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AGelbert:
Agelbert's Aerobatic Adventure - In A NON-Aerobatic Aircraft :o  :P   
Once upon a time, I was young and a newly licensed Private Pilot. I had racked up about 53 hours of flying time, passed my 4 hour written test and my one hour flight test so I figured I had most of this flying stuff all figured out. I was now starting my commercail pilot training which required a total of 160 hours. A lot of this time was solo flying practicing advanced maneuvers such as chandelles, lazy eights, pivotal altitude hold while circling a ground reference point, several kinds of stalls, engine out procedures, emergency landing procedures and some extended cross country flights.

But most of that was in the future. I had already flown my mother as my mandatory first passenger now that I was a bona fide licensed pilot and could legally carry passengers (without charging for it, of course).

I modified the last part of the tail number on the cherokee 140 above. It's not the one I flew but is identical in appearance and paint job.
This bright sunny day I boarded Zero Nine Whisky (N--09W tail number) Cherokee 140 trainer aircraft to accumulate some flying time towards my minimum required for a commercial pilot license. Zero Nine Whiskey was my favorite of the aircraft. It had a pretty paint job and was the plane I had soloed in. It was an old friend to me by now. I didn't have any particular plan except to go out over the everglades practice area and repeat some of the maneuvers I already knew. 

Of course, being young, curious, over confident and foolish, I wanted to expand my knowledge of how the aircraft responded in somewhat, shall we say, higher pitch attitudes than the every day dull training fare.

If you have ever heard the expression, "pushing the envelope", let me tell you that it is originally and aviatior's expression stolen from us by you ground pounders to make your dull lives seem more exciting!

Yes, dear readers, Agelbert was fixin' to push the envelope.

The flight "envelope" is the airspeed range and pitch attitude (angle above or below the horizon) as well as bank angle range of the wings that the aircraft is designed to fly at. If you leave the envelope when you are in the air, you are entering the danger zone. WHY? Because the aircraft can suffer catastrophic structural damage, engine, failure or a combination thereof. If this happpens near the ground, you are done. If it happens 4 to 5 thousand feet up, you MIGHT be able to recover and live through it. You have a little more time but your survival usually depends more on luck than skill.

Recently licensed Private Pilots are not too long on skill...

I taxied out, took off and flew northwest about 10 miles to the practice area. This area over the Florida Everglades was (in 1966) in the middle of nowhere. There were a few roads near some farms that had boundaries by the glades but otherwise it was all swamp and you were alligator food if you went down there.

Cherokee in cruise flight at about 115 mph over Ohio, not the Everglades.
On the plus side for a designated practice area, it was flat, far away from people or cows (our flight school had been told to NOT allow the student pilots to practice low approaches to emergency landings near cows because it caused abortions), and arrival and departure aircraft traffic to Opa Locka or Miami International Airports. Besides, it was within radio range of several ATC towers so if you had an emergency, you could set 121.5 on your radio and call for help before you made a forced landing even if you were at a low altitude.

Out over the practice area at 2,000 feet, I practiced a few engine out procedures and checked the area for potential landing sites that I could reach with the power off. It didn't look all that great but I would pick a spot and pretend I had to put it down right there. At about 300 feet I would apply full power and climb away looking down at the spot to see what sort of a mess I would have made if I had actually landed there.

I then decided to try something new. I knew I might have some "difficulties" so I climbed to 5,000 feet (the recommended altitude for stall and spin practice). I may write about an exciting and humorous adventure with spins someday but that was still in the future for me then. For this adventure, I must explain to you what a "stall" is before I explain my imaginative variation of it.

An aircraft flies because a low pressure area forms over the upper surface of the wing in direct proportion to the velocity of said wing and the angle of the wing to the air movement (relative wind). The point is that the wings are sucked up and the aircraft flies. 

Straight and level flight (arrow) ----> produces enough lift to not go up or down. When you pull back on the control point the aircraft nose higher, you are increasing the pitch attitude. A Cherokee 140 normally flies at a pitch attitude of a few degrees (positive pitch).

