He has never failed me. Even when I stray He is there with me
He prepares a table for me at the right time and ensures I eat
Everyone is welcome to share in the Lord’s grace for I have no enemies
His mercies follow me all the days of my life
Thank you Lord
Long post worth the read. I have a close friend who flies private jets. He flew Lear 60 for over 15 years and now flies a Gulfstream. This is a copy and paste of his response to me asking him if he thought Ice was the issue.
“We always fly in ridiculous cold temperatures.”
“Usually you get the bad ice when the temperatures are like 0 to negative 20. Believe it or not, there's a point where it gets too cold for ice. At negative 40, you pretty much can't get ice. Besides that, the airplane is equipped with hot wings and hot tail.”
“I flew the Lear 60 for like 15 years. It's a no joke airplane and probably the most dangerous airplane I've ever flown. It has a super critical wing. The airflow has to be perfect. When it gets into rough air and turbulence, it will easily stall. It has stalled on me at 41,000 feet just because we got into some turbulence. (On the way to Palm Beach as a matter of fact. ) we recovered and got her flying again around 30,000 ft. Scary
But here's the problem. This airplane has a terrible coffin corner. (At high altitudes) what that means is, you fly in a really narrow window where if you lose 20 knots, it stalls. And if you gain 20 knots, it goes into overspeed. The air goes supersonic over the wing and it goes into a high speed stall, or worse, a Mach tuck.
So if you stall, the normal recovery is to push the yoke forward to lower the nose and gain air speed again. At low altitude, you can push really hard and recover quickly. But in the 60... if you push hard, it will gain air speed and go into a high speed stall, it doesn't take much. It's very sensitive. The 60 has super short wings that don't make much lift. So then you high speed stall, and the computer is yelling at you... OVERSPEED! So then you pull back and enter a low speed stall. And you go back and forth trying to keep it in the air speed window.
This whole thing is pretty scary. And you should recover basically by using your finger tips using super small corrections. You can't over do it. If you try to muscle the recovery, she gets mad and will become unrecoverable. If she enters a mach tuck. You're done.”
“I taught the Lear 60 to other pilots and mentored them. I told them... this airplane has a soul and it's trying to kill you. Do not ever try to top the weather. Don't go over a thunderstorm. Go around it. If it means a half hour longer, then do it. Going over the thunderstorm will go into turbulence that you might not recover from.
These pilots went right over a thunderstorm. I think it stalled which caused them to drop down into the thunderstorm and ended up in mach tuck. They picked up so much speed that it ripped off the horizontal stabilizer. At that point... chuck Yeager can't fix it.
These same pilots did something similar a couple months ago. ATC got mad at them. They poked the bear one too many times.
This is not a beginner airplane. The Gulfstream would never do this. It has HUGE margins of error and won't stall like that. But then again... it's got HUGE wings. It's a pussy cat.
The Gulfstream is like driving a 4 wheeler. The Lear 60 is like riding a uni cycle.”
Two interesting things I discovered this week are:
1. That you can get genuine court affidavits online from the Nigerian Federal High Court. A genuine one, not the ones those roadside people give you.
The website has all sorts of affidavits, even ones I didn't know existed.
2. The National Population Commission has a working portal. You can register your newborn online and get a certified birth certificate that is accepted worldwide.
You can do all these things without any bureaucracy.
For 1, visit: https://t.co/mMEjgphabJ
For 2, visit: https://t.co/vEssNLkZ5l
Joseph Adedeji
She Hid Her 12-Year-Old Daughter in a Ditch for Nine Months to Save Her From Boko Haram
In August 2014, Zainabu Hamayaji made a decision that would keep her daughter alive but force the young girl to spend nine months hidden underground.
Hassana was only 12 years old. Her mother feared that Boko Haram fighters would abduct her and force her to become a child bride.
To protect her, Zainabu hid her in a deep ditch behind their home in Madagali, Adamawa State, Nigeria.
Then, she did something that made the plan even more extraordinary.
She pretended to be mentally ill so the insurgents would leave her family alone.
When Boko Haram invaded Madagali, families faced a terrifying choice. People who tried to escape were being killed, and Zainabu witnessed the violence firsthand.
Her husband was among those killed.
She was left trying to protect her children in a town controlled by the same fighters she feared would take her eldest daughter away.
Zainabu had heard that the insurgents were looking for young girls to marry. When they learned she had a daughter of marriageable age, they came to her home.
She denied having such a daughter, but they did not believe her.
They beat her repeatedly. Her shoulder was dislocated, and she lost a tooth during the attacks.
Zainabu realised that simply denying Hassana's existence would not be enough. She needed to make the fighters believe there was something about her family that made it dangerous to interfere with them.
So she began acting as though she had lost her sanity.
She loosened her hair, stripped off her clothes and wandered around the community. She rolled in rubbish and smeared herself with urine and faeces.
The woman who had once lived an ordinary life was deliberately making herself an object of avoidance.
The insurgents returned repeatedly to check whether her behaviour was genuine. Each time, Zainabu continued the act.
Her younger children helped her maintain the deception. When the fighters questioned them about their mother's behaviour, they insisted that she had been mentally unwell for a long time and had previously visited a psychiatric hospital.
The children were frightened, but they played their part.
Eventually, the insurgents began to believe the story.
According to Zainabu's account, they feared that harming a mentally ill woman or taking her child could bring a curse upon them. They even left a warning on the family's house telling other fighters not to attack them.
But while Zainabu was trying to convince the insurgents that she was mentally unstable, Hassana was facing a different kind of ordeal.
She was living inside a ditch.
Her mother had prepared the hiding place with supplies, including food, water and matches. Hassana had to cook and manage her basic needs in the confined space. She also had to find a way to dispose of her waste.
For nine months, the ditch became her hiding place.
She could not simply walk outside whenever she wanted. Her safety depended on remaining hidden while her mother continued the deception above ground.
It was an extraordinary burden for a child who should have been able to live without fear of being abducted and forced into marriage.
Zainabu kept up the act, despite the beatings and the physical injuries she had suffered.
Then, in March 2015, Nigerian soldiers recaptured Madagali from Boko Haram.
When the soldiers encountered Zainabu, they were suspicious. They wanted to know how she had survived in the occupied town and questioned whether she had been married to a Boko Haram fighter.
She denied it and explained what she had done to protect her children.
The soldiers did not immediately believe her.
So she took them to the hiding place.
When they opened the ditch, Hassana was there.
After nine months underground, the 12-year-old girl was finally brought out of hiding.
The soldiers took the family to a camp for displaced people in Gwoza, where Zainabu later told her story to journalists.