--- id: flying-free-10-check-your-gauges title: Chapter 10 – Check Your Gauges category: Life Application predicted_narrative_arc: Military training memory to universal life principle via scripture sentiment: Reflective emotions: - serious - nostalgic - faithful keypoints: - Pilot training valued at three million dollars during Vietnam era - Three memorized emergency steps applied to any crisis - Maintain control first, then analyze before acting - Gideon’s fleece test as biblical example of verifying God’s direction - Advice applies equally to blown tires, layoffs, or family threats summary: Dean recounts his USAF pilot training during the Vietnam War era, where the three emergency procedures—maintain aircraft control, analyze the situation and take proper action, land as soon as practical—were drilled into students. He extends these steps to everyday life crises such as job loss or personal loss, and cites Gideon’s reliance on God in Judges as a model for deliberate analysis under pressure. tags: - childhood - family - faith - work - military - testing - gratitude - reverence - warmth - conviction - air-force-training - emergency-procedures - life-crises - biblical-example - gideon - air-force sycophancy: 2 truth_score: 8 entropy: 4 updated: '2026-09-08T20:49:36Z' vault_stage: 07_CODEX headwaters: COMPA prefix: COMPA enrich_status: ok enrich_blockers: [] enrich_method: llm pipeline_filename: COMPA_2026-09-08_chapter-10-check-your-gauges.md proposed_topic: Stories lane: Stories description The three emergency procedures that saved Dean’s life in the cockpit also work in life: Maintain control. Analyze the situation. Land as soon as practical. This chapter unpacks the power of deliberate analysis before action. routing_source: carbon corpus_topic: Stories --- # Chapter 10 ## Check Your Gauges – Prepare Your Response **Full book:** https://deanrush.net/downloads/flyingfreebook.md --- ### Context for the Reader This chapter returns to the three core emergency procedures that run through the entire book. Dean emphasizes that “analyze the situation” is not passive — it is an active, deliberate examination of what is really happening before taking action. The story of Gideon is used as a powerful biblical model of analysis under pressure. --- I felt privileged to have served in the United States Air Force and to have attended the Air Force pilot training program. When I attended, we were told the training was worth three million dollars, so there is no telling what it is worth today, more than forty years later. The government spared no money in developing the most professional pilots in the world and it was a joy to be part of the group. As stated previously, I attended pilot training during the Vietnam War, so we were very serious about learning everything we could about flying airplanes, because the big test was coming when we graduated and were sent into combat. We were destined to go very quickly from being a student pilot to a combat pilot. We were in the “pipeline” to go to Vietnam, so “passing or failure” literally became matters of life and death. As I was going through pilot training, there was a tremendous amount of emphasis placed on learning emergency procedures. It is always good to be prepared for an emergency but the Air Force seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time preparing us to crash or avoid a crash in their airplanes. Each airplane we learned to fly had its own unique set of emergency procedures. One of the first duties in checking out a new airplane involved hours of memorization of the emergency procedure for that particular make and model of aircraft. The actions for an emergency were simple and easily memorized so they were the ones I learned to use whenever I encountered a problem in an airplane. The ones specific to any particular model of airplane always followed the same three guidelines. We were told the three to use first in an emergency were: 1. Maintain aircraft control 2. Analyze the situation / take proper action 3. Land as soon as practical Those words were drummed into our heads until they became automatic reactions to a crisis. I mention them again here to drum them into your head. The three procedures were survival steps for taking action when anything happened out of the ordinary in the cockpit. If things began to go wrong in the cockpit we could refer to those life-saving steps to get the crippled airplane back on the ground. The three emergency procedures work in non-airplane emergencies equally well. They work if you have a blown tire in your car, an emergency in your home, are laid off from a job when it was completely unexpected, experience the loss of a loved one, or find yourself out of control in a dire situation. When something happens that is out of the ordinary in life we often just react and never think about maintaining control or analyzing our situation. My advice for acting under stress or solving a simple problem is simple. Use the advice of my old Air Force instructor pilots: *maintain aircraft control, analyze the situation / take proper action, land as soon as practical*. It is obvious that you cannot get beyond an emergency if you do not maintain control of your life or your airplane during a problem. Maintaining control is essential in any situation if you are going to safely survive an ordeal. Regaining or maintaining control is the first essential element to surviving a crisis. Maintaining your life or your aircraft allows you to proceed to the next essential element of making it through that problem event. