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Highest Duty

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A book review.

Highest DutyLast night, I stayed up late to finish reading Highest Duty by US Airways pilot Chelsey B. “Sully” Sullenberger. Captain Sullenberger was the pilot in command of US Airways Flight 1549, which landed with no loss of life in the Hudson River on January 15, 2009.

I’d been wanting to read the book for a while but I kept putting it off. I wanted it to be my first purchased ebook experience. I was supposed to get a Nook for Christmas, but the idiots at Barnes & Noble were completely clueless about customer service and timely order fulfillment, so I canceled the order. I wound up with an iPad in April. After weighing the benefits and drawbacks of ebook reader software — iBooks, Kindle Reader, and B&N Reader — I decided to go with the Kindle software and ordered the Kindle edition of the book from Amazon.com. From what I hear from Twitter friends, the iPad makes a better “Kindle” than Amazon’s Kindle.

On Heroes

I’ve always been intrigued by Captain Sullenberger’s modesty and apparent reluctance to bask in the limelight of his extraordinary experience. People call him a hero but he [rightly] refuses that title. He quotes from a letter he received after his Hudson River landing: “I see a hero as electing to enter a dangerous situation for a higher purpose, and you were not given a choice.”

I agree with this definition of a hero. Captain Sullenberger did what he had to do and was fortunate enough to have the knowledge, experience, demeanor, and team to carry it off successfully. His love and respect of life — including, of course, his own — is what motivated him to do everything he could to succeed.

In many ways, that’s better than being a hero. When a terrible situation was thrust upon him by circumstances he could not change, he rose to the occasion and emerged victorious, saving the lives of 105 people. Along the way, he gave the rest of us hope — after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, in the midst of a serious economic recession, with wars going on in the Mideast — he showed us what people can accomplish when put to the test. He gave us the happy ending we all needed.

It Wasn’t a “Miracle”

Another thing that intrigued — and, I’ll admit, pleased — me about Captain Sullenberger was his failure to credit his success to the intervention of some supernatural being. I’m talking about God.

I can’t tell you how sick I am of seeing famous athletes and celebrities and just plain people thank God for something good happening to them. Scored a record number of goals in a basketball game? Thank God! Won a Grammy? Praise Jesus! Tornado took out the house next to yours but left yours unscathed? God was watching out for you!

It makes me sick. People don’t want to give themselves credit where credit is due. They work hard, they train, they practice, but they give God credit for getting the ball through the hoop. They learn music, they practice singing, they get a great producer who helps package their material, but they give Jesus credit for winning that Grammy. They don’t want to admit that luck has a place in our lives — good luck preserves one house while bad luck takes the one next door away. What of the people who lost the basketball game or the Grammy or their home? Did God simply not like them as much? And what about when these winners get their own dose of bad luck — injury, illness, scandal, death? Did God change his mind about them?

Captain Sullenberger, however, did not thank God or any other supernatural being for the positive outcome of his Hudson landing. At least I didn’t hear him do so in any article, interview, or elsewhere. I wanted to read the book to be sure that he didn’t thank God within its pages. He didn’t.

And that just makes me respect him even more.

The Story

The book mingles autobiographical material with events from the day of the landing. The autobiographical material was presented in a roughly chronological order, but did bounce around a lot with side stories, including references to the Hudson landing. I’m not sure that was the best approach, but it did keep me reading.

Captain Sullenberger is clearly a true pilot. He entered aviation because of his love of flying. From his start as a teen, he took aviation seriously, learning what he could to be a better, safer pilot. He understands the importance of knowing an aircraft’s systems inside and out. He understands the value of studying past accidents to prevent future ones. He also understands that all the things that happen in our lives define who we are and how we will react in a given situation.

Flight 1549 from Wikipedia

This iconic photo of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River by GregL originally uploaded to Flickr can be found on Wikipedia under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.

A detailed discussion of the events of January 15, 2009 begin about 60% through the book. The story is riveting. He combines his narrative of what happened with references to his past that he believes influenced him to make certain decisions. For example, his knowledge of research into why military pilots sometimes ejected too late is part of why he decided not to worry about saving the airplane by attempting an airport landing and instead concentrate on saving the people by landing in the river. (There’s a lot more to his decision than that; this is just part of what went into it.)

