The House of Rapp

When is an airline’s livery more than just a bunch of paint? When it makes a buzz on the internet which goes far beyond the likes of aviation geeks like me.

I’d never heard of South African carrier Kulula Airlines until today. And odds are, you hadn’t either. Given the chance, though, I’d fly with them in a heartbeat just based on what’s in these pictures. Typical male response, eh? Only concerned with exterior appearances!

Seriously though, it speaks volumes about Kulula that they set aside the laws of corporate branding long enough to acknowledge the oddity of the aviation lexicon. To the average passenger, it’s undoubtedly an off-putting jumble of terms, acronyms, and abbreviations. They acknowledge this, and do it with a sense of humor which will bring a smile to neophytes and veterans alike.

Most American carriers wouldn’t have the chutzpah to green light this sort of thing. They tend see the exterior spaces of an airliner fuselage as a place to sell advertising to the highest bidder. I’ve seen theme parks, NBA basketball franchises, states, magazines, and other entities advertised. Perhaps it’s part of the financial equation and simply a necessity to keep the airline profitable.

Whatever the reason, I salute Kulula. Perhaps there’s a moral here: putting the fun and enjoyment back into aviation can help the bottom line, too. Here’s hoping “Flying 101″ is viral enough to bring some of that thinking up to our hemisphere.

The introduction of computerized displays (also known as “glass panels”, or in the FAA’s parlance, Technologically Advanced Aircraft or “TAA”) into general aviation cockpits can mean serious consequences for those unprepared to deal with the complexities involved.

Sure, there’s a lot of power and capability present in those computers. They can provide you with wind speed and direction, beautiful color moving maps, an entire continent worth of aeronautical data, and so much more. Terrain databases, traffic alerts, sophisticated autopilots, GPS roll steering, highway-in-the-sky, and so much more. Things we probably haven’t even though of yet.

Amazing stuff. Of course, it can be a bit daunting for those who haven’t reached a particular skill level with the glass. Information overload is common, even in experienced pilots. I see this a lot in the latest generation of G1000 panels; there is so much information on the Primary Flight Display that it can get overwhelming.

As always, the weakest link in the cockpit is usually the guy flying the plane. One thing pilots of all experience levels have to watch for is what I call the “junk in, junk out” syndrome. The computers will do exactly what you tell them to do. If, for example, you input SLI as a waypoint and aren’t careful, you can end up going to South American instead of Seal Beach, because there is an identically named navaid on that continent. All it takes is a wrong button push and poof!, you’re on your way.

This kind of thing is common with intersections because they use five letters. Key in DRIFT instead of DRIFY and you’ll end up east of Philadelphia instead of south of Long Beach, CA.

I’ve done this several times myself. The only way to prevent it is to double check that the courses and distances make sense.

Computers have the ability to smooth and simplify our lives. They also have the ability to cause major problems. Anyone who has ever cc:’d an email to the wrong person(s) can tell you about that.

In aviation, they can cause funny things to happen even outside the cockpit. Here’s one such example: a friend of mine runs a well-known aviation weather site, and his system choked on an odd identifier. Turns out someone at the FAA cut-and-paste into the wrong window, and his laundry list of personal tasks ended up in the FAA’s international NOTAM system.

You’ve gotta see this NOTAM that popped up a couple of weeks ago, and it just tripped up our decoder today…

This is for ICAO identifier “MIKE” — which as far as I can tell is just a guy named Mike!!

Wish this was just a joke, but it’s actually in the FAA’s international NOTAM system!!!!!

0014/09 – 0014 NOTAMR 0009 0013 A) MIKE PART 1 OF 2 B) WIE C) UFN E)

THINGS TO DO LIST IN NOVEMBER 2009 AT:
1607 JAMES ISLAND AVE., N.M.B.
BRING: MESUREMENTS OF: OUR BEDROOM SET, ETC.
TURN ON THE HEAT VICE A/C.
MASTER BATHROOM/KITCHEN PAINT: CLOSET/WINDOW MOULDING.

I OWE JOE/JOE FOR PALM FERTILIZER/TRIMMING, IF DONE??
BUY: GRILL, PRESSURE WASHER AT LOWE’S (NMB), NEXT SPRING (2010).
10 AZALEAS, OR FLOWERS (NMB), NEXT SPRING (2010).
CURTAIN ROD FOR UP-STAIRS BATHROOM??

TO DO: ME, HANDY-ANDY, PAINTER??
STAIN/OR WAX BANNISTER?
SPARE BEDROOM: PAINT INSIDE TRIM IN CLOSET.
CLEAN UP THE PLANT IN THE GARAGE, NEXT SPRING (2010).
FERTILIZE LAWN/PLANTS, NEXT SPRING (2010).
HANDY ANDY, NEXT SPRING (2010).

(ED) CAULK/PAINT OUTSIDE WHERE NEEDED.
INSTALL SHELVING IN ALL UPSTAIRS CLOSETS.
RE-HANG BALCONY DOOR LIGHT FIXTURES.
LAUNDRY ROOM: INSTALL CABINET/SHELF ABOVE.
CLEAN OUT THE GARAGE DOORS: BRAD/BRADY, CHRIS DOORMAN.

