The House of Rapp

Aviation is a fascinating, almost secret world. To those on the outside, it basically consists of airliners and… uh, more airliners, I guess.

When people learn that I’m a professional pilot, they invariably ask which airline I fly for. When I tell them I don’t fly for an airline, they say “ohhh” in that sad empathetic tone reserved for downtrodden, second class citizens.

Little do they know there’s an entire world of flying out there, much of which does not involve an endless series of occupied gates, surly passengers, overcrowded airports, corporate mergers, pay cuts, bankruptcies, and nights spent away from home.

One of the things I’m most frequently asked about by those who dig a little deeper into my flying career is my work for the “Medfly program” here in Southern California. What is it? Why is it needed? And what the heck is a Medfly, anyway?

The short version: the program is a cooperative effort between the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to control the Mediterranean Fruit Fly population here in the state.

Medflies are not native to the state of California. On the contrary, they are highly destructive to more than 400 varieties of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and other crops. Keep in mind that agriculture is California’s largest industry and California is by far the largest economic engine in the country, and you can understand how these little insects could cause some serious damage. I’ve heard that our program, which costs about $25 million per year, saves more than a billion dollars in crop damage.

In the early 80’s, the Medfly problem even cost the state’s governor his job. Medfly eradication in those days was done with malathion, a controversial pesticide which was sprayed over populated areas by a fleet of helicopters. Then-Governor Jerry Brown claimed the pesticide was not harmful, but the public was skeptical, and at the very least, it damaged the finish on cars left outside during spraying operations.

Rather than run for a third term, Governor Brown ran for U.S. Senate but was defeated by Pete Wilson, in part due to extremely poor public opinion of the way he handled the Medfly outbreak.

Most people who lived in southern California during that period assume I must be spraying malathion, but that practice ended a long time ago. Today, we use a non-pesticide method called the “sterilized insect technique”. Basically, male flies are raised in captivity and irradiated to sterilize them. Then they are released from aircraft, and these sterile males mix with any wild female population. Their attempts to breed are futile, and without any reproductive capability, that generation of flies dies off. The program releases flies in the southern California area as a preventative measure even when there are no major outbreaks.

One of the earliest questions I had about the program was why it was necessary here in the L.A. basin. There’s very little agriculture left in this area due to the high population density. Wouldn’t it be better to drop flies in the San Joaquin Valley where most of the farms are located? I was told that although there’s little agriculture in the Los Angeles basin, there are a lot of immigrants and cargo coming into California via the roads, ships, and airports, and that’s how most of the wild Medflies find their way into our fair state. It’s also why there are agricultural inspection stations on the way into California.

If you’d like to read the California Department of Food & Agriculture’s official explanation of the program, they have a detailed breakdown of how it all works on their web site. Rather than re-hash that, I’ll give you a photographic look at the program from a pilot’s perspective.

By the way, I should note that I don’t work for the CDFA. I work for a company called Dynamic Aviation, which is contracted by CDFA to handle the actual flying. The pilots, mechanics, and aircraft are Dynamic assets. It’s a fascinating company to work for, but I’ll save the company details for a future post.

OK, here we go! The day starts at 4:45 a.m. Yes, you read that right. I get up, take a shower, eat breakfast, make a brown bag lunch, check weather, and head out the door by 6:00 a.m. But when that alarm goes off at 4:45, I always wonder what the hell I’m doing up at that hour.

It used to be a lot harder to work this schedule when I was also singing for Opera Pacific. Every now and then I’d have a rehearsal or performance the night before which wouldn’t allow me to get to bed before midnight at the earliest, and then have to get up at 4:45 the next morning. Ugh.

I don’t have any photos from the next thing, but I arrived on base at about 6:30 a.m. to start the dispatching tasks for the day: checking & printing weather, issuing flight assignments, coordinating with the CDFA personnel, filing flight plans, and basically doing a lot of paperwork. That’s the one constant in aviation: paperwork.

After that, I proceed to the flight line and join the other guys in performing the kind of mundane task you don’t see in Top Gun: washing an aircraft. Everyone pitches in, pilots, mechanics, etc. I don’t mind it, because it’s a chance to watch the sun rise, joke around with the other crews, and stretch out a bit before the 6-7 hours of flying which follow. Hours of sitting in a seat fairly motionless, I might add:

After the wash, the aircraft is towed back to the flight line and the crews start pre-flighting their aircraft. We typically send out four or five aircraft per day. Each aircraft will fly two or three flights totaling five to seven hours of flight time. So that’s 25-35 hours of flying for our fleet each day, and we do it seven days a week.

This is Tim, my first officer for the day, doing the towing duties. Like many of the pilots at Dynamic, Tim is also an A&P mechanic, meaning he can fix the planes as well as break them. I can only break them… but in my defense, I do it very well.

We operate out of a military base which sits on some prime real estate near the ocean right on the border between L.A. and Orange counties. It’s a “Joint Forces Training Base”, whatever that means. We just call it “Los Alamitos”.

For a military airfield, it has remarkably little flying activity. There are some helicopters based here, and occasionally the President, F-18s, or other aircraft will fly in for a while. Sometimes a civilian 737 will fly in to drop of soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan. During the annual fire season, military Blackhawks are sometimes pressed into service to fight the fires.

But for the most part, we are the main users of the base’s runways. In 800 hours of flying off this air base, I’ve yet to see another non-Dynamic aircraft taxiing at the same time as me anywhere on the airfield.

Here’s a pair of T-45A Goshawk jets near the wash rack:

Within about 15 minutes, our aircraft is prepared for departure. Fuel and oil checked, chocks and covers removed, dispersal equipment checked, cockpit setup complete, and we’re hooked up to an external generator to keep the refrigeration equipment cold. The flies are kept at about 40 degrees so that they don’t try to escape from the box. At this point, we’re just waiting for the CDFA personnel to arrive with our cargo.

You’ll notice the interior has been stripped out of this aircraft. These airplanes are ex-military U-21A turboprops — basically an unpressurized King Air 90. The passenger seats are replaced with a refrigeration and auger system used to distribute the flies. We also have upgraded avionics, wig-wag landing lights, traffic detection systems, and other modifications.

The “Restricted” placard indicates that this aircraft is certified in the Restricted category (due to our installing non-aviation equipment) and cannot be used to carry passengers or non-essential personnel.

In these photos we have the cargo door open and are waiting for our load. Notice the fly chutes hanging down from the belly of the aircraft in the second photo. Also, note the power cord which is providing electricity to the refrigeration unit.

Here the CDFA guys have arrived with our box. This thing contains several million flies. The sterilized ones we drop have an orange dye on them for ease of identification when they show up in the little fly traps placed around Southern California. We load the box, fill out some paperwork to confirm the load weight and the regions we’re headed to, as well as an ETA for our second flight, close the door, run some checklists, and off we go!

According to my watch in the photo below, it’s about 9:45 a.m. and we’ve probably been in the air for about an hour and forty-five minutes. The fuel panel shows the tanks are still fairly full. I don’t know why I took this picture, except perhaps to show some part of the aircraft for a reason I’ve long since forgotten.

Here’s the front office. The panel is fairly standard, with flight instruments in front, two rows of engine gauges to the right of them. And in the center a stack of Garmin radios. We have two transponders, so as per Murphy’s Law, we will never, EVER have a transponder failure.

The equipment which probably looks most foreign to the pilots among you are the camera and the red LED-thingie above the annunciator panel. The camera is so we don’t miss any breaking news from CNN about new TFRs. And the LEDs are for the laser light show which accompanies the flying music on our iPods.

Um, or not. Actually, the camera allows is to verify that flies are actually dropping from the aircraft. The light bar on top of the glareshield is part of the AGNAV system. This system was originally designed for cropdusting. It indicates how far off the desired flight path we are at any given moment.

In the photo below, it indicates our ground track is 181 degrees true, and that we’re 64 feet to the right of the course centerline. The LEDs in the middle are a form of Course Deviation Indicator. Cropdusters need this because they can’t be looking down at a computer screen when they’re flying 10′ off the ground.

Here’s a wider photo of the entire panel, which I undoubtedly took on my way back from the ‘loo. Yeah, if only. We don’t have a bathroom onboard this aircraft. I was probably checking the fly box to get an idea of how much longer we’d be in the region dropping flies.

Anyway, the light bar now indicates we’re flying a true ground track of 3 degrees and are 41 feet right of the desired course line.

We are required to keep the aircraft within 150′ of the course line, 100′ of the desired altitude, and maintain 140 knots indicated airspeed +0/-5 knots. That’s not hard to do… for a while. But try doing it when you’ve been in the air for seven hours already. Fatigue? Yeah, it gets tiring.

Thankfully, we have two pilots on board and can switch off. That’s not to say the PNF (pilot-not-flying) can just sit around. The PNF has to operate the radios, scan for traffic, operate the dispersal equipment, monitor the pilot who is doing the flying, and do the required paperwork for each pass.

Here Tim is flying the aircraft while I’m… well, apparently taking a photograph. Keep in mind most of our operations take place in the Los Angeles basin, the most highly congested airspace in the world. We operate close to terrain, at low altitudes under the LAX localizer, and in all sorts of odd places you don’t normally find airplanes. We need to do that to ensure a proper coverage of medflies. I believe we drop them at the rate of something like 32,500 flies per linear mile.

The system works well, but it does require a high level of vigilance from the pilots. The Los Angeles airspace was not designed to accommodate our kind of flying, but what we do is important enough that the controllers have maps of our regions and we have an excellent working relationship with them, often operating in Bravo airspace where other aircraft would not be allowed entry.

When we reach the end of a line (or “pass”, as we call it), we reverse course and fly the next line according to the data provided by the CDFA. Most of our regions are flown on north/south or east/west courses, but occasionally terrain will dictate an oddball course, such as out by Lake Elsinore.

Anyway, here we are in the middle of a right turn. Notice the attitude indicator, which shows about a 50 degree bank. Pretty steep for a King Air. We are allowed up to 60 degrees of bank by company policy. It’s hard on the airplanes, and they’re old. And we fly in heavy turbulence at times. So the aircraft get frequent spar inspections.

I don’t know the details, but General Electric apparently has a division that does this type of inspection using some high tech equipment. I’ve seen the van come out and do something to the airplanes, but I’ve never paid enough attention to really know all the details. However, I take comfort in knowing that the same mechanics who turn wrenches on these aircraft also fly them.

Well, after a couple of hours on station, I go back and check the fly box to see what’s left. In this photo you can just see some residual flies clinging to the side of the box. They don’t fly around — remember, it’s 40 degrees in that box. They just sit there, even when the box is opened up. Looks like we’re out of flies, so it’s time to head back to base to refuel, take a 20 minute lunch break, and then do it all over again.

At the end of the day, the aircraft has to be refueled, post-flight inspection completed, cockpit secured, the augers cleaned out, paperwork completed, and more. When we’re done, the ramp looks neat and tidy:

It’s worth noting that not everyone at Dynamic gets to fly every day. There are two types of pilots: those who are mechanics, and those who aren’t. I’m a part-time, non-A&P captain, which means I fly all the time I’m there. Full-time mechanic/pilots split their work week, half the time in the air, and half on the ground doing maintenance work on the fleet:

Anyway, we’re pretty much done with work by 4:00 p.m. or so. Sometimes bad weather will cause us to work later than scheduled and we won’t get out of there until 5:00 or so, but that’s a rarity. We clock out, and voilia! The day is done.

These photos were taken by the crane operator during salvage of the US Airways Flight 1549 aircraft.

It’s remarkable how little damage there was to the fuselage of this Airbus A320. Obviously the aircraft will never fly again — even minor damage incidents can cost millions of dollars to repair — but I think these images are important for us to examine. They illustrate not just how skillful the pilots were during the landing, but also just how much punishment these aircraft are built to take.

Airliners are tough. They endure year after year of constant use, often 16 hours a day or more. They travail the -60 degree flight levels, then bake in 110 degree summer heat. They are pressurized and de-pressurized tens of thousands of times. They fly through punishing turbulence, endure lightning strikes, and even the occasional bird strike. Amazing, isn’t it?

The radome damage (on the nose of the aircraft) was probably a bird strike from the same flock that took out the engines. The right engine cowling is pretty mangled, but that could also have been at least partly from the birds.

In several of the photos you can even see one of the checklists, flight plans, or other crew documents still sitting on the glareshield. It’s almost as if the aircraft is saying, “hey, we’ve still got one more leg to fly, guys!”.

[View with PicLens]

My attempt at a spot landing during the 2005 West Coast Cub Fly-In

Sunrise has something like 30 aircraft on the line, ranging from 200+ knot turbo Cirrus SR22 to an Extra 300 to plane-jane Skyhawks.  And I fly them all.  But for my money, there’s nothing better than cruising down the Orange County coastline at sunset in that little J-3 at 45 mph, sipping fuel at maybe 3 or 4 gallons an hour.

You’re 500′ above the water, door and window wide open, just breathing in the fresh ocean air and watching the sun work its way ever lower on the horizon.  I love that time of day, with shadows creeping across the rolling hills of Laguna Beach and city lights from the beachfront homes and restaurants lighting up one by one.

I recently had a chance to take Kristi for an early evening flight in this simple, yet classic aircraft. For the price, nothing else comes close. The wet rate is only $89/hr. And with those clipped wings, the aircraft is far more maneuverable and sporty than traditional Cubs.

On occasion I’ll even take it up solo and just bomb around the pattern for half an hour — it’s that much fun! The engine puts out 100 hp, so it climbs out quite nicely when only one person is aboard.

Anyway, here are some photos from our flight. Enjoy!

[View with PicLens]

So, the plane-in-the-Hudson thing.

At the risk of tempting fate — because as more than one person has noted, many a captain has been hailed as a hero on Sunday only to be hung out to dry on Monday — it looks like Cactus 1549 was one of those rare cases where an airliner gets totaled and the flight crew’s careers don’t.

Hundreds of articles have already been written about this incident — some by people who actually know what they’re talking about. So I’d like to focus on two things which really piqued my curiosity.

Glider Training: Did It Make a Difference?

Much has been made of the Captain Chesley Sullenberger’s years of experience in the cockpit, but one thing on his resume stands out: he holds a commercial glider rating. Not only that, but according to the FAA Airmen Registry, he is also a rated glider instructor.

Glider pilots are intimately familiar with the concept of “speed-to-fly”, something power pilots never concern themselves with. But perhaps they should. For you power pilots out there, speed-to-fly can best be thought of as a variable “best glide” speed which varies depending on the kind of performance you are seeking. Do you want to stay in the air as long as possible? They your speed-to-fly is the “minimum sink” speed. Want to extract maximum energy from rising air? They you want to fly the “best L/D” speed.

Power pilots are taught that when the powerplant(s) fail and the aircraft becomes a glider, they must immediately fly a predetermined speed which results in the best possible lift-to-drag (L/D) ratio. This is often referred to as the “best glide” speed and is notated as Vg.

The problem is, a fixed Vg speed isn’t always going to extract maximum performance from the aircraft in a power-off situation. An example: assume an aircraft has a Vg speed to 70 knots. But let’s say it’s also flying into a 70 knot headwind. The resulting groundspeed is zero knots. The glide ratio at “best glide” speed is literally zero in this case. In the heat of battle, a power pilot wouldn’t likely notice this, especially at altitude. But a glider pilot would instantly recognize the need to increase the indicated airspeed by 50%, giving a ground speed of about 35 knots. Now this might not produce a spectacular glide ratio, but it’d certainly be a hell of a lot better than zero.

Glider gurus account for the effect of wind on a powerless aircraft in other situations, too. A good example of how this might save your bacon can be illustrated by considering an overwater flight from Long Beach to Catalina Island. Many pilots I’ve trained simply look at the geographic mid-point as the place where, in the event of an engine failure, they’d opt to go toward one place or the other. If the distance between Long Beach and Catalina is 40 miles, they’d turn around until their GPS said 20 nm. After that point they’d continue toward Catalina.

A glider pilot, on the other hand, would have already considered the winds aloft (both forecast and actual), the altitude burned during a 180 degree turn, as well as the terrain on Catalina Island (inhospitable to say the least) as well as the off-airport landing options on the mainland.

Glider pilots also become familiar with what we call “look down” angles. Just by looking out the window, we can tell if we’ll make it to a specific point at our current sink rate. Power pilots do this as well, but usually only on final approach and not always power-off.

Did Captain Sullenberger’s glider experience make the difference in this case? Did it even help? Perhaps not. As I recall, the elapsed time from liftoff to touchdown was only 3 minutes. But his glider experience certainly didn’t hurt. And it may have assisted him in ways even he is not fully cognizant of. When an emergency presents itself to a flight crew, they tend to fall back on their training and experience.

Inadequate Multi-Engine Training?

The most surprising thing about multi-engine training is that it doesn’t really consider the possibility of multi-engine failure. Think about it: most multi-engine aircraft don’t even have a Vg speed listed in the Approved Flight Manual. Most type rating programs, even those for airlines, don’t include all-engines-out scenarios. Thousands of Boeings and Airbuses are flying around with flight crews who don’t even know what the best glide speed for their aircraft is.

I understand this is starting to change, but I’m still surprised it isn’t a major part of initial and recurrent training on any multi-engine aircraft. I can think of quite a few incidents in recent years where an airliner lost all engines. Just off the top of my head:

• a British Airways 747 lost all 4 engines after encountering volcanic ash.  Engines were restarted at lower altitude.  Major engine damage.
• a KLM 747 lost all engines after encountering another ash cloud.  Same result.
• an Air Canada 767 ran out of fuel after a conversion error while fueling.  Landed on a closed runway.
• a Pinnacle CRJ lost both engines after the flight crew exceeded the aircraft’s limitations.  Engines core-locked and plane crashed.
• an Air Transat Airbus A330 lost both engines after a fuel leak.  Landed safely on an island.
• an Ethiopian Airlines 767 was hijacked and forced to an alternate destination without sufficient fuel to fly that far.  Crashed in the water.
• this week’s US Airways Airbus landing in the Hudson River

A more complete list of unpowered jet airliner accidents is available here.  Keep in mind, that list does not include the many turboprops, bizjets, military aircraft, and other planes which have lost all engines in flight.  There are so many ways this can happen:  fuel contamination, fuel leak , fuel mismanagement, mechanical failure, sabotage, pilot error, bird strikes, hijacking, and the list goes on.  It’s baffles my mind that these scenarios aren’t considered during every multi-engine training program.

At Dynamic, we fly out of a large military base here in Southern California which also happens to be home to some of the last undeveloped land in the area.  As a result, there are a lot of birds around, and bird strikes on our King Airs are fairly common.  More than once I’ve been taxiing out in the morning only to find thousands of large geese wandering all over the field.  Thus far I’ve yet to encounter one in flight, but this US Airways accident is a reminder that it’s a possibility with every takeoff and landing.

More evidence we’re living in a world gone crazy. And I’m not just talking about Wall Street, my friends. The TFRs have truly reached a level which can only be described as insanity.

You know, I remember a time when it was possible to fly across this country of ours much the way we drive across it: just get in and go. Oh, sure, you had to check the weather, compute landing and takeoff distances, fuel load, weight & balance, etc. But aside from the usual due diligence, nobody was stopping you from using the airspace around your own country. Grab a chart and go fly.

That shouldn’t sound foreign. It’s called “freedom”.

Remember? There was no need to get the government’s permission to fly, submit a passenger manifest to the TSA for their approval, or wonder if someone’s wedding might require a diversion in your flight plan.

Alas, it’s 2009, and the FAA apparently now issues Temporary Flight Restrictions for weddings. Check this one out. I think it qualifies as a new low in the standards for issuing a TFR, and since the page will probably be gone in a few days, I’ll archive the NOTAM text here:

FDC 9/0803 ZLA CA.. FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS MALIBU, CA. EFFECTIVE 0901102230 UTC UNTIL 0901110230 UTC. PURSUANT TO 14 CFR SECTION 91.137(A)(3) TEMPORARY FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS ARE IN EFFECT FOR MEDIA COVERAGE OF WEDDING WITHIN A 2 NAUTICAL MILE RADIUS OF 340050N/1184916W OR THE LOS ANGELES /LAX/ VORTAC 269.0 DEGREE RADIAL AT 20.0 NAUTICAL MILES AT AND BELOW 3000 FEET MSL.

What’s next? TFRs for the first day of school? Flight restrictions because someone on the ground got a hangnail? Since they’re publishing flight restrictions for weddings, why not add them for divorces, too?

You know what would be fun? Invisible TFRs! Oh wait — we already have those. Yes, there are unpublished TFRs over professional and college sporting events which pilots have to magically know about. We have to figure out where the stadium is, when the event starts, and when it ends. Oh, and we must somehow figure out the elevation of the uncharted stadium in order to stay 3000′ above it.

Anyway, I’m not sure who’s getting married this weekend, but I can’t imagine anyone whose nuptials should ban air traffic. It makes about as much sense as shutting down a freeway because someone’s bar mitzvah is taking place in the neighborhood.

We already have a permanent flight restriction over Disneyland, and as I’ve stated previously, either there is no threat to the theme park (in which case the TFR is a needless infringement on air traffic in the L.A. basin), or there IS a threat to Disneyland, in which case they owe it to visitors to let them know about it. Of course, they won’t do that because it might hurt ticket sales. And the bottom line on the Disney TFR is that it exists because Disney doesn’t want any noise over their theme park, so they had it declared a security risk for people like me to fly near it.

But wait. It gets better! The entire Washington, D.C. area is already a no-fly zone unless you’ve jumped through enough hoops to qualify you as a Cirque du Soleil stand-in. Yet the government felt that wasn’t enough, so they issued a flight restriction on top of the existing flight restriction for the Obama inauguration on January 20th.

It leaves me wondering what it would take to raise enough hackles on this issue to force a reversal in the ever-larger list of mundane events which receive TFRs. Frankly, if the entire country were declared a no-fly zone (just like Baghdad before the war) and general aviation was permanently grounded, I don’t think it’d even show up as a blip on the average American’s radar.

But it should. Even if you’re not a pilot, it should. Because today they’re coming for my freedom, but tomorrow they’ll be coming for yours. You may not realize it because it happens so insidiously. But slowly, one piece at a time, we’re being ground down to the point where exercising our freedoms is so difficult that we simply give up.

John over at Aviation Mentor recently posted an excellent article on the whole pitch vs. power debate.

I’ve never understood the dogmatic attitudes you’ll find among some pilots on this issue, although I’ve definitely seen those vociferous arguments out in the real world.

You can’t say it’s JUST power which determines altitude, because let’s face it, some aircraft don’t even have engines. And those aircraft happen to fly higher than aircraft which do have engines.

And it can’t always be pitch which determines altitude. One look at Sean Tucker flying the Oracle Challenger in level flight with a 45 degrees of pitch is enough to demonstrate that.

John’s longer and more detailed analysis came to the same conclusion I did. I’ve been saying forever that it’s not one or the other. It’s both. The pilot is simply managing the aircraft’s energy state. Those who insist it’s one or the other are taking a narrow-minded view, to say the least.

It pains me to see students get so mixed up in this debate, because it’s pointless, and it places so much emphasis on the topic that a more important element is left by the wayside: trim.

Students tend to think of trim as a secondary control, something relatively minor which is used for pitch. In fact, the control is even referred to as “pitch trim”. But unless you’re behind the power curve, it’s more directly related to airspeed than pitch.

Example: you’re cruising along at 160 knots in level flight and drop 10″ of manifold pressure. The airplane will begin slowing almost immediately. Less air over the wings means less lift. Since it’s trimmed for 160 knots, it’ll start to descend in an effort to maintain 160 knots. You didn’t change the trim, yet the pitch angle did change. What the airplane tried to do was maintain the same airspeed.

Oh, it’ll hunt around a while, but eventually, if the airplane is dynamically stable, it will return to the trimmed airspeed.

The same thing is true of climbs. The airplane is in level flight at 160 knots and you add 10″ of manifold pressure, the airplane will accelerate. This added airflow creates additional lift and the airplane starts to climb. The airspeed drops off again, the airplane’s climb rate decays a bit, the airspeed builds slightly, and the cycle repeats until the aircraft is established in a stable 160 knot climb.

This is an eye-opening event for many students. Yet even among those who “get it”, the importance of trim isn’t always fully apparent until it comes time for instrument training, because precision instrument flying requires pilots to be capable of climbs and descents at constant airspeeds. Without exception, they always have a much easier time of it once they ensure the aircraft is trimmed for the desired airspeed and let the inherent stability of the aircraft work on their behalf.

From where I sit, this tends to relegate this whole pitch/power debate to its proper place: an obscure message forum thread somewhere on the internet.

Do you fully understand the famous “turning tendencies” which act on propeller-driven aircraft?

It’s one of the first things primary students are taught when flight training commences. And the concepts are not all that complicated. Yet I’ve found that even long-time instructors often lack a proper understanding of at least one of these forces, specifically gyroscopic precession.

Here’s an excerpt from one of Bob Miller’s Over the Airwaves newsletters:

“An unexpected stall, coupled with four powerful left-turning tendencies of a single engine airplane in a steep climb and insufficient right rudder, could easily produce a left hand spin.”

I wrote Bob to tell him that I only count three “left” turning tendencies and ask him to identify the fourth one.

He replied to my question by asking which three I was counting. I said slipstream, torque, and p-factor (propeller factor).

Bob responded by saying I was missing “gyroscopic effect of the spinning propeller. Pull it up, a force will be exerted to the left.”

Really?

Nope. That’s literally 180 degrees off. Rotate a tricycle gear aircraft and the aircraft will yaw to the right. Gyroscopic force is expressed 90 degrees ahead in the plane of rotation. The prop spins right (as seen from the cockpit). That means the force will act as if you pressed on the propeller disc from the LEFT side, and the plane will yaw about the vertical axis to the RIGHT.

In a tailwheel aircraft it MAY be opposite, but the gyroscopic force is dependent upon how the airplane is rotated. Or should I say, whether it is rotated at all. In a Super Decathlon, I allow it to fly off in the three-point attitude. Since I’m not pushing the nose down (or up, for that matter), there is no gyroscopic effect. In the Pitts, on the other hand, I often rotate more to a level flight attitude before leaving the ground, so I get some left yaw.

But gyroscopic effect is not a “left turning tendency”. We (aerobatic pilots) use gyroscopic effect all the time to yaw the plane left, right, up, down, flatten spins, accelerate spins, tumble the airplane end-over-end, and do many other things.

Assuming you’re flying a SE aircraft with clockwise engine rotation, torque always wants to roll the plane left, p-factor always wants to yaw it left (ok, unless you’re flying with zero or negative AOA), and slipstream always goes around the fuselage the same way. But gyroscopic effect does not remain constant. It depends where the force is applied to that propeller disk.

I believe this concept is poorly understood because most pilots don’t generate pitch or yaw rates with enough acceleration to really see the effect of gyroscopic precession. It’s also another example of how the training and knowledge of even experienced pilots are frequently incomplete without the benefit of that flying laboratory we call “aerobatics”.

My life can be a little complicated at times, even by time zone-hopping pilot standards. You see, at the present time, I have six employers: Sunrise Aviation, Dynamic Aviation, Skytypers, Opera Pacific, and two individual clients.

As you might imagine, keeping my schedule straight isn’t easy, especially since each of my employers uses a different system. One of them sends out the schedules as Excel spreadsheets. Another has a proprietary web-based system. Still another does everything via text message. Then there are rehearsal calendars from Opera Pacific, which are in constant flux. Those are only available in paper format. Then there are benefit performances, Angel Flights, family affairs, birthdays, anniversaries, SCR performances, and more.

Currently, I use Microsoft Outlook as the master calendar and transcribe everything manually into that application. At one time, I simply synchronized Outlook with a Palm Pilot and carried that with me. However, I quickly got sick of lugging a PDA all over the place. It doesn’t sound like much of a burden to carry a small handheld device in my pocket, but when combined with the cell phone, iPod, keys, wallet, and other sundry items, it was just too much.

Thankfully, Google has a Calendar Sync applet which will automatically upload your Outlook data to Google Calendar as often as you wish. Between that, LogMeIn.com, and the easy availability of internet connections these days, I can usually get access to my schedule when required.

That’s the long way of saying that I show up where I’m supposed to, when I’m supposed to be there.

Well, most of the time, anyway.

This morning I got up at the usual hour of 4:45 a.m. for a day of King Air flying out of Los Alamitos JFTB. I made my typical brown-bag lunch, drove to the base, parked my car, and sat in for the Monday morning staff meeting before the pilots disperse to preflight their aircraft.

I just happened to glance at the dispatch sheet for today and noticed that, for some odd reason, my name wasn’t on it. Weird. I assumed that it was a typo and the name “Ross” in Medfly 3 was actually supposed to be “Rapp”. I did notice that Bill Ross was at work that day, but he also works sometimes as an A&P in addition to being a pilot, so perhaps that was it.

I questioned the dispatcher, and as you’ve probably figured out by now, there was no typo. At least, not on the dispatch sheet. More like a gigantic typo on my Outlook calendar, because I wasn’t even supposed to be at work today! As if that wasn’t enough, I was right in the middle of the meeting, so not only did I show up on the wrong day, but now everyone at work knows it.

Nice, eh?

On the plus side, I did get to sit in 60 minutes of rush hour traffic on the way home, which gave me ample time to consider how blessedly rare this kind of snafu is. And it certainly could have been worse: I could have failed to show up when I was scheduled to fly instead of the opposite.

I asked my boss how often something like this happens, and he said, “More often than you might think.” It must really hurt when one of the guys who lives far away from the base does this. One of our pilots drives in to Los Alamitos from Pacific Palisades. One comes from Santa Monica. But the all-time winner commutes from Redlands — it takes as long as two hours each way. Ironically, when I fly with that first officer, we always seem to be assigned Region 25, which is over Redlands. Oh, the irony of getting up at 4 a.m. and driving 100 miles across Southern California only to get in an airplane and fly right back to your house…

Now if I can only get over the fact that I’ll be getting up before the sun tomorrow instead of sleeping in. Ugh.

There are many types of “special use” airspace out there. One of the most prevalent is a Military Operations Area, or MOA. According to the Aeronautical Information Manual (Sec. 3-4-5):

a. MOAs consist of airspace of defined vertical and lateral limits established for the purpose of separating certain military training activities from IFR traffic. Whenever a MOA is being used, nonparticipating IFR traffic may be cleared through a MOA if IFR separation can be provided by ATC. Otherwise, ATC will reroute or restrict nonparticipating IFR traffic.

b. Examples of activities conducted in MOAs include, but are not limited to: air combat tactics, air intercepts, aerobatics, formation training, and low-altitude tactics. Military pilots flying in an active MOA are exempted from the provisions of 14 CFR Section 91.303(c) and (d) which prohibits aerobatic flight within Class D and Class E surface areas, and within Federal airways. Additionally, the Department of Defense has been issued an authorization to operate aircraft at indicated airspeeds in excess of 250 knots below 10,000 feet MSL within active MOAs.

c. Pilots operating under VFR should exercise extreme caution while flying within a MOA when military activity is being conducted. The activity status (active/inactive) of MOAs may change frequently. Therefore, pilots should contact any FSS within 100 miles of the area to obtain accurate real-time information concerning the MOA hours of operation. Prior to entering an active MOA, pilots should contact the controlling agency for traffic advisories.

d. MOAs are depicted on sectional, VFR Terminal Area, and Enroute Low Altitude charts.

One of my pet peeves is a misunderstanding about Military Operations Areas which leads many pilots and air traffic controllers to believe that any VFR aircraft flying inside one must be a “knucklehead” (a controller’s description!). From an ATC or military pilot perspective, perhaps this is the case. After all, what possible justification could a non-military pilot have for going into one of these MOAs when it’s active? Just go around it! Right?

Wrong.

As I said in a reply to this Jetwhine article, I fly a lot of high performance aerobatics in a south Orange County (Calif.) area known as the Blockhouse. There is no protective MOA on the chart for us, and we often have climb and descent rates which exceed 15,000 fpm. Consider: an Extra 300 pulling into a vertical upline at 180 knots TAS is traveling straight up at 18,228 fpm.

We’re out there with minimal fuel flying very high performance maneuvers while trying to teach students. I’ve seen as much as +10G on the accelerometer, and as low as -6G. Inverted flat spins. Tumbles. Rolling turns. And I’ve given and received formation and aerial interception training. So I’m quite familiar with the sort of high performance maneuvers which make it hard to watch for other traffic.

Those who say non-military pilots should simply “always stay well clear” of an active MOA irk me because it ignores many practical matters regarding this special use airspace.

First, what if I’m trying to get to Inyokern, Tehachapi, or Kern Vally airports, all of which lie in the middle of the Isabella MOA? You literally cannot get there without flying through a MOA.

Half the high desert airports around my neck of the woods are in the middle of MOAs. Pull out a sectional and look at them.

