Remembering

Sorry Dad. It’s been a while since I visited. Memorial Day reminded me of the sacrifices you and countless others made to preserve our freedom. Some described the campaigns that you fought in Peleliu and Okinawa as the bloodiest battles of the Pacific War. Fierce fighting on two hellish little coral islands with 56,000 casualties .

Watching some of the scene’s in the “Pacific” series wasn't easy. In addition to conveying the horrific and bloody feeling for what that war was like, the film reminded many of the terrible loss suffered by a generation of Americans that Franklin Roosevelt once claimed had "a rendezvous with destiny." Eugene Sledge described the battles you fought and the trials you faced with the First Marine Division in his book ”With the Old Breed”.

Three years in the military helped mold you but it never defined you. God first, family second are the examples you established and I’ll always try to remember that. The persistence and resilience of your generation are frequently overshadowed by instant gratification and dependence of ours. Heroism and sacrifice of your contemporaries have given way to the cynicism and gain of today. Teamwork and collective purpose are lost to individualism and family cohesion has been replaced by families in fragmentation. Trust, in people and in institutions were more evident than in any other succeeding generation.

So anyway, thanks. Thanks for your service and most especially for your example. You certainly are one of The Greatest Generation.

Wing and a Prayer

There are only six active wing walkers in the country. One of them is Ashley Battles. She's been flying since she was a teenager and graduated from OSU with a degree in aviation. She could fly most general aviation airplanes. Instead, she climbs on top of them. "I knew I wanted to be a pilot for the rest of my life, but after getting all of my ratings, I was really kind of bored with flying straight and level," she said. But will she get bored walking on a wing for five hours?

She's pictured below with Greg Shelton.

Ashley Battles is going for a really long walk on a very short path. She is preparing to take a five-hour stroll on the wings of a 450 Stearman piloted by Robert Ragozzino...The current wingwalking record is 3 hours, 39 minutes; however Battles and Ragozzino are shooting for five hours.

Of course it’s to set a record, but Ragozzino hopes to call attention to his future plans to recreate Lindbergh’s flight in a replica of Lindberg’s “Ryan” aircraft. I’ve weighed in on this before and while I admire their effort, courage and stamina, I seems like it's a wild stunt that won't necessarily promote general aviation. Will more people be attracted to flying or think it's strange? How many light airplane pilots have relatives and friends that already wonder why we take to the air?

Five hours is a long time inside a plane.

Crash Course

The Extra 300 is a marvelous unlimited aerobatic plane with a spritely climb rate of 4,000 feet/minute, a roll rate of 420 degrees / per second and rated for 10 g’s. I logged in to schedule time in the plane with an instructor only to find that it was listed out of service for six weeks. (The actual plane is depicted on the right side of the page, right above the “Blogroll”).That’s a mighty long time so I contacted the chief pilot. The plane was indeed out of service. Permanently. It had been totaled.

“What happened?!” I asked “ Remember that old Warrior on the ramp?” said the chief pilot “The guy in the Piper wasn’t paying attention after start-up and didn’t have the brakes set. Apparently he was distracted by something as the plane taxied along and sliced into the Extra 300 parked in front of our hanger....knocked it right out of the chocks. Both planes are complete losses”. I know the relative distance between both areas and the only explanation is that the Warrior pilot must have been reading the paper. Or taking a short nap. How do you lose awareness that you're behind the wheel of a plane in motion?

Taxiing is usually the least demanding part of a flight, a fact that leads many pilots to discount the need for attention or to attempt to multitask on their way to the runway. The rolling runup used by some charter operators comes to mind.

Simply put, it’s inattention. These are the people who get out of the airplane and walk into a spinning prop. They’re the pilots who start the engine and bury their heads in the cockpit to work radios or fold charts while the airplane meanders across the ramp. They taxi down perimeter roads and hit poles. They start taxiing with one wing still tied down, spinning the airplane in a circle and crunching something nearby. One pilot who was taxiing in thought it critical he retrieve a chart that had fallen on the floor in front of the right seat. He rammed a trailer that had been parked on the taxiway. The accordion plane shown below was the result of another pilot who let the plane get away from him. A little Bondo and I'm sure it'll buff right out.



The variety of miscellaneous accidents also illustrates how problems can sneak up on you. The airplane can get blown over by a jet blast or prop wash from another airplane. You can stumble into a construction zone. One pilot’s sleeve caught on the throttle and advanced it to full power suddenly.

Taxi accidents prove the wisdom in an old saying usually applied to tailwheel airplanes: Fly it from the time the engine starts until you shut the engine down.

Minimum Expectations

83 years ago today, the Lone Eagle landed in Paris. He was greeted by over 100,000 people and instantly became a household name to millions. It was obviously risky. Six well-known aviators had recently lost their lives in pursuit of the $25,000 Orteig Prize for crossing the Atlantic. No one had ever done it and it was as fantastic as the first landing on the moon.



How risky? There were plenty of unknowns and potential hazards but Charles Lindberg willingly departed with the cards stacked against him. He took off from a rain-soaked field with a tailwind. He was using a cruise prop and had the carb heat hot wired to the on position. The plane was loaded with 451 gallons of gas rendering the Sprit of St. Louis 1,000 pounds heavier than it had ever been. The engine was running 40 rpm short of max power. Lastly he went to bed at 1:40 a.m and, unable to sleep, headed to Curtiss Field at 2:30 a.m. to prepare for take-off, knowing that he had another 33 hours of flying ahead of him. Two full days without sleep at the worst possible time. Heavily laden with fuel, the plane bounced down the muddy field, gradually became airborne and barely cleared the telephone wires at the field's edge. It was almost a very short trip. (Excellent footage of the whole story right here, compliments of Win Perkins).

He should have postponed the trip for numerous reasons but the pressure to leave was huge. Anybody else in our viewing audience guilty of taking off when conditions exceeded personal minimums? (Your humble scribe now sheepishly raising hand). There aren’t many reasons to undertake unacceptable risk. Combat flying is one, medical evacuation is another but that’s about it. This flight was strictly for fame and fortune.

The consequences can be disastrous. This video shows an L-39 entering a loop in poor visibility. It was too much for the pilot who spun the Albatross into a fireball. He wasn’t capable of maintaining control in the clouds and this was beyond his personal "minimums". Contrary to the news report he was never an Israeli fighter pilot (another one of those stolen valor situations). But it was an air show and the show must go on. Family, friends and an audience were there to see him fly and so he did... for a short while.

The plane and the pilot both have limitations and we exceed them at our own risk. Not everyone is as lucky as Lindy.

Rocket Powered Chopper

You Made a What?

The Dragonfy DF1 jet powered helicopter demonstrates that a helicopter can actually be made noisier. Swisscopter- Americas has developed a chopper which is sure to make dogs bark and howl for miles in any direction.

The video reminds me of one of those early aviation experiments destined to explode or vibrate into oblivion but incredibly it lifts off (eventually) and maneuvers pretty well. More suprising that people remained in close proximity during the test flight. Your average helicopter is driven by an engine that causes the rotor to turn in one direction while concurrently forcing the body of the aircraft in the opposite direction. A tail rotor is normally used to counteract this force. Instead, the Dragonfly has the rotor power itself using small hydrogen-peroxide jets on the blade tips, spinning them without counter rotating force. The tail rotor is still needed only to turn the aircraft. It has 50 endurance and I have no idea if it autorotates, which would be a good idea if there's a problem. Not a bad rate of climb at 2,300 fpm and 115 mph top speed. Swisscopter is also working on a two seat version if you’re able to talk a family member into actually climbing in with you.

Tip-jet powered helicopters are not new. The British had an experimental helicopter in the 1950s that employed tip-jet powered rotors but was unable to get off the ground. The Hiller YH-32 Hornet built for the US Army and Navy also in the early 1950s had potential but noise and poor range doomed the effort.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGcRgEuCocQ&feature=player_embedded]

I'm hoping the idea doesn't take off. Not in my backyard anyway.

Deserving our Support

I was inspired after reading “Unthinkable”, the story of Scott Rigsby. Rigsby was the first double amputee to complete the Hawaiian Ironman. Determined to transcend his limitations, he felt it was his calling to give hope to other disabled veterans. Another group with the same mission is the Wounded Warriors Project . So just after completing the book, it was great to see this story from the folks at AOPA regarding flights for our disabled veterans.

