Things I Bring

February 19, 2020

THE TIMELINE of an aviation career, for some of us, is punctuated with dark occurrences. Furloughs, rejection letters, bankruptcies. And now, sigh, I’ve lost my beloved calculator.

I bought the thing 23 years ago, if I remember right, at the old Osco store on Highland Avenue near Davis Square. It was your basic flip-top model, dual solar and battery, with fat buttons and an oversized screen for better low-light viewing. I paid about four dollars for it.

When you own anything for 23 years, you grow fond of it. The same chemicals and synaptic energies that attach us to pets, or even people, I suspect, are the ones that, albeit on a lesser level, attach us to inanimate objects. These objects mark the passage of time. They carry with them the memories of past jobs, past relationships, former eras of our lives. I hope that isn’t being too oddly sentimental, or insulting the very nature of what it is to be human. Regardless, I miss my calculator.

Two weeks ago I was working a flight to Edinburgh, Scotland. I was the relief pilot on this leg, sitting in one of the cockpit jumpseats with the calculator on my knee. It was shortly after takeoff and I’d just finished running through the waypoint times and working out the breaks schedule. I was about to put it back into my briefcase bag when something distracted me. I placed it on top of my roll-aboard bag, which was stowed standing up, an arm’s reach away to my left — and promptly forgot about it.

That’s the last time I saw it. At some point it must have gotten jostled to the floor, where I presume it still is, kicked into a corner and set upon each flight by heavy luggage. Perhaps another pilot picked it up and tucked it into one of the cockpit cubby holes. (Sure we have a lost-and-found boxes in our crew bases, but who’s going to return a cheap plastic calculator?) Or maybe he threw it away. The truth is, most pilots don’t bring or use calculators. It would’ve been a peculiar artifact to find.

You can see the calculator in the picture below, taken in 1998. No, that’s not a U-boat circa 1944; it’s the flight engineer’s station of a Douglas DC-8. This was my office for about four years, shuttling cargo to and from Europe and across the U.S. The calculator is on the ledge, lower left. Notice it has an orange sticker on its case. I added the sticker for the same reason that I use a bright red bumper on my iPhone: to keep me from leaving it behind. So much for bright ideas, literally.

The calculator was a necessary instrument on the ancient Douglas. The weight, balance, and fuel calculations were all done by hand. It was simple arithmetic, but these were big, six-digit numbers. Not so much on the 767. It’s the dispatchers, loaders and planners who do all the serious number-crunching. They upload the results to us and we plug them in. About the only things we calculate manually are the waypoint crossing times and maybe the start/end times of our crew rest breaks. This is hardly anything technical; they’re just figures of convenience jotted down in the margins of the flight plan, requiring nothing more than adding or subtracting a few simple numbers.

But there are fewer things that I am worse at than adding or subtracting simple numbers. I am, in fact, so bad at even basic math that I can barely make change for a dollar. Solving a problem like “14 plus 28” is, to my mind, like contemplating quantum physics. And running the times, forget it: If you cross one waypoint at 14:26, and the next one is 47 minutes later, what time will that be? Are you kidding? Where the hell is my calculator?

I guess I’ll start using my phone. On the bright side this means one fewer thing to carry around.

And what do pilots carry around?

Once upon a time — meaning not very long ago — we lugged with us heavy black briefcases stuffed with maps, charts, and manuals. Pretty much all of this technical arcana now lives electronically in an iPad or other tablet device. Of all the advances seen in commercial aviation over the past two decades, this is probably the one most welcome by pilots. Because not only did those books weigh a ton, they required almost constant revising. Every two weeks a thick packet of pages would show up in your mailbox. The tiniest addendum to any approach or departure procedure, and bang, eighteen different pages needed to be swapped out. A particularly hefty set of revisions could take an hour or more to complete. Page in, page out, page in, page out. Side effects included dizziness, blindness, repetitive motion injuries and suicide.

