Thursday, March 18, 2010

On Tuesday we had some excitement down at the Provo airport (KPVU).  The BYU basketball team, cheerleaders, and pep band left to Oklahoma City for the NCAA basketball tournament.  So when BYU athletics goes on long distance trips, the charter and airplane.  No, not a small airplane, but an airliner.  BYU football usually flies on a JetBlue Airbus A320.


However on Tuesday we had a Boeing MD-83 in Provo.  I was there so I took some cool pictures of it.


This picture gives you a good idea how big this thing is. You can actually walk underneath it without having to duck.  And by the standards of the airlines, this thing is small!

And then the most exciting part of all.  The takeoff.


There is just something about flying that awes me.  It's such a liberating experience.  For centuries man was destined to live a life confined to the ground.  Gravity was the enemy of all who dreamed. 


 Even Sir Isaac Newton himself, the man who "discovered" gravity, could not escape it's grasp.  Ironically, because of his studies in the laws of physics, man is able to break free of the invisible hand that has held man down.  

Here's how it works: Newton's third law says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  
As the wing travels through the air, the moves the air around it. Stationary air is met by the leading edge of the wing and forced to flow over the wing.  When two objects collide, the force applied to each object is the same, due to Newton's third law.  Momentum from the airplane is transfered to the air molecules.  Momentum  equals mass times velocity. As the airplane strikes the air molecules they are accelerated to a very high velocity, and flow smoothly over the wing. At the trailing edge of the wing the air comes off and is traveling in a downward direction at a very high speed.  The wing forces the air downward, and because of Newton's third law, the reaction to that is that the wing must be forced upward.  And there you have it the phenomonon of flight.  We call it LIFT!  I looks something like this.

It took thousands of years and two brilliant bicycle makers, Wilber and Orville Wright to finally make mans dream of flight a reality on December 17th, 1903.


Flying is amazing.  It can take a miserable, cloudy, rainy day....


...and turn it into the most beautiful day you've ever experienced.


I can't imagine having any other job.  I will love going to work every day if this is my office...


...and these are the only papers I have to push.


Salt Lake City Intl Salt Lake City, UT (KSLC): NSIGN ONE (RNAV) (DP)   Salt Lake City Intl Salt Lake City, UT (KSLC): LEEHY THREE (RNAV) (STAR)  Salt Lake City Intl Salt Lake City, UT (KSLC): ILS OR LOC RWY 16R (IAP)  
I can not wait for the day that I get to add one of these to my wallet.


I was not born to stay on the ground.  I was born to fly.  I am meant to fly spend my days in the skies above this world, taking in the beauty and wonder of God's creation.

"The duty of a pilot is to fulfill the disires of his earthbound ancestors who could only look towards the heavens and dream."











Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Vengence is MINE!!!

So, back during the summer during band camp, Skyler and this girl, Kelsey,  decided that it would be incredibly fun to toilet paper my car.  They did a pretty good job of it.  The wrapped it around everything and then tore more into little shred and filled the floor of my car with it.  I was still finding bits of it for weeks afterwards.  Anyway, I told Kelsey that I would get her back.  I would get Skyler too, but she doesn't have a car or anything that is easily accessible to vandalize. haha.  So now that its been a good 6 months or so and Kelsey's forgotten all about it, I decided it was time to get her back.  And here's a couple snapshot of the finished product.





Special thanks to the Wilson's for giving me the 15 pound roll of shrink wrap.

Completely off topic, but I think I will become a more frequent customer at the Coldstone by the dollar theater.