The flights were part of an agreement between the Wounded Warrior Project and the Vandy-1 demonstration team. AOPA hosted Vandy-1’s five aircraft—a P-51 Mustang, two L-39 Albatroses, and two MS-760 Paris Jets—along with a B-25….. “They say the World War II-generation was the greatest generation—and perhaps that’s true,” Kelley said. “But these kids we’ve got in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to be our next greatest generation, and I’m thrilled to be able to do little things like this to honor them. Too many of us do nothing. We all ought to be doing more.”

Speaking of “Doing more”, here are two other organizations worthy of consideration which we also support: Disabled American Veterans and Soldiers Angels.

It’s the least we can do for those who gave so much for our country.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

You don’t have to be rich to fly but it doesn’t hurt to have bundles of cash if you’d like to travel in a style that’s hard to imagine. Well, I can imagine it pretty easily when making the 21 hour trip to Singapore.



Despite an economy that’s still rising from the ashes, there are still a small number of folks who are able to spend money like drunken sailors on private air travel. The super luxury segment is all but impervious to economic woes and public relations gaffes. During the recent 2010 European Business aviation Exhibition, jet service provider Comlux announced it was adding six more 767’s to the fleet to “better serve our Head of State and Royal Families customers". This seems especially appealing if you’ve ever been in a middle seat with passengers on either side that require seat belt extenders in order to buckle up. I’ve even had an elderly lady fall asleep on my shoulder which was plenty awkward. Say goodbye to all that since luxury air travel enables you to get a whole couch to yourself.

For those who are determined to spend even more money there’s the Supersonic Bizjet. An idea whose time may never come. One such start up company, Aerion, is still in search of an established manufacturer to fund, develop, certify and produce it. The concept was launched in 2004.

They’ve received orders for 50 of the $80 million aircraft, priced in 2007 dollars, each backed by a $250,000 refundable deposit, but have been unsuccessful in enticing any OEM to become a partner in the “first mover” project. If and when that occurs, Aerion managers say it will take a minimum of 6.5 years and $3 billion to bring it to market.

Six years later and no manufacturer will touch this with a ten foot pole. Why? Because it’s the same as dumping truckloads of money into a gigantic parking lot and setting a match to it. Perhaps they didn’t pay attention to the economics of the Concorde which later burned up money by the plane load. (To be fair, British Airways did make money initially). Ultimately, it wasn’t economically feasible for a larger group of passengers. Why would this concept be viable for only a half-dozen people on a flight? (Even if you do have truckloads of money to burn). Oh, and there’s that little problem of a sonic boom which relegates this to oceanic flights.

It's an idea that's likely to be grounded for years to come.

Dumb and Dumber

For some reason, some folks find it entertaining to point lasers at aircraft. The menace is growing despite the efforts to inform the public that it’s a Really Bad Idea. Earlier this month, some idiot targeted Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma:

During a recent night flying week, the difficult and dangerous business of learning to fly at night was made even more difficult and dangerous when three Vance aircraft were the targets of a concentrated beam of green laser light, either from a laser pointer or a laser rifle scope. All three aircraft, a T-6A Texan II and two T-38s, landed safely, but all six pilots had to report to the Vance Clinic for precautionary eye exams. All were cleared by flight surgeons. “They were on final turns to come into the base,” said Bob Farrell, Vance’s chief of community relations. “That’s a very critical phase of flight.”……“The critical phase of flight, absolutely, is the last 1,000 feet coming in and landing. That’s when the pilots need their eyes the most.”

During 2009 there were 1,527 laser illumination incidents reported to Federal Aviation Administration, up from 311 in 2005. Through 4/15/10 there’s aleady 550 reported incidents.

This guy is going to do four years in prison for it. Some say that that’s too severe and it’s an over reaction. I don’t. The lives of the pilot (s) and passengers in commercial aircraft are placed in jeopardy if pilots are blinded on short final. It can also cost a pilot his livelihood. An American airline pilot who’s lost his medical after his eye was struck with a laser. You cannot blink fast enough. In my view, this is no different than someone firing a rifle at a plane. A severe penalty sends a message.

“Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.” (George Savile)

h/t to Dan for the article

Another Milestone

Son#1 completed his MBA the harder way. Raising a young family, with two boys under the age of three while working as an electrical engineer and the occasional out-of-town travels. Same as Dad and I'm sure countless others. We're obviously very proud. He's a good man. It doesn't seem that long ago he was putting together electronic projects as a young tyke. I was relieved the rail gun and MIRT Opticom transmitter never worked.





When it finally ends, you wonder what to do with all that time.

I'm strongly recommending ground school and flight training.

Long Arm of the Law

Lycoming's Dilemma

One of the reasons flying is expensive is that liability insurance and the cost of lawsuits are passed on to the pilot. Today, Lycoming Engines (Division of Textron) said the company will appeal an $89 million verdict involving a 1999 crash of a Piper Cherokee Six. The long arm of the law can reach back over 40 years. The aircraft that crashed was built in 1968. Lycoming sold the engine to Piper in 1967.

This verdict was especially surprising because it was decided in spite of the General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994,which provides limitations on lawsuits against aircraft and component manufacturers eighteen years after the product was first sold. The other surprise: The NTSB determined it was pilot error:

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows: The pilot’s loss of control of the airplane during a turn. Factors include the pilot’s failure maintain sufficient airspeed, and his failure to maintain the airplane in proper trim.

In the 1980’s over 90,000 general aviation jobs eventually were lost as plants closed. This was due in large part to the rise in damage awards and liability insurance costs associated with the manufacture of general aviation aircraft. Manufacturers passed along costs to their customers. Private aircraft had liability insurance expenses of approximately 40% of each plane produced. Lawsuits occur in the majority of all crashes even though pilot error is responsible for 85 percent of them.

Today, most piston powered airplanes are powered by Lycoming engines. I've been to their facility in Williamsport, PA and it's top notch with a focus on designing and producing the best engines around. I hope litigation doesn't drive more suppliers and OEM's away from general aviation. It takes a lot of revenue and retained earnings to pay for one of these and ,after a while, investors will want to park their money elsewhere.

What is the goal? Is it to drive manufacturers out of business with punitive lawsuits (Parker Hannifin no longer makes vacuum pumps) or is it to make as much money as possible for the lawyers and plaintiffs? I don't pretend to understand the legal profession but some lawsuits stretch the imagination.

Personal Jets

Having enjoyed time in the L-29 I can safely say that "low cost" and "jet aircraft" really don't occur in the same sentence. This is even truer when developing a Personal Jet. While there is argument on the definition, some have termed the more recent VLJ (Very Light Jet), as one with a gross weight under 10,000 pounds. A Personal Jet has a gross weight under 5,500 lb, which is substantially smaller. The L-29, a war bird, isn't really either one but since it's less than 12,000# , doesn't require a type rating.

Many start the design process searching for a low cost solution. The engine out of an L-29 is relatively inexpensive, assuming you can find one that you or anyone else would be willing to sit on top of. There is usually a good reason why the engine is cheap, thus the issue with finding parts, as well as someone qualified to work on it. Further, given the age of the technology, you can figure the thing needs an equivalent of a toilet bowl for a fuel delivery device (the whooshing sound is the fuel dollars being sucked down the drain). It makes the J-79 look efficient.

Then, you need to determine what you want the airplane to do. If you don't care about range and only wish to bore holes in the sky around your local airport, then you might develop a decent sized airplane, but you’ll never go cross country in it. The rule of thumb for any jet aircraft, in order for it to have anything approaching a realistic range, it must have as a very minimum the same amount of fuel on board in pounds as the engine is rated for static thrust, in pounds also. The L-29 flys only two hours in cruise but anything more strenuous makes it a much shorter flight.

So, assuming you find a 1,200 pound thrust engine, (The L-29 Motorlet engine is 1,800 pounds of thrust) you will need to carry between 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of fuel. If you’re building a Personal Jet, then you may be lucky to achieve a thrust to weight ratio of .25 and while that’s OK, it’s not anything to brag about. A larger engine will require larger fuel tanks and a larger airframe as the design evolves into something ever larger. Then it weighs more and the engine that seemed plenty powerful isn't so much. Small wonder there’s not too many of them around. The most recent personal jet effort was the ATG Javelin and it was a nice looking little F-18. Unfortunately they went bankrupt in 2008.

If you want a short history, look here . None are in existence but it indicates why VLJ’s, with their range and capability, are more commercially viable. And those aren’t anywhere near what I’d call inexpensive.

