Category: aviation history

Designing “tomorrow’s” electronic flight displays… back in 1976!

about Greg, aviation history

Ever wonder how today’s incredible digital flight displays and simulators developed?

Well as a relatively new private pilot back in 1975, I was enlisted to participate in a new-technology experiment to test the feasibility of using electronic flight displays for instrument flight and training.

The technology of the day allowed me to “fly” a simulator employing an ~8″ CRT (read “old-TV set”) driven by a roomful of computers delivering half a dozen moving lines to convey flight data.

I was intrigued by the experience, and as a University of Illinois Industrial Design grad student, applied to my grad committee to participate as a display designer on the project, which was being conducted by U of I’s Aviation Research Lab (ARL) under US Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsorship.

My assignment was to address symbology and human factors design for some future time when computers became compact and powerful enough to drive more sophisticated displays like today’s.

Well yesterday I came upon my following 1976 presentation slides from that project, which I predict you’ll find interesting. (Click the first image to see it full-size, and then advance using the left-right arrows.)

Let me know what you think!

Greg

PS: That simulator pilot appears to be my fellow grad student, Bruce Artwick. You may be familiar with a personal side-project he was working on at the time, now known as MS Flight Simulator!

Flight simulator, 1976. And yes, that computer bank powered it!
The control station.
Only this much data could be displayed with near-real-time motion...
Okay, let’s fly the sim!
Yep, that’s the digital flight display atop the dash!
Back then this was called a VSD (vertical situation display), versus today’s PFD (primary flight display).
Design parameters for the various planned cockpit displays.
My part of the project: designing tomorrow’s display symbology.
To nail display perspective, I shot slides from the Flying Illini club Cherokee, projected and traced them off a wall.
Graphics were hand-drawn or applied with adhesive film and press-type.
Envisioning “tomorrow’s flight displays” in 1976 cockpits…

“Sky King & the Old Apache,” Greg’s Cockpit Adventures from the Flying Carpet Podcast, Flight #4

aviation history, flying adventures, Greg's Podcasts, Well, I'll be!

Ride along with renowned aviator, writer, and photographer Greg Brown in his light airplane, the “Flying Carpet,” as he searches behind clouds for the real America, experiencing countless aerial adventures along the way.

Listen to “Sky King & the Old Apache,” Greg’s Flying Carpet Podcast Flight #4

“The roaring powerplant and squealing tires soon brought my instructor scrambling from the office.”

Rancher-pilot Sky King of the legendary 1950s TV program played a role in the wackiest checkride of Greg’s piloting career.

Cover photo: “Sky King” (Kirby Grant) and “niece, Penny” (Gloria Winters) with Songbird, the TV show’s Cessna 310.

Podcast music by Hannis Brown.

Greg

Find all Greg’s Flying Carpet Podcast episodes here!

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About Greg

A former National Flight Instructor of the Year, Greg is author of five books, a former Barnes & Noble Arizona Author of the Month, and recently completed twenty years as aviation adventure columnist for AOPA’s Flight Training magazine. Some reviewers have compared his book, “Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane,” to sixties road-trip classics like “On the Road,” and “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”

“Greg thinks with the mind of a pilot, questions with the curiosity of a philosopher, and sees with the eyes of a poet.” — Rod Machado, aviation author and humorist

“You don’t have to be a pilot, or even a frequent flyer, to soar with Greg Brown in [his] Flying Carpet.” — Nina Bell Allen, former Assistant Managing Editor, Readers Digest

So buckle in and join Greg for the ride!

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Make a one-time donation, or better yet, subscribe your ongoing support. Thank you! Greg

If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!

“Raise the Flying Carpet: Shipwrecks over Arizona,” Remembering Clive Cussler, Greg’s legacy Flying Carpet column

aviation history, Flying Carpet column, life & love

I was saddened to learn today of Clive Cussler’s passing.

Jean and I once enjoyed a memorable day with the acclaimed author and adventurer, including a Flying Carpet ride. It turned out Clive had strong aviation connections, along with those of land and sea. The biggest thrills were learning about his famed sea recoveries, and seeing him in action formulating fiction. Here’s the column I wrote about that memorable day. A more detailed account appears in my book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane.

