The Peckish Synapse

[truckguy82]

On 5/19/2025 at 12:12 PM, KARNUT said:

I’ve been all over the spectrum when it comes to high performance cars. With all the nannies, launch control with heavy insulation to keep out noise. I have my most fun with my wife’s Acura Intagra type r. Hardly any sound deadening. Slammed to the ground. Rides like a rock. But it sticks to the road like nobody’s business. It feels fast going slow on the twisties by my house. You get to use all it has noise and all. And the best part you don’t have to go over the speed limit. These super high horsepower cars. You hit the gas and immediately let off your over the speed limit. As we see with automobile racing. Very few people can handle the horsepower these street cars put out without nannies. You’re paying for all that. You’re not going to use it. You can’t. 

New one is pretty fun too.

 

Just test drove a new 911 gts with a 7speed manual. I hated the manual and I’m a die hard manual guy.

 

I think I’ve realized I only want a manual in a car that’s slow enough to rev out and shift a few times. If it’s too fast, give me an auto/dct. Also need super short gearing in the manual so you need to shift 4 times to get up to highway speeds.

 

Believe it or not, another super fun car to whip around is the model 3 performance. I know you won’t believe me until you try it. I think it’s more fun than an ITR on public roads (i had an ITR in the mid 2000’s)

[Donstar]

Good comments about a manual transmission. ^^^^  

[Grumpy Bear]

Once in a Lifetime

 

Sitting in the Chiropractors office today I met a gentlemen who like me was a life long Refinery, Gas/Oil/Chemical worker and a fellow refinery Fireman/EMT. He spent his career at the Exxon/Mobil unit in Baytown, Texas. Forty years. Mostly we chatted about fire training and responses but dipped into the processes as well. He was in a unit large enough to be dedicated to the department. I was in a smaller unit where we wore all hats. Fire, medical and unit operations. 

 

We talked at length about our training and strangely it was like taking to a fellow you trained along side of. We went to the same schools, knew some of the same trainers. Worked the same 'props' took finals at the same facility and got our qualifications from the same coordinating department just a few years apart. He younger than I by just a few years. His wife was aghast. She thought his ramblings were embellishments, actually fictional. I believe that ended today for her. 

 

It did for me as well. When your experience is so far removed from your present time and after a thousand people telling you 'your high, that didn't happen'; you start to doubt your own experience. 

 

I may never interact with this fellow again and yet he holds a place marker in my life. What are the chances you run into a guy with identical experience down the field you took your finals on 50 years after the fact? 

 

Once in a lifetime.  

 

I know what I know. Did what I did and said what I said. It was a good day......it was a GREAT day.....

Edited June 3 by Grumpy Bear

[Donstar]

We live in and near popular retirement destinations. Today we're having lunch with a couple who taught in classrooms next to me in a small northern community for two years 46 years ago.  We re-met fairly recently.  We found them  living a couple of  blocks away from us in a city over 1k miles from where we originally met.   We stumbled upon each other by fluke.  This isn't the same as your story but I can appreciate the excitement of meeting someone who shares and validates your treasured experiences.   

[customboss]

 

Not Everyone Can Become an Airline Pilot

Aptitude and cognitive skills testing are being viewed as more important than ever before.

Les Abend

Friday, June 06, 2025

 Paying for flight training is not a cheap investment. If a student just doesn’t have the aptitude, money is being wasted. [Image: David Weaver/Adobe Stock]

Being picked and probed during the medical phase of the airline pilot interview process was an anticipated expectation. My understanding was that the airline was not only testing for current health issues but also the possibility that family history might forecast problems that could manifest themselves later.

One of the more challenging portions of the undertaking involved an aptitude test that not only included solving equations but also capacity for retaining and comprehending other information simultaneously. In other words, being tested on multitasking skills.

This Article First Appeared in FLYING Magazine

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My memory of the items on the test from four decades ago are limited, but I do recall the sporadic narrative math problems among other cognitive questions. A group of about 20 interviewees answered a seemingly endless number of these questions while listening to a recording of communication between ATC and pilots during a thunderstorm event in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In the second phase, we continued with the written cognitive exam but were asked to pay closer attention to the ATC communication. I soon became fascinated with the terse exchanges between the controllers and pilots while they attempted to deal with  rapidly deteriorating weather. 

• READ MORE: Should Maximum Age Requirement Even Exist for Airline Pilots?

Shortly thereafter, we were given another multiple-choice exam that required us to recall details of the ATC recording. I excelled at this task but to the detriment of completing the cognitive exam. Thinking that this particular interview phase would be my downfall, my hiring expectations lowered. Fortunately, the required grading must have been at lower standards because I was given the opportunity to complete a 34-year career.

