To the general public, this kind of life is glamorous and carefree, but insiders know quite well that long-distance international trips frequently take on a yin-and-yang quality. Between blasting through a dozen time zones in a single flight and the long dark hours spent on oceanic red-eyes, they can be impressively exhausting.

Maybe that’s why pilots I’ve talked to who are scheduled to transition into the Gulfstream G650 aren’t always as enthusiastic about the upgrade as one might expect. Sure, it’s the latest and greatest business jet, but with 8,000 statute miles of range, those grizzled road warriors know that the jet lag from those max-endurance flights can be just as awe-inspiring, especially if it’s a Part 91 ship being flown by a single crew.

Of course, it goes without saying that there are many wonderful aspects to this sort of flying. These are the things most people think of when I tell them I’m headed to Paris: decadent food, historic architecture, wide boulevards, and world-class museums. And that’s what you’ll see in the photo gallery below, because… well, time zones are hard to capture on film.

This trip started with a series of airline flights, first to New York and then on to London via Kuwait Airways. We are fortunate to fly in business class when airlining internationally, and the guy I was traveling with was looking forward to a beer or two before he sacked out for the long flight over the pond. Little did he know that Kuwait is a dry airline!

Eventually we alighted in Paris and had a couple of days to enjoy the town before flying out. Our hotel was on the south side of the city in the 14th arrondissement and proved to be an ideal place from which to explore restaurants and cultural sites. The area is known as a home to many members of Paris’ arts community.

I’d never been down to the catacombs, so we walked the two or three blocks to a completely nondescript entrance and took the long, dizzying circular staircase that leads to “The Empire of the Dead”, a series of tunnels buried deep beneath the streets and Metro lines where the remains of more than six million Parisians are stored.

As we walked along the dark passageways, I couldn’t help but wonder who all these people had been. Was there a famous painter down here? A great political genius, a scientific wunderkind? You could literally walk for miles and see nothing but piles of bones on both sides of the tunnel, stacked five or six feet high. The “six million” figure brought to mind the Holocaust, and the sheer magnitude of the humanity represented there.

These people, of course, were not victims of a genocide, but rather ordinary citizens who had been buried in cemeteries within what were at that time the city limits of Paris. Eventually the graveyards began overflowing with human remains, and so the decision was made to relocate the bones to former mining tunnels out the outskirts of the city which had been dug in order to obtain the limestone needed to construct Paris’ many architectural landmarks.

As much as I enjoyed the experience of being 100 feet underground in musty, dark medieval caverns, it was nice to get back up to the surface among the living. There are some who really enjoy exploring the catacombs, however, and do so to the point where they’re almost living down there.

Between sightseeing and long relaxed meals, time in Paris tends to go by quickly and pleasantly. Eventually work called and we jetted off to Green Bay, Wisconsin for what’s referred to as a “tech stop” — a landing for fuel and/or a crew swap. Under Part 135 rules, pilots are not allowed to fly more than 10 hours in a 24 hour period. That’s not to say our work day can’t be longer than 10 hours. Between pre- and post-flight activities, it’s often much longer. But when flying charter passengers, we are prohibited from functioning as flight crew members for more than 10 hours of flying in a single day.

In the Gulfstream IV, this works out pretty well because that also happens to approximate the jet’s fuel capacity, so upon landing in Wisconsin the airplane was re-fueled, re-catered, and turned over to another crew who were taking the passengers on to their ultimate destination somewhere along the west coast. The “10 hour” rule doesn’t apply to flight attendants, however, so our FA continued on with the airplane while I got to adjourn to a warm meal and bed.

After spending the evening there, I realized that Green Bay might have more in common with Paris than it does with Orange County, California. For one thing, there’s the snow and cold wind that seems to penetrate even the most substantial clothing. That’s rather foreign to residents of coastal Southern California!

Another similarity: both Wisconsin and France are obsessed with cheese. I actually had a 45 minute conversation with someone over the squeaking sound of cheese curds, and another half hour about why they don’t squeak once they’re fried.

I am not making this up.

The next morning, we airlined to Chicago and then LAX, where I shuttled to my car and then fought rush hour traffic on the way to Orange County.

I try to keep my watch on Pacific Standard Time, as it seems to help stave off jet lag. Probably has something to do with keeping mental track of what everyone’s doing back home. Sleeping, working, eating lunch, etc. I’ve found that if I can periodically “check in” with the daily routine of my home time zone, the rhythm seems easier to fall back into once I’ve returned to California.

Enjoy the photos:

Those are all good answers, but for me the one that takes the cake is a low-visibility circle-to-land maneuver to an unfamiliar airport at night.

If you’re not an instrument-rated pilot, you might not be familiar with this. The need for circling comes from situations where the weather is poor and the runway most associated with the approach is not suitable for landing. This could be due to unfavorable winds, runway construction, insufficient runway length, or any one of a dozen different reasons.

Some approaches are simply not aligned with any runway whatsoever, and in those cases circling is mandatory if you want to put the plane on the ground.

In plain English, circle-to-land means low-altitude, low-speed maneuvering in a confined space. Circling out of an instrument approach procedure in relatively low IMC is not something to be taken lightly. The margin for error is slight, and that’s probably why most Part 121 airlines don’t allow their flight crews to perform circling maneuvers.

Despite that fact, the FAA recently elected to change circling approaches in a way that adds significant complication for those of us who do use them.

Here are four examples of what circling might look like:

These are four common methods used for circling. (The exact maneuvers during circling are not specified. As long as the aircraft is kept within the protected airspace, terrain and obstacle clearance is assured.)

Up until now, determining how large an area was available for circling was straightforward and quite standardized. The FAA would prescribe a minimum altitude to use during the circling maneuver based on the aircraft’s speed. This makes sense, because the faster an aircraft is flying, the more airspace it needs in order to maneuver, right?

There are five speed categories:

Category A: up to 90 knots
Category B: 91 to 120 knots
Category C: 121 to 140 knots
Category D: 141 to 165 knots
Category E: 166 knots or greater

Once the aircraft’s category is determined, the minimum altitude for the circling maneuver could simply be read off the approach plate. The size of the protected airspace at that altitude was determined by a standard radius from the ends of the runways.

If, for example, you were flying category “B”, you were assured of obstacle and terrain clearance within a radius of 1.5 nautical miles from the ends of each runway. There were relatively few things to memorize. When the weather’s poor and you’re tired after a long bumpy flight, that’s a good thing. The “KISS” principal has proven to be a pilot’s best friend on many occasions.

This is the way it used to be: simple. Each category had only one radius to remember.

As of this month, however, circling has become more challenging. I’ve read several explanations of the new system, but I believe NBAA described it best:

At first glance this looks like a positive development — and it is, if you fly an airliner and are approved for circling maneuvers. But most airlines aren’t, and those that are often have significant limitations on their flight crews. For example, I know of a few companies that do not allow circling at night. Others pad the circling minima.

If the old system was going away, it would actually be less complicated. But the FAA is keeping it — sort of. In addition to all the things a pilot is responsible for briefing him- or herself on, there’s a new one: if you see an “inverse C” icon or “inverse C diamond” icon on your approach plate, you’ll have to either pull out a separate reference sheet or rely on a memorized version of this table to determine how large your protected airspace is:

 
The FAA believes this makes circling safer, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s necessarily true.

To be sure, the new radii are equal to or greater than that of the old system, meaning that a pilot who misses the inverse symbol on the approach plate and flies the old criteria will not find themselves outside the protected airspace. But the variety of possible radii in the new system introduces added complexity that make it far easier for an aviator to select the incorrect circling area. That can make them more likely to hit something, not less.

This is especially true if a last-minute change (say, a wind shift) requires circling when it was not previously expected.

In addition, the CFIT accident the FAA cites in their justification for the new circling radii happened more than 11 years ago, involved a foreign carrier, and according to the March 2005 accident report, was the fault of the flight crew, not the procedure or TERPS criteria. The report found that their approach briefing was subpar and didn’t include the missed approach. They “exercised poor CRM and lost situational awareness”, and “failed to execute the missed approach after losing sight of the runway”.

Finally, as I noted above, there’s the matter of whether the very airlines these changes where designed to help will even use them. Increasing the circling radii will often have the effect of raising the Minimum Descent Altitude, and that could make the procedure less valuable.

I think of circle-to-land much like a contact approach or Special VFR: a wonderful tool, but one that must be used with great care in truly poor weather if tragedy is to be avoided. Complicating the matter as this new criteria does may have consequences that the FAA never anticipated.

I grew up in Studio City, ironically not far from the Van Nuys Airport that I fly out of on a regular basis these days. But aside from a few childhood toys, aviation wasn’t on my radar much as a youngin’.

The one exception would be a memorable flight from Los Angeles to Missouri in 1977. My mother took me to visit the grandparents, and the trip to St. Louis was made via a shiny red and white TWA Boeing 727. It was the old days of air travel, before so-called “de-regulation”. I don’t know what the ticket cost. What I do know is that everyone dressed up, including yours truly in a little two-piece denim suit. The flight attendants provided a pair of pilots wings for my disco-worthy attire, and I was invited to visit the flight deck — in mid-flight, I might add. Imagine the response you’d get by asking to do that today!

After landing there was a miniature photo shoot in the cockpit with the flight engineer. Everyone was all smiles. I remember enough of the adventure to realize it was nothing like flying on a Part 121 air carrier today, even in first class.

Trying out the pilot’s seat after my first flight in an airplane, a TWA 727. This was in St. Louis, circa 1977.

As I said though, apart from that trip, flying just didn’t figure into my life very much. It might have in later years, but my mother lost a quick battle to pneumonia on my 7th birthday and my father followed a couple of years later after a heart attack in October of ’82.

I miss them.

My parents having dinner at the Playboy Club in L.A., circa 1970.

As you might imagine, those two events changed everything. By Thanksgiving that year, the perpetual summer of southern California had been exchanged for the little town of Eagle River in Alaska. I was living with my cousin David and his family. They had just moved there themselves, actually — he was hired by the FAA as a replacement Air Traffic Control Specialist after Reagan fired virtually the whole cadre in the PATCO strike.

It’s one of those strange twists of fate that brought me closer to aviation even as I was focused on more mundane things. The sixth grade, for example. Learning what “winter” meant. Making new friends. Rebuilding my life on what, to a 10 year old, seemed like another planet.

David was an instrument-rated GA pilot, but as I recall he didn’t fly much. After completing his initial training in Oklahoma City, he’d been assigned to the Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC). Being the low man on the totem pole, he often worked the graveyard shift.

Things at Anchorage Center were rather lively in those days, as the strike mess had left the Center extremely short staffed. And I was a curious kid, so one day David took me to see the place and before I knew it, they put me to work as a “runner” in the Flight Data section. Flight Data was an area where computers and industrial-sized dot-matrix printers would churn out the paper flight progress strips that controllers used to track each aircraft. I learned how to detach the strips, put them in the plastic holder, and then take them to the appropriate controller.

These strips are used to track an IFR flight’s information as it works its way through the system.

When I think back on those days, I’m amazed. The early 80′s were the height of the Cold War, and Anchorage Center was (is?) located on Elmendorf Air Force Base, very much a front-line facility within easy strike range of the Soviet Union. But there I was, a ten-year-old kid wandering around a major air traffic control center with no supervision. Today, I’d probably get arrested or shot for the simple act of loitering in the employee parking lot.

But back then? Nah. I never thought anything of it. It seemed completely natural. The controllers showed me how to read the flight progress strips, explained the data block on the radar screen, and even showed me how the entire airspace was organized. They’d let me sit in and listen as they worked, and would even have me watch an empty sector (remember, they were understaffed!) so I could call someone over to work the traffic if any appeared on the screen.

This is what Anchorage Center looks like today. Back when I was there, it was far more antiquated.

It was during those years that I got my first exposure to Saturday Night Live, MTV and Friday Night Videos by watching them in the break room. It was also when the Soviets shot down a fully loaded Korean Airlines 747 after it wandered into their airspace. Like I said — the Cold War. As I recall Anchorage had just handed the flight off to Tokyo Center.

Anyway, as a newbie, David was still undergoing training as he worked toward FPL (“Full Performance Level”) status. It took several years of on-the-job training to reach that point. You’d start on the data side, and then learn to work the radar end of things. His training required periodic tests, and as Gene Kranz said, failure was not an option. You’d be allowed a single re-test, which would result in one of two outcomes: pass or termination.

Unfortunately, he washed out of the program after a couple of years and we bid the 49th state goodbye shortly thereafter. In it’s place: Las Vegas, Nevada. Talk about freezer burn. Within a few years I’d gone from hot to cold and back to hot again.

By that time, I was focused on middle and high school, finally completing my own personal Bermuda Triangle when I returned to Southern California for college. During these years I wasn’t much involved in aviation, but in retrospect it had to have been somewhere in the back of my head, because shortly after graduating, the flying bug hit me faster than… well, than a bug hitting a flying machine.