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary says that the word “analyze” means to “to examine carefully,” and “to take apart and examine.” Once when I was complaining about something that had happened to me, a close friend who knew what I was going through said to me, as only a friend can, “Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger.” Bad things can happen to anyone. You are not alone in this problem. He was saying that it is important to realize that we can learn from others and all that you are experiencing. You can do that by analyzing what is happening and why. Analyze the situation. What a concept! One of the greatest examples of analyzing a situation in the Bible is the story of Gideon. Gideon’s story has a lot of application to what is appropriate when you find yourself in a crisis. When we face difficulties in life we need to remember there is always a time for evaluation. Gideon had to make some very important decisions at a very stressful time. Stressful situations always seem to come when we think we do not have time to react properly. That is part of what makes the situation stressful. You may find yourself in those situations as well. Have you just been laid off? Has something just happened to threaten your way of life or your lifestyle? Do you feel like what you are experiencing is threatening your existence, your comfort zone, your family? In the book of Judges in the Bible we meet this biblical character, Gideon, at a tough time in his life. He was the military commander of Israel. Talk about responsibility! The security of an entire nation depended upon Gideon. Gideon did what we are told in the Bible to do in times of crisis. He relied on God. Judges 6:36 (NAS) says, “God If you are truly going to use me to rescue Israel, you will deliver Israel through me as you have spoken.” Gideon was verifying God’s promise. He knew he had to rely on God to be successful. He obtained a clearer understanding of his situation by relying on God. He was maintaining control and analyzing the situation with God. Gideon’s primary tool for solving the problem ahead of him was to rely on God’s promised support to accomplish the assigned mission. He intended to take the proper action the Lord directed him to take. General Gideon was in charge of 30,000 soldiers but he was facing a force far larger that were bent on the annihilation of his people, his army, and his country. The enemy was a Midianite army 120,000 strong and they were camped only a few miles away from Gideon’s army on higher ground. The enemy on higher ground is something military tacticians would tell you is not a positive situation. So we find Gideon was not only outnumbered four to one, but his enemy was just around the corner. They were ready to pounce from an advantageous position. Gideon had been thrown into the circumstance without a quality plan, and yet he would have been a great pilot because he followed that first law of an emergency to a T. He maintained control while analyzing the situation. General Gideon stopped, talked to God (he maintained control), and then analyzed his situation which resulted in a definitive plan. He gathered his men around a pool of water. “So Gideon took the men down to the water. There the LORD told him, ‘Separate those who lap the water with their tongues like a dog from those who kneel down to drink.’ Three hundred men lapped with their hands to their mouths. All the rest got down on their knees to drink” Judges 7:5-6 (NIV). A few years ago, Vickie and I visited that pool in Israel (now called Gideon’s Pool). Our visit made the story of Gideon even more real for me. The pool of Gideon is simply a wide place in a small stream at the edge of a hill. The stream runs very shallow and trickles between mounds of sand so it is no deeper than three to four inches in any place between the islands of sand. The pool is about twelve to fifteen feet wide. I could see in my mind’s eye a legion of soldiers kneeling on the sand to drink from these tiny streams. Gideon’s men were told if they wanted to go home they could, and 20,000 of them did just that and headed for the hills of home. He allowed two-thirds of his force to walk out because he didn’t want them around if they were hesitant to fight, so that was part of the test. As it states in the verse above, he then instructed the men to sip the water and he carefully watched the men drink. (His stress must have increased as he saw so many fail the test but he didn’t quit.) He observed the remaining 10,000 soldiers and actually sent 9,700 of them home with the 20,000 who had already chosen to leave. He kept only 300 of the original 30,000 soldiers because he wanted men who would analyze their surroundings and follow his plan. Gideon was coming up with a plan that would work with this particular enemy and this particular situation. He was also demonstrating faith in God with this plan. Both establishing a plan and sticking with it are elements essential to your analysis of a plan for life and your situation. You must take time to analyze what will work in your life, structure a plan, and then take ownership of (have faith in) your solution. Faith in a plan becomes essential to proper execution. You must take time to maintain control, and then analyze the situation you are in, so that you can begin to see alternatives. Even in the case of an emergency there is time to stop and analyze the problem. Take time to analyze before you act. The secret to success for Gideon was deciding to analyze who he wanted to have fight by his side, and how the battle would be fought. The plan God gave him to execute required faith to successfully implement. Gideon knew God had provided the diagram but he still required faith to execute the plan. If you haven’t read the rest of Gideon’s story I recommend spending some time reading the conclusion because it ends well. Gideon’s army wins the battle and he becomes the hero. I love happy endings. Sometimes to follow God’s instruction in our lives is stressful but there is always a favorable conclusion for those who listen to and rely on God. We are told to slow down and analyze what is happening around us. The next step to success in renewing life after a crisis is to do exactly what God is telling you to do. Following God’s instructions can be difficult but we must remember those words we discussed in Deuteronomy 31:6. You need to be ready to be strong and courageous in your life. You need to slow down and use the strength you have in reserve to the maximum, especially in stressful times. Following advice and instruction can be difficult when you are in the midst of a crisis and the world is saying, just react. Tutoring from God’s instruction book often goes against the standards