Headwork

"Thanks for the memory ..."

Who could ever forget that song that old What's-her-name used to sing: "Memories, like the BLAH blah blah blah blah ... misty BLAH blah blah BLAH memories—of the blah blah blah." Well, you know how it goes.

The truth is, our memories are going down the drain. "After age 26 we lose two grams of brain tissue every year. That's where the damage starts," says William Johnston, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and an expert on human memory. "It doesn't really show up on most standardized tests on memory until age 40, but there's a definite general cognitive decline in memory, perception, learning ability — all sorts of things."

It wouldn't be so bad if the total we had to remember was the words to songs about ... what was I talking about here? Oh, yes — who could forget how much there is to remember in an airplane? Regulations, rules, checklists — remembering them and remembering them at the right time and in the right sequence remains right up there with remembering to take off with fuel in the tanks. Fortunately for us pilots, there were the Greeks.

Those ancient, pre-teleprompter, pre-recording Greeks were big on displaying prodigious feats of memory. Homer trotted around with The Iliad tucked inside his cranium — that's the equivalent of 500 pages of modern text. Of course he and his poet buddies never actually flew; they only sang songs about gods and mortals who allegedly could. What they did do, though, was to come up with handy, easy-to-remember techniques to jog the human memory. In flying, the most often used technique is called mnemonics. Not surprisingly, the word is Greek, for "remember." (The first m is as silent as the p in pneumonia.)

My introduction to aviation mnemonics came a decade ago, back home in Kansas. My first flight instructor was valiantly attempting to teach me how to remember that when taking up an easterly heading you fly at odd thousands of feet (plus 500, if VFR. After a time he leveled a long, hairy eyeball at me. "Here's how you remember it," he said kind of quietly. "You know how people back East are a little strange?" I nodded, although I really didn't know any Easterners at the time. "Well" — and he paused ominously — " Oddballs go east."

Within a year I had moved to New York City, and although I've always wondered if my relocation had confirmed his suspicions about the directions in which oddballs head, I've also never forgotten his sage device. That instructor had a million mnemonics, too; one for every occasion. When his wife had a baby, he passed mnemonics out at the FBO instead of cigars. Every time I shut down the 152, he said "Mixture, mags, master" (though my brain often reversed the last two, in direct violation of the law of iambic pentameter). Whenever he pulled off the power, he preached a checklist that went — I think — Glass, gas, and grass: It meant check your flight instruments (encased behind glass, naturally), check your gas (self-explanatory), and then find a place to land (in Kansas all open fields look like grass, even to oddballs flying east). At the time I actually thought that it would just be easier on everyone if he kept his grubby hands off the throttle.

Eventually I got my private pilot certificate, and along the way I found myself relishing those catchy joggers of memory, mnemonics, although I still have trouble remembering how to pronounce that word. I've always wanted to compile a comprehensive list of them, and I've always found pilots who were willing to add to my list. The first few came from my earliest flight instructors: ARROW (airworthiness certificate, registration, radio station license, operating manual, and weight-and-balance — although the radio station license is no longer required for domestic flight); CIGAR (controls, instruments, gas, altimeter, and runup); and its traditional suffix, TIP (trim, interior, prop). One CFII even gave me GUMP — gas, undercarriage, mixture, prop — which at the time was only four letters strung together in a word-like form.

These mnemonics, the most popular kind, rely on what Professor Johnston calls a "peg word." For instance, dieting pilots might skip my first instructor's alliterative "mixture, mags, master" and instead chew on SLIM: switches (off), lean mixture, ignition (turn off and remove key), master switch (off).

For those who would rather feast, pilot Ben Rosenberg offers BLT (boost pump, lights, transponder). To impress Hollywood types on board, though — and when the airplane doesn't happen to have a boost pump — he likes to call out "Lights! Camera! [transponder] Action! [throttle]." For IFR departures he offers CRAFT: cleared, route, altitude, frequency (departure, that is), and transponder. Then for IFR en route to terminal, Ben (that's his real name, not a checklist) likes to use WIRE: weather, instruments, radios, en route. Mnemonics seem especially popular with the IFR set. On a missed approach they're advised to brush up on MATH: missed, altitude, time, heading.

The best mnemonics, our good professor says, are ones that connect what you're doing with what you're trying to remember. Take this engine-out sequence offered by Sue Critz: GLIDE. It stands for glide speed, landing spot, identify problem and try to remedy it, discuss your situation (radio "Mayday"' and squawk 7700), and emergency checklist (if you have time). In this same vein — but not as rich — there's the before-takeoff mnemonic LEFT HALF MT: Lights, engine instruments, flaps, transponder to altitude reporting, heading, altimeter set, fuel boost, mixture rich, time record. If you stretch it a bit, this one doubles as a last-minute reminder about fuel quantity.

Unfortunately, the most memorable mnemonic devices are words that aren't printable in respectable magazines. Suffice it to say that the first, a takeoff checklist from the Sam Houston Institute of Technology, reminds you strobe light on, heading indicator set, instruments (engine) check, transponder to Alt. Next, the way to set navigation radios is tune, identify, twist (for a VOR) or test (for an ADF). Really, though, if you can't remember the sequence for setting nav radios, you probably don't have much business flying.