Now all we do is tap a button that says UPDATE. United Airlines says that its switch to iPads saves twenty million sheets of paper annually. I can believe it. It also has saved time, fuel, and visits to the chiropractor.

We still carry flight bags, but they’ve gotten a lot smaller and contain mainly personal items and sundries. Some pilots use a soft-sided briefcase; others use gym-stye bags or even backpacks. My preference, at the moment, is an offensively overpriced Tumi briefcase that I bought about six years ago and quickly learned to hate, with a series of undersized exterior pockets that are exactly too small for anything I try to fit in them.

Inside this Tumi is a repurposed toiletries bag. This is where I keep my flight essentials. The most substantial object in here is a headset. The headsets supplied in our cockpits are old David Clark models — those Space Age green things that NFL coaches used to wear on the sidelines. They’re heavy, bulky, antiquated. So, like many pilots, I bring my own. I’ve been thinking about splurging on a noises-canceling set, but for now I use a cheap, reliable Telex. I also have a 26 year-old Sony that I sometimes bring. This was a present that I bought for myself in 1993 when I checked out as a Dash-8 captain.

You’ll also find pens, earplugs, a solar-powered flashlight, a calculator (RIP), sunscreen, masking tape, and a big packet of wet-naps used to wipe away the dust, crumbs, and grime from the radio panels and other cockpit surfaces, which are routinely, astonishingly filthy. And three or four clothes pins. The cockpit sun visors are flimsy things that don’t do much in the way of blocking the sun. To keep from going blind, I augment the visors by clothes-pinning up sheets of paper, a map, or maybe a folded garbage bag.

In the shirt pockets of my uniform you’ll always see three things: a ballpoint pen, a highlighter, and a red Sharpie.

The pen is used for all the things people use pens for. The highlighter I use mainly for marking up the flight plan. I’ll go through it page by page, striking the important parts in yellow: the flight time, the alternates, the dispatcher’s desk number, the airport elevations, deferred maintenance items, ETP coordinates, etc. Every pilot does this in his or her own style. Many don’t do it at all. I have a bad habit of coloring the flight plan even when it’s not my leg to fly, irritating the pilot whose turn it actually is.

The red Sharpie is my tool for what we’ll call high-emphasis tasks, the most critical of which is putting my initials on the cap of my water bottle, to keep anyone else from drinking from it. If there’s a redispatch point along our route, I’ll mark it on the flight plan with a red “RDP.” I also use it for my scratch-pad notes. When I’m in the first officer’s seat there’s a clipboard along the bottom ledge of the window, just to my right. I keep a folded piece of paper there on which I jot down various quick-reference figures: the flight number, en route time, block fuel, minimum takeoff fuel, transition levels, planned oceanic crossing altitudes and speeds, radio frequencies. All in red.

That’s aviation for you. Where the smallest and most mundane things — I mean physically, tangibly, the smallest accoutrements — are often the marks of experience. I’ve been flying commercially for thirty years now. My advice to the aspiring aviator is this: bring a Sharpie.

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24 Responses to “Things I Bring”
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  1. Geoff Glave says:

    I chuckled at your comments around RE the 767’s calculations being automated, or performed by others. As I’m sure you know, Air Canada Flight 143 – aka the “Gimli Glider” was a 767 that ran out of fuel midflight between YUL and YEG in 1983, due to a miscalculation by the ground crew (approved by the flight crew) that confused pounds for kilograms. Perhaps your calculator would have helped.

  2. Dick W Waitt says:

    As of today my calculator is an HP-32S which I bought in the late 1980s as a backup. Most people today wouldn’t know how use it since it uses RPN (Reverse Polish Notation), shall we say a “different” method of data entry, which (to me) is more intuitive.

    I bought it when computers were really coming on, and it didn’t get much use then, or now. But I can’t throw it out…

    Do you ever use a slide rule??

  3. Peter says:

    Condolences on the loss of your calculator.