 

Although my 1980s interview experience was a holdover from the protocol of the 1960s and ’70s, today’s screening process has developed a different philosophy for many  airlines. With the majority of hiring at most major airlines being funneled from the regional carriers, the current requirement to possess an ATP certificate indicates that appropriate cognitive skills already exist. 

For the most part, the testing described has already been completed by virtue of such pilots having successfully operated in the airline environment. Of course, exceptions exist in the form of pilots hired directly to major airlines with primarily military backgrounds and those with other types of GA experience like corporate flying. With major airlines having embraced ab initio training, independent flight schools are now affiliated with mainline regional carriers, enrolling a record number of aspiring airline pilots. In that regard, this is where aptitude and cognitive testing should be initiated, more so than at the airline hiring level. 

• READ MORE: Airline Pilot Generations Vary to Say the Least

If my attendance at the Flight School Association of North America (FSANA) convention in February was any reflection, many of these flight schools have already established the testing process. The reasoning is relatively simple. Paying for flight training is not a cheap investment. If a student just doesn’t have the aptitude, money is being wasted. The vast majority of independent flight schools have the integrity to evaluate a student showing a lack of ability. But those that administer an aptitude test prior to an aspiring airline pilot ever touching a control yoke distinguish themselves even more as honest brokers of the profession.

For a better insight to pilot aptitude testing, I tasked representatives from the assessment company, Symbiotics. The company manned a booth in the vendors’ section of the FSANA convention. The back of its business card reads, “Experts in psychometric assessment for the aviation industry.” For those like me that don’t have a clue about the definition of “psychometric,” it’s the science of measuring mental capacities and processes. James Hoad, Symbiotics’ head of sales, indicated that it employed three aviation psychologists and five occupational psychologists. Aleksandra Kapela, one of the aviation psychologists, patiently answered questions about the company’s assessment process. For the most part, testing is completed online through a proprietary platform customized for each client. Although a flight school can administer at its location, most prospective students complete the exam remotely.

• READ MORE: Reflections on Life in the Skies as a Check Airman

The process can be divided into phases depending upon the client’s needs. Once the assessment is completed, the results require interpretation. Symbiotics trains flight school personnel to make sense of the data, and then it becomes incumbent upon them to set their standards for student admittance. 

So, what exactly is tested? A personality assessment plays an important part. It comes as no surprise that competent pilots have character traits pertinent to the occupation. Decisiveness. Assertiveness. Cautiousness. Cognitive reasoning and the capacity to assimilate information are measured through a series of tasks. 

 

Mathematics and physics are tested as well. Pilots may not be on the Einstein level in these areas, but a basic knowledge of these subjects is critical to a safe operation, notwithstanding the ability to understand various facets of flight training. Dexterity and hand-eye coordination is also tested. Hoad insisted I apply my skills to one such test. With a joystick attached to a laptop computer, the objective was to keep a virtual ball in the center of a circle by manipulating the control appropriately. A wind vector would be added during a portion of the exercise. I was reluctant to participate, thinking that I would prove my successful career to have been a farce. Even with the shortened version of the test, my results were only slightly above average. The B-777 I flew for nine years would never be in my future.

In addition to attending some of the unique breakaway sessions at the FSANA convention, I was also a keynote speaker. My presentation, the “Four Most Important Leadership Skills of Great Captains,” is a subject I’ve taken on the road to both university and independent flight schools. Would the testing described assist in a screening protocol that would place competent leaders in the left seat of an airliner a few years down the road? Time will certainly tell.

One of the more infamous airline interviews of the distant past was given to pilot applicants at Delta Air Lines. Part of the process involved a conversation with the carrier’s psychologist. It wasn’t so much about the paranoia of having this type of professional find a disqualifying mental issue but rather how an interviewee would sit in the rocking chair. Rock or don’t rock? I never received consistent answers on how colleagues fared with rocking or not rocking, so maybe this wasn’t a test to be feared…or taken seriously. As an unfortunate side note, the psychologist that administered this phase of the interview took his own life. Not sure what that says exactly. Certainly, criteria has changed over the years to a more data-driven system.

It goes without saying that in the current environment of unprecedented hiring the flying public deserves competence in its airline cockpits. Assessment screening for pilot aptitude should be an important part of the process. Because not everyone can be an airline pilot.

---

This column first appeared in the May Issue 958 of the FLYING print edition.

 

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Les Abend

Les Abend is a retired, 34-year veteran of American Airlines, attempting to readjust his passion for flying airplanes in the lower flight levels—without the assistance of a copilot.