Second, what if weather dictates a deviation which takes me through a MOA? I’ve encountered this scenario several times. I’m ferrying a Pitts S-2B which has a 23 gallon fuel tank and burns ~13 gph. Should I deviate another 75 nm out of the way to go around it? Many of these MOAs are in hot, high desert areas here in the southwest, and often thunderstorms, terrain, fuel, turbulence, wind, or other factors come into play, depending on the aircraft in question.

Finally, if the activity is dangerous enough to non-participating aircraft (a gunnery range, etc.), it should be a restricted area. Now that’s an airspace I wouldn’t want to fly into if it was hot, even if I legally could. I’ve seen active restricted areas at night and the tracers were bright enough to light up the sky. The sound of the artillery could be heard even above the noise of the aircraft’s engines! But MOAs are not restricted areas. And there’s a reason for that.

Having said that, I don’t take flying into a MOA lightly. I know there are high performance military aircraft out there doing their thing. I know budgets are tight, their flying time is minimal, and I don’t want to be the cause of their having to break off some training exercise simply because I was in the way. But keep in mind, the airspace is JOINT-USE. We do have a right to be there, and there might be a darn good reason for our presence as well.

Talk about art imitating life.

I snapped this photo today while Sunrise’s chief mechanic worked on the Becker com radio in our Extra 300. I had taxied out to the non-movement boundary and been attempting to contact clearance delivery (and ground, and tower, and company, and…. you get the picture) to no avail.

It was curious. We seemed to receive transmissions perfectly well. There was side-tone. The radio indicated that it was transmitting.

Now on the one hand, if a radio is the weakest part of your airplane, life can’t be too bad. On the other hand, it costs about $6 per minute to operate this aircraft, and the only other person on board the plane is the guy footing the bill. And he came all the way from Thailand to get some professional aerobatic training, not pay for me to idle there in the taxi lane. So we shut down the aircraft.

I knew the camera system processor had just been reinstalled. Perhaps something was loose or got bumped during that maintenance? Nothing looked amiss, but I double checked the antenna connections, tried a different helmet, checked the front seat headset jack connection, circuit breakers, etc.

Nothing.

Eventually, I called our mechanic, who knew enough to come over with a replacement radio. You see, this wasn’t the first problem we’ve had with this piece of equipment. Maybe it’s the 15 years worth of 10G pulls, but that radio has been back to the manufacturer more often than Joan Rivers has been to the botox clinic. Every time, Becker fixes it, certifies it, sends it back, and it works great.

For a while.

So when Matt pulled out the old radio and set it down on the pilot’s seat, I got the impulse to find a baseball bat and re-enact that classic Office Space scene where they take their frustrations out on a recalcitrant printer. Oooh, that would be so satisfying. The radio frequency knob shattered into a thousand tiny black pieces. The rectangular LCD screen leaking black fluid onto the ramp. Vengeance!!

I suggested this to Matt, who said he’d already tried that tactic and it hadn’t worked. From the tone of his voice, I got the impression that, unlike the printer, this thing fights back. “You want a piece ‘a me??”

Don’t tempt me, punk.

With the new radio installed, we were able to complete the flight without any light gun drama. And I will admit, at least the radio had the decency to fail on the ground and not in mid-air. Still, that Becker better hope I don’t find it just sitting on a shelf one day. I might have to steal something from work…

With the advent of the Glass Age, I’ve been seeing more and more pilots question the need for traditional needle/ball/airspeed instrument skills. Why bother to learn the technology of yesterday, they ask?

On the surface, this question makes sense. After all, who even manufactures aircraft with non-glass panels anymore? Heck, even the venerable Legend Cub is being built with a Dynon D10A these days. At my home field, we have a Waco UPF-7 (a 1930’s era open-cockpit biplane) with a Garmin glass panel. It looks more like you’re sitting on the bridge of the starship Enterprise than in a barnstormer ready to dust crops.

There’s no doubt that glass panels have fewer insidious failure modes than analog instruments. Instead of an attitude indicator that slowly rolls over (possibly taking the pilot with it), you get a giant red “X” leaving no doubt about the quality of the AHRS data.

And, lest we forget, many of the pilots who balk at an six-pack instrument panel probably don’t see one that often. They fly newer airframes, experimentals, turbines, and read industry publications that rarely even show a non-glass instrument panel. Out of sight, out of mind. So the question is a good one, but my answer may surprise you.

In my opinion, the traditional analog instruments are not obsolete, if only by virtue of the fact that out of the 200,000+ GA aircraft in existence, probably 90% of them have the older style panel. These airplanes are mostly certificated in the Normal category, and it would be neither cost effective or legally possible to put newer style instrument panels into those aircraft at the present time.

Of course, if you have an RV-X and only plan on flying that airplane and it’s got glass and you can fly it proficiently (including partial-panel, whatever that may look like in your ship), then there is no need to be able to fly with a turn coordinator, altimeter, and airspeed indicator.

On the other hand, when I train students to fly IFR in glass airplanes like the SR22 and Columbia, I ensure they can fly a traditional six pack as well via simulator training. There are several reasons for this:

• I want them to be a complete instrument pilot able to fly more than just an Avidyne or G1000
• Second, I want them to understand the way analog instruments work since there are analog instruments even in those glass aircraft, and they have different failure modes and different scans than an AHRS-based system
• Third, it’s harder to go “back” to analog instruments than it is to go “forward” to glass panels if you’re already a rated and experienced pilot, so I want the heavy lifting to be done while we’re already doing the heavy lifting: during primary instrument training.

I disagree with those who feel instructors are anti-GPS, anti-glass, attached to older technology, or provide unrealistic failure modes for no good reason. I know none who have that attitude. On the other hand, we often turn those devices off or direct a student’s focus elsewhere because it’s necessary for training. If we don’t push your workload to the breaking point, fail instruments and radios, etc. then we’re not doing our job.

Anyone can fly IFR when everything’s working. I’ve seen pilots who aren’t even instrument trained do it. But when you’re on one engine or partial panel in the clouds, a passenger is airsick, you need a bathroom break, the fuel is getting low, it’s night, and you’re tired, that’s not the time to find out how well you perform when stress is high. That’s why we push you hard. If you ever have a bad day and come out the other side in one piece, you’ll understand that.

“Riding the range once more, toting my old Pitts S-2B…”

Doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it? No matter. It was so nice taking the Pitts up today — I made two practice flights at the Blockhouse, concentrating on the Intermediate Known sequence for the upcoming season. It’s a bit tougher than last season’s sequence. The total K value (difficulty) is about the same, but this year it’s front loaded with harder figures, while at the end of the sequence the K values drop off significantly.

My practice strategy seems to differ from most aerobatic pilots. For whatever reason, most pilots begin by working with individual figures. On the surface this seems like a logical building-block approach. However, I prefer to run the new sequences all the way through until I can do them without any hard zeros. My reasoning is that a beautifully flown sequence is of little value if you zero most of it because you end up going the wrong direction or misread the card. Also, by the time the sequence can be flown properly, it should be clear which figures need the most work.

Let’s just say I have a long way to go before this is ready for public consumption. I’m trying to get ready for the Copperstate contest in Arizona, which will hopefully tune me up enough to benefit from a training camp in Borrego so that when the California season begins at Apple Valley, I will at least have a fighting chance. Last year, I didn’t fly for the whole season. Then I had one practice flight to prepare for the AcroFest. In case you were wondering, I do not recommend that training regime.

Anyway, back to the present. As usual, my 45s are shallow going up, steep going down, and I have to recalibrate my sense of the aircraft’s energy state going vertical. In other words, I keep torquing out of push humpties and other such maneuvers because I’m spending too long on the upline and running out of energy. I’m sure my rolls aren’t centered on the appropriate lines, either.

These things always happen in the off season. It’s almost as if I have an internal mechanism which falls out of adjustment after a period of inactivity. The frustrating thing is, I’ve been flying every day, and flying the Pitts a lot, too. But it’s primarily been demo flights, checkouts, advanced spin training, rides, and other non-competition stuff.

I haven’t even started working on rolling turns or getting my snap rolls back in order. All day long my snap rolls had an extra 200 degrees of rotation before I could get them stopped. But that’s okay. I’m glad just to be up there, zooming through the sky without a care in the world.

In honor of my new focus on not sucking this season, here are a group of pilots who definitely don’t stink: The Four Horsemen. This team still flies, but now it’s down to two Mustangs and they’re simply called “The Horsemen”. This video clip is well edited, and best of all, there’s no narration from an air show announcer. I’m not a big fan of announcers in general, but in this case it would be outright sacrilege. When a quartet of Mustangs is in the air, an announcer — whoever he may be — should just be quiet and let the sound of those Merlin engines speak for itself.

But that’s just my opinion.

Now is this a sweet looking pair of machines or what? A 1993 Pitts S-2B and a 2008 Honda Accord Coupe in matching paint:

I had the opportunity to get back into the Pitts yesterday and when I saw the two of them together I had to take a picture. It’s so rare that both the car and the plane are clean at the same time.

I was out at CNO to take Dan for a flight. His flight review (an FAA-mandated recurrent training requirement) was due and I owed him a favor for ferrying me out to Borrego last fall. I had needed to get out there to retrieve the Pitts after the Acrofest. I was the Contest Director for that competition. And a competitor. And a judge. And… I’ll never do that again. It was a crazy time, even by my standards.

Anyway, Dan wanted to try some advanced spin training as part of his flight review, so we focused on flat and accerated spins modes. After that, I went up for a solo flight to work on the 2007 intermediate known sequence. I’m trying to get an early start on preparing for the upcoming competition season.

The 2007 season was basically missed by all of us at Cloud Dancers because the airplane was undergoing a particularly heavy maintenance interval which lasted for most of the spring and summer. The timing was unfortunate, but after the aircraft came off leaseback it only made sense to get it into good working order. The wings were off, the prop was overhauled, fabric & paint were touched up, the top end was overhauled, and she was cleaned, rigged, inspected, and so on.

When I got back to Chino, I spent some time just shooting landings in the pattern. It’s such a blast to go from 1300′ AGL to zero in about 15 seconds. The airplane pretty much climbs at the same rate. I had forgotten how much sprightlier the S-2B is when flown solo vs. with two people on board. Losing that 200 lbs up front really makes a difference!

I’ve been doing a fair bit of Pitts flying lately, but most of it has been dual in an S-2C owned by one of my recent Part 61 private pilot grads. This airplane was originally owned by a good friend from the aerobatic competition circuit named Reinaldo. The person Reinaldo sold it to installed a wicked six-camera video system and sold it again shortly thereafter, leaving my student as the lucky beneficiary of this upgrade. Here we are preparing to start up during a recent flight:

Today, a bit of a rant — for which I will apologize in advance, my friends.

Flying is just about the only avocation I can think of where people can be found spending their free time at work by choice.

Think about that. In an office environment, folks typically get to work no earlier than necessary. Likewise, they leave as soon as possible when their work day is over and would never even entertain the idea of hanging out at the office on their day off.

But in aviation? It’s the polar opposite. At the end of a long week spent at the airport, they’ll spend their day off… at the airport. This is a major shift in motivation from the average workplace, and it contributes to a positive attitude and happy demeanor there.

Imagine an office building where everyone inside couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning. It would be a much different place, wouldn’t it?

Perhaps that’s why I don’t understand the disparaging attitude many people harbor toward instructing. It is widely viewed within the aviation industry as a bottom-rung starter job which must be endured in order to get to a “real” flying gig. And I suppose if that’s all you make of it, if that’s all you put into it, then that’s what it’ll be.

Here’s one instructor’s take on it:

Here’s the way a flying career works.

1) A person wants to become a captain of a big airliner and make lots of money
2) To do that, s/he need to be the first officer of a big airliner
3) To be hired into a major airline, s/he needs to build a bunch of jet time, so s/he works for a regional airline for a painfully low salary
4) To be hired at the regional airline, s/he needs a bunch of flying hours
5) To get those flying hours without paying for them, s/he becomes a flight instructor – that way the student pays for the hours
6a) Because the purpose is to build hours and not to make real money, flight instructors, in general, don’t get paid much at all (e.g. $11/hr in many places)
6b) Because most flight instructors actually want to work for an airline, they leave instruction as quickly as possible, so there are very few truly experienced flight instructors around
6c) Because these flight instructors don’t care what they make, they depress the entire instruction industry – it’s hard for anyone to charge more

Keep in mind this was written by a CFI. He goes on to wonder if the change in Part 121 mandatory retirement age will “destroy the short-lived increase in pay that I’ve seen for CFIs, now that the existing CFIs won’t be able to find airline jobs and will probably be stuck being instructors”.

Stuck? Please. Life is what you make of it. Just because instructing is a low-cost way to build hours doesn’t mean that’s all you can get out of it. There are float planes, glass panels, helicopters, turboprops, and a hundred other specialties out there to be mastered. If you want to be just another guy teaching primary students in a beat up Skyhawk, be my guest. But there’s so much more out there if you just have the vision, work ethic, and patience to pursue it.

I’ve got news for you, buddy: some of us actually enjoy instructing. Some instructors specialize in high performance aerobatics, formation flying, experimentals, warbird transitions, antiques, biplanes, tailwheels, and other such interesting airplanes. That’s what I do. I might fly a Pitts one day, a Columbia 400 the next, then a 1928 TravelAir, then an Extra 300, then an RV-6 or a Harmon Rocket. I coach aerobatic competitors, ferry aircraft, fly formation, and get paid for all of it.

I get to be home at night. I set my own schedule. And I charge whatever I want. There are very few instructors with the hours and credentials to gain insurance approval on these aircraft, so for the most part I’m in the driver’s seat.

It’s really a shame that those who teach primary students (poorly) for a couple hundred hours and simply look at their CFI time as some trial they must endure to get a “real job” are considered to be in the same category as CFIs who’ve spent many years honing their craft.

I’ve cleaned up the messes left by countless CFIs whose instruction was criminally poor, unprofessional, and incomplete. I say good riddance to those CFIs. As far as I’m concerned, the airlines can have them.

The ironic thing is that aviators with that attitude aren’t going to be happy when they reach that Part 121 job. They’ll decry the pay, the hours, the equipment, and look ahead to the next thing. The next plane, the upgrade to the left seat, the move to a “major” airline. We’ve all met people like that. The challenges of instructing don’t sit well with these types.

Make no mistake about it. The starting pay can be poor, the conditions rough, the hours long. In many ways instructing is like flying for a regional, come to think of it. The difference is that instruction allows you to play a pivotal role in a life-changing event for a person; you get to shepherd them toward the fulfillment of a dream which probably hearkens back to their childhood. How many jobs let you do that?

One final note about primary instructors, as they are probably the least respected of the CFI ilk. The longer I instruct, the more I’m convinced that primary instruction is one of the most difficult (and potentially rewarding) jobs a CFI can pursue. It’s a major undertaking to transform a civilian who doesn’t even know how to open the door of an aircraft into a pilot with sufficient knowledge of aerodynamics, navigation, aircraft systems, emergency procedures, airspace, meteorology, aviation law, aeromedical factors, etc. to safely operate that aircraft with passengers aboard.

I think it’s high time that CFIs — especially the career instructors — got the respect and recognition they deserve.

It’s so rare to get true winter weather here in Southern California. But as Lesley always says, it never fails to rain on opening night, and last night was no exception. Boy did it pour!

I nearly broke into a Gene Kelly-esque dance all the way down Avenue of the Arts as I made my way to OCPAC for the opening night performance of Die Zauberflöte. Ave. of the Arts even has the right kind of street lights for it! But there’s something about the ultra-modern look of the theaters which kept me from indulging myself. (Note: I may also have been concerned about looking stupid, although that’s never stopped me before).

I’ve been making quite a few flights to northern California lately, and this weather has certainly made that part of my day job interesting. I’m not used to seeing low pressure systems around here, but California has been surrounded by them for the past week. Several cold fronts have blown through, bringing lower snow levels and higher concerns about in-flight icing. It’s the one thing that really worries me when flying, and it must be approached with extreme caution. This is especially true in fast composite ships with so-called “laminar flow” airfoils, as contaminating this kind of wing leads to an especially dramatic loss of performance.

The last two round trips have been in a TKS-equipped SR22. Despite low freezing levels and airmets for icing, IFR conditions, mountain obscuration, and turbulence, I was comfortable flying the route because I knew the tops were 10-12,000′. There were plenty of alternate airports nearby, and the deicing fluid was topped off to give me some time to get out of any ice which did build. As it turns out, there was only one bit of ice worth noting, right as I climbed out of the top of a cloud layer. The worst icing is often found at the tops of clouds, so that wasn’t a surprise. For the most part, between ATC and PIREPS I was able to stay out of the precip most of the time when I was above the freezing level.

The TKS system works much better when you prime it properly. The first time I ever tried using TKS, it seemed to be useless. It was a summer flight across the Dakotas a few years ago. No one had ever told me that it can take several minutes for the fluid to make its way to the outboard panels, and by that time the ice could have covered the panels so thoroughly that they’d be unable to protect the wing.

Now, my standard preflight procedure on the system is to top off the TKS tank (the only way you’ll know how much fluid is on board), turn on the pump to ensure it works, and wait for fluid to come out of each panel before turning it off. Then, when you enable the system in flight, you’ll get immediate protection. I’ve standardized on coating the wings and tail surfaces with deice fluid (”normal” setting) before entering precip when it’s below freezing, and using the “maximum” setting at the first sign of ice.

Of course, the airplane is not approved for known-icing, so the TKS is just one tool to buy you time to change altitudes, turn around, find VMC, get to warmer air, or something else which will stop the accumulation.

The worse thing about ice is that it’s unpredictable. We don’t really understand why it occurs in some places and not in others, even when the conditions seem to be ripe for it in both places. It might be light icing for one pilot and severe for another one who flies through the same piece of sky only minutes later.

Pilots hate the unknown more than anything else. We strive for complete control over the flight, and that means being able to predict with certainty every critical aspect of our aircraft’s performance. Ice robs us of that capability. Our climb rates, airspeeds, handling, and other characteristics change. The airplane takes on a new personality, and the only thing you know for sure is that it won’t be as friendly as the one you’re used to.

Whoever said ice belongs in your drink and not on your airplane was right.

On the ground, though, all this rain has been a welcome sight after years of drought here in the Southland. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I hear a Gene Kelly song calling my name…

Every time someone asks me why, with all my flight time and qualifications, I haven’t gone on to an airline job, I just think about stories like this one. Keep in mind, Sam left behind a city he loved, picked up his whole life and moved across the country for this job. All I can say is, I would not have handled the day’s events as diplomatically as he did.

I’ve always said that life is too short to do something you hate all day long. No offense to those of you working in the trenches at a regional or major, because I have the utmost respect for the hard life you folks are leading, but a Part 121 flying job is just about the perfect definition of “something I’d hate”. I swear, if Dante Alighieri was alive today, the Inferno would be set at a domestic airline.

To add insult to injury, the everyday risks to one’s career at a Part 121 airline are not insignificant. Medical certification. FAA enforcement action. Bankruptcy and mergers are but two of the ways one’s seniority (and paycheck) can go from 60 to zero in a heartbeat through no fault of your own. Ugh. The airlines even have their own version of purgatory. It’s called “furlough” and can last what feels like an eternity.

Most of the former instructors I’ve met over the years look back on their teaching days as something they simply had to endure in order to get a “real” job in the aviation world. I am tempted to give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to the repetition of working with one primary student after another. But the truth is, many of those folks were simply not any good as instructors. They got out of it what they put into it: not much. I feel bad for them, because they’re always looking toward the “next thing” to make them happy. When they’re at an airline, they’ll look toward that upgrade, or the next aircraft, never satisfied with where they are.

I don’t mean to suggest that Sam falls into this category. He seems to be taking the bumps and bruises with a lot more grace than I could ever hope to have in that position. But I have a hard time getting past the fact that, without exception, every single retired airline pilot I’ve ever met has given me the same piece of advice: stay away from the airlines. In what other field would one get such an overwhelming vote of no-confidence from the industry’s most successful veterans?

Come to think of it, I’m not sure why CFIs are so looked down upon. I probably made twice as much money as Sam did in 2007, and worked fewer hours flying more interesting aircraft to boot. The highest performance aerobatic airplanes in the world. Historical, fully restored open cockpit biplanes. The latest in composite glass-panel aircraft. Warbirds. Experimentals. Turbines. Formation flying. The list of aviation jobs out there is pretty long, and I’ve had the good fortune of working many of them. And I choose when and where I work, as well as who I fly with.

The allure of the airlines is a mystery to me. It’s like the ninth circle of hell, except in this version everybody is clamoring to get there.

I think there was a mix-up somewhere and I got this guy’s fortune by mistake.

Bob Miller at Over the Airwaves frequently touts the fact that ‘nobody’ provides spin training anymore. Perhaps my perspective is not typical, but I don’t find this to be the case.

At Sunrise Aviation (KSNA), we have the largest aerobatic program on the west coast. Not only that, but our private pilot students are all required to experience spins in a Decathlon before they solo. We’ve taught thousands of people to fly over the past quarter century using this philosophy. I was trained this way myself.

I can think of several other large operations which provide quality spin training just here in California. CP Aviation in Santa Paula, Attitude Aviation in Livermore, and Tutima Academy in King City.

I rarely have any problem getting pre-solo students to do multi-turn spins on their own (and recover on a specified heading). It’s simply a matter of proper technique when teaching this to students. Easier said than done. Most CFIs learn from instructors who have never done spins. There is no way they will effectively be able to teach it without proper spin training of their own.

Many pilots and instructors who do expose students (and perhaps even more egregiously, non-pilots) to spins introduce them by simply doing one unannounced. That is the worst possible idea. It guarantees the maneuver will simply blur by for the student, resulting in spatial disorientation and motion sickness. It also ensures they won’t learn anything other than to be afraid of flying.

More than any other maneuver, spins come with a long litany of baggage. Horror stories from other pilots. Tall tales of spins that swallow the aircraft whole like Moby Dick. Apprehensiveness about motion sickness. This requires delicate handling by the CFI, but instead it’s often approached with blunt force. “Just do it”.

Wrong approach.

Teaching spins must begin with a thorough understanding of the aerodynamics involved. That means ground training. I start with a review of how lift is developed. Then progress to a discussion of stalls, coordination, wing drops, and finally the aerodynamics of the spin itself. When teaching spins, the best advice for a CFI is: assume nothing. I’ve seen some really weird explanations from spin students about basic aerodynamics. One of the most common errors is a belief that aircraft stall at a specific speed rather than a specific angle of attack. The ground training is the place to get all that stuff taken care of.

In the air, it’s vital that the spins are worked up to slowly, beginning with stalls of various types. Falling leaf stalls are particularly valuable. The student must be comfortable with high angles of attack. Then, spin “drills” are introduced were the spin is started, then stopped within a quarter turn. Once the student’s technique and comfort have reached the requisite levels, a one turn spin can be introduced with appropriate ground reference. From that point it’s simply a matter of allowing the spin to develop through two and three turns while ensuring the student maintains situational awareness.

For the really apprehensive students, I begin the actual spins by having them work only one control, usually the rudder. Once they’re comfortable with that, I switch them to the stick. Then I have them do both, and eventually give them the throttle as well.

I also teach students the difference between a spin and a spiral dive. They are easy to confuse with one another if you don’t know what to look for. For students who take to the spins with more alacrity, I will sometimes introduce aggravated spin modes. Keep in mind these are all pre-solo students with maybe 20 hours of total flight time.

I’ve taught spins to countless students using this method. I’ve never had one get sick. I’ve never had one who didn’t feel more comfortable and confident with spins, stalls, high deck angles, high AOAs, and unusual attitudes afterward.

The importance of practical spin training doesn’t stem from the likelihood of encountering one inadvertently. If proper coordination is maintained (and it’s often not — that is why we have these stall-spin accidents), pilots are not likely to ever encounter one in the heat of battle. No, the best reason for teaching spins is to eliminate the “fear of the unknown”. Once they’ve completed the spin training, students uniformly feel that spins are “not nearly as scary as I thought”.

Personally, I think a lot of landing accidents are caused by a lack of spin training. Students who are afraid of spins will be afraid of deep stalls. It’s only natural to fear the unknown. Those wing drops can be scary if you don’t understand what’s causing them, what will happen if you don’t correct properly, and how the resulting spin entry should be handled. A fear of stalls means they’ll be apprehensive about high angles of attack and low airspeeds. So they approach the runway with too much energy just to be on the safe side, with predictable results.

There are many excellent reasons for practical spin training, but it’s hard to make any headway with those arguments when the FAA proclaims said training as unnecessary. To me, the proof is in the pudding. I see people every day who have had no spin training. It’s usually accompanied by poor rudder skills, limited understanding of the related aerodynamics, and a lack of appreciation for the importance of coordination. The low quality of basic airmanship skills can be quite dramatic.

And besides, just think about all the fun they’re missing out on!

Have you had spin training? If not, find a good aerobatic instructor and get the lead out. You won’t regret it.

From the “you learn something every day” file comes a fascinating Air Safety Foundation quiz on RNAV approaches.

For the non-pilots and/or non-instrument rated among us, RNAV is short for “random area navigation” and for the most part refers to satellite navigation — in other words, GPS. It’s not called GPS because there are other area navigation methods such as loran, omega, inertial navigation, and so on.

But they all do the same basic thing, which is to allow a pilot to fly from any random point in the world to any other point. Prior to RNAV, radio navigation consisted of flying from one ground-based station to another. A highway in the sky, if you will, but one firmly tied to the ground. These ground-based stations are housed in little buildings scattered around the country which transmit signals the aircraft’s navigation receiver can follow. The problem is, these buildings are not movable. They’re expensive to build, maintain, and monitor.

With RNAV, pilots can create virtual waypoints anywhere. RNAV systems therefore have more capability than the older ground-based navaids. If you’ve ever used a GPS, then you’re part of the RNAV revolution.

Of course, there has to be a down-side, right? Nothing is free in aviation, and so it is with RNAV. RNAV systems tend to be computerized and therefore more complex. They also tend to fly in the face of thing we’ve learned about IFR navigation. Curving approach paths, precision approaches without an ILS, etc.

For example, every instrument-rated pilot knows that in order to proceed below the published minimums for an Instrument Approach Procedure, three criteria must be met. In general terms, they are:

1. The flight visibility must meet the published minimums for that procedure
2. The aircraft must be in a position from which the pilot can make a normal landing using normal rates of descent
3. The runway environment (pavement, lights, paint, etc) must be in sight

Aside from an esoteric 100′ rule dealing with a specific part of the approach lighting system, there are no exceptions. Or at least, that’s what I thought until the RNAV quiz taught me about “fly visual” segments.

“Fly visual” segments are typically seen on approaches to airports in mountainous areas. Treat them as red flags: If you see one, take some extra time and give the procedure a closer look.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, as discussed in the main portion of the course, the visibility required for the approach is sometimes less than the length of the “fly visual” segment-meaning that the pilot can legally continue beyond the DA/MAP without the runway environment in sight, provided he/she has the required flight visibility. Obviously, this leaves a certain amount of room for interpretation. If you find yourself in such a situation, and there’s any doubt about whether to proceed (particularly if you’re not familiar with the local terrain and landmarks), it’s best to opt for the missed approach.

It’s also worth thinking about why the “fly visual” segment exists in the first place. Why did the designers of the approach essentially choose to “slide” the entire approach away from the airport by the distance of the visual segment? In many cases, the underlying reason is that terrain in the missed approach area would necessitate unreasonably high minimums if the MAP were in its normal position. By displacing the MAP a few miles, the designers can build a missed approach segment that doesn’t have terrain problems (a situation well illustrated by the NDB/DME or GPS-A approach at Hailey, Idaho).

Of course, the terrain is still out there, and the danger for pilots flying such procedures is that the unanticipated need to initiate a missed approach beyond the MAP can lead to obstruction conflicts (or, to put it more bluntly: a collision with a mountain).

The bottom line? For procedures like the one at Hailey, never continue the approach past the MAP unless there’s absolutely no doubt about the outcome.

Sounds like fun. Not! Imagine having 1/2 mile visibility and coming to the end of your RNAV highway in the sky, yet being permitted to continue flying visually without the having the airport in sight. TLAR (”that looks about right”) navigation at its best.

The scary thing about these approaches is that they occur in mountainous areas. By definition, these areas having high density altitudes in the summer and are prone to icing in the winter. A mountainous approach is one time I would want to start my missed approach segment earlier rather than later in order to assure adequate terrain clearance during the climb.

The RNAV Approach Quiz is free, and it was far more informative than I had anticipated. Normally I breeze through these things with nary a thought, but I really had to stop and think about some of the questions. And I must admit there were some things in there I didn’t know.

Reason #438 to avoid the iPhone: that smug Applesque feeling of superiority you get from owning one could backfire.

We push back from the gate and get advised of a ground stop in MEM due to storms in the area. My Captain informs the passengers over the PA. Not one minute later, we get chimed from the flight attendant. “Some guy with an IPhone says the weather is good, and wants to know what the REAL reason is for the delay. Is something wrong with the plane?”

Read the rest. Apparently Mr. iPhone doesn’t realize that he flies on that aircraft at the behest of the very person whose judgment and/or integrity he’s questioning.

I wish I knew which company employed that pilot! I’d like to give them some business next time I’m forced to subject myself to the depraved masquerade of modern airline travel.

I think Harry Callahan said it best: a man’s got to know his limitations. Loathe as we may be to admit it, we all have limitations. Our bodies can only go so long without food, water, and sleep. The mind can only process so quickly, the memory retain so much, the senses absorb so much input before they cease to function properly.

Likewise, the equipment we fly has limits, too. Airspeed, temperature, pressure, altitude, RPM, weight, center of gravity, and other limitations must be understood and respected if we want our aircraft to respond in a predictable manner. This is something every pilot learns from the very first day of training, and those limitations look him or her square in the face on every flight. From color coded markings on the gauges to those annoying placards liberally distributed throughout the cockpit, you don’t have to look far to find an advisory or warning in the aviation world.

But let’s be honest: some of these limitations might get exceeded on occasion without major catastrophe. Perhaps it’s a slight overspeed on a fixed pitch prop during aerobatics. Flying a bit over gross weight. Exceeding a duty day limit. Extending the flaps a few knots above Vfe. Flying under VFR when the visibility hasn’t quite reached the requisite level.

Normally, these minor variances don’t result in scratched paint. The problem is, once you’ve exceeded the limitations, you’re essentially a test pilot and the margin of safety built into the aircraft by the designer is now gone. How far can you push it before something bad happens? Nobody knows until it actually happens. I hope you’re as uncomfortable thinking about that as I am writing it.

Now if you actually are a test pilot — say, one flying an experimental aircraft during phase one — that’s one thing. You know what you’re getting into, and you have prepared for it with engineering data, specific training, contingency plans, and so on.

But if you’re flying a Hawker 800XP jet with six paying passengers on board, your whole raison d’etre is to ensure the airplane remains well within the documented limitations. And recently, those of us at SNA got a good look at what happens when you ignore them. I was in the lobby at Sunrise last week when I heard a loud “boom” eminate from the general direction of the runway and soon saw thick black smoke wafting up into the air. Once the smoke had cleared, I got a look at what happens when a jet’s brake system limitations are exceeded:

From the NTSB preliminary report:

On October 29, 2007, about 1400 Pacific daylight time, a Raytheon Corporate Jets Hawker 800XP, N800CC, was substantially damaged by a fire originating from the left main landing gear after the takeoff was aborted at the John Wayne-Orange County Airport, Santa Ana, California. The aircraft is owned and operated by CIT Leasing Corp. and was originating at the time for the 14 CFR Part 91 business flight. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time and an instrument flight rules flight plan was filed. The two airline transport pilots and six passengers were not injured. The flight was destined for Denver, Colorado.

The pilot reported to the responding Federal Aviation Administration Inspector from the Long Beach, California, Flight Standards District Office that the takeoff was aborted twice before the third attempt due to an engine warning light. All three takeoff attempts were made within about a 20 minute period.

Inspection of the landing gear found that the left main landing gear tires overheated and blew during the third takeoff attempt. The hydraulic line on the left main landing gear was severed and hydraulic fluid leaked out onto the hot surface and ignited.

Jet aircraft, with their 200+ mph takeoff speeds and higher weights, can place tremendous strain on the brakes in the event of an aborted takeoff. That’s why most aircraft in that class have a time limitation after an abort. The brakes must be allowed to cool for a specified period (or, if the aircraft has brake temperature sensors, until a specific temperature is reached) so that if the second takeoff attempt also ends with an abort, the brakes don’t overheat and fail.

I don’t know what the limitation is for the Hawker, but I would be surprised if three attempts were allowed within 20 minutes. The scary part is that the Hawker has a fuselage fuel tank aft of the trailing edge of the wing, right where the skin has been burned through.

