Letter to my daughter

Today we got to number eight on our "weird" aircrafts list. I have awarded this post to the Convair XFY-1 Pogo, a curious vertical takeoff device which rested on its cruciform tail for takeoff and landing maneuvers in a setting called "tailsitter ". Although the concept had already been studied by the German engineers during World War II, this was the first vehicle that came to fly with this configuration but never passed the prototype stage. This prototype is still kept at the National Air and Space Museum of Suitland (Maryland).

With a maximum takeoff weight of 7,370 kg, powered by an Allison YT40 turboprop counterrotating propeller and 5,500 HP it made its first full flight (including takeoff, transition to horizontal flight and landing) on November 5th, 1954. The stability problems and the landing difficulties, which forced the pilot to look back while trying to keep balanced the aircraft caused that the project was abandoned in the summer of 1955.

At a time when the turbojets almost reached Mach 2, this jet fighter concept with propeller was obsolete since birth but it was still an innovative concept which was continued by the French company SNECMA with its Coleoptére.

Here you have a link to Youtube of one of the few videos that show a Pogo full flight. Enjoy it.

So, our number 8 on our list of ‘weirdest’ aircrafts ever goes to POGO.

Today we are going to do something a bit different and our entry will be a simple letter. A letter to my daughter.

Dear daughter

I’m sorry, to contact you in this somewhat atypical way, but since your life already goes different paths than mine, I do not have many opportunities to speak in depth of the matters that concern you.

Although you have never told me so, I have always thought that the fact that you did not dedicate yourself professionally to engineering has been a disappointment to me. You are completely wrong. I never wanted to influence your decisions and this case is no exception. I've always believed that regardless of the direction we want to give to our career, life is so strange that you never know what you will end up doing, so we must follow what attracts us most and let the future do the rest.

When you tell me things about your job, your relationships with your bosses, your concerns, I cannot help thinking that for me all that is a "déjà vu". Life copies itself over and over again and makes that certain patterns are repeated cyclically.

I know you feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of your job, you believe that your effort does not receive the recognition it deserves, and that, definitely, you give more than you receive.

I realize that this does not comfort you, but what it happens to you in your world, happens every day in mine too. I get desperate when I see young engineers, people your age, suffering the same stress unable to find a clear balance between their efforts and their reward. They are people who are committed to their job with conviction and who are forced, especially in this time of crisis, in which companies increasingly have fewer employees, to assume responsibilities that would not correspond according to their level in the organization.

This usually happens but it is more serious if, besides, you are a woman. I have had, throughout my career, brilliant colleagues who have not been recognized in their work as they deserved simply because they were women.

I am firmly convinced of the equality between men and women in all aspects of life and, in particular, at work. For that reason I am against any kind of quota system that prime women over men, the same as I rebel against it otherwise. I do not admit that the recognition to the work done depends on your gender.

If you talk about this topic with people in positions with responsibility, they will all tell you, because it is politically correct, that in their areas they do not make any gender distinction among people under his command. But most of them are lying. And men and women lie the same. Men do it because that's all they do and women because, as it was hard to get their promotion, they will not make it easy to the new coming behind them. Naturally I can confirm that there are honorable exceptions but are just that, exceptions.

So, whenever you need to talk to your boss in any situation in which you felt humiliated or mistreated follow the instructions I give below.

When you face him, and before you start talking, take a few seconds to look him straight in the face. If you concentrate all your attention, you will notice that his face slowly begins to fade and slowly but surely, the traits of Mister Potato begin to appear, removable jumping eyes and nose.

At this stage, it is important to hold your breath and do not laugh because you would break this magic moment. When you are ready, start talking, but not with your boss, but with the Mister Potato you have in front of you- a quite comic and simple person who has lost all his aura of power and his ability to intimidate.

Apart from the above, which is very useful, there is another thing you should be very aware of and that is that whatever they say, there is no urgent work that cannot be finished tomorrow.

The world tours around big lies, and this is one of them. We accept them all because they are part of the social consensus of the environment we live in, but still a lie.

When a group of people are forced to make an extraordinary effort to finish a job on a specific date (which surely includes some sleepless night), their first sensation at the end, is the immense satisfaction of having reached the target they had set. This gives them an adrenaline rush and makes them feel like heroes. They are exhausted and broken, but they have lived an extraordinary experience and they feel proud of themselves.

Unfortunately they will never know that the result of their work, either teamwork or report, will remain on the table or in the customer stores for days or weeks before someone picks it up.

When we founded our company, one of the first important works we did was a cockpit for a flight simulator for a large company in the industry (which unfortunately no longer exists).

We had given a deadline to our client without thinking that the delivery date of the mentioned cockpit was a Saturday. A few days before coming to this date the Program Manager, chosen by our client, urged us under threat of penalties for breach of contract, to deliver the cockpit on the agreed date without excuses.

Since, as usual, the reality does not meet your expectations, we had a little delay. So last week we worked without rest and the last two nights we were sleepless. Finally, at 4 am on the agreed day, we finished the task. I still remember me handing out blankets to our boys so that they could bundle up and sleep for a few hours on office chairs before the truck picked up the simulator cockpit.

At 9 am the truck came, we loaded the cockpit and we went to the client to download it. I hoped that there would be a lot of technicians waiting for the product to start working on it. Surprisingly there was only our friend, the Program Manager, waiting for us. We unloaded the truck and carry it into the store. Then the Program Manager thanked us and closed the door.

When I asked him where his people were, he answered that they would not begin until Monday to work with the cockpit. At first I was surprised and disgusted, but then I thought, "it is somehow logic- we have brought it today so that they can start working on it, very soon very soon, on Monday morning."

With this thought I went home to rest. On Monday, at 8 am, I was in our customer’s office to make sure that there was no problem with our unit and that the integration had begun as planned.

After three hours waiting I managed to speak with the Program Manager and I told him cranky:

- Where are your people? Why is the cockpit still where we left it and no one cares here?

He smiled wryly and said:

- Actually we cannot really start working for another 5 or 6 days which is the time it takes for the bureaucratic procedure of our company for the acceptance of the cockpit in the stores.

And then - I asked him - why have we been forced to spend two sleepless nights, if we could have brought the cockpit today and the result for him would be the same?

His response was a lesson in cynicism that I have never forgotten:

- Actually it could have been like this, but then I would not have been able to call on Saturday at noon my director to tell him that the cockpit had already been delivered in our facilities and consequently I would not have been congratulated on my good management.

So, my daughter, when someone tells you that a job is very important and you have to finish it on an exact date, smile and think of Mister Potato, and then answer:

- Sir, I come here to work, not to flagellate myself.

Love,
Dad

A thought:
The worst kind of fool is the self-made one.

See you.

Be brave!

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