A stall has nothing to do with the engine. A stall is what happens when the low pressure area over the wing surface gets disturbed (burble point) by too high a pitch attitude and the wings no longer produce lift. The maneuver is performed by gradually increasing the pitch attitude with a certain designated power on or power off condition (or something in between) until the nose shakes a little and noses down as the wings hit the burble point.

Stall recovery is performed by establishing a negative pitch (nose below normal glide pitch) to pick up flying speed while applying full power simultaneously. Panicky student pilots have a tendency to point the nose down steeply and upset their flight instructors. After some practice, students learn that the secret of stall recovery is just to put that nose down to a few degrees below glide pitch and, of course, keep the plane from banking with the rudder so you don't get into an inadvertent stall-spin.

The most challenging stall recovery is a power on stall because the nose is pitched about 40 degrees up (much higher than for a power off stall) and the burble point stall break is snappy. It's also harder to keep the plane straight to avoit a spin entry due to one wing stalling before the other.

Well, I knew all that. I had that down! Let us see, I said to myself, what happens when we REALLY pick up the nose with full power?   


I pushed the throttle all the way and pulled the nose as far back as I could about 60 degrees). The effect was a much more violent stall (imagine a bucking bronco) break and the plane trying to spin this way and that. But I recovered within a few hundred feet of altitude loss which was well within limits for a power on stall.

I thought about that for a while. I wanted a 90 degree pitch up nose position (straight up!) but, even with full power, I couldn't get there before the plane stalled. Bummer.
So, I applied full power again and lowered the nose to pick up maneuvering speed (129 mph designated aircraft speed where structural damage could not occur from control movements). ZOOM!

At 129 mph I gradually lifted the nose all the way to 90 degrees! Yippee! There I was, going straight up like a fighter pilot!


I then waited for the stall break and the nose to pitch forward. And I waited. And I waited. The airspeed went down past 60, which was no flaps stalling speed, and kept going down. Fifty, forty, THIRTY (WTF!), TWENTY!!! (I pulled the power off and tried to nose the aircraft over - no response - I was going too slow to ahve ANY EFFECT on the fight controls - I was basically a rock tossed in the air at this point approaching the peak of a ballistic trajectory), TEN, ZERO!

Now it gets really good. The cherokee 140 is a utility trainer aircraft. That means it is capable of withstanding 4.4  G forces plus and 2.2 G minus. Aerobatic aircraft can handle 6.6 both ways with out structural issues. I knew this. I knew I was not in a Citabria or Stearman that could do whip stalls and tail slides and hammer head stalls at air shows just for fun. Cherokees have a stabilator (instead of an elevator) on the tail that is quite easy to break. If that breaks, you are dead, period.

You DO NOT want to stress the stabilator, EVER.

I went weightless. My pilot briefcase began floating in the air next to me. The wind noise was picking up rapidly and the airspeed still read ZERO!


Panic time! I decided to release the controls because ANYTHING I did would translate BACKWARDS because the aircraft was "flying" backwards. I did NOT want to bust that stabilator. I wanted to get that nose DOWN somehow. As a kid I had thown gliders in the air and watched them tail slide and whip stall to a nose down pitch and recover. I was counting on that but my confidence level was measurable in fractions of an inch at the moment.

Hanging by my seatbelt, I experienced the most violent forward whip stall forward you can imagine. That is probably what save my life. Had the stabilator caused a BACKWARD whip stall, it would probably have broken off. Without the ability to control the pitch attitude, even with engine power, a small aircraft will nose hard into the ground destroying the airframe and killing the pilot.


I watched the blue sky instantly change to brown everglades. It was weird. The nose did not just go from straight up to straight down; it went from straight up to a pendulum movement. I still hadn't touched the controls. The airspeed had, of course, been increasing all along but it didn't show because aircraft measure airspeed with a pitot tube that faces the relative wind. Planes don't generally fly backwards. LOL!

The moment the plane whipped over to the glades facing pendulous rocking movement, the airspeed went from zero to ABOVE VNE (Never Exceed Velocity - about 160). The airspeed indicator was PEGGED!