I feel for the flight crew. If brake limitations exists and the flight crew intentionally exceeded them, FAA sanctions will be difficult if not impossible to avoid. Aviation is like that. You can fly safely for 20 years and with one moment of carelessness ruin a whole career. Tough business, eh?

On the other hand, limitations don’t necessarily mean an aircraft can’t take a tremendous amount of abuse! To wit, you might be interested in this video of a brake certification test on the Boeing 777. Known as a “maximum rejected takeoff” test, the purpose is to ensure the aircraft can be stopped if a takeoff must be aborted at the worst possible moment under the worse possible conditions.

To simulate that situation, regulations state that the aircraft must, at max gross weight (660,000 lbs!), be able to accelerate to decision speed (around 210 mph) and then stop using nothing but extremely hard braking. No flaps, no spoilers, no thrust reversers.

Oh, did I mention that the brake pads must be worn down to minimum before the test starts? They must then absorb nearly ten million foot-pounds of energy in about 20 seconds without catching fire.

I’ve seen this video clip a hundred times, but it still amazes me every time I watch it. Enjoy.

Every time I start to think “hey maybe I’m not such a bad pilot after all”, I come across something like this which puts me back in my lowly and humble place.

These guys will trim your weeds and put out your fire all at the same time. And they’ll do it with the world’s largest operational flying boat:

Impressive doesn’t even begin to describe it. I remember thinking that Lake Elsinore seemed a bit small for a flying boat with a wingspan greater than that of a 747, especially when they need to be flying it on the step across the water for nearly a minute to scoop a full load of water.

The Martin Mars is not quite as big as the Hughes H-4 Hercules (better known as the Spruce Goose), but then again that airplane only flew once for a few seconds, whereas the Mars has been in active service for well over half a century (ladies, remember that lesson: size isn’t everything).

The Mars, built during World War II, was originally designed by the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Co. as a long-range bomber. It never saw use in that capacity, however, and served during the war as a troop transport moving people and supplies between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Pearl Harbor (see a full history). Since the war it’s primary use has been to fight fires.

Seven Mars aircraft were built by Martin. One was lost to an engine fire in 1950, another to a typhoon, and a prototype fire bomber Mars crashed in 1961 during testing. Two of these giants remain: Hawaiian Mars and Phillipine Mars. They’re based on Sproat Lake up in Canada.

What impresses me most about these airplanes is that they’ve been sitting in water for about sixty years, yet they continue to soldier on in one of the most demanding applications in the aviation world. The corrosion issues, even if freshwater, must be daunting. The planes are hauled out of the water for the winter, though. You can see how they launch the Mars back onto the lake in this photo essay.

A few years ago it looked like the Mars fleet would be grounded permanently. The owner and operator of the two remaining birds put them up for sale to any museum able to pay the asking price. I think it was just assumed that no one would be able to continue operating the Mars as a profitable business.

As it turns out, Coulson Flying Tankers purchased the entire firefighting operation — aircraft, FBO, spares, etc. — and has, according to their web site, essentially rebuilt the airplanes from the ground up.

My hat is off to Coulson; I can’t even imagine how much it must cost to keep those suckers airworthy. Each of them has four 2500 horsepower Wright-Cyclone R3350 radial engines. They stopped making those engines fifty years ago. The fuel burn is nearly 800 gallons per hour. At $4.00 per gallon, that’s $3,200 per hour for fuel alone. I don’t even know where you could get a supply of 100LL fuel large enough to keep those airplanes fueled. Most fuel farms of sufficient capacity stock Jet-A, not avgas. Plus, those farms are nowhere near lakes. I assume they fuel the aircraft from trucks. Another logistical hurdle.

Overhaul and maintenance reserves are probably at least as costly as fuel. Add in the support personnel and equipment, insurance, and ancillary expenses and figure a grand total of about $15,000 per hour to operate the Mars.

Of course, for that price, you get the ability to drop 7,200 gallons of water on a fire every nine minutes for six straight hours. That’s 265,000 gallons between refuelings. With both airplanes alternating shifts, you could theoretically drop 1.06 million gallons of water on a fire per day. Keep them both in the air and the total is 2.12 million gallons per day. In practice it wouldn’t quite reach that level because one of the Mars aircraft has a lower fuel capacity than the other. But you get the idea. Any way you slice it, it’s a lot of water.

Nothing else even comes close. There is a DC-10 airliner which has been converted to firefighting duty. It carries a bit more water, but it must return to the airport in order to reload. The Mars can skim a lake or ocean for a minute and be back on station far faster than any DC-10, and it has the capacity to mix fire retardant foam with the water while enroute.

The DC-10 has some other disadvantages. For one thing, it’s a swept-wing jet. It was designed to fly around 0.8 mach, not loaf around at slow speeds close to the ground. It just can’t fly as slowly as the Mars. In fact, the DC-10 was recently damaged when it ran into some trees while making a drop. This might not have anything to do with the speed at which it flies, but all things considered, the Mars seems better suited to the task. If only there were more of them…

Perhaps the day of the flying boats is not yet finished. In fact, the only dedicated firefighting aircraft I’m aware of that’s currently in production is a flying boat: the turbine powered Bombardier CL-415.

With the Southern California fires still fresh in our memory (actually, the Santiago fire is still burning), it’s worthwhile to consider how much worse the damage could have been were it not for these friendly giants. God bless the Martin Mars. Long may she fly!

I keep meaning to post the Red Bull Air Race broadcast schedule. Better yet, let Red Bull do it. The races are broadcast exclusively on Fox SportsNet in my neighborhood. I believe they’re available on other channels elsewhere. I understand they also transmit the races in real time in other parts of the world.

If you haven’t seen one of these broadcasts, you’re missing out on some exciting stuff. I have to hand it to RB, they really know how to put on a slick show. They’ve outfitted all the aircraft with multiple cameras on the wings, tail, belly, and of course in the cockpit. The aircraft are instrumented to provide real-time telemetry so viewers can see acceleration, airspeed, altitude, and more. They stage helicopters around the course to capture the action from the best possible angles. And the whole production is edited down to show only the best moments.

Best of all, they’ve refined the RBAR format. In past years they simply raced each plane and the fastest time won. Now it runs like an NCAA basketball tournament, with various seeds flying against one another and the winner moving into the next round. The results must make Red Bull pretty happy — they’ve had as many as a million people show up to watch a single race.

Some people think the Red Bull Air Race is too reckless. I’m not sure I agree. The pilots push pretty hard, but they are also well trained for these events. To get into the Red Bull Air Race, you must have recent Unlimited international or world championship aerobatic success on your resume. A surface level airshow waiver is also required. That’s a pretty tall order. It’s not enough to be a great aerobatic competitor OR a big name airshow pilot. You have to be both. And all that does is qualify you to participate in their training camp. It’s not even a guarantee that you’ll be invited to join the Air Race circuit.

While I’m on the topic, the Red Bull Air Race web site is rather addictive. They’re good about updating the site with the latest news and video highlights from the race series.

And be sure to check out the Red Bull Copilot site. It puts you in the cockpit during an actual run around the pylons.

As large as the aviation industry looks to those on the outside, once you’re on the other side of the fence, it doesn’t take long to realize that it’s a very small world. One of the big challenges facing that world has been from product liability issues.

In fact, for about a decade, the general aviation industry stopped producing new airplanes. From the mid-80s to the mid-90s, product liability was such that every major OEM exited the business. The insurance costs rose, the manufacturers had no choice but to pass that on to the consumer, who was summarily priced out of the market. Sales fell, per-unit liability costs rose further, and the cycle spiraled downward until even those companies which still had an operating production line were only turning out a handful of airplanes per year.

It wasn’t until the General Aviation Revitalization Act was signed into law by President Clinton in 1994 that things started to change. Aircraft manufacturers started producing planes again. The Cirrus, DiamondStar, Columbia, and other such advanced aircraft were brought to market. New avionics systems were developed. The whole VLJ (very light jet) market came into being.

But the liability problem never totally went away. Frivolous lawsuits still abound. Manufacturers have been sued for things as idiotic as not telling a pilot that the engine wouldn’t operate without fuel. I don’t have to tell you how this lunacy looks to people from other countries, do I?

Most recently, the largest manufacturer of aircraft carburetors, Precision Airmotive, abruptly decided to stop making, selling, and supporting them. In a letter to customers on their web site, they wrote:

Precision Airmotive LLC has discontinued sales of all float carburetors and component parts as of November 1, 2007. This unfortunate situation is a result of our inability to obtain product liability insurance for the product line. Precision Airmotive LLC and its 43 employees currently manufacture and support the float carburetors used in nearly all carbureted general aviation aircraft flying today. Precision has been the manufacturers of these carburetors since 1990. These FAA-approved carburetors were designed as early as the 1930s and continue to fly over a million flight hours a year. After decades of service, the reliability of these carburetors speaks for itself.

Nonetheless, Precision has seen its liability insurance premiums rise dramatically, to the point that the premium now exceeds the total sales dollars for this entire product line. In the past, we have absorbed that cost, with the hope that the aviation industry as a whole would be able to help address this issue faced by Precision Airmotive, as well as many other small aviation companies. Our efforts have been unsuccessful.

This year, despite the decades of reliable service and despite the design approval by the Federal Aviation Administration, Precision Airmotive has been unable to obtain product liability insurance for the carburetor product line. While we firmly believe that the product is safe, as does the FAA, and well-supported by dedicated people both at Precision and at our independent product support centers, unfortunately the litigation costs for defending the carburetor in court are unsustainable for a small business such as Precision.

Therefore, as of November 1, 2007, Precision Airmotive LLC has been left with no choice but to cease production and support of its float carburetor line.

We are working with the engine manufacturers and others in the industry in an attempt to minimize the impact on general aviation and to provide future support for this product line. There is a substantial quantity of parts and carburetors stocked at our distributors, which should be sufficient to support the industry for a short time.

I’ve seen this news devolve into an argument over the merits of fuel injection vs. carburetion in aircraft powerplants — something which drives me batty. Doesn’t anyone seen the larger picture here? Because crushing liability costs aren’t limited to carbs. And many parts of our airplanes are manufactured by a very small number of companies. Prop governors come to mind. Vacuum pumps. Brakes. Fasteners. If one firm is having trouble staying in business, odds are the others might be as well. It doesn’t portend a rosy future for the industry, especially when you consider that many of the advances we now enjoy came from small companies just like Precision Airmotive.

Sure, with experimentals you have more freedom to put what you want on your aircraft. But many of the components on experimental aircraft are certified anyway. Most of them essentially have certified engines, props, skins, wiring, brakes, tires, fasteners, etc. This liability issue affects everyone regardless of what it says on the plane’s airworthiness certificate.

The only solution to this problem is further liability reform legislation. This could be as simple as changing the law to allow NTSB reports into evidence. Currently, plaintiff’s attorneys know that NTSB accident report findings are not admissible in court. Ostensibly this is to protect the NTSB from outside influence, but an unintended consequence has been to remove the most skilled and impartial source of information on the cause of aircraft accidents from the courtroom. And that vacuum gets filled by paid “expert” witnesses who tell the aviation neophte jury exactly what the plaintiff wants them to hear.

This sort of thing isn’t limited to aviation. But GA is particularly vulnerable to abuse because of the implication that anyone involved in it must have deep pockets. The end result is a case like this one, where a jury awarded $480 million verdict against an aircraft manufacturer even though the NTSB indicated pilot error was the cause.

Personally, I think it’s high time our society acknowledged the fact that safety does not equate an absence of risk. Failure to do so is putting us, our industry, our economy, and even our way of life at risk. Wake up, people. Today it’s Precision Airmotive. Tomorrow it will be your company or industry that goes down for the count.

Think about it.

I received an inspirational email from a reader the other day. I hope he won’t mind if I quote a bit of it here, because it brings up a topic which has been on my mind lately.

Even though I got a six-year head start on your ticket, and have even gotten a bit of action in the box (Citabria or Stearman driving), my 300 hours is nothing compared to your 3000! The demands of home ownership and $155/hr rates on 172s put a lot of dust on my logbook, and I let my currency lapse–a dangerous thing, I know, since many pilots never pick it up again once they hangar their medical for the first time.

But thanks to your witty and inspiring blog, I renewed my 3rd Class last week and just today finished my BFR! Yee haw…back in the saddle.

I’m glad I was able to inspire you to get back into flying! The magic never goes away, there’s always something new and exciting in aviation. The trick is just to find it.

Many people fall away from aviation because unless they’re pursuing a professional career as a pilot, once they have the core ratings and certificates, there’s not much of a reason to go fly. You can only eat so many $100 hamburgers before the “new” factor wears off and the cost/benefit ratio starts to tilt in the wrong direction. It’s especially hard if you own a home or have a family. The rising cost of fuel and insurance don’t help.

I’ve found several ways to keep aviation interesting. One was to fly for Angel Flight West. Let me just say it’s the most rewarding flying you’ll ever do; helping those in need while getting your aviation fix can almost be a guilty pleasure. And it will take you to airports you would not otherwise have had a reason to visit. Your horizons will expand in many ways. The direct expenses are also tax deductible.

Another great idea was aerobatics. It improved my experience and skill levels immensely, not to mention bringing me in touch with an amazing group of aviators. It’s also a humbling thing to watch the great aerobatic pilots fly. They aren’t just the Unlimited competitors either. There’s a guy who flies a stock Great Lakes in Intermediate and he’s as entertaining to watch as any airshow. And as you progress through the ranks, there’s always a new generation of pilots coming up behind which need mentoring and coaching.

Aerobatics is a quest for the perfect flight — something which is impossible. Yet we continue to strive for that perfect roll, flawless spin, constant-radius loop, etc. Side benefits include an ability to recover from unusual attitudes with speed, accuracy, and a cool head. This is a boon to overall flight safety.

Formation flying is another burgeoning genre. The stick-and-rudder skills are almost secondary to the sense of camaraderie which develops from trusting another pilot with your life, and having them do the same with you. In formation flying, you’ll often find highly experienced pilots, interesting experimental aircraft, and a higher level of discipline than you might encounter with an average group of aviators.

The cost of flying has been a tough nut to crack for a long time. And it’s not getting any easier. The only thing I can say for sure about the cost of flying is that it will be more expensive in the future than it is today. Ten years from now we’ll look back on what we’re paying today and wish it could be that cheap. Hard to believe, but it’s always been true in the past.

OK, so that doesn’t help you finance your fix. There are things you can do to fly “on the cheap”. One is own an aircraft in partnership. I’ve always been a fan of buying less than you can afford. This is important because you want to own the plane rather than have it (financially) own you. Having said that, a flying RV-3 can be had for ~$25-30,000. That’s a 200 mph aerobatic airplane, and with an Experimental-Homebuilt airworthiness certificate, you can do the maintenance yourself. Split it with another pilot and the indirect costs are cut in half. It’s a little more complicated than sole ownership, but it certainly costs less.

Of course, the cheapest way to fly is to get paid for it. Instruction, banner flying, skywriting, pipeline patrol, towing gliders. There are a lot of great full or part-time jobs out there. Even if you just tow gliders a couple of weekends a month, at least it’s something which keeps you in the cockpit and in touch with the vibrant aviation community.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to get off on a dissertation about flying. Well, ok, yes I did. It saddens me to see people leave the flying populace, so it’s a good day when someone writes to say they’re getting back into the game.

You worked hard for your ratings and certificates. You knew it would be a tough endeavor. What nobody told you is that it’s just as challenging to keep that spark going when you’re through. But in the end, it’s well worth it. You’ll see!

It never ceases to amaze me how often folks within the aviation industry use “small planes” as a catch-all scapegoat and get by without being challenged.

Whether it’s FAA funding, airline delays, noise issues, pollution, ATC staffing levels, or the long lines at the McDonald’s in the terminal, the finger always gets pointed at the same place: it’s those small airplanes. Yes, guilty as charged. We’re also responsible the Southern California fires, the Landis doping scandal, and the overabundance of Pottery Barn catalogs in your mailbox.

No one will call them on it, even when the very statistics they espouse to support their thesis clearly suggest the problem lies elsewhere. The latest example comes from my home base, John Wayne-Orange County Airport (KSNA), where the Orange County Register reported this:

Airport spokeswoman Jenny Wedge chalked the problem up to JWA’s large number of private small-plane flights, which account for roughly 70 percent of operations.

“We would love to help with whatever we can do, but we’re doing everything (the FAA is) suggesting, and still continue to have problems,” Wedge said. Private pilots “could help by building their own awareness” of the airport and its safety guidelines, she added.

It’s because I’m “so aware” of the airport and its safety guidelines that I can say it’s ridiculous to blame runway incursions primarily on general aviation. The numbers don’t back you up, ma’am.

First of all, there are varying levels of runway incursions. There are incursions which have no bearing on safety, and there are those which could lead to an accident. If your spinner crosses 1″ over the hold line, that’s an incursion. But is it a serious safety issue? Certainly not on the level of the type we’ve been seeing at LAX. The “serious runway incursion” is defined as one which would likely have lead to an accident without intervention. Example: a pilot crosses a hold short line and stops 1 foot over the line. There are no other airplanes around. It’s not a serious incursion. Second example: an airliner crosses an active runway without clearance just as another airliner is about to touch down. A go-around is performed to avoid the collision. That would be a category A or B (serious) runway incursion.

JWA’s safety record compares well with its local counterparts since 1998, the longest period for which data were immediately available. In that time frame, JWA had one serious incursion, Long Beach Airport had four and LAX had 22, including an August incident in which two planes reportedly missed by just 37 feet.

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s examine that a little closer. According to FAA statistics, LAX has 1700 operations (takeoffs and landings) per day, basically all of them by commercial airline pilots. John Wayne sees 950 operations per day, and 70% of those are by general aviation pilots. That’s a ratio of about 1.7:1. Yet the ratio of serious runway incursions over the past nine years is 9:1. That means LAX, which sees ZERO general aviation, is about six times as likely to have a serious runway incursion.

Or, to put it another way, John Wayne Airport, where more than 2/3rds of the aircraft are the “small planes” ostensibly piloted by rich white yahoos with reckless disregard for the safety of law abiding citizens who just want to get to grandma’s house in one piece, is nearly six times safer than LAX.

Here’s another stat: on a per acre basis, SNA is busier than LAX. A lot busier — I’ve compared the acreage in a previous article. That means we move more airplanes with a smaller physical airport. Clearances are tighter. Yet we do it safely day after day. I don’t know what that says to you, but to me it indicates that the GA pilots flying out of SNA are doing better than the airline pilots they’re so unfavorably compared with.

I should add that John Wayne Airport is currently under major construction. They’re building hangars on the southeast side, digging up the northwest corner, and constructing a new terminal which causes one of the two runways to be used as a taxiway at night. They’re parking airliners in weird places, taxiways are closed, and we still have a safety record that LAX could only dream of.

Unlike large airports such as LAX, inspectors at JWA are focusing on recreational flights. Errors by small-plane pilots account for the majority of recent incursions at JWA, according to federal records obtained by The Register.

Considering 70% of SNA’s operations are general aviation, that is normal and should be expected. LAX has no general aviation, so focusing on GA there would be an exercise in futility. The whole statement makes no sense… unless you’re trying to make GA look bad.

If you want to know where the real safety hangups are when it comes to runway incursions, look at the airline guys. They’re jet lagged, overworked, frequently underpaid, at war with their employers, and perpetually behind schedule. And if the airliner in question is a regional jet, the guy in the right seat could have as little a 300 hours of total flight time.

You won’t read about this in the newspaper, but only about half of nationwide runway incursions are even due to pilots at all. The numbers break down this way:

• 54%: pilot deviation
• 35%: pedestrian or vehicle deviation
• 11%: operational deviations or errors

And speaking of runway incusions, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve been on 1/4 mile final only to see a 757 cross my runway right in front of me. They may not call that a runway incursion, but it’s not safe. Also, those 757s are too long to hold between the runways without the tail hanging out past the hold bars. That puts their jet blast closer to landing traffic on 19L and fits a reasonable definition of runway incursion.

The bottom line is that the runway incursion problem is a local issue. The factors which lead to incursions at SNA are completely different from those that cause them at LAX. Runway layout, operation type, time of day, weather, controller staffing & experience, pilot fatigue, signage and lighting, these all have as much to do with surface safety as who’s in the cockpit. So don’t always trust what you read in the newspaper. Or from your airport spokesperson. Look carefully at the statistics. They might tell a very different story.

I once read that the most powerful supercomputers in the world are used to predict weather. Not cure disease. Not search for aliens. Not out-smart Wall Street. Predict weather.

And despite all that computing power, they really don’t do a very good job. I’m not sure if it’s a case of “junk in, junk out”, the so-called butterfly effect, poor algorithms, or what, but even short term forecasts for things like the marine layer are often completely wrong.

Right now it’s raining outside, but the weather is nothing like what was predicted. The forecasts were so dire that the National Weather Service issued a Special Weather Statement:

…UNSEASONABLY STRONG SEPTEMBER STORM TODAY THROUGH SATURDAY…

A STRONG PACIFIC STORM FOR SEPTEMBER IS EXPECTED TO MOVE THROUGH SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LATE TODAY THROUGH EARLY SATURDAY. THIS STORM HAS THE POTENTIAL TO PRODUCE WEATHER RARELY SEEN IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA IN SEPTEMBER. SHOWERS AND ISOLATED THUNDERSTORMS WILL OCCUR OVER THE REGION…MAINLY TONIGHT AND EARLY SATURDAY. LOCAL SNOWFALL IS EVEN POSSIBLE ABOVE 7000 FEET…MAINLY TONIGHT. WATERSPOUTS WILL BE POSSIBLE WITH THUNDERSTORMS OVER THE COASTAL WATERS THROUGH SATURDAY.

HEAVIEST RAINFALL WILL BE OVER THE SOUTH SLOPES OF THE MOUNTAINS IN SOUTHWESTERN SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY WHERE UP TO ONE AND A HALF INCHES COULD FALL.

They’ve since changed their story to something that gave me a chuckle:

SHORT TERM (TONIGHT THROUGH MONDAY)…
EXTREMELY ANNOYING UPPER LOW STILL SPINNING NEARLY STATIONARY SOUTH SOUTHWEST OF POINT CONCEPTION. A COUPLE BANDS OF SHOWERS MOVED ACROSS THE AREA EARLIER THIS MORNING…BUT GENERALLY PRODUCED LESS THAN ONE TENTH OF AN INCH OF RAIN. THANKS TO THE UPPER LOW…SKIES ARE MUCH SUNNIER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT…SO TEMPS ARE MUCH WARMER THAN EXPECTED THIS AFTERNOON.

I wasn’t laughing about it this afternoon, though. My work is highly weather dependent, and plans were made, cancelled, un-cancelled, re-cancelled, changed, and then changed again, all because of this “extremely annoying upper low”.

While flying with Skytypers over the Red Bull Air Race in San Diego this afternoon, it was easy to see Mr. Annoying Low sitting off the coast. It was really moving fast, only the movement was northward rather than on shore. As a result we had high winds aloft, but no other significant weather to deal with.

So much for the supercomputers.

Speaking of the Red Bull Air Race, I don’t know how they got permission to do hard core low-level aerobatics right next to the primary Class B airport in San Diego, but it sure was causing the controllers a lot of headaches. Departures out of Lindbergh had been altered, leaving everyone stressed and confused.

I was monitoring Socal and heard two different airspace busts in the time I was flying over the Air Race. A civilian aircraft busted the Class B and was given a number to call. Ten bucks says that guy ends up on the bench for two months. The other was a military aircraft. He wasn’t given a number to call — the controller just asked him to leave the Bravo airspace.

We’ll be flying over the RBAR again on Saturday, weather permitting, of course.

What on earth is going on at Socal Approach these days? It seems every time I fly, they find a new way to confuse, infuriate, or disappoint me. Sometimes all three.

It really pains me to say that, because my cousin was an air traffic controller and I have the utmost respect for ATC. Hell, when I was a kid, I used to hang out at Anchorage Center’s facility on Elmendorf AFB. It’s not easy controlling traffic in the Los Angeles area. They are beset with personnel shortages, a plethora of trainees, a dysfunctional relationship with FAA management, and high levels of traffic.

I try to help them out as much as possible. Speaking clearly, eliminating excess verbiage, being patient when they’re busy. But a guy can only take so much, and in my experience Socal makes more mistakes now than they ever have.

Just the other day I launched out of SNA on an instrument flight plan. My clearance was to depart the airport and fly heading 220 for radar vectors to the Seal Beach VORTAC. This is the standard boilerplate clearance when departing John Wayne Airport under IFR, and something I’ve done a thousand times.

I’m not two miles from the field before they start yelling at me for not following the Orange departure. This is a head scratcher, because the Orange departure is a VFR procedure.

As soon as I explained that I was IFR, not VFR, I received five different squawk codes in the space of 4 minutes. As if this wasn’t enough, I was then handed off to Los Angeles Center while at 2000 feet MSL and less than 10 miles from the airport!

I am not making this up.

I questioned the handoff and got yelled at for doing so. OK, I shouldn’t have phrased it the way I did (”Is the TRACON being evacuated?”), but still. I would have asked for a phone number, but things were so screwed up on their end I wasn’t sure whose number to ask for. I was basically “lost com” while talking to ATC via a functioning radio.

Eventually I got in touch with the proper Socal controller, who yelled at me for not being on the frequency sooner.

Now I try not to fly angry, so I forced myself to let it go. But in retrospect, that might not have been the best thing to do. Something was very wrong down in San Diego, and I could have forced someone there to deal with it. Imagine if this had been a freshly minted IFR pilot on his first flight in the system. Or someone who wasn’t familiar enough with the area to know that they should be talking to Socal on 127.2, not Los Angeles Center.

It sounds like I’m really down on ATC, but I do realize they have their own challenges. Socal is the busiest TRACON in the world. As I noted, personnel shortages are a big problem for them right now due to high numbers of retirements, and it’s clear there are a lot of trainees working the scopes these days.

I’m not sure the towers are any better. A friend works as a tower controller at LAX, and said the quality of the new people working the cab there is “scary”.

This experience has reinforced something I teach all my students: trust but verify. Because regardless of whether you’re flying under visual or instrument flight rules, when all is said and done, the only person you can count on up there is yourself. So expect the unexpected and don’t let a controller bully you. If something smells bad, question it. Trust me, you’ll be doing yourself — and ATC — a favor.

From what I can see, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. If you want a controller’s perspective on this, I recommend Get the Flick, a blog written by a recently retired controller and safety representative from Atlanta ARTCC.

I first saw this on the wall in a restroom at Cable Airport. No joke. For reasons I can’t begin to fathom, someone had taped a photo of this aircraft to the wall:

It’s called Turbine Toucan, and it’s just another ho-hum aerobatic biplane, just like my Pitts. Except that it boasts something most modern jet fighters can’t even claim (no, I’m not referring to the paint scheme): a positive thrust-to-weight ratio.

This thing weighs 2000 lbs and the turbine engine puts out 3300 lbs of thrust. That’s an amazing 1.65:1 ratio, enough to accelerate in a vertical climb. Indefinitely.

Even fighter jets with positive thrust-to-weight ratios — of which there are few — can’t match Turbine Toucan’s performance in this department. The F-15 Eagle, for example, is about 1.12:1. Even the latest and greatest generation of jets like the F-22 Raptor (at 1.26:1) and F-35 (1.22:1 with 50% fuel) can’t compare.

Among aerobatic aircraft with reciprocating powerplants, only the most pumped up Sukhois and Edges approach the performance of that magical 1:1 ratio. I ran the numbers on the Pitts S-2B and was surprised to find 0.95:1, because it sure doesn’t feel that sprightly on the uplines. Maybe I need to go on a diet?

Eh. More likely it’s due to the high level of drag from the Pitts’ biplane design. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

This isn’t the first time someone’s had the bright idea of putting a big turbine engine on a featherweight aerobatic airplane. Wayne Handley did it back in the late 90’s with his Oracle Turbo Raven. Equipped with a 750 hp Pratt & Whitney PT6A turboprop powerplant, that monoplane sported a 1.47:1 thrust-to-weight ratio. Still not up to the Turbine Toucan standard.

Handley frequently demonstrated a vertical climb where he would stop in mid-air, hover, and then accelerate upward again. I never had the opportunity to see the Turbo Raven in person, but from what I’ve been told it left quite an impression. I think of it has a GA equivalent of vectored thrust. Handley would take off directly into a half Cuban, then perform a vertical half-roll and push over into a steep descent which ended with a landing in the exact same spot he’d departed from 60 seconds earlier.

Sadly, the Raven was badly damaged in a 1999 accident (see video). Wayne Handley was injured but has since recovered and still trains aerobatic pilots at his private airfield in central California.

Being a biplane, I can’t help but wonder if the Turbine Toucan will beat the Turbo Raven’s time-to-climb records. Toucan has a higher thrust to weight ratio, but will certainly be hampered by higher drag. The Raven climbed to 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) in one minute and nine seconds seconds, a rate of 8,560 fpm.

Initial testing of the Turbine Toucan yielded an 8,400 fpm climb rate at about 50% power, but that was based on a sea level climb to 4,500′ MSL. Even with a turbine engine, as the airplane climbs, thrust will decrease. Drag will decrease as well in the thinner air, so I think it’ll be close.

As a biplane owner, I’m going to have to root for the Turbine Toucan. (Sorry, Wayne!)

I just returned from a 48 hour round trip to southern Florida to pick up a refurbished Grumman AA-5B Tiger and ferry it back to California. I’ll say this for general aviation, it’s always an adventure. I took a few photos, which are available here.

My first thought after sitting down to memorialize the weekend: I’d forgotten how exhausting these transcontinental trips can be, especially when you’re dodging thunderstorms for 2000 continuous miles. Florida in late August — good times.

The commercial flight out to Ft. Meyers was blessedly uneventful, but between the three hour time change and our 6:45 a.m. wheels up plan for Sunday morning, I was behind the curve even before we started. Fortunately the thunderstorms were confined to the coasts at that hour and we managed to pick our way up to Tallahassee and then over to west Texas on the first day.

This Grumman is very well equipped: Garmin GNS430, Shadin fuel flow, EDM700 engine monitor, Stec 40 autopilot with altitude hold, new canopy glass and Scheme Designers paint, LoPresti cowling and HID landing light.

But all that stuff was a distant second to the capabilities of the Garmin 496 handheld Zach brought with him. The XM satellite downlink was worth it’s weight in gold on this trip. Having that thing in the cockpit is like putting a FSS briefer in the copilot seat (a real briefer, that is, not these Lockheed automatons). We knew the exact location of every cell, every lightning strike, cloud cover, and so on. Jacksonville Center was announcing a new convective sigmet every couple of minutes, and by the time he was done talking we’d have a graphical plot of it overlayed on the 496.

This was my sixth transcon trip in a GA aircraft. Most of them have been delivery and training flights, which is neat because there’s nothing quite like watching someone realize the long-held dream of obtaining their own aircraft. More that just watching, being a part of it, and helping guide them through the exciting (and often confusing) delivery process. Is the aircraft ok? Paperwork in order? How do we get home? How do I master the avionics and systems in this thing?

Zach was fun to work with because this trip represented so many firsts for him. Before we left Orange County, he had only 60 hours in his logbook and had just obtained his PPL. This trip increased his total time by 25%. It was also his longest distance flight, longest leg time-wise, highest flight altitude, first real encounter with weather, and so on. The growth and experience he gained in just one day is phenomenal, and it was a pleasure to be a part of it.

Damaris B. Sarria is a NASA employee who works on the space shuttle program. After an orbiter is launched, her standard M.O. is to fly from Florida to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to help analyze photographic data and determine what, if any, damage occurred to the spacecraft while it made the journey into space.

I believe they did at least some of this even before the Columbia accident, as the launch pad, orbiter, and surrounding area contain a multitude of cameras which record the launch from every conceivable angle.

Anyway, she writes first hand about the options available to NASA on her web site:

We have the black emittance wash, which will keep heat from building up in the cavity. Another option is a gun that ejects a heat-resistant, caulk-like material into the cavity. The third repair option is the overlay, which is a 15″ x 24″ sheet of silicon carbide that gets augered into the tiles to cover up the damage.

Damaris says they might also bring the shuttle home without making any repair.

One might wonder why they wouldn’t a) make a repair anyway, even if it’s probably not needed, and b) utilize all three repair options just as a precaution. Use the wash, inject the caulk, and then cover it with an overlay (aka “speed tape”). I believe the answer is that the TPS tiles on the orbiter are fragile and any work done on the shuttle could have the effect of making the damage worse.

Of course, this assumes I know what I’m talking about. Which I don’t. If I was up there, I’d call the Auto Club and tell them I wanted a tow to the nearest shop. Or call the the dealership and ask their service department for a repair quote (”that’ll be about $50 million, sir”).