Failure to Launch

Unknown to most of the general public, NASA has been using large unmanned helium balloons to put payloads into the edge of space to investigate the nature of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and search for anti-matter. Not the sort of thing that sparks a lot of public interest. That is, until something bad happens and then it becomes news.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieyD1FfQOIg&feature=player_embedded]

Good thing the Wizard of Oz didn't make his exit in one of these. Speaking of Oz-apparently this particular launch was down under. Keep yer heads down mates.

Art Imitates Life

U.S. Navy Lieutenant Joe and our niece Melissa are pictured here. Joe is a naval flight surgeon. When he returned from his one year deployment in the middle east, his Dad (George) handed him the keys to a “like new” Mustang Cobra as a surprise. George reconditioned the engine and vehicle during his son’s tour overseas. Another Mustang restoration project was presented to his daughter a couple of years ago.

A nice story in itself but more extraordinary in that Joe’s Dad is confined to a wheelchair. George lost the use of his legs when his bunker was blown up during a firefight in Vietnam.

George and Joe both have our gratitude and admiration.

It seems that Ford introduced this ad honoring our military which, although not identical, features a Mustang also as part of the story. Five minutes long but perhaps one of the best ever Ford commercials.

Connecting Flight

Most wing walkers stay on the same plane.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58L3m0dqVDY]

Red Bull finds new ways to push the envelope into the unimaginable. Skydiver Paul Steiner climbs from one glider to another and touches the rudder of the other plane while in mirror flight. Folks in Baldwin Wisconsin might have not have thought this was impossible but I did. That is, until I saw it.

Hanging Loose Over a Volcano

Maui is a tropical paradise like none other. It was where I finally made good on a promise that someday Mrs. Wilko and I would travel to a nice location to make up for the honeymoon in Wisconsin 33 years ago. “Someday” finally arrived for the two of us last week and it was better than advertised.

One of the “must do” items was renting a plane and flying around the islands. To do this, I headed to the only airport open to general aviation which is the busy terminal in Kahului. There’s two ways to get access to a plane at a FBO. Either you get checked out in the plane or fly dual with an instructor. I’ve done both when travelling across the U.S. and this time it was more efficient to fly with an instructor with my wife snapping away from the back seat (with the final tally at 230 aerial shots). The instructor didn’t do any instructing but most operations won’t part with an expensive airplane unless they’re sure of your skills or have someone in the right seat as plan B.

We were greeted warmly by a guy who had all the appearances and mannerisms of Surfer Dude. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. He was a great guy, but very relaxed in his approach. “Hang Loose” is the common expression in the Islands. Hanging Loose and flying just never went together in my vocabulary. It was raining and rain brings poor visibility and ceilings. “Not to worry” says Rick our instructor. “It’ll be fine after we head South”. Hang Loose. I was skeptical, having been burned by IMC conditions in the past without filing a flight plan from the get go. We launched in a 172SP behind a commuter jet and after flying through many holes and layers in the clouds we found partly cloudy skies and bright sun.

Flying on Impulse

"Solar Impulse" is the name of the all-electric aircraft which is intended to circle the world using solar power. It made its first maiden flight this week over Switzerland.

With the wingspan of a Boeing 747 and the weight of a car, never before has an airplane as large and light as the Solar Impulse flown before. It lifted off at a speed no faster than 45 kmh (45 mph) and, once airborne, completed a series of turns by gently tilting its wings that measure 63 meters (208 feet) from tip to tip.For the test flight Scherdel was forced to rug up with special underwear, windproof overall and heated gloves and shoes since the cockpit had no shell around it. When asked how the plane behaved in flight Scherdel said, “So far it was very well-tempered. But I have to say that today we were flying very slow – at one point the ground speed had dropped to 12 knots per hour".

At 12 knots it will take about 75 days. Glad I won't be the pilot in the open air cockpit. What a treat if it encounters any weather which I suspect will ground the plane. While it's an engineering marvel, it's a vastly underpowered engineering marvel. Power is one thing that's mighty handy when you run into an aviation problem like wind shear or less than perfect landings (not that I'd know anything about that). If there's turbulence you will get pushed around pretty hard in a kite.

It would be impressive to use the "Impulse" for a fly-in pancake breakfast. Tie down space might be tight but you wouldn't need to fuel it up for the return trip.

So You Think You're a Good Stick?

Try this

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3dxLsCYDbI]

Low level aerobatics with short excursions into 12 g territory and knife edge turns.

What's not to like?

Red Bull Air Racing began last week with Defending champion Paul Bonhomme winning the first of the 2010 season in Abu Dhabi.

Man On The Moon

From Flying Among The Stars To Dancing With The Stars

AOPA has a write up with some unknown (at least to me) facts about the second man on the moon. He had "The Right Stuff".

Buzz Aldrin has lived an extraordinary life. He graduated third in his class at West Point, downed two MiGs in Korea, got a Ph.D. in Astronautics from MIT, and completed what was at the time the longest spacewalk in history before Apollo 11. Here are some of his thoughts on flying.

Favorite aircraft… No hesitation—it was the F–86. But the T–28 was something that had a lot of promise. I tried a double Immelman and passed out on the way up. I woke up heading straight down for Texas with the throttle in one hand and a stick inanother. I didn’t do that again until I had a G-suit in an F–86.

Under stress… I was by myself after I saw the guy bail out of the MiG well north of the Yalu River. As a solo heading south, I didn’t have anyone protecting my rear end. The airplane wasn’t climbing as fast as I thought it should. I realized with great embarrassment that my speed brakes were out. I was trying to climb back home with full power and my speed brakes out. How stupid can you be? Experience as a pilot brings a successful pilot—the experience of knowing how to control your emotions by a real increased alertness.

Falling from the Edge of Space

This year, Felix Baumgartner’s will attempt a freefall from 120,000 feet and will also attempt to break the speed of sound with nothing but a space suit.

In the hostile stratospheric environment Felix plans to traverse, hazards include temperatures as cold as minus 56 degrees Celsius; an environment with too little oxygen to sustain human life; and air pressure so low that decompression sickness and embolism. During his ascent beneath a 30-million-cubic-foot polyethylene balloon filled with helium, Felix will depend on a sealed capsule to provide a pressurized environment; but once he depressurizes the vessel and opens the door to step off, his full-pressure suit and helmet – what engineers call a “Pilot Protective Assembly,” or PPA – will be his only life-support system until he reaches the safety of the lower atmosphere.

Pretty impressive. While this is a record-setting attempt, the first man to do it faced more unknowns. Colonel Joseph Kittinger’s first attempt was a near-disaster when an equipment malfunction caused him to lose consciousness. His automatic parachute opener in his equipment saved his life after he went into a flat spin rotating at 120 rpm sustaining 22 g’s. Kittinger's final jump was at 102,800 feet reaching 614 mph. ). Pressurization for his right glove malfunctioned during the ascent, and his right hand swelled to twice its normal size.

That’s not all

After Kittinger’s efforts to help the USAF understand high altitude bailouts, he later served three combat tours of duty during the Vietnam War, flying a total of 483 missions. He was shot down while flying an F-4 with the Triple Nickel squadron and later spent 11 months as a prisoners of war in the "Hanoi Hilton".

Mr. Baumgarner’s attempt is phenomenal and will no doubt gather a good deal of PR for Red Bull. Col. Kittinger's didn't get endorsements although his contributions were crucial to the early days of the space program . While his record-setting days are over, he never stopped flying. No doubt he'll become a little more famous as the new record breaking attempt gets underway.

First Place

p>Beautiful weather in Chi-Town this past week. Upper 70's, mostly clear skies and dry.

This morning: 52 degrees and constant rain which, as it happens, was the day of our first 5k race of the season. It finally did stop raining...after we returned home. It's all in the timing.

Son #2 finished in first place. Pop was just glad to finish. Next up for SN2: The Illinois Marathon and a half triathlon before the tackling the actual Ironman this summer. That's a 2.4 mile swim, biking 112 miles and running 26.2 miles. I'm of the opinion I should be cheering rather than getting carried away in a stretcher. Besides, it would be dark and no one would be around by time I crossed the finish line.

