April 27, 2021 Jetymology

The Liberty Gazette

April 27, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Want to know where jets come from? Other than the factories. Would it surprise you to know that the word, “jet” seems to have its origins centuries before the jet age? What got me going on this was reading a 200-year-old novel that had nothing to do with airplanes, yet the word “jet” was used a few times, in its verb and adjective forms. So, I had to know. And then, of course, I had to share it with you.

Around the late 15th century, the words “jectere” and “jactare” came into use. These are Late Latin words, meaning “to throw” or “thrust.” In fact, “jectere” was abstracted from “dejectare,” “projectare,” and other similar words. “Jactare,” to toss about, to throw or cast, comes from the root *ye- meaning to throw, impel; to push forth or fling violently. At least, that’s according to Wiktionary and etymonline.com. 

The French must have been jealous, thinking about how they would try so hard to beat future Americans into the air, and so they came up with a word, “jeter,” also meaning “to throw.” About a hundred years later, this evolved into “jet,” meaning to jut out. 

Those were the verb forms, but they also used it as a noun, meaning a spout from which water (or other liquid) comes. This is where we get jet propulsion; jet engines were named as such because they use jet propulsion.

The word can also be used as an adjective. “Jet black” is a deep black and comes from lignite, a mineral used for ornamentation. That was news to me. The Anglo-French adjective was geet, while the Old French version was jaiet. The Latin is gagates, and the Greeks offered gagates lithos, which represented the location of this mineral. Credit for that knowledge goes to wyzant.com. 

And then we have words that grew out of the meanings for “jet” such as jettison (to throw out) and jetlag, a sleeping problem when one’s circadian rhythm is messed up, usually due to long trips across several time zones. The way things are going, jetlag may soon become an antiquated word. With tight controls on international travel, tomorrow’s generation may never know how jetlag feels.

Mike: Cheers to today’s etymology lesson. Basic jet engine operation is simple: it ingests air—pulls it in, squeezes it, and then fuel is mixed into the compressed air. Once the fuel-air mixture is set aflame, it expands rapidly and is pushed through the tail pipe (also known as a jet pipe) with much greater force than when it entered. That force is measured in pounds of thrust. Then, as Newton’s Third Law of Motion says, where there is an action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and away we go. 

There are different types of jet engines, such turbojets, which are often referred to as straight jets, and fan jets, where the jet engine core turns a huge fan like those on most airliners. But they all help you get out of town. 

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April 20, 2021 Don't Mess With Texas

The Liberty Gazette

April 20, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Every day when we take our elderly German Shepherd, Hilda, out for her walk, we encounter trash along the sides of the neighborhood roads. It’s abominable, and it makes us wonder what kind of people these are who toss their trash out in front of someone else’s house. We pick up what we can, drop it in the poop bags, and add it to our trash bin, all the while muttering things about these characters who we think even live in this neighborhood. Have they no pride in their community?

One day, Mike was so angry with the amount of trash he collected on just two streets that he wished he could take the Commemorative Air Force’s B-17G Flying Fortress and scare the bejeebers out of those skunks who are littering here daily. “Just like that video,” he said. “I want to do that to them.” 

“What video?” I asked. 

“The B-17 that hunted down a screwball just like these. It was a commercial for the Texas Highway Department’s ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ campaign.” 

“Oh, cool,” I responded and rushed over to my comfy writing chair in the living room and looked it up on YouTube. 

You might remember it. A couple of yahoos in an old red pickup rumble down a dusty West Texas highway, country music playing, and the driver tosses trash out his window. 

Queue the announcer (in West Texas drawl): “Somethin’ to think about. If you throw trash on Texas highways…” (sudden change in music to a daunting, imminent “I will get you” bass note) “Somebody up there’s gon-be watchin’.” 

A heatwave-rippled silhouette rises ominously from over the horizon and, just feet above the ground, it zeros in on the truck.

Radio: “Ghost Squadron to Ghost Squadron Leader, we’ve got one in sight. Let’s make an impression on this guy. Over.”

Announcer: “And you don’t wanna mess with the Texas Confederate Air Force.” Whoosh as the B-17 passes so low you must duck. “So don’t mess with Texas.” 

Radio: “Bombs away.” 

Yes, how wonderful that would be to invite the CAF to Liberty to hunt them down. 

The CAF brought out their North American P-51 Mustang and Grumman F4F Wildcat along with the B-17, and the director tried filming the ad with all three aircraft, but the Flying Fortress produces so much wake turbulence that the other two couldn’t stay close enough behind it, and above the wake, they were too high for the dramatic effect.

Mike: Shot more than 20 years ago, people remember this commercial among all the other “Don’t Mess With Texas” spots, including those with Texas’ famous residents Chuck Norris and George Strait. 

I wonder if the perpetrator’s perspective would change if all the trash they dumped on our streets over say 10 years was collected and then planted on their own front lawn by a low flying four-engine WWII bomber. Would the B-17’s bomb bay be big enough to hold it all? Let’s find out. 