 

 

 

Edited June 7 by customboss

[customboss]

My CO Congressman (R)  sharing very “hungry”synapse info. What an improvement over BOOBERT. 
 

Storing digital data on DNA

Edited June 7 by customboss

[Grumpy Bear]

Good Night and Good Luck

 

Love this play and that sort of journalism. Stage work was off the chain. You go George!! I remember some of the film clips in this play. I also remember Bomb Shelter Drills at school. 

 

File out to the middle of the hallway. Back to back. Head between your knees and kiss your a$$ goodbye. 

 

Déjà vu all over again.   Didn't see it coming. 

[Grumpy Bear]

Ever read something over an over and over again and never get the sense of it? Then one day BOOM!

I'm sharing a personal experience so hold the religion complains in check. Below are quoted the first five verse of the Bible: 

 

[Quote] In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and desolate, and there was darkness upon the surface of the watery deep, and God’s active force was moving about over the surface of the waters.

And God said: “Let there be light.” Then there was light. After that God saw that the light was good, and God began to divide the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, but the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day. [Close quote]

 

I don't know how many times I've read this passage and yet it never dawned on me that the bold statement is the beginning of the first day, and not verse one...  Meaning?

 

The heavens and earth were already in existence for only God and Christ knows how long before the creative six days commences. The creative process was as it would have seemed to an observer, had there been one, on earth at that time, and for the purpose of the benefit of the observer.  Like I said BOOM! 

 

I read an unrelated book decades ago five times over twenty years before I understood the meaning the writer was conveying. It was called "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. It had noting to do with either Zen nor Motorcycles just like understanding Bible verses can have little to do with Religion. 

 

People, I observe, struggle with that distinction. Sad.... It forces one to be taught instead of to learn. 

[diyer2]

[Grumpy Bear]

@Z45 posted this link in another thread and it's worth the repost

 

 

I'll comment on it later. 

 

[Grumpy Bear]

Commentary

 

The number one thing I hear when I do a modification or stray from the book is: "You will loose your warranty"! The second most heard thing is: "Wait until the warranty expires". The above video says both are bad advice. Okay that is forum advice. How about the GM advice? Hint, it isn't the engineering department giving that advice. He could not have been more clear; more clear about who nor more clear about what it is based on or what drives it. 

 

Not one bit of this surprised me. I've been hearing this stuff from Engineers since I was old enough to sit upright. GM is using the same thinking Zenith used to drive itself out of business. If you were paying attention to the section on the 4L60 series planetary gear fiasco you might have pickup up on the words "UP GRADE". An upgrade they were not. But it was the words used to attempt to recover from a bad discission to cheapen metals and metallurgy that had the late four gear setups failing as fast as they could install them. Perhaps you pickup on warranty parts being Tier II products? And that is the best of the rest. 

 

I was 'lucky' that the 6L80E behind the V6 didn't use that disaster of a torque converter used in the bread and butter V8 pickups and SUV's. And every time I mentioned replacing it before it crapped out I got....???? Those first two pieces of advice. 

 

Very early on I flipped the pill and when then new TBV became available I used it. Cool the fluid. 

 

Very early on I swapped to a lower temperature water thermostat. Cool the fluid some more. 

 

Swapped to a PAO based base oil D6 spec fluid. Cool the fluid some more AND give in more room. 

 

Change fluid like I own the facility which??? Keeps the valve body clean and un-abrasive. 

 

Between each step and during each step I collected, graphed and shared every step and the reasoning behind each step. And now ten years after that fact we have a GM POWERTRAIN engineer giving the EXACT same advice and to the EXACT same target temperatures even in consideration of the more robust base oil choices. Go figure. And what does cooling this unit almost a hundred degrees do? Slows oxidation AND Increased working VISOCISTY. 

 

As good fortune would have it these afore mentioned modifications also lowered my bulk engine oil temperatures to???? The values he suggest in the video.

 

And what did he say about the claims "Todays fluids can handle it"! Pure rubbish. 

 

Early on I started using an oil with SAE40 like HTHS viscosity and cooled it some more with base oil selections which I published. [below...again] And that results in? More oxidation resistance AND more running viscosity. That 30 degree reduction is good for more than doubling oil life AND one grade in VISCOSITY. My recent move to 5W40 raised oil temperature about 3 degrees. Still a net gain in viscosity and less than 1 mpg on alcohol reduction in economy for the total package of cooling and oil upgrades. Fractions of an MPG on gasoline. I can live with that. 

 

And what has been the observed results? 188,000 miles of pretty flawless service. 3X the warranty duration. If she drops dead tomorrow...I win. 