The Windy City

Sometimes it is. Thankfully runway 18 was just reopened otherwise it would have been pretty sporty. I was amazed at how far I was pushed downwind and was especially vigilant for wind shear. Mrs. Wilko inquired as to my state of mind, flying in gale force winds. Actually, it's more of an attitude adjustment than loss of senses. Nothing focuses the mind or provides the exhilaration like breaking the surly bonds. The unpredictable wind at times acted like a bucking bronco but with the appropriate increase in speed and less than full flaps it could be tamed. Normally this is a busy airport. Today, I had the place to myself and after boring holes in the sky returned to make six circuits with nary a soul in the pattern.

Chicago IL (Chicago O'Hare Intl) [KORD] hourly observation on the 2nd at 3:51pm CDT (2051Z) wind 190° at 27 knots gusting to 42 knots, visibility 10 miles, 20,000 feet scattered, 25,000 feet overcast, temperature 26°C (79°F), dewpoint 9°C (48°F), altimeter 29.67.

Chicago/Aurora IL (Aurora Muni) [KARR] hourly observation on the 2nd at 3:52pm CDT (2052Z) wind 190° at 24 knots gusting to 34 knots, visibility 10 miles, 25,000 feet broken, temperature 26°C (79°F), dewpoint 11°C (52°F), altimeter 29.67.

Yah. It was worth it.

Aviators TV

Sky King was a weekly aviation television series from the 1950's and the name of the pilot who rounded up the bad guys using his Cessna 310 plane. It fired the imaginations of many aspiring young pilots. I hope that this new program does the same.

The Aviators is a new weekly magazine-style TV series featuring interesting people, the latest aircraft, the coolest technology and the best fly-in destinations. We will take you behind the scenes to show you how airline pilots train, how planes are built, and how ATC works. We will profile aviation businesses and showcase aviation products. We will provide safety tips for private and recreational pilots and career tips for professional pilots. The Aviators is all-things-aviation: “For everyone who has ever gazed skywards.” In the United States, The Aviators will be distributed to all 356 Public Broadcasting Stations in the fall of 2010.

Have a look at the preview .

Identified falling objects

Rod Machado had the tent roaring when I saw him at Oshkosh. He's a gifted speaker with an ability to tell a story. Occasional reader "Scary" mentioned falling meat bombs in the previous post. It reminded me that things can fall from, and out of, planes as captured in Rod's article (below) which initially appeared in the AOPA magazine.

It’s falling—the sky is falling. Well, not really. It just seems that way sometimes. Unless you’ve been in cold storage the past few years, you’ve probably heard about at least some of the items that have fallen from airplanes. Landing gear, funeral urns, jet engines, and other odds and ends have made the list. I don’t know about you, but I get the willies when things drop from or off of airplanes, especially when the pilot was counting on using the newly liberated item later in the flight.

Take the story of a student pilot who recently departed John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California, in a fixed-gear Piper Warrior. The rental airplane, just released from a major inspection, appeared to be in good working order. With preflight complete, our young aviatrix completed her runup, then taxied onto the runway and departed. The subsequent conversation between the tower and the student went something like this:
"Piper Two-One-Three-Two-Bravo, this is John Wayne Tower. Ahh, ma’am, you appear to have left your main landing gear on the runway, over."
"Huh? Please repeat for Two-One-Three-Two-Bravo."
"Ma’am, your landing gear is on the runway. It fell off the airplane when you rotated, over."

Close Call

A near miss (near hit makes more sense) as a Boeing 777 came within 300 feet of a small high-wing Aeronca Chief in San Francisco. Just after wheels up at 1,100 feet, United pilots were advised by ATC that they had company. Simultaneously, the airplane's traffic collision avoidance system, (TCAS) sounded a warning.

The Boeing plane's automated collision avoidance system instructed the pilots to "adjust vertical speed" and then "descend" to clear the smaller plane's path. The first officer followed those directions and the flight continued to Beijing without further incident, the NTSB said The United flight's first officer, who was flying the 777, pushed the control column forward to level the airplane…Both crew members said they saw the underside of the Aeronca as it passed overhead, coming within 200 to 300 feet of their jet.

Not one where visibility was impeded due to the nature of the aircraft. One was a high wing with a vertical blind spot. Low wing aircraft have a few areas of blocked visibility when looking down. The Aeronca pilot must have had a commanding view of a gray monster passing underneath and I expect his pants required dry cleaning afterward. Older aircraft are not required to have radios so perhaps no radio contact was available but then he would be prohibited from KSFO airspace which surely this Aeronca must have violated. That particular area is protected from 10,000 feet to the surface. How can anyone dawdle off into class Bravo airspace-right by the airport?

I’ve had two close calls over the years within less than 500 feet. Both times with no radio contact from the pilots of faster planes. Closure rates can be pretty quick and these were VFR "See and Avoid" situations.

TCAS: Went from nice to have to something higher in my priority list.

Update: While this incident is unsettling, the good news is that mid air collisions are gratefully small in number. According to the 2009 Nall Report: Out of 1.254 accidents involving non-commercial fixed-wing aircraft only 11 were midair collisions. Eleven isn't good but certainly not a leading cause.

Blazing the Trail

Congressional Gold Medal awarded to WASP aviators, including Betty Greene.

Betty Greene was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) of World War II but she never considered it it one of her most important achievements. As a WASP , Greene and 1,100 other women flew non-combat missions that could be hazardous.

Betty Greene's grand-niece represented her great aunt this month at a Capitol Hill ceremony that honored WASPs with a Congressional Gold Medal.

Greene joined the Women’s Airforce to gain experience in preparation to serve on the mission field. She was the first pilot for Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) and was also the first woman to fly across the Andes and the first woman to pilot an aircraft in Sudan. From its humble beginnings of three pilots and two airplanes, it has grown to a fleet of 58 bush aircraft -- including a new Kodiak . It serves 1,000 organizations in isolated areas of the world., transporting missionaries, medical personnel, medicine and relief supplies, as well as emergency medical evacuations. Every three minutes, somewhere in the world, an MAF pilot and plane takes off or lands, covering more distance in six hours than David Livingstone did in his entire 28 years as a missionary in Africa.



Amazing what a commitment to something greater than oneself can accomplish.

Build it and They Will Crash?

This whole idea of building your own bird has intrigued me. I'm a member of the EAA and the project our local chapter had begun was restoring a Stinson, as opposed to a kit plane. I think it's great for those with perseverance and a hangar, making flying more affordable (affordable being a loose definition here). I'm in favor of anything that increases the pilot population. Apparently, amateur builts can also decrease the pilot population:

Kit-built planes accounted for 18 percent of noncommercial plane accidents (in 2008) even though they logged less than 5 percent of the flight time.. The accident rate for kit aircraft, including amateur-built helicopters, is more than seven times higher than for other noncommercial aircraft.

The Lancair leads the pack in this area and was called out in this FAA safety advisory that was just released. Not because it's a bad design. It's just a really fast plane with high stall speeds and high wing loading. Without the appropriate experience and training, you can get in big trouble. On a related matter, the Mitsubishi MU-2 had a horrendous safety record for years. This eventually led to strict, specific, recurrent training requirements imposed by the FAA. The result: an almost spotless record over the past four years.

The recently released 2009 Nall Report is pretty hard on experimental/ amateur built aviation. Accidents are out of proportion to the total number of airplanes built and hours flown. Experimental and amateur built aircraft had an accident rate almost 5 times higher than certificated aircraft and a fatal rate of 7 times higher per hour flown.

The amateur builts have accident rates involving mechanical problems and unexplained losses of engine power that are about double that of certificated airplanes. This makes me much happier with a Lycoming up front in the factory builts. "Experimental" aircraft should not involve experiments with powerplants. More mentoring and oversight are needed. If you're interested, the AOPA has the 2009 Nall Report here.

Air Traffic Control Heroes

The "Archie" Awards pay tribute to air traffic controllers and the life-saving role they provide for general aviation pilots who screw up. Two times that was me. There are some who deride the FAA as those who pick nits. (We're Not Happy Until You're Not Happy).

My friend at the Chicago area FSDO would want you to know that can touch an FAA employee with a ten foot pole. Just don't hit them with it. This years awards are out and they're well deserved.

Here's a few that deserve our respect and admiration. There are many others.

John Overman (Great Lakes Region) for providing outstanding assistance on April 25, 2009, to a Lifeguard Helicopter that was transporting an accident victim to a hospital. Overman’s detailed information about severe thunderstorms and coordination with EMS personnel on the ground enabled the helicopter crew to land in a nearby parking lot and transfer the patient successfully.

