What is the best decision you ever made, and what is the worst decision you ever made?

[msc545]

My best decision was to get several graduate degrees in a row. These degrees have allowed me to help others feel better and live longer, and to have the satisfaction of practicing a profession I spent a great deal of time learning and now spend a substantial amount of time teaching while I'm still doing quite a bit of learning. They have also allowed me to make a very comfortable amount of money in the process of all this.

My worst decision was getting married. I'm not going to go into the details of this, but I will tell you that I think there was something absolutely, temporarily wrong with me to have made such a ridiculously stupid and destructive decision. Never again.

What were your best and worst decisions?

[Anonymous]

What happened when you got married?

I was engaged to be married then I chickened out

My parents were strongly against our SU that probably confirmed it for me

Why you think you went through with it if it was so bad?

[msc545]

It didn't seem bad initially, or I wouldn't have done it, but it became very bad relatively quickly and ended in an ugly divorce.

[msc545]

You are very fortunate you didn't go through with this. It would have been quite sad.

[Pterodon]

Best quitting HS and joining the Navy. Worst was not staying in and retiring

[msc545]

Were you on a ship or the land for both? What was your MOS in the Navy? If you were deployed, where did you travel to?

[Pterodon]

Both. I was an aircraft mechanic. My first two years I was on the USS Tarawa LHA-1 stationed in San Diego. While on her I made a deployment to the western Pacific. We went to the Indian Ocean and a lot of SE Asia plus Australia. When we got back home I then went to school in Memphis then I was shore duty at a squadron in Norfolk, VA. While there I was involved in the Grenada thing and got a medal. I would have stayed in till retirement but the MOS I was in was overmanned and the Navy said all first term enlistees in that MOS had to change jobs or get out. The Navy did make me a very sweet offer to stay in. They wanted me to be a ship fitter which is mostly a plumber, welder and damage control specialist. A good field to be sure but had nothing to do with aviation. They were going to send me to school and give me $20,000 in cash to reenlist in that field. This was 1984 and I said no. I got out and continued my career in aircraft maintenance which was my dream job. Still I wonder where I’d be had I taken their offer

[msc545]

Sounds like you had a very interesting career. What was your life like on the aircraft carrier that you were presumably on? Wait, I don't know if the Tarawa is a carrier or something else. Anyway, I ask this question because many of my patients have served on aircraft carriers, and I've heard varying stories about the quality of life, particularly for enlisted people, on those ships. Are you still working as an aircraft mechanic? If so What kind of aircraft do you work on these days?

[Pterodon]

I am retired and no longer work. My ship was an LHA. Landing Helicopter Assault. She was part of the “gator” or amphibious Navy that carried marines for shore assaults. She was larger than WWII carriers and is the second largest class of ships in the Navy after the carriers. She was a flat top and carried Marine helicopters and Harrier aircraft. She also had a well deck that could carry landing craft and launch an assault by water. She carried approximately 2000 marines. I enjoyed being sea duty more than shore duty. The food was actually pretty good and well planned. Is it luxury? No but I went in knowing this so it wasn’t a surprise. I’ve worked all areas of aircraft maintenance. Private, commercial, military and corporate. I enjoyed corporate the most. The planes were big but not too big. I worked on a 747 one time and I swore I’d never work another. Every thing you do you’re a minimum of three stories off the ground. It’s insane how big that plane is. My favorite planes to work on were the Gulfstream corporate jets and the Grumman C-1A I worked on when shore duty in the Navy. It’s funny but the Navy sent me to jet engine school and I learned all about them. I graduated upper 5% and was sent to my duty station in Norfolk. When I got there I was dumbstruck because all the planes in the squadron were radial piston engined planes. They were the last ones when I was in. No jet engined planes anywhere. So much for turbine engine school

[Pterodon]

My ship has since been sunk in an exercise a few years ago. It did sadden me

[msc545]

That is sad. I thought about you just now because a. Learjet 60 just crashed in Florida. I've been sitting here thinking about what the hell would make that happen. I think it's very unlikely that they lost both engines simultaneously but not impossible. You would know more about that than I would. I guess there's always the possibility of a spin stall accident I would think that would be more evident on takeoff or just shortly thereafter, and these people apparently were flying for a while before whatever happened happened. So what's your thought about this thing? I've done a bit of flying in small planes but nothing like what you've worked on and never in a jet of any kind. So I really don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to these things. I know you do. So. I'm curious about your opinion.