of the world. The Bible provides wisdom that guarantees success. It is also very important, when in a serious situation, to follow the instruction provided because the information came from someone else who had endured the same circumstance. Why not learn from someone else’s experience? It is essential to position yourself with people and situations where you can “practice” your faith. Crisis doesn’t normally occur in good times but usually shows when up it is least welcome. No matter how inopportune the timing, it is our responsibility to find the way out of a mess when it occurs. Remember, the most important element in discovering the proper solution is normally found within ourselves. When we prepare for the unexpected it is much easier to react to crisis. Remember, the definition for the word “analyze” is “to take apart and examine.” How do we do that in a crisis? The natural reactions when we are faced with an immediate problem may be to push, pull, fight, argue, destruct, or even worry, but those actions seldom solve anything. However, when we prepare ourselves to handle a problem by consulting God, we are more readily fit to take proper action. God can provide a quality analysis that is necessary to truly understand what is happening. An effective self-examination requires objective analysis because there is no way to go forward if you remain hampered by false assumptions. In order to progress in your life you must develop methods of analyzing problems with objective analysis. Only then can you determine the cause of a problem and truly break away from habits or actions that lead to the same problem reoccurring. It is important to break loose from the bonds of the past that constantly obstruct progress. To change your life it is imperative to find a method of flying free of old habits, habitats, and routines. Try to look at life through a new and revised lens. Establish why you made a mistake and then develop a new way of dealing with problems. My wife and I enjoy traveling. In order to get a fresh perspective on life, we make it a point to take a mini-vacation about every six weeks. We sometimes don’t go anywhere or spend any money, and at times we do nothing except lock the doors, refuse to answer the phone, or maybe go out to dinner, but we separate from the our normal world. We intentionally change our customary routine. You might be surprised to find that changing your environment, even for a short time, allows you new perspective. You look at problems differently and react to stress in a different manner. In my present job as a pastor I often counsel couples wanting to be married. When I am counseling the pair I always ask them to tell me what they are going to do when they have a crisis in their marriage. Usually they look at me with starry eyes as if there will never be a crisis because their love will carry them through anything. I am not trying to bring them down with the question, but I do want them to prepare for what will probably occur at some point in their lives. They are going to endure some hardship and they need to prepare for that experience. I simply want them to be prepared. I have been blessed with a wife who has never failed to stand with me, even when a trying situation enveloped our lives. We decided long ago in our marriage that we would trust one another to the point that if we failed, we both failed. In Air Force parlance, she has become my best wingman. We developed a faith plan. If we have a problem, we have developed faith in God and one another so we can endure whatever circumstance we encounter. I am sad to say there have been times when she could have easily backed away and abandoned the plan because of my bad decisions, but she didn’t and I am grateful. We have stuck with the plan through good times and bad. Our crisis plan was to remain together. We have prepared for the bad times during the good times. Just as Ecclesiastes 4:9 (NIV) states, “…Two are better than one…” It is essential to develop a faith partner with whom we can share our problems, even in bad times. Don’t be afraid to share your problem with someone you can trust. In my case, I share the problems with Vickie. If you are not married, speak with a trusted friend, counselor, or pastor, but share the burden. There is someone who will help you. Outside viewpoints are usually more objective than your own. The key is to get someone to show you a different view of the problem. Seek out someone with whom you can share your heart and who will provide you with truthful feedback. You want someone who will tell you the truth even if you don’t agree with their view of the situation. Listen to their ideas and, if you agree, begin to rely on their judgment. I do believe there is someone for everyone who can be trusted and relied upon in every challenging situation. There is someone who cares. Don’t be afraid to ask that person about their ideas for your circumstance. A few years ago, we lived in Indianapolis and I met with three other guys who were trusted friends and operated as my wingmen in my business life. We met at Jo Jo’s restaurant each Tuesday morning. One was an entrepreneur and inventor, one president of a manufacturing company, one a great pastor, and I was just fortunate to be a part of the group. We shared our hearts on problems of both private and business matters. We had faith in one another to the point that we came to rely on the meeting as an essential part of our schedule. Later in my career I was transferred to Dallas and I would actually fly back to the city where the guys met every Tuesday to obtain their advice and counsel. The friendship paid dividends far beyond money. They helped me develop my faith in life. Those men were honest with me to the point that they made me accountable to everything I did personally or in business. The key factor for those three guys in my life was that they were trusted, we were mutually accountable, and we held each other to a high standard of following God’s instruction in our lives. --- **Next chapter:** Refer to Your Checklist – Follow God’s Operations Manual **Full book:** https://deanrush.net/downloads/flyingfreebook.md