(AUGUST 09)
CALL EXTERMINATOR FOR APPMT: 843-365-5120 (CONWAY PEST CONTROL)
CALL A/C TECHNICAN FOR SEPT. CK ON HEAT PUMPS, NEXT SPRING (2010).

You’ve gotta admire the guy’s level of organization. His home sounds lovely. Now if he could just do something about those “fat fingers”…

As I mentioned in my last post, some captain upgrades and new hires are finally appearing at Dynamic.

For the past year and a half, things had been completely static. I was one of the last people to upgrade to the left seat, and those who were stuck as first officers eventually started to get discouraged. It’s hard to blame them. They work extremely hard for $11 an hour (yeah, you read that right) day in and day out. Thankfully, for those who stuck around, their patience has begun to pay off. And for those who haven’t upgraded yet, at least they see some light at the end of the tunnel.

The down side to this is that I have lost some of my favorite first officers. I’m glad they’ve upgraded, but today I started to realize how much I’d come to rely on their experience, not to mention the fun factor of flying with them. Then again, I get to play a part in the training of some upcoming pilots, and that’s pretty neat too.

Today I was flying with one of the “new guys”. It was an atypical day because I clocked in at 6:00 a.m. I normally get an early start, but not THAT early. We were cranking at that hour because a ceremony would be taking place later in the day to honor a soldier whose body was being returned home from Afghanistan. During the ceremony, which was to occur in the middle of our work day, the base would be on “quiet hours”, meaning no aircraft operations were permitted.

My first officer and I had taxied out to the runway for our second flight. We lined up, completed our final checks, set power, and released the brakes. Everything was normal for a few seconds. Then, as we accelerated down the runway, a very large hawk came into view. He was sitting in the middle of the runway with his back to us, wings folded majestically. He didn’t seem to be doing anything special, just sitting there.

My FO (who has only a few flights under his belt in the BE90) asked if he should abort. I said no. My feeling about birds is that they generally get out of the way. Those that don’t are not going to be avoided by maneuvering, especially in something the size of a King Air. It’s akin to a scuba diver trying to out-swim a sea lion under water. We move at a comparatively glacial pace, and if they want to avoid us, they can jink and jank in ways we can only dream of.

And in this case, I don’t think we could have stopped in time anyway, even with full reverse and hard braking. I’d rather hit the bird than try and steer around it in a 10,000 lb. King Air and end up veering off the runway.

We seem to hit birds fairly frequently at Los Alamitos. The base — along with the adjacent Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station — is some of the last open space in the area, and it attracts a lot of wildlife. Now as to why the wildlife that flies seems to enjoy hanging out around the runway, you got me.

So as I mentioned, the hawk was sitting on the runway centerline with his back to us. I’m sure he knew we were coming. A King Air with the props turning at 2200 RPM is pretty loud. Plus we have two alternating flashing landing lights on each wingtip and another one on the nose gear. In fact, I know the bird saw us coming, because he actually turned his head 90 degrees and looked at us as we approached!

By now you’ve probably guessed the hawk elected to make a stand against the five-ton turboprop, and in the words of the Knight Templar, he chose… poorly. We heard a distinctive thump as the half of the hawk which wasn’t left on the runway hit the right main landing gear leg.

We rotated, the FO called for gear retraction, and I selected… nothing. The gear handle wouldn’t move. So I pushed the downlock override, selected gear up, and was rewarded with red lights, warning horn, and no gear movement. Mmm-hmmm. I lowered the gear handle and immediately got three green lights. Down and locked.

Remembering rule #1 (always fly the plane), I elected to monitor the FO as he flew and ignore the gear until we could get to a higher altitude. Once off the coast, I briefed the FO: he would focus on flying the airplane and look for traffic; I would troubleshoot the gear and handle the radios.

There were no indications of blown circuit breakers or other failures. No reason to pump the gear manually, it was already down. There is a checklist for failure to extend, but nothing for a failure to retract. I suspected that the bird strike had done something to the squat switch, because the aircraft was reacting like I had raised the landing gear lever with the plane sitting on the ground.

I called our maintenance shop and after a few queries, they said that if it was definitely down and locked, leave it that way and return. So that’s what we did. I elected to make a fly-by of the tower just to have them look at that right gear leg and see if there was any obvious sign of damage, flat tire, or other abnormality. They didn’t see anything amiss, so we returned and landed uneventfully. Well, aside from the trail of emergency vehicles which followed us to the ramp.

We moved our load to another aircraft and had an uneventful flight. At the end of the day, I got with the mechanic who put our broken bird up on jacks, and what they found was that the hawk had bent part of the squat switch — a device which detects when the airplane’s weight comes off the wheels — in such a way that it was locked in place and always thought the plane was on the ground. An easy fix. And they also found the hawk on the runway. Or should I say, half of it. Apparently our prop cut the bird cleanly in half.