That was another fright. I realized the flip had occurred above maneuvering speed and was sweating the possibility I had lost my stabilator.

I  reached for the controls and, ever so gradually, applied back pressure to get out of the dive without tearing the wings off. Also, if I pull back too hard and too quick, that was another chance to over stress the stabilator (if I still had one) that I didn't want to risk.

It worked. I hadn't lost my stabilator! Gravity returned and I got the airspeed back to 115 mph normal cruise. I had lost about 3,500 feet. I applied power.

Nothing. Engine failure. Argh.

I turned on the electric fuel pump (this aircraft has a manual fuel pump but uses the electric fuel pump to aid starting and engine restart in the air) and set 121.5 emergency frequency on my radio and looked for a place to put Zero Nine Whiskey down.

At 800 feet the best place looked like a dirt embankment in the Everglades. I began a final approach and had the mike in my hand to begin transmitting mayday when the engine sputtered on. Believe it or not, my greatest relief at the moment was not having to embarrass myself by radioing an emergency.

Such is the foolish pride of the young.


I hooked the mike back on to the panel and changed to tower frequency, radioed that I was inbound about 15 miles northwest and brought her home (without turning the electric fuel pump off until I was safely on the runway).

I taxied to the grass parking area at the fight school and shut own the aircraft.

Then I noticed something that needed to be taken care of. The cowling above the panel was full of dirt! The whip stall had been so violent that every speck of dirt on the floor had been thrown up and then forward and down onto the cowling as I applied gradual back pressure to pull the aircraft out of the dive. The floor looked like someone had done a great vacuuming job on it. LOL!

I called a line boy and said there was a lot of dirt on the cowling that should be cleaned up. He looked at it  and asked, How did that get there?". I said, "I don't know." and quickly walked into the office to sign out...".

NOTE: Zero Nine Whisky was NOT damaged. I flew over 50 hours in that aircraft subsequently along with hundreds of hours by other pilots and flight instructors.

I pre-flighted VERY closely the aircraft a day later and, had I seen the least bit of evidence of stabilator stress, would have reported it.

I know, I should have reported it anyway but I was foolishly and pridefully afraid to besmirch my pilot record because it would reduce my chances of getting hired by the airlines.

All I can say is the Piper Cherokee 140 is an excellent trainer aircraft.

So that is how a foolish young man happened to cheat death in 1966.


If you liked this true story by Agelbert, be nice and register. 

Agelbert giving his first lecture on Renewable Energy. 
Have a pleasant day.   ;D

Renewable Revolution

 
 

 

AGelbert:
MKing says about CH4
--- Quote ---It is one of the more useful molecules out there in the long run,
--- End quote ---

Sure, from YOUR rather narrow definition of "useful" (It's a hydrocarbon!). 

But in the BIOSPHERE that we all depend on, THE most useful molecule in the hydrocarbon pantheon is this one:


--- Quote ---Ethylene: The Ripening Hormone
--- End quote ---

http://postharvest.tfrec.wsu.edu/pages/PC2000F

Ethylene causes fruit to ripen and plants to die on schedule so they can  be recycled into the biosphere. In short it is key to the life cycle of all earthlings. Now THAT is REALLY useful! So you see, I DO recognize that there is ONE hydrocarbon that we really need AS LONG AS WE DON'T BURN IT!


C2H4 (Ethylene)




Some products produced by ethylene that fossil fuelers and other LIVING BEINGS NEED 


My favorite HYDROCARBON! 


What!? You mean to tell me Agelbert, the quixotic crusader against fossil fuel folly in all its poisonous and biosphere trashing forms has some hydrocarbon love?

YEP!

Back when I was trying to get through pre-med in the daytime while I worked as a computer analyst in the FAA at night (I was promoted from air traffic control to Automation) I took Botany, one of many biology courses the curriculum required. 