The options available to NASA sound a lot like the ones available to a homebuilder. A sort of composite repair in space, albeit with materials which can absorb 2300 degrees of heat and still be cool enough to hold in your hand.

Speaking of homebuilding, this begs the question of who would sign it off? I mean, who holds the repairman certificate on a space shuttle, anyway?

Ah, the minutia of aviation.

A fellow CFI and I have been scratching our heads for the past month about the proper type designator for a DiamondStar. I’ve always thought it was DA40 and hadn’t heard anything to the contrary until someone recently said it was actually “DV40″. What the…

Socal TRACON was queried during a flight today and confirmed it should be DV40. Now normally I don’t argue with the Feds, but I think Socal was mistaken.

Diamond refers to it as a DA40 in manuals, on their web site, and on the aircraft itself. I just looked up the ICAO type designator for the DiamondStar and it shows as DA40. The Eclipse/Katana is a DV20, however. Try it yourself and enter “Diamond” as the manufacturer.

The DiamondStar is a DA40 according to ICAO. Maybe the FAA has decided on something different, but I doubt it. I found FAA documents instructing pilots to use the “ICAO Doc 8643″ type designator, which comes from the above referenced web site.

Also, I checked with an LAX tower controller who used to work TOA and LGB, she confirmed it’s DA40.

By the way, the ICAO list also shows a “Katana DA40″, so perhaps Socal hasn’t been wrong when calling us a Katana. Is it possible I’ve been taking offense for no good reason?? The ICAO list is very current — it even lists the Diamond D-Jet.

With all due apologies for destroying the Top Gun mythos, yes, these really are the things pilots talk about and research for hours on end.

If I had a “frequently asked questions” list for glass panels, the first question on the list would probably be: “is it legal to fly with electronic charts alone (ie. no paper on board)?”. Without exception, every person I’ve flown with in an Entegra or G1000 equipped aircraft has made this inquiry.

My response has always been that while it’s not a wise idea to fly without paper since an electrical component failure could render your whole charting system inoperative, from a legal standpoint, electronic charts are acceptable as a substitute. Get caught above the stratus without your approach plates? If you have the electronic charts, go ahead and do the approach.

In fact, as far as I know there is no legal requirement to carry charts whatsoever. This applies to VFR and IFR under Part 91. And from a practical standpoint, it doesn’t make sense that there would be. There are aircraft out there — my Pitts S-2B is one of them — which literally don’t have any room for a chart. No room to unfold it, store it, keep it secure during hard aerobatics, etc. Sure, we use one during cross-country operations, but for acro flights? Who really has a chart readily accessible to the pilot in that scenario?

If there is an FAA regulation, case law, regional counsel legal opinion, advisory circular, directive, or other binding document which indicates otherwise, I’m not aware of it.

The only exception I can think of is on the Los Angeles terminal area chart on the Special Flight Rules panel which states “The following rules shall be adhered to while utilizing the Los Angeles Special Flight Rules Area:” and below that one of the requirements is “The pilot shall have a current Terminal Area Chart in the aircraft”.

Beyond that, I just don’t see any regulation requiring charts. The closest thing would be 14 CFR 91.103:

Sec. 91.103 – Preflight action.

Each pilot in command shall, before beginning a flight, become familiar with all available information concerning that flight. This information must include –

(a) For a flight under IFR or a flight not in the vicinity of an airport, weather reports and forecasts, fuel requirements, alternatives available if the planned flight cannot be completed, and any known traffic delays of which the pilot in command has been advised by ATC;

(b) For any flight, runway lengths at airports of intended use, and the following takeoff and landing distance information

Anyway, I bring this up now because the FAA has issued Advisory Circular 91-78, Use of Class 1 or Class 2 Electronic Flight Bag (EFB), which basically confirms my thoughts on the matter. In summary, electronic charts are acceptable legal substitutes for paper charts, but carrying paper backup is recommended.

In other words, common sense. Which, when the government is involved, isn’t necessarily all that common.

The phrase “electronic flight bag” is probably not part of your lexicon, but it refers to a wide variety of panel mount and handheld electronic navigators. The Advisory Circular covers everything from the G1000 to a lowly black-and-while portable GPS and is, I believe, the first time the FAA has granted implicit admission of “non-IFR” receivers to the cockpit.

As always, the ultimate responsibility for ensuring receipt of the latest and most currently available information lies with the pilot. That much remains the same. But it’s refreshing to see that the FAA doesn’t care how you get the data as long as you get it.

Now the that door is open, I would love to see a parallel Circular to make sites like Weathermeister legal for official FAA weather briefings. Lord knows the data is infinitely cleaner and easier to interpret when viewed in such a manner. Alas, one step at a time…

This brilliant sketch manages to encapsulate my daily life as a CFI in the wilting summer heat. At 8 a.m. I’m Dean Martin. By 8 p.m., I’m Foster Brooks.

Yes, it has quite a familiar ring to it, right down to the part about running an an hour and forty three minutes late for the next flight.

Through pure happenstance, it seems some of the best aviation photographers out there are friends of mine. Dean Siracusa, fellow pilot, photog, and proprietor of Transtock.com was at LAX yesterday and snapped these fine pictures of the superjumbo Airbus A380 making it’s first landing in the United States:

 
Photos (c) Dean Siracusa, transtock.com

 
Photos (c) Dean Siracusa, transtock.com

Photo (c) Dean Siracusa, transtock.com

Well, not really. As it turns out, this airplane was the second A380 to land in the U.S. It was supposed to be a simultaneous arrival with another aircraft touching down at JFK, but the timing was a little off and this aircraft landed shortly after the one in New York. A minor annoyance, but one that undoubtedly doesn’t sit well with the folks at Los Angeles World Airports. In fact, a quick check of Wikipedia and other online sources indicates that they view it as a JFK-first landing.

The original agreement between LAX and Airbus was that Los Angeles would be the first landing point for the A380. In exchange, the airport would spend about $120 million on improvements and build a new gate large enough to accommodate the A380 so Airbus could perform tests while it was in town. At some point — well after LAX had committed serious money to the new gate — Airbus reneged on the deal and decided to land in New York instead. It was another black eye for a company that really didn’t need one.

I’m not sure yesterday’s ceremonial arrival has repaired those bad feelings. LAX is spending billions in upgrades, some of which are designed specifically for the A380. For example, the southern-most runway has been closed for an entire year while construction crews completely remove it and build a new one just 55 feet further south. The reason? The A380’s wingspan is 50′ greater than the 747. It’s a big bet on an airplane that may not be as successful as the aforementioned Boeing product. But if Los Angeles wants to remain competitive, they’ve got to spend money to make money.

As it stands now, there are no orders for the freighter version of the A380, and only ~155 orders for the passenger version. The A380 has been saddled with wiring problems, weight issues (how very American), and long delays. The airplane is certainly impressive; in single class configuration in can carry as many as 853 passengers. The thing is, I’m not aware of any airline interested in using that configuration. Launch customer Singapore Airlines settled on a three-class 485 seat configuration and Quantas a 500 seat arrangement. With those numbers, the advantage over the 747 is far lower than it initially appeared.

Dean put it best:

They created it at a time when airlines are attempting to end the hub and spoke system somewhat. When going overseas you used to always have to go through places like LAX or JFK no matter where you lived in the country. Now places like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City have international flights using smaller, more efficient aircraft like the 767 or upcoming Dreamliner, the 787.

Still, it’s an impressive airplane. It’s hard to get a sense of how large the airplane is from the photos because there’s nothing to compare it to. The LA Times has some pictures which give a sense of relative size.

Very impressive. Even more so because of the multi-national conglomeration which overcame the inefficiencies of administrative overhead and diverse geography to build the thing in the first place. If Boeing or McDonnell Douglas had those hurdles to overcome, we’d still be flying piston airliners.

As a pilot, it’s my job to consider everything that might go wrong on a flight and have a plan of action for dealing with it. But I can honestly say I’ve never thought about this scenario:

British Airways has issued an apology to a first class passenger on a flight from Delhi to London last week who woke up to find himself next to a dead body.

The cabin crew had used an unoccupied seat in his row for the body of an elderly woman who had died in the crowded economy section about three hours after takeoff.

Paul Trinder, 54, told the Mirror and Sun tabloids that he woke at 30,000 feet to discover the flight crew strapping the body into the seat near him.

“I woke to see the cabin crew manoeuvring what looked like a sack of potatoes into the seat. Slowly, through the darkness, I realized it was a body,” the businessman told the paper.

“The corpse was strapped into the seat, but because of turbulence it kept slipping down onto the floor … It was horrific. The body had to be wedged in place with lots of pillows.”

It seems the flight crew could have done a better job handling this situation. British Airways alienated a guy who flies their airline 200,000 first class miles per year. On the other hand, I can’t think of any way of dealing with this tragedy without upsetting someone, especially when the aircraft is fairly full. An aircraft — even an airliner — is only so large.

I was shocked to read that BA experiences this ten times per year. Chalk it up as another reason to fly general aviation.

Selling crazy on the internet is nothing new, but for some reason it’s really getting under my skin as it regards the Legacy/Gol accident. I got into it the other day on an internet forum with someone who was sure the bizjet crew had to be at fault, yet couldn’t explain why.

Can anyone out there explain to me why the Legacy crew was under house arrest for two months? Whatever the suspected cause of the accident, the detainment was a violation of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) 1963 Tokyo Convention, something to which every ICAO signatory subscribes.

As far as I can tell, the crux of the detainment stems from the fact that “the pilots did not stick to their flight plan”. To those who are not aviators, that probably sounds like an undeniable indicator of wrongdoing. But anyone who operates under or is knowledgeable about Instrument Flight Rules will tell you that a filed flight plan means nothing. In most places, pilots virtually never make a flight exactly as it appears on a flight plan. ATC is always giving re-routes, differerent altitudes, vectors, and doing other things to account for traffic conflicts, weather, and so on.

What matters is not what was filed, but what they were assigned in their clearance. And they were assigned the same altitude as the Gol 737. ATC instructed both planes to maintain same altitude and they complied with that clearance as required by regulations. Neither one knew that the other aircraft was at the same altitude. The only party with that information is air traffic control. They have the radar screens, the flight data strips, the “big picture”. They are the ones that issue routes to fly and altitudes to maintain, and therefore it seems to me that Brazilian ATC is the most likely culprit here.

Wherever you go on this planet, ATC’s primary job is to separate IFR traffic from other IFR traffic. Regulations require pilots to maintain a visual scan for other airplanes when flying in visual conditions, regardless of the flight rules under which they are operating. However, if one seeks to place blame on the Legacy crew for failure to see-and-avoid, then an equal share must fall on the Boeing’s flight crew.

Regulations aside, the see-and-avoid argument is a tough one to comply with in a place where airplanes can converge at up to 1,200 mph. That’s one mile every three seconds. This is one of the reasons airliners and business jets have Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems. TCAS systems not only alert the crew to traffic conflicts, but will actually communicate with TCAS systems in other aircraft and coordinate collision avoidance. This is known as a “resolution advisory”. One airplane’s TCAS will command the flight crew to climb, and the other aircraft’s crew will be ordered to descend.

As far as I know, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Legacy’s transponder was physically turned off by the pilots, or that the crew was doing anything improper or unusual. Mainstream media has reporting that the Legacy crew performed aerobatics, intentionally disabled their transponder, and refused to acknowledge ATC transmissions, but each of those claims later turned out to be unsubstantiated.

The one question mark is why the TCAS systems didn’t alert the flight crews to the impending conflict. The Legacy was brand new, having just rolled out of the factory shortly before the flight. Is it possible there was an avionics problem? An antenna issue? A blown circuit breaker or other fault? It’s possible. But whatever the cause, it seems likely that Brazil’s air traffic control system contributed mightily to this accident, something Brazil has been loathe to admit.

If you want to read an account of Brazilian air traffic control from someone who’s been there, here’s what a 38,000 hour pilot and former 747 captain had to say about flying in that neck of the woods:

I am not even slightly surprised that two aircraft collided while under “control” of Brazilian ATC, but I am very surprised we don’t see more such mid-airs. I flew in Central and South America, including Brazil, in the late ’50s, mostly cargo and ferry flights. In 1994, while working for JAL, I began flying three trips a month between Los Angeles and Sao Paulo until my “first retirement” in 2001. Not much had changed in the intervening four decades.

Communications are still horrible to non-existent. HF is still being used routinely, even when VHF is available. It is somewhat anachronistic to be flying near enough to Porto Velho to see the lights of the city, and still have to talk to them on HF. Call them on the VHF frequency and they may answer, but they will often ask to switch to HF for the position report, or for the next call. There is no question they prefer using HF, but I still don’t understand why. As far as I know, all ATC services are provided by the military, and by rather low-paid and poorly trained personnel. The results of that are inevitable, and many times I’ve flown through an ATC sector without being able to raise anyone, HF or VHF. If someone does respond, it is sometimes obvious they’ve just awakened. There are several sectors (Porto Velho being one) where any transmission from the ground is overwhelmed by loud music in the same room as the mike, and it sounds like the controller is across the room, yelling in the general direction of the mike. Party time, I guess, or maybe just trying to stay awake.

Even when the radio works, all communications are in Portuguese, unless no one on the aircraft can speak it. Then English will be used, but it’s very hard to understand. Of course, any transmission in English that is not absolutely standard and very common will not be understood on the ground at all, leading to “Say again?” or, worse, they will ignore further calls of any kind. The vast majority of flights over Brazil are flown by crews who do not speak either Portuguese or English as a native language, so it is the Tower of Babel all over again. It is dangerous, but heck, the same thing happens in France, Quebec, Russia and many other countries, too. We are very fortunate in the good-old United States, where we can push a button and talk to someone in English. Most of the time, anyway.

There is essentially no radar coverage in South America, except around large cities. Where there is radar, they don’t use it en route, because aircraft will soon be out of coverage again, so they are forced to fall back on timed separation at all times, and the old-fashion position reports (which most American pilots have never done). To be fair, arrivals and departures are sometimes vectored in the terminal area at low altitude.

In seven years of my operating on that route, there were five incidents where other aircraft were definitely in “my airspace” by any standards. This is made worse by those countries who consider a national airline a matter of pride, and whose crews take short-cuts. In one of those, I watched a Lan Chile aircraft cross our track a mile or two ahead, at our altitude, close enough to identify the logo at night. Both Lan Chile and ATC denied it, for the aircraft was supposed to be crossing at a VOR about 60 miles behind us. They were giving phony position reports (in Spanish), and simply taking a big shortcut. I felt it prudent to climb a few hundred feet to avoid a huge bump from the wake. File a report, and it would never see the light of day. I did anyway, and never heard a thing.

In my opinion, it would be much safer to do away with ATC entirely in areas like this. In trying to “control” aircraft with the equipment they have, and the “skill” they demonstrate, they create danger. I’d feel much more comfortable going with random routes and altitudes and using TCAS for my own separation.

Many of us in the aviation world have recently come to know the name Robert Miller.  Mr. Miller is an east coast CFI and the author of Over the Airwaves.  OTA’s masthead describes it as ”the bi-weekly journal for the proficient pilot”.

I’ve been reading Over the Airwaves for about a year and find that I agree with Mr. Miller on many points.  He’s obviously dedicated to the issue of flight safety and a proponent of realistic, recurrent training which exceeds the Practical Test Standards and embraces the real-world aspects of flying.

I continue to read OTA and learn a lot from it.  And I should note that his dedication to publishing Over the Airwaves is admirable.  One can’t help but stand in awe of the many hours it must take to put together each issue.  I commend him for venturing beyond the traditional CFI methods of providing information to pilots and hope he continues to publish OTA for a long time.

Having said that, I’ve noticed that OTA seems to spawn from a single raison d’etre, namely that the general aviation fatal accident rate is “worsening at an alarming rate” (OTA Vol. 3, No. 25).  Statistics, tables, and charts are proffered in support of this thesis, and I must admit the case looks compelling.  It begs the question:  have AOPA, the Air Safety Foundation, the FAA, and the NTSB been lying to us?  Are they glossing over the true story on general aviation flight safety?

I decided to look into this issue a little deeper, not to discredit Mr. Miller or his publication — remember, I’m an avid reader of Over the Airwaves - but because for some reason his theory just didn’t feel right.

I began by asking him where he got the raw data to support the claim that “We are marching down seven straight years of worsening GA fatal accident rates”, because the data I see from the Air Safety Foundation and NTSB suggest that the fatal accident rate has been in a long term hold.  In light of the fact that annual GA flight hours are estimated, the NTSB figures showing a rate hovering near 1.3 per 100,000 hours for the past decade indicate that GA fataility rates are not getting worse.  My source:  http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Table10.htm

Bob very kindly replied and referred me to the headline article in Volume 3, Issue 23a of OTA.  This article uses avgas sales to suggest declining flying activity.  He also pointed me to a linear regression analysis at the bottom of Volume 3, Issue 25 which suggests an increasing fatal accident rate:

After reviewing the data, I still suggest that his analysis is quite flawed.  Miller ties avgas burned to hours flown.  To be fair, the NTSB uses the same methodology.  However, the connection between the two cannot be a direct one, because the Department of Energy stats he references would then indicate that flying activity has declined 80% since 1983.  The table shows a drop from 418,000 gallons/day in 1983 to 98,000 gallons/day in 2004.

A more logical explanation is that there are various reasons for the drop in avgas fuel usage:

• Let’s begin with the pilot popuation.  Yes, there are fewer pilots flying today than there were in the 1980s.  I don’t really care how many are in the FAA registry.  Many of them don’t fly anyway, just as they didn’t fly in the 80s.  But the number of active pilots is down, maybe 10% I’d estimate.  Even if it’s higher, there’s no way it would come close to an 80% drop.

• There are fewer piston twins flying today than there were in 1983.  Who is even making piston twins these days?  The Baron, Seminole, and TwinStar sales combined total fewer than 50 airplanes per year.  Cessna is completely out of the piston twin market, and for the most part so is Piper.  No more 300 and 400 series twins, no more Twin Comanches, Apaches, Aztecs, Twin Bonanzas.  You name a piston twin, it’s pretty much been out of production for decades.  And the existing piston twin fleet is being decimated by the inevitable ravages of time, spar ADs, high operating costs, limited parts supplies, and so on.  Fewer twins flying = lower total fuel consumption per hour flown.

• Single engine airplanes are more efficient.  An SR20, SR22, DA20, DA40, Columbia, or other modern airplane gets far better economy than the airplanes of the 80s.  Composite construction and advanced aerodynamics allow these planes to fly with less drag.  Any decent MFD or GPS can show you the real time NMPG efficiency of that airplane.  Especially at lean of peak operation, these planes burn a fraction of the fuel a piston twin does.

• Now, consider lean-of-peak operation.  Advanced engine monitoring and fuel metering for GA has led to greater use of fuel efficient operating techniques.  We care about fuel burn now because fuel is expensive.  Even without an engine monitor, nobody goes flying around with the red knob all the way in for hours on end.  In my Pitts, I can burn anywhere between 11 and 26 gph.  Considering that I only have 23 gallons of fuel on board when I takeoff, that’s not irrelevant data.

• But the biggest factor in the decline of avgas since the early 80s is the nearly 100% decline in piston twin usage by commercial operators since 1983.  The commercial operators used to fly piston airliners for freight delivery, and GA piston twins for smaller stuff.  Corporate operators used to fly executives around in piston twins, whereas nowadays nearly all those folks have moved up to turbine twins and/or jets.  The corporate/commercial operators flew a huge chunk of the total piston hours in the early 80s.  Over time, they moved to turbine equipment and therefore bought less and less avgas.

• Look at the DOE statistics for jet fuel usage.  They show a 65% increase in jet fuel consumption over the same period that avgas dropped by 80%. During that same period, the total U.S. civil fleet has remained consistent in numbers, ~200,000 aircraft on the registry.

OTA’s fatal accident rate per million gallons of avgas consumed analysis is also flawed, because the GA accident rate includes all sorts of general aviation airplanes, and as previously noted, a great portion of GA flight hours are now being accumulated in aircraft with turbine rather than piston engines.

In regards to Mr. Miller’s linear regression table at http://overtheairwaves.com/vol3-215.gif, it is also deceptive.  It uses too few data points to be statistically relevant.  Increase the data to include numbers going back to 1983, as he did with avgas, and it would show a different picture, namely a) a long term decline in accident rates, and b) that the chart’s vertical axis only represents 0.14/100,000.  Zoom in far enough and you can make anything look bad just by virtue of the chart’s scale.

Even given the data as Mr. Miller presents it, there exists a variance between a fatal accident rate of 1.25 and 1.32 per 100,000 hours flown.  Think about that.  For every 100,000 hours flown, the accident rate went from 1.25 to 1.32.  That’s an increase of 0.07 accidents per 100,000 hours.  To put it another way, it’s an increase of 5%, which to be honest is probably less than the margin of error when you consider that the hours flown are merely an estimate.

OTA describes this as “worsening at an alarming rate”.  Am I crazy for disagreeing?

As I said before, my analysis is not designed to slight Mr. Miller or his publication.  I simply suggest that he is trying to have it both ways with the statistics.  He claims that the NTSB’s “hours flown” esimates are way off because of the decline in avgas usage, yet uses those same NTSB numbers for his regression analysis.

These are just one guy’s thoughts on the matter.  But from where I sit, the accident rate is holding steady over the past few years, and remains in a long term decline.

FAA Administrator Marion Blakey is fond of reiterating how controller staffing levels are sufficient.  Yet something tells me this guy might disagree with her.

It seems to me that anytime a controller tells a bunch of pilots “you guys really should come up here and see this”, things can’t be going too well.  Viva la JFK!

User fees.  TFRs.  High fuel prices.  Increasing regulation.  A tight insurance market.  It seems everywhere we turn these days, there’s a new challenge for general aviation.  And that goes double for the aerobatic community, which by its very nature has additional noise and public relations issues with which to contend.  IAC membership is down.  Here in Southern California, we’re being relegated to ever smaller and more distant chunks of airspace in which to legally do our “thing”.

How depressing!  There are days when I question whether this avocation of ours will survive.  So it was with great pleasure that I accepted an invitation last month to present a seminar on aerobatics at the Socal RV Rendezvous, a regional gathering of homebuilt RVs.  Fifty seven aircraft and more than 100 people showed up.  The event coincided with IAC’s recent push to be more inclusive of recreational aerobatics, and the RV Rendezvous reinforced in my mind the wisdom of that shift.

According to Vans Aircraft, 5,024 RV-series airplanes have been built and flown thus far.  Thousands more are under consruction around the country, and the rate at which they are achieving flight status is increasing rapidly as the build time drops.

Aside from the 350 RV-9/10 models, every one of those 5,024 airplanes is designed for aerobatic flight.  This represents the largest aerobatically capable fleet in the world.  Compare these 5,000 RVs to perhaps the most ubiquitous competition aircraft, the Pitts.  According to Aviat, approximately 700 factory built and 600 homebuilt aircraft are in that fleet worldwide.  The Extra?  I counted 258 of those on the U.S. registry.

I’ve been involved with the RV community since a friend of mine started building his RV-7 in 2001.  I pounded rivets on his plane and had a chance to watch one come together from the ground up.  My general impression is that these aircraft are quite conventional and well designed.

I’ve flown the RV-4, RV-6, RV-7, and RV-8.  I wouldn’t consider them to be especially well suited for competition, primarily because the clean design, flush riveting, and careful fairing of the draggy bits mean the airspeed will build quickly when pointed downhill.  That’s not to say they cannot be flown in competition.  They can, and they have been.  You’d just have to work harder to ensure the airplane’s limitations are not exceeded.

When you get to recreational aerobatics, that’s where the RV shines.  RVs are light in roll but somewhat heavier in pitch.  Reminiscent of a Pitts, though not quite as heavy in the lateral axis.  A true pleasure to fly.  They actually gain altitude throughout most sequences, something you don’t often see in airplanes with 160-200 horsepower.

Speaking of drag, an aerobatic flight in an RV will open your eyes to just how draggy most of our competition airplanes are!  All that horsepower under the cowl of your S-2B or Sukhoi is designed for vertical penetration.  Speed is, to a certain extent, an enemy when you’re competing.  It will carry you through the box too quickly.  The RV was designed for speed because they are used for cross country transportation.  Put that 300 hp engine in an RV and it will go a lot faster than any Extra 300, Edge 540, or Velox.

I’ve flown a wide variety of Sportsman-level maneuvers in RVs, and they perform remarkably well as long as the energy is properly managed.  Spins, aileron rolls, loops, immelmans, cubans, hammerheads, barrel rolls, and the split s are easily done in an RV within a +3.5/-0G range.  This is well within the designer’s stated design limits of +6/-3G (and ultimate load factors +9/-4.5G).  Airspeed limits such as Vne, Vno, and Va are high enough that RVs can fly through these maneuvers without danger of overspeeding the aircraft.  Throttle management, unusual attitude training, and a clear understanding of the RVs slippery aerodynamics are key to safety in these birds.

Unlike certificated airplanes, RVs come in many flavors.  Different engines, props, canopy styles, landing gear configurations, etc.  Much like a Citabria, Stearman, or Cub, most of them do not have inverted fuel or oil systems, so I will modify maneuvers like the half Cuban by rolling upright as soon as the 45 degree inverted point is reached in the loop.  Remember, we’re just talking about recreational aerobatics.  These guys aren’t going to fly competition in their pride and joy.  They just want to be able to safely perform basic figures.

On the topic of safety, my primary goal at the Socal RV Rendezvous was to encourage RV pilots seek out quality instruction before attempting acro in their aircraft.  This is smart advice for any aspiring aerobat, but it’s especially true with the RV for two reasons:  first, the aforementioned sleekness of the airframe.  And second, builders are often out of the air completely for several years while they focus on construction.  Their Phase One flight testing may have been prepared for with recurrent flight training, but very infrequently does that training include aerobatics.  Yet aerobatics must be included in the flight testing if it’s going to be added to the approved maneuvers in the airplane’s operating limitations.

On the way home, I couldn’t help but marvel at the strength and energy in the RV community.  We could use a little of that in our local IAC chapter, don’t you think?  There are five thousand of them out there, so let’s start recruiting!  And if you have the opportunity to take an aerobatic flight in an RV, don’t pass it up.  I’ll bet you’d be pleasantly surprised with what those little kit planes are capable of.

I see go-arounds all the time at John Wayne Airport.  And not just with general aviation aircraft. 

The big runway is only 5700 feet long, so there’s not much room for error, especially with some of the larger transport airplanes that fly into the airport.  For example, FedEx sends a fully loaded Airbus A300 jumbo into Orange County each day.  As far as I know, that is the largest airplane to land at SNA.

Anyway, the Southern California geography gives us a semi-permanent inversion layer, and it’s typically accompanied by a slight windshear at that altitude.

Of course, sometimes that shear is stronger than others, and a few days ago I watched 6 airliners go around in the space of 30 minutes.  One of them was a Southwest 737 which turned final about 1.5 miles out with what was probably a 50-55 degree bank.  He did his best to drop down to the runway, but was fighting a strong tailwind that didn’t abate until around 600′ AGL.

Those of us in the area were razzing him pretty badly.  Someone said “$5 he doesn’t make it”.  Another chimed in with “I’ll put ten on it” and I piled on with “count me in for fifteen bucks”.  Eventually he started the go-around, and I keyed the mike with one final shot:  “If he was a tailwheel pilot I’m sure he would have made it…”.

It was all in good fun.  I think Southwest got the final laugh, though.  A few minutes after his aborted landing, a different Southwest jet was slow to cross 19L and I had to do a go-around of my own.

In lieu of Aviatrix’s recent post on navigation, I thought it might be worthwhile to post these World War II era approach plates.  We have a few mid-40s sectional charts of the west coast hanging on the walls at Sunrise — in mind condition, no less — but they’re behind glass and would be tough to scan.

I always find these artifacts fascinating to study.  These plates are not that different from what we use today.  Charted plan and elevation views of the approach procedure on the front, and textual descriptions on the back.  I guess the major difference is that the Washington, D.C. approach procedure uses the ancient four-course A/N audio navigation system.

I love historical aviation material.  Charts.  Logbooks.  Manuals.  Speaking of logbooks, Lesley has her grandfather’s aviation logbook.  He was a Naval aviator prior to World War II and completed primary flight training before the war. Unfortunately, there were no aircraft for him to fly, so after sitting around for a while he volunteered for the silent service and ended up commanding a submarine.

Someone who reads my site sent me a British constant speed prop manual (or “hydromatic airscrew” as it was called back then) from the mid-late 30s, complete with handwritten mechanics notes.  Seventy years later and the constant speed prop is essentially unchanged.  That really says something about the elegance and simplicity of the design, and is undoubtedly the reason the CS prop is considered to be one of the greatest inventions in aviation history.

Most corporate aircraft have no identifying marks on them at all because the company doesn’t want competitors knowing where their executives are going.  They even go so far as to have their N-number blocked from sites like FlightAware.

But not all companies are like that.  KFC, for example, used to have a corporate airplane at SNA.  I’m not sure if it was based here or just came into Orange County frequently, but it always seemed to be on the field.  This thing was a beauty, a Challenger 604 painted in red and white striping.

Unfortunately, the clean lines were marred by a giant Colonel Sanders logo on the tail.  Also, the 604 fuselage has a wide diameter, but it’s not very long.  So between the paint scheme and the logo on the tail, the airplane was essentially a giant KFC chicken bucket turned on its side.

One day, just for kicks, I walked up the airstair door, knocked on the side of the plane, and with the straightest possible face asked the pilot if I could get an bucket of Cajun chicken “to go”.

He got a kick out of that, laughing heartily for about 5 seconds before pointing at the airstair and telling me to get the hell off his airplane.  I descended toward the tarmac while uttering my parting shot:  “They warned me that the Colonel made a mean bird…”

Mike Busch’s AVweb article “Checking the Dipstick” got me wondering how much oil is truly required for safe operation.  He writes:

The engines on my Cessna 310 have 12-quart sumps — 13 quarts if you include the quart in the spin-on oil filter. When I first acquired the airplane, my mechanic would fill the sump to its maximum capacity at each oil change. It didn’t take me long to discover that the engines didn’t like that, and promptly tossed several quarts out the engine breathers.

My POH states that the “minimum for flight” oil level is 9 quarts. So I asked my mechanic to service the sump to 10 quarts (instead of 12), and I’d add a quart of make-up oil when the level got down to 9 quarts. That worked better, but I was still seeing a fair amount of oil on the underside of the engine nacelles and the outer gear doors.

He goes on to say that after experimenting, he found that running at 9 quarts and not adding oil until reaching 7.5 worked best.

By comparison, an SR22 has a 310 horsepower TCM IO-550-N.  That’s a big engine — bigger than in Mike’s C310.  Yet the sump has an eight quart capacity.  And I’ve found that if you fill it much above 5-6 quarts, it throws the excess overboard.

Yes, operating a 310 hp, 550 cubic inch engine at 80% power for hours on end with  only 5 quarts of oil.  It sounds wrong, doesn’t it?

In lieu of 14 CFR 33.39, Continental must have demonstrated proper operation of that engine with only 4 quarts of oil.  It’s interesting that the FAR is entitled “Lubrication System”.  My understanding of oil’s function in the engine is that as little as one quart is needed for lubrication.  The balance of the sump capacity is primarily for engine cooling.

I’m not suggesting that anyone go out and run a $60,000 aircraft powerplant with one quart of oil in it, but this might explain the lower capacity on the IO-550-N.  If air flow and oil cooling are improved, perhaps a lower quantity might be acceptable.  They’re referred to as “air cooled” powerplants, but that’s a huge misnomer.  If you took away all the oil that wasn’t required for lubrication, you’d end up flying a glider, especially on a hot day.

The IO-550-N is also standard on the Columbia, Legacy, and other fast airplanes, and they all seem to have an eight quart capacity.

I want to suggest that the cowling is efficient enough and the aircraft’s cruise speeds high enough that air takes on a greater role in keeping the engine cool, but the Columbia 400 sort of blows that theory out of the water.  The CL400 is twin-turbocharged and it operates as high as FL250, where there’s little air to cool the engine, yet power output remains very high.  All on an eight quart capacity.

I’m not a powerplant engineer, so I could be way off base with the rationale.  But there’s no denying that the SR22 operates with 50% less oil capacity than other airplanes equipped with basically the same engine.

For a long time, I used to get very uneasy operating an engine of that size with so little oil.  The O-470-S in my previous aircraft had a 9 quart capacity.  That’s a 13% greater oil capacity for an engine with 15% lower displacement and 25% lower horsepower.