[Pterodon]

Several years ago another Lear crashed killing a professional golfer. What happened in that accident was a pressurization valve stopped working and it gradually under pressurized the plane and everyone on board passed out. The plane stayed on autopilot and at times would reach 40,000 feet. If no pressurization that would’ve killed everyone. The Air Force launched planes to escort it and to possibly shoot it down if it went near a populated area. They reported the cockpit windscreen was iced over on the inside. The plane eventually ran out of fuel and crashed

[msc545]

I remember reading about that incident in detail and it was exactly as you described it. There was even a fictional TV episode based on that incident. I guess the only solace and all that is that those people probably died fairly quickly and painlessly, but the whole family was pretty horrible.

[msc545]

So I wonder if the accident that just happened was due to the same sort of cause pressure in the pressurization system. I think that would tend to kill you really pretty quickly and you might not even notice the fact that you weren't getting enough oxygen until you weren't and just simply passed out.

[Pterodon]

There’s no telling what happened. Mechanical failures are rare but they do happen. So many times it goes to “pilot error” and I’ve always considered that a non answer. When did he err? Before the emergency situation or during it? What error did he make. There is a very brief moment in time on take off that if an engine goes out there isn’t enough airspeed or altitude to make recovery possible and that’s all airplanes but it’s brief

[msc545]

I'm not sure where in the flight that terrible dive occurred, but I'm under the impression that it was well after takeoff. I'm thinking about what would do this. I guess maybe losing a horizontal stabilizer might cause it. I have no idea however how an entire stabilizer would come off the plane. Perhaps just jamming it in the wrong position would be sufficient and it seems More likely to me that that would happen as opposed to losing it. I guess maybe losing an aileron or having one jam might do it too. Other than control surfaces issues I can't imagine what else would do this.

[msc545]

If they somehow jam the stabilizer in the down position and that would cause the nose to pitch down and if it went far enough, I think it might be enough to cause a dive like that. I don't really know. I've never seen anything quite like this before. What do you think?

[Pterodon]

Another crash many years ago was Alaska Airlines flying at altitude off the coast of California on its way to Anchorage if I remember right. This one was very bad. The pilot made a trim adjustment which moved the horizontal stabilizer. Suddenly the plane went totally out of control. It literally tumbled down out of the sky. On its way down the plane experienced virtually every attitude a plane can experience including inverted. The FAA chose not to release the cockpit recorder because it was nothing but human suffering. What happened was the jackscrew or horizontal stabilizer actuator had stripped jackscrew threads from ineffective lubrication of the jackscrew. It was a faulty design. When the pilot made the trim adjustment the jackscrew had no threads left for travel. So where the horizontal attaches to the actuator once it hit where there were no threads it allowed the horizontal move leading edge up and down. Fluttering if you will. All planes of its type and I don’t remember what it was were ordered to immediately perform inspection of that assembly and they came out with a fix to properly lubricate the jackscrew. Yes they did find others that had started stripping during the inspection

[msc545]

Wow, that's a really horrible story. I don't want to think about what the people in that plane went through when that happened. Sounds like the stabilizer was just moving freely, and the actuator had no ability to do anything about that. What a nightmare.

[Pterodon]

What made it worse was being at altitude. The plane tumbled and fell for a long time

[msc545]

Yeah, that actually makes it even worse. Those people had a long time to be really, really distressed before they died.

[NathanDavis]

best decision... to quit college
worst decision... to bet on Aaron Rodgers to win (the fourth time, lol)

[MrChinaski]

My best decision has been to lead with my heart. My worst decision was when I was too shy to do so.