A fascinating English salon titled “An astronomer’s eyes above clouds, an amateur’s glance at aviation”, as a part of serial activities by the labour union group of the Center for Astro-geodynamics Research, was held at SHAO on August 8th. Dr. Dali Kong from University of Exeter, UK, with his own experience, joined and brought us a fantastic and characteristic feast of aviation. Researchers and students attended and enjoyed much.

Dr. Dali Kong is an outstanding research fellow of planetary fluid dynamics and closely collaborating with our Key Laboratory of Planetary Sciences, CAS. Dr. Kong has also been enthusiastically involved in amateur aviation. His flight experiences include at least five unpowered flights in a Schleicher ASK-21 glider and three powered flights in a Piper PA-38 microlight. Apart from real flying, bearing a cross-crew instrument certificate of Airbus A330/A340 flight simulators, Dr. Kong is a member of VATSIM, an international virtual flying network, and has flown a range of inter-continental flights in the shared virtual world. He is also interested in fields like avionics and air traffic control (ATC) technology. With diagrams and pictures, Dr. Kong first guided us to a general view of airplane construction and illustrated major functions of instruments, and then introduced marking method of runways, PAPI(Precision Approach Path Indicator),VOR(VHF Omnidirectional Range)+DEM(Distance Measurement Equipment), and further vital elements of aviation such as approach control service, navigation and landing. After that, he provided information about ATC (air traffic control) as well as GNSS landing system of next generation precision approach. What’s more, Dr. Kong, through a real pilot training course, showed us a vivid and cool flight demonstration (PVG-SHA).

Though a childhood dream of many, flighting in the sky requires professional knowledge and strict practice to which most of us have little access. Dr. Kong, from an astronomer and amateur’s special angle, unveiled the magic field. There are, of course, terminologies and points hard to understand. However, Dr. Kong together with all participators, by enthusiastic interactions of raising and answering interesting questions, for example, how to mark the runways and how to understand and translation audio clips of air traffic control, make it easy and happy. We learned much professional knowledge and enjoyed the enchantment of aviation.