Various stories

When I took flying lessons, our small town airport was between mountains, requiring a change from the usual flight path.

You made your first turn over a mountain, meaning you had to land at a steeper flight path than normal. Then you turned for approach when you saw the whites of the eyes of those skiing on the nearby mountain. Finally, you came in steeper than normal but had to watch it because there was a small lake on approach, so when you changed from over water to over land, the updraft stopped and your plane lost altitude.

So why am I stating all this? Because the dirty little secret is that a lot of airports have similar "air over water then over land" approaches, which can cause problems, especially on cloudless warm days.

The latest Plane crash in San Francisco may have run into a similar problem: Analysis here denies it.

The approach to runway 28 Left at San Francisco International airport presents some challenges, not unlike those at many other airports that are either built right on the ocean or next to it. Winds at these airports tend to be stronger and more unpredictable in terms of their gusts and direction. Bodies of water are also known to produce sudden updrafts and heavy fog. As of the latest briefing by investigators, it appears flying conditions were not a factor in the crash.

they then go on to point to the pilot errors in a plane he might not have had much experience with.

I've been in two missed landings, both in the Dakotas, with fog and snow and a cross wind. You know the pilot made the right decision when you start climbing and see the airport 100 feet to the right of your window...

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Nine "must have" survival tools.

here, the worst case scenerio would be a major earthquake. So are we prepared?

Yes, I do have a first aid kit. But usually I only buy a week of Lolo's blood pressure medicine at a time because it is expensive, so we have a problem there.

we don't have MRE's: we have a garage full of rice.

We don't have water purification tablets: The river is two blocks down and somewhere in our junk room we have a huge ceramic water purifier...we also have our own water pump and generator to run it (actually two generators: A large one and a smaller backup one that we sometimes use at the farm), although in an earthquake the pump might be damaged..

We have plenty of knives, and since the Philippines has gun control (and Chano, being a Christian, is one of the few middle class Filipinos who obey the law), we do sleep with a machete on the window sill next to our bed. Our main protection against attack is George, the killer Lab,

 and of course in a worst case scenerio, we can always eat Adobong George...

We don't have a magnesium fire stick, but we do have plenty of matches and our stove has a flint starter.

We don't have sleeping bags, but mats and hammocks.

Ah, but we do have duct tape. Worth it's weight in gold.