Botany was a lot of fun. I learned how they keep grapes from having seeds in them (Gibberrelins) and all sorts of interesting facts about plant biochemistry. But the story of the orange grove fruit warehouses in Florida in the early 20th century was one I liked especially because it is a great example of the scientific method in action. Read on. 8)

The vast orange groves in Florida around 1910 had giant warehouses where picked fruit would be stored while they reached the proper stage of ripeness before shipping them to markets. The oranges are picked nearly full size and still green. They are tough at that stage and not easily bruised by the picking process.



The crop is stored in heated warehouses to finish the ripening process. The oranges, as they ripen, obtain their pretty orange color. The fruit expands somewhat and becomes more fragile but, since they already have them packed in bags or crates ready for shipping, they get to markets pretty well unscathed.




Well, around 1910, the orange growers were sold on electrification of their orange ripening warehouses. They had hitherto used kerosene heaters which sometimes caused a warehouse to burn down and they liked the idea of controlling the temperature within a few degrees to fine tune the ripening process. Boy, were they in for an unpleasant surprise!  :o

They spent small fortunes in electrifying the warehouses with lights and elecric space heaters. The picking season came and they happily picked the crop and stored it in the new and improved hot shot electric heater warehouses. They waited for the oranges to ripen, fill out and turn orange in color. And waited. And waited. Those silly, stubborn oranges refused to ripen! They stayed hard and green.   ???

A bright bulb among the growers, all of whom had ALWAYS believed (wrongly) that HEAT is what makes fruit ripen, stated that there must have been something besides heat in those old kerosene heaters that made the fruit ripen.

They got a team of scientists to do some experiments with green oranges with and without kerosene heaters at various temperatures and the oranges exposed to the kerosene heaters DID ripen as they always had before irrespective of temperature. Next they identified all the products of combustion of the long chained hydrocarbon called kerosene.

We all know when you burn (oxidize) a hydrocarbon, you get CO2 + H2O. But that is ONLY if you have COMPLETE combustion. A kerosene heater, as many family tragedies can attest to, puts out lots of INCOMPLETE combustion products like CO (carbon monoxide) that will kill you quickly and quietly.

But there is another product of incomplete combustion that burning kerosene puts out. It's called Ethylene. 

This tiny molecule is a miracle of plant biochemistry. The scientists determined that ethylene was making the oranges ripen! So the growers had to put the kerosene heaters back in.

Well, they got electric lights out of the deal and plant science took a giant step forward so everything worked out for the best. 


The obvious follow up question is, where does the ethylene, now defined as a plant ripening hormone, come from when the oranges ripen on the tree?  ???  From the orange as long as it is connected to the tree when it turns color. Henceforth, whether on the tree or off it, the orange itself keeps putting out ethylene until it rots in preparation for the orange seeds to grow.  Pretty neat, huh?  ;D

This was a revolutionary development in botany in general and fruit growing in particular. The study of plant hormones grew explosively from that point and many mysteries were (and still are being) solved about how these miraculous photosynthetic life forms function.

What is so amazing to me is that such a simple molecule can do so much. Have you ever put bananas on top of a bowl of fruit containing apples in the bottom? Sure, everyone has. Have you noticed how fast those bananas get overripe when they are on top of apples? YEP, ripe apples are one of the highest ethylene producers out there! :o Those bananas produce much less but when the added apple ethylene whacks them, here come the brown spots!  :P




Unless you are going to eat the above bananas TODAY, this is a No No! The bananas will ripen too fast!   ???  Set them a few feet away and they will keep longer.  ;)
So now you know that, if you have a well ventilated area and happen to have brought some green bananas from the store that you are worried about "going bad" before ripening or just refusing to turn yellow as sometimes happens, get a small hurricane kerosene lamp and put it in the vicinity of the bananas and I guarantee you they will ripen. You can impress your spouse with your botany smarts.  ;D






Behold, the humble ethylene molecule, my favorite hydrocaron.


Ethylene (IUPAC name: ethene) is a hydrocarbon with the formula C2H4 or H2C=CH2. It is a colorless flammable gas with a faint "sweet and musky" odor when pure.[3] It is the simplest alkene (a hydrocarbon with carbon-carbon double bonds), and the simplest unsaturated hydrocarbon after acetylene (C2H2).