Throughout this part of the book are bits and pieces of the cockpit transcript, recorded by microphones during the flight — the so-called “black box” data. Even though I knew how it would end — don’t we all? — I found the details fascinating. It was a great example of teamwork between Captain Sullenberger and his first officer, Jeff Skiles. Later in the narrative, it was clear that the flight attendants were also part of the team, helping passengers off the plane in as orderly a manner as possible.

The aftermath of the experience also made interesting reading. Getting an inside look at the mail Captain Sullenberger received from people on the plane — as well as many people who had no direct connection to the flight or its passengers at all — revealed the psychology of people. I’m not the only one who appreciated the happy ending to that seemingly doomed flight.

The Soapbox

One of the complaints people have had about the book is the soapbox aspect. Captain Sullenberger believes that airline pilots are not treated as well as they should be by their employers considering the hours and responsibilities of their work. He believes that pay cuts and pension cuts are making it ever more difficult to attract and retain quality pilots who actually care about their work. He suggests that airline pilots are like bus drivers of the sky.

Although I don’t have intimate knowledge of the airline industry, as a professional pilot who has worked for a large tour operator, I know exactly what he means. Aviation employers don’t care how good a pilot is. As long as the pilot meets insurance requirements and can do the job, all that matters is how much that pilot costs. In my experience, many employers would rather hire a cheap, entry level pilot than a seasoned professional who costs more. They don’t see the benefit of the experience. They’re gambling, of course, on the equipment and circumstances of flight — when something goes wrong, will the entry level pilot have the experience and knowledge to bring the aircraft and passengers back safely?

In the airline industry, pilots are locked into their employers for seniority. If they leave one airline, they lose all seniority and start at the bottom at their new employer. This prevents experienced pilots from looking for better jobs. It stagnates the employee pool. And although Captain Sullenberger didn’t mention this, it prevents good ideas from one airline from migrating to another.

Captain Sullenberger does discuss how many airline employees have simply stopped caring about anything other than what’s in their job description. As budget cuts reduce non-essential staff, customer service suffers. Captain Sullenberger talks about his personal experiences going the “extra mile” to help passengers who can’t get the help they need from other airline employees. He talks about how most airline employees are simply tired of doing other people’s jobs. He doesn’t blame them — he hints that they’re underpaid for what they’re supposed to do — but he does decry the system that results in this poor attitude.

He also believes that budget cuts have the potential to reduce safety. A good example of this is the emergency procedures book that his first officer needed to consult on the loss of both engines. In the past, the book had numbered tabs that made it easier to find content. The airline, in a cost-cutting measure, had stopped including the tabs, making it necessary to thumb through the book and look at individual page headings to find content. In the slightly more than three minutes the cockpit crew had to land the plane without engines, every second was valuable. Yes, this flight had a happy ending — but could other flights be lost due to cost cutting measures like this? It certainly makes you wonder.

My feelings about Captain Sullenberger’s soapbox are mixed. I didn’t like reading his complaints, but, at the same time, I knew they were valid. And I know that his experience and the interviews, articles, and books that come from it are the perfect way to get the message out.

While Captain Sullenberger was careful not to criticize his airline, it’s clear that US Airways is just as bad as the others when it comes to matters of pilot compensation and cost-cutting. Perhaps his insight will help make the situation better?

Sadly, it probably won’t.

Thumbs Up

In all, I give the book two thumbs up. While it’s especially good reading for pilots and others interested in aviation, I also think it makes a good guide for young people who want to make something of their lives. And for the rest of the world, it’s a great look at one of the most amazing emergency landings we’ll likely ever see.

iPad: First Impressions

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First thoughts on Apple’s “magical” device.

iPadLast week, while I was away in Ventura, CA, recording a revision to my Twitter course for Lynda.com, I took the plunge and bought an iPad. I bought the 32 GB WiFi version. I already pay for Internet in three places and am not willing to add a fourth monthly Internet bill.

Because I had a lot of work to do all day in the recording booth and a lot of work to do in the evening to prepare for the next day in the recording booth, I didn’t open my new toy for over 24 hours. This was particularly difficult on the last day of recording when I could see the bag containing my new iPad right outside my booth, just beyond where my producer sat.

@Miraz commented on Twitter that I have iron willpower. She may be right, at least as far as this goes.

So later that day, when the course was in the can (dig my movie lingo), I finally got a chance to break my iPad out of its box and play with it.

Very First Impressions

My immediate impression on power up: disappointment.