Dale Taylor (Great Lakes Region) for providing outstanding assistance on Feb. 20, 2009, to the pilot of a single-engine aircraft who suffered an engine failure on a night flight in poor visibility. Taylor provided vectors and other critical information that allowed the pilot to make a safe landing with no injury.

Robert Hill Sr. (Southern Region) for providing outstanding assistance on Nov. 11, 2009, to a pilot on a flight in instrument conditions who experienced an instrument malfunction in low visibility, heavy rain, and high wind conditions. Hill provided no-gyro vectors to an alternate airport and talked the pilot down to a safe landing.

Don Nikolich and David Pridgen (Southern Region) for providing outstanding assistance on Nov. 29, 2009, to a noninstrument-rated pilot who entered night instrument meteorological conditions. Nikolich and Pridgen, through exceptional coordination and team work, were able to guide the pilot to a safe landing despite widespread areas of low ceiling and multiple attempts to land at several airports.

Larry Gardiner (Southwest Region) for providing outstanding assistance on Aug. 12, 2009, to an aircraft that was not under his control. Controller Gardiner preemptively transmitted a traffic warning, in the blind, which resulted in one of the aircraft taking evasive action and avoiding an almost certain midair collision.

New Crow Hop Record

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1fFrEuuMF8]Ladies and Gentlemen, please stay seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces the plane back to the terminal.

For those of us who have ballooned a plane with a little too much airspeed, the last thing you want is a forced landing. That's why flaring was invented. Surely the pilot would have gone around by the twelfth bounce... but no. Time for a new prop, engine tear down and nose gear.

It wasn't the plane's fault, it wasn't the pilot's fault, it was... the asphalt.

Under Water

Just like my 401k

We interrupt our regularly scheduled aviation programming to bring you…diving. Why? Because I have pictures from the Florida cave dive. Not nearly as much fun as flying but still a great sport. Similar to aviation, equipment must be in good working condition, training is required and there’s risk management. Few venues are as risky as cave diving. Not night diving on a shipwreck. Not search and recovery in near zero visibility which is plenty creepy when a freighter passes overhead. The water wasn't nearly deep enough and we could only hear the engine but not see the screws. Ice diving? Only for those who have lost their minds after repeatedly freezing their brains.

Cave diving demands redundant systems and managing acceptable risk. The most important reason: No vertical egress. If you run out of air or have an emergency (embolism et. al.) you must return the long way and ascend no faster than one foot per second. A dive computer helps but a dive buddy is a safety requirement.

Another thing. Cave diving has plenty of challenge but there’s usually not much to see compared to ocean reefs and shipwrecks. The visibility is the best, so you can basically see nothing perfectly. The deepest I’ve tried was about 100 feet with none of it straight down. Did I tell you how dark it is without a dive light?



The sign behind me reads: “STOP - Prevent Your Death-Go No Further” The fine print below reads “There is nothing in this cave worth dying for”. Which is true. Longest time in an underwater cave does not produce a winner.

Flying and diving have something else in common: You can’t rationally explain why anyone should go up in a light airplane or down in an ocean. Below, my brother is ready to lead the way.



Not recommended if you don’t like confined spaces.

NASA's New VTOL

First there was the Chance Vought Umbrella Plane which failed miserably, without aerodynamic principles applied to the design at all. This was in 1911, when much was trial and error. Fortunately, Vought later redeemed themselves with the original F4U Corsair which changed the game over the Pacific, and then the F-8 Crusader and A-7 Corsair II.

Next there was the Pogo XFV VTOL (vertical take off and landing) aircraft developed by the famous Lockheed Skunk Works in 1951. They proved it could handle transition flight but was a scary plane to fly. Fast forward to 2005. After resolving issues that caused several fatal crashes, we have the V-22 Osprey which is now one very expensive troop transport with some estimates at $70.0M per copy. There are the turbine versions too, such as the AV8-B Harrier and F-35 Lightning but, for now, I’m recounting the story of VTOL propeller aircraft.

Technological change frequently builds on previous invention. To quote Sir Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

NASA continues the evolution with the one man electric “stealth” version named the Puffin (i.e. quiet, not invisible to radar). No one knows if it will really work but it mimics the Pogo concept without moving nacelles for transition flight along with the same landing characteristics.



Hopefully this design will autorotate on engine failure . (The Osprey cannot autorotate either). Otherwise it’s a very fast trip down. For obvious reason, ejection capability would be a bad idea. I’m still trying to understand if anyone would buy it. An electric engine will not allow a payload of more than the passenger and the “stealth” capability is lost once the blade tips reach max speed. It’s the propeller that makes most of the noise in a light airplane or helicopter with tip speeds approaching 500 mph.

If it does work, I guarantee the pilot will have one terrific crick in the neck. If it never leaves the drawing board, at least the animation was pretty good.

Can You Spot the Red Herring?

Lt. Kenneth Solosky, with 21 years in the NYPD, articulates the facts regarding general aviation as a security threat after the February light airplane crash in Austin Texas. Some politicians and a whole lot of the MSM continue to view light airplanes as terrorist weapons and a hole in homeland security. The shrill cry goes forth for more pilot and airport regulation.

As law enforcement professionals, we must ask ourselves, is general aviation a significant terror threat or just a red herring? If history is our guide, the answer is no; general aviation poses no more of a threat than any other vehicle such as a car or truck and indeed, perhaps is less of a threat. ……..Even if a plane was loaded with explosives, the damage could never approach the devastation caused by a large truck bomb such as used by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995….The weight limitations and relatively small cabin size of general aviation aircraft certainly limit their ability to carry a similar devastating deadly payload.

An informed voice of reason. Which is nice for a change.

Build It and They Will Fly

Homebuilt aircraft approved by the FAA have the “Experimental” designation. They must be at least 51 percent built by the individual as compared to factory fabrications. There are manifold reasons: the challenge, the reduced cost, the ability to customize. Many homebuilts use composite materials which are lighter and more fuel efficient. The downside? It takes time. Lots of it. Usually 2,000 to 3,000 hours and if you have a day job it might take 5 to 10 years and beyond. If you’re spending every spare moment building, when do you fly? There are also the stories of homebuilt planes that didn’t make it past the first flights, ending in a smoldering heap of debris. All that work down the drain. Of course if you were the pilot in command, that’s the least of your worries. As recently as last week:

"It looked like he was going to give me a real neat show with a swoop. As he started to come down yellow pieces just flew everywhere, he just exploded and then crashed down”. Another eyewitness said she saw the plane do a couple of loops just before its left wing blew apart.

Part of the problem associated with quality control is you’re hand crafting a “one-off”. No benefit of lessons learned in the production of dozens, sometimes hundreds with standard procedures along the way. Therefore, a pilot must fly between 25-40 hours of test flights in non-populated areas after passing the initial FAA airworthiness inspection. It would take a very brave person to fly even once in this.

Although I’ve always subscribed to the idea that sustained effort produces results, spending ten years on a flying project is like a very long time. Yet recently, my attention was grabbed while son #3 perused one of my EAA magazines and pointed to a two passenger kit plane. “Dad, we should build one of these”, he said. Within moments, thoughts wandered to selling the current homestead, moving to the country and setting up a pole barn workshop by the house with a grass strip in back. Some, like my wife's cousin, did exactly that - rebuilding sixteen vintage planes.

There are some who seek to recreate the terrific warbirds of years gone by , albeit replicas in smaller scale. Fellow flier Tom recently discovered there’s an effort to make a mini-mini B-17.

So what do you do when you’ve already built a Kitfox and a Georgia Special and your buddies (with the help of a few adult beverages) prod you to build “one last” experimental? If you are Jack Bally of Dixon, Illinois, you build a 1/3 scale B-17 Flying Fortress replica.

Ideas hatched with the help of “adult beverages” sometimes sound a little less viable the morning after. Still, Mr. Bally has made progress. There’s mini home built Mustangs, Warhawks, and Spitfires. So why not a B-17 the size of a two seat Cessna?



Because it's very much like the Shriners zooming around in their miniature cars in parades. It looks just a little strange when it's scaled back to extra small. I hope he succeeds. With ten years invested, it deserves to be in the air, not just on the ground.

Emergency Landing at Hilton Head

Sad Landing.

A 38-year-old father of two was jogging and listening to his iPod when he was hit from behind and killed by a small plane making an emergency landing on the beach.

Who knew that running with headphones might kill you? No doubt hard for the pilot to manage with an oil covered windscreen during an emegency landing. Tough situation for everyone.

