(Some of us still use small planes like ATVs -- but if the description of Woz' experience in the incident is accurate, this is like taking a Lamborghini out with a fresh driving permit)

[1] https://www.cultofmac.com/465778/today-in-apple-history-stev...

How could leaning on the yoke (or any other control) cause a stall? She'd have to pull back on it to force a climb like that. I'm kind of amazed he was able to fly a plane like that at 50 hours. A turbo-charged engine requires an extra certification step right? And the private pilot license minimum is 40 hours.

The wikipedia page for the Beechcraft Bonanza says: "The NTSB investigation revealed Wozniak did not have a "high performance" endorsement (making him legally unqualified to operate the airplane)" and links to https://web.archive.org/web/20121019022620/http://www.ntsb.g...

To fly this he would need a complex sign off to fly the retractable gear/variable pitch prop and high performance sign off for having over 200hp engine.

It’s a lot of airplane for that much experience but only takes 5 hours or so to get those sign offs from your instructor. Bonanzas have a reputation -now- that keep people away from them until they are very comfortable with flying a complex and fast airplane.

Fast reflexes comes from being young or being older and using reflexes you picked up when you were young. Knowing what you are doing comes from knuckling under to someone that does. It's why these aircraft regularly kill middle aged doctors. They have neither the reflexes or the tendency to obey.

There is a reason the air force trains 20 year old's to fly jet fighters.

No, most Bonanza owners are mid-career doctors, dentists and lawyers. Never seen a teen fly one.

Also, you generally have a second or two at least to deal with issues. Hence the old saw about "winding your watch before reacting to an airliner emergency."

> There is a reason the air force trains 20 year old's to fly jet fighters.

I talked to an ex-Air Force, now civilian flight school owner about that.

He said the problem with 30 year-old military aviation students is that they talk back when fed b.s., unlike kids. So it's a general discipline issue, not an age one.

One of my flight instructors had a friend/business associate that bought a Kodiak @ Oshkosh after only having flown 182s. The insurance requirements were insane of course. Also, know a guy with 70 hours who bought a Lancair with a 330hp engine. In flying it seems more readily to be a case of if you can afford it, you can do it.

I was in a Mooney @ 120 hours. I just did a lot of extra training--EMT, Tailwheel endorsement, Instrument & commercial rating in it when I had the hours.

I guess there are people who do it for the danger, but the beauty of it is that you can get really down in the details and master things so it's not that risky. Once you really master the game, your biggest danger is yourself: get-there-itis, sloppy preflights, pushing things a little at a time, getting away with them, then pushing more, and so on.

I have done nothing in my life that I loved as much as flying. Mankind has been staring up into the sky for eons wishing we could fly. Now we can. Who wouldn't want to be part of that?

Normalization of deviance, for people interested in the literature.

I don't fly anymore, but when I did? I used to get all the aviation safety magazines and read them cover-to-cover. I also knew some flight instructor instructors; people known for teaching safety in the industry.

A surprising number of well-trained pilots get in perfectly good airplanes and fly them until they run out of gas. Just because you pushed it those last dozen times doesn't mean you're going to get away with it this time.

EDIT: One of the more unusual crashes I will mention since this is HN happened out in the mountain states. A couple of thousand hour+ MEII pilots get into a multi-million dollar brand new jet. It's CAVU -- clear skies, visibility unlimited. They then proceed to fly the plane into the side of a mountain -- all the time trying to figure out the new switches and displays in the cockpit. I still think of that one when designing UX. Aviation is really complex, detailed, fun, and full of math like programming. But it is also a life-and-death endeavor if you take it too lightly. If you're safety paranoid, take up boating. It's much more forgiving than aviation.

Aside from the downdraft issue, running out of gas at altitude in VMC can be very interesting, but it doesn't have to be fatal. Even in heavily-forested areas, in a small plane you can put out the barn doors and decrease your horizontal speed quite bit, especially with a headwind.

We had a guy in Virginia in the 90s, I think. He was a student-ish pilot in a 150 that ended up in IMC (fog) in the heavily-wooded mountains while running out of gas.

He slowed the plane down as much he could, somehow kept the wings level, and ended up on somebody's back deck. Walked away. That's not guaranteed, of course, but in general planes are crash-rated based on flying directly into something. It's the failure to maintain control that kills many times more than the crash itself. Heck, they used to have shows where people crashed planes on purpose.

https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?E...

It can be an interesting experience, even if you have no desire to become a licensed pilot.

In case you are interested, that book is a post-apocalyptic novel and the protagonist has a great relationship with his dog. Usually having a dog in the story is all it takes to keep me interested, but I loved everything about this book.

When I turned 16 and started driving, my life changed overnight in a very good way. I imagine learning to fly would give me that feeling again. I could go where I want and not be limited by going where the roads are. It's very appealing.

I can hardly wait for my electric VTOL PAV.

This is a fundamental drive in many people that calls on something innate.

I tried to get into guitar, but after I found skydiving I sold my guitar for my initial training and have been jumping ever since (20 years). That led me to wanting to drive airplanes when I could afford it.

Flying touches my imagination some how and was always interested in it. Being able to leave my local airport and bust out of the clouds hundreds of miles away safely despite the weather and lack of vision is rewarding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_BASIC

I do know that it was referred to that as far back as 1980. I’ve never seen a reference to it as “Apple Basic” and I had an Apple //e in 1986.

Woz originally called it "Game BASIC", some history at this page: http://woz.org/letters/apple-basic/

When you can fit the entire architecture into your head, all the way down to the chips and board layout, you'll find that you're capable of quite a lot on that platform.

A human with a skillet that has scaled up as much as computing hardware has scaled up is going to be virtually impossible to find, if not actually impossible.

Systems today are just too complex for one person to understand at the breadth and depth that Woz understood the earliest Apple hardware.

Tried googling and didn't turn up much.

Details on page 16 of http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Apple/Apple%20II%20Refere...

An exception is the "Reset" key which is hard-wired to the reset pin of the 6502. On early Apple II models, pushing "Reset", which is located just above Return, had disastrous consequences. People used to put a washer under the Reset key to make it harder to push by accident. Magazines published a simple hardware mod that required Control to be held at the same time as Reset, and later versions of the Apple II came with the mod built-in.

The Apple IIe keyboard adds two "apple" keys on both sides of the space bar which are dealt with in a completely different way, and are mapped to the same locations as the two joystick/paddle buttons. This was useful for playing games which required repetitive button-mashing, as it is easier to type a key quickly than to push a joystick button quickly. Since I was used to controlling the joystick with one hand and pushing a key on the keyboard with another hand, I had no problem adapting to early Macintosh software that required shift-click, option-click and command-click to overcome the limitation of a one-button mouse.

"The Macintosh mouse has four buttons, it's just that three of them are on the keyboard."

I was feeling old and thinking I was ignorant of some new slang there for a few seconds.

:-D

And it is totally something I could see Woz doing. :-D

You damn-near gave me a heart attack then! :D

I thought he had died for a moment, Phew!