The trouble is, if you don’t have an Internet connection when you first power up, there’s not much of interest to play with. So the “right out of the box” experience isn’t too thrilling. Perhaps Apple should have included some sort of video tour? Or sample content? Something to give you a gee whiz, this is fun feeling?

I didn’t have Internet when I first fired it up. I was staying in a hotel that had WiFi but it was kind of flakey. I’d connect with my MacBook Pro and maybe be able to access a page or two and then it would throw up a page forcing me to log in for free. It did this at least once a day. When my iPad reported that too many people were connected (?), I thought it was this weird hotel Internet.

Similarly, I had trouble connecting my iPad to my MacBook Pro with the provided cable. I kept getting weird error messages on the iPad. I kept doing what I thought — intuitively, mind you — would fix the problem. Eventually, it did. I made the connection to my MacBook Pro and, moments later, the weird hotel login screen appeared in Safari on my iPad. I connected to the world.

Suddenly, the iPad wasn’t so disappointing anymore.

The Good

I’ll tackle the list of what’s good about my first experience first.

  • Included Apps. The iPad comes with a number of applications and most of them are good, well designed, and useful. I’m constantly surprised by how well thought out some of them are. I’m especially impressed with the implementation of Address Book and the way Mail makes it very easy to add a sender as a contact. (More on apps — specifically, interface — in “The Bad” section below.)
  • iPad CaseApple Case. Frankly, I can’t understand why so many third party vendors are creating and selling cases for this device. The plain black case Apple offers (at a whopping $49) is excellent. It provides the protection you need for your iPad investment without making a slim, portable device unnecessarily bulky. And since the cover can be used to prop up the iPad at an angle in landscape view, it does double duty. Now that I’ve slipped my iPad into it, I can’t imagine the need for anything else.

Just two good things? Yes. For now. After all, these are my first impressions.

The Bad

Here’s what I didn’t like about the iPad. Remember these are first impressions. I’ve organized these by how nit-picky they are. The first ones are minor whines; the last ones are what I consider serious drawbacks.