It was 1998. I was driving down the street one day on the east side of John Wayne Airport for a reason I cannot recall (except to say it had absolutely nothing to do with aviation), and noticed a series of sky-blue awnings that said ‘Flight Training’.

This is the blue awning that literally stopped me in my tracks on that July day in 1998.

Sometime between where the awning started and where it ended, I made the decision that yes, I was going to do that. Not “that looks interesting” or “maybe I’ll check into it”. No, whatever clicked in my brain that day, by the time the car traveled the next hundred feet, it was a foregone conclusion that flying was the new focus.

It was almost as if this was something that had been on my to-do list for a long time and I’d simply forgotten about it. So I slammed on the brakes, left a ridiculously long skid mark on the street, and turned into the parking lot at Sunrise Aviation.

I never looked back.

Demo flight? Nah. Just get me some books and let’s start scheduling the training! I didn’t even look at any other FBOs. The place seemed clean and professional, so I checked that off the list and dove in with both feet. I wasn’t in a particular hurry, but started in late July and finished on Christmas Eve. And those five months included a long period when one of the two runways at SNA was closed for reconstruction. It’s just part of my personality to put laser-like focus on any task I undertake until it’s done. Either I do it or I don’t. There’s no halfway.

Looking back, it’s also clear that this was a rare and perfect time in life: I had a sufficient quantity of both time and money, something I didn’t fully appreciate until I began instructing and saw the struggles many aspiring pilots had in one or both of those arenas.

It was also an era when things were significantly cheaper. This was only fifteen years ago, avgas was about $2.60 a gallon. The Skyhawk cost $66 an hour (including fuel) and instructors were $29 per hour. Today that same airplane at the same FBO is $164 and the CFI is $70.

The bill from my first flight. Ah, the good old days! Of course, we’ll be saying that about *today’s* rates at some point, too…

So now I was a pilot. And I did what many of us do after primary training: looked around and said, “What now?” Well fate had an answer for me. You see, after completing the private, Sunrise provides a “free” hour of aerobatics as a little thank you. Brilliant marketing on their part, as it turned out to be the most expensive hour I’ve ever flown. A few weeks later I had finished a tailwheel endorsement and aerobatic program, and for about six months thereafter I took everyone who would say “yes” up for an aerobatic ride, giving them loops, rolls, spins, Cubans, Immelmans, barrel rolls, and more.

Then came the Skylane, which I bought for instrument and commercial training, later using it for the many Angel Flights I’ve written about. By that time that was done, it was nearly 2004 and I started to notice that the cost of operating the Skylane had easily doubled from what I was paying just a few years earlier. The fuel, insurance, maintenance, and everything else was driving me into a financial hole. But what did I care? I was flying!

Okay, maybe I cared a little.

My C182P Skylane, nicknamed “Tweety”. I flew her for 800 hours and she never let me down.

Truth be told, that was actually the fork in the road. To the left I saw a future of fewer hours in the air due to the cost. To the right was going to have to be something that would make flying affordable. But what?

I pondered this for quite a while. Winning the lottery was the preferred route. I suppose a World Series of Poker victory might have also sufficed. Alas, for reasons I’ll never understand, neither of those came to fruition. Lower down on the list of possibilities were things like selling a kidney… but only because those might have affected my medical certification. You get the idea, though: I was hooked. While I thought about the future, I got a seaplane rating on the Colorado River and my commercial glider rating at the now defunct Sailplane Enterprises in Hemet.

I took my seaplane rating checkride in this highly modified C150 on Lake Havasu

My day job had been working as an independent web developer, and nights were spent singing with a professional opera company. I’d started back in the earliest days of the World Wide Web, when knowing HTML meant you could name your own price and people would line up to pay it. But the business was changing, and the work I’d been doing was keeping me in front of a computer all day at my home office. So in an effort to fly more and get away from the solitary nature of working alone, I sold my beloved airplane and plunked down a pretty penny on ATP’s 14-Day CFI Program.

(I kept a day-by-day journal of that experience if you’re interested in reading about what it’s like obtaining a CFI, CFI-Instrument, and CFI-Multi in two weeks time.)

After that, I went back to Sunrise at a fortuitous time and was hired to teach there. The rest, as they say, is history. You meet a few people, fly a bunch of interesting airplanes, make some friends, and the next thing you know, you’re a 6,500 hour pilot with 100 aircraft types under your belt.

I’ve always felt that variety was the spice of life, and in aviation that philosophy has allowed me to do some very cool things. I just looked at the most recent page in my logbook, and it contains entries for a DiamondStar, Super Decathlon, King Air, Gulfstream IV, TwinStar, RV-6, and Pitts.

Still giving rides! My wife gets her first flight in the Gulfstream IV.

In some ways, it seems like a lifetime ago that this journey began. In others, I realize that there’s still so much to learn and experience that I’m (hopefully) closer to the beginning of this adventure than the end. Looking at the photos and re-reading log entries and blog posts constantly reminds me to appreciate and absorb every moment of the next decade just as I’ve done with the 15 years that have passed.

What a life it’s been — and God-willing, will continue to be.

The ultimate airborne manifestation of this phenomenon is formation flying. Not just being in an aircraft with fellow pilots, but each person bringing their own airplane along for the ride as well. It can appear deceptively easy. After all, we drive our cars on the highway in “formation” for hours on end and think nothing of it, barely paying attention as we hurl along the interstate at 80 mph while mere inches from vehicles on both sides of us.

A large formation of RVs at the 2013 West Coast Formation Clinic.

In reality, anyone who’s done it can tell you that quality formation flying takes a lot of work. You’re moving at a much higher speed, for one thing. There are no lane lines to guide you, no road for support, and so the aircraft must be controlled in all three dimensions. The air currents — much like a river — are constantly ebbing and flowing, bouncing the aircraft around.

The throttle alone gets a serious workout, as anyone who’s not the lead aircraft will find themselves needing to make constant power adjustments to hold “station”. And the stakes are much higher, because unlike an automobile, a collision between planes is far more likely to result in a funeral.

So far it doesn’t sound too appealing, does it? But in my experience, when it’s done with skill and precision, formation flying is a lot like aerobatics: incredibly demanding, rewarding, and just plain fun. If you’re a pilot, formation flying can be a wonderful cure for that “what now?” feeling you may get when you need something to reignite your passion for flying. And as I previously noted, it’s the ultimate social flying activity.

Here’s a video from the recent 2013 West Coast Formation clinic in Madera, CA that will give you a good sense of what this kind of flying is all about. The WCFC is a large training event specifically for the RV series of experimental aircraft. Note the constant adjustments by each pilot in order to hold their aircraft in just right position.

This reminds me of the flying I sometimes do for Skytypers, a formation skywriting team based at Chino. The five aircraft have to maintain a line-abreast formation of considerable (yet precise) distance while the smoke is on in order to make the sky typing look good from the ground while creating a message that can be several miles long.

The west coast SkyTypers team

Come to think of it, formation flying has played a role in quite a bit of my aviating. Whether it’s “on tow” during a glider flight or enroute to an aerobatic contest, there’s always a great feeling of camaraderie during formation flight, not to mention a feeling of safety. If I should suffer an engine failure or other problem, I’ve got someone right next to me that knows exactly where I am. Another set of eyes to look for traffic, weather, or just talk to on a long cross-country leg.

Speaking of flying together, a few aviation writers (myself included) have banded together to try a new concept: “blogging in formation”. The idea is that we’ll take a topic — in this case, how we got into flying — and write about it. There are six of us, each with a specific day to publish our post.

Taking the social aspect of flying online, one post at a time.

Here’s the schedule for this week:

05/07/13 Flight to Success – Karlene Petitt
05/08/13 Adventures of Cap’n Aux – Eric Auxier
05/09/13 House of Rapp – Ron Rapp
05/10/13 Airplanista – Dan Pimentel
05/11/13 Smart Flight Training – Andrew Hartley
05/12/13 iFLYblog – Brent Owens

If this thing takes off, we might turn it into a regular series. Please do follow the various writers as it goes from one site to another and see how each of us ended up in this quirky little flying world of ours!

I agree with them. The biggest bite doesn’t come from the fee itself as much as the fact that aircraft based at Santa Monica are no longer exempt. So a student learning to fly at the airport will now have to pay thousands of extra dollars to achieve PTS-level proficiency as they get dinged for every single landing. A typical GA pilot or owner at SMO who flies, say, twice a month will face a similar financial burden. And that’s to say nothing of the precedent this sets for other airport operators. You can bet every one of them is watching the SMO situation closely.

The future for Santa Monica?

These new fees are sure to weigh heavily on flight schools, if not cause their outright failure. Without them, the maintenance shops, restaurants, and other tenants will suffer as well. With traffic at the airport already down 50% from last decade, it’s hard to see how a steepening downward spiral could be avoided. I’m sure the Santa Monica council members will watch gleefully, awaiting the day when they can bulldoze large X’s in the runway, Daley-style.

Aviators may not like paying more, but we’ve been known to accept the hit if it’s for a good cause. Look no further than Catalina Airport, which currently socks visitors with a $25 landing fee. The airport is located in a remote area and is owned by a non-profit organization. Maintenance is frequently required on the runway, and it’s not cheap to get people and materials in and out to do that work.

Compare that with the situation in Santa Monica, where AOPA claims the city is justifying the need for yesterday’s massive fee hike with dishonest accounting.

Here’s a letter from NBAA to the city of Santa Monica detailing specific legal issues with the landing fee hike. And from AOPA:

It makes me wonder if there is anyone outside the aviation industry who recognizes the importance of America’s aviation infrastructure. While China is busy building airports as fast as they can, we occupy ourselves by closing down runways in the very places they’re needed most.

Which is better, kids enjoying the miracle of flight, or another strip mall?

This should concern every American, whether they’re directly involved in aviation or not. A municipality choking a vital reliever airport like Santa Monica is no different than tearing out a section of interstate because they don’t like the noise, pollution, or traffic it generates. It simply makes that entire transportation system less valuable for everyone, regardless of where they’re located.

A town’s decision to rip out chunks of a railroad or national highway would not be tolerated. Why is it allowed where runways are concerned? Just as cars are useless without road, airplanes are worthless without airports.

On paper, Santa Monica should not be able to close the airport at all. The land the airfield sits on was deeded to the city by the Federal government under the Surplus Property Act. The land grant contains a clause which states that the city must continue to operate the airport in perpetuity. Should that ever fail, the land automatically reverts to the Federal government. In theory, this clause should keep the aviation infrastructure intact by preventing random airport closures.

If only the reality matched. One needn’t look any further than Chicago’s former Meigs Field to see that enforcement has been lacking, and now the city leaders in Santa Monica are talking openly of using Chicago’s lawless, gangland-style disposal of Meigs as a brilliant example to follow.

It seems clear that if SMO and other airports are to be preserved, those who recognize their worth must fight back against this precedent. Far from being powerless, there are many things that can be done. I’m sure some of these ideas are already in progress, but here are just a few:

1. First and foremost, legal action by the FAA is needed, backed up by the California Pilots Association, AOPA, the Association of California Airports, the Friends of Santa Monica Airport, and others. Also, the city should be made to understand that any attempt at closure will result in the land reverting to the ownership and control of the Federal government under the Surplus Property Act.

2. I would love to see a serious recall campaign against city council members. Keep them looking over their shoulders rather than attacking one of the truly great and historic resources their city has to offer. If they want to play politics with the airport, why shouldn’t it return the favor?

3. The Freedom of Information Act offers a fantastic way to dig up the real financial statistics for Santa Monica Airport, making it easy to prove that SMO is not the drag on the city’s coffers that the council claims. From there, is it much of a leap to questions about the honest performance of their fiduciary duty?

4. The Socal aviation community is a large one. Rallies — big ones — at the airport on a regular basis would be an ideal way to raise awareness of what’s going on there and just how much the city stands to lose.

5. The Hollywood types who fly (Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, etc.) should be appealed to directly for their personal assistance at council meetings, in the media, and elsewhere throughout Santa Monica. I’d love to see them go door-to-door if necessary. Their faces on billboards, meet-and-greets with them at SMO. You get the idea.

6. Major financial support is needed from AOPA’s political action committee to help fund the above. In the same vein, boycotts of Santa Monica businesses by those who support the airport should be considered. Let them see how important and beloved SMO truly is.

7. Educational efforts toward the Santa Monica community about the benefits of the airport in the form of op-eds, flyers, public forums, and so on. Polls show that most residents of the city aren’t opponents of the airport and don’t rank it as a top issue. They’re not the enemy. Once they understand how curfews, noise abatement flying, specific adherence to departure procedures, and other efforts are being made to minimize the impact of airport operations, they’re likely to be even more supportive. The move toward quieter, more fuel efficient aircraft will only lessen that impact going forward. Quieter Stage 4 jets, hybrid and electric aircraft, new propeller designs, and LSAs help reduce the noise footprint of airport activities. Leaded fuels are on the way out — do they know that? Funding for housing upgrades (improved windows, soundproofing, etc) has been used around other airports, it might help at Santa Monica as well.