Another data point:  I fly an Extra 300 with an AEIO-540 and it has a 14 quart capacity.  And let me tell you, you’d better not take off with less than 12 quarts in that sucker or you’ll be looking at higher engine temps.  Sure, I’m doing inverted flat spins and other things that frequently toss as much as 2-3 quarts of oil out the breather and onto the tail.  In fact, it’s quite common to come back with the empennage completely coated in oil.  But Decathlons have a similar setup — an inverted oil system — and their oil capacity is no higher than what you’d find in a non-aerobatic airplane with the same engine.

Consider also that the limited fuel capacity of aerobatic airplanes means they won’t be in the air for more than an hour or so.  A normal airplane with an IO-550-N will typically have a 4-5 hour range.  Longer flight times, lower oil capacity?

Anyway, back to the Cirrus.  My unease was abated somewhat by talking (repeatedly) to the factory.  When I was in Duluth, the demo pilots and instructors said they never ran more than 5 quarts in any of the SR22s or it’d be expelled by the engine.  This isn’t just what they do, it’s what they teach in the standardized training program.  The SR22 fleet has already surpassed one million hours of operation, and with the advanced engine monitoring capabilities in these airplanes, it’s a sure bet that operating at this “low” oil level is not harmful.

It does take some getting used to, though.

My final thought on oil levels is that most pilots probably never know what the engine is actually using versus what it’s venting, because most aircraft have a dirty underside, and unless it’s dripping with oil, you’d be unlikely to notice it.

In fact, depending on the location of the breather in relation to the exhaust pipe and the rest of the airframe, vented oil might never show up at all.  This is especially true if they’re flying something like a Pitts, Extra, Decathlon, or other such plane because the breather doesn’t exit under the cowling.  To keep oil off the belly, the tube runs down the longitudinal axis of the airframe and ends next to the tailwheel.  It could vent oil all day long and you might not see any sign of it on the airframe.

Mike mentions another skewing phenomenon.  When it comes to checked the oil level, is what you read on the dipstick an accurate representation of what’s in the engine?

If you check the oil level shortly after the engine has been run for awhile, the dipstick reading will be noticeably lower because a significant quantity of oil remains adhered to various engine components. Another reading taken 24 hours later will often show an oil level that is 0.5- to 1-quart higher.

Tailwheel aircraft, especially those that have seen significant maneuvering during the last flight, can have a fair amount of oil sitting in the long breather vent tube I mentioned earlier.  Put an oil bottle on the breather, and within 24 hours you can have a quarter of a quart in there.

With all these factors, how does one really know what’s causing oil consumption?  Simple:  get to know your airplane.  Listen to what it’s telling you.  Look at usage patterns and note when oil is added.  Check the underside of the airplane during the pre- and post-flight inspections (you do perform a post-flight inspection, right?).  These hand-built contraptions have individual personalities.  Pay attention to them and they’ll tell you exactly what’s going on.

Aviation legend Bill Kershner, renown throughout the GA community as an instructor and author, has died.

Dog-eared copies of Kershner’s Advanced Pilot’s Flight Manual are on the bookshelves of countless pilots.  He’d been flying since 1945, and by my count, he must have been in his late 70s.

Kersher was cool.  He lectured at the UT Space Institute.  Kershner was old, but not crotchety.  He was modest, yet confident.  AOPA has a page of video clips and article reprints on the man.

We’re in an era when aviation is more synonymous with “money” than ever before.  The flying world tends to pay you little notice unless you’re in a half-million dollar composite SR-22 or Columbia.  Or the aerobatic equivalent, an Edge 540.  Bill Kershner did his thing with an old C152 Aerobat, training “over 600 students, including 45 Army aviators, FAA test pilots, lectured and flew spins at the Navy Flight Test School at Patuxent River, MD three separate summers, and taught aspiring Navy and Air Force pilots”.

That’s what I call “the right stuff”.  RIP, professor.

A friend of a friend (don’t all good hangar flying stories start out that way?) reminiced about flying rotorcraft in Vietnam.  While there’s certainly adventure and excitement in becoming an impromptu test pilot, don’t forget that there were more than a few such attempts at stretching the envelope which didn’t turn out so favorably.  In other words, don’t try this at home.

If you’d like to crowd your pages with “over max-gross” stories, just talk to any combat pilot.  The old C model Hueys were the designated gunships of the Vietnam era before the Cobras came into country in late ‘67 as I recall.  Underpowered, carrying a full compliment of ordinance, then taking on as much fuel as you could estimate would get you on station, execute whatever mission you needed to before being able to take a break and find a fuel bladder somewhere was the common routine.

Tactical Emergencies (TAC-E’s…duh) trumped anything the Safety Officer or aircraft specs put out regarding limits.  You just got there any way you could to help whomever needed it.  A TAC-E that involved a fellow American took precedence over anything else, often times even direct orders from a senior officer that you’d determined either didn’t understand the situation or had their head up their ass.  Helping a fellow American was the most powerful driving force in existence.

I’d just taken on a few hundred extra pounds of fuel and had a full load of rockets and mini-gun ammo.  I was heading out to pick up and escort a “people sniffer” mission, flying cover for a “slick” that had a long tube hanging out of it that read the contents of the air and could “smell” if a concentration of humans had been in an area…signifying enemy troop movement.  Generally, a low-risk mission with no urgency involved.  I’d taken on the extra fuel knowing that if I had a problem taking off, I could just sit there and burn it off to the point that I could at least make a low-power take off and get through translational lift, then get on station and hopefully get through the mission without having to refuel.

We were sitting on the PSP [Pierced Steel Planking] at the fueling station when a TAC-E came in over the Guard channel.  We were the closest to the emergency and I called in that we could cover.  The problem was whether we could get off the ground.

As luck would have it, I couldn’t budge.  I had the collective snuggled into my armpit and all I could get was RPM bleed-off.  I got on the intercom and told the crew chief and door gunner to get out.  I got light enough to start a little skid.  Worked it out to the active (about 50 yards maybe) and pointed it down the runway.  Full pitch, pimped the engine RPM’s up as high as they’d go, kicked left/right tail rotor and forward cyclic to break the skids free again from the PSP and was barely able to get the ship moving down the runway, playing hell with the sheet metal skid shoes… and the crew running along on either side of the ship.

The crew was running along flat out.  I intercommed “now” to my Peter Pilot and he waved the crew to jump on.  I lowered the pitch a little just as they jumped on, then yanked in as much as I could… sprung up off the ground a little… settled back down… dropped the pitch… yanked it in again when we “bounced”… skid, hop, skid, hop… skiddddddddddddddddddd…. nursed in some pitch… stayed off the PSP at about 6 inches… then that delicious shudder and voila!!  The crew was cracking up and clapping.

Made the mission, kept the bad guys away from the good guys until they could get extracted, then back home.

I kinda miss those days.

A while back, I made a casual suggestion John at Aviation Mentor.  He often writes about instrument flying in “glass panel” aircraft, something that is near and dear to my heart since this is one of my specialties at work.

I’d been noticing that more and more instrument approach procedures where being developed with weird minima.   There were columns for LNAV, LNAV/VNAV, RNP, LPV, and more.  Back in the late 90’s when I got my instrument rating, these acronyms weren’t even a gleam in the eye of their creator.  Now they’re all over the place, and CFIIs have to ensure their students know what these things mean.

I’ll let John take it from there.  Read his article and tell me it doesn’t sound confusing.  LNAV/+V?  C’mon people.  The FAA and equipment manufacturers can’t even agree on whether or not an LPV approach is “precision” or “non-precision”.

I’m glad I suggested this as a topic. One observation I have on the whole LNAV/VNAV thing is that in the past, when new approach capabilities were introduced to the IFR world, the equipment was usually in place at or before the time when the approaches starting appearing.  For some reason, it’s backwards this time.  There are a ton of RNAV approaches with VNAV glideslopes depicted on the plate, yet as far as I know, very few — if any — aircraft are yet certified to fly them.

Since the approaches have to be tested before they’re approved for the general public, I wonder if the FAA is the only one with the capability to fly these things. John indicates that he hasn’t flown any VNAV capable equipment yet.  I haven’t either, nor do I know anyone who has done so in the soup.  Between the two of us, we’re operating in the largest metropolitan areas in the state of California.

I completely agree with his concerns about the way this capability is being integrated into our cockpits.  The terminology is confusing, and it’s a terrible idea to have a pilot approaching a final approach fix without an idea of whether he’ll be shooting a precision or non-precision approach.

If the GPS receiver decides it doesn’t have the required geometry for a glideslope approach, the downgrade is annunicated at the worst possible moment.  There is no more likely time for a pilot to miss a flashing message light than when he’s about to pass the final approach fix.  ATC is providing final vectors, issuing an approach clearance, approach mode should be armed/arming, the pilot is running the “T”s and the Before Landing checklist.

I’ve always had a suspicion that these things were developed and tested in a perfect-world environment, something that those of us in busy airspace never see.  People who can afford a $65,000 glass panel are not aviating in the middle of nowhere, they’re flying in busy metropolitan areas and mixing it up with large jets and controllers who vector them as close as possible to the final approach fix.

The lack of a glideslope is not enough of an indicator; glideslopes fail for more than one reason.  Is it a software bug?  Did we load the wrong approach?  Or fail to activate it? Is there a hardware problem?  A RAIM alert?  This is not a good place for head-down time and button pushing.  These things should be designed to minimize that, not maximize it.

It seems to me it might be better to make critical annunciations more obvious to the pilot.  A tiny flashing “message” in the lower corner of nearly four square feet of computer screens is not sufficient.  My students miss these annunications all the time.  In fact, they actually learn to ignore them because most of the annunciations are nuisance alerts.  Airspace, schedulers, etc.

Pilots need to preconfigure the avionics suite so messages are minimized.  That means understanding the auxillary and setup pages.  We also need better education on GPS approaches.  If you fly a TSO-129 GPS equipped aircraft, you own it to yourself to read AIM 1-1-19, 1-2, 5-4-5(d), and other related sections of the Aeronautical Information Manual

A logical system for integrating new approach technologies without just throwing new acronyms and minima onto hundreds of approach plates would go a long way toward preparing pilots before the approaches were out there.  From my experience, it’s easy enough for a pilot to inadvertently select the wrong minimums without adding all these new ones to the mix.

One look at an RNP approach (like the one above, from Palm Springs) should be enough to convince anyone of the capability GPS can provide.  But those who don’t have an airline training department and budget behind them must proceed with caution, lest the road to GPS nirvana turn into GPS hell.

I perused the recent archives here at the House of Rapp and was surprised at how often I write about aircraft accidents.  It may seem morbid.  But ever since I started working as a CFI, I am conscious of the fact that with my own personal approval, pilots go hurling off into the clouds in new, high tech, 3/4 ton aircraft crusing at nearly 200 mph.

That’s a big responsibility, and as such it occupies a lot of my thoughts.  When an incident occurs, I want to learn everything possible from it so that I — and more importantly, those I’m charged with teaching — avoid the same fate.

John’s Killing Zone article got me thinking about the recent Cirrus SR20 accident in New York City.  I’m not sure what happened there.  I’ll leave it to the NTSB to figure that out.  As John pointed out, the weather may have been marginal, the pilots were new to the area, and the route was bounded by obstacles.  And none of those things may have been factors.  What got me thinking were the questions about why the parachute wasn’t used.

I spend a fair amount of time talking to my students about the CAPS system.  For those of you who aren’t “in the know”, CAPS stands for Cirrus Airframe Parachute System.  It’s a parachute for the whole airplane.  When deployed, it lowers the whole airplane down to the ground slowly enough that the occupants can walk away without injury, although the aircraft will usually be a total loss.

Here’s an analysis of CAPS deployments to date, including a step-by-step illustration of a CAPS system in use.

When transitioning pilots into the SR20 and SR22, most initially see CAPS as a get out of jail free card, albeit a one-time use card with a high price.  They don’t understand the limitations of the system.  And more importantly, they haven’t researched general aviation accident statistics enough to know that in many — perhaps most — accidents, the CAPS system would be useless.

From what I can tell, most accident scenarios would still result in an accident even with the parachute:  low altitude stall/spin.  Controlled flight into terrain.  Poor pilot judgement (aerobatics, buzzing, etc).   Loss of control on takeoff or landing.  Taxi and other ground accidents.  The list is long, and in the end, hopefully students realize that a ballistic recovery system is no panacea.

This is true of the Cirrus’ other systems, as well.  Skywatch, TAWS, GPS, autopilot, and other cockpit tools are useless in most of these scenarios.

I applaud Cirrus Design Corporation’s emphasis on quality training.  The transition training is well thought out, and their materials and AFM are better written than any other comparable aircraft I’ve seen.  They emphasize recurrent training, use email and web technology to keep owners abreast of the latest information, and seem dedicated to keeping the accident rate low.

Despite that, I believe the Cirrus is going to be involved in more accidents than comparable aircraft.  For one thing, it’s designed and built for cross country flying.  That means pilots are going to be flying long distances and encountering weather.  They’ll also be flying in unfamiliar areas.

The other reason is statistical.  There are just a lot of them out there.  Cirrus is outselling everyone at the moment, and one of the down sides having a lot of planes in the air is that when accidents occur, they’re more likely to be in one of your planes.  That doesn’t mean the Cirrus is unsafe.  If I thought that, I wouldn’t fly it.

Finally — and this is really what I wanted to say — let’s look at the type of people flying these aircraft.  The SR22s I instruct in are about $265/hr.  A two hour flight with instructional costs will run close to $700.  I have students who will make flights like that a couple of times per week.  These guys are successful, fast pace, type-A personalities.  They’re used to getting their way, making it work, pushing through and solving problems by either working really hard or throwing money at it.

This is not always an asset in the cockpit.  In aviation, sometimes the answer is to not tackle the problem at all.  Stay on the ground.  Turn around.  Land.  Or, ask for help.  Admit you’re lost.  Declare an emergency.  This is not an easy or natural mindset for a lot of these guys.

The Cirrus is fast becoming the modern day “Bonanza”, and the high net worth / low time individuals buying them are the 21st century “doctors”.  Their bank account can easily outstrip their piloting capabilities.  Putting them in a fast, slick, complex airplane with a ton of switches, knobs, buttons and systems can be risky.  But that’s who Cirrus is marketing their airplanes to, and they’re the only ones who can afford to fly them.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not disparaging these guys.  They’re smart, fun, colorful personalities with whom I enjoy flying.  I’m simply analying the personality traits that don’t transition well to aviation.

When you realize that the SR22 is as high as some of these pilots can get in the food chain without running into insurance limitations which lead to professional and/or multi-pilot crews, the risk becomes clear.  I believe the risk is manageable, but it has to be countered with quality instruction, recurrent training, personal minimums, and good judgement.

I spend considerable time tailoring instructional techniques to the type of person I’m flying with.  It’s critical that they understand the role their own attitude plays in safety, because at some point I’m going to get out of the plane, and they’re going be out there on their own.

You know, sometimes the news is just too crazy to be made up.  As I was flying across Southern California today, I couldn’t help but think of the new workplace rules the FAA has imposed on air traffic controllers:

What rankles controllers most, on a personal level, at least, is the formal dress code being introduced. Some controllers dress as if they work in windowless rooms where visitors aren’t customarily allowed but FAA brass have apparently had enough of flip flops, tank tops and cutoffs. As of Sunday, the glow of the screens will reflect off, as we understand it, collared shirts, dress slacks and shoes and socks.

Now I’m not sure what a starched shirt sounds like, but ATC didn’t seem any different today.  With each frequency change, however, I couldn’t help but wonder what the controllers were wearing.  Despite the usual ‘evening push’ congestion on the airwaves, I had to bite my tongue to keep from asking them.

It’s probably for the best – I’ve said the wrong thing before and ended up waiting 30 minutes for the ILS.  Some guys just don’t see the humor in their job.

Perhaps this whole thing has been engineered by Men’s Wearhouse.  They donate a few bucks to the Administrator, and suddenly they’re outfitting the air traffic controller corps with the latest in business-casual finery.  But why should they have all the fun?  Maybe we pilots could get in on the game, giving tips a la Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

“Diamond One Charlie Kilo, turn left heading zero six zero, vectors for the localizer.”

“Zero six zero, vectors for the localizer, and DiamondStar One Charlie Kilo feels that a herringbone jacket would really compliment that shirt”.

Steve Fossett strikes again:

The 62-year-old Chicago investment mogul said he and Norwegian co-pilot Einar Enevoldson, 74, rode powerful rising air currents above the remote Patagonia region on Tuesday, reaching a record 50,699 feet.

If Fossett isn’t careful, he’s going to end up like Alexander the Great, standing on the edge of the aviation world and weeping because there are no more lands (records) to conquer.

I’ve reached as high as 13,000 feet in a glider — ironically, before I even received my glider add-on rating.  In fact, as I recall, it was on my first solo flight in a glider.  Eventually I came down because I thought my instructor would be worried.  It’s hard to imagine being four times that high.  At those altitudes, your blood will boil unless you’re wearing a pressure suit.

I love the fact that these two guys are 62 and 74 years old.  They’re considered unfit to pilot an airliner by the FAA, owing simply to their age.  Yet they’re up there, literally in the stratosphere, at twice the altitude of the airliners flying by below.

Let’s consider how this compares to the daily routine of your average 74 year old geezer.  While Joe Average is sitting on his butt watching Matlock reruns, these two characters are contemplating the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space while they ”collect meteorological data for a NASA and U.S. Navy study of the polar vortex”.

In a glider.

If I was wearing a hat, it’d be off to them.

I recall hearing a rumor of some Fossett-backed project that sought to reach 100,000 feet in a glider.  Perhaps he won’t end up like Alexander the Great just yet…

Sam got me thinking about good places for a pilot to grab a bite around Southern California.

I was going to add a comment to his entry, but it soon exceeded the length of his original post, proving once again that Socal cannot be beat for flying destinations (or weather, but you knew that right?).  Upon reflection, it also became quite frightening to realize how many calories I’ve consumed at these joints.

Let’s get started.  I’d put Catalina Airport on the top of the list. There’s nothing like enjoying a Buffalo burger on the airport’s patio!

Lots of history at that field — William Wrigley (of Wrigley’s Chewing Gum fame) had the airport built in the 1930s so the Chicago Cubs could be flown onto the island for their pre-season baseball games. The airport was nearing completion when World War II came to America, and the War Department closed the airfield to prevent its use by the Japanese during an invasion. The runway remained blockaded with obstacles until 1945.

I also like Catalina because you’ll see plenty of interesting people. Hikers passing through, pilots, and sometimes a recognizable face. I’ve seen Harrison Ford and Lorenzo Lamas out there.  The people who work at the airport have wonderful stories, too.  One guy whose name I cannot remember, used to pilot Grumman flying boats between the island and the mainland.

Next, I recommend Annie’s Kitchen at El Monte. They make a mean breakfast. A favorite meeting place for me and my L.A. based friends on the weekend.

At French Valley (F70), the basin’s newest airport, there’s a very clean, quiet, and most importantly, strongly air conditioned restaurant called the French Valley Cafe. After flying over the Inland Empire, it feels great to step inside there and have a cool one. Er, a Coke, that is. And two hours later, you can head back out onto the ramp and find your oil temp exactly the same as you left it!

Then there’s Corona Airport, one of my longtime stomping grounds.  You have to be careful out there — it can be a zoo in the pattern.  But after braving the non-towered wilds, your reward is the infamous Bob’s Chili & Chow Hall. With a name like that, how can you go wrong? You walk in there and they know your name, your order, and your booth. No a/c, but the ambiance more than makes up for it. I recommend the club sandwich. Ask ‘em to prepare it “the old way”.  Also, don’t miss seeing the poster-sized photograph of the airport during the January, 2005 flood.

Sam mentioned Big Bear Airport, but I should add that there’s a greasy spoon called the Barnstorm Cafe on the terminal’s lower level, below the Chinese joint.  They have limited hours, but those hours seem to compliment Mandarin Garden’s quite nicely.  If you’re out there for breakfast or lunch, Barnstorm will be open.  For late afternoon or evening dining, the only option there is the Mandarin Garden.

Actually, that’s not quite true.  There’s a decent Mexican place at the end of the street, La Mulita.  It’s a 3 minute walk.  Paul and I flew up there to watch football games and get out of the heat once or twice.  Big Bear Airport is also blessed with relatively inexpensive fuel, a great ski resort, and a large freshwater lake.

Riverside has a nice restaurant, D&D Airport Cafe, on the field. Lots of interesting models hanging from the ceiling. Flabob (RIR) has a quaint cafe, too.

I like Camarillo’s Waypoint Cafe — it’s on the far east end of the field. You’re near the arrival end of the runway, and there’s a shaded outdoor seating area with a strip of grass so you can watch the planes come and go from the ramp and the runway. Inside, the walls are plastered with photos, hundreds (if not thousands) of them covering the last sixty years of aviation history.

If airplane watching is a priority, though, it’s impossible to beat Santa Monica.  Sam touched on the virtues of SMO, but I should note that both on-the-field restaurants are a hundred feet from the runway, each with a panoramic, unobstructed view of the runway, taxiways, and indeed, the entire pattern.  The late afternoon brings in the cool ocean breeze, making a perfect mix of humidity and wind.  I could sit out there for hours.

I returned from Mexico a couple of days ago.  It was unfortunate that I wasn’t able to fly down to San Carlos.  When you’ve got a pilot certificate, making a 15 hour drive leaves you wondering why you went through all that training, even though you’re well aware that there are plenty of times it just wouldn’t be safe to fly.

As it turns out, this was one of those times.  The intense heat and humidity the southwest has been experiencing lately created a 300 mile long squall line along Interstate 8.  Spectacular thunderstorms are a common occurance in the region during summer months, but this one was impressive even by those standards.  Surface winds of 50 mph and lightning strikes at the rate of 2-3 per second.

While on vacation, I watched with interest the unveiling of Cessna’s long-awaited “Cirrus killer” at AirVenture.  The Textron subsidiary has been losing market share to Cirrus Design for a number of years and certainly saw the handwriting on the wall.  To be competitive, they’d have to ante up with a modern design containing all the features you’d find on an SR22.  This is what they came up with:

More photos availble here. 

Cessna CEO Jack Pelton was careful to describe this as a “proof of concept” airplane.  It’s hard to know how close this will be to the final product and where they are in terms of certification.  It could be a year down the road.  It could also be five years down the road.

From what I can see, this thing is basically a high wing Cirrus.  The wing is similar, the structure looks similar, it even has the free-castoring nosewheel.  The shape and size of the vertical stabilizer, main landing gear, and fuselage are reminiscent of the Cirrus as well.

I can’t decide if Cessna is trying to catch up, or if waiting to build this airplane was a sign of genius.  On the one hand, it’s a huge corporation that probably moves slowly.  On the other hand, it’s possible that Cessna waited on purpose, allowing Cirrus to spend millions on R&D, tooling, improvements, etc.  Then, once they had a final product which was selling well, just copy it and put the wing on top.  The Soviets did that for years, copying everything from military jets to our space shuttle.

One can assume that Cessna will have to match Cirrus in price.  Cirrus is selling a thousand airplanes per year, that’s what’s taking the lion’s share of the high-performance piston market.  A fully loaded SR22/GTS runs about $450-480k, so to be competitive, that’s where Cessna will have to price this airplane.

It had also better come with airbags, a parachute, a glass panel, air conditioning, deicing, and all the other stuff you find on a Cirrus in that price range.  It will be interesting to see what the useful load is with all that equipment on board.

A fully loaded GTS has a full fuel (80 gallons) payload of 500 lbs.  Not much, I guess, but that’s what people want these days.  They rarely travel with four on board, so why not have the equipment and fuel capacity that will allow the airplane to really travel — in style.

I fly Cirrus SR22s every day at work.  It’ll be tough to beat them at that game.  The folks in Duluth spent a lot of time and money to come up with a modern airplane, and they’ve had thousands of chances upon which to improve the product.  The doors, brakes, fairings, electronics, and other components are far better than on the models they made just a few years ago.  And Cirrus recently announced the addition of a turbocharger to the SR22.  It’s their way of trying to stay competitive with the Columbia 450’s 230 knot cruise speed.  To really keep up with the Jonses, Cessna’s new airplane should at least have a turbocharger option.

One place where Cessna can improve on the SR22 is in control feel and harmony.  In my opinion, this is the SR22s main drawback.  The Cirrus is not designed for “fun” flying, it’s designed to go places.  With that in mind, it uses a series of spring cartridges for trimming the plane.  It leaves the controls with a foreign, artificial feel.  They feel the same on the ground as they do in the air.  There’s no aerodynamic feedback through the stick.  When you’re low and slow, the controls don’t feel mushy.  They’re as firm as when you’re at cruise speed, because what you’re feeling when you move the stick is the resistance of the spring cartridges more than the resistance of the air passing over the control surface.

Another major omission in the SR22 is the lack of a pitch trim wheel.  It’s extremely difficult to manually trim the plane for level flight.  A manual trim wheel would be perfect for this job, but Cirrus chose to omit it from the plane.  Again, it’s because the aircraft was designed for serious travel.  The thought was that the airplane would be on autopilot most of the time.  And it is.  But still, the lack of an analog pitch trim device is a major drawback in my opinion.  If nothing else, it would make the plane safer.  As it stands now, a trim failure means you have to fight the plane until landing.  In a Cirrus, it’s hard work to do this.  You’re not only fighting the out-of-trim condition, but also the normal spring cartridge pressure AND the rudder-aileron interconnect, which is quite strong.

If Cessna fixes this, gives it an A36-like control harmony, and is competitive on price, I can see them making headway against Duluth.

One major advantage Cessna brings to the battle is money.  As a subsidiary of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, they have financial resources far beyond those of Cirrus or Columbia.  That means they can design, certify, and start producing these planes far more quickly than anyone else.  Witness the Cessna’s Mustang jet.  They got a very late start into the VLJ market, yet they’ve basically caught up to Eclipse.  Why?  More resources.  That means less time spent scrounging for money.

Whoever wins this battle, it’s nice to see that one is at least taking place.  The ultimate winner in this contest will be the general aviation community, because competition means innovation and that’s something the industry has been in sore need of for a long, long time.

The title of this Chinua Achebe novel came to mind this afternoon as I considered the status of the local airspace system.

I’m listening to SoCal Approach while I pack, and things are a little hectic up there due to a ground stop on all flight into Los Angeles: 

NOTAM:  Due to ZLA ATC ZERO. ALL FLIGHTS TO AND THRU ZLA STOPPED., departure traffic destined to ZLA airports will not be allowed to depart until at or after 03:00 UTC.

Apparently a widespread radar outage has occured at L.A. Center’s facility in Palmdale.

LOS ANGELES, JULY 18 (Reuters) – A power outage late on Tuesday at a regional radar center halted most air traffic in the Los Angelesa area, an airport spokeswoman said.

“All departing flights at LAX of at least 13,000 feet — essentially all our flights — have been grounded,” said Nancy Castles, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

A regional radar facility in Palmdale, about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, lost power, cutting radar for Los Angeles area airports at around 5:30 p.m. local time (8:30 p.m. EDT, 0030 GMT Wednesday).

There was no estimate of when the radar facility would resume operations.  

I guess it’s a good thing I’m driving down to Mexico this year.

When radar outages occur, airplanes flying under Instrument Flight Rules (read:  airliners) must be spaced much further apart to ensure safe seperation.  When radar is operating, controllers can “see” the plane on the scope and safely vector them closer together.

With the radar out, aircraft are stacking up and it sounds like some are bumping up against fuel reserves.

I’m curious about why the power outage would disrupt ATC services.  Surely L.A. Center has generators, backups, and contingencies for loss of power.

The last time I can recall an outage of this size was during the October, 2003 fires.  Socal Approach went offline when forest fires mandated a full evacuation of the facility.  As I recall, L.A. Center did their best to fill in the gaps.

This isn’t quite that bad.  Center is still “on the air”, they just don’t have any radar.  There are procedures for dealing with radar failures.  They don’t typically happen on this large a scale, but the procedures are there for dealing with it.  In the 2003 evacuation, there weren’t any procedures for dealing with the complete loss of a major metropolitan approach facility.

Of course, today we also have the Seal Beach VOR outage, which affects several L.A. approach procedures.  Not to mention the impending long term runway closure which will shut down a quarter of LAX’s runway capacity until 2008.

Fires aside, it seems things will continue to be hot under the collar around here for quite some time.

Things fall apart, indeed.

I’m off to Mexico with the Club Zeta crew for a much needed vacation.

But I will leave you with this not-safe-for-work video clip.  Let it never be said that Pitts pilots aren’t proud of their equipment.  “Nice helmet”.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

“If we raise the roof, then phat beats will come.”  At least, that’s what Jon says.

And perhaps that’s what the FAA had in mind when they shut down the Seal Beach VOR last week to rebuild the roof.

I keep thinking that this must be some serious repair job.  I imagine a fraternity from Cal State Long Beach trashing the place during a knock-down-drag-out keg party.  A VOR transmitter is pretty small.  If the roof on a house can be replaced in a week, I wonder why it’s going to take so long to fix one that’s significantly smaller?  Could it be because the government is doing it?

Nah.

Perhaps it’s a testament to the widespread use of GPS that one of the nation’s most frequently used VOR stations can be out of service for more than a month without causing a meltdown of traffic in the Los Angeles area.

Every northbound IFR flight out of John Wayne Airport gets radar vectors to Seal Beach as the start of their clearance.  Departures and arrivals into many (perhaps most) airports around here use Seal Beach in some way.  If you look at an IFR chart, you’ll see that Seal Beach sits in the heart of Southern California.  Pretty much everything rotates around it.

I’m surprised they aren’t using a temporary or portable VOR.  I believe they used one of those when the Filmore VOR burned down during the fires a couple of years ago.

I count 44 instrument approach, arrival, or departure procedures listed in the NOTAM.  Many of these are listed as N/A (not available) until SLI is back online, the rest are changed in some way from what’s printed on the plates.

I forsee some confusion, especially if we get actual IMC around here, because it seems that the FAA’s left hand doesn’t know what the right one is doing.  For example, I flew the ILS into Torrance a few days ago, and when we executed the missed approach procedure, the controller told us to hold “as published”.  This raised a question in my mind.  I said, “Published where?”, thinking he might be referring to the NOTAM.

Nope.  He wasn’t aware of any change on the ILS 29R missed approach procedure.  He was aware the the VOR was offline, though.  And it gets better: on a tower enroute flight from Santa Monica to John Wayne, another controller cleared us “direct Seal Beach”.

Ah well.  At least they waited until after the June gloom to perform this maintenance.

OK, the 80’s style Jazzercise headbands don’t exactly fit the Top Gun image of a hot shot aerobatic pilot.  This video is impressive nonetheless.

Maybe there’s something to be said for having the prop turning the wrong way.

Imagine you’re flying in the clouds.  You can’t see anything out the window.  You’re flying toward the airport on an instrument approach, only a few hundred feet above the ground while traveling at 120 mph, guidance courtesy of a multi-billion dollar miracle we call “GPS”.

You know that GPS is the latest thing.  It’s never failed you.  Everyone uses it.  It’s the future.  It’s smart.  It’s sophisticated.

And it may be sending you off in the wrong direction.

RAIM is the method an IFR-approved GPS receiver uses to ensure that the data it’s getting from the satellite constellation is valid.  I won’t get into the specifics of how RAIM works, but with the world moving ever more toward satellite navigation, this is pretty important stuff. 

It always stinks to realize you’ve been remiss in teaching students something they ought to know, and unfortunately, Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring — better known as RAIM — falls into that category.

I’ve got a couple of instrument students right now who are working toward their ratings in glass panel airplanes.  One’s in a G1000 equipped DiamondStar and another flies an Avidyne equipped Cirrus SR22.  I’ve taught them a lot about Global Positioning System usage, but for whatever reason I have not been insisting that they perform RAIM checks before IFR departures and approaches.

Oops.

I was reminded of my omission by John at Aviation Mentor.  He’s penned an excellent post about RAIM with plenty of nitty gritty details.

“Time to spare, go by air.”

That’s the old saying. For those of you who aviate on airliners, you may feel this aphorism is directed your way. The delays, breakdowns, and other vagueries of the industry can leave you feeling like it would be faster to just walk to your destination.

In some cases, you’d actually be right. Here’s something I wrote last summer after returning from Mexico via America West:

The coming and going from Mexico was interesting. First of all, one of our divers has been in Mexico City for the past few months and decided to travel to San Carlos the cheap way, via bus. It took Seth more than 36 hours.

I thought he was crazy to be traveling by bus, especially since I made the savvy decision to go by air. Yeah right. It took me 36 hours to get home! Which is especially maddening when you consider that my conveyance was travelling at 500 mph, more than 10 times the speed of Seth’s taco bus.