  • Packaging. There’s too much. The box is beautiful, as most Apple product boxes are, but it’s about twice as big as it needs to be. As a result, I had to leave it behind in my hotel garbage pail. Couldn’t fit it in my luggage. And let’s be real here: Aren’t big boxes a bit wasteful?
  • Documentation. There is none. Well, there is a small card with a picture of the iPad and callouts to what its few buttons do. Beyond than that and a few brief instructions on the back of the card, you’re pretty much on your own until you can get on the Internet. That’s where you can download a 154-page iPad User Guide available as a PDF. As @JeffCarlson pointed out, there’s a link to this manual in Safari’s bookmarks. Sadly, I replaced Safari’s bookmarks before seeing that link. I had to stumble upon the documentation on Apple’s Web site. You can find it on the Manuals page.
  • Interface. While I’m sure the iPad’s interface is completely intuitive to someone who has been using an iPhone or an iPod Touch for years, it was very unintuitive to me. (I’ve never owned an iPhone or iPod Touch.) I didn’t immediately (or intuitively) know how to go back to a previous screen or perform some functions. I kept looking for Mac OS type interface elements that I needed to get a job done and coming up empty. Instead, there was some other element II’d never seen before that did the job. Yeah, I know I’m not a genius, but I make my living figuring out how things like this work and I still struggled a bit with it. I think that putting this in the hands of someone who has always used the same kind of computer and operating system his/her entire life will stoke up a lot of frustration. It’s very interesting to me how individuals who have no computer experience — very young children, older folks, and cats — seem to be able to use the iPad without much problem. I think it’s because they don’t have to “relearn” anything to do so.
  • Keyboard. In general, the keyboard is pretty good and very easy to use. But it’s definitely not one a writer would depend on to write a long piece. I started this blog post on my iPad (in the WordPress app, no less) and wound up sending it to my iMac to finish. (I got as far as the second bullet point in this list and added the images later.) I would go nuts if I had to write more than a few paragraphs with that keyboard. My main gripe? The apostrophe key. It’s in a weird place. I do need to mention, however, that since I learned how to use the dictionary assistant feature that’s part of text entry — I had to look it up in the User’s Guide, for Pete’s sake! — typing is a lot better, although not much faster. Using a wireless keyboard helps tremendously. The Keyboard Dock that Apple offers, by the way, is obviously not designed for travel. The Dock part doesn’t detach, making it extremely bulky. I’m surprised at Apple. They can do better design that that.
  • KindleKindle vs. iBooks. I think Apple missed the boat on this one. The Kindle app (see screenshot) has iBooks beat. Why? Because the Kindle app is available for iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, Mac OS, Windows, etc. iBooks is available on iPad. So I go to Amazon.com and I buy a book. That book is automatically available on all of my registered devices. My bookmarks and last page read are automatically synchronized among them. So I can read a book in bed on my iPad and then, the next day, when I’m stuck waiting in line at the Motor Vehicle office, I can whip out my BlackBerry and continue reading where I left off. Theoretically, I can also register my husband’s Windows laptop so he can read my books, too. The only thing that would make this better is the ability to loan books to other Amazon.com account holders like Barnes and Noble’s Nook. (By the way, I named my iPad “Not Nook” because I cancelled my Nook order in January, expecting to buy an iPad instead. B&N dropped the ball when they couldn’t fulfill orders in a timely manner. Not having a problem doing that anymore, I bet.)
  • iTunes. The iTunes app is really the iTunes store. It’s embarrassing to admit that it took several frustrating sessions with my iPad to figure out that I had to use the iPod app to access my iTunes music. Hello, Apple? You had to include two store applications? You couldn’t just make one? This really illustrates what some blogger — wish I could remember who! — said about the iPad: it’s just a vehicle for selling content.
  • No FlashFlash. Okay, so the iPad doesn’t support Flash. I don’t care very much because I hate Flash. I hate the way it’s overused on the Web, I hate the way it takes so damn long to load on the shitty slow Internet connection in my Wickenburg office, I hate the way when it finally loads that it wastes time and bandwidth with idiotic content. Take, for example, the crappy design of Stingray Sushi’s Web site. Like I need to see dancing Sumo wrestlers? Hear loud music? I couldn’t see or hear it on my iPad, but even when my husband connected with his laptop, he still couldn’t figure out how to view a menu. Web designers lean too hard on Flash to make Web sites they think will impress clients. They don’t consider the user experience. If not having Flash on my iPad means I’ll miss experiencing crap like Stingray’s site (see iPad screenshot), I consider that a positive feature of the iPad. Right now, it’s just a drawback because I occasionally can’t see something I might need to see.
  • Tethering for Internet Access. I knew this would be an issue when I bought it, but it still bugs me: I cannot use Bluetooth to tether my iPad to my BlackBerry Storm for Internet access. I can do so with my MacBook Pros, my iMac, my old PowerBook, and even my Dell laptop when I need to. But this capability is unsupported on iPad and is likely to remain so. I resent this. The only reason Apple has locked up the tethering feature is so force encourage people to buy a more expensive device and sign up for Internet access with Apple-approved providers. And even a long-time Apple user like me — it’s been 21 years since I bought my first Mac — should be able to look at the situation objectively enough to realize that it sucks.

Overall, I Like it

After reading all this, it may sound like I hate my iPad. I don’t. I rather like it.

The challenge is to understand what the device is and isn’t — and how it can be part of my life. I already see a bright future for it as a take-everywhere device. I even bought a new purse that it will fit comfortably inside. (I was long overdue for a new purse anyway.)

Testing has shown that it handles my multiple IMAP e-mail accounts extremely well. Browsing is quite acceptable. The e-book reader (Kindle is my choice) is magnificent. Syncing through MobileMe puts my calendar, address book, and Safari bookmarks at my fingertips. (Literally.) Twitterrific’s iPad app is an excellent choice for accessing Twitter and Instapaper gives me the ability to read Web content I’ve saved for later reading, even when I’m offline. The Netflix app gives me access to movies available for immediate playing through my Netflix account. I’ve even tested the iPad with my merchant account and found that have no trouble processing credit card transactions.

Of course, these aren’t first impressions. These are the things I’ve learned since Wednesday evening at about 8 PM. Less than four days.

As I learn more, I’ll likely start churning out how-to pieces and tips on Maria’s Guides. I’ll be sharing more overall impressions — good and bad — here.

But don’t worry. I do have a life beyond my iPad.

Dan Brown Doesn’t Know Much about Helicopters

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I guess a best-selling author doesn’t need to check his facts.