It would be a shame to see one of America’s most historic airports fall by the wayside. That’s where we’re headed at the moment. Reversing the tide is possible, but it will require enough political pressure to make the city council see that their fortunes are better served by embracing SMO than digging it’s grave.

You might not know it from the way most airfields are ensconced by ominous chain link, barbed wire, and signage screaming of long prison sentences for trespassing, but some of the sweetest experiences are on the other side of that boundary. And I’m not even talking about the actual flying.

No, this is about the people. Folks who, if they work at the airport, probably go there on their day off as well just because they love it so much. Even when they don’t, their thoughts wander back to that place.

Is there anything less inviting than a barbed wire fence plastered with warning signs?

There are individuals who will work two and three jobs, laboring, scrimping, saving their whole lives to afford an airplane and then, just for the honor of helping another aviator, will toil in the summer heat or bitter cold to take pieces off their own aircraft and happily give them to a total stranger so he or she can get back in the air.

These people think nothing of giving that same stranger the combination to their hangar, the keys to their truck, and just as often provide food, lodging, or even a flight home. And strangest of all, those who give and give and give will feel that they were actually the fortunate ones! Because really, a fellow aviator is not a stranger but a sibling, a kindred spirit who shares a love of the sky. Put two pilots in a room and they’ll never run out of things to talk about.

General aviation pilots have literally flown around the world on the kindness of strangers. Don’t you wish we had just a bit more of that in our everyday lives?

I’ve only been in the game about fifteen years but I’ve already experienced all those things, and more. Sure, economic and regulatory burdens are downsizing our little world at an alarming pace, but that heart and soul is still present.

I’ve experienced GA from the other side, too. Many of my cherished moments revolve around providing someone with their first flight (and on a few occasions, their last) in a light aircraft. Or transporting them for medical treatment for Angel Flight.

I wasn’t even upset that she was standing on the main landing gear fairings.

This little girl was one that I will always remember. Ashley had a serious illness of some sort and I was honored to bring her to Southern California for treatment on an Angel Flight. How amazed she was at the sights and sounds of flying, especially when I invited her to fly for a while from the right seat!

It was a transformative experience, because for a short time she was no longer the same sick girl that had boarded the aircraft. For the rest of the journey, she was on the controls, watching every move I made. All the way through the landing, in fact, taking in the full measure of the experience even though she was too short to even see over the glareshield.

You see, flying is like that.

This video reminded me of Ashley:

Speaking of good judgement, Chris, a New York-based private pilot, recently related a story about an instructor who steered him wrong on a WINGS proficiency flight.

Chris learned a great lesson, both about being pilot-in-command and about the fallibility of instructors. If I had a dime for every mistake I’ve made as a CFI, I’d be able to buy the world a Coke.

Sad to say, some of the dumbest events in the sky involve airplanes with instructors on board. On the other hand, sometimes a CFI has to let a students make some mistakes in order to learn. But it can be a fine line to walk.

Example: a student is timid or challenged in some way with radio work. This is pretty common, and not just with greenhorns. Even experienced pilots who come to Southern California from less hectic parts of the country have a hard time with it. I have to let them bumble about a bit on the frequency in order to learn.

But if the approach controller is really busy or short-tempered, how much do I let my student irritate the guy? Does it affect safety for other aircraft? And how does that weigh against the need for my student (and client!) to become a safer pilot by working through this communication hitch?

It’s not always clean or easy figuring out how far is “far enough”. Is my student really creating a safety problem, or is the controller just being snippy? There are things I cannot know, like how many other people might be waiting to get a word in on the frequency.

The same applies to the pattern situation Chris faced in upstate New York. There are good arguments both for and against simply fitting into the existing traffic flow. But either way, it’s a judgement call that the pilot-in-command should make and then execute with courtesy for those already in the pattern.

I fly a wide variety of tailwheel airplanes, and they don’t handle tailwind landings very well. Sometimes I’ll come to a non-towered airport and see everyone landing with a 5-6 knot tailwind. They don’t mind it so much in tri-gear aircraft — heck, they might not even notice it! Or maybe they just don’t want to disturb the other pilots. But I cannot land in a tailwind in my Pitts in good conscience when other options are available. So I get to be the jerk who wants to land in the other direction and pisses everybody off.

On the other hand, I try to make the call early, circle as necessary to stay out of people’s way, and certainly avoid a straight-in.

John Wayne Airport is one of the busiest Class C airports in the country.

I’ve even done this at highly-congested Class C fields like John Wayne Airport. Turning around a busy airport so that everyone’s suddenly landing in the opposite direction is a major hassle for controllers. First they have to stop arrivals and departures. Then all the airport traffic being vectored to runway 19R (which can stretch for 50 miles or more) has to be re-routed for 1L. If wind directions change temporarily and the velocity is not too strong, often they’ll try to ignore the tailwind for a bit. And that’s fine, as long as pilots are willing to land that way.

Ironically, SNA is one of the nation’s shortest runways (5,700′) for major airline traffic, so the Part 121 drivers don’t let things get very far afield before they demand “the other runway”. But there have been times when I’ve been the guy, the little twerp in the biplane, who forced the airport to halt operations while tower and approach controllers vectored traffic all over the place and taxiing aircraft had to snake their way from one side of the field to the other in order to accommodate me.

(More often than not, they’ll just create a brief “hole” so I can land against the traffic flow, but you get the idea.)

On the other hand, perhaps some of those pilots were silently thankful that someone spoke up. Just a few weeks ago, a departing 737 ingested a bird at SNA and lost an engine just as the pilot was lifting off into low IFR conditions. I wonder how that guy would feel about a few knots of tailwind?

Flying is less about physical aircraft control than it is about good judgement. Unfortunately, many of the situations we face as aviators are not cut-and-dried. We’ll all get along a lot better if we can remember that.

The price, on the other hand, would probably give our time-traveling barnstormer a heart attack that not even modern medicine could fix. I can see him clutching his chest while proclaiming “In my day, gas was $0.15 a gallon!”

Since I started flying, the most notable changes have occurred where computers are used. Avionics, tablets, internet-based data connectivity, traffic and terrain avoidance, etc. In many cases the revolutionary thing isn’t even the technology, but the incredible drop in prices that has made even the certificated stuff available to the everyday general aviation pilot.

A good example is today’s news about the huge price reduction on the Garmin 3X glass panel suite. Not only has the price decreased, but they’re now throwing in their class-leading GFC-700 two-axis autopilot for free.

As much as I follow the glass revolution, I never thought much about GA simulators until Brent mentioned it on iFlyBlog.

The mention of RedBird reminded me of a recent visit to Angel City Flyers, a Diamond-esque GA flight training operation at Long Beach Airport. They have two of the most advanced general aviation simulators I’ve seen. One is a DA-42 TwinStar simulator. No motion, but it has a full wrap-around visual and what appears to be an actual DA-42 cockpit, including canopy, G1000, and the rest of the works. The sim was manufactured by ELITE Simulation Solutions, who refers to it as the “iGATE Advanced Aviation Training Device”, or A-ATD. From what I was told, the TwinStar sim is not a new addition. They’ve had it since 2005.

Angel City Flyer’s DA-42 Twin-Star flight training device. The simulators are getting better, folks!

Incidentally, ACF also recently installed a Redbird-based Citation Mustang simulator that was on display during the open house I attended. They had it running in some sort of demonstration mode (or it could just have been the autopilot was on, who knows). I don’t see any mention of it on their web site yet, but the setup was pretty sweet, complete with huge flat screen display outside the sim which showed a “chase plane” perspective of the Mustang as it flew. The cockpit interior looked very much like the actual Mustang jet parked outside their hangar.

Some of these simulators (“flight training devices”, technically) are so advanced and technology-heavy that their hourly prices start to approach those of the actual aircraft. At least, that’s the case with the lower end of the market. The TwinStar FTD at Angel City runs $110 an hour. For something like a Mustang, where operating costs are probably in the $1600/hr range, spending $250/hr or so on a halfway decent motion-based FTD is a no-brainer. Mastering flows and procedures in the sim will maximize the benefits reaped from each hour spent in the actual jet.

The Citation Mustang, a “very light jet” (though not an inexpensive one!)

The one place where these advanced FTDs really shine is in allowing pilots to try things they can’t or shouldn’t do in real life. Taking an engine-out scenario all the way to touchdown, simulating smoke in the cockpit, deploying a ballistic recovery parachute, extreme unusual attitudes in a non-aerobatic airplane, emergency descents, icing encounters, zero-zero departures, and so on.

During my last recurrent training session on the Gulfstream IV, we had an extra session in the sim and the instructor asked if there was anything in particular I’d like to use it for. My preference is usually to run emergency scenarios and simulate situations that don’t occur very often, because it’s so easy to get rusty on stuff that’s not used on a regular basis. So he set me up on a hot day in Aspen, we figured out the performance-limited maximum weight we could handle, and I departed with a not-unexpected engine failure just after V1.

The Gulfstream IV “Level D” simulator is literally a small building sitting on a bunch of hard-core hydraulics.

As an added bonus, the visuals were left on so I could see how close the aircraft gets to terrain while flying the departure procedure (the short answer: reeeeealy close!). Then I climbed up to cruise altitude and experienced a loss of cabin pressure followed by an emergency descent and single-engine approach and missed at Denver.

Simulators are just that — simulations. They’re not the real thing, and even the best of them can’t duplicate reality with 100% accuracy, but the benefits of ever-more-accurate reproductions are undeniable. With the high (and rising) cost of flying, the same high-fidelity stuff that has kept jet pilots safe and current is rapidly becoming available to the rest of us.

I’ve experienced a few of those in my career. One was a clogged fuel filter in a Pitts. Believe me, anything out of the norm in a Pitts really gets your attention. I love the airplane, but it sports a glide ratio akin to that of a brick. Only worse. Another memorable engine failure was caused by a broken cylinder in a Cutlass. The ensuing vibration and smoke convinced me to shut down the engine, and I glided the 10 or so miles to Corona with my commercial student and made a uneventful, real-world power-off 180° approach to runway 25. I even remembered to put the landing gear down.

Incidents like these illustrate one of the core skills of a talented pilot: energy management. This is true even if the powerplant is operating normally. From aerobatics to IFR flying, those who have mastery over the machine have an innate feel for the aircraft’s energy reserve as well as the energy required to achieve whatever goal is currently before them and can adjust accordingly. If this sounds a lot like flying a glider, stay tuned.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that our training for engine failures is inadequate. For one thing, they seldom happen the way we train for them. In a multi-engine aircraft, a dual-engine failure is — to the best of my knowledge — never discussed or trained for. I wrote about this after the “Miracle on the Hudson” ditching:

Gulfstream Aerospace is one of the only multi-engine aircraft manufacturers I’ve seen that includes power-out performance charts for their aircraft.

In a single-engine realm, the typical training scenario involves an instantaneous total loss of power. Sure, it happens, but perhaps even more frequent is a partial loss of power accompanied by abnormal sounds, vibration, and engine indications. That adds significant complication to the decision making process at a moment that has already been imbued with tremendous stress for our intrepid PIC.

If your engine is failing but some power remains, do you land straight ahead, fly the pattern, turn around, bail out, pull the chute, or…? There are so many variables to consider: How high are you? What sort of terrain and obstructions are in the vicinity? What’s the wind speed and direction? How sick is the engine, really? Will it continue to provide some power? Is there smoke or impending fire? Are plane and/or pilot equipped with a parachute? And what’s the glide ratio of your airplane?

It’s that last question I want to focus on. Pilots of powered aircraft are taught a single “best glide” speed to use in the event of a power loss. This strategy has the benefit of being simple. Just one number, one pitch attitude to memorize. The problem is that this single number will not maximize glide performance because it does not account for weight, CG location, and most of all, wind.

Pia Bergqvist recently tackled this and suggested that “minimum sink” airspeed might be useful to powered pilots.

If you really want to maximize performance based on something beyond the standard “best glide” speed most pilots are taught, glider pilots have an even better technique in their tool box. It’s called speed-to-fly and it’s used to maximize distance traveled (much like Vg) but goes the extra mile — no pun intended — by taking wind into account.

Let’s look at an example: the engine quits and you dutifully establish your Vg speed of, say, 60 knots, assuming that your glide performance will be maximized. But you’re flying into a 60 knot headwind, so the resultant glide ratio is zero. Even if the airport was 10 feet away, you’d never make it.

In this instance, any increase in airspeed over the book number of 60 knots will provide a mathematically infinite increase in glide ratio. If you were to add 1/2 the headwind component and fly 90 knots, your ground speed would increase to 30 knots. Not spectacular, but a heck of a lot better than zero.