Here’s what happened. First of all, the America West Dash-8 was about four hours late getting to Guaymas to pick us up. There was some sort of mechanical delay in Phoenix. Then, we dodged thunderstorms all the way to Phoenix only to find the airport closed by the weather. We held for more than an hour before diverting to Tuscon, which was totally unprepared for us. We got AW to comp us some lodging, but not before Arnie let off a little steam at a supervisor. The next morning, our flight from Tuscon to Phoenix was late departing, and I barely made my connecting flight to Orange County. Most of the guys on this trip drove, and they made it home in 1/3 the time it took me via America West.

Sadly, it was a typical airline experience.

Nevertheless, the “time to spare?” saying is actually directed at those of us who fly our own airplanes. Oh, the glossy ads and rosy prognostications about private air travel make it sound like you can just jump in an airplane and fly away.

I wish.

That sort of thing might be possible in the middle of nowhere, but when you’re in the Los Angeles area, it’s a very poor idea. No, the reality of flying oneself around is quite different, especially in a post-9/11 world. Consider:

• check weather, TFRs, NOTAMS, etc.
• ensure the aircraft is legally airworthy, meaning all required inspections and maintenance are up to date
• open the aircraft, stow covers, heat shields, etc. and get the cockpit setup
• perform a preflight inspection
• get ATIS and a clearance
• perform engine runup, system checks, brief passengers

You’d think that those of us who own aircraft would get there faster, but the truth is that we’re sometimes stopped short of the runway by mechanical discrepancies and/or weather. Hell, I recently scrubbed a flight because it took an hour and a half for Atlantic Jet Center to send a fuel truck over to my airplane! By the time the aircraft was refueled, there was no time to make the flight.

On the other hand, there are plenty of times when the system works the way it’s supposed to. I had just that sort of experience last Friday, zooming up to Van Nuys in an SR22 in 19 minutes. My family was impressed by the short flight time. Frankly, so was I.

The trip home was even more fun, departing around 11:30 pm. I did have to wait a few minutes for a Baron to land downwind on 34L before I could take off. He made his initial call to the Van Nuys CTAF while passing over Santa Monica. I thought about taking off before he arrived, but those airplanes are capable of moving at better than 200 knots. I wasn’t sure the light I saw off in the distance was him, so for safety’s sake I just held short of the runway until he landed. The guy was nice enough, offering to expedite for me, but I insisted he take his time. Visions of a gear up landing danced through my head, and I didn’t want that on my conscience.

After departure, I turned the autopilot loose with the GPS flight plan I’d entered, and sat back to monitor the aircraft, look for traffic, and enjoy the view. Those late night flights are just about the only time you can fly from Van Nuys to John Wayne without talking to anyone. The towers at both airports are closed and the Special Flight Rules corridor is usually vacant at that hour.

I wish I could get a night-time photo of what it’s like up there. Unfortunately, my camera never takes decent photos of the cityscape after dark. The pictures either end up blurry or, if I leave the flash on, the glare reflects off the windows and ruins the shot. But imagine: it’s quiet, it’s cool, the air is perfectly smooth, and an endless carpet of twinkling lights projects out all around you. What’s not to like?

I challenged myself to make the perfect descent, arriving on the downwind at 100 knots and 1000′ AGL. The Avidyne makes it so easy. Just figure out how much altitude you have to lose (in thousands of feet) and multiply by two. Start down when you’re that many minutes away.

Example: You’re cruising at 4500′ and the airport pattern altitude is 1000′, so you have 3500′ to lose. Start a 500 fpm descent when the GPS reports your remaining time to destination is seven minutes.

If you are able to maintain a consistent airspeed during the descent and the winds don’t shift too drastically on the way down, it’ll work out every time.

The one issue I wrangled with during the trip was that of the noise curfew at Van Nuys. It says “NOISE ORDINANCE CURFEW: NO TKOFS FOR ACFT EXCEEDING 74 DBA (PER AC36-3) BTN 2200-0700; EXCP MILITARY; MERCY FLIGHTS & LAW ENFORCEMENT ACFT.”

I sat there for quite a while trying to figure out how much noise an SR22 generates on departure, and how the noise signature is computed. Do they mean 74 db right next to the prop? Or at the monitoring equipment on the ground? I tried to find a copy of Advisory Circular 36-3, but a Google search turned up nothing substantive.

In the end, I did a maximum performance takeoff, lifting off before the numbers, and climbed to 1000′ as quickly as possible before reducing the prop speed to 2500 RPM.

Later, I thought of searching for “FAA Advisory Circular” rather than “AC 36-3″ and found a comprehensive listing of Advisory Circulars on the FAA web site. 36-3 shows the SR-22 comes in at 73.6 db, just under the 74 db limit.

Conventional wisdom – and statistics — tell us that a mechanical engine failure in a properly maintained aircraft is quite rare.

Engine stoppage is usually caused by the dummy in the pilot seat.  Fuel exhaustion is by far the leading cause.  Engine and fuel system mismanagement are also possibilities.  There’s no shortage of creativity in this department. 

Until recently, I didn’t know very many people who’d ever experienced a mechanical failure of a certified aircraft powerplant.  But at the last aerobatic contest I encountered no less than three people who’ve recently had one (there were also two prop strikes, but that’s a story for another time).  The reasons were varied:  cylinder failure, fuel contamination, and oil pump failure.

The last of these was in a Pitts S-2B — the same kind of airplane I fly.  It piqued my interest because an engine failure in a Pitts is a big deal.  The airplane is not terribly crashworthy, and it comes down like a rock when the engine stops turning.  It’s one of the few airplanes where my first inclination would be to leave the airplane rather than stay with it.

The pilot in question is a great guy named Yuichi.  He’s not only a talented aerobatic competitor but also an active Airframe & Powerplant mechanic.

Yuichi is has saved my bacon on more than one occasion through his willingness to work on my airplane in 100 degree heat after a long day of flying.  Sometimes I’ve even seen him skip his own practice time in the box in order to help someone else solve a mechanical issue so they could compete.

When the phrase “couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy” was coined, it must have been Yuichi they were talking about.

Here’s his story:

As most of you know I had to make a forced landing last Saturday afternoon in Pitts N117PS. I am very happy to be at my desk again and to share my experience.

June 03, 2006. I took off about 1410 local from LVK for routine practice at Mt. Diablo practice area. At about 1435, around 2500ft MSL, I noticed power loss (probably just propeller speed reduction due to loss of oil pressure) after finishing a snap roll. As all you guys do, I have a habit to look oil temp/press gauges as well as performance gauges, especially when changing positive and negative Gs. I saw oil pressure gauge was pointing 0 psi that time.

Reduction in oil pressure is not unusual on N117PS. Whenever there is prolonged 0 G load, like a top of push over humpty, or outside loop, etc. This mostly reduces oil pressure drop to about 20 psi and come back right away. But holding 0 psi for couple of seconds is not normal. I pulled throttle to protect the engine and glided at 95 MPH, and continued to push / pull, and move throttle to recover oil pressure.

A couple of things came into my head as the cause of losing oil pressure.

1) Lost engine oil because of practice maneuver, crack at engine parts, or loosen drain plug.
  (But the wind screen is clean … No oil drops at all)
2) Oil pressure gauge mulfunction. 
  (Ok but it does not explain the RPM drop.) 
3) Oil pump failed. 
  (I think it is the problem.) 
4) Gravity valve stays at inverted position. 
  (Maybe. If it is, I can do someting before I hit ground.)

Unfortunately the pull and push maneuver did not work in this case.  Occasionally the oil pressure came back to 2-3 psi, but dropped back to 0 psi very soon. There was not enough altitude to make it to the nearest airport (Byron). I have no choice, so I decided to do a off field landing down there.

I picked up a straight road (Empire Mine Road) running east to west through the box. There was no traffic. There was also a grass field right next of the road would be perfect alternative. I made a mayday call to LVK tower and 121.5, before I got too low.

Now it was easy, just do routine landing I used to. On final approach, I saw white SUV turn onto the road which would have been on a collision course with me. I could not blame the driver, because the road was not blocked at entrance, they even don’t know what happened in the air. I switched my landing site to grass field just south of the road and landed. At first landing roll was perfect, I thought “wow, this is my one of best landings I ever made!!”. But 5 second later, the landing gear caught the muddy surface and the plane then flipped over inverted.

I was so lucky, the airplane stoped after just half flip and did not tumbled. The bad thing was now the airplane was upside down and the canopy was held by the ground. I realized that I was trapped inside the airplane. I picked up my cellphone and dialed Attitude Aviation front desk. A cell phone is great tool in this situation.

I was sitting there upside down for a while, when suddenly a gentleman called me. “Are you OK?” I told him to lift the tail up and now the airplane was standing on its top wing. I got about 2 ft clearance opened the canopy and then I dropped on the ground.

The gentleman said, “I am so glad you are OK.” I looked at his car .. It was the the white SUV that I saw on short final. Soon, we saw emergency crews turned on the road, then he said “I guess you are OK. Take care!”. He was exactly like a hero. I hope I said “Thank you” to him. I wish I will find him again.

Post emergency landing review: 
(1) I asked myself why I did not try complete inverted flight, not just shaking the airplane. If the cause of problem is gravity valve, I might have some oil pressure while I was at inverted.

(2) Some people suggested to me that I jettison the canopy before touch  down. That way I do not have the risk of being trapped in the airplane. The load meter in the cockpit said I had negative 6Gs at least when the airplane flipped over. I checked my seat belt before touch down, and I had 1 inch clearance between the canopy, but I still hit canopy because my body stretched a little at the time. This means that if I had jettisoned the canopy before impact, I might hit my head somewhere. The canopy protected me from rocks and mud. I do not say to keep canopy is best idea, but the pilot has to be able to break the canopy at least. I will carry a knfe (not a small folding knife, heavy duty survival knife prefered), or axe in the future. I also have a idea how to open biplane canopy even upside down without outside help. However, I have no chance to test this technique until next time…

(3) Preview your practice area if low altitude practice is needed. 1500ft AGL is not enough to make airport in most situation. I was so surprised that practice area has many hills and power lines.

I think Yuichi’s a little hard on himself.  Even if the gravity valve was at fault, priority #1 is fly the plane, #2 is find a place to land, and then you can troubleshoot.  From 2500 AGL, I’m not sure he’d have had much of a chance to get to it. 

In this case, “any landing you can walk away from” really is a good landing.  I believe the airplane is a total loss.  The damage doesn’t sound that bad, and I’m sure it’s fully repairable, but once the airplane goes over on its back, the steel tube airframe gets bent.  At that point, the ship is probaby worth more as a collection of parts than it would be after the restoration, so the insurance company writes a check.

It’s worth noting that all three engine failures I heard about at Paso Robles were in high performance aerobatic airplanes.  When these engines are installed in normal airplanes, pilots take great care to make gentle throttle movements and generally be as nice to the engine as possible, cooling it down slowly at the end of a flight and helping it live a low stress life.

Install the same engine in an aerobatic airplane and we rapidly move from full throttle to idle and back again, over and over.  Short flights, high climb rates with little cooling air.  Lots of cycles.  We torque the prop and put tremendous stresses on the crankshaft, pulling enough Gs to move the entire engine several inches on the mounts.

When you think about all that, perhaps the real surprise is that these failures are not more common.

Anyway, I hope this is as close as I’ll ever get to re-living Yuichi’s experience.  I love how he casually states that he won’t have a chance to test his new technique “until next time”, as though it’s a foregone conclusion that this won’t be his last engine failure.

You’re probably thinking, “How about hoping there won’t be a next time?”.  The thing is, as pilots we have to plan for it anyway.

The longer I work as an instructor, the more amazing I am that we’re able to do anything productive at John Wayne.  I want to say the airport is kind of busy, but that’s akin to saying the Pope is kind of Catholic.  Understatement of the year.

Yet we somehow manage to take a person who has never been in an aircraft before and turn them into a pilot, someone qualified to mix it up with the big jets, deal with wake turbulence, handle the highly challenging radio communication, and fit into the pattern with a dozen other airplanes of all shapes and sizes.

When you stop to think about it, that’s pretty amazing.  You can’t help but turn out some capable pilots in that atmosphere.

It gets even more impressive when you run some numbers.  The “big bad” airport that everyone speaks of on the east coast seems to be Teterboro.  Its proximity to Manhattan and the lack of reliever airports for that region make it a very popular destination for the jet set when they’re “in a New York state of mind”.

An east coast-based pilot recently indicated that he felt TEB was the greater challenge because the airspace around New York was so crowded.  He went on to say that those of us here in the Los Angeles area “only have LAX to deal with”, whereas “in a small area JFK, EWR and LGA all share airspace.”

I think this is a guy who’s never been to Los Angeles.  It’s not only LAX… not by a long shot.  It’s Burbank, Van Nuys, Long Beach, Hawthorne, Santa Monica, Fullerton, Torrance, El Monte, Compton, Whiteman, and so on.

But when you get to John Wayne, you really start to see some fireworks.  SNA may be Class C airspace, but it qualifies for Class B airspace rulemaking.

Class B airspace requires 5 million passengers enplaned per year and more than 300,000 total operations (an operation is definied as a takeoff or landing). I expect this year we’ll enplane over 5 million and serve a total of 10 million passengers, and that’s just on the airlines.

Of the 355,000 operations that take place at SNA each year (which is 57% more than TEB), 250,000 are general aviation.

I estimate that between 50,000 and 75,000 of those are just from Sunrise, the FBO where I work.

Then there’s the physical plant.  John Wayne Airport is only 500 acres in size.  Teterboro has 827 acres.

The one area where TEB does take the cake is, unfortuantely, fuel prices.  Fuel at TEB now costs as much as $7.05 a gallon.  That’s at Atlantic Aviation.  We have one of these bloodsuckers at SNA, they make Signature Flight Support look really good — not an easy thing to do.  And I’m not just saying that because I waited 90 minutes for a fuel truck this afternoon.

It really is a jungle out there.  I first realized this shortly after I earned my pilot certificate.  When you find Class B airports like LAS, PHX, and SAN far more laid back than your home base, you know it’s someplace special.

Teterboro may be famous for long IFR delays and rigid adherence to narrow departure corridors, but if you look at numbers, it’s hard to compare anything to John Wayne.

The hits just keep on coming for Airbus.

As if lost sales and slipping delivery dates weren’t enough to worry about, the EADS subsidiary lost two top executives today:  the CEO of the company, and the guy who ran the Airbus division.

Humbert said the delays to the A380 had been a “major disappointment for our customers, our shareholders and our employees,” adding that he felt it was the right course of action to offer his resignation to shareholders.

Relations between Forgeard and Humbert, his soft-spoken former No. 2 at Airbus, have appeared prickly and Airbus was reported to be furious when Forgeard diverted blame onto his former teams in Toulouse, southwest France, for the A380 crisis.

But some analysts had said the future of both men had become intertwined simply because of the scale of the A380 problems.

The A380 delays are expected to cost EADS some 2 billion euros in lost operating profits between 2007 and 2010. Its shares fell 26 percent, wiping out 5 billion euros of value in one day when the A380 delays were announced in mid-June, sparking a hunt by French regulators to know exactly who knew what and when.

The sell-off and disclosure of what was going wrong inside the A380 assembly plants also angered Britain’s BAE Systems.

Shades of the Concorde?  Perhaps.

Forty years ago, Concorde was touted as the future of commercial aviation.  Now they may have been right from a technical standpoint, but Concorde was an economic disaster for those who built it.  Predictions of thousands of supersonic birds traversing the planet gave way to just a dozen aircraft, each sold to their respective airline for the princely sum of one dollar.

If Airbus isn’t careful, people far more influential than me will start making that connection.

On the other hand, billions of dollars worth of infrastructure improvements necessary to accomodate the mammoth A380 appear to be moving ahead without regard for the machinations taking place at Airbus.

Here in Southern California, LAX is about to close one of its four runways for as long as two years.

Around midnight July 29, airport workers will paint large yellow Xs on the southernmost runway, a signal to pilots that it is closed. Then, multitudes of dump trucks, graders and excavators will roll onto the airfield, not far from where hundreds of airliners will continue to take off and land each day.

The first major project at Los Angeles International Airport in two decades aims to improve safety and prepare the airport for a new generation of jumbo jets. Work will begin just as the airport enters its most hectic month of the year, putting pilots, airlines, air traffic controllers — and members of nearby communities — on edge.

“I think delays will be more significant than the original forecasts,” Jon Russell, a safety coordinator for the Air Line Pilots Assn., said of the $333-million project to move the runway 55 feet south — closer to the airport’s boundary with El Segundo — and build new taxiways.

The impending mix of heavy construction equipment and commercial air traffic at a crowded airport about to lose one-fourth of its runways has officials looking for ways to head off long delays, which could trigger problems at other airports as well.

LAX can probably operate with three runways and maintain partial on-time performance.  The problem is that it doesn’t leave them with an ounce of additional capacity.  No wiggle room to deal with contingencies.  It’s a point the FAA makes in the last paragraph of the article:

With construction in full swing in a matter of days, air traffic controllers caution that mechanical problems or bad weather could throw off their best-laid plans.

“If there’s an aircraft mishap, like someone’s gear collapses on the runway, and now we’re down to two runways,” the FAA’s Shappi said, “all bets are off.”

It’s hard to imagine that LAX wouldn’t have events like that from time to time.  A blown tire, brake fire, rejected takeoff, overweight landing, runway incursion, bird strike, or a dozen other problems might close another runway.  That’s when things will really get interesting.

My last missive may have come off as a bit dismissive about air traffic controllers.  So in a contrapuntal vein, I offer the story of Phil Aune, the nation’s (and probably the world’s) oldest air traffic controller.

VAN NUYS – The nation’s oldest air traffic controller made his final approach Thursday from the world’s busiest general-aviation airport.

Phil Aune, 70, the “Voice of Van Nuys Airport,” stepped down from the control tower after tracking his last plane, a single-engine Cherokee.

Throughout his 47-year career, the soothing voice of “Papa Alpha” had guided millions of planes in and out of Van Nuys Airport.

“I’ve been crying; it’s very emotional,” said the gray-haired grandfather and FAA veteran just after his last shift ended at 1:40 p.m. “My last airplane.”

Before dawn, Aune (pronounced awe-nee) hoisted Old Glory for the last time outside the six-story box of glass west of runway One Six Right.

At the top of rush hour, three Los Angeles television and radio traffic aircraft and four traffic choppers flew in tribute past his capacious glass window.

Midmorning, two engines from the Los Angeles Fire Department “crash crew” at VNY – the FAA designator for the airport – stopped before the tower to let fly honorary streams of firefighting foam.

After noon, actor and pilot Patrick Swayze called Aune from London to wish him a fine farewell.

“Phil is sort of the Vin Scully of Van Nuys,” Dan Katz, president of Hollywood Aviators, a flight school in Van Nuys, said while dropping off a basket of farewell cookies. “He really is the voice of VNY.

“He’s just amazing. He’s such a fixture here. It’ll be sort of funny not to be able to hear him on the radio.”

Aune signed on at Van Nuys Airport in 1959 when it was surrounded by fields of corn and wheat. He was among the first hired by what was then the newly founded Federal Aviation Administration.

Over the years, Aune would track Hollywood celebrities from Bob Hope – who used VNY for his ’round-the-world USO tours – to pilot-actors Danny Kaye, Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

I had known about Phil before he was featured in the documentary One Six Right, but wasn’t aware of the amazing record of longevity he’d set at Van Nuys Airport.  He’s been working at the VNY tower for as long as they’ve had one.  Or to put it another way, he’s been a controller for as long as the FAA’s been in existence.

It’s a testament to his skill and patience that he served so long at what is renown as the world’s busiest general aviation airport.

Since we’re on the topic of air traffic controllers, I must admit I’m fascinated by the individual personalities they foster at GA airports.  For example, at John Wayne Airport, the controllers are as good as they come.  Helicopters, airliners, student pilots, hot shot aerobatic gurus, experimentals, spam cans, and more mix it up over SNA, but the controllers rarely get flustered.  I know their voices and when coming home it generates a sense of comfort to know they’re there.

They are on top of the situation and it shows.  If a student’s soloing, they get a watchful eye over them, something I appreciate when it’s my guy up there flying by himself for the first time.  The controllers know the airplanes I fly, and they know my voice.  After a while, you can almost anticipate each others thoughts.  It’s an amazing partnership.

On the other hand, I avoid Camarillo on the weekend if I can help it.  Especially in the morning.  The tower operators there often seem to be right on the edge of overload whenever the airspace gets full.  Several controllers have strong accents, and I get the feeling the place might be a training location for controllers.  I don’t begrudge the CMA controllers their classroom — after all, pilots have theirs, right?  But there seems to be a higher level of stress with a lower level of traffic at Camarillo.

Chino is another place where you can find some interesting personalities in the tower cab.  Some are sharp as a tack, others seem to miss a lot of things.  I’ve been extended downwind and forgotten about on multiple occasions at Chino.  Try as I might, I’ve been unable to get a handle on individual controllers there.  They all sound the same to me.

Brackett Field in Pomona is one of my favorite places to observe ATC behavior, especially during the holidays.  The tower folks there seem to be quite talkative, almost festive in mood.  In fact, they even string up a huge strand of green and red lights on the side of the tower, creating a massive Christmas tree.  You can almost smell the Douglas fir branches.  At least a couple of the tower controllers are pilots.  You can always tell the ones who are pilots — when something new or different shows up, they take an interest.  The other guys are only asking questions so they know how to address the airplane.  Is it “Experimental” or “Vultee”?

The really huge airports don’t seem to have much personality.  I’ve been into LAX, SFO, LAS, and PHX, and I can only assume that the plethora of airliners sucks some of the personality out of the airwaves.  No classic biplanes, no mix of aviators.  Just an endless stream of seven-something-sevens coming down the ILS.

Airports are nothing in and of themselves.  Just patches of high-strength concrete.  It’s the people that give airports their personality, and a controlled fields, the guys in the tower cab go a long way toward dictating what sort of feel the airport will have.  They do great work, and those of us on the other side of the radio appreciate it.

There’s something very satisfying about instrument flying.

I’m not sure if it’s the precision, the difficulty, the pilot/controller teamwork, or the sheer magic of being able to whisk through three dimensional space for hours on end without seeing anything outside the aircraft, navigating and maintaining ones situational awareness all the while.

Despite what the some would have you believe, all instrument ratings are not created equal.  I have yet to see a pilot who earned their rating at one of the accelerated Arizona programs who was able to handle the workload in the L.A. area without some remedial training.  It’s not a snub at those programs per se.  You just don’t have the exposure to actual IMC and high density operation out there in the desert.

Case in point:  I made a literal cross-country flight (Duluth, MN to Orange County, CA) with one of my instrument students in a new SR22.  We shot many approaches along the way, and he did a nice job.  But nothing could prepare him for coming over the Cajon Pass and being given the following pop-up IFR clearance:

Cleared to SNA via make a right 360, fly heading 175, when able proceed direct Paradise, depart on the Paradise 270 radial, victor 363, victor 8, Seal Beach, direct, descend and maintain 5000, squawk  4672, and contact Socal now on 135.4.

The controller read so fast that my student was only able to write down the first bit.  I knew this would happen and was prepared to pick up the slack, because when actual IMC conditions prevail, the controller is swamped, and you’re asking for the favor of a pop-up clerance, you have to make a strong first impression or ATC will simply refuse to give you IFR (as is their right).

Naturally, there were two revisions between Paradise and SNA, and what we actually flew bore no resemblance to the original or amended clearances.

The point is, this is a brutal environment in which to learn.  It takes longer, costs more, and is more stressful.  But it results in a much better instrument pilot.

Whether you concur with that statement or not, I’m confident most pilots would agree that the instrument rating is the most challenging certification to obtain.  And maintain.  This is especially true here in the Los Angeles basin due to the traffic density.  There are scads of airplanes, airports, and the frequencies are usually jam-packed.  This can lead to pilots and controllers attempting to take shortcuts with radio phraseology in order to be more efficient.  Unfortunately, this rarely works.

This brings me to the reason for this article.  My latest pet peeve is a shortcut that ATC seems to be taking more and more frequently these days:  they vector pilots around without telling them where they’re going.

I’m quite sure that this happens to other pilots as well, so I’m curious about why it never gets mentioned.  I was taught (and it makes perfect sense) that any time a controller takes you off your clearance and starts vectoring you, they are supposed to tell you where you’re going.

This is important because if you lose communication with ATC in actual instrument condition, you have to know where to go.  The regulations state that if you lose comm in IMC during radar vectoring, you should proceed to the that location.  How are you supposed to do that if you don’t know where you’re being vectored?

I asked a DPE about this, and was told that controllers often omit the vector limit when they know the weather is solid VFR.  On the surface, this seems reasonable.  After all, the regulations state that if you lose communication while in visual conditions, you should remain VFR and land.  If the weather is good, why bother providion a vector clearance that will never be used?

I can think of two reasons.  First, because it’s required.  When providing radar vectors, FAA Order 7110.65R states the following in section 5-6-2:

b. When initiating a vector, advise the pilot of the purpose.

PHRASEOLOGY-
VECTOR TO (fix or airway).

VECTOR TO INTERCEPT (name of NAVAID) (specified) RADIAL.

VECTOR FOR SPACING.

VECTOR TO FINAL APPROACH COURSE,

or if the pilot does not have knowledge of the type of
approach,

VECTOR TO (approach name) FINAL APPROACH COURSE.

It’s interesting to note that while it says “advise the pilot of the purpose“, four of the five examples given are locations, not reasons.  The only exception is “vector for spacing”.  All the others are “vector to some location”.  While we’re on the topic, “vector for traffic” doesn’t show up on that list.  How often have you received that one?

Also, notice that 7110.65 does not make any exception for specific meterological conditions. If the aircraft is flying under Instrument Flight Rules and the controller starts to vector it, as far ask I know, the pilot should be given a vector limit regardless of the weather.

The second, and more important, reason controllers should provide a vector limit is because when they don’t, a red flag should be raised in the pilot’s mind.  He should ask where he’s being vectored.  As it stands now, pilots are learning or re-learning instrument flight all over the L.A. basin and not asking this question.  We’re becoming de-sensitized to the situation.

What’s going to happen when they’re being vectored in actual IMC?  Yeah, they won’t know where they’re going.

The larger picture?  Pilots are not navigating.  “Navigating” is the process of finding your way from one place to another.  If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not navigating, are you?  You’ve effectively abdicated that responsibiilty to ATC, closing your eyes and allowing them to blindly lead you by the hand.  This is dangerous, not to mention the fact that you won’t know when you get wherever you’re going!  If ATC says “radar vectors to final approach course” and five minutes later you blow through the localizer, you know to speak up.  If all you get is “turn left heading XXX”, you are a lot less likely to say something when that needle swings.

The answer to this problem is simple.  Insist on a vector limit.  I’ve become more stringent about requiring my students to always know where they’re going during radar vectoring.  Rule #1 when flying IFR is to maintain situational awareness.  You can’t do that if you don’t know where you’re going.

Sport Aerobatics is the monthly magazine for the International Aerobatic Club.

It’s a pretty good read.  Of all the magazines I get — and there are quite a few of them – I like this one the most.  It’s the smallest, but the content is right up my alley.  “Let’s talk about aerobatics!”.  The magazine is also one of the things IAC is trying to improve upon because it serves IAC’s two constituencies: competition pilots and those who fly aerobatics recreationally.

The magazine has a pretty, glossy cover.  But don’t be fooled, the total membership in IAC is only 4,500 people.  I’d be surprised if they print more than 6,000 copies of each issue.  It’s a small club, unfortunately.  I say unfortunately because a few vocal people out there that hate airplanes and would be glad to see aerobatics banned.  Our only sure defense relies on strength in numbers.

Anyway, every month they print a “personality profile” on one pilot.  Guess who’s in the June issue?

It seems that Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca thinks he’s above the law.  Normally he’d be right.

But Baca’s department demonstrated a custom designed unmanned surveillance drone to the media last week.  The problem?  They ignored written counsel from the Federal Aviation Administration, which had told the Sheriff’s Department that flying the drone would require certification from the Feds before flight would be allowed.

They flew the drone anyway.

“I wouldn’t want to term us as peeved, but we were definitely surprised,” FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. Sheriff’s officials were told “that we were more than willing to sit down and talk about a certificate — but that was before their first flight.”

The FAA is now investigating Friday’s demonstration to determine whether the Sheriff’s Department should face disciplinary action.

Until the investigation is over, Brown said, the agency will not authorize the county’s use of the drones.

Good.

The way I see it, pilots and aircraft operators of all sizes all have to go through certification.  We pay the price in time, money, and effort in order to use the national airspace system.  Now Lee Baca thinks he can just purchase a couple dozen drones and fly them around the Los Angeles area with impunity?

I don’t think so.

If the LAPD wants regulatory relief from the FAA, they can get in line with the rest of us.

Sheriff’s officials dismissed the conflict as a misunderstanding that would soon be cleared up. But they were incredulous about what they consider red tape getting in the way of their law enforcement tool.

There’s no misunderstanding.  The FAA considers the drone to be an aircraft requiring certification.  The Sheriff’s Department took a different view and decided that they were not only the boss of the streets, but the final authority in the air as well.  Don’t need to be coy, Roy.

“A private citizen can go to the store and buy one of those model airplanes and fly them around. But because we’re doing it as a public service, we have to deal with the FAA?” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Sid Heal. Once they “take a deep breath and realize there was no malice intended, it will get back on track.”

No, you don’t have to deal with the FAA “because you’re doing it as a public service”.  You have to deal with the FAA because you’re operating something the Feds have determined requires certification.  Obviously they don’t consider it a model airplane.  You disagree with the FAA?  Join the club.  But they are the ones who administer law in the air, and if I have to follow their mandates, so do you.  Hop on the bus, Gus.

And if malicious intent was a benchmark for FAA enforcement, the world would be a much different place my friend.

Baca said Wednesday that he was unaware of the FAA investigation but downplayed the dispute.

“There’s no reason for the FAA to be concerned,” he said, calling the drones “non-invasive and nearly silent.”

Since when is Lee Baca an expert on the National Airspace System?  Is he aware that there are well over 100 instrument approach procedures in use in the Los Angeles basin?  Does he know where Class E surface areas are located and what might be in them during marginal conditions?

Without the proper training, one of these drones could easily collide with an airplane coming out of the clouds.  Pilots know this and are trained to maintain appropriate distance from clouds when flying under visual flight rules so there will be enough time for evasive action.

What will his response be when an airplane, helicopter, blimp, or other craft has a midair or near-midair with one of these harmless objects?  Is he aware of the location and dimensions of protected airspace around runways?  Does he know that helicopters fly as low as 50′ off the deck at times?  Of course not.  But he’s the Sheriff, and nobody’d better mess with him on his turf.

My advice?  Make a new plan, Stan.

Fellow IAC36 competitor James Pratt borrowed a digital video camera and made this video of his practice session in the Super Decathlon today. This is the aircraft I flew last season before moving into the S-2B.

Speaking of which, the video is interesting because there’s a lot of talk about video systems right now. A two camera system is being installed in the Extra 300, and we’re interested in putting a two or three camera system into the Pitts. Combined with the smoke system, it will make a great addition to the demo flights we do in that aircraft.

Anyway, back to James’ video. He should be flying in a higher category and move up from the Super D, but the cost gets prohibitive. Quickly.

You’ll see him run through the sequence twice. The first time, the camera is pointed at his face. Despite appearances, this is not (always) due to vanity. No, it’s so he can see where he’s looking. If a maneuver is not working out well, it is often because the pilot is not looking in the right place at the right time. Plus it’s funny to see yourself get scrunched down in the seat by the Gs, and as we all know, the ability to laugh at oneself is important — right up there with putting your video online so we can all giggle at it.

The second time through, the camera is pointed straight ahead. Believe it or not, this is one of the least useful angles for aerobatic training. In general, I think looking out at the wing, back toward the tail, or across the aircraft will be far more enlightening than looking straight forward. The wing view will reveal common flaws with vertical lines, 45s, departure from the X-axis track during looping maneuvers, and so on.

The video was taken at the Blockhouse, an unimproved area of south Orange County that we use for aerobatic flight. It’s one of the only places left around here that meets the requirements of 14 CFR 91.303. Comprised of three closely spaced, parallel north-south valleys, on any given day you’ll find as many as four airplanes using this space at one time. It requires a high level of situational awareness. It think this pays off, though, because I’ve noticed that folks who practice over featureless areas or open water have a harder time managing their position in a marked aerobatic box.

During the video, you’ll hear the Pitts (N1191) make a call inbound to the Blockhouse. James is in the central valley. One of the other Decathlons (N5535K) shifts from the east valley to the west valley to make room for the Pitts. We keep the S-2B in the east valley as much as possible for noise abatement. This Blockhouse ballet is pretty amazing when you step back and look at it.

