Chris' Christian Blog

June 25, 2020

Prompt sent by Princess Megan Snow Rose

Stardate: June 25, 2020 Prompt: "Prompt: Write about a conversation you had with a person on a plane or on a train."

I have never ridden a train so I never had a conversation on a train. Airplanes I have flown in quite a bit. I was a scanner/observer with the USAF Auxilliary or Civil Air Patrol. The scanner is responsible for watching the ground and conducting a thorough search pattern that goes a certain way across the surface of the ground. You do this to search for missing aircraft or other targets.

The Observer is the person who flies in the right seat beside the pilot. They are the commander of the search team. They monitor radios and if possible scan out the right side of the aircraft for targets. Their primary job is communication with the ground team. If a target is spotted the observer directs the ground team to the target. I qualified as an observer and was a second lieutenant.

The typical conversations on the aircraft were about the searches or the location of landmarks. We typically flew using Visual Flight Rules or VFR so we were interested in landmarks and so forth. This was particularly important when you were flying a grid pattern. In a grid pattern, you continually fly over the same terrain. You vary your pattern on the return trip across the pattern by putting the opposite wingtip in the same air space the other wingtip occupied before. Most of the conversations on board had to do with the search.

Prompt: "How do you beat the heat? Give us some ideas for cool summer fun."

I typically stay inside and write or study. When I was young I worked a lot during the summer. I held summer jobs every year until I was an adult. If I did have fun as a child it would be going down and swimming in the creek. I've even taken a bath in the creek a few times. Then off course we made sure we drank plenty of fluids as well.

"Prompt: "Books are the bees which carry the pollen from one mind to another." James Russell Lowe Use this quote in your Blog entry today."

I would agree with that statement. Books plant ideas into the mind.