H/T to Dan

Aerobatics in a Bi –Plane

Because that’s all they had in 1918. The book “Aerobatics” (you can view all 130 pages using the link) was written by Captain H. Barber and includes flying the “cartwheel”. My current recollection of cartwheels has a certain fatal quality but they meant something different in the way back. Must have had a whole lot of rudder authority to pull that off.



They would have been amazed at the aerial antics of the Extra 300.

Check It Out

Fuel sumps are located in strategic areas in general aviation aircraft to test what’s inside. Usually, this is to look for water contamination or debris. It pays to check what’s inside. Twice I had to have the fuel drained. Once due to an endless stream of sediment. Another time for color and smell. It had the appearance of Jet-A which would never do in an engine that burned 100 low lead. It’s rare but not impossible for an inexperienced lineman to make an error in judgment when filling aircraft. Fueling mistakes have stopped hundreds of engines in flight so I always check what the engine is consuming. You wouldn't want to eat something that you didn't know in advance was acceptable (for now, I'll exclude the topic of MRE's). Neither does your airplane engine. It’s a lesson I learned long ago but not in a plane.

During my junior year at college I had the experience of sharing a house with four other guys. Not exactly animal house but we all had our habits. One of the guys would gobble up our grocery budget usually after returning home late at night despite our protests that food was to share. Another one of the guys, brave enough to cook, would prepare a bowl of chicken salad for everyone, only to find the bowl sitting empty in the refrigerator the next morning. We decided to make the next “salad” using cat food. Next morning the bowl was again in the fridge. Empty. True story, but we had nothing to do with his next culinary treat. At another time, the guy ate two cakes of activated yeast thinking it to be the same as brewers yeast (a health food supplement). It’s not. We watched in amazement as he began to ferment before our eyes. I’ve never seen anyone burp non stop for an hour.

So remember to check . You may be getting something you just don’t want.

Child’s Play

Taking your children to work usually involves observing not doing.

An air traffic controller at one of the nation's busiest airport was suspended after his young son was permitted to give radio instructions to pilots. The controller at Kennedy Airport brought his daughter into the tower the next night. The man's daughter communicated with pilots twice.

LiveATC founder Dave Pascoe said: "I absolutely believe that this is being blown out of proportion. This is just a completely controlled situation. A child was being told exactly what to say." (listen to the recorded ATC exchange here)

Controlled, yes, but probably not a great idea during one of the busier times in the tower. Distractions can have consequences in this line of work. Six months ago a controller was placed on leave after his negligence led to a fatal crash between a helicopter and plane over the Hudson River. He was recorded joking on the phone with his girlfriend and failed to separate the aircraft. While I think it admirable that someone show their son or daughter what they do for a living, it’s not one of the places with a relaxed, laid back atmosphere. There’s too much at stake. I wouldn’t want an eight year old helping Dad or Mom on the flight deck for the same reason. Also, the image of a kid at the microphone isn’t likely to inspire confidence among the flying public.

Or maybe I should just lighten up. Get the kids to join in for the next conference call with company headquarters for laughs. Let me know how that works out for you.

World's 18 Strangest Airports

Here they are according to Popular Mechanics:

1: Kansai International Airport - Osaka, Japan
The airport is an artificial island 2.5 miles long and 1.6 miles wide—so large it's visible from space.

2: Gibraltar Airport - Gibraltar
Sometimes it's a road and sometimes it's a runway.

3: Madeira International Airport - Maderia, Portugal
Engineers extended the runway to 9000 feet by building a girder bridge atop about 200 pillars.

4: Don Mueang International Airport - Bangkok, Thailand
Looks like any other midsize airport but between the two runways is an 18-hole golf course.

5: Ice Runway - Antarctica
The real challenge is making sure that the weight of the aircraft and cargo doesn't break the ice.

6: Congonhas Airport - Sao Paulo, Brazil
"It becomes a challenge in terms of safety to just get the plane in there."

7: Courchevel International Airport - Courchevel, France
"You take off downhill and you land going uphill with an 18.5 percent grade.”

8: Princess Juliana International Airport - Simpson Bay, Saint Maarten
Not many airports are flanked by oceanfront property with tourists standing underneath.

9: Svalbard AirportSvalbard - Norway
A cluster of islands sitting in the Arctic Ocean. It’s the world's northernmost airport where tourists can book tickets.

10: Juancho Yrausquin Airport - Netherlands
The 1,300 foot runway is difficult even for Cessnas



11: Barra Airport - Barra, Scotland
When the tide comes in, the runway disappears.

12: Hong Kong International Airport Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong
A 3.2 square mile island made by merging two smaller islands with reclaimed land.

13: Toncontin International Airport - Tegucigalpa, Honduras
The runway is 7000 feet long in a valley surrounded by mountains.

14: Qamdo Bangda AirportQamdo - Tibet
The world's highest airport, more than 14,000 feet above sea level.

15: Dammam King Fahd International Airport - Dammam, Saudi Arabia
The largest airport in the world with over 300 square miles of desert.

16: Denver International Airport - Denver, Colorado
Has a 9200-panel solar farm and produces 3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.

17: Macau International Airport - Macau
A set of highways links the runway with the small island of Taipa.

18: Copalis State Airport - Grays Harbor County, Washington
The runway is located between the mouth of the Copalis River and a barrier of rocks. It’s submerged every time the tide rolls in.

My personal favorite was Meigs Field- the small island airport previously located near the city center of Chicago. It's gone but I'm willing to give Juancho Yrausquin a try.

Death in the Atlantic

'An Accident Like This Could Happen Again'

Spiegel has the summary.

One alarm after another lit up the cockpit monitors. One after another, the autopilot, the automatic engine control system, and the flight computers shut themselves off. "It was like the plane was having a stroke," …

The final minutes of flight AF 447 had begun. Four minutes after the airspeed indicator failed, the plane plunged into the ocean.

Investigators have finally pieced together sufficient evidence to unravel what happened during the last four minutes of Air France Flight 447, the ill fated flight from Rio to Paris. The key culprit: Pitot tube malfunction. All three airspeed indicators gave different readings and once that occurred, the flight computer decided to call it quits.

Flying through a thunderstorm is always a bad idea but there was apparently little latitude to divert based on fuel. Like many accidents, it involved a chain of events. They suspected this could possilby happen. And it did.

No Easy Days

Military aviation sifts with the finest of mesh screens for judgment and skill, leaving only the best qualified in the cockpit. The US Navy has an even finer mesh screen with fewer aircraft to command than the men and women in blue. Since the end of the Cold War, we have witnessed the “Incredible Shrinking Navy'' with fewer billets for pilot trainees with fierce competition for one of the most challenging jobs in the world. Plenty of lessons to be learned with lives and assets at stake in the air and on the ground. Courage is tested, missions completed and sometimes people even shoot back.

Naval Aviation is unique given the precision required during trapping an aircraft on a pitching deck. Arguably aviation's toughest maneuver is measured in inches and microseconds at the moment a jet lands crashes on deck. Add darkness for more excitement. A coworker dreaded night landings which never got any easier as he flew F-4’s off Yankee station. By his account, the preoccupation with landing accuracy at times overshadowed the importance attached to delivering ordnance on target (which is a little strange when you think about it). “No Easy Days” is a pretty good description and also a riveting movie and book. If you want more current (and excellent) sea stories, spend some time at this place.

As for WWII action, there’s a bit of it here:



Of course tearing off the empennage is plenty dramatic but some of the most visceral footage (for me) is half way into the clip. - Flying into a barrage of artillery during strafing missions. A gunfight with the Quick and the Dead.

I can shoot an ILS without it shooting back. Landing to minimums in IMC can lead to sweaty palms but that beats heck out of a steep approach into a hail of lead. So a big thanks to all our military aviation heroes, both past and present. Air superiority makes all the difference.

Hexicopter

While I know little about RC model aircraft, it was hard not to be impressed with the unique and unorthodox "Hexicopter". Not that I'd want one. It sounds like an angry swarm of bees. However, it has good payload, GPS and camera capabilities. A pretty good attempt from a hobbyist. Imagine the evolution of this idea with military backing. No, not another V-22 troop carrier but maybe a camera platform. Just bring earplugs.

H/T to Flyboy Tom

This Will Be My Final Landing

Today’s crash of a Piper Cherokee in Austin Texas made national news. The pilot was a man troubled by taxes, big government and corporations but unlike most of us, decided to show a little retribution. It leaves it its wake more fear mongering among the main stream media, casting another shadow on general aviation.