Ethylene is widely used in chemical industry, and its worldwide production (over 109 million tonnes in 2006) exceeds that of any other organic compound.[4][5] Ethylene is also an important natural plant hormone, used in agriculture to force the ripening of fruits.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene

AGelbert:
If you think it all ends here, you will consider risking your life to save a stranger an irrational act, period.    


I was faced, one day at a beach family outing when I was 34 with 2 small children, with a life or death situation. My dentist brother in law, an expert swimmer and scuba diver, was drowning in a rip current and 14 ft high wave breakers.



It was afternoon and my sister had scolded her hubby because he was reading a book on dental practice instead of "playing with his children like my brothers do". John wasn't feeling too great that day but he responded to the henpecking by going in. I had noticed that the tide was going out and some rather large "lumps" on the water surface indicating rapid current (about 8 inches high in otherwise calm water in a tide pool) were visible and I said, "It looks kind of rough out there".
He said he could handle it and it would be okay. My sister just looked at me crossly. John went in and was playing with some kind of raft with his kids that would just reach the surf at the edge of the opening in the tide pool lagoon and swing back in.

I knew that dynamic was going to change and the outgoing tide would soon try to suck anyone near the reef opening at the edge of the tide pool lagoon (about 50 yards from shore) into the surf and rip tide. I told my wife to gather up the kids and keep them out of the water. I sat on the beach while John began to drown.

My 36 year old brother and Vietnam vet, who had supported John in this dangerous game when I appeared concerned, now froze on the shore with a worried look on his face. Somebody grabbed the small raft his 8 year old son was on and managed to get it to shore (it was some good samaritan with red hair in the water that we never did talk to later).

My brother, over his momentary paralysis and spurned to action, ran up to me and said we had to get John. He had a big of piece of driftwood for floatation. He rushed to the shore and waited for me as the seconds ticked by and John was floundering, unable to swim to shore.

I stood there a second and thought to myself, "You know, you are going to die out there." I answered my own thought , "If I stay here, I'll never be able to live with myself so God will have to decide if I make it through this or not". The fear was momentary and rational. I dispensed with it with a practice I had of sticking to my principles come hell or high water. It wasn't heroics, it was habit. And BABY, this was HIGH WATER!

My wife later said we looked like children in the waves because they were so big. So my brother and I hyperventilated for about 20 seconds to get some extra oxygen in our lungs and dove in. My bro lost the driftwood in the turbulent water (just as well - it could have bopped us on the head and killed us). We got to John lickity split. Getting to him was like being on a river in the right direction.

Of course when we got to him, we had to turn around and try to hold his head above water. The moment we reached him and I said, "We've got you, John", he gave up. His head went under and I was under too and watched bubbles coming out of his mouth and his body totally relaxed. We pulled him up only to be slammed by the most god-awful monstrous wave power I have ever experienced. My femur bones were being bent by the force of the turbulence!
My fear returned with some terror thrown in. We had to fight to get back up to the surface only to be slammed back down by a new breaker. All the while we were trying to swim to shore and getting weaker. After one particularly powerful wave, I looked at my brother and yelled, "We're going to DIE out here!". He yelled, "A man has to think of himself!".

Our only chance to make it to shore was to let John go. We did. I glimpsed him floating away underwater. That was the most heart tearing, sad and anguished moment of my life all wrapped up into one desperate attempt to survive with my principles intact.

We began swimming to shore with the waves still sending us down a couple of seconds after surfacing. The salt water mixing with my breathing felt like fire burning my throat trachea. The people on shore didn't get closer. I lost sight of my brother. I was yelling "Praise the Lord" even as I ran out of energy in those brief moments on the surface.

My brother, much stronger than me and an agnostic, was concentrating on getting back to shore by cursing the ocean, the waves , the current and whatever else he could think of to keep himself "mad enough" to keep fighting for his life (I learned this from him later as I could not hear him in the tumult at the time).