Bombs away.

 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

April 13, 2021 A Little Local Flying

The Liberty Gazette

April 13, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Wheels up on a sunny Friday afternoon, and we’re over the hometown here spotting reality from a different perspective. I had wondered about those cranes along the river. For the past couple of weeks, I have noticed when driving past them at dark that all but the shortest one seem to be unlit. That’s rather unusual. The standard (law) is that anything over 199 feet must have a light on top. If the light goes out, a Notice To Airmen must be issued through the formal channels for the FAA to publish. The goal is to prevent pilots from hitting stuff. Smart goal, thank you very much. I’m not sure why only the shortest one has a light, so beware, if you’re flying low. 

After the birds’ eye view of the construction project, we flew on toward Conroe’s Lone Star Executive Airport to practice some instrument approaches. When the weather is beautiful, as it was that day, the skies tend to be more densely populated with small aircraft. I wondered why the Houston approach controller sighed after I asked for a practice approach. As we got close to Conroe and were switched over to the tower controller, we realized what that sigh meant. Lone Star Executive was abuzz with small airplanes, and the guy in the tower was spewing instructions rapid-fire! 

The wind favored landing on runway 14, so everyone was being funneled in, or out, that way. Some were flying multiple circuits in the traffic pattern, practicing landings, some were practicing approaches, like us. Others were arriving to dine at the Black Walnut, and some were taking off to who-knows-where. It was the start of the weekend, and people were getting out of Dodge. 

As the controller cleared us to land on 14, he said immediately after, “Exit One-Nine.” That’s a runway, not a taxiway. Okay, fine, runway 19 was not in use as a runway at that time, so it was being used like a taxiway. But being given this unexpected instruction while we are on short final meant we had to look quickly at how much landing distance we had before we would arrive at 19, the crossing runway, where we were expected to clear the way for the plane behind us. It meant we should plan on landing early, touch down close to the approach end of the runway and be ready to apply brakes sooner. For someone with a lot of experience, that’s a few quick adjustments. But for students and other low-time pilots, the fast-talking controller issuing orders, some of them unusual, this scenario can be intimidating. 

What probably got pilots’ attention more than anything that afternoon was his no-nonsense, gruff voice – “Listen up people! You have to be ready when I call you!” He left no question who was in charge, which is good. Later, we asked a friend who keeps their airplane there about him. “Ha! Yes, we know him. Yes, he’s very good at his job!” she said. 

How was your Friday afternoon?

 

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

April 6, 2021 If Only...

The Liberty Gazette

April 6, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Last week when we wrote about flying blind, we knew we would want to return to the British blind adventurer we mentioned, Miles Hilton-Barber. Miles lost his eyesight while in his early twenties. But he’s flown an aircraft halfway around the world from London to Australia, and that’s not all. Wait, let’s step back a bit. 

At age 18, Miles expected to follow his father, a WWII fighter pilot, into the Royal Rhodesian Air Force, but he failed the eyesight exam. Three years later, both he and his brother, Geoff, were diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a genetic disease that leads to total blindness. Game over? Yes, for Miles. He adopted an attitude of victimhood that lasted for the next 30 years. Then he helped Geoff build a boat, and Geoff went off and set a world record as the first blind person to cross an ocean solo. He sailed from Africa to Australia by himself. Afterward, he told Miles to stop focusing on his blindness, and start focusing on his dreams.

That was the kick in the pants Miles needed. Here he’d been waiting all those years for a miraculous healing. If only he could see again, then he could… but there was Geoff. He wasn’t waiting. He was living, while Miles had been telling himself, “you’re not meant to do that.”

He realized that we cannot always control things that happen to us, but we can control how we respond. He didn’t know how it would happen, but he would pursue his lifelong dream to be a pilot. It took years of perseverance, but he never gave up, and one day he took off from London and touched down in Sydney after 55 days and 13,000 miles in a microlight aircraft. Speech output technology and a co-pilot helped him do it, and most important to Miles, he raised money to eradicate preventable blindness in developing countries. 

Miles has set other world records and taken part in extreme events across all seven continents in mountaineering, desert and polar ultra-marathons, power-boat racing, scuba-diving, motor-racing, aerobatic and supersonic flying. He completed the Marathon Des Sables, 151 miles across the Saharan desert in the “toughest footrace on Earth.” He’s climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and holds the world record as the first blind person to man-haul a sled nearly 250 miles across Antarctica. 

But here’s the thing: If you’re Miles Hilton-Barber, you believe that God can use you to help others; that it’s not about you, it’s about relationships. He and his wife of several decades have children and grandchildren who are the light of their lives. 

He also says don’t let your achievements make you arrogant and proud. Rather, know that by God’s grace, if you can do these things, it must mean that other people can. “It’s like walking through deep snow,” he says, “you need a strong person up front, breaking through and making a path for others to follow.” That’s what his flight to Sydney did for preventable blindness.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com