Out of the Blue

I got a very interesting phone call last week and it really was a thrill. It's kind of complicated, so I'll have to start with some background.

Back in 1991 a couple of guys I worked with doing in-flight simulation were Technical Chairman and a Session Chair, respectively, at the AIAA Simulation Science Conference, which was held at the same time and place as the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control and Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Conferences. My husband and I always went to these conferences, which are in August. The guys wanted me to write a paper about in-flight simulation at Dryden. There were two reasons for this, that I'd been managing the in-flight simulation at Dryden for years and that it wouldn't look like an advertisement, since Dryden used the various aircraft, rather than providing the service. I guess I need to mention that the conference TC was the USAF manager of their in-flight simulators and the Session Chair was the department head of the company that operated those aircraft and a couple of their own. You can see where them writing such a paper might not look entirely neutral on the subject.

So I wrote the paper. It took a lot of research and I spent a lot of time up at the Ames Research Center, going through fiches and reading old, old papers. I blew a lot of them back and would have a heavy box to carry back on the KingAir on every trip. I went around and interviewed past and present research test pilots and engineers and generally had a good time, but it was harder to write this paper than it was to turn out a more focused paper on some flight test results. I also spent a lot of time picking out photos so the paper wouldn't be just text.

I gave the paper at the conference (it was in New Orleans that year) and the room was full to overflowing and engineers came up afterward to tell me how much they'd liked it, engineers I knew and respected. As a result, I decided it was a pretty good paper. AIAA couldn't publish it as a journal paper because it was way too long and there was no good way I could cut it down, so I was kind of stuck, looking for a more widely distributed publication method. I happened to talk to Dick Hallion, who was working as a historian for the Air Force Wright Aeronautical Laboratory at the time, about the paper (he'd liked it) and he suggested I try the Journal of the American Aviation Historians Society. Dick had written a very good history of Dryden some years before this, which was when I'd gotten to know him.

So I sent it to the AAHS and they were very happy to publish it for me. I made a few small changes and we sent it off, with a stack of photos, and got back copies of the magazine some time later. They did a beautiful job printing the paper, because they used glossy paper and photos were important to them.

You can read the TM version of the paper, In-Flight Simulation Studies at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility, here. It's not very technical and it may be interesting.

OK, that's the background. You can see why I said that you needed it to understand what happened last week.

Dick Hallion is back working for NASA as a historian again. The agency is putting together a four-volume series on NACA/NASA aeronautics research history, aimed at letting the young engineers learn about all the stuff that has been done in aeronautics over the years. Three of the volumes are about aerodynamics and wind tunnels and the fourth volume is about handling and flying qualities and topics like that. At least, I think that's how Dick described it. I may be wrong, though. Dick is in charge of this effort (I think he's a contractor, not that it matters) and he'd remembered my paper all these years and thinks it should be included.

So he called me up to ask me if I'd like to bring it up to date for inclusion in this, because he thinks it's important to include the topic and I'd already written such a good paper, he thought. This is a form of profession immortality, in its way. I'll be a contractor to NASA and I think I'll be able to use the Dryden library and photo lab, as well as having access to the pilots and researchers. So far as I know, there hasn't been a lot of in-flight simulation studies at Dryden since I wrote the paper. Handling and flying qualities research has really dropped off the charts for funding these days, as has aeronautics, at least at NASA (and, I think, the USAF). Aeronautics has kind of been the red-headed step child at NASA once the Space program really started sucking up the funding.

And I get a copy of the four-volume set, too. Plus they pay me, although not a huge amount.

Three More Rows And The Bind Off

I'm almost done with my shawl. This is the first non-scarf project I've knitted in maybe two decades.

I haven't forgotten to post, having been busy lately, but now I'm going to wait another hour or two so that I have a Finished Object to show you.

I Discover A "New" Military Science Fiction Author

Some time ago, like at least a year, I was browsing at my local Waldenbooks and I bought some paperbacks by an author named John Ringo. The titles I got were There Will Be Dragons (the first in a series) and A Hymn Before Battle, Gust Front, and When The Devil Dances (the first three in another series). I bought these because Ringo had co-written at least one book with another author whom I liked and I had liked that joint book.

I finally got around to reading There Will Be Dragons and decided I really did like the author. I'd say he's ex-military, a Southerner, and, like me, a baby-boomer, as well as a pretty good writer. So here I am on Wednesday, almost finished with the first book in a series and wanting more. I went to Amazon and found the next two books, as well as the other books in the second series, and ordered them. We'd joined the Amazon frequent-reader club, so we get 2nd-day delivery free. However, Monday, when they should have showed up, was New Year's Day and UPS was taking the day off. So I expected them on Tuesday, which was what Amazon promised me. I don't know what happened, but my eagerly-awaited books spent Tuesday down in the LA basin and didn't arrive at my house until late Wednesday afternoon. I was kind of grumpy about that.

However, I did have the first three books of the second series, so I started reading them. I caught the author in a glaring factual error, one that just leaped off the page at me, but otherwise the books seemed very well edited, without the ugly spell-checker errors that are so common these days. This series, set in what was the near future, has a certain resemblance to Tom Clancy's books, with lots of technical stuff and combat and somewhat shallow character development, but are, in my opinion, better written.

I like military science fiction, like David Weber's Honor Harrington series, because it's generally less fantastical than a lot of sf. In Weber's books, about all one has to suspend disbelief about is that faster-than-light space travel is possible. Human nature is still human nature, peculiar as it is. I also like some alternative fiction, like the 1632 series by Eric Flint and the Belisarius series by Flint and David Drake.

I don't know what's going on with all the collaborating in sf these days, but there seems to be a lot of it. On the one hand, it can make the quality somewhat uneven, particularly in series. On the other hand, we readers get a lot more books in the series. Plus, it makes it easier to find new authors, the way I found Ringo.

Now and then, not very often in the good collaborations, it's possible to tell which author wrote something. I don't particularly look for this (I'm a pretty uncritical reader) but now and then it's impossible to overlook. I know, with an absolute certainty, that David Weber wrote one paragraph in a collaboration, because of a quirk of his. To him, all chairs are comfortable. No doubt it's the Spanish Inquisition's influence (no one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition), but he doesn't seem to be able to mention chairs without calling them comfortable.

So anyway, I've finished the first three books in the first series (and discovered that there's a fourth volume, which I ordered today) and the first two and a half books in the other series. The problem with good books is that they have to be read, no matter what else goes by the wayside. So I don't have those photos I promised and I've only got about four inches knitted on my first scarf for the Red Scarf Project and our laundry hamper is overflowing and I'm slipping behind in AFCA.

I've gone back to working on the red scarf, as it has to be done and shipped to VA this month. I ordered three colors of red Wool Of The Andes from KnitPicks for these scarves. I really like the yarn, which is Peruvian wool. It's not at all scratchy, but it has a very soft yet firm texture and it knits into a fabric with a very good hand. It's also very economical. That's not why I ordered it, though; I ordered it because there were so many good reds. Anyway, the pattern I'm using is the Open Basketweave Mesh from Charted Knitting Designs: A Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara A. Walker. In the Schoolhouse Press edition, it's the yellow volume and the pattern is on page 252. I'm using 21 stitches, but the two edge stitches are slipped purlwise at the beginning of each row and purled at the end, so the pattern is really worked on 19 stitches. On 6.0 mm (US 10) needles, this give me a scarf that's 5.5 in. wide.