Light Bulbs Aloft

Generally, light bulbs are only useful when functioning.

They say it's the little things that make or break it for you. Whether those small things are something you can't control but they still affect you, or if it's the way you make little choices and decisions, small can have big power.

A time-honored ritual of the flying experience is the preflight inspection. Simply put, you check the airplane to make sure it's not broken and that it will fly. That means looking for the obvious (perhaps a big concave indentation on the fuselage left by a truck driver who didn't have good situational awareness) as well as the not so visible (like checking the fuel tanks to see how much gas you've got). Finding something seemingly small can be just as important if not more so as spotting something large.

Provided you do a thorough job, and avoid developing mental tunnel vision (Oh, there was a pool of oil on the ground underneath the cowling? I guess I was focused on checking the other stuff, so I must not have noticed that...), the preflight greatly improves your odds of catching problems on the ground so that they don't become problems in the air. If everything checks out, then it's time to hop in, and away you go.

A couple weeks ago I was getting ready to go up with a friend to practice my commercial maneuvers. It was a lovely Sunday morning, a lot cooler than recent days, and I guessed it was going to be a perfect day for flying. It probably would have been too, if we could have gone up. But the results of my preflight dictated otherwise.

Turns out a little rotating beacon light - also known as an anticollision light system - on top of the tail fin was not lighting up like it usually did. Of course it was full daylight, and who's going to narrowly avoid hitting my plane in the air just because they saw the slow-flashing red light at the last moment? Even though it seems insignificant, that little red light had the power to ground me. Something I had learned during groundschool studies drifted to the surface of my memory - something about needing to have that thing working during all operations, regardless of the time of day. (Check out CFR 14 FAR 91.209 (b) - and no, I was not reciting that specific code number when I was deliberating.)

So, when the mechanic's verdict came a few minutes later, after he unscrewed the assembly and found a part that was quite ready to be replaced, I had to declare my verdict and scrub the flight. Naturally I was a little disappointed, although not nearly so as my 15 year-old friend who was looking forward to his first ride in a small plane. But why kick up all that fuss, grounding myself and the airplane, just because a light wouldn't blink? It would have been quite easy to just ignore the problem and head off, and the risk would have most likely been negligible.

It all boils down to the little things. Making that small choice, not necessarily because you want to, but because you know it's the right thing to do. I'm not trying to say that I'm the perfect guy who never messes up - I've broken my share of the rules in the heat of the moment. But there's one thing I've come to appreciate, and it's summed up best in the words of a 19th century Christian author: "Every right action prepares the way for its repetition."¹ 

Each time you act from principle, you reinforce the neural pathways involved in such choice-making actions, making it easier to do the right thing next time. And that investment is important, especially when you're in high-pressure situations.

Wow. All that from a faulty light system! Just goes to show you that flying encompasses a lot more than just up-and-down whoop-dee-doo stuff. If there's one thing that you do more than anything while operating an aircraft, it is making decisions. Not a bad skill to refine for life in general.

I'm happy the problem has been fixed and I got to go aloft again today, this time with an illumined rotating beacon. As it turns out, I may not have gotten airborne anyway that day, because the next guy to try and fly it after the beacon was fixed found the starter had given up the ghost. But I gained a unique little lesson, with some important large applications.

¹Ellen White, Testimonies for the Church, Volume 5, p. 18.