'Cause my little voice told me.....
 

My whole life as a pilot, I've thought that I had a little voice looking after me. I can't say it kept me entirely out of trouble, but on many occasions, I can recall making the better decision, just 'cause my little voice told me to. That very slight whisp of balance of a decision one could make... I believe that when I sense the whisp of a little voice, I should listen - do the thing which may not be the most obvious or convenient, it'll work out better....

Today, with lots of fuel, and an endlessly clear day, I knew I could make one more stop at another airport before heading home. It was a beautiful day for flying. But my little voice said "no, just go home now.". I flew home. I landed, and felt quite a swing upon touchdown, near full rudder to keep it straight. I stopped at the proper place along my runway, but the plane would not turn around to backtrack to my tiedown. Hmmm... Aha, flat tire! :uhoh: . Well, it was a walk back to my hangar to get my ATV, and a bottle of air, but at least my flat was at my home runway, instead of away! Listening to my little voice had assured that the problem I had, I had at home, after my flight, not at a stop on my way home! I filled it up from the bottle, and it held air enough to taxi to my tiedown, I'll take the wheel off tomorrow and figure out how, after a nice day of flying, with three stops, it went flat all of a sudden.

In the mean time, thank you little voice!

We've had a spate of inner tube failures over the last six months, with no sign of any penetration by FOD. The tiny irregular shaped holes suggest defective rubber, or whatever they're made of.

The number of flats at our home base has increased dramatically, all with the same evidence.

Little Voice has stopped me twice from flying through an unseen wire, and once in the car from wearing a sheet of steel that lifted off a flatbed in front of me.

Listen to that voice, unless it is telling you to get your AK-47 and kill people...

Listen to that voice, unless it is telling you to get your AK-47 and kill people...[/QUOTE]

There could be a great many reasons today when I'd listen to THAT voice over all the others......................................:E

SND

The little beggar even told me to buy a boat last year!

I think that 'little voice' speaks to us when subliminally we identify an anomaly. When we have developed a certain level of skill or a certain level of familiarity and expectancy, we come to know what is normal. Our perception works at several levels - we are consciously aware of what we are looking at, what we are doing, what we are feeling, and the situation around us, but there are also subliminal inputs that operate below our level of conscious perception. It is those perceptions which give rise to that uncomfortable feeling that things are not quite right.

For example, a very simple case indeed, when driving a car in busy traffic. Without being consciously aware of it, this aspect of our perception 'sees' the driver of another vehicle starting to lean over in preparation for turning the steering wheel. We are not consciously aware of that action but we 'know' he is about to turn across in front of us and we brake. We don't know why, but it was the right thing to do.

That was a very obvious example, but there are many many more that are much more subtle. It doesn't answer Pilot DAR's example, but it is at this sort of level that I believe our 'little small voice' operates.

I believe that it's all down to quantum mechanics.