Bruce Landsberg, executive director of the AOPA Air Safety Foundation said. "The NTSB has found very few suicides involving GA aircraft - only 21 since 1983." That's an average of 1.1 suicide accidents per year, Landsberg noted. Three of the 21 involved student pilots; they had an average flight time of 61 hours. No ground injuries have resulted from any GA suicide accidents.

But there have been buildings. The Austin crash did relatively little damage not unlike the Cessna C172 that was smashed into a building eight years ago by Charles Bishop who also left behind a strange note.

Peter Garrison of Flying magazine captured the dark side of all this in a Feb 2005 article where he documented a number of stories involving Pilots Gone Sad. Invariably, it doesn’t involve hurtling planes at other people. Almost always it involves just the pilot.

The tower controller asked whether he would be able to get down and land, and the pilot replied, "This will be my final landing." He pushed the nose over, increased power, and dove into the runway.

No doubt, there will be the expected cry for more stringent regulations and increased security, casting aspersions on pilots as ticking time bombs. It all began when planes were associated with terrorism during 9-11. Since then, we’ve borne additional scrutiny. But for all of the hype, it’s important to remember it’s only one out of 600,000 good men and women.

A Primer on Primers

To gain some simulated instrument time I planned a hop with a CFII that I knew using his Cherokee 180. We departed the class D airspace to practice approaches at another towered field 20 miles to the South. The aircraft was quite unfamiliar. Instruments were laid out much differently. Trim was provided by an overhead crank and there was a push button starter. It was an older plane, reliable but not fuel injected, and included a primer and carburetor heat control. As has been said: “The devil’s in the details” so I try to follow checklists carefully. The run up and departure were uneventful as ATC steered us to the southwest. Soon, I received the anticipated vectors for ILS 9 while still at 3,000 feet. I captured the localizer just as Center cleared us for the approach with a rapid-fire set of instructions and a quick hand off to the tower. Down we go, descending quickly enough to intercept the glideslope before the final approach fix. I pitch down and retard the engine to get us into position. The glideslope needle begins to come alive on the CDI and I slow the decent only to find that I’ve reduced power a bit too much. To bring it back on track I ease the throttle forward. The engine starts to cough and sputter. A little more throttle and it seems to be dying with an increasing sink rate. While I’m grateful not to be in IMC, I’m not exactly happy to be in this plane in sunny weather either. Expectations are immediately downgraded from precision approach to a survivable one. I request permission to land, advising the tower that we’re having a little engine trouble. After switching on the boost pump, checking the fuel selector, Mixture, carb heat and magnetos I resigned myself to best glide with the engine below 1,000 rpm. It still sounded ominous but it was running. Sort of. Finally, I could see we’d make the threshold. I plopped it down and the engine provided sufficient power to taxi to one of the general parking areas.

After cutting the mixture and flipping off the master switch, I did what most people do with any troublesome engine. Pop open the hood (in this case the cowl) and peer inside hoping for the obvious. Mechanic's wrench, loose fittings, dead squirrel. Nothing. It looked fine. We tried another engine start but still had low RPM. Frankly, unless it ran really great, I’d just as soon leave it. There’s snow on the ground, it’s cold and an off airport landing in the middle of nowhere is just not inviting. Once more I get in the left seat but this time, I stopped at the line item that said "Primer-In and locked". Looking down, I noticed it was not all the way in. After locking it, I hit the starter and presto. Ran like a top. In aviation, there are many ways to screw up. Some big. Some small. The little goofs are just as lethal as the spectacularly idiotic ones. I had pushed on the primer to verify it was in. I should have pulled on it to make certain it was locked. Rookie mistake. Important enough that the FAA included it in this advisory circular.

If the primer pump handle is not locked in the closed position, raw fuel will continue to be drawn into the cylinders by the suction created in the affected cylinders during the intake cycle. The engine will run rough at low RPM, mimicking magneto problems.

The Really Cool Solution is FADEC – (full authority digital engine control) which I’ve greatly enjoyed flying in a much newer plane. It replaces magnetos, carburetor and mixture controls. Each engine cylinder is independently adjusted for optimum injection and timing. There is no primer. Later model aircraft all have fuel injection. Nevertheless, it wasn’t the planes fault. It was mine.

It could have been worse. This Air tractor , N3654T, collided with terrain and a fence during a forced landing in Minnesota. The pilot was spraying a field at an altitude of 5 to 10 feet AGL, when the engine ran rough, stopped, started, then stopped again. Post accident inspection of the airplane revealed the fuel primer control knob was not locked and it had backed out.

Never Again.

Lucky Man

The best thing that ever happened to me is pictured to my left 33 years ago. Cross country skiing for Valentine's Day with lunch at Whole Foods which is what she wanted and shopping afterwards. Some of the folks that eat there do love their tofu and wheat grass which is a bit much for me. The things you do for love.

She's worth it.

A Little Bit Nuts

My travels around the country took me to Meridian Mississippi , hopefully to drum up new business. My airport destination: Key Field. There's a small pax terminal next to the 186^th Air National Guard and NAS Meridian is 20 miles northeast.

Key Field was named after Fred and Al Key established an endurance record in their Curtiss Robin with 27 days aloft. A few displays in the small terminal area gave witness to their feat and it was scary stuff indeed at that time. Flying in shifts, the men maintained the plane by stepping outside on a catwalk that went around both sides of the engine. In those days, rocker arms had to be oiled but not usually while hanging on a scaffold with prop blast in your face at 3,000 feet. Fred actually fell overboard once and was saved by a strap.

Meanwhile, Fred had two mishaps while acting as crew. Once he was momentarily stunned when the heavy refueling hose slipped out of his hands and struck him in the face. Later, when he was on the catwalk greasing the engine rocker arms, Ole Miss hit a pocket of turbulent air, bucked and tossed him overboard.

An amazing story that proved air to air refueling would work using a cutoff valve similar in concept to those used to keep bombers and fighters aloft today. That was useful. This is not.

Chet and Matt Pipkin plan to set a new record for time aloft in an airplane, a record that currently sits at 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes and five seconds.

I really wish they wouldn't . It relegates general aviation to the same scrap heap as other strange world records including:

1. Heaviest weight lifted with a human beard: 130.2 lbs by a man in Lithuania


2. Fastest time to solve a Rubik Cube blindfolded: 5 minutes 42 seconds by Ralf Laue in Los Angeles, CA


3. Most figure eights with a kite: 2,911 figure eights in one hour set in 1988.


4. Longest midget toss: Yes, this is actually tossing a little person and it is an annual event. The record is 11 feet 5 inches.


5. Fastest Furniture: 87 mph. This sofa is actually street legal.

It won’t paint GA with a positive brush nor will it encourage people to become pilots. I’ve seen the current record holding airplane in the Las Vegas airport. 64 days back in 1959. It 's appropriate somehow in a city where multiple Elvis’s roam the streets. The Pipkins supposedly plan to raise money for charitable causes with the flight, which is admirable. They better raise a lot since the costs aren't trivial. I estimate 93,000 pounds of fuel at a cost of $73,000.

It’s not wrong to challenge yourself, to establish goals. Son #2 will train six months to compete in the Ironman this summer. Staying aloft in a light plane for more than two months without going anywhere is just another goofy stunt to break a record.

Escape Life's Gravity

That’s the tag line of the website: AirshowBuzz that EAA was good enough to highlight. If you like air show and air racing videos, historic movies, and photos then you should have a look. Top notch videos in high-definition with great production quality and content. Their latest ambitious project is a 26-episode animated series: Mike Da Mustang.

A global airshow search engine too! Of course if you're headed to Oshkosh, that's the only event you need to lock in anyway ;)

Tough Day at the Home 'drome

Authorities are still investigating what caused the twin-engine Piper Aerostar to crash into a residential neighborhood minutes after taking off from Aurora Municipal Airport. Air traffic controllers lost contact after he notified he had reached 1,300 feet (Wilko's note: this is MSL-actually only 600 feet off the ground) and they cleared him to climb to 4,000 feet. It was a foggy night with about half a mile of visibility, according to the NTSB.

A friend of mine, who works for the FAA, mentioned he was on the scene shortly after this particularly violent airplane crash by my home airport two weeks ago. Not all airplane crashes result in a debris field that size, leaving only small remnants of the plane. As I was biting into my scrambled eggs he said” There were body parts everywhere. I saw legs and an arm but we never did find one of the heads”. I put my fork down, the eggs losing much of their appeal. “Did he lose an engine” I asked. “You know. Asymmetric thrust on a twin at low altitude is hard for most people to handle.” He replied that it wasn’t engine failure. There was nothing official but it seems the pilot possessed a low amount of instrument time.