    In my second semester of college, I bought a black Sears 4-banger (a rebranded Bowmar, I think), which served me well until Grad school, when I splurged on an HP-25. Yes, Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) entry. Which is quite logical when you get used to it. After I left school, I bought a nifty HP-41, but I was always afraid of losing it, so it stayed at home.

    Now that we have cell phones and computers, I find myself using one of several virtual calculators (V41 on the PC, i41cx on the iPhone). They have the look and behavior of my old 41 (I still have both the 25 and the 41) but they don’t take up space, or need new batteries!

    Check Goodwill…there’s always a chance you’ll find the lost twin of your favorite calculator!

  4. Lee Taplinger says:

    About that Tumi briefcase and anything that has lots of pockets – if those exterior pockets were large enough to use you could label what’s in them with your sharpie. What’s worse is those “wonderful” jackets and pants with 12 pockets because guess what, whatever you’re looking for is going to be in the twelfth pocket you look in.

  5. Larry says:

    I feel for you losing the calculator!

    The best one I ever bought – in Glasgow of all places, for UK pounds 5 – in about 1976, was simple, big keys, a memory (!!) and best of all calculated time differences etc.

    I’ve been retired from flying now for 20-odd years and no calculator has been as useful, and used, as that one. I only got rid of it a couple of years ago and only because it was so filthy you couldn’t see the keys!

  6. Daniel G says:

    And one more thing…by federal fiat we cannot have electronic non railroad ANYTHING in the cab anymore. No working cell phones, no digital cameras…perhaps we can use an abacus to calculate train length and tonnage…
    And we called our lil suitcase with goodies in it a GRIP. “Grab my grip and toss it down would ya son?” Some were elaborate affairs made with angle aluminum and a formica like hardboard riveted together and me? I carried something like your flight bag with all the ‘stuff’ we needed. Always a hoot when climbing on and off a locomotive out in the snow. I equate it to climbing into a B17.
    So it went…

    • UncleStu says:

      A grip! I haven’t heard that term in years.

      A commenter on another article mentioned the DC-3.

      The nostalgia is with us today.

  7. Daniel G says:

    As a retired railroad conductor I CAN RELATE! We have to carry all rule books and timetables of every railroad we operate on…not too bad if you always stay on home rails but rather ridiculous when you go into a terminal city like Chicago. I WISH the rails would go to an IPAD system for updates that are non ending…and that does not even count the daily bulletins you must have in your possession and have intimate knowledge of…as in who is that with the machinery in our way..oh yeah we must stop here.
    Just going to an IPAD system for orders and bulletins would involve different railroads actually AGREEING on a single system…you can forget about that.
    Then shall we toss in such fun as going into Clearing Yard in Chicago (as an example) That’s the one just outside Midway Airport. You have to talk to 6 different yardmasters, yard crews and engine house employees just to move into or out of that place.And yes, they were all on different radio freqs. Bensenville, outside O’Hare, wasn’t bad at all though…they had a ground man that lined you into the yard and into your track for your train…a revolutionary idea that went bye bye some time ago.
    And we did stay at the HoJo in Schiller Park and I would get the highest floor room facing O’Hare and listen to the ATC…interesting to a railroad guy to say the least. I tip my hat to you all!
    And the Sharpie makes a great weather map changer too…if its bad…just change it with your SHARPIE!
    Glad I am retired.

  8. Chris Anschuetz says:

    SOB = “Souls on Board?”

  9. Thomas says:

    This is a great piece. You are a very good writer.
    I have a TRIM pocket tool, which I have been carrying with me since the 1970s. It’s basically a cheap dinky little pocket knife. But it is extremely useful. I dread losing it, because they no longer make them. There is a somewhat similar sized Swiss Army knife. This looks much better, and seemingly has more and better features (tools). But in fact my old American TRIM is noticeably smaller, and more useful.

  10. Bruce says:

    I feel your pain.

    My cheap comb – free from a hotel in Beijing many years ago, but a comb that was just exactly right – broke in Bangkok last week. I was gutted: I loved that comb. I’ve got a new one – one I actually paid for – but it’s just not the same.