Sometimes I think about the hundreds of pilots who have trained — and trained others — at the Blockhouse. I would not be surprised if this was the most active aerobatic practice area in the country. Unfortunately, the Blockhouse is at risk as developers build homes ever closer to our practice area. I am hopeful that a serious slowdown in the housing market will allow this aerobatic haven to flourish for a while longer.

As they say, supplies are running out. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Alternative titles:  ”A Place Called Vertigo”, or perhaps ”How to Dismantle an Atomic Pitts”

An F-14 has nothing on this baby.  Speaking of which, isn’t it ironic that the Tomcat has been retired while the Pitts Special – a 1940’s design! — is entering it’s sixth decade of production?

There’s just no end to the cool photography one can generate when you’ve got an airplane like this.  A 20″ wide glossy print of this photo is being framed right now.  It’s going to be the centerpiece of my home office.  The composite image shows the runways of the old El Toro Marine Corps Air station in the background.

What would make this even cooler?  Well, future plans for the aircraft include reinstalling the smoke system and putting in a video system with multiple cameras.  Great for demo rides, debriefing aerobatic training flights, and plain old everyday fun.

The 2006 aerobatic season is underway.  In fact, fully one-third of the California contests are already in the books.  I finished in second place at the Borrego MiniFest and a distant sixth at Apple Valley.  I haven’t written anything about it as yet, mainly because I’ve been too busy flying to write about flying.

This is a good thing.

But let me back up and talk about how I got here.

As I wrote in December, my career in aerobatics was at a crossroads after last season.  I wanted to move up to Intermediate, but couldn’t do so in the Super Decathlon.  After running the financials, and thanks in no small part to the experience of owning Tweety for several years, I bought into a partnership in an Pitts S-2B.

I’m sure you’ll all want to see the art work before I drone on about the mundane details of aircraft ownership, so here are some photographs that were taken at the L.A. Gold Cup competition last month:

In the words of George Costanza, “Yeah, she’s a sweet ride”.  This is true as much because of the circumstances as the actual airplane.  See, this isn’t just any S-2B.  It’s an aircraft which is on leaseback where I work.  It’s available for checkouts and solo rental — one of the few Pitts Specials that you can fly solo, I might add.

The rarity of solo rentals has made N1191 very popular.  We have folks who regularly come from as far away as Japan to fly it.  The leaseback revenue has been high enough that it keeps the partners cost extremely low.  Much moreso than I’d be able to swing with any other partnership, let alone if I were to buy an aircraft outright.

A partnership also made sense because it’s unlikely any friction will develop between the owners about who takes the plane for the weekend.  A Pitts is not a good cross country aircraft.  It’s cramped, noisy, and uncomfortable.  It was designed for one thing:  aerobatics.  As such, when it leaves the area, it’s probably going to be enroute to a competition.  And all the owners will be going, too.  So where scheduling is concerned, our desires are nearly always aligned.

Finally, as anyone who’s been in an aircraft partnership will tell you, these arrangements are akin to a marriage:  you’re attached financially and personally to the other owners.  So you better get along.  And the partners in this aircraft were already a known quantity to me.  I’d spend time with them at competitions, seen how they treated the airplane, and knew we’d be a good match because we’re already friends.

I also like the fact that the airplane isn’t moving to a new home.  It’s been based at SNA for more than a decade.  The maintenance and upkeep will be done by the same people who’ve managed it since day one.  I don’t have to worry about where to hangar the aircraft (it’s already got one), how much the insurance will cost (the same as it did before I owned it), and what the tax consequences will be (there are none).

Of course, there has to be a down side, right?  Nothing’s free.  In this particular arrangement, what I’m giving up is the freedom to fly the plane whenever I want.  We have a scheduling system that everyone, even the owners, must use.  If I want to fly it tomorrow morning and it’s already booked, I’m out of luck.  But at a total cost of operation of $85/hour, this is a limitation I can live with.  I just have to plan my flights a little further in advance, that’s all.

If I learned anything from owning my other aircraft, it’s that the purchase price is a small piece of the financial puzzle.  An engine overhaul or airframe repair can easily blow your budget wide open, no matter how much money you hold in reserve.  Case in point:  the canopy on the Pitts has been lost before.  One time it wasn’t latched properly.  Another time the jettisoning mechanism had worn beyond limits and the canopy fell to the ground after a flight.  This is a $5,000 part.  An engine overhaul is in the $30,000 range.  Prop overhauls are more than $2,000. 

As the saying goes, a few thousand here, a few thousand there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

Speaking of mishaps, I can already recount a Bad Day I had with N1191.  It was at the last competition.  I was in a hurry to refuel the airplane after my flight and get over to the judging line.  Everything was fine until I reached into my pocket to grab the fuel strainer.  I couldn’t find it.  Turns out that I had left the strainer in the fuel hose extension (where it is stored), and when I put fuel in the plane, the pressure of the 100LL going into the tank had dumped the fuel strainer into the tank as well.

You should have seen the look on my face when I realized what had happened.  I spent the next two minutes cursing myself with the most colorful idioms.  From what I’ve been told, it was quite entertaining.  I figured that the competition was over for me.  And the other partners.  Nice way to join the group, don’t you think? 

In the end, the day was saved by the fuel truck driver.  He somehow managed to fish the strainer out of the tank using nothing but an 18″ spring loaded claw, flashlight, and one of those magnetic doo-dads that are used to pick up washers and screws from hard to reach places.  I don’t know how he did it.  If you look at a photo of the Pitts, you’ll see that the acro tank filler cap is only a few inches from the bottom of the top wing, leaving very little space to even get your head in there and see what’s going on, let alone fishing something out of the tank.

I could have hugged him.  But instead I pulled out my wallet and said, “I don’t know how much is in here, but whatever it is, please take it!”  He wouldn’t hear of it, but I at least managed to buy the guy lunch.

One of the owners later told me that years ago, something similar had happened.  The difference is that when they went about retrieving the fuel strainer, they didn’t find one in the tank, they found three.

Good times.

I’ve got about 25 hours in the plane now, and my impressions are generally good.  It’s certainly a higher performance bird than the Super D, but I sometimes fail to account for the tremendous drag presented by the airframe.  On the way back from Apple Valley, I flew in formation with the Extra 300 and had to apply full power to keep up with it.  The Extra was running at about 15″.

I wish I’d have learned that lesson sooner.  I zeroed a figure at that competition because I fell out of an inverted lay out after a vertical roll.  And I had entered the maneuver at nearly Vne!  The high drag and wing loading are especially apparent during any attempt to “glide”.  I use the word in quotes because a better adjective might be “fall”.  It comes nearly straight down.  On an extremely tight downwind, if I pull the power abeam the runway numbers, I barely make the runway from 1300′ AGL.  They should consider using the S-2B to train shuttle pilots…

I have a high level of respect, maybe even a little fear, of the Pitts.  Oh, not because of spins.  I’ve spun it every possible way and it exits even the most aggrevated spin mode beautifully.  No, I’m talking about the structure.  The structure is extremely light.  I don’t see a whole lot of crashworthiness in the plane.  Combined with the poor glide ratio, high landing speed, and landing gear configuration, it certainly must give one pause when thinking about engine failure scenarios.  When Gray and I ferried the Pitts and Extra out to Apple Valley in marginal VFR last month, I asked to fly the Extra because flying at 2000′ AGL for any length of time in the Pitts just made me very uncomfortable.

In closing, I will note that the Pitts has a legendary reputation as an unpredictable and highly difficult airplane to land.  From what I can tell, the reputation is undeserved.  The Pitts, like any other airplane, will do what you tell it to do.  I found the transition to be easier than moving into the Extra 300.  Once you get the sight picture down and can roundout low enough, it’s no different than any other aircraft.  Get the nose straight.  Stop the drift.  And when it’s on the ground, keep it going straight.

Now, if you never learned how to do those things in other aircraft, the Pitts is certainly capable of teaching you a lesson you won’t forget.  But it’s not a machine that will disobey pilot input.

So that’s it.  A new adventure begins!

Now.  Who wants to go for a RIDE??

I spent the weekend up in Susanville with some friends.  We departed out of Oxnard Airport on Friday and apparently made the front page of the newspaper as we did so:

That’s our Skylane in the background.  According to the newspaper article, the Warrior in the foreground had experienced an engine failure after takeoff and the pilot elected to return to the airport.  Unfortunately, he didn’t have enough altitude to make it all the way back.  The aircraft touched down in a field west of the runway and collided with an SUV as it crossed a public road.

Considering the open farm fields that litter the west end of OXR’s runway, attempting to turn around may not have been the best option.  On the other hand, I give the pilot credit for resisting the temptation — which must have been strong, considering how close he was to the runway — to stretch the glide, which could well have ended in a stall/spin situation.  He flew the Warrior all the way to the ground, and in doing so preserved his life.  He’s got some injuries, but nobody was killed.

The Ventura County Star has a slide show of the Warrior.

What can we learn from this accident?  First, determine your turn-around altitude before you takeoff, not after.  Second, have alternative landing sites picked out in advance.  And third, even a lowly GA single has a remarkable level of survivability if you just keep it flying all the way to the ground.

Another nail in the coffin of Southern California’s once rich aviation community.  A friend writes about the end of the line — literally — at Long Beach: 

I witnessed the final death blow this morning as the last MD-717 lifted off and departed for delivery to the customer, TransAir. Unless a miracle occurs it will be the last jet airliner ever built in Long Beach.

All of the old Douglas buildings have been bull dozed and the property is being developed by the Boeing realty company into an industrial park, complete with 1500 high density housing units. Yep, right next to [runway] 25R on the Long Beach airport. Is it any wonder the management of Boeing/MD ran the company into the ground?

There were many speeches by VP’s, most of which talked about how great we used to be and what great airplanes we used to build. A very sad thing to see. I feel very empty inside.

It’s a shame. The economics of the airline industry may have dictated an end to the 717 production line, but by putting homes on the airport, Boeing shows an amazing lack of respect for its own history.  Future generations will not only grow up unaware of the 63 years of continuous aircraft production, but in another half century they may not even know that there used to be an airport in Long Beach.

With four million people living in Orange County, there are undoubtedly quite a few folks who make the drive from Santa Ana to Carlsbad on a daily basis.

I’m not sure how long it takes.  Traffic being what it is, anywhere between 90 minutes and two hours seems like a reasonable estimate. Figure three to four hours for the round trip in a car.

I feel sorry for those folks.  I traveled that route yesterday in a Cirrus SR22 in 27 minutes on a training flight with a student:

In fact, the round trip from John Wayne Airport to Carlsbad and back — under IFR, no less – was only about an hour.  And that included time for:

• startup
• taxi
• runup
• a five minute hold for IFR release
• takeoff and climb
• vectoring across V23 for traffic
• vectoring from Oceanside VOR way past the final approach fix
• shooting the ILS 24 approach in IMC
• landing
• taxiing back to the runway
• picking up a new IFR clearance
• another hold for IFR release
• taking off again
• flying back to SNA via V23
• the ILS 19R approach into John Wayne in IMC

The Cirrus is so fast that controllers on both ends underestimated how much airspace we’d consume on the base-to-final turn to intercept the final approach course (you can see that in the flight track graphic above — we initially flew through the localizer).  The coastal stratus kept the VFR aircraft on the ground, so we had the run of the place.

What a flight.  The air was smooth, the clearances were easy to get, and the flying on top was in beautiful sunshine.  My student was adept enough at operating the aircraft and avionics that we were able to turn on the XM satellite radio system and enjoy a few minutes of respite during the enroute segment.

I could get used to this.

Dan writes about fuel economy experiments in his RV-7.

It’s interesting that he managed to get 35.4 statute miles per gallon out of his airplane.  With a slight headwind, no less.

I’ve never seen more than about 20 mpg out of a Cirrus, even with a tailwind.  That’s on par with far draggier airplanes like the strut-braced Skylane.

For such a slick airplane, that’s surprising.  But perhaps it shouldn’t be.  After all, Dan’s RV-7 is extremely light.  The Cirrus aircraft are quite heavy, up to 3400 lbs on departure.  So even with 50% more horsepower, the Cirrus still comes up short on a hp-to-weight ratio.

Dan’s experiments and my observations with the Cirrus just reaffirm my belief that drag reduction only gets you so far.  If the airplane is heavy, it won’t matter how much aerodynamic improvement you make, it’ll never reach a respectable level of fuel efficiency.  So if $6.00/gal. fuel prices are a concern, the moral is clear:  keep it light.

I recently returned from Duluth, MN, where I had the pleasure of picking up a brand new Cirrus SR22 from the factory.  The experience left me feeling that we’re becoming a bit too complacent about the miracle of glass avionics. 

During the obligatory tour of the Cirrus plant, I was surprised to learn that starting with the 2006 models, they no longer manufacture airplanes with any analog engine instruments whatsoever.  Instead, they make critical engine data (RPM, MP, oil pressure and temperature) available on both displays.  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.  After all, the Garmin G1000 – general aviation’s first and thus far only true purpose-built all-glass avionics suite — has had fully digital engine gauges since day one.

Nevertheless, I question the wisdom of this approach.  On the return flight, we were in solid IMC west of Pierre, South Dakota.  Suddenly all the engine gauges stopped displaying data.  The displays were still there, but no data appeared.  Here’s what we lost:  RPM, manifold pressure, pressures and temperatures, CHTs, EGTs, power output, fuel flow, and fuel totalizer.

Was this a concern?  Sure, but not nearly as much as it would have been if the analog gauges hadn’t been available.  A call to Cirrus revealed that some moisture had probably gotten into one of the processors.  As soon as it dried out, everything came back online.  To it’s credit, the Avidyne primary flight display did annunicate the loss of the engine data processor at the time of the failure.

John over at Freight Dog Tales writes about discovering a G1000 failure mode the hard way:  by having a student relate it to you on the phone after experiencing it first hand.

The autopilot was flying the plane and the PIC was flipping through some approach plates when both the primary flight display (PFD) and mulit-function display (MFD) went black.

The intercom, radios and autopilot continued to function, but the pilots had no navigational display, no way to change radio frequencies, no engine instruments, no indications of the health of the electrical system, and only the back-up steam gauge instruments with which to control the plane. Luckily they were in VFR conditions and were already talking to approach control, who helped them land at a nearby airport to sort things out.

The cause of the blackout and the solution turned out to be both simple and unexpected. Something of which I was not aware, nor were several other pilots and instructors who were consulted on this, is that Cessna still has an avionics dimmer knob and, here’s the kicker, it will override the G1000 screen brightness settings when it is adjusted to any setting other that off. 

I experienced this while doing a ground training session in a G1000 equipped DiamondStar hooked up to an external Ground Power Unit.  I couldn’t figure out why the screens wouldn’t come up after plugging in the GPU.  Eventually I figured out that the dimmers had been turned on and were set to the dimmest setting.  The DA40 is nice in that the rheostat seems to be very beefy, and when the dimmer is “off”, it clicks into place quite solidly in such a way that it would be hard to accidentally bump it out of position.

Cessna SE rheostats have a bad reputation, but the new ones they’ve put into the glass panel planes are different.  They seem quite solid.  In fact, all the knobs and switches appear to be Citation jet-quality hardware.

But yes, that’s definitely a single point failure.  All the more reason to carry a Garmin 396 or other capable handheld GPS.  With that and the standby flight instruments, you could still keep the plane upright and navigate.  You’d either have to talk on the current frequency, or hold down the flip-flip button long enough to set it to 121.5.

I don’t think this is all that uncommon.  I’ve recently read about Airbus aircraft having problems with displays disappearing in flight.  I predict we’re going to hear a lot more about this scenario as analog gauges fall by the wayside.

After the factory tour, I have even greater confidence in the strength and engineering quality of the Cirrus airframe, but my misgivings about the increasing reliance on computer displays remain.

Side note: the good folks at Cirrus were busy expanding their factory.  Current production is 5 airplanes on Monday, 5 on Tuesday, 5 on Wednesday, and 4 on Thursday. The plant uses Friday to perform maintenance and catch up on any backlogs. 

They’re also busy building a new airplane:  a single engine jet that looks an awful lot like the SR20/22.  The prototype is under construction and the first flight is scheduled to take place in the fall.

Think it’s expensive to fill up your car?  According to AirNav, aviation fuel is now running as high as $6.79 a gallon.

Yes, you read that right.  We’re pushing seven dollars per gallon.

Anyone want to take a guess about how high it will go?  Eight dollars?  Ten?  Assuming a fuel flow of 30 gallons per hour on takeoff, an SR22 would be burning nearly $300 an hour just in gas.  Filling up an 80 gallon tank would cost $800.

I’d love to open an FBO just so I could take pride in having the most expensive fuel on the planet.  And you know what?  People would still line up to buy it.  I don’t see any of these FBOs suffering.

Good times, my friends.  Very good times.

Dan sent me a couple of companion pieces to yesterday’s entry.  Both are cockpit-based videos of a tailwheel airplane landing on a gravel bar.

In the first clip, our intrepid pilot uses the “waterski” arrival, touching down with the main wheels on the surface of the river and sliding right up onto the gravel bar.

In the second, he drops in from above some trees and lands on a short, curving spit of land.

I’m not sure what kind of airplane this is.  It’s got a hinged top cowl, so I assume it’s a Super Cub or derivative?

As usual, don’t try this at home.

A fellow CFI sent me a real gem.  I’d have to say this is the ultimate short field landing.  It’s so short that half of it takes place on the water.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal except for the fact that the aircraft in question is not a sea plane.

You can do some pretty amazing things when you push a capable bush plane like the Super Cub in this video clip to the edge of it’s performance envelope.

Of course, you can just as easily end up in a heap at the end of a gravel bar in some remote corner of the 49th state.  So as the Templar Knight told Indiana Jones, “choose wisely”.

It does make for interesting viewing though, doesn’t it?  I think I’ll show this clip to the next student who looks at an 1500 foot runway and claims they couldn’t possibly land there.

FDC 6/4280 ZLA CA.. FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS 25 W PALM SPRINGS, CA. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. PURSUANT TO 14 CFR SECTION 91.137(A)(2) TEMPORARY FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS ARE IN EFFECT WITHIN A 3 NAUTICAL MILE RADIUS OF 340223N/1165315W OR THE PALM SPRINGS /PSP/ VORTAC 281.0 DEGREE RADIAL AT 25.0 NAUTICAL MILES AT AND BELOW 11000 FEET MSL TO PROVIDE A SAFE ENVIRONMENT FOR ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION.

The TFR text says it’s for “accident investigation”. I wonder if this is the accident they’re referring to:

YUCAIPA, Calif. – Authorities have located the wreckage of a plane owned by Cessna Aircraft that crashed Tuesday in steep terrain in San Bernardino County. Both men on board, a Cessna employee and the president of an aircraft sales company, were killed.

The FAA says the Cessna Caravan disappeared off radar about 5 p.m.

The plane was en route to Ontario from Wichita, Kansas, where the Cessna company is based.

Cessna CEO Jack Pelton identified those aboard as Steve O’Neill, a regional sales manager for the company, and Rick Voorhis, president of Pacific Aircraft Sales in Reno, Nevada.

Curious.  Why would a GA aircraft accident require a TFR? I don’t recall having seen this before, especially for an accident that is not “high profile” like the crash of JFK, Jr.’s Saratoga.

This TFR is not quite as large as it seems.  It’s from the surface to 11,000 feet MSL, but the terrain is notated on the Los Angeles sectional as reaching 6,600 feet MSL in that area.

Perhaps whoever designed this sign lost sight of the, uh, “larger picture” — if you catch my meaning.  It doesn’t help that the pilot is sporting what appears to be a bicentennial porno mustache, circa 1976.

I’ve been trying to think of a good caption for this photo.  Suggestions?

Just two days after Christmas in 2000, an American Eagle commuter flight developed pitch trim problems immediately after takeoff from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.  The pilots had the controls full forward, yet the aircraft was climbing at ”3000 to 6000″ feet per minute.  All pitch trim controls were inoperative.

Take it from someone who’s been there:  when one of the primary flight controls stops responding, it really gets your attention.

Eventually, the flight landed safely at O’Hare.  As a pilot, I found this incident interesting for a few reasons.  First, there’s a screen capture of the departure controller’s radar screen available, which is rare.  Along with the accompanying audio recording of communication between ATC and the flight crew, it makes it possible to see the incident from the “other side of the scope”.

Second, the NTSB report indicates that ten other identical incidents had occured on the Embraer EMB-135LR fleet.  It doesn’t address why no corrective action was implemented prior to this.

Third, although the pilots of American Eagle flight 230 followed the appropriate checklist, the Approved Flight Manual procedure was unclear.  It said to slow down, but it didn’t say how much.  Also, because the pilots thought they had a trim runaway situation, they had pulled the circuit breakers and even if they’d slowed down enough, the trim would have remained inoperative.

I have a zip archive with the Lotus screen capture here.  It contains a self-extracting .exe file.

The NTSB full narrative report is here.

There are a couple of lessons here for GA pilots.  First, this incident seems to be another one of those “think outside the box” moments when standard procedures and checklist discipline don’t cut it.  The pilots of Eagle 230 had to learn to fly all over again, experimenting with spoilers, landing gear, airspeed, and flaps to find the most controllable configuration.  It’s at critical moments like these that knowlege of aerodynamics, aircraft systems, and other academic things can pay off in spades.  This is something I try to impart to my students.

Second, you’ll notice that there are many times when the approach controller will call Eagle 230 and they won’t respond.  I’m sure the PNF (”pilot not flying” — if there was such a thing in this incident!) had his hands full.  Flying the airplane always comes first, emergency or not.  Talking to ATC is secondary.

All in all, a successful outcome due in large part to the flight crew’s ability to think quickly on their feet and prioritize the workload when it got too high.

High resolution sectional charts for the entire U.S. are available at Kyler Laird’s aviationtoolbox.org.  How cool is that?

These charts are not up-to-date, but they’re great for illustration, teaching, and web-based excerpts.  Also, be aware that the downloads are pretty large.  The south side of the Los Angeles sectional chart was more than 42 megabytes.  The detail is worth it, though.

Kyler has other cool tools on the site.  One of my favorites is the sectional mosaic.  It starts you off with a mosaic of all the sectional charts.  As you click on the image, it drills down into the appropriate sectional, allowing quick access to any point on any sectional in the country.  Beats keeping a stack of expired charts on your desk just for occasional reference.

When I start teaching aerobatics to a pilot, one of the first things we discuss is when and where aerobatics are allowed.  Or, more accurately, where they are prohibited.  As anyone who’s familiar with government regulation will attest, the Code of Federal Regulations doesn’t tell you what you can do.  It only tells you what you cannot do.

One of the places aerobatics are prohibited is “within the lateral boundaries of the surface areas of a Class B, Class C, Class D, or Class E designated for an airport.”  Anyone who flies acro should know this.  And, to me at least, the definition of a surface area was always crystal clear:  it meant airspace that extended down to the surface of the earth.

What other meaning could there be?

Apparently, for about seven years, the FAA has been operating under a different definition of “surface area” than the rest of us.  Their interpretation meant that the lateral boundaries of B, C, D, and E airspace were, for all intents and purposes, extended down to the surface of the earth everywhere.  If you saw controlled airspace on a terminal or sectional chart, aerobatics were prohibited anywhere within the lateral boundaries, regardless of altitude.

This definition makes no sense.  We refer to the dashed magenta lines on a VFR chart as defining a “class E surface area”.  The charts actually use an abbreviation, “SFC”, to represent surface areas in class B and C airspace.  Finally, there’s the issue of class E airspace.  This is airspace that, while controlled, is usually not directly depicted on a sectional or terminal chart.  If all class E airspace were to extend to the surface when aerobatics is considered, aerobatics would prohibited absolutely everwhere.  No matter where you stick your finger on a chart — any chart – class E airspace exists at some altitude in that place.  It may start at the surface, 700 feet, 1200 feet, 14,500 feet, or some other arbitrary altitude, but it exists there.  Extend it to the surface, and the entire face of the earth becomes a “no fly” zone for aerobatics.

Is it possible someone at the FAA didn’t think this through?

Class E issues aside, the FAA would have been busting pilots left and right for violating this regulation if that definition were enforced.  Aerobatic pilots practice out over the water southwest of Long Beach harbor (between, but not on, V8-64 and V21) all the time.  It sits directly underneath a shelf of class B airspace that extends from 8000 to 10,000 feet MSL:

The good news is that an EAA member from Minnesota didn’t just blindly accept this interpretation.

The issue “re-surfaced” late last year when Robert Hucker, EAA 443420, Lakeville , Minnesota , filed a petition in advance of the Minneapolis (MSP) Class B airspace expansion slated to go live February 16. That expansion increased MSP’s Class B radius from 20 nm to as much as 30 nm in some areas, including over an aerobatic practice area 25 miles southwest of the airport used frequently by many local aerobatic pilots. Hucker used EAA’s 1998 petition as a basis for filing his petition.

“The (1999 FAA) explanation to EAA’s petition didn’t seem right to me,” Hucker said. “Plus use of the term, ‘surface area,’ was inconsistent, so I decided to put together some facts and file my own petition.” During his fact-finding process, Hucker discovered EAA’s 1998 petition at the MSP Flight Service District Office (FSDO) and used that as the basis of his argument.

In a March 7 letter, Rebecca MacPherson, FAA Assistant Chief Council, Regulations, wrote in a letter to Hucker, “Upon review, we conclude that the EAA was indeed correct in its understanding of ‘surface areas.’ In responding to your inquiry, we concluded that our 1999 interpretation was inconsistent with the term ‘surface area’ as used by Air Traffic Organization (ATO) airspace planners to describe only airspace that touches the surface of the earth.” 

I’m glad someone has been pursuing this.  I didn’t even know this interpretation of “surface area” existed, and I’m a very active instructor and competition aerobatic pilot.  I read everything I can get my hands on.  Accident reports, newsletters, aviation forums, FAA publications.

It leaves me wondering what other interesting FAA interpretations are lurking out there.

This is very sad.  It seems that Angel Flight West has suffered the loss of one of its pilots while enroute to pick up a patient for transport to the UCLA Medical Center.

SANTA MONICA, California (AP) — A former TV game show host and his wife were killed Monday morning when their small plane crashed into Santa Monica Bay, authorities said. Rescue crews were searching for a third person also aboard the plane.

The bodies of Peter Tomarken, 63, host of the hit 1980s game show “Press Your Luck,” and his wife, Kathleen Abigail Tomarken, 41, were identified by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

The plane was on its way to San Diego to ferry a medical patient to the UCLA Medical Center, said Doug Griffith, a spokesman for Angel Flight West, a nonprofit which provides free air transportation for needy patients.

Griffith said the pilot was a volunteer for the group.

This isn’t the first AFW accident.  I can’t recall if there have ever been any fatal accidents while on a transport flight, but I do know that Angel Flight has an outstanding safety record covering more than two decades.

Everyone in the organization starts and ends with the mindset that cancellations are okay.  If the weather, the aircraft, or anything else is not 100%, pilots are encouraged to stay on the ground.  There’s no pressure to fly — in fact, patients are supposed to have an alternative form of transportation available just in case a flight cannot be completed due to extenuating circumstances.

I flew for Angel Flight for many years, later working as a mission coordinator, and found it to be the most rewarding part of aviation.  I’ve always thought that the pilots got more out of the deal than our passengers, a warm feeling of restored faith in one’s fellow man.  Everyone I flew with was extremely grateful, and had a unique and interesting story to tell.

I don’t think anyone can dispute the fact that Angel Flight makes our world a better place.  Much better.

My heart goes out to the Tomarken family.  Perhaps it will serve as a small comfort to them that their loved ones died while doing something that makes a real and vital difference in the lives of people suffering from terrible illnesses.

I used to think that “smell” represented the least valuable sense when piloting an aircraft.  On February 8th, however, it turned out to be just the opposite, because the crew of this UPS DC-8 did smell something about 23 minutes prior to their scheduled landing in Philadelphia: smoke. 

The crew immediately declared an emergency.  Three minutes before landing, the smoke/fire warning light illuminated, and the jet burst into flames upon touchdown at Philadelphia.  The crew evacuated the aircraft via the cockpit windows using escape ropes provided for that purpose (you can see the ropes dangling from the cockpit window in the first photo).

It took more than four hours for firefighters to extinguish the blaze.

The aircraft was a complete loss, but there were no injuries.  When your aircraft catches on fire, that’s all that really matters.  Apparently there were two hazmat materials being carried aboard the DC-8:  amyl methyl ketone and tire repair kits.

Fire is one of the worst things a pilot can encounter in the air.  This accident was probably caused by the cargo, but in general aviation aircraft, fires are usually fed by electrical problems and/or fuel.  There just isn’t a whole lot else that’s flammable on board an airplane.

I teach my students that at the first sign of fire — whether that be smoke, flames, or just a burning smell — the best course of action is to kill the master switch and eliminate everything electrical.  Many electrical systems, especially older ones, have wiring insulation made out of PVC-like material.  When burned, a byproduct of combustion is cyanide gas.

Electrical fires are nothing to mess with.  If you suspect a fire, shut off the master switch immediately.  When you’re VMC, this is an easy call.  Most of us spend the vast majority of our time in visual conditions, so that’s the de facto solution.

In the soup it’s a little tougher.  Airplanes with air-driven flight instruments will continue to function, but the proliferation of all-electric glass panel airplanes has made shutting off the electrical system a bit more complicated.  The two main glass panel airplanes out there are the G1000 and the Avidyne FlightMax Entegra.

The G1000 system I’m most familiar with is the one in the DA40 DiamondStar.  Here, you can shut off both sides of the master switch with impunity, because a small emergency battery exists to power the standby attitude indicator and flood light.  In the Cirrus, however, you cannot do this.  Battery 2 powers the standby attitude indicator.

The best answer in the Cirrus is to shut off alternator 1, battery 1, and alternator 2.  Leave battery 2 on to power just the essential items.  Since battery 2 powers the essential buss directly — bypassing the Master Control Unit and the essential distribution bus — most of the electrical equipment in the airplane will have been shut off, and therefore whatever’s causing the problem will hopefully also be rendered inoperative.

If the problem does not abate, however, then battery 2 should be shut off and the ballistic recovery system deployed.

In some airplanes — and I’m thinking of the Extra 300 and Pitts S-2B here — there aren’t many electrical items.  However, you do have the main fuel tank inside the cockpit.  In fact, it sits right above the knees of the guy riding in the front seat!  An ideal place?  No.  But that’s how it is.  The Pitts is even worse because the analog fuel gauge (basically a bit of translucent tubing) brings the gas into the rear cockpit, too.

I haven’t come up with as many bright ideas for dealing with a fuel fire in a small, closed cockpit.  The best you can do is get the hell out of there.  In most airplanes this is not an option, but in aerobatic aircraft we wear parachutes.  Score one for the good guys!

In fact, a recent Sport Aerobatics article has me thinking a lot about this fuel fire issue.  An aerobatic competitor and CFI named Spencer Suderman wrote an article about the performance of various materials during exposure to fire.  He found that Nomex, the stuff most flight suits are made of, provides only 3 seconds of protection before a 2nd degree burn (blistering) is sustained.  Nomex has other serious drawbacks which Suderman details in his article:

Wearing a Nomex®  flight suit in the cockpit of an acro-mount is a waste of time and money:

1. The design and construction of most aerobatic aircraft with a fuel tank located inside the cockpit means that in a crash the probability of a fuel tank rupture and gasoline coming into contact with the pilot is virtually guaranteed.  Furthermore, lets not forget that high-tech fuel gauge consisting of a piece of clear tubing that is fastened to the instrument panel of virtually every Pitts literally inches from your body!

2.      Nomex®  absorbs liquids like a sponge.

3.      A single layer of Nomex®  carries the lowest protective rating according to SFI, http://www.sfifoundation.com/

Additionally, if you get covered in fuel, that $240 Nomex®  suit is no better than a T-shirt and jeans when it comes to fire protection.

While a pair of cotton jeans will do a reasonable job of insulating you from thermal energy for very short periods of time, natural fibers (cotton, wool) also have the property of not supporting combustion in the absence of external heat.   Natural fibers will absorb liquids such as fuel so if you get drenched you will be toast, literally.

It would however, be better to wear cotton or wool than synthetic fabrics because the natural fibers don’t support combustion nor do they melt into your skin when they do burn.

You don’t fly wearing polyester or nylon against your skin, do you?

The solution is to wear a suit made from a fabric called Dale Antiflame® made from 100% cotton and treated for flame and fluid resistance. (http://www.daleas.com/) 

A single layer suit of this material carries an SFI rating of 5 while a single layer Nomex®  suit carries an SFI rating of 1.  Most race car drivers are wearing this fabric either alone or in layers with other aramids such as Kevlar to gain increased fire protection. 