I use this kind of computation when flying to places like Catalina Island. There’s a lot of water between the mainland and the island, and most of the Catalina coastline is comprised of steep cliffs without any usable beach. So if you fall short of reaching the airport, you’re stuck with extremely steep, undulating terrain. I take all that into account, along with the wind aloft, in determining my point-of-no return and speed-to-fly when making the overwater leg. Very rarely is the PNR located at the half-way point, and rarely is Vg the most efficient speed if your goal is to fly as far as possible with Sir Newton in the driver’s seat.

So why has speed-to-fly remained exclusively in the glider world when the principles could be critically important to emergency situations in powered aircraft? Because the a) the calculations are complex, and b) an accurate wind speed and direction is difficult to obtain in flight, especially if altitude is not constant.

But technology is changing all that. It seems to me that “speed-to-fly” is particularly useful today because of the proliferation of glass panel avionics. The number of aircraft equipped with an air data computer is rising exponentially. The ADC constantly computes and displays wind speed and direction. It’ll even give you your headwind component, making a speed-to-fly computation quick and easy.

When I was training for my commercial glider rating, our rule-of-thumb was to add adding 1/2 the headwind component to the published “best glide” airspeed. But that was a crude estimate for a soaring neophyte flying without the benefit of computers. Paul MacCready developed more sophisticated techniques (including a variometer add-on called a “MacCready Ring”) to approximate speed-to-fly based on sinking or rising air.

If you’re thinking that this is way too much for a human being to be worried about during an emergency situation, I agree with you. Nobody could make those computations quickly enough, especially as the characteristics of the air change with altitude and distance covered.

But a computer can! It knows actual headwind and crosswind components as well as current vertical speed. All this data could be programmed into a glass panel so that, in the event of a power loss, optimized speeds could be suggested based on the actual wind and, with the addition of an instant or netto variometer, any sinking or rising air currents.

It could also provide a range ring that would give you engine-out glide range based on current conditions. In the example above, a 60 knot headwind might put that field just a few tantalizing miles in front of you well out of range, while an airport behind you and three times as far away that you’d normally have never even considered might be easily reachable.

Companies like Xavion already have apps out for the iPhone and iPad that run engine-out simulations and will guide the pilot to an airport in the event of an emergency. Perhaps it’s time we started teaching the speed-to-fly concepts to power pilots for use in flight planning. Timing is not as critical at cruise altitudes, but at 1000′ AGL, knowing how the wind will affect one’s glide capability can make the difference between landing where you thought you could and having to execute a Plan B at the last minute because winds were not taken into consideration.

With the advent of computers in the cockpit, speed-to-fly needn’t be limited to a conceptual idea we talk about in the classroom. We can make it work for us today. All that’s required is a bit of programming.

On January 23, 2003 at about 4:20 p.m., Rob Cable — the grandson of Cable Airport founder Dewey Cable — took off from that airfield to perform a post-annual test flight in his twin-engine Beech 95 Travel Air. Six minutes later he was killed when the Beechcraft crashed in Rancho Cucamonga.

This accident was big news in the Southern California flying community. Cable Airport bills itself as “the world’s largest family-owned public-use airport” and anyone who’s been there can tell you what a scrappy little place it is. From the friendly people to the quirky Maniac Mike’s Cafe to the gently rolling terrain that seems to encompass every bit of the airfield, a trip to Cable always reminds me of what general aviation can — and should — be.

Set against the San Gabriel mountains just north of Ontario Airport, family-owned Cable is going strong long after so many other airports have fallen victim to the ravages of time and development.

The NTSB investigation soon found that the cause of the accident was a mechanical failure. This alone made the crash significant. Statistics point to pilot error outweighing mechanical failure as the root cause of fatal accidents by a ratio of about 9-to-1.

In this case, it was determined that a 2.5 foot-long portion of one of the right engine’s propeller blades had failed. Think about that for a moment. This aircraft was equipped with two-bladed props, each of which had a diameter of about six feet. Therefore each blade was about three feet long. Losing 2.5 feet of a blade meant that the hub was now attached two a three-foot blade on one side and a broken 6″ stub on the other. Can you imagine the difference in weight between the two sides of the propeller?

According to the NTSB, the resulting imbalance cause a vibration severe enough that it overstressed the engine mount and tore the right engine off the airframe. A witness reported “reported observing the right engine hanging straight down toward the ground with the propeller stopped”. At that point the center of gravity would have rendered the aircraft uncontrollable.

It should be noted that while this was a massive failure, I’ve seen cases of props shedding just an inch or so off a blade tip causing such severe vibration that instruments in the cockpit were shattered, cowlings were torn away, and other serious damage was created.

One of the most famous constant-speed prop failures occurred during a test flight of the the Rutan Voyager in 1986. A blade broke off the rear engine near the prop hub. Voyager was equipped with composite propellers with blades which were much lighter than the metal Hartzell unit on Rob Cable’s Travel Air. Dick Rutan later wrote that after figuring out which engine had the problem, he moved the mixture control to the cut-off position. As the rear engine slowed down, the amplitude of the vibration increased, eventually tearing the powerplant completely off it’s mount. Those engine mounts were designed to handle 10g, so you can imagine the forces at work. Rutan said that after landing at Edwards Air Force Base, they found the engine lying on the bottom of the cowling, attached only by a safety cable they had installed for just such a purpose.

The famous Rutan Voyager in the hangar. Note the composite MT Propeller assemblies on the front and rear engines. They were replaced a few months later with metal props after losing a blade in flight.

In Voyager’s case, the MT propellers were so troublesome that they were soon replaced with more traditional metal props specially manufactured by Hartzell (in record time — something the folks at Hartzell are still proud of) with specially shaped blades. The increase in aerodynamic efficiency more than made up for the increase in weight, and the program went on to successfully circumnavigate the planet on a single tank of gas.

Anyway, back to our story. The NTSB delved into the Travel Air’s maintenance records and found that, rather than being neglected as one might expect, the props had just been overhauled! Their next stop was the FAA-approved Repair Station that did the work, T&W Propeller in Chino. This is where things got particularly interesting for me, as I owned an aircraft with a constant-speed prop that had just been overhauled by that very same shop.

You can read the full report if you’re so inclined, but here’s just a partial list of what was found on the accident airplane’s propellers:

Even if you don’t speak “A&P”, the gist is undoubtedly clear: T&W Propeller was criminally negligent in the performance of their work and it resulted in a fatal accident. The FAA quickly issued Airworthiness Directive 2003-13-17, which required another overhaul of my improperly zero-timed constant-speed prop. I believe the price tag for the two overhauls was nearly $6,000. Welcome to the world of aviation! It reminds me of an old joke where a prospective student pilot asks a grizzled veteran how much money it would take if he wanted to learn to fly. The answer: “All of it.”

It was about this time that I realized that the “FAA Certified Repair Station” designation means absolutely nothing. I sent the prop to a small, non-CRS shop in Bakersfield called Johnson & Sons and got a better result for less money. Caveat emptor.

I also started researching propeller-related failures and realized that most of them are a direct result of neglect on the part of the owner or operator. Just like an engine, props have a recommended Time Between Overhaul (TBO). For most constant-speed props, it’s 2400 hours or six years, whichever comes first. Not many us of put 400 tach hours on our planes each year, so the six year calendar interval will almost always be reached first. And for reasons I’ll never understand, it’s the calendar limit which is most likely to be ignored. Inside the hub are seals, bearings, and other parts which age with exposure to the thermal cycles, humidity, and so on. But time and time again, you’ll find aircraft with 500 hours and 10 years on the propeller assembly and the owner claiming it’s not anywhere near TBO.

The recommended TBO is not mandatory if you’re flying under Part 91, and as a result it’s not uncommon to see aircraft with 10, 20, or even 30 years since the prop and/or governor were overhauled. Personally, I’d much rather fly behind a 30 year old engine than a 30 year old prop. Why? I know how to fly an airplane without an engine (and not just because I fly gliders)! If the powerplant takes the day off, I can still control the aircraft quite nicely. But losing a blade? That’s likely to create a problem no piloting skill can rescue you from. The more I learn about propellers, the more convinced I am of this. At the very least, I’d have the prop hub opened and inspected by a (hopefully) trustworthy shop for what’s called a “re-seal” job.

I visited the Hartzell factory in Piqua, Ohio about ten years ago and took this photo of an actual constant-speed propeller which had been cut-away and turned into a display model. (Extra credit if any of you can tell me what type of constant-speed prop this is. Clue: look at the relationship between the spring and the piston in the hub.)

This cut-away shows the interior workings of a constant-speed prop hub.

You can see that the blades are individual pieces held in the hub by a beefy retention bearing. With the prop spinning at 2600 RPM, there are more than 20 tons of centrifugal force trying to rip that blade out of the hub. As I mentioned, even if a shed blade didn’t hit the airframe as it departed, the resulting imbalance would almost certainly tear the engine off and shift the center-of-gravity to an uncontrollable location.

Suddenly, skimping on that prop maintenance doesn’t seem like such a hot idea, does it?

A spinning prop also exhibits gyroscopic properties, so every time the aircraft is pitched or yawed, immense forces twist and bend those blades. You can see an extreme example of that in a slow-motion video of a helicopter main rotor blade that I posted a while back. Rotorcraft airfoils are far less rigid than any constant-speed prop, but the principal is similar.

Aerobatic pilots know all about gyroscopic effect. If you’ve been amazed by scenes like this at an airshow and wondered how they do it, most of the spectacular maneuvers like tumbles are produced with gyroscopic effect.

The aircraft is largely being thrown about the sky from forces generated by the prop. But you pay for it with high stress on the item the prop is connected to: the crankshaft. My Pitts S-2B once broke a crankshaft due to high stress imposed on it from a two blade metal Hartzel prop after repeated snap rolls. After that, the owners elected to spring for a new light-weight, 3-blade composite MT propeller.

The takeaway is this: propellers are under high stress in flight, and although they’re quite reliable, due to their nature when things go bad they are more prone to an unrecoverable failure than a reciprocating powerplant and thus deserve even more respect than the engine they are attached to.

At times like these, it’s important to take a deep breath, remember that the vast majority of airports are already non-towered, and as always, cast a skeptical eye on the antics of those in Washington.

I’ve been monitoring the hue and cry from aviation magazines, organizations, and bloggers and have been impressed by how many have refused to adopt a hysterical “the sky is falling!” attitude. It’s also worth noting that the cut extend beyond tower staffing. For example, the FAA does not intend to repair all navaids when they fail, only those that are part of their minimal network plan.

My take? The degradation of ATC services isn’t the end of the world. I view it as somewhat akin to “partial panel”: not an ideal situation, but definitely flyable.

We do need to do some educating, though. The general public must understand that we can fly at non-towered airports. Few outside of the insular aviation community are aware that only a few hundred of the nearly 5,000 paved airports in the United States have ever had a control tower. Taxi, takeoff and landing without air traffic control assistance is the rule, not the exception. I can’t tell you how many non-flying friends are floored by that revelation. “No tower?! How will we know what to do?!”

Of course, there’s a big difference between flying around, say, Santa Monica, California and… well, just about everywhere else. After reviewing the expected closures, my eye was caught not by what was on the list, but rather what wasn’t. There are quite a few low-traffic, rural towers that are somehow escaping the axe.

Example: last month I flew coast-to-coast in a DA-40 DiamondStar and we stopped at seven towered airports, the majority of which are in far less densely populated areas that Los Angeles and only one of which has anywhere near the traffic of the SoCal area airports whose towers are slated for closure.

I used the FAA’s Air Traffic Activity System (ATADS) to compile a list of all the towers in the United States for which data was available and requested the number of tower ops (takeoffs, landings, and transient operations) for the last twelve months. They were then sorted by number of operations. See the full list (.xlsx format).

On my transcon last month, we stopped at:

• White Plains, NY (HPN) – 183,167 operations
• Morristown, NJ (MMU) – 80,053 operations
• Lewisburg, WV (LWB) – 24,028 operations
• Knoxville, TN (TYS) – 101,835 operations*
• Greenwood, MS (GWO) – 41,975 operations*
• Roswell, NM (ROW) – 26,280 operations*
• Henderson, NV (HND) – 90,895 operations

*12-months ending March 31, 2012, data from Airnav.com

Based on the closure list and comments from FAA officials, it seems that everything with less than about 150,000 operations per year is on the table. That means only White Plains would survive. But when I look for these identifiers, I only see two — Rosewell and Lewisburg — which are actually scheduled for closure.