And that, my friend, underscores the difference between legal and proficient. You might complete the required minimum amount of approaches and holding patterns but it takes consistent practice to stay out of trouble. An autopilot can help, most Aerostars have them. It takes very little time for a plane to hit the deck at that altitude if you aren't glued to the instrument panel.

None of us knew the pilot and passenger. They were from Florida, travelling to Denver, but it’s somewhat personal when it happens at your airport.

Blast From the Past

Through electronic serendipity I was reunited (on-line) with a high school friend. We had both moved and lost touch in the way back. Thought I’d seen his name in a Time Magazine article, flying Special Forces missions in the first gulf war. Many years later I find he retired as a bird colonel and was large and in charge of Air Force Special Operations at Hurlburt(AFSOC). It takes a good deal of effort to rate O-6 with that sort of responsibility. He was a smart guy and driven to achieve but I never suspected that he’d be in that career path.

Great to hear from you . That was me back in the first war I started flying search and rescue helicopters, was an instructor at the school house in Albuquerque, took a short staff tour at the Pentagon, went through fixed-wing transition (not a fun thing to pull those G’s with frustrated fighter pilots for instructors) then went into special operations. I was the Operations Group Commander for all SOF aircraft in the AF (had 11 squadrons) so I got checked out in the AC-130 gunship, the Talon II, and flew some soviet stuff.

How cool is that? While I’m proud of the path I’d chosen, I’d love to hear his operational flying stories in the Pave Low. Some of his adventures are featured in Shadow Warriors and The Commandos. He later served as Operations Group Commander of AFSOC during the time of the famous Horse Soldiers with 94 aircraft and 1,400 Airmen under his auspices. There’s probably a good narrative behind “flew some Soviet Stuff”, like why was the U.S. flying Russian MI-8’s?

For both of us, it all sort of worked out with careers and families. However, Bob still gets to play with some cool toys. BZ Bob. Dinner’s on me when I make it to Florida.

Don't try this at home

...or anywhere else.
A game of chicken with car and plane ended badly.First the pilot's skills were not all the good. Second, The pilots judgement was not all that good. A stupid pilot trick that will result in suspension or revocation of a hard-earned pilots license.

Flying For Dummies

At last. Flying 101. For the rookie passenger. Kulula Airlines is based in South Africa and has been around since 2001 but recently introduced a new paint scheme. Now you know where the “Big Cheese” sits and an arrow points to the aircraft's registration, as the "Secret code." Shanair captured the details.









I can’t wait until they introduce the FAR / AIM for Dummies!

H/T to Dr. Tom

Common Sense

It was good to hear the White House dropped the plan to impose user fees on general aviation and stay with the current tax on tickets and fuel . This will help prevent many more airports from closing. The 5,300 general aviation airports in the U.S. connect with others in the system in a way that the large 22 airports simply cannot by themselves and provides more capacity so that cargo and passengers don’t further clog the class B system. New levies on the already beleaguered aviation industry would have also reduced available jobs. Taxes aren’t the answer to every problem. Thanks go out to the AOPA, EAA, GAMA and others for their persistence and hard work.

The Pride of France

The Concorde Trial and the July 2000 Crash

Money is not a major issue, since the victims' families accepted settlements long ago. The plane's airworthiness is not at stake: The jet was retired by both Air France and British Airways in 2003.

The trial starts tomorrow, and most likely continue until May. If convicted, Continental Airlines may get fined $500,000 and two of its employees will face up to three years of prison, as well as designers of the plane, who prosecutors say knew that the plane's fuel tanks could be susceptible to damage from foreign objects,

Indeed the plane was fragile. Seven blown out tires from 1979 through 1981 including two incidents causing severe engine damage. However, prosecutors are determined to pin the blame on the titanium strip that fell off the Continental DC-10 which was found 20 feet ahead and 90 feet to the right of where the tire blew out. Continental officials were frustrated by the lack of cooperation from the French, including an unwillingness to share data and the immediate resurfacing of the Concorde's takeoff runway after the crash. Ten years later, the trial seems less about criminal justice than assuaging national pride.

Kinda Cool

Winter flying would be great if it wasn’t cold. Unless you’re someone who flies in Southern California, it means engine pre heating and wing de-icing. No longer is it legal to use a broom to remove frost. Spray on glycol is the way to go and frankly that beats the pants off dipping your hand in a bucket of radiator fluid. I want my wife to enjoy flying in small planes so I leave her indoors while I remove the tie down chains, fuel up and preflight. I like having her along .

Props and lifting surfaces all work better with dense air. There’s more horsepower and more lift. The plane climbs steeper and cruises faster. Best of all, unless a front is coming through, the air is smooth and stable which makes happy passengers. Upon slipping the surly bonds, earth comes into view with the sum of its parts. Forests instead of just trees. Mostly though, everything looks….white. Rivers become huge pythons snaking across fields. Enormous wind turbines are reduced to tiny pinwheels dotting the landscape. Mrs. Wilko was kind enough to handle the camera.

Cool flying is cool.

A Pilot’s Worst Nightmare

During lunch with a fellow GA pilot I asked about the toughest airplane problem he encountered flying his Piper Lance. “Fire in flight” was the chilling response. A wiring problem that began smoldering at altitude. He was fortunate to have enough time and a close airport to make an emergency landing, especially since he had no extinguisher on board.

I can’t think of anything worse. First you need to deal with the fire, and then the adventure of making an emergency descent and landing. When’s the last time you practiced a maximum spiraling descent? Then, after building up all that airspeed, find a landing area, probably off airport, and bleed off all that speed to make a survivable crash landing. If you were lucky, the quick descent might blow out the fire. If not, it gets you closer to terra firma before you have in flight barbeque.

This pilot (begins page 2) did everything right in an incredibly close call while flying at night:

The instrument panel lighting suddenly dimmed momentarily and then returned to normal brightness. (The passenger) smelled something burning and noticed that “it’s getting hot back here.” I could see what appeared to be a small, orange dot, centered on the lower right-rear seat cushion. As I watched, it grew rapidly as flames burned through the leather seat material…. As I continued the descent, a highway overpass loomed out of the darkness. The interstate was easy to find with all the headlights from cars and trucks, even though there were no streetlights along this stretch of road. With excess airspeed I reduced my rate of descent to pass over the bridge and then brought in full flaps as I reduced the power to idle. I touched down on the centerline of the northbound lanes.

The passengers made it. The plane- not so much. The pilot attributed his survival to having aircraft systems and emergency procedures down cold. Turns out that the rear seat springs shorted out the battery terminals when the rear seat was improperly repaired. Once again, no fire extinguisher on board.

My first personal experience was after climbing through 2,000 feet in a C182 after engine repairs. The cockpit filled with the smell of fuel vapor. I can’t say I was scared but I was focused and plenty nervous. I awaited the inevitable heat coming through the firewall and hoped to avoid any sparks from the panel that would create a small Hindenburg. It was hard not to recall an accident at my airport that roasted an award-winning E-Racer in flight. Fortunately, I was able to RTB and shut down without incident. A fire is more likely to occur under the cowl in an older plane due to age or faulty maintenance. A cherry-red turbocharger or a crack in the exhaust system can ignite the spray from a broken fuel or oil line to create an impromptu blast furnace. The second time involved toasting a bird’s nest in the engine compartment after reaching cruise altitude. You can’t easily access the engine compartment in a Skylane (unlike other planes) so while it was my responsibility, I didn’t look under the hood before launching.

The most common fire is one that erupts during engine start. A cold weather start is perfect for an engine fire, particularly if you get carried away with the primer in a plane without fuel injection.

It’s not just piston engines. There was a surprise in the L-29 jet as well. One cold morning, after climb out, it was getting cold. After turning on the heater, the cockpit immediately filled with black smoke. (Black smoke usually signals an oil fire, fuel usually burns bright orange). As soon as the pressurization and heating system deactivated the smoke cleared. We found out later there was a buildup of dust on the heat exchanger, so when the heater was activated, the bleed air from the engine caused it to burn off.

Lessons learned? Preflight carefully, memorize the in flight fire checklist; carry an extinguisher and practice like your life depends on it. Sometimes it does.