    It’s those little cheap things that you get attached to.

    On the cheap things front… Thanks for the DC-8 picture. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a DC-8 in Australia or East Asia. I know they’re very old. But I’ve been surprised to see a few pop up on Air Crash Investigations, covering incidents that were really very recent. One involved a plane carrying denim by air freight from Miami to the Dominican Republic, I think.

    Given that DC-8s are so old, and four-engined, I assume they’re really not very fuel-efficient. Would this be right? If so, how have they survived so long in their air freight business? I’m struggling to understand how it could make financial sense to airfreight denim on an old, thirsty plane. Is it profitable?

    • Thomas says:

      Many DC-8s were re-engined with (then) modern engines, which were more fuel efficient. Production of the DC-8 was from 1959 to 1972. The conversions were done from 1982 to 1988.
      Old planes can still make money as ‘ad hoc’ or ‘tramp’ freighters, because the purchase price is so low. A ‘tramp’ freighter being a plane or ship that goes to whatever (air)port the cargo needs to go. A liner (ship or plane) is always on the move, making its scheduled stops along fixed routes – the line. And earning money for owner. So it is important that the operating cost is low. A tramp sits around, waiting for the next cargo. This does not cost the owner much, because the old bird was so cheap to buy.
      There used to be tramp steamers, from the late 1800s until the 1950s. Ships were built as tramps, with very low powered engines, making them cheap to buy. They cruised at 6 or 7 knots. Freight liners were faster, cruising at 11 or 12 kts. Most passenger liners cruised at 15 or 16 kts. A few fast and luxurius boats ran at 18 or 20kts. On the North Atlantic, and only on that one route, there were big and famous boats that cruised at more than 20 kts, even over 30 kts.

  11. Simon says:

    A very nice piece, Patrick. I really enjoyed reading about your tools of trade and the details of your cheat sheet. You have a great way with words. Who could make such a mundane topic so exciting to read?

    I feel for you and your calculator. To this day I rely on my trusty old HP-12C at work. RPN forever. Fortunately, the 12C was built like a tank and it’s still going strong after 35 years. I have an emulator for it on my iPhone. While that works fine, I still dread the day when I can no longer use the real calculator.

  12. Fiona says:

    I’m so sorry to hear you lost your calculator – I understand how it feels to lose things, as I’m always losing things and I won’t rest until I find them again! No matter how small or insignificant the item may be, I *hate* losing things.

    I had a scientific calculator which I started using when I was around 16 or so, and I still kept it until now (I’m in my 30’s now).

    Really hope you find your calculator again soon! Hopefully some kind person would’ve picked it up and put it in a lost property box!

  13. JamesP says:

    As I read your article, there is an HP-12C calculator that I bought probably 30 years ago right by my arm. Maybe it was even more than 30 years: It has “USA” stamped on the back by the serial number.

    I imagined losing this trusty old tool, and as I did, I felt your pain.

  14. Speed says:

    I hope that aircraft’s zero fuel weight has been updated to include the calculator.

  15. Deb says:

    Kind of nice to know that you are so organized! BTW, there are a number of old calculators for sale on ebay, might be worth a look.

  16. Carlos says:

    So, you’ve finally discovered why Trump used a clumsily doctored weather map of hurricane Dorian (to include Alabama): whoever made it is an aspiring aviator!
    Talking about fondness for inanimate objects, I’ve been using my stapler for about 45 years. So I do hope you get your calculator back.

  17. Noor says:

    Wow! It’s the best-written eulogy to an inanimate object that I’ve ever read and I’m feeling sorry for your calculator as well. I was just wondering about bringing books to the cockpit on a long flight, are pilots allowed to read during breaks on long flight

  18. Chris Jones says:

    Did you mean “jumpseat” in the fourth paragraph? (I have this mental picture of a relief pilot hazing ritual involving having to wear the “cockpit jumpsuit” and fetching coffee for the rest of the crew.)