Compare the above list to the number of operations taking place at Los Angeles area airports which are going to be shut down:

• Camarillo, CA (CMA) – 145,929 operations
• Santa Monica, CA (SMO) – 123,161 operations
• El Monte, CA (EMT) – 102,099 operations
• Pomona, CA (POC) – 102,771 operations
• Riverside, CA (RAL) – 83,129 operations
• Whiteman/Los Angeles, CA (WHP) – 75,309 operations
• Hawthorne, CA (HHR) – 73,783 operations

So what’s going on here? Why is Camarillo, with 146,000 operations per year, being closed while Greenwood, with less than 42,000 ops annually, remains open? It seems airports with U.S. Customs service are being spared. Morristown and Knoxville are airports-of-entry, so they keep their tower. Greenwood’s tower is owned and operated by the city, so the FAA doesn’t save anything by closing it. As far as Henderson is concerned, I cannot see any reason that it escaped the axe beyond it’s status as a reliever for McCarren Int’l Airport. But if reliever towers were to be left open, surely Santa Monica and Hawthorne would be safe. Those airports are just a couple of miles north and south, respectively, of LAX.

Speaking of Santa Monica, a controller there provided some specifics to illustrate why fields like SMO would not necessarily be able to operate as other non-towered airports do:

Airspace? Piece of cake. Especially when you get rid of all the towers!

Obviously I’m not privy to the inter workings of the FAA, but the list of L.A.-area towers being cut seems excessive. These towers not only see a lot of traffic but serve other purposes, such as special flight routes across the Class B airspace, handling continual Medfly overflights, complex IFR traffic coordination with LAX arrivals and departures, and dense layers of helicopter, fixed-wing GA, and corporate & airline flights.

Rather than just close a tower because is has an arbitrary number of operations per year, wouldn’t it make more sense to look at the type of activity, the airspace being controlled by that tower, and so on? Fullerton, for example, is a Class D tower with Charlie airspace nearby and Bravo above. That’s got to be more complicated than a Delta tower in the middle of nowhere. You’ll see this reflected in the discrepancy between tower ops and airport ops. The larger the difference, the more likely it is that the facility is handling a significant transient aircraft load. From a safety perspective, that’s a big red flag. The tower is handling a lot of traffic which did not takeoff or land from that airport. Translation: busy airspace, and a potentially legitimate need for that control tower.

Sadly, the current administration strategy lends credence to those who say the directive from the top is to create as much pain as possible. It makes sense from a political standpoint as well. They want more money and fear what will happen if the sky doesn’t fall over this minor cut. It’s human nature and not government-specific.

Think of any office department you’ve been a part of. The end of the fiscal year is typically accompanied by a spending spree to eliminate any leftover money. And why? Because if you return a surplus to the general fund, it might be assumed that your department can get by with less.

The FAA’s finances are worth looking at while we’re on the topic. Their budget for 2013 was $7 billion and the sequestration cut is $600 million, or about 8%. In real dollars, the 2013 sequestered budget of $6.4 billion is still $500 million higher than their 2008 spending allotment. Why can’t they survive on that, especially considering traffic levels have fallen from their 2008 highs?

If the FAA’s primary concern truly is flight safety, then it seems to me there are many alternatives to tower closures of this kind. For one, start by slowing or halting NexGen development. A year ago, Congress approved $63.4 billion for the program. That’s enough to keep those towers open for the next 100 years.

Restrict administrative expenses like travel costs. Use videoconferencing. The agency budgets $2.7 billion just for supplies and travel expenses for its 48,000 employees. That’s $56,250 per person. I know they’re in the transportation business, but isn’t that a bit much?

Reduce controller salaries at the high end. It stinks to have a $140,000/year salary reduced, but doctors, lawyers, and other highly-educated member of our workforce are taking their lumps these days, too.

How about reducing staffing hours at those towers? Most are closed at night anyway. Shut them down an hour earlier and/or open them later during the week. The Delta towers are most needed on the weekend.

How about eliminating the 3rd class medical? Downsizing the Aeromedical branch and changing policy to presume medical certification is acceptable until they get around to reviewing a deferred application? Statistics show that pilots who fly under Sport Pilot rules using medical self-certification are no more prone to incapacitation in flight than those with traditional AME-based certificates.

Should an 8% budget cut close this many towers in a region with good weather year-round, many airports in close proximity, lots of airline and corporate jet activity, and some of the most densely packed airspace in the country? I don’t think so. They can do better than this.

And if they don’t? We’ll keep on flying anyway.

Unfortunately, the IPC cannot substitute for a flight review. They are two different things with different goals and requirements. 14 CFR 61.57d is the governing regulation with regard to the IPC, and it’s pretty short and sweet:

The Instrument PTS lays out the details, but suffice it to say the requirements are all geared toward instrument flight, whereas the flight review (14 CFR 61.56(a)) requires the performance of whatever maneuvers are necessary to satisfy the instructor that the student is capable of safely exercising the privileges of his or her certificate level.

That gives the instructor tremendous latitude in determining what’s required, and is the primary reason pilots wonder if an IPC can double as a flight review. It’s actually a very common-sense question! You’d think if someone was capable of flying a Instrument Proficiency Check to practical test standards that it’d be a snap for them to accomplish a flight review, but my experience has shown that it’s not always the case.

I’ve flown with many individuals who always filed IFR and were very comfortable and accomplished in “the system”, yet were completely at sea the instant they’re tasked with flying somewhere VFR. Typically it’s airspace and visual pilotage that gives them the most trouble. I for one cannot sign someone off as having demonstrated the safe exercise of the privileges of any certificate if they can’t fly from point A to point B by looking out the windshield.

The flight review also differs from the IPC in that it has a time requirements: at least one hour of flight, and at least one hour of ground reviewing the operating procedures of Part 91. The IPC has a list of tasks which must be accomplished, but no minimum time requirement.

On the other hand, while one cannot substitute for the other, there’s nothing that says the two cannot be completed at the same time. In fact, 61.56(h) specifically says “The requirements of this section may be accomplished in combination with the requirements of Sec. 61.57 and other applicable recent experience requirements at the discretion of the authorized instructor conducting the flight review.” Since there are areas where the two overlap, this presents an opportunity to save some time and money. Reaping those benefits would require planning the combination in advance by the instructor, so if this is something you’re thinking about, be sure to let the CFI know!

Ironically, I’ve done flight reviews with people who later figured out they didn’t need one at all. Hopefully extra training is never wasted, but if you’re trying to save money it’s worthwhile ensuring you actually need a flight review. Obtaining a new rating or certificate always resets the flight review clock, as does adding a type rating, passing a military or civilian competency check, or other such exam. I, for example, don’t need a flight review because I do annual recurrent training and a Part 135 checkride on the Gulfstream IV. If you’ve completed any phase of the Wings program, the flight review requirement is also waived (see 61.56(d) and (e)). Finally, successful completion of a flight instructor refresher clinic (FIRC) obviates the ground portion of the flight review.

I was half relieved, half disappointed to find out that for the purposes of obtaining a my private pilot certificate, “cross country” meant landing at an airport at least 50 nautical miles away from my departure point. Fifty miles? In an airplane? Now how long could that possibly take, I wondered? As it turns out, between the flight planning, pre-flight, taxi time, run-up checks, and just being a slow-moving neophyte, it could take quite a while.

The 50 nm standard also applied to instrument rating and commercial pilot certificate. The ATP certificate was even less restrictive: logging “cross country” time didn’t even require a landing. And last but not least, the general definition of the term in 14 CFR 61.1(b)(3)(i) only required landing in a different place, regardless of distance. You could takeoff from John Wayne Airport and land at Tustin MCAS two miles away and it qualified as “cross country”. What kind of crazy world was this?

The vaunted cross country flight of my dreams would have to wait a while.

Eventually I did start flying across the entire country, and over the years I’ve done it in a wide variety of aircraft ranging from single engine recips down low to the Gulfstream up at FL450. Off the top of my head, I’ve made the trip in a Skylane, Tiger, Cirrus (3x), Pitts, Diamond Star, and Gulfstream. I even did the mid-20s in an unpressurized King Air while sucking on oxygen. Each has it’s pros and cons.

In a more modest aircraft, the trip is always different because of varying weather, even when flying the same general route. You see and feel more of the land when you’re down there. In a jet, it’s the exact opposite. The transcon flights always feel the same, regardless of route or direction. You’re up high, way above the weather, and can’t see much detail. Of course, that’s a welcome trade-off for the ability to climb through ice, clouds, and bumps to smooth clear air on top while making the entire flight in a few short hours.

A couple of weeks ago I made a memorable cross-country once again, bringing a newly purchased 2007 DA-40 DiamondStar to Southern California from upstate New York. And as always, the least pleasant part of the trip was that spent on the airliner. After a full day of work on Thursday, we began with a rush-hour drive to LAX and a jam-packed red-eye to JFK, arriving at 5 a.m. We grabbed a rental car and drove up to White Plains for a pre-purchase inspection and test flight with the soon-to-be ex-owner.

This is the 2007 DA-40 XLS that we ferried across the country.

It’s places like White Plains that make me appreciate the weather we’re blessed with in Southern California. We can fly any time of the year in jeans and a t-shirt with little worry about ice, thunderstorms, or whether the very act of starting the engine will damage it unless you carefully pre-heat first. In New York, many folks just put the airplane in a hangar and walk away for six months. Sure, you can fly, but it’s not exactly fun.

It was bitterly cold and windy in White Plains, as it always seems to be when I’m there. Winds gusting to nearly 30 knots. The simple act of opening the canopy is a challenge in those conditions.  The DA-40 front and rear canopies become sails, and if you’re not careful the wind will rip them right out of your hand, snapping them up with sufficient force to damage the hinges.  Even with three layers of clothing, a jacket, hat, and gloves, my limbs were frozen solid by the time we walked across the ramp to take our first look at the aircraft.

But the inspection and test flight went well and the logbooks were in order, so money and title were exchanged and we departed mid-day for Morristown, NJ to get some paperwork notarized. Here’s a little know fact: many FBOs have a notary on staff. Who would have thought?

By this time, I was already a bit tired, but weather was bearing down on us from the Midwest. This has been a crazy year for winter weather. A few days before we flew out to New York, a solid line of storms extending from the Gulf of Mexico well into Canada would have made the trip impossible in a DA-40. It literally bisected the country. The 24 and 36 hour prog charts predicted similar chaos descending on the New England area, powered by a collision of unusually cold polar air and warm moisture from the Gulf. Bad juju.

Our strategy was simple: fly VFR. If we can see the weather, we can avoid it. This is something they don’t often tell you when you’re spending all that money pursuing an instrument rating.  In a light aircraft, sometimes VFR is safer. The DiamondStar has no de-ice capability, so if the clouds are below freezing, you can either stay out of them or, if that’s not safely possible, remain on the ground.

Anyway, our trip to the west started off with the compass pointing south. Past Washington D.C. and the infamous ADIZ, tracing the Appalachians and we skirted the eastern edge of a band of mixed rain, ice, and snow.  The DA-40 had an active XM weather subscription, so we were able to see the big weather picture as we flew.  It was a good thing, too, because headwinds kept our ground speed in the 80-90 knot range for most of the trip.

The XM weather was a big help. You can see the snow and rain we were avoiding as we flew over Tennessee.

I’m a big fan of the DiamondStar, but one “gotcha” with this aircraft is the low Vno speed:  129 knots.  At low altitudes, the airplane will cruise in the yellow arc, so any turbulence requires an airspeed reduction.  Once you’re above 6,000 feet or so, the indicated airspeed gets low enough that full-throttle cruise will be below that Vno limitation.

I made the trip with a talented automotive engineer and designer named David who, while he’s not the owner of the plane, is going to be the primary pilot.  He’d never flown east of Palm Springs, so this was a big deal!  I’m actually glad the weather was a challenge, because it presented a much more valuable learning opportunity for him.  Between our low altitude, the (relatively) high terrain of the Appalachian range, and the wind, we spent the first four or five hours fighting some annoying up- and downdrafts.  Or should I say, he did.  After ensuring the path ahead was clear, I took a nap!

The clouds were below freezing, so we stayed low. You can see sunlight ahead — a good sign.

The first fuel stop was a night landing at Lewisburg, West Virginia where somehow it was even colder than in White Plains.  A quick bathroom break and we were in the air again, finally in clear skies on a direct route to our overnight destination of Knoxville, TN.  I should point out that when we left New York, we had no defined route and no hotel reservations. Where we went and where stopped for the night was going to be dictated by weather.  There are plenty of airports all over the country.  Rarely is one far away.  If either of us didn’t like what was ahead or just wanted to stop, we’d stop.  And our plan did change several times based on what we were seeing.  Even fuel stops were fluid, as the strong winds decreased our range.

Day two was much easier.  The weather kept us heading southwest until we passed Birmingham, Alabama but was relatively good during our fuel stops in Greenwood, MS and Ada, OK.  Greenwood is an interesting place.  It’s got a huge new control tower and scads of old airliners on the ramp, but curiously, no traffic.  Even the tower controller seemed to be half-asleep.

Greenwood is home to a nice but little-used airport. GE Capital maintains this boneyeard for old airliners.