The problem of overheating and dehydration is addressed through the design and construction of the suit itself.   Sewing in panels of knit Nomex®  on the small of the back and shoulder areas, air circulation is achieved while minimizing the total amount of Nomex®  in the suit.

The bottom line is this:  fire is bad and if you have one, every second counts.  You can’t afford to wait until you’re smelling smoke, seeing sparks, or dodging flames before considering how you’d handle this scenario any more than you can afford to takeoff without forming a plan of action for an engine failure.

Aerobatic pilots often rehearse bailout procedures before egressing the cockpit after a flight.  Next time you fly, take a look around your aircraft.  Think about where the fuel is, where the electrical wiring is, and how you’d respond in VMC and IMC conditions.

Our intrepid UPS DC-8 crew had the benefit of recurrent Level D full-motion simulator training to prepare them for a fire.  GA pilots must take charge of their own preparation for a day we pray will never come.

A CPA member found a video I saw years ago and haven’t been able to find since.  It’s a great clip from a BBC television program about Robert “Bob” Hoover, one of the world’s all time greatest pilots.

Click on the photo at the right to view the video.  It shows Hoover shutting down both engines and then performing an aileron rol while pouring a glass of iced tea.  Naturally, he doesn’t spill a drop.

Don’t be fooled by the genteel look of a kindly older man.  Hoover was a World War II figher pilot who went on to be Chuck Yeager’s backup on the X-1 project.  He had a long career as a test pilot, racing champion, and airshow performer.  In fact, Yeager himself called Bob Hoover the greatest pilot he ever knew.

For me, it’s a close call between Hoover and Jimmy Doolittle for the title of all time greatest.  Doolittle engineered the launch of B-25 bombers off of an aircraft carrier, set many speed records and won numerous air races, and carried out the world’s first instrument flight, so he’s always had my vote.  But I suppose it’s worth nothing that Doolittle also called Hoover the greatest stick and rudder pilot who ever lived.

Anyway, in this clip, Bob Hoover talks about his energy management routine.  Keep in mind the airplane he’s flying is not designed for aerobatics — it’s a business aircraft not designed to withstand the rigors of such activity, so there was little margin for error in his routine.

AVweb reports a setback in Airbus’ attempt to get the mammoth A380 certified: 

Airbus is downplaying test results in which an A380 wing undergoing static testing failed slightly before the required design limit.

The wings are supposed to take 1.5 times the design load limit but this one failed at 1.45 times, about 3.3 percent shy of the certification requirement.

Airbus spokeswoman Barbara Kracht said the wing will need some “refinements” but the aircraft is on schedule for certification and first deliveries late this year. “We will need to find out from the data what is really needed but it’s certainly not a redesign of the wing,” Kracht told Associated Press.

In order for an aircraft to be certified here in the U.S., it must withstand the maximum “g” loading specified for that category, plus a 50% overload factor.  For example, in the Normal category, the aircraft must withstand a positive load of 3.8g and a negative load of -1.52g at maximum gross weight.  It must also be able to withstand an additional 50% of those loads without failing.

These “static” tests, as they’re called, are accomplished on the ground by mechanically loading up the wings.  Sometimes this is done by simply placing sandbags on the wings to simulate a load.  Large manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus use slightly more expensive methods.  I’ve seen video of a 777 wing being tested to failure — the wings bent up to the point where they almost touched.  In other words, it handled far more than the required loading.

The requirements for the Transport category are set out in 14 CFR 25.337(b)-(d):

(b) The positive limit maneuvering load factor n for any speed up to Vn may not be less than 2.1+24,000/ (W +10,000) except that n may not be less than 2.5 and need not be greater than 3.8 — where W is the design maximum takeoff weight.

(c) The negative limit maneuvering load factor –

(1) May not be less than −1.0 at speeds up to VC; and

(2) Must vary linearly with speed from the value at VC to zero at VD.

(d) Maneuvering load factors lower than those specified in this section may be used if the airplane has design features that make it impossible to exceed these values in flight.

So if the plane is going to be certified in the Transport category, it will have to handle somewhere between 2.5 and 3.8 positive G — plus 50% — depending on the maximum takeoff weight. 

I’ve never heard of an aircraft failing to withstand the 1.5x test.  That’s not to say it’s never happened, just that I’m not familar with such an ocurrance.

However you slice it, this has got to be a huge embarrassment for Airbus.  Even if the flaw was simply a construction defect in the prototype, it will bring into question every other aspect of the A380’s design and construction in the minds of potential customers, not to mention the flying public.

It’s a bona fide public relations disaster.  I expect Boeing will get major mileage out of this one, though if they’re smart they will tread carefully.   After all, Boeing will soon be seeking certification of its own new design, the 787 Dreamliner, and Airbus’ PR folks will certainly be looking to return the favor.

I’ve had a couple of eyebrow raising moments in the cockpit over the past year.  What keeps me coming back for more — besides the fact that I just love to fly — is the notion that a fair number of aviators have been through far worse, often bizzare mechanical breakdowns like the one-in-a-billion United 232 hydraulic failure.

Aside from their entertainment value, they teach a valuable lesson: keep your cool, apply good judgement, rely on your training, and you’ll be amazed at what can be overcome.

A former Navy A-6 pilot went through just such an incident during the Gulf War when his bombardier/naviagor’s ejection seat malfunctioned in spectacular fashion.  He refers to the “luck of the Irish” — I can only assume he’s not talking about a football team from North Bend, Indiana — but I think you’ll agree that for every bit of luck there was twice as much professionalism and talent from all involved which saw this thing through to a happy end.

Anyway, read through the story.  It comes with photos, video clips, audio recordings, and eyewitness accounts that take you through the incident from every angle.

I love flying and scuba diving, so it would seem only natural that I’d like this.

It’s a cool idea, yet somehow still very sad. 

Of course, much like Homer crying as he eats the last buffalo, I’ll still dive the wreck.

I don’t know how airliners are supposed to die.  It sucks to see them cut up, parted out, melted down, sunk, or relegated to a dusty museum or boneyard.

Basically, I think all airplanes should always remain airworthy and be flown by people who love them.

See?  This is why I could never leaseback an airplane.  Too much attachment.

Hey, here’s a cool idea:  sink a few planes, and build an entire airport under water!  It would be especially neat if you could put a few seaplanes down there.  Lord knows there are already enough of them under water, all you’d have to do is collect them into one place.

I just got home a few minutes ago, exhausted after spending two long days in an intensive class studying the finer points of judging competitive aerobatics.

My employer sponsored this seminar, better know as a “judges school”, where those of us who are involved in the sport can satisfy one of the requirements for becoming an accredited IAC aerobatic judge.

I came away impressed once again with the two dozen aerobatic pilots I’ve come to know over the past year.  They’re an intelligent, well-considered group who take flying upside down seriously.  People who’ve invested — and continue to invest — their time, money, and attention in this fine sport.  People who take the risks seriously, countering them with world-class training and a dedication to following the rules.

I also came home to some bad news on the AP newswire.

ROSEVILLE, California (AP) — A single-engine plane that appeared to have been performing an aerobatic stunt lost control and crashed into a suburban home Sunday, killing at least two people and sparking a fire that gutted the house, police said.

The crash left a gaping, smoldering hole in the two-story house it directly hit and set fire to an adjacent house, damaging the garage and attic, said Roseville Fire Marshall Dennis Mathisen. One body was visible in the wreckage.

The plane — which the FAA identified as a 1996 Glasair II — appeared to be doing an aerobatic maneuver when it crashed just before 11:30 a.m., Roseville Police spokeswoman Dee Dee Gunther said.

“The pilot appeared to be coming down low for some kind of maneuver that brought him to within 500 feet of the rooftops,” she said. “And then he appeared to lose control and crashed into one of the houses.”

Rick Wurster, who lives about a half mile from the crash, saw the plane attempting to make a figure eight.

“He couldn’t pull up because he didn’t have enough altitude,” Wurster said. “I saw him do two spins and then go over the tree line. A second later, I heard two booms.”

This is the other side.  Reckless behavior exhibited by the unqualified.

I firmly believe aerobatics are a safe activity, assuming they’re performed in a safe location by a properly trained pilot.  The investigation into this one is just starting, but this Glasair crash may be another case of massive error in pilot judgement.  I say “may” because initial media reports after an accident are often inaccurate.  Even preliminary NTSB reports often contain errors.

Nevertheless, I can say with certainty that no one should be performing aerobatics over homes.  It is both unwise and highly illegal.  I’ve seen footage of the crash site, and it’s definitely a congested area.

In fact, 14 CFR 91.303 prohibits aerobatics in six places:

• over any congested area
• over an open air assembly of people
• within an airport surface area
• on an airway
• below 1500 feet above the ground
• when in-flight visibility is less than 3 miles

Since we’re on the topic, it’s worthwhile to define aerobatics.  For the purposes of 91.303, it refers to “an intentional maneuver involving an abrupt change in an aircraft’s attitude, an abnormal attitude, or abnormal acceleration, not necessary for normal flight.”

Now I wouldn’t put too much stock in an AP news story, but if the reported eyewitness accounts are anywhere near reality, this pilot was way out of line.  He shouldn’t have been flying at 500′ over those homes, even in straight and level flight, unless he was in the process of taking off or landing.

So how dangerous is this kind of thing?  Well, there were about 1,200 general aviation accidents last year.  According to the Air Safety Foundation, “Low-level maneuvering was the leading cause [of accidents] again this year, as it has been for the last five, holding steady at about 25 percent of fatal accidents.”  Low level maneuvering is a synonym for low level aerobatics, something 99.9% of the pilot population has absolutely no business messing with.

By the same token, Sport Aerobatics magazine reported that 2005 saw only 10 airshow or contest-related mishaps, the second lowest total in the past two decades.

Ten accidents.  Is that a lot?  I don’t know.  But I do know this:  airshows are one of the most popular events on the planet.

In the 1990s, airshows were the second most popular spectator sport in North America with over 18 million people attending more than 400 airshows annually. In 1998, airshows drew nearly twice the attendance figures of NFL football.

These airshows consist almost entirely of hard core, low level aerobatics.  A year with only 10 mishaps sounds pretty good to me, especially when compared with 300 low level maneuvering accidents among the greater general aviation community.

The inescapable conclusion is that unless one has received appropriate aerobatic and  spin training from a qualified instructor, aerobatics should be avoided.  Though I’m undoubtedly talking to a brick wall, I’ll say it again:  low level aerobatics are especially deadly.  They should only be attempted by extremely experienced, highly trained aerobats flying purpose-built equipment under tightly controlled conditions.

If pilots would stick to this simple rule, fatalities would drop by 25%, the largest single killer of aviators would be eliminated, and this beleagured avocation would avoid further damage to its public image.

Wake up, people.

Congratulations to the Virgin GlobalFlyer team!  Aside from a couple of blown tires, they got the ship home in one piece.

After surviving a major fuel loss, some turbulence that nearly ripped his plane apart, and blowing out two tires on the landing, American adventurer Steve Fossett Saturday broke the world’s flight distance record after traveling more than 26,000 miles (about 42,000 km) in 76 hours.

It sounds like they had a few tense moments at the end.

Minutes after officially setting the new world record over Shannon, Ireland, Fossett lost electricity aboard the single-engine turbofan aircraft and had to perform an emergency landing in Bournemouth, on the coast of southern England.

“As I was making my descent, the generator light came on and, as pilots, we know that’s really serious,” the 61-year-old millionaire said, noting the aircraft’s back-up- battery lasts only about 25 minutes.

“I had to get the plane on the ground.”

I’m not sure why the failure of a generator would require declaring an emergency, but then I don’t fly turbine equipment.

You know, despite the impressive numbers Fossett generated with his latest record breaking flight, I remain far less impressed with GlobalFlyer than I was — and still am — with its predecessor, Voyager.

Think about it.  The Voyager flight was twenty years ago, when everything from satellite navigation to advanced composite design was either unavailable or in it’s infancy.  The autopilot was a comparative piece of junk.  Ditto for the ANR headsets, radar, and avionics.  Fossett flew with glass panel instruments, internet access, and more.

The lightweight Williams engine that powers the GlobalFlyer wasn’t even on the drawing board back in 1986.  Heck, instead of a turbine powerplant, Voyager did it with reciprocating engines.  And they did it on 95% less money, building the aircraft themselves, refusing foreign sponsorship in order to make it an “all American” venture.

It’s hard to imagine, but in the early 80s, the scene at Mojave Airport was much different.  If you wanted to put a project like Voyager togther, you had to scrape for every dime.  Today, anything with Burt Rutan’s name on it can bring in millions in venture capital.  If Rutan wanted $10 million for a new project, there’s no shortage of people ready to write a check, no questions asked.  Heck, if I had the money I’d be getting in line to drop some his way.

Most impressive of all is that Voyager did it first, at a time when just about everyone said circumnavigating the globe without refueling was impossible.

It sounds as thought I don’t think much of Steve Fossett.  On the contrary, it’s great to see people pushing the envelope.  He seems to be a modern day Howard Hughes, albeit without the eccentricities and recklessness.  I offer my heartfelt congratulations to their entire team.

And I noticed that someone else did the same.  A class act.

Glenn over at RantAir links to an interesting article on noise abatement problems at Denver International Airport.

There’s not much I can add.  The article speaks for itself.

I launched on a night cross country flight this evening with a pilot who’s approaching his checkride date.  He’s got over 100 hours logged, largely because he’s doing his primary training in an SR22.

The big question mark for me before departure was how the wildfires in the Santa Ana canyon would affect this VFR flight.  Since Dan is based out at Chino, I got a poor man’s weather briefing from him.  The smoke was headed westbound and then south.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the fires were on the south side of the 91 freeway.  For some eason I’d assumed they were on the north side, closer to Prado Dam.  Once I discovered their true location, the smoke patterns made more sense.  The Santa Ana winds blow the smoke westward until the terrain drops down, then it heads south.

Nevertheless, METARs and TAFs all across the L.A. basin were solid VFR.  Just as we rolled down the runway, the tower reported a change to 2500 broken.  I explained that this METAR was made by a weather observer on the ground who, while professionally trained, is a human and sometimes gets it wrong.  This was one of those times, and the skies were actually clear.  Since the official forecast was VFR, we were legal to depart.  And once in the air, we could maintain VFR conditions, so it was all good.

At TOA, at least.  As we headed eastbound, the visibility steadily declined.  The line between the smoke-covered areas and the crystal-clear ones was so well defined that I filed a PIREP with Flight Watch:

CNO UA /OV TOA-VPLSA/TM 0530/FL065/TP SR20/WX IMC FU S LINE TOA-SANTA ANA CANYON

OK, so they got the aircraft type wrong.  The gist of it is right.  This is the first time I’ve ever seen a fire so prominent that it can be used as a VFR checkpoint.

After we returned, it hit me:  flying around here is tough!  We went from Torrance to Redlands on a path that took us right over a 5000′ MSL flight restriction.  At one point, we were above class D, 1000′ below class B, just north of class C, 1000′ above the fire TFR, and just north of another TFR (Disneyland), all the while navigating in marginal visibility.

Snow is a funny thing.  It reinforces the essential truth that airplanes are both incredibly strong and terribly fragile.

Snow looks pretty, but when enough collects on the top of an aircraft’s wing while it’s parked on the ramp, the sheer weight of that snow can be enough to damage it.  I can’t find it at the moment, but AVweb has a great photo of a piston single with a broken wing from snow accumulation.  Other times, the weight of all that frozen stuff will push the tail down to the ground, leaving the nose high in the air as though the airplane is on the verge of flying away.

A good friend who just moved to Susanville, CA sent me this photo of his Skylane sitting on the ramp.  He said, “Four people were expecting to witness a crash and I made a perfect landing with 100 ft overcast on 6″ of fresh snow on the runway!”

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!   Or…. perhaps not if you live in the Anaheim Hills area. 

ANAHEIM – A wildfire pushed by Santa Ana winds quickly spread over 800 acres of the Cleveland National Forest a few miles east of Orange County suburbs on Monday.

No homes were immediately involved but State Route 241 was closed in the area of the blaze, dubbed the Sierra Fire after a peak where it began.

More than 200 federal, state and county firefighters battled the fire, said forest spokeswoman Joan Wynn.

The blaze began about 4:30 a.m., and its cause remained under investigation, Wynn said.

Winds were blowing at 35 mph, and smoke stained skies brown across the Los Angeles metropolitan region.

SR241 is a major connector between Riverside and Orange Counties, a tollroad that (somewhat) alleviates a nighmarishly miserable drive for commuters who’ve been pushed further and further from their jobs by high real estate prices. I don’t even want to think about how badly this will snarl traffic on the highways.

And in the air, come to think of it. This TFR will probably leave some people wishing they had checked NOTAMs a little more carefully before takeoff:

The thing I’m curious about is how aircraft will get into Orange County’s John Wayne Airport.  The ILS approach cuts right through the TFR area, and my reading of the TFR text does not indicate any possibility of waivers for planes flying under ATC control.  I wonder how jets flying the KAYOH4 arrival are being handled.

It appears that Corona Airport juuuuust clears the east side of the TFR.  On the sectional excerpt, you can see the junction of the 91 Freeway and Highway 71, which is inside the TFR.  So I suppose as long as aircraft departing runway 25 didn’t extend upwind much beyond the airport boundary, they’d be ok.

On the other hand, the FAA’s TFR site does print the following disclaimer at the bottom of every page:

Depicted TFR data may not be a complete listing. Pilots should not use the information on this website for flight planning purposes.

Sort of begs the question of who you should turn to for an accurate graphical depiction of the TFR boundaries.  If you can’t rely on the FAA for accurate aviation information…

Yes, these are the things I think about on my day off.

To quote Frank Costanza, “I’m back, baby!”. United Airlines exited bankruptcy protection today.  I suppose that should be cause for celebration, as many (most?) people doubted the legacy carrier would even make it this far.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m hoping for the best.  United is a historic airline — it was founded by Boeing and has ties to the earliest days of aviation.  But my gut feeling is that UAL’s prospects are still murky at best.

For one thing, unions are going to be putting the screws to the barely-in-the-black finances almost immediately.

Several of United’s unions, still stinging from steep pay cuts and other concessions in bankruptcy, issued statements putting management on notice that they expect to see better results for all their sacrifices. “With bankruptcy behind us, there are no more excuses, no room for error and no second chances,” said Mark Bathurst, head of the pilots’ union.

To my ears, “better results” means restoring the pay cuts that have allowed the airline to exit bankruptcy in the first place.  If United were to report “better results”, the unions would push that much harder for more money, making it impossible for the company to get ahead.

I’m a pilot, so I know what these guys are worth.  I wouldn’t begrudge them a six figure salary.  I just don’t see where the money will come from.  Whether the company got into trouble because of management incompetence or some other factor, it is where it is.  Unless an airline is in bankruptcy, they have little recourse against a strike.  Simply surviving seems a best case scenario for the foreseeable future.

A friend works for Northwest and is certain that airline’s pilots will be going on strike — a move that will likely force a shutdown.  With so many other airlines on the ropes, United is going to be facing tough times, not to mention a very poor reputation, even by industry standards.

United used to offer some of the best customer service, but the cuts have eliminated much of what made flying the “friendly skies” special in the first place.  UAL still has some advantages, though.  Their frequent flier program, for example.  I take advantage of that through the United Visa card, and have built up enough points for several free round-trip tickets anywhere in the United States.

The more time I spend in this industry, the less I understand how any airline can make money.  I see GA singles going for $300 an hour, King Air charters at $3,000, and bizjets at more than twice that.  A 737 with 100 passengers at $200 per seat is only bringing in $20,000.  Between fuel , landing fees, maintenance, crew salaries, insurance, and capital costs, I just don’t see how any airline ever made money, even when times were good.

Every pilot must, by law, complete a Flight Review (or equivalent) every 24 calendar months.  The law specifies that this review must comprise at least one hour of flight and one hour of ground instruction, and it must include a review of the operating procedures of Title 14, Part 91 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

“Part 91″, as it’s affectionately known, covers things like airworthiness rules, pilot-in-command responsibilities, weather & equipment minimums, right of way rules, etc.  It also contains some fun stuff, such as rules on formation flying, and the guidelines you have to follow before dropping objects from your aircraft.

I’m not making that up.

The Flight Review is a good thing.  The average pilot only flies 30-50 hours per year, and doesn’t progress beyond the private level.  Inevitably, skills and knowledge begin to rust away.  Even I, a pilot who flies ~500 hour per year and teaches this stuff every day, find myself having to look things up.  There’s just a lot of stuff to remember, and precious little of it is what could be classified as “unimportant”.  This is flying.  We’re hurtling through the air in three dimensions, sometimes in the clouds where we cannot see, and defying the law of gravity in a way only birds were meant to do.

Anyway, there are countless Flight Review guides, aides, and courses available.  Some are extensive commercial products that have a hefty price tag attached to them.  Others are available for free via the internet.  I’d never found one that I really liked until today.  And who made it?

Would you believe… the FAA?  Yep.  Anyone who’s read through the FARs (and even the AIM to some extent) know that brevity is not the Fed’s strong suit, but this course is different.

The FAASafety.gov web site — the online component of the FAA’s Aviation Safety Program — has put together a sort of online college catalog of courses you can take.  I was not in need of a Flight Review, but just for kicks went through the course anyway.  It took me about an hour, and covered all the pertinent information in a very concise, compact way.  PDF files are available if you want to go into more depth on a particular topic, and there are plenty of links to the relevant pages in the Airman Information Manual.

I loved the format, because if you are not in need of much review in a particular area, you can get the basics and move on to the topics where you do need to go into more detail.  It’s customized without being customized.  Even the quiz questions at the end were a cut above the usual FAA stuff.  It’s a mystery to me how the required TSA security training can be so poor while this FAA Flight Review guide can be so good.

Actually, I do have a thought on that.   One of my students — a guy who came to me for a Cirrus checkout — is a video producer who worked with the FAA to produce a runway safety DVD.  This DVD was was sent to every flight instructor in the country.  I spoke at length with him about the quality of the FAA’s publications and he indicated that the Feds know some of their stuff falls short, but they’re slowly (it’s a government agency, after all) coming around to a new way of doing things, bringing in web, video, and marketing specialists to make use of the latest tools and techniques for pilot training.

To be fair, the FAA’s own web site does provide a tremendous level of data.  Pilot searches, aircraft registrations, online regulations, etc.  On the other hand, there are things like IACRA, the FAA’s attempt at making 8710 forms ‘paperless’.  If it were possible to take out a contract on a web site’s life, I’d be sorely tempted to pool my money with other CFIs and hire Tony Soprano to rub that thing out.  Ugh.

I went through the FAASafety.gov site in greater detail and found a lot of good stuff there.  But the Flight Review course really caught my eye.  I thought highly enough of it that I’m going to print out full color copies of the course and put in a binder for reference.

The House of Rapp must show up at the top of some frequent Google search used by prospective Skylane owners, because I field a lot of inquiries about the airplane.  In fact, I received one such query today.

As a C-182 driver and previous owner I was wondering if you could comment authoritatively regarding the following comment from a back issue of Aviation Consumer:

“To this day, the airplane [ 1998 Cessna 182 ] requires aggressive re-trimming during the flare to prevent wheelbarrowing, and many 182s have been pranged over the years because of it.”

The statement “aggressive re-trimming during flare” conjures up all sorts of scenarios in the minds eye that I can’t quite sort out. Does this mean in the last few seconds you have to reach down and bump the trim nose up or suffer an iffy score from the landing judges? How bad are we talking here? Would a stiff arm suffice for controlling pitch in the flare? Would keeping a little power in help minimize the nose-drop tendency or is that a bad idea?

It seems to me, that any pre-occupation with trim might, at such a critical phase of flight, result in an over-trimmed configuration and place you in a perfect situation for a departure-stall if a go-around is needed.

I don’t have much Cessna time (all PA-28 variants) and I don’t fiddle much with the trim on short-final and never in the flare. Which is why the comment surprised me.

I’ve been thinking about buying an airplane and the 182 is on the short list. Any other squawks a buyer should know about?

I understand what Aviation Consumer was getting at, but they either didn’t phrase it very well, or they just don’t have much Skylane time.

The C182 has a heavy nose, owing to 6-cylinder O-470 engine and sizeable constant speed prop hanging out there. The situation is made worse by the typical loading configuration (two people up front, nobody in back), which leads to a forward-ish C.G. location. Pilots who use poor technique can and do land them nose-first. Early 182s fell victim to bent firewalls because of these nosegear first landings. Later 182s have a beef-up kit installed.  You can see a diagonal “I-beam” installed on the firewall to strengthen it. You’ll also find this on a lot of older 182s if they’ve experienced a wrinkled firewall in the past.

In my mind, the problem stems from poor pilot technique. Many people never really learn to land an airplane properly and don’t take care to ensure a solid mains-first landing. This may be okay in a Skyhawk or Cherokee, but when they transition to the Skylane, this manifests itself in nose first landings, as the pilot never really learned to give appropriate respect to the fragile nature of nosewheel assemblies. The nosegear is attached to the engine mount, which is in turn mounted to the firewall. Make a hard landing on that poor nosewheel, and the weakest part will give.  The firewall is often that part.

Prop strikes, while possible, are rare because the nosegear assembly is designed to prevent a prop strike even when the nose strut is flat — a certain amount of clearance is built into the design. Anyway, because of this heaviness, many pilots learn to trim the airplane nose-up on final approach so they don’t have to pull so hard on the yoke in the flare. I subscribe to this method and used it for years with no problems. Could I just strong-arm it? Sure, but then I lose the subtle tactile feel I want when landing the airplane.

The reader is correct in noting that with the airplane trimmed nose-up (and I used FULL nose up trim, to the point where I had to use forward pressure on the yoke to keep the nose down until the flare), you have to be careful when executing a go-around. Adding full power with the trim set that way will lead the airplane to develop a very nose high attitude. However, as long as the pilot is aware of this tendency and is ready and able to use forward pressure on the yoke for a few seconds until he/she can feed in some nose-down trim, I don’t see it as a problem. I practiced go-arounds with full nose up trim – a useful exercise no matter what you’re flying — and never had a problem.

On the other hand, I know pilots who simply strong-arm the airplane, and that’s fine if that works for you. Just make sure you don’t land the airplane nosewheel-first. Each person should try the two techniques and select the one that works for them. And if you do bounce it for some reason, don’t try to salvage the landing, just go around. The first bounce rarely breaks the plane, it’s the subsequent ones — often greater in amplitude — that do the job.

As far as other squawks, check for corrosion from loose sound-deadening pads. The adhesive was known to retain moisture if it came loose from the airframe. I’d also check above the headliner, in the tailcone, and inside the wings for corrosion. None of these airplanes had any corrosion proofing unless they were ordered with the optional sea-plane provisions.

Check the fuel cells for age and condition– they only last about 20 years and are about $1500 each to replace. They last longest if you keep them full, as the fuel prevents the nitrile material from drying out.

In the powerplant department, I like to see an airplane that’s been run, not sitting. Inactivity is the #1 enemy of a piston engine. I’d also look for any looseness in the induction system tubing (often overlooked in inspections), any rubbing of the lower cowling assembly on the crossover tube under the prop, and check the cowl flap hinges for looseness. Especially the right cowl flap, which gets beat up by pulses from the exhaust system.  As previously mentioned, check the logs for any firewall damage.

Check the prop for overhaul date. It should be overhauled every 6-8 years or so. A failure of the propeller can kill you. If a blade or portion thereof fails, the vibration will be severe. Severe enough that it can rip the engine off the mount. Once that happens, the CG shifts so far aft that the aircraft will be uncontrollable no matter what you do. Constant-speed props are frequently ignored as long as they maintain RPM. It’s not uncommon to see props in service that have not been overhauled in 15 or 20 years. Big mistake. Huge.

Do a thorough AD search. And have a 182-savvy mechanic do the compression tests. They have to be done with the engine HOT, using a compression tester with a master orifice for calibration, and using proper technique. TCM engines are different from Lycomings in that respect. That stuff about a 60 psi baseline is wrong. You establish your own baseline using the calibration tool, and it’s often down in the low 40s! You WILL have leaks, the only question is where are they coming from. If it’s past the rings, fine. If it’s coming through the exhaust valve, that’s a problem.

Overall, the 182 is probably the best plane out there. It represents the best combination of useful load, wide CG range, cabin size, aftermarket support, STC availability, and low acquisition (and insurance!) cost of any airplane in existance. It also has impressive short field capability, low speed performance, great climb rate, and outstanding visibility. The O-470 is a phenominal engine. Smooth, powerful, dependable, and easy to maintain.

You can’t go wrong with a Skylane, trust me.

A final note:  if you’re in the Socal area, I highly recommend Dave Palacios of DP-Air for your prebuy. He knows Skylanes, and owns one himself. http://www.dpair.net/ Dave did the work on my Skylane for several years, including replacing the aforementioned fuel cells, a dirty and difficult job.

The latest AVweb contains a very disturbing article which, while aviation-related, has implications reaching far beyond our quirky corner of the world.  Indeed, this thing comprises a serious erosion of basic constitutional rights that should concern every American whether they fly or not.

…the California Department of Health Services, Radiologic Health Branch, came to the warehouse expressing concern about radium-dial instruments on the premises. This set a process in motion that seems to have no end — even almost eight years later — and thus far has resulted in the destruction of over one million (yes, one million) irreplaceable historic aircraft instruments and related parts, only a tiny fraction of which had any radium. It has also resulted in the razing of one of two warehouses that housed the items since the 1950s. So far, the cost of the “cleanup” has exceeded $7 million and the bill is being presented to Jeff, personally, even though it was a lawfully incorporated company that owned the instruments. Under the law, he cannot even protect his house and family by declaring bankruptcy, so our government has inventoried his house and its contents for possible seizure and sale.

The article touched a nerve for three reasons.  The first and most important of those is ennumerated above.  The second reason is because this all took place at Chino Airport, a well-loved local haunt and home to numerous friends.

The third reason is a personal connection.  One of my co-workers at Sunrise had their Stinson 108 restored recently, and much of the work was done at Chino.  The project was held up for quite some time due to the fallout (no pun intended) from this radium instrument issue.  As I recall, the 108 has instruments with the radium faceplates.

The ultimate irony here is that at Chino — and airports all over the country — pilots toss fuel samples on the ramp every day during preflight inspections.  That fuel contains high concentrations of tetra-ethel lead, a carcinogen which is present in far greater quantities than any collection of aircraft parts, no matter how large.

Ah, the poor old Irvine World News.  This is the Rodney Dangerfield of newsprint, a hometown paper which is printed once a week.

It gets little respect, probably because they give it away for free.  ”You get what you pay for” and all that.  Plus, it really does confine itself to the world of Irvine.  That fact alone makes the paper worthless to most of Orange County, I’d think.  They don’t care about the happenings in Irvine any more than I care about the minutia of life in Brea.

More often than not, the World News is “delivered” to my house by a paperboy who throws it onto the ground behind — or more often, underneath — my car.  The issue typically remains hidden there until it’s crushed by the tires of my Eclipse.

Like I said, little respect.

Even so, the paper published an article about me in today’s issue.  Opera Pacific has been making an effort to better publicize our productions, and as part of this push they’re trying to highlight members of the company.  I guess they found me interesting because of the aviation angle.

Anyway, I’ve got a PDF file available if you’re interested in reading it.

A post over at Cockpit Conversation got me thinking about the 787 Dreamliner, a new all-composite airliner from Boeing.

That post referenced a British newspaper article whose title was a bit sensationalistic.  “Passenger aircraft rivals clash over safety of fuselage built from plastic”. 

Airplanes are not built out of plastic, they’re made of carbon fiber.  The two are both composite materials, yet interchanging them would be like saying a metal airplane was going to be made out of tin.

The article also states that the Dreamliner will be the first “passenger jet” made entirely of composites, which is untrue.  Smaller passenger jets are already made of composites.  The Raytheon Premier, for example.  The Hawker 4000. The Eclipse 500. The Citation Mustang. The Adam A700. And GA aircraft have been made wholly out of composites from the 1970s (witness the Varieze).  Many modern airframes are all-composite (Cirrus, DiamondStar, etc).  The 787 may be the first large airliner to be built mostly of composites, but the material and methods have been tried and tested for a long time.

Composites are also insanely strong.  I fly aerobatic airplanes that you can put 10 Gs on — an frankly they’ll take twice that without blinking.  You stress them that way over and over again.  A very hard life for a wing.  What’s it made out of?  Yeah.  Composites. The parts that tend to break are the metal ones (formers, stringers, etc) that you cannot see.  Which is Airbus’ whole arguement against composites.

No material is perfect.  Everything is a compromise.  But I’d have no problem flying (or flying on) a 787.

When William Congreve wrote that “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”, the woman he had in mind was probably Mother Nature.

Despite the fact that nearly a quarter of a million people are in the air at any given minute of the day, the rarified heigh