“Clive Cussler!” I said, “He writes the Dirk Pitt novels, like Raise the Titanic and Inca Gold. And he discovered the Confederate submarine, ‘Hunley!’”

“That’s right,” said Penny Porter, director of Tucson’s Society of Southwestern Authors writers conference, “After our original keynote canceled for next week, Clive graciously agreed to speak on short notice. You’re still coming, right?”

“Wouldn’t miss it!” I said, “And I can’t wait to hear Clive Cussler speak. But why are you phoning me?”

“Because we have a problem,” said Penny. “Clive has agreed to present, but he must get home by five o’clock for another engagement. Would you bring him with you in the Flying Carpet? He lives nearby and you’d easily be back before five, right…?

**Continue reading Greg’s remembering-Clive-Cussler column, “RAISE THE FLYING CARPET: Shipwrecks over Arizona” **.

(Mobile-device link here.)

Photo: Tucson’s aircraft “Boneyard,” viewed from the Flying Carpet with author Clive Cussler. 

(This column first appeared in AOPA Flight Training magazine.)

If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!

“Best Landing Anyone Ever Made,” Greg’s Father’s Day legacy Flying Carpet column

aviation history, flying adventures, Flying Carpet column

“We’re out of control!” yelled my father, grabbing the wheel.

“No we’re not.” I replied, grabbing it back.

Ignoring my father wasn’t easy, as he’d been a pilot since before I was born.

He bought his first airplane in 1949, a tiny Aeronca Chief. Soon afterward he traded for an Ercoupe, which he landed in a Missouri farm field to wait out thunderstorms. Pilots don’t do that sort of thing anymore.

“We’re in trouble! I’m taking over!”

“Dad! Please believe me. We’ll be okay…”

Next came a triple-tailed Bellanca Cruisair. “Most efficient airplane I ever owned,” he claimed, “150 mph on 150 hp.”

He earned his instrument rating in that Bellanca, using just a headset, compass, and turn-and-bank indicator. In those days pilots flew airways defined by Morse code — “a” indicated one side of course, and “n,” the other. On course aviators were treated to a steady tone. No frilly moving maps, back then.

My dad’s one metal bender occurred in that Bellanca, which had retractable landing gear manually extended by many turns of a crank…

**Read Greg’s complete legacy Father’s Day column, “Best Landing Anyone Ever Made“** (Mobile-friendly version here.)

Photo 1: “Harold Brown kisses his Cessna 310’s good engine in the Azores Islands, after losing the other engine 250 miles from land.” 

Photo 2: “Cessna 310C similar to the one flown by Harold Brown and Eddie Hayes ‘the long way’ across the Atlantic, in 1962.”

(This column first appeared in AOPA Flight Training magazine. **Read an expanded version of this story in my book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane.)

Greg

©2019 Gregory N. Brown

If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!

“The War in the Air,” yesterday’s view of the future, by H.G. Wells

aviation history, Greg recommends

0574890L-1I’ve just finished reading The War in the Air, by H.G. Wells.

For those who aren’t familiar, that 1908 sci-fi work is renowned for having presaged modern aerial warfare.

Although the book’s protagonist and his personal story are forgettable (if not downright annoying), Wells is remarkably prescient in predicting the advent of world war, coming 20th-century German and Japanese aggression, and the terror rained down by aerial armadas in World Wars I and II.

And if you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to do battle from dirigibles, or fly a flapping-wing aircraft, here’s your opportunity to find out!

You’ll need to hold your nose through parts of it, but the author’s broader observations and predictions are quite fascinating.

Those who have read it, or choose to, let me know what you think!

The book is available in various print editions, or you can download The War in the Air for Kindle, FREE from amazon.

©2014 Gregory N. Brown

“Flying the Mists of Time,” Greg’s March column

aviation history, flying adventures, Flying Carpet column, Greg's photographs

4-GregBrownFT313_5604eSmw800Remembering a despicable piloting feat

Usually the skies between Flagstaff and Palm Springs are brutally blue. But this would be no normal journey. En route to AOPA Summit, Jean and I launched our Flying Carpet over a dense silvery blanket of prescribed-forest-fire smoke.