The FBO manager, quite a character in his own right, told us the tower was the result of military activity.  They use the airport for practice approaches.  The airliners were old lease returns that GE Capital was storing or parting out.  I asked why they’d part out airliners that looked relatively new and he replied that some of them were just odd cases, like a 7,000 hour 747 that had a container of mercury spilled inside.  Apparently the cleanup costs made salvaging the airframe economically unfeasible.

We ended the day at Tradewinds Airport in Amarillo, TX because David had relatives there.  His uncle was leaving a couple days later to take this homemade trailer to Florida and bring home a new mast for his 40′ sailboat.  I think one of the lessons David learned from the trip is that most of the country is very windy compared to southern California.  All that stuff he learned about positioning the controls for crosswinds that seemed so meaningless in Orange County was suddenly important.

David’s uncle fabricated this trailer to haul a sailboat mast across the country.

Day three (or four if you want to count airlining) found us ahead of schedule, so we made a detour toward Roswell, NM for some alien beef jerky, a visit to the International UFO Museum and Research Center, and an even larger aircraft boneyard.  We had hoped to make it as far as Flagstaff, AZ by the end of the day, but new hazards started to appear in the form of lowering clouds and rising terrain.

The terrain issue out there is interesting.  There were no “mountains” per se, just a ground elevation that slowly, inexorably rose toward the heavens.  We were at 10,500 MSL yet only 3,000 feet above the flat terrain.  The squeeze started to make itself known right about the time the sun was setting.  It was raining, we were getting a wee bit of ice, even in clear air, and the thick layer of clouds above was blocking out much of the remaining sunlight.  So rather than press on toward a dark night time approach into Flagstaff — which, by the way, is surrounded by mountains as high as 12,700 feet — we diverted to Gallup NM, arriving at our hotel just in time to see the lights go out at Superbowl XLVII.

Our final leg on day four brought clear skies and an actual tailwind (!) as we coasted into Henderson, Nevada where David was due to work out some kinks in a new bus that the company was displaying at the International LCT Show.

It was fascinating to see how these trade shows go together.  For one thing, the MGM Grand’s convention center was going to be full of limos, buses, and other massive vehicles.  The logistics required just to get every vehicle loaded into the building in the right order was quite significant.  Everyone wanted to have their vehicle displayed a certain way, so these behemoths were moving to and fro in a very confined space.  I’m amazed there were no collisions.

Even something as simple as hanging the signage for a company’s booth was a big deal.  It’s done by union members and therefore the cost of hoisting these relatively small signs can be as much as $3,000.

The Grech Motors display coming together at the 2013 LCT show at the MGM Grand.

The trip ended for me in Las Vegas after about 23 hours of flight time and 210 gallons of fuel burned.  David stayed at the show and I took the Southwest shuttle back to Orange County.  Another coast-to-coast round-trip in the books.  If you haven’t done it, I highly recommend “low and slow” as a great way to see the country, as long as you’re up to the challenge of course.  A few tips:

• Be flexible.
  Don’t get attached to any particular route, airport, or schedule.  It’s amazing how many solutions make themselves known once you do this.
• Use CRM.
  “Cockpit resource management” doesn’t just mean another pilot.  It includes ATC, XM weather, your iPad, and whatever else is available.
• Don’t forget about VFR.
  Sometimes that makes a trip more flyable, not less.
• Manage your risk.
  Especially if you’re new at traversing long distances, tall mountains, unfamiliar airspace, and weather.  Ask yourself how tired you are, how much experience you have in the aircraft you’re flying, and what tools are available.  We had a glass panel, a great autopilot, a satellite datalink, and two pilots on board.
• Know when to say when.
  If we had been a day later departing New York, we’d have spent several days there waiting out the weather.  And that’s fine.  Recognizing that light aircraft have limits and that we cannot control the weather is like a 12 step program for pilots. It’s not easy, but we have to do it.

Nothing says “freedom” quite like hopping into an airplane and seeing the States from a couple thousand feet up. As the Southwest ad says, “you’re now free to move about the country”. May that never change.

Here are a few photos from the trip:

This might not strike the average person as outlandish, especially if they’re of the “safety at any cost!” ilk, but let’s look a bit more closely at the situation. First of all, 5% have not been lost. They simply weren’t physically returned to the airport administration once they expired. The TSA considers those badges “lost” even though, once expired, they are electronically deactivated and will no longer open gates or pass muster when inspected by the security guard prior to entry.

Even if they were somehow acquired by a person with mischief in mind, they would only be useful as a clothing accoutrement once admission to the airport ramp had already been gained. I could probably mock up a badge that would pass muster for that purpose in about 20 minutes.

The procedure for obtaining a badge involves an application, an employer approval, a driving test, fingerprinting, a background check, payment of fees, and more. Even a renewal requires most of those items. This isn’t a five minute procedure. The airport administration office has had to ramp up their staffing and hours in anticipation of the demand. Early mornings, nights, and weekends are now work times for the folks in that office. When I was there recently, the lady working the counter said the line had recently been out the door and all the way to the street. “It felt like taking orders at In-n-Out!”, she laughed.

Badges already expire on the owner’s birthday. Mine, for example, stopped working nearly a month ago. The next time I appeared at the gate, even though I was escorted by someone else, the security guard confiscated my old badge. One might wonder why that would be necessary if all the badges were about to be invalidated.

When I presented myself at the airport administration office to obtain a new badge a few weeks later, I was prepared: two forms of I.D., multiple forms of payment, paperwork signed and double-checked, and ready for the admittedly simple driving test. What I got instead was a 90 minute wait while they tried to figure out where my old badge was. I explained that it had been confiscated by the gate guard, but they responded that if that was the case, the badge should have been returned to the office and have been in their pile of expired credentials.

“What was the name of the guard who took it?”, they asked. Now how am I supposed to know that? I was able to provide them the exact date and time that it was taken by the guard, because I sent a text message to a friend immediately thereafter. More searching, more waiting. Time passes. Eventually they throw up their hands and state that it’ll have to be treated as “lost”. That means I get to pay a fine, fill out more paperwork, and provide an interview to a sheriff’s deputy.

I suppose it’s not the end of the world. But when you’re a pilot, it seems some organization is always demanding money and paperwork. First the passport expires, then the medical certificate needs renewal, then it’s recurrent training, then a CFI refresher, then it’s time to update your data with various insurance companies for the upcoming year. And let’s not forget about memberships with AOPA, EAA, IAC, NBAA, or any one of a dozen different organizations. Each of them seems mystified when anyone grouses about $50 for this or $75 for that. If they’d look at the larger picture, the total commitment of time and money would be more apparent.

Getting back to the badge situation, a far more serious affront was experienced by a fellow pilot who didn’t realize his badge had expired. He rolled up at the airport gate and when the guard saw the date printed on that little yellow card, rather than asking for the credential to be surrendered, he literally reached into the car to rip it right out of the pilot’s hand and then turned him away without the common courtesy he’d have received before his recent birthday.

Upon hearing his story, I couldn’t help but wonder if there isn’t a Soviet salute of some sort that could be used to complete the scene? “Papers, please!” These guys aren’t even sheriffs or deputies anymore. They’re “rent-a-cop” private security personnel hired by the county, undoubtedly via the lowest bid. The county may get what it pays for, but if a stranger reached into my vehicle without so much as a word and started grabbing at objects, he’d end up needing an ER visit and a cast. Driving onto the airport shouldn’t be a degrading process or involve the permission-less invasion of one’s vehicle or personal space.

One of the most senseless aspects of TSA airport security is that I’ve already obtained a pilot certificate, countless ratings, an instructor certificate, a U.S. government security clearance, a SENTRI “fast pass” for border crossings into the United States, a passport, Part 135 approval, type ratings, medical certification, and numerous other stamps of approval. Most of these already required an official background check of one sort or another by the federal government.

In an era where our medical, financial, and biometric information already seems to pass from one faceless bureaucratic entity to another at the speed of light, shouldn’t the onus of finding those clearances rest with them rather than us?

Just a thought.

In the 21st century, nary a day goes by that a security camera, paparazzo, web cam, smartphone photo, Twitter post, or e-mail doesn’t undo a celebrity, politician, or executive somewhere. An entire industry of magazines and low-budget television shows (TMZ, anyone?) testifies to the fact: we are always being watched.

Did you stop by the bank or eat at a restaurant today? Smile — you’re on candid camera! Driving in your car? Cameras abound on highways and streets. Law enforcement vehicles have them built-in. If you used a credit card, proximity key card, or access badge, your location has been logged. At work and at home, computer and/or phone usage leaves a trace, too.

Speaking of phones, we tend to forget that our phones connect to cellular networks periodically whenever they’re powered up, whether we’re actively using them or not. The cell towers they connect to are an indicator of one’s location — evidence that has been used in court. Even refrigerators are digital these days. The one my wife and I have keeps track of when the door is opened so that it can run the freezer’s defrost cycle at the appropriate intervals.

“What’s it doing now??”

Do you ever think about these things? I do. Not because I have anything to hide, but because I simply don’t like being monitored, especially if I’m not sure who’s doing the watching or what nefarious schemes they might be able to hatch with the collected data. The bottom line here is that in many respects, privacy seems to be a thing of the past. It’s part of the price we pay for technology and convenience, and it’s one of the darker sides to the digital age.

It shouldn’t require the presence of a camera to keep an aviator from experimenting with Stupid Pilot Tricks. But let’s face it, knowing we’re “under glass” may help keep those of us with Type-A personalities on the straight-and-narrow when we’re tempted to do something that is, shall we say “on the margins” of acceptable behavior. Perhaps it’s flying a bit too low, busting weather minimums, rolling a non-aerobatic aircraft, or just a low approach with a slightly aggressive climbout at the other end.

Alas, in some cases the presence of a camera seems to have the opposite effect, actually encouraging behavior that is beyond the pale. I’ve noted quite a few examples of that in the past. You can find hundreds more on YouTube.

The latest example, a low pass by a Pitts biplane that appears to come within inches of persons on the ground, has been picked up by the national media.

From CNN:

The irony here is that Mr. Newburg is a fairly well established airshow performer. Unlike recreational and competitive aerobatics, airshow pilots (especially those with a surface waiver) can do pretty much anything they darn well please with only one exception: they can’t put people on the ground at risk. Typically that’s interpreted as keeping the aircraft’s energy directed away from the crowd. It will be interesting to see how the FAA proceeds with their investigation. If the individuals who were so close to the fly-by are part of the airshow performer’s “team”, would this constitute a violation?

The FAA’s army of inspectors and attorneys makes and interprets these rules, so only they know the answer. Regardless of which way it goes, it was clearly unwise to have a video of that sort posted on the internet because the average Joe (including the media) doesn’t understand the FAA’s national airshow program. Even if all the paperwork was in order and it was legal by the letter of Advisory Circular 91-45, FAA Order 8900.1, and FAA Form 8710-7, those things are meaningless gibberish to the general public. All they see is something that looks dangerous. It spread across the internet and onto cable channels faster than… well, than a Pitts doing a 200 mph fly-by.

Think you’d never fall victim to the temptation to do something stupid while being recorded? Don’t be so sure. This kind of thing isn’t limited to intentional stunts. In an era of glass panels, portable GPS receivers, tablets, and smartphones, it’s worth remembering that if you’re got a computerized device in your aircraft, everything you do is being recorded. Your flight path, attitude information, altitude, position, acceleration, and many other parameters might be stored on silicon.

Even something as simple as a graphic engine monitor will be creating log files with your power settings, fuel flows, engine temperatures and pressures, and more. They’re fantastic tools for diagnosing engine issues, but the fact that they record data can come back to haunt you if a warranty claim is required or if the FAA or aircraft owner suspect improper operation.

Simple aircraft are not exempt. If you’re flying a rag wing Cub, the presence of an ordinary transponder means you’re position is being monitored and recorded onto tape by the FAA. You might think a 1200 code will protect you from identification, but as long as the device is transmitting, it’s also sending out a Mode S code that’s been assigned to that radio.

Even if you don’t have a single piece of electronic equipment in your aircraft, you’re still flying a loud vehicle that attracts attention from those on the ground. Think about that. Big Brother isn’t always electronic. Sometimes he’s a flesh-and-blood human witness. Ironically, they can be far worse than electronic evidence because unlike computers, people can take proactive action against pilots they perceive to be doing something wrong. A Garmin G1000 isn’t going to call the FAA on you. At least, not yet. But a human?

So don’t forget, my friends: it may not be 1984 anymore, but it’s still 1984. Whatever form he may take, Big Brother is always watching.

One thing I didn’t write about at the time was a visit to the ACA booth by Alyssa Miller, AOPA Online’s managing editor. After the show ended, she posted a “wish list” of items she’d buy on AOPA’s “Reporting Points” blog:

Knowing that AOPA’s magazine has a circulation of around 400,000, it seemed worthwhile to see if we couldn’t trade some time in the Decathlon for a bit of publicity. The print edition is supplemented by an electronic version, a web site, and a weekly newsletter. That’s a lot of opportunity to connect with the target audience. Even if only 0.001% of the readership took a serious interest in the Decathlon, it would still represent 40 prospective customers. In a 21st century aviation ecosystem where prices are sky high but volumes extremely low, the math here is compelling.