A few weeks ago, I forced myself to slog through Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. I’m trying really hard to understand why people like this guy’s work. He’s a gawdawful writer. Have we become a nation of illiterates?

As a helicopter pilot, I’m really sensitive to errors about helicopters that appear in fiction. The Lost Symbol was chock full of them. Apparently, it’s too much to ask Dan Brown to take a peek at Wikipedia or talk to a helicopter pilot when writing passages that concern helicopters. It makes me wonder what other “facts” he got wrong.

This bugged me so much at the time that I wrote a post title “Facts in Fiction,” where I discuss the failure of novelists to check the real-life components of their fictional worlds. I wanted to include a discussion of Brown’s failures in that post, but didn’t have time to complete it. Instead, I’ll cover them here.

These are the passages that bugged me most:

Without warning, Omar felt a deafening vibration all around him, as if a tractor trailer were about to collide with his cab. He looked up, but the street was deserted. The noise increased, and suddenly a sleek black helicopter dropped down out of the night and landed hard in the middle of the plaza map.

Deafening vibration? We get it: helicopters are loud. But do they deafen with their vibrations?

Black Hawk Helicopter

Public domain image of UH-60L by SSGT Suzanne M. Jenkins, USAF from Wikipedia.

The “sleek black helicopter” he’s describing is a “Modified Sikorsky UH-60,” which is basically a Black Hawk. I’m not sure what kind of modifications Brown is talking about — there are many versions of this helicopter. I’m also not sure I’d use the adjective “sleek.”

But what bothers me more is how it “dropped down out of the night and landed hard” — if it “dropped out of the night,” it would indeed “land hard.” This poor helicopter “landed hard” three times in the book. I think the CIA should consider getting a new pilot.

CIA field agent Turner Simkins was perched on the strut of the Sikorsky helicopter as it touched down on the frosty grass. He leaped off, joined by his men, and immediately waved the chopper back up into the air to keep an eye on all the exits.

“Perched on the strut,” huh? Not perched on a skid? Oh, yeah, that’s right: A Black Hawk doesn’t have skids. It has wheels. If someone can tell me where a Black Hawk’s perchable strut is, please do.

High above the National Cathedral, the CIA pilot locked the helicopter in auto-hover mode and surveyed the perimeter of the building and the grounds. No movement. His thermal imaging couldn’t penetrate the cathedral stone, and so he couldn’t tell what the team was doing inside, but if anyone tried to slip out, the thermal would pick it up.

I honestly don’t know if there’s an auto pilot in a Black Hawk or whether it has an “auto-hover mode.” I suppose I could research this and find out. But I do know that there’s no way in hell that a CIA Black Hawk pilot (if there is such a thing) would be responsible for flying a helicopter and doing overhead surveillance using thermal imaging at the same time. Pilots fly, on-board observers observe.

As they rounded the corner at the top of the stairs, Katherine stopped short and pointed into a sitting room across the hall. Through the bay window, Langdon could see a sleek black helicopter sitting silent on the lawn. A lone pilot stood beside it, facing away from them and talking on his radio. There was also a black Escalade with tinted windows parked nearby.

Hello? Mr. Brown? A Black Hawk has a crew of two pilots. The original Black Hawk had a crew of four pilots. Yet the book consistently uses the word pilot — a singular noun — when referring to the person flying the helicopter. I guess it’s easier to write one character than two.

The modified UH-60 skimmed in low over the expansive rooftops of Kalorama Heights, thundering toward the coordinates given to them by the support team. Agent Simkins was the first to spot the black Escalade parked haphazardly on a lawn in front of one of the mansions. The driveway gate was closed, and the house was dark and quiet.

Sato gave the signal to touch down.

The aircraft landed hard on the front lawn amid several other vehicles . . . one of them a security sedan with a bubble light on top.

Google Maps shows Kalorama Heights to be a densely populated area of Washington, D.C. filled primarily with embassies. This is an especially poor location for the bad guy’s lair:

Black Hawk Dimensions

Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk dimensions public domain line drawing from Wikipedia.

  • An area filled with embassies is likely to have very, very tight security. It’s unlikely that the events Brown reports could happen at a “mansion” there without anyone noticing and calling the police.
  • Properties are not large — not in relation to the buildings on them. The fronts of buildings are generally right up on the street. It would be a stretch to park multiple vehicles on a lawn.
  • The area is heavily vegetated with lots of tall trees. This makes me wonder how a helicopter that’s almost 65 feet long and has a rotor diameter of nearly 54 feet can land on a lawn full of parked cars in this area.