When rare swirling clouds cloaked the primeval and sunbaked Mojave Desert it seemed we were treading not mere miles, but the surreal mists of time. And in a sense we were. For at Summit I met someone connected to my hazy beginnings as a pilot.

Wandering the exhibits, I discovered Morey’s West Coast Adventures. Longtime instructor and pilot examiner Field Morey is legendary for his cross-country instrument-training courses. Field is now based in Medford, Oregon.

But when I was a young University of Wisconsin student he operated family-owned Morey Field, just across Lake Mendota from Madison’s Truax Field where I learned to fly. Introducing myself, I explained how as a newly minted pilot, I’d often flown over Morey Field. We reminisced about examiner Claude Frickelton, who delivered my private pilot check ride.

416px-Sterling_Hall_bombing_after_explosion_1“Greg, were you at Madison in 1970 when UW’s Sterling Hall Army Math Center was bombed?” asked Field. Forgotten memories of that turbulent era flooded back.

“I arrived a year later Field, but well remember seeing blue sky through windows of the bombed-out building when walking to class. And the bombing’s ringleader, Karleton Armstrong, still dominated both the local news and anti-war T-shirts.”

“Then I have a story you’ll appreciate…” said Field…

Read Greg’s entire March Flying Carpet column, “Flying the Mists of Time.”

Top photo: Rare clouds cloak California’s Mojave Desert. Upper right: Sterling Hall after the August, 1970 bombing (Wikipedia). See more photos here.

41qY7ieHTqL._SL500_AA300_PS: I’ve been reading a fascinating book about the UW bombing and surrounding events. “Rads,” by Tom Bates, is out of print, but available used. Highly recommended.

©2013 Gregory N.Brown

(This column first appeared in AOPA Flight Training magazine.)

If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!

“Skimming Blue Waters,” Greg’s featured legacy column

aviation history, flying adventures, Flying Carpet column


“Need help?” yelled the guy in the boat.

“No thanks,” I replied, not daring turn my head too far for fear of falling into the water.

We were adrift in the middle of the Colorado River, me balanced precariously on the seaplane’s float, face down, pumping water out of the forward float compartments.

Twice we had tried to take off, both unsuccessfully given today’s calm wind and glassy waters.

“You must not have emptied all the water from the floats,” said examiner Joe La Placa, finally. “Get out there and do it again.” Great way to start a checkride, I thought.

I was here to earn my single-engine seaplane rating from La Placa Flying Service at Lake Havasu City, Arizona…

READ THE ENTIRE STORY in my June, 2000, Flying Carpet column, “SKIMMING BLUE WATERS.” (Mobile optimized version HERE.)

Photo: Joe LaPlaca congratulates me on earning my single-engine seaplane rating in his 150hp Cessna 150 on floats, February, 2000. See more photos.

(Read an expanded version of this story in my book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane.)

If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!

How the “Flying Carpet” got its name

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Reader Sergio Schaar wrote to ask, “What inspired you to call [your airplane] the Flying Carpet?”

Years have passed since I last explained it, so I thought it appropriate to share my very first Flying Carpet column that tells the story behind the name.

“Magic! The whining of the gyros gave way to mystical drums and rhythmic chanting, crazily mixing images of flight with those of ancient and sacred ceremonies. Chills traveled up and down our spines-we could scarcely have been more astonished if we had arrived by flying carpet.

“Adventurer Richard Halliburton would have appreciated our situation. After hitching ’round the world by freighter and camel in the 1920s, he became obsessed with visiting remote Timbuktu, a legendary mid-Sahara caravan stop. The way to get there, he decided, was by The Flying Carpet, a black-and-crimson Stearman that he bought and shipped to England in 1931.

“With pilot Moye Stephens guiding the Stearman, Halliburton traveled the ancient world to exotic places such as Baghdad, the Dead Sea, headhunter country in Borneo, and, yes, Timbuktu. During the course of his journey he enthralled princes and paupers alike as he took them on their first airplane rides.

“It’s tempting to look back at those times and think we missed the real adventure of flying. Well, we didn’t. Flying was out of reach for all but the wealthiest people in Halliburton’s day, so most people could enjoy flying only vicariously through his writing.