My original idea was to focus on the virtues of the Decathlon, especially with the Xtreme version so close to FAA certification. As it turned out, the needs of the magazine were somewhat different. They wanted material for their “training & proficiency” section, so we elected to focused on completing Alyssa’s tailwheel endorsement. It certainly doesn’t hurt to achieve a professional goal while also reaching a personal one at the same time!

So how did she do? Well, let’s go to the video:

As any experienced tailwheel instructor will tell you, the technique for landing a tailwheel and nosewheel airplane are the same: round out low, keep the nose straight, and hold it off the ground until it’s ready to touch down. Then keep the plane pointed in the same direction it’s traveling while it slows to taxi speed. Because the techniques are so similar, tailwheel transition training quickly reveals how well the student learned to land during primary training, even if it was done in a nosewheel aircraft. As such, it’s not uncommon for me to spend more time on remedial flying technique than on tailwheel-specific stuff. Typical areas of deficiency include coordination, control confusion (using aileron when rudder is required or vice-versa), crosswind correction, and drift control.

In Alyssa’s case, however, I didn’t see many of those issues. She recently received her instructor certification and had a bit of tailwheel time in the Citabria and Husky, so she quickly picked up the required skills. In the video, you’ll hear her talk about how it took 7 hours and 44 landings before she was done, but it’s worth mentioning that she would have been done sooner if not for the challenging conditions at John Wayne Airport during her training.

It’s uncommon to get “real” crosswinds out here, but while Alyssa was in town we experienced several days of gusty, direct crosswinds of up to 20 knots. The wind changed direction, allowing her to see what landing with a tailwind felt like. It rained. We flew two lessons in the dark. I put her in the back seat for one flight. Controllers kept reversing the runways. And of course SNA is famous for wake turbulence and jet blast issues from the many Boeing and Airbus airliners which come and go on a continual basis. In addition, we completed a spin flight and spent extra time getting video to accompany the print article.

Alyssa described it pretty well:

The weather conditions presented an interesting situation. While they were a fantastic training opportunity, they also extended the total time required to finish the endorsement. That can be deflating for a student who expected to reach proficiency more quickly.

While I would have felt comfortable signing her off at least a couple of hours earlier, the gusty crosswind left Alyssa feeling like she wasn’t “getting it” even though she was flying in weather she probably wouldn’t tackle on her own quite yet. The extra time was helpful in allowing her to get the icing on the cake: confidence that she really could keep the ground loop at bay.

I was impressed by the quality of the resulting AOPA article and accompanying video because it shows what a proper tailwheel transition program looks like. Alyssa also noted one of the most important things about it, that the skills developed during this training can be applied to any aircraft regardless of landing gear configuration.

So now AOPA has another tailwheel-qualified instructor on staff. I hope she’ll become an evangelist for the virtues of conventional landing gear and keep them from getting too far afield with those stinky turbines!

I’ll leave you with a gallery of photos from an air-to-air shoot we did with Jessica Ambats when 5g’s demonstrator arrived on the west coast.

It was less than six years after Kitty Hawk that Glenn Martin was flying over the Irvine Ranch in south Orange County. Three years later he made the world’s longest overwater flight — Newport Beach to Catalina — in a plane he built in a Santa Ana church basement.

PT-22 aircraft under construction at the Vultee plant in Downey

During World War II, Douglas Aircraft Company had 150,000 workers at their Long Beach plant rolling out a new airplane every two hours. Incidentally, today Boeing turns out a grand total of one aircraft per month at that same facility. Douglas also produced incredible numbers at their Santa Monica plant.

Likewise, Lockheed had a virtual city at the Burbank Airport and the Hughes Aircraft Co. operated out of their airport in Culver City. Even among those familiar with SoCal history, few are aware that Vultee fulfilled the Army Air Corp’s largest orders (nearly 12,000 aircraft during the war) at their massive factory in Downey.

The Hughes Aircraft plant in it’s heyday.

Speaking of Downey, that facility has quite a pedigree. Cruise missile technology was first developed there in the form of the AGM-28 “Hound Dog”. The X-15 was designed and built there as well. At the height of the Cold War, Apollo spacecraft were constructed in Downey by North American / Rockwell. Later on the space shuttles would be fabricated at that same plant and then shipped to Palmdale for final assembly and rollout.

There are countless other examples. Northrop built 747 fuselages at the Hawthorne Airport and B-2 Stealth bombers in Pico Rivera. Ryan Aeronautical turned out Navions and PT-22s by the thousand. Satellites and payloads were created and tested around the region.

Even today Robinson Helicopter, the world’s largest rotorcraft manufacturer, is based at the Torrance Airport. The C-17 is built in Long Beach, and nearly half of the F-18 Hornet’s components are made in SoCal. Also, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s fuselage is built in Palmdale and El Segundo.

Still, the trend has been negative for decades, and many industry observers have been waiting for the final shoe to drop on aerospace activity in SoCal. But the strangest thing seems to be happening. Despite a lousy economy, there’s been some new growth in the aerospace sector.

Hawthorne has seen a resurgence in aerospace activity with the success of SpaceX, which is headquartered next to the airport there and employs about 2,000 people there. At the moment they’re America’s best bet for getting humans back to the space station without Russian help.

A virtual army of individuals are building GA aircraft under the Experimental/Amateur-Built rules. The number of E-AB aircraft achieving first flights is increasing rapidly, and as I’ve noted previously, they’re even outpacing the commercial OEMs.

Airbus recently announced “an effort to forge new partnerships with Southern California manufacturers, with the goal of creating new contracts and new job opportunities for businesses in the region.” That’s just talk, of course, but it beats the usual aerospace-related press releases where “layoffs” and “closures” are frequently mentioned.

The UAV sector has been growing by leaps and bounds for quite some time. General Atomics, the 500-pound gorilla in the industry, is a Southern California company and employs something like 10,000 people. And speaking of drones, one of the principal developers of the UAV is a guy named Abe Karem. His company, Karem Aircraft, is headquartered in here in Lake Forest, CA. It’s literally a couple of blocks from my front door.

The massive aircraft is dwarfed by the even larger blimp hangar

Most recently, at least one of the former MCAS Tustin blimp hangars has been leased to WorldWide Aeros Corp for construction of an intriguing cargo aircraft called the Aeroscraft.

There was a time when the massive Tustin blimp hangars were clearly visible from any point in south or central Orange County. Surrounded by farm land and open space, they were originally constructed to house the helium-filled Lighter-Than-Air craft built for west coast defense during World War II. For more than 70 years they’ve stood above the landscape, their flexible wood superstructure impervious to decades of Santa Ana winds and earthquakes. When the threat of west coast invasion abated, Tustin was reconstituted as a helicopter base for the Marine Corps, and although it closed in 1999, the hangars remain.

If they ever build a real-world Star Trek space ship, this may be just about the only space large enough.

After seeing images of the Aeroscraft inside the north hangar, the structure’s value becomes crystal clear. There are precious few places where something of this size and delicacy could be built. Who knows what ideas aerospace designers will come up with in the future? Some of them are bound to be large. It seems to me that the hangars are worth preserving for that fact alone.

So what does the future portend for aerospace in good old Southern California? Only time will tell. The weather, terrain, remaining infrastructure, and geographic location are certainly appealing. The banana republic regulatory and governmental aspect, not so much. But it occurs to me that it’s darkest just before dawn, so I’m keeping a hopeful outlook. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet… but she’s definitely warmed up and ready to go on.

The punishment? McCay was indicted by a federal grand jury on a single count of “attempted interference with an aircraft”.

This strikes me as a woefully inadequate charge. Aside from cases of self-defense, any time a firearm is intentionally and repeatedly discharged directly toward humans, an aggravated assault or attempted murder charge seems more appropriate.

The classic Stearman biplane: wood structure covered in fabric skin.

I’d argue it’s especially so in this case because it involved an aircraft in mid-flight. Even if the occupants were unharmed, any hit to the Stearman itself could have brought the entire plane down. That sounds like a hell of a lot more than just “attempted interference with an aircraft”.

McCay pled guilty and was sentenced to one year of probation. Though unconvinced of the sincerity of McCay’s apology, the judge somehow came to the conclusion that jail time was not warranted.

Perhaps the prosecutor or judge were sympathetic to the defendant’s antipathy toward aircraft noise. Or maybe there’s something in the law that made interference with an aircraft the strongest charge they could make stick. Either way, there’s a double standard here, folks.

I’ve never understood the logic that allows Harley-Davidson to build (and/or their owners to modify) motorcycles with straight pipe exhausts in order to generate as much noise as possible while in general aviation we spend untold hours and fortunes modifying aircraft with mufflers, new prop designs, hush kits, and adjusting takeoff and landing procedures, flight paths, and more to minimize our noise footprint.

The Stearman is a World War II-era, fabric-covered radial engine tailwheel trainer.

If McCay had walked into a restaurant and fired several blasts toward people and later claimed it was “just to scare them”, would he have skated with a year of probation? Of course not. It would have been national news on TV and a trending topic on Twitter for a week.

What if he was unhappy about highway noise and had fired at a car or the aforementioned Harley from an overpass? Forget probation, he’d be looking at a very long prison sentence. So why are pilots less worthy of protection under the law?

Yes, pilot Fred Campbell and his airstrip are going to be the cause of some noise. But it’s worth noting that the airport has been there for half a century and that McKay built his home adjacent to an operating airport. If those of us living near roads and highways have to deal with the constant buzz of vehicular traffic going by, it’s only fair that those near GA airports do the same, especially when users of such airfields are doing as much as reasonably possible to mitigate the noise.

Being a good neighbor goes both ways. It’s just a shame the law isn’t enforced in a way that reflects it.

Rich has been working as a food critic for quite a while, always regaling me with the latest culinary goings on in Orange County. I’ve had the pleasure of dining with him at Paul Martin’s, Mozambique, the Crow Bar, and other trendy joints. It’s always first-class experience. Appetizers, deserts, and executive chefs seem to appear at our table out of thin air. “Did we order this?”, I’d ask. I’m living on a pilot’s salary, remember. “Don’t worry about it”, is always the reply. “I know a guy here”. If The Sopranos revolved around charcuterie rather than murder, this is what it would have looked like.

Anyway, this was to be a visit to the Sunstone Winery to research an article he’s writing for an online magazine called O.C. Executive. I’ve loved Santa Ynez for years. Not only does it have a fantastic little airport, but it’s also where I got my first education about wine. Just a couple hours north of Los Angeles, yet infinitely less affected by overcrowding than Napa or Temecula, I find the central California coast region to be ideal when it comes to the quality of the wine and the overall experience.

My wife and I belong to and/or frequent a number of wineries, and they’re all in the central coast region (roughly defined as Paso Robles/San Luis Obispo/Santa Ynez). Sunstone had thus far escaped me, however, so it was with great pleasure that Rich and I made the short drive to Chumash country to begin our adventure.

We first met with the winery’s private events director, Annamarie Kostura, who wasted no time setting up our first tasting. Though never a big Merlot drinker, I found Sunstone’s ’07 Merlot Reserve a very mouth-filling and luscious, yet appropriately smooth in texture. I’d recommend it with some kind of food, however. Sunstone had a Chocolate Balsamic Vinegar and French bread nearby and it really brought out the best in that tasting.

My favorite of the current crop has to be the Rapsodie du Soleil, however. This 2007 blend is a full estate wine, and like everything on their property, the grapes are organically grown. My previous experience with organic wines has left me wanting, but this one was different. The Soleil is a Syrah base combined with 12% Mourvedre and 2% Viognier. I loved the nose on this thing so much that Rich had gone on to the next sample before I’d even contemplated tasting it. Blessed with an expansive middle palate of blackberry and just a hint of vanilla, I would pair this with a glazed pork tenderloin or perhaps an eggplant dish of some kind.

After our tasting, we met with Sunstone’s president, Bion Rice, who told us a bit about the history of the estate, their philosophy of wine as food, and the importance of building relationships rather than just making wine. Bion is a guy who always takes the long view when it comes to the sustainability of things. As both a business and an entity, he’s looking for Sunstone to be more than just the vintages they turn out. It’s an old-world view, but one that’s easy to admire. In addition to the wines, Sunstone brings music performances to the estate and has plans for a culinary institute on the premises.

That culinary institute will eventually be based at the winery’s Tuscan-style villa, an 8,500 square foot work of art which sits on a plateau overlooking the vineyards and winery. Originally built as a family home, many of the materials used it it’s construction were brought over from reclamation yards in France. Massive wood beams came from Queen Victoria’s lavender factory. The door to the wine cellar once kept Napoleon’s prisoners in their cell. The roof tiles still have French moss growing on them. Rich and I spent the evening at the villa, exploring the grounds and delving further into Sunstone’s wines.