About 15 minutes into this ordeal, I lost all my energy. I couldn't speak and I couldn't swim. I would send the commands to my arms and legs and they just WOULD NOT MOVE! I was in very good shape at that time of my life and had no muscle cramps or anything like that. I sank into the depths.

I made myself a promise that, even though I was sure to drown, I would absolutely refuse to breathe until my autonomic response kicked in after losing consciousness; I wasn't going to DO that burning throat thing any longer (later on my doctor said that saved my life but I'm not so sure). I began "breathing" by pushing the air in my mouth into my lungs and back. I thought of my wife and kids and asked God to take care of them.

I was totally convinced I was a goner. For some reason, I stopped feeling that urgency to breathe. Perhaps it was something like the nitrogen narcosis that divers get but that only happens at depth with scuba gear. I think the Guy upstairs gave me a break here (You know, that sky God atheists don't believe in).   

I became quite relaxed, still unable to move and my surroundings got darker. I figure I was about 20 feet down when I felt some rocky bottom passing under my right toe. The force of the waves was slight here but my movement with the current was plainly felt. This woke me from my torpor.

I concentrated on my foot and tried with all my might to flex my foot and anchor my toe on the reef surface below. It worked and I cut my toe. This woke me up more. I still, believe it or not, did not need to breathe. I waited for the current to shift direction and slid along the bottom with the top of my right foot. When the current flipped again, I would anchor my toe on the reef. I did this 5 or six times. The only part of me that I tried to move was my right foot and toe. I still did not have the strength or muscle coordination to swim. It was getting shallower (warmer water) and my surroundings lighter.

All of a sudden the water got murkier and the bottom hard to hold because it was sandy instead of rocky and, like a submarine surfacing, my head popped out of the water.
Now a normal person takes a deep breath here, right? Not me. I was in terror of losing my grip on the bottom (it was sandy with no toe holds) so I plunged back under to "hold position" until the current shifted. I had glimpsed my sister yards away and I realized I was on the shore so I weakly and carefully stood up, breathed in deep and vomited my guts out.

I raised my head and stared into my sister's eyes. She looked at me and said, "You tried". John died that day. I ended up fishing my brother out as he was cursing his way in (We lay him on the beach and he was okay after about 20 minutes) and keeping John's teenage kid (he had two of his kids there that day) from drowning trying to fish his father's body out.

We got the body as it managed to float a ways away from the rip tide and bump up against the far end of the tidal pool reef. We did CPR to no avail; he had a pulse from my pushing on his sternum while my sister (a registered nurse) cleared the air passage and breathed into his lungs but we gave up when the ambulance got there about 20 minutes later; he was a solid blue color (John was very fair and redheaded). Not a good day.

The point of this experience I am relating is that we need to get our priorities straight in this country. WTF are we willing to die for? What are our principles? I know what mine are, who my boss is, and where I'm going when I leave this valley of tears. That guides me in my decision making.

As a pilot I learned that you HAVE TO think about trouble all the time, plan what you will do when or if it comes and PRACTICE it in your brain. Then relax and go on about your life. Otherwise you will learn by hard experience why a coward dies a thousand deaths. Be true to your principles and you will sleep better at night and be an asset to humanity and God.

My rant is for anyone here that hasn't thought this through like I KNOW Surly, Ashvin, RE, Eddie and probably Ka, among others, have. I'm in the moral imperative faith based Ashvin, Surly camp.

More Background:

I had events occur in my life that kept me alive miraculously when I should have gotten killed. I did not pray to avoid getting smacked by a car that ran a red light without lights on at night while my brother was saying "It's not going to get any greener" to me from the back seat of the car while I sat there like a bump on a log for NO ****ING REASON WHATSOEVER!

I didn't spend 10 to 15 minutes underwater refusing to breathe and come out of it because I'm superman; it just happened and I wrote about it in detail here some time ago. Sure, I was praising the Lord and thanking Him for "rescuing" me while I was drowning trying to fish my brother in law dentist (who drowned) from the surf but it was my foot moving me along the bottom for those 10 to 15 minutes or so that got me to the beach because I could barely move my arms and had to concentrate just to dig one toe into the rocky bottom. God made me work for that one!