“Today we live exploits that Halliburton’s readers could only dream of — piloting our own flying machines on our own adventures.

“On this particular day, our flying carpet had taken us to a mystical and exotic place in the New World — Window Rock, Arizona, capital of the Navajo Nation, where Jean and I had invited friends to spend the day exploring the annual Navajo Nation Fair…”

Continue reading my first Flying Carpet column, “Ninety Minutes to Another World,” here. (This column first appeared in AOPA Flight Training magazine.)

Read my book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane for more on how Halliburton’s flying adventures inspired the naming of my column and steed.

Top photo: LeRoy Peterson’s black and crimson Stearman biplane, similar in appearance to Richard Halliburton’s Flying Carpet. Lower photo: Miss Navajo Nation at the Navajo Nation Fair, Arizona, as detailed in the column.

Richard Halliburton was a renowned travel writer in the 1920s-30s. Among his most popular works are Richard Halliburton’s Book(s) of Marvels, and The Royal Road to Romance. His lesser-known 1932 book, The Flying Carpet, tells the story of his adventures flying North Africa, Europe, and Asia in a 1929 Stearman biplane.

For more about Richard Halliburton and his “original” Flying Carpet, see “Richard Halliburton and Moye Stephens: Traveling Around the World in the ‘Flying Carpet’” and “Moye Stephens: Aviation Pioneer and Adventurer” at Aviation History magazine.

©2012 Gregory N. Brown

If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!

“Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript – What Really Happened”

aviation history, Citizen Brown

Wow! Talk about chilling!!! I didn’t realize they’d fully released the voice and data recorder contents relative to the Air France crash in the South Atlantic several years ago.

“Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript – What Really Happened,” from Popular Mechanics.

I rarely post links to outside stories on my blog, but this is just so provocative, so telling, and so downright scary, I decided to do so.

A thought-provoking must-read for every pilot…
Greg

“New Beginnings,” remembering one pilot’s return to flight after the 9/11 terrorist attacks

aviation history, flying adventures, life & love

There have been two “first flights” in my life.

These weren’t first flights in the sense of first solo, first glider flight, or first balloon flight, although such milestones were memorable each in its own way. Rather, these were moments when I discovered, fresh and new, the pure joy and freedom of flight.

The first of those experiences occurred in a banking turn, flying a Cessna 150 over the cracked ice and windblown snow of Lake Mendota, near Madison, Wisconsin. I don’t remember if it was as a solo student or new private pilot — it doesn’t matter — but at that instant I escaped for the first time the nagging traumas of becoming a pilot and the consuming minutia of doing what pilots must do to remain aloft.

Instead of fearing the terrain as a threat to be avoided, I noted with fascination sailing iceboats and fishing tents among which I’d skated between college classes in the winter. While skating I’d experienced the fast-moving iceboats only as flashes of color passing me by. From the air, however, I could see their forward progress across the lake, and the paths left by their runners for miles behind.

The pressure ridges that blocked my progress when skating could now be seen in their entirety — cracked and buckling they formed huge rational patterns stretching for miles like spider webs across the lake. I soared and gazed, soared and gazed, and knew that day for the first time that I’d achieved the ranks of birdmen and would never be cured.

My second “first flight” occurred on a warm autumn day just short of 30 years later — three weeks and two days after twisted souls hurled peaceful airplanes against skyscrapers. At first the grounding of all things flying seemed appropriate, in homage to those who had died and revulsion to the dark twist taken during the normally beautiful act of flight.

For days afterward I walked our quiet street, gazing up in wonder at a tranquil sky never before seen devoid of airplanes — at least in my lifetime. I’ll admit to enjoying the peace of it for a time, and finding myself content with the quiet and solitude afforded by empty skies. But when airliners were again released to fly my mood changed, and I was soon overwhelmed with jealously…

Continue reading “New Beginnings: a pilot returns to flight after the terrorist attacks,” here.

Photo: Sun pierces clouds near Wickenburg, Arizona. (This article first appeared in AOPA Pilot, September, 2002.)

©2011 Gregory N. Brown

If you enjoyed this story, you’ll love Greg’s book, Flying Carpet: The Soul of an Airplane. Autographed copies available!