What I learned today (or should I say, re-learned) is that rule #1 really works. Fly the airplane, no matter what. When something goes wrong, there’s often an irresistible urge to do something, fix something, check for that breaker, try the gear retraction juuuuust one more time. In a busy terminal area when you’re low to the ground with the extra drag of the landing gear reducing your climb rate and a brand new low-time first officer flying the airplane, the best course of action is frequently to ignore the problem and just fly.

Hello there. Yeah — you. The one who thought I was MIA/AWOL/just plain dead.

I will be the first to admit that I’ve been remiss in keeping my site up to date. As a former professional web developer, the kiss of death for any site in my bookmark list was always when a site was no longer updated on a timely basis. Sort of the way this one has been of late. After all, why should I pay more attention to a site than the owner does?

So who knows what sort of readership I still have left for the House of Rapp — if any.

In my defense, however, I’ve got a great excuse. I went from being unattached to dating to engaged to married in a little over a year. If you know anything about me, you’ll know I’m very methodical about important matters, and this sort of thing is uncharacteristic, to say the least. However, it’s definitely the best thing that’s ever happened, too.

My fiancee — er, I mean “wife” (I’m still getting used to that!) — and I just returned from a fantastic ten day honeymoon in Hawaii. My only experience with the 50th state had come from a few visits I’d made to Honolulu when I was a kid. And Kristi had never been to Hawaii at all. I explained that Honolulu was basically a major metropolitan area and might not impart the romantic solitude we were seeking. So we ended up honeymooning on Maui, and what a great decision that was! Not nearly as sleepy as Kauai, but far less urban than Oahu.

Anyway, the past months have involved working, planning a destination wedding in San Luis Obispo, registering, the honeymoon, and of course the process of combining two households. My routine has been anything but normal, so finding time to write has been scarce. I aim to change that, however.

OK, you’re probably here because of an interest in aviation. So, on the flying front, I’m still flying King Airs for Dynamic Aviation. For the past 18 months or so, there really hasn’t been any movement in the pilot ranks. No upgrades, no new hires. But over the past few weeks we’ve had three upgrades, an announcement of a new base manager, and other developments.

I’m not sure this portends any sort of upswing in the overall aviation sector, however. These are mainly replacements for existing King Air captains who are moving on to other bases or jobs within the company. Nobody I’m aware of is being hired by airlines, fractionals, or charters. In fact, Netjets, the 500 pound gorilla of the Subpart K world, just announced it was laying off about 500 pilots. So the pain continues. The Netjets news was particularly disheartening to me, because flying for them is my ultimate career goal.

Aerobatic competition has been nil for the past year. Sad, but with the move to the Advanced category, I really don’t feel good about just jumping into things. I want to ensure I can fly the sequences safely and be competitive. Do it right or don’t do it at all. That’s my philosophy. I’ve done some judging, coaching, and instruction, just not much competing.

The RV transition training has been picking up nicely. I think I’m starting to get a stronger reputation as a Socal guy that knows RVs. The next step is really for me to get a side-by-side model — probably an RV-6 — that I can use for transitions. The problem with using the student’s aircraft is that often it’s not available. It either hasn’t been purchased, or the builder hasn’t made the first flight yet. I’ve started to delve into what’s required for an FAA training exemption so that I can hire the aircraft out for these flights. Without that exemption, it is not permissible to rent an Experimental airplane.

So that’s the story. Thanks for sticking with me and being patient. I’ll leave you with a link to a web site I created for the wedding. It’s got quite a few photos, stories, and other stuff on there. Our wedding was aviation-themed, so you’ll at least want to get a look at the photo of the cake.

The fine folks at Applemoon have put together a lovely slide show of photos from our shoot earlier this month. As a Sinatra fan, I thought the sound track was a nice touch. It’s also the title of our wedding web site.

http://applemoonphotography.myshowit.com/krisitronengagementslideshow

We’ve gotta narrow it down to about 20 pictures for our album, and that’s not going to be easy! So many of them turned out beautifully that it’ll be a shame to pick only 20. Oh well — that’s certainly better than the alternative!

I thought I was creative with a camera, but even after 4500 hours of flying, I never came up with any of the stuff they thought of. The photographers commented many times on how they could have spent all day out there on the ramp because airplanes present so many interesting photographic possibilities.

You can see from the slide show that they took advantage of many of these options. Wings, struts, cabanes, flying wires, chromed spinners, gull-wing doors, and all sorts of funky curves throughout the fuselage. We ran out of time long before they ran out of ideas. The fact that they don’t spend all their time around aircraft probably let them come to the shoot with a fresh perspective, whereas I see the aircraft every day, so I overlook many of the details they immediately noticed.

The beauty of digital photography is that you can shoot to your hearts content without driving up the cost of the photos since there’s no film to purchase, process, develop, store, etc. I’m not sure how many pictures they took in total, but it may have been over a thousand. Both of them were shooting all day long.

Again, many thanks to Michael & Maren for the great work!