My favorite of this genre, one that Rob Lloyd learned in a multiengine course, is an easy way to remember the emergency checklist for engine failure after takeoff. So ingrained in his mind was this memory jogger that, when an engine failed on a Britten-Norman Islander while he was climbing out with nine parachutists aboard, Lloyd actually found himself shouting out the mnemonic.

"I staggered over to the drop zone," he says, "a great bootful of rudder already in. The last [parachutist] out, the jumpmaster, said, 'You stay here, I'll get help.'" But Lloyd managed to make it home all by himself, and once all stood safely on the ground, the parachutists jokingly allowed that their pilot was on the verge of blowing his cool in a most un-Vulcan-like display of emotion.

No way, he replied; it was a mnemonic.

They asked what it meant, so Lloyd calmly explained that it stood for firewall everything, undercarriage up, check which engine is failing, kill that engine.

"What about the second part?"' they asked.

He thought quickly. "Mags/electric check," he said.

Less helpful are those mnemonics joggers that don't really say anything. There's TXD, and while you can remember it as a vowelless reminder of what happens on April 15, it's meant to be a quick pre-takeoff check: Time, x-ponder, and directional gyro. Then there's the mnemonic A BB CCC DD E. It's a takeoff checklist for sailplanes: altimeter, belts, ballast, controls, cable, canopy, dive brakes, direction of wind, emergency action. It looks to me like a rhyme scheme used by a beat poet.

Still, what's most important about mnemonics, says Johnston, is that the device works for you, no matter how weird it sounds to the rest of the world. Shout out "Lights! Camera! Action!" if that's the only way you can remember to turn the transponder from standby to alt once you've been cleared for departure. The way I remember the color of position lights is that right and green have the same number of letters. One pilot says he knows that red and right begin with the same letter and that isn't right, it should be on the left. I almost get what he's trying to say there. And maybe there's someone feverishly laboring away at an FBO trying to concoct the logical companion for GUMP: FORREST. (Let's see now — Fuselage, no, flaps, oleos, radio antennas ....) I guess that means my attempt to compile the comprehensive list of aviation mnemonics is best forgotten.

That's OK, though; it only means that everyone can get into the act. For those who aren't patient or creative, or for sequences that don't lend themselves to catchy words and phrases, the ancient Greeks offer a device that they used to memorize their epic poems and outrageously long speeches. They called it the Method of Loci, or location. What you do is think of a place or an area you know well — like the layout of your home or the route to the airport — and imagine an enlarged, cartoonish caricature of the items on your list at each distinct location. In other words, if the list is time, transponder, and directional gyro (DG), and you pass by a church, a library, and a store, imagine a huge clock embedded in the church steeple, the transponder faceplate blocking the library door, and the DG lying on the store sidewalk.

For lists of up to 10 items, you might imagine each contained in an item mentioned in the following sing-song list: "One is a bun, two is a shoe, three is a tree, four is a door, five is a hive, six is sticks, seven is heaven, eight is a gate, nine is a clothesline, ten is a hen." For containers that rhyme with 11 and above, however, you're on your own.

In truth, though, mnemonics are but a weak substitute for checklists — and no substitute for constant training. It's fine to remember ARROW when you're sweating out the private pilot written, and quite another thing when your only engine seizes at 500 feet agl and you find yourself staring at the windmilling prop, mentally debating whether it's "glass, gas, and grass" or "gas, glass, and grass." Personally, with GUMP I'm prone to think " Gear, undercarriage, mixture, prop," which is not only redundant and repetitive, but may also be dangerous. One pilot told me the most helpful memory jogger he knows is "Whoop, whoop — pull up, pull up," provided by a sophisticated aircraft's ground proximity warning system. So it's best to leave mnemonic devices for the shorter, simple cockpit sequences found in smaller, simpler aircraft, unless you want to concoct a mnemonic to remind yourself to use checklists.

But there's more that you can do to help you increase your memory retention as age takes its toll (and there ain't none of us getting any younger, either). "Memory is like a lot of things — if you don't use it you lose it," says Johnston. "Learning new things probably slows down the loss of brain tissue, and it also slows down the loss of cognitive acumen." Most important, he recommends that you stay active intellectually. That is, avoid getting into a lifestyle rut, and dive into new interests that force you to keep the gray matter churning: Learn a new language, for instance, or perhaps take up a martial art. Continuing to add ratings and types to your pilot certificate will keep your mind sharp for the more mundane, everyday flying you do. In that respect, Johnston adds, learning is like a tree. "People who have more branches can learn things more readily; they have more branches to hang things on."

I guess that means there's hope for those of us who rue the day we began clogging our noggins with banal pop lyrics. Now if I only could have remembered my ex-girlfriend's birthday ....

Phil Scott, AOPA 1275180, is a private pilot working on his instrument rating. He is the author of The Shoulders of Giants and the upcoming Canvas, Steel and Wire. A full-time writer, he lives in Manhattan with his cat, Kitty.

Do you have a favorite mnemonic that was not included here? Mail to AOPA Pilot, 421 Aviation Way, Frederick, Maryland 21701; fax 301/695-2180, or e-mail [email protected] — we'll post them on our Web site (www.aopa.org) and print a few of the best in a future issue of Pilot — Ed.