The friendly skies

Musing on lift and drag, literal and metaphorical

Was it more than an odd coincidence that I finished a re-reading of Nevil Shute’s “Round the Bend” the same day that my permanent light sport repairman mechanic certificate arrived in the mail? If you absorb the ideas Shute develops in this quirky, niche novel you would probably reject the idea that there are coincidences. I believe that our recent experiences attune us to notice certain things in our environment, and that the key to making ourselves more aware is to seek out new things.

And that explains why, at the age of 64, after a lifetime of massaging bits and bytes from the comfort of a well-appointed and air conditioned office, I am contemplating a second career as an airplane mechanic. It also explains why I am particularly attuned at this moment to the themes of “Round the Bend.”

Nevil Shute was once a superstar author. He is largely forgotten today outside a small circle of enthusiasts who are attracted to his straightforward depictions of ordinary honest down-to-earth men contending against the faceless forces of modernity, bureaucracy, and elite stupidity. I think it is a cosmic shame that he is best remembered for his late novel (published three years before his death) “On the Beach” because it was made into an admittedly very good movie directed by Stanley Kramer. It was an atypical novel for him; he had made his reputation by portraying ordinary people being heroic by doing ordinary things in ordinary circumstances.

“Round the Bend” on the other hand, is a window into a pedestrian, yet exotic, world: a Brit on the loose in the Middle East in the years immediately after WWII, parlaying his knowledge of aircraft and his childhood friendship with a skilled mechanic into a burgeoning freight and passenger service from Bahrain to Bali. The mechanic, Constantine Shaklin (or Shak Lin as he is hereafter named by the ‘Asiatics’ who fall under his spell) is half-Russian, half-Chinese, and wholly his own man. And this was his teaching (he is expanding upon the teaching that Moses passed to Mohammed that men should pray 50 times a day and was bargained down to five) :

“Men who work as you do upon aeroplanes can pray to God forty-five times a day easily, and I will tell you how. I inspect some of the work you do upon these engines and these aeroplanes. God, the All-Seeing and All-Knowing, He inspects it all. You come to me and say ‘I have replaced this manifold and the job is finished.’ I come to look at it to see if there is any fault, and I see everything in place. I look at the nuts, and I see the locking wires correctly turned the right way to prevent the nuts unscrewing, and that is all I can see. I cannot see if you have put a level on the spanner and strained them up so tight that the bolts are just about to fail in tension. These things are hidden from me, but nothing is hidden from the All-Seeing Eye of God.”

He paused. “God, the All-Knowing, knows if you have done well or ill,” he said quietly. “If you ask Him humbly in prayer to tell you, He will tell you if you have done well or ill; in that way you will have a chance to do the job again, and try to do it better. Or you can come to me and say Help me to do this work, because I cannot do it right. God is All-Merciful, and He will not hold bad work against you if He sees you striving to do right. So I say this to you.”

He paused again. “With every piece of work you do, with every nut you tighten down, with every filter that you clean or every tappet that you set, pause at each stage and turn to Mecca, and fold your hands, and humbly ask the All-Seeing God to put into your heart the knowledge whether the work you have done has been good or ill. Then you are to stand for half a minute with your eyes cast down, thinking of God and of the job, and God will put into your heart the knowledge of good or ill. So, if the work is good you may proceed in peace, or come to me and I will help you to do well before God.”

As I embark upon my new career, I invoke the protection of Shak Lin and I pray to my own, very staid and Christian God, that I will always adhere to the Mechanic’s Creed:

UPON MY HONOR I swear that I shall hold in sacred trust the rights and privileges conferred upon me as a certified mechanic. Knowing full well that the safety and lives of others are dependent upon my skill and judgment, I shall never knowingly subject others to risks which I would not be willing to assume for myself, or for those dear to me.

IN DISCHARGING this trust, I pledge myself never to undertake work or approve work which I feel to be beyond the limits of my knowledge nor shall I allow any superior to persuade me to approve aircraft or equipment as airworthy against my better judgment, nor shall I permit my judgment to be influenced by money or other personal gain, nor shall I pass as airworthy aircraft or equipment about which I am in doubt either as a result of direct inspection or uncertainty regarding the ability of others who have worked on it to accomplish their work satisfactorily.

I REALIZE the grave responsibility which is mine as a certified airman, to exercise my judgment on the airworthiness of aircraft and equipment. I, therefore, pledge unyielding adherence to these precepts for the advancement of aviation and for the dignity of my vocation.