While totaling a car, the seat belt caused my rib cage to rotate approximately 10 degrees or so I fully expected to die and had no desire whatsoever to stick around as I lay in a field gasping for air.

I did not pray or ask to be miraculously healed but nevertheless, AFTER the doctor at the ER had decided to do an exploratory on me to see how ****ed up I was inside, everything just POPPED into place X-ray room just before the body cavity/chest X-ray prior to the operation. The doctor cancelled the operation after seeing the x-ray. Apparently nothing was broken. You studied medicine (this comment was originally made to a doctor). How many times have you heard of rib cage rotation along the sternum that just pops back into position? How about the spleen? In violent car crashes it is almost always ruptured.

I lost consciousness gasping for air at the hospital with everything going round and round. When I woke up I was still gasping and being rolled into x-ray when all kinds of bubbling noises came from my chest.

I addressed God in my mind and said, WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!? Something or someone said, also in my mind, I"M FIXING YOU. My reaction was of chagrin. I was convinced I was DONE here and now I had to live in this HELL HOLE some more.

Now you can call that a faith based miraculous healing if you want but if you do I will say that you are fooling yourself. The "power" of your mind in Faith isn't going to have you or anybody else walking on water anytime soon. All this stuff and nonsense about each one of us being a little god and able to do miracles just by tuning in to some zen power or mind focus is simply magical thinking. As to JC's quote about moving mountains, mustard seed and Faith. He was talking about rocket fuel for evangelizing (fishing humans), not habitually violating the laws of physics.

My belief in Christ is EVIDENCE based. RE thinks I fancy myself "privileged" to have these experiences. I consider myself incredibly stubborn; so much so that God decided that I am so dense that He had to show me some evidence before I would believe. He doesn't do that to most people because most people aren't that dense, period.

And no, I'm not going to detail all the weird and wonderful stuff I have witnessed to you because some reader here might think I'm inventing it just to prove some metaphysical bull**** I believe in. Sorry, I'm about as hard nosed about cause and effect as any other scientist out there.

I once put a guy in jail because I refused to back down on my court testimony after witnessing a car he lost control of drive over and kill a street vendor. Despite receiving death threats, I said, **** it, it's the right thing to do so I'M GOING TO DO IT. 

Everything I witnessed about God doing His thing here and there was rigorously questioned and fact checked moment by moment by me. I was NOT looking for anything but an excuse NOT to believe there is a supreme being that intercedes in the lives of people on this planet in a personal manner.

But the observed events and facts said otherwise. Sure, I have Faith NOW, but I didn't do anything to earn it. It really IS, as the bible says, a gift.
 

AGelbert:
There is a lot of strange stuff that goes on out there.  :o I will now relate quite a strange close encounter I had with light beings/creatures or whatever.

Here's the story of my experience April 9, 1990:


I was in a parking lot overlooking a city watching the moon rise at about 9:00 P.M. There were about 20 other people there listening to their radios and drinking beer. I wasn't drinking. I saw this weird cloud about 5 miles away boiling like a tornado cell. It seemed to  be backlit (not by moonlight) but there was no sound of thunder from cloud internal lightning. People started saying "look at that and ooooh and aaaah".

This went on for about 5 minutes and two lights shot out of the cloud at least 1,000 mph (I'm a pilot and atc at this time so I had a very good grasp of distances and speeds). One was red and one was blue. The red one headed north (I was facing east towards the cloud and the moon) and the blue one headed south for a mile or so and did a hair pin turn and caught up to the red one headed north. They grew brighter and whiter and disappeared. 

It all happened in less than a minute after they shot out of the cloud. I was smoking a cigarette and was amazed at this "whatever" display of acrobatics and speed.

I heard a muffled pop like when you pop a paper bag. I looked left and I saw the first light ball. Then POP, POP. Two more appeared out of nowhere right before my eyes (no doubt some kind of interdimensional movement similar to what you mentioned and what occurs constantly in the electron clouds around an atomic nucleus).