So we’ve got a big helicopter and some loud activity happening in a densely populated, heavily treed embassy area of Washington, D.C.

Sato moved the group toward the dining room. Outside, the helicopter was warming up, its blades thundering louder and louder.

Warming up is a function of the engine. The blade sound would not be different. Spinning up is a function of the blades. In either case, the sound of the blades would not get louder. If the helicopter were spinning up, the sound of the blades — the rhythm of the blades — would get faster.

Sato could hear the whine of the helicopter blades at full pitch.

Pitch is a poor choice of words here. “Helicopter blades at full pitch” literally means the collective is full up. The helicopter should be flying, not on the ground (as it is in this passage). Full speed — meaning that they’re spinning at 100% RPM — is probably what Brown meant here.

Langdon felt his stomach drop as the CIA helicopter leaped off the lawn, banked hard, and accelerated faster than he ever imagined a helicopter could move.

This is a classic ignorant writer passage. If the helicopter could leap off the lawn — which it might, depending on load — Langdon’s stomach wouldn’t drop. He might feel pushed back in his seat. The only time you’re likely to feel a helicopter motion in your stomach is if the helicopter entered autorotation, which feels — especially the first time — as if you’ve crested the top hill of a kiddie roller coaster and are suddenly zipping downward.

As for accelerating fast, I don’t know much about Robert Langdon’s imagination, but helicopters generally don’t accelerate quickly. It’s not like slamming down the gas pedal in a Ferrari in first gear. (In fact, one of the challenges I face when photographing car and boat races is catching up to a high-speed car or boat that has passed us while we’re hovering.) Can’t say I’ve flown a Black Hawk lately, though.

Langdon held his breath as the helicopter dropped from the sky toward Dupont Circle. A handful of pedestrians scattered as the aircraft descended through an opening in the trees and landed hard on the lawn just south of the famous two-tiered fountain designed by the same two men who created the Lincoln Memorial.

There’s that hard-landing helicopter again. Maybe the problem is that Brown — and most of the rest of the population — doesn’t understand that helicopters don’t just “drop out of the sky” to land. There’s a thing called “settling with power” that will basically ensure a very hard landing if you descend too quickly straight down.

And don’t even get me started on the encyclopedic fact that has nothing to do with the plot, fouling up the end of that sentence.

Once everyone had jumped out, the pilot immediately lifted off, banking to the east, where he would climb to “silent altitude” and provide invisible support from above.

Silent altitude? What’s that? About 50,000 feet? I don’t know of any altitude above a point where a helicopter would be silent — especially if it still had to provide “invisible support” — whatever that is. I look forward to the day when the words silent and helicopter can be used in the same sentence as adjective describing noun.

The UH-60 pilot threw his rotors into overdrive, trying to keep his skids from touching any part of the large glass skylight. He knew the six thousand pounds of lift force that surged downward from his rotors was already straining the glass to its breaking point. Unfortunately, the incline of the pyramid beneath the helicopter was efficiently shedding the thrust sideways, robbing him of lift.

He threw his rotors into what? What the hell is that supposed to mean? And what’s with the “six thousand pounds of lift force” surging down from this rotors? Is he trying to say that rotor wash is exerting 6,000 pounds of force?

Hello? Helicopters do not work just like big fans blowing air down to fly. They have wings, just like airplanes do. Airfoils create the lift that makes a helicopter fly. Downwash just helps a bit when the helicopter is near the ground. That’s called ground effect.

And let’s look at this in real life — the helicopter had only 2 or 3 people on board. It had already discharged its passengers. Is Brown trying to say that the pilot was depending on ground effect to fly? On a winter night (cold; it landed on “frosty grass” once) in Washington DC (sea level)? How did it get off the ground with passengers on board — let alone leap into the sky — if it couldn’t even hover out of ground effect when it was nearly empty?

And what’s all this about skids? Didn’t we already establish that the Black Hawk has wheels? If you can’t read the words, Mr. Brown, at least look at the pictures.

Errors like this just prove that the writer has no understanding of how helicopters fly. Yet this and many of the other helicopter-related errors in this book could have been prevented if the passages were handed off to an experienced helicopter pilot as part of the editing process.

But I guess a bestselling author is beyond all that.