 

 

I didn't write this to brag on something hidden. I've logged every move in plain site for 10 years and it has been worth every nasty comment made to me. Doing isn't' bragging. I've said this before:

 

I'm not telling you what I think. I'm telling you what's been done. 

Not explaining theory. Showing an example in PRACTICE.

 

How's that MPFI three pot looking now? Luck of the draw my eye. 

 

 

[OnTheReel]

The blurb about ZF asking GM why the hell they were changing parts of the 6 speed (to save money) made me laugh. I can picture some irate German engineer losing his mind…watching his baby get cost cut to death by those morons.

[Grumpy Bear]

Love this chart. Straight mineral oils reference point is 160 F. So Group IV gets you another 20 F. Not as much as you thought, eh? No one currently makes a hindered Group V turbine like oil for ICE's which would be a game changer. 

 

OEM is calling for an OCI of 7,500 miles and a bulk oil temperature of about 234 F. Yea, that isn't happening and keep that motor of your alive longer than they wish it to. 

 

I cool and operate under 200 F and currently have cut my OCI in half of the OEM recommended interval. 

 

 

I have been running at 2/3thds the OCI and cooling/operating below 200 F with this result. 

 

 

Dropping bulk oil temperatures 40 F plus increased viscosity about 2 SAE grades. Then I added one more. Darn little impact on fuel economy. Major impact on reliability. 

 

Question. 0W20 at 210 F bulk oil temps is what at 240 F? Now tow with it and run it up to 270 F + and keep your 7.5K OCI. Now tell me viscosity doesn't matter. Tell me your WONDER additives will hold the line. Explain how 7.5 K OCI is reasonable on a SAE20 running 40+ F over it's designed limits then tell me why people with vast educations in this endeavor persist in that company line? WHY and HOW 0W20 is the right choice in a world where the metallurgy is compromised for the sake of $$$$. Then explain it to me with a straight face why I should listen to such advice and keep ANY credibility. 

 

 

Edited June 22 by Grumpy Bear

[Grumpy Bear]

Did we forget?

 

Go back in time. Most common thermostat was 180 F. There was no thermal bypass valve for the transmission. 10W40 was common oil and all were full SAPS and ATF was as viscous as an SAE 30. We didn't have GDI diluting the oil. We didn't rate a half ton pickup at well over a ton. Those meant to tow had large transmission coolers. We didn't think oil consumption measured in quarts between 3K "long drain' mile oil changes was normal. Transmission failures were pretty rare unless abused and it wasn't uncommon for an old Ford C6, Torqueflite 727 or TH-400 to go a half million miles. Diff were loaded with SAE 110 and out lasted several trucks they were moved to. 

 

Were we paying attention?

 

Bulk oil temperature is a function of? 1.) Water temperature 2.) RPM 3.) Load 4.) Viscosity and 5.) Base oil type. and if you put a cooler on it that game changes again. 

 

Just because you motor is 'water cooled' doesn't mean fluid choices and operating/climate conditions don't have a MAJOR impact on your oil temperature. True that for the entire driveline! Where did people get the idea that a water cooled motor has a steady, tempered, oil temperature? 

 

 

 

 

Do we care?

 

Oil, in SOME respects, has improved but in many others it has erased most of that improvement. What impact did hearing GM calling the 5 pinion planetary that replaced the 4 pinion an "Upgrade" to hide the fact the reduction in metallurgy offset every gain in load sharing have on those words...UPGRADE?  

 

That as a combination of all the above the units you now drive are a fraction of the reliability of a few decades ago? That every improvement in lubrication is met with a set back in either lubrication or in design or specification. More heat, lower viscosity, less cooling, more load, longer drain intervals or non-serviceable units are not the result of advancement but of greedy manufactures and apathetic consumers to lazy or ignorant to care about their own welfare or that of the machine.  

 

Engineers tell you. Information is TSB's tell you. Experience tells you. Do you care?

[KARNUT]

I’m an old guy. My memory is vivid from the 60s on. We had plenty of cars and trucks being a large family. Mostly GMs some Fords. Factually speaking. Even at 3K oil changes during that time. We without a doubt as a family and business. Have more vehicles passing mileage we’d only dream of back in the old days. It took me until recently to trust a vehicle passing 150K miles. That’s average for me now. I only recently stopped going extended with oil changes. Only because my driving changed. Sure there’s experimental engines that shorten engine life. As a rule generally the manufacturers that do it right have longevity. Even at their recommend extended drains. Simple buy those. But generally they all last longer than the old days. Well almost all.