I just stared at these majestic looking things that reminded me of a Dandelion seed Ball with clear Lucite rods sticking out. They where white and translucent, not yellow as portrayed. The center was compact. They floated south a few feet from me rotating lightly (the lateral rods were near stationary while the most forward and rear rods appeared to roll clockwise through the air two feet or so from the asphalt (the rate of roll did not coincide to the asphalt below like tire movement does). The asphalt was lit up by these things as they passed by. It took no more than a couple of minutes. Think of a feather floating in a whisper of a breeze.

Then the lead one Popped and disappeared, followed in sequence by the other two. I caught a flash of light entering the cloud miles away and then the cloud stopped boiling and assumed a typical cloud appearance. I was sorry I hadn't tried to touch one.

I didn't know anyone there so I didn't talk to anyone but people appeared pretty dumbfounded. I left a few minutes later. I've never made heads or tails of this experience. If the balls ARE energy creatures, they must have had a good time but made no effort to communicate. If they are vehicles, whatever pilots them is no bigger than a rabbit. Whatever they are, I do not think they are from Earth. It appears that there are some ETs out there that aren't shaped like us and prefer the sea urchin star shape.  :icon_mrgreen:

What do you think I saw? Note. The moon didn't jump position. I lost no time.

   

AGelbert:
True story.   8)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAJDnhpvtJY&feature=player_embedded
The above is NOT the experience related. I post it so you will get the picture of what a Huey Gunship in combat is like.

Spring 1967 12:15 to 12:20 A.m. (I looked at the car clock!):
I'm riding shotgun with my pal in his 1958 metallic blue Mercedes (in excellent condition with leather seats!). We are listening to the radio and smoking menthol tiparillos. It's a warm and pleasant night. We are at a stop light. The light turns green. He pulls out and crosses the intersection into our neighborhood. I was NOT thinking about my brother, Viet Nam or the war. I blurted out, "My brother just got shot. What time is it?". My friend asked me, "Is he dead?". I said, "no", as I looked at the car clock. There wasn't much else to say. I did realize it must have been day time in Viet Nam (it was an 11 hour time difference from where I was). 

So, I wrote it down and waited. I didn't say anything to my parents or anybody else in my family. I figured that tiparillo had some weird **** in or I was unconsciously just concerned for my brother and my brain "made something up". I certainly did believe that telepathy was possible but that was only the second time I had one of those flashes (the other one was from my old man several years prior and I did not link the two). Note: I was an atheist at the time.

Same moment in Viet Nam (I checked and confirmed this with my brother personally BEFORE telling him my experience!) It's mid day there (11:15 A.M.):
A Huey helicopter gun ship with my brother as crew chief riding on the left side machine gun mount area was flying low while another one was flying high above. The tactic was for the low flying chopper (it was their turn in the barrel that day  :P ) to sucker snipers into shooting at them so the high chopper can waste the sniper at the location of the weapon flash. It was a bright and hot day.

They were close to Bien Hoa Air Base where they were based. So far it had been a calm day...
My brother said he heard somebody say "move over" (when you are manning the machine gun on the left side, half your ass is in the breeze  ;D). He shifted his ass to the right and felt something hit him like a baseball bat on the left side of his ass (had he not shifted right, the round would have missed the pelvis and gone straight up into his abdominal cavity to his heart, probably killing him on the spot). The round lodged in his pelvis and **** it. He was thrown to the right yelling "TAKING FIRE!". They flew out of it and the high chopper "took care of business".

Flying back to base,  STILL with only a mildly sore ass, he asked who had radioed to "move over"? The other three crew members said the first they knew something was going on was when my brother yelled. "TAKING FIRE!". I learned all this many months later after my brother returned from Viet Nam.


For crew chiefs only! Crew chiefs were top rated mechanics so they had "access" to some "expensive" replaced parts. My brother had one of these Huey helicopter rotor chain bracelets.  ;D

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