We took a break from our winery expedition to grab dinner at the famous Hitching Post. Rich said the burgers there were epic, and he was right. That’s bacon you see on top. Big, thick slices of bacon.

In fact, we left the estate only long enough to grab a bite at a local restaurant called The Hitching Post. I’d never heard of the place, but true to form, Rich always knows where to eat! Apparently The Hitching Post is famous for it’s Oak Grilled Burger. It’s not on the menu. You can only order it the bar area, and even then only on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Wednesdays. At one time those were the slow days of the week, so the burger was developed to help bring in some business. I can only say “mission accomplished”! It had two slices of the thickest, juiciest bacon I’ve ever encountered. The patty was like eating a stick of butter, a perfectly cooked medium-rare slice of heaven. This is not your typical ground chuck burger. The Hitching Post is a steak house, so they use premium cuts of filet mignon and rib eye which are baptized with a spice mixture they refer to as “magic dust”. From the mango ketchup to the bun, everything is made in-house.

After gorging ourselves on Americana and making the obligatory donation at the nearly Chumash casino, we retired to The Villa. True to form, there are virtually no artificial lights on the property at all, so we literally stumbled back into the house to discover Annamarie heading up the hill to check on us. The next thing you know, two hours have gone by and we’re chatting away in the villa’s living room over glasses of wine like old friends.

It was about this time that it hit me: a boutique winery is as much about personality as wine-making, and the folks at Sunstone have it spades. They’ve managed to create an experience, and though it’s centered around wine, without the vision and personality of the individuals running the joint, it could never reach full potential. As I commented to Annamarie, the smaller wineries of the central coast region are so exemplary because when you walk in the door, often the wine is being poured by either the vineyard’s owner or the winemaker himself. And if not that, it’s typically someone who’s there simply for love of it all. There’s always a great story, you just have to ask for it.

One example I often recall is a Paso Robles winery where the owner told me that he once hired a helicopter to show him the area so he could see the various parcels that were for sale. The helicopter developed a mechanical problem and made a forced landing in a long canyon. The guy figured it was a sign that this was “his” land, and he promptly bought it.

Anyway, Sunstone is a gem, and I expect to continued good things from them in the years to come. If you find yourself in the central coast region, don’t miss it.

For some reason, change seems to occur in aviation at an even greater pace that in the surrounding world. Companies, fortunes, people, and aircraft in our little slice of life seem to come and go at an amazing pace. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising since the whole idea behind flying is to get somewhere. I guess the real question is, are we getting where we want to go?

That’s about a philosophical as I get, folks.

Thankfully, for me the answer has definitely been yes. I was fortunate enough to ring in the new year in the same place and with the same people as last year, which in business aviation almost qualifies as a long-standing tradition.

The operative terms this holiday were “sushi” and “Hawaii”. There’s a little seafood restaurant called Sansai Sushi Bar which is tucked into an outdoor shopping plaza in the Waikoloa area on the northwest coast of the Island of Hawai’i. My crew and I patronized this joint on the last day of 2011 and loved it. Through the miracle of crew schedules we found ourselves there exactly one year later, exploring the seafood delicacies of the Pacific once again.

Many of the pilots and FA’s I’ve flown with are foodies, so I’ve been surrounded by folks who know where to eat. Since I started flying for this company I’ve enjoyed comparing notes with my old college roommate, because he’s gone on to become a well-known writer and food critic in the Southern California area. In fact I’ll be going with him on an assignment to the Santa Ynez area later this month. When I’m home, he’s the go-to guy for restaurant ideas. On the road, however, I might be able to help him out with suggestions in places like Jackson Hole, London, New York, or Hawaii.

Anyway, if you’ve never been there, I highly recommend Sansei. They have restaurants on Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island, and I’ve been to all three locations while “on business”. From a simple salmon sashimi to complex dishes with myriad sauces and flavors, they do it right. The food’s not cheap, but then bargain sushi seems like the kind of thing The Most Interesting Man in the World would sternly disapprove of.

The secret seems to be out on this joint, so I recommend getting there early. Real early, in fact. The line on New Year’s Eve was out the door and branched off in two directions well in advance of the restaurant’s 5 p.m. opening. By the time we arrived, the seating reservations for the sushi bar were long gone; we snagged the last three seats available in the whole place. I tried to tell them that we’d flown 2,600 miles just to indulge in their panko-crusted Ahi, but apparently everyone else in line was from Southern California, too.

It’s always a bit of a bummer to be away from loved ones at the holiday, but if you’re traveling with the right people life can be pretty sweet. And besides, I made it back for the ball drop at midnight, if only virtually. My wife was at a party with friends and we hooked up a Skype session just in the nick of time. I was able to say hello to the peeps, count down the final moments of 2012, and still get a good night’s sleep before my 5:15 a.m. wake-up call.

What will 2013 bring? I’m in the aviation biz, so who knows. Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and enjoy all the good food and adventure you can in the mean time. That’s my plan, and I’ll be sticking to it.

I was home about 36 hours before departing following morning for a week’s vacation on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. For those of you who are keeping track, St. Maarten and St. Thomas are about 90 miles apart, but rather than just fly a short inter-island hop I managed to put about 7,000 miles behind me only to end up right where I started.

Flying is like that.

Anyway, unlike most other trips, this one was a long-planned vacation with extended family — 10 of us in all — to celebrate my brother’s 70th birthday. Yes, you read that right, I have a 70 year old brother. As Tom Hanks so succinctly explains in You’ve Got Mail: “we are an American family”.

Aside from my a nasty cold my wife picked up from her nieces on Thanksgiving, we had a lovely time. Poor Kristi was stuck in the hotel room for the first three of our seven days, but we were continually thankful that it was just a minor illness. Between the heat, humidity, jet lag, mosquitoes, and other facets of a long-distance tropical vacation, it’s not hard to imagine a serious gastrointestinal or sun stroke problem out there. I’ve seen it happen.

Speaking of which, though I wouldn’t bat an eye at flying half way across the world, I nearly came to grief trying to drive a car on that little island. In the Virgin Islands you drive on the left side of the road, but the automobiles have the steering wheel on the left side as well. Add in a general lack of signage, narrow streets, and terrain hilly enough to make even a San Franciscan take notice, and you’ll get an idea of what I was dealing with. Pilots like to joke about the drive being far more dangerous than the flight, but in this case it was 100% true.

St. Thomas is a delightful way to do the Caribbean thing. To begin with, as an American territory, the usual travel hassles are eliminated. They use the same voltage, currency, language, and customs we have here in the mainland. The beaches and resorts are first rate. I can’t say enough good things about the Frenchman’s Reef, Cove, and Morningstar Beach. It was a first class experience even by Marriott standards.

And as a lover of history, there’s no shortage of things to do and see around the island. Columbus landed there on his second voyage to the New World, and a century later the Jamestown settlers stopped at St. Thomas on their way to America as well. Sir Francis Drake used one of the island’s high hills to spy on enemy ships of the Spanish fleet passing through what is now called Drake’s Passage. There are fortresses, submerged artillery, and the 2nd oldest synagogue in the English-speaking world.

Here are just a few images from the trip.

Naturally, not every trip is blessed with locales of that caliber. Those that are sometimes come with long-haul flights which cross a half-dozen or more time zones and can take jet lag to an unenviable level. But there’s little doubt that the ends are worth the means.

Of course, alighting in Aspen or Nassau doesn’t mean much unless you get to stick around for a while and enjoy it. Thankfully, a charter gig sometimes provides that opportunity. Over the past year, I’ve had multi-day layovers in Jackson Hole, Kona, Manhattan, London, the Bahamas, Cleveland (don’t laugh — it was for the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame induction!) and other such places.

The most recent addition to the list is the Caribbean island of St. Maarten. This was my first time in the Netherlands Antilles, and we were able to enjoy three full days in paradise eating, sunning, and relaxing in perfect weather. I had only known St. Maarten as the place with the crazy beach airport. If you haven’t seen video of this, the runway pavement starts about 50 feet from the surf, and that 50 is taken by a two lane public road and popular beach.

Anyway, St. Maarten was fantastic. The best part? I flew home on Thanksgiving, thinking there was no way I’d get to enjoy any of the holiday, but my wife and her family re-convened late on Thanksgiving evening to give me an opportunity to enjoy a slightly belated meal of traditional Turkey Day delicacies.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll stop rambling here and let my iPhone 5′s camera do the talking.

I’ve been following the online NTSB docket for months — in fact, I’ve read the entire thing. It comprises thousands of pages of interviews, telemetry, analysis, company records, flight test cards, and transcripts. If you’ve got the time and are enough of an airplane nerd to stay awake while reading it, the accident docket provides a fascinating and detailed look into how a modern test flight program is conducted.

The NTSB’s ultimate conclusion is that Gulfstream (GAC) was to blame for the crash. They cited the company in three areas:

1. technical deficiencies related to computing the critical angle-of-attack
2. inadequate safety monitoring
3. allowing scheduling pressures to affect decision making

In their own party submission to the NTSB, Gulfstream agreed that they were ultimately to blame and plainly accepted full responsibility for the accident. However, after reading the collected body of data the NTSB used to reach their decision, I can’t help but wonder if their expectations are realistic. Given the scope and severity of the required tests, it’s surprising that accidents aren’t more common. I’d like to look at a few of the mitigating factors in that regard.

First of all, by definition flight test is an inherently risky business. The accident occurred during “single engine continued takeoff” testing, definitely one of the most hazardous parts of the multi-year program. This phase of testing involved continuing a takeoff after an engine fails at the most critical moment. The airplane is aggressively flown to the very edge of its capability while operating with a dead engine. In fact, part of this is referred to as “abused takeoff” testing. They do this over and over again at different weights and CG locations.

If it flies half as good as it looks…

The crash occurred because the airplane stalled during one of these takeoffs. Gulfstream did not realize how much lower the critical angle-of-attack is in ground effect than it is in free air, and consequently the stall warning devices (stick shaker & pusher) were programmed to activate at too high an AOA. Estimating this “in ground effect (IGE) stall” phenomenon is not an exact science, and it’s easy to see why. New airplanes receive thorough stall testing, but it’s done well away from the ground. It’s impossible to test stall behavior while in ground effect without high risk of destroying the jet, so computer analysis is relied upon instead.

It’s also worth noting that while Gulfstream is one of the largest and most successful jet aircraft manufacturers, the G650 was a “clean sheet” design. GAC hadn’t really run a test program of this kind for more than half a century. In the late 1960′s, Grumman — best known for their tough-as-nails military aircraft — was riding high with the success of their business turboprop aircraft, which they called “Gulfstream”. The decision was made to develop a turbojet powered version called the Gulfstream II, and it was that aircraft which introduced swept wings, turbojet powerplants, all new systems, and more.

Everything since the G-II has been an incremental development. The G-III was a derivative of that airplane, and Gulfstream IV/450 was a follow on of the G-III. The same is true with the G-V/550. But the G650 was entirely new, and that came with increased risk. Fly-by-wire flight controls, near supersonic speeds, 33% more wing sweep, and so on. For example, Fokker Aerospace developed third-generation fully thermoplastic composite elevators and rudder which are 20% cheaper and 10% lighter than their predecessors.

Next, the NTSB took GAC to task for what they characterized as a lack of cooperation with their investigation. A hard drive containing telemetry data was inadvertently discarded, and Gulfstream requested that some information be redacted in the NTSB reports. Naturally, the Feds weren’t happy with any of that. But Gulfstream operates in a very competitive space. It costs billions of dollars to develop a new product, and their aircraft have some unique features that GAC wants to protect: the large signature windows, a wing free of leading edge devices, etc. The design data for their aircraft is closely guarded intellectual property and an important part of the company’s competitive edge. On the other hand, NTSB reports are public information. You can see why Gulfstream would be concerned about what gets published.

Gulfstream G650 production line in Savannah, GA

The most interesting finding in the NTSB docket is the revelation that the wing roll-off (stall) which caused this accident was not unique. On the G650, two previous roll-offs had been experienced, but when examined by Gulfstream’s flight test department, they were attributed to other causes (piloting technique, for example). Obviously this was a central part of the accident chain and represented the primary missed opportunity to prevent this tragedy. But flight test is a dynamic environment. A post-accident analysis from the safety of a Washington D.C. conference room is quite easy. Coming to the same conclusion from inside an active test program might be more challenging.

As part of the investigation, the NTSB interviewed current and former GAC employees and some fascinating information came to light. Here’s one passage from Lee Johnson, who was chief pilot and project pilot during the Gulfstream IV test program. He reveals that wing stalls occurred during IGE continued takeoff testing on that airplane, and — of particular interest to my fellow Gulfstream pilots — that it was solved by adding the those vortilons found on the G-IV/450 line:

The NTSB noted that scheduling pressure was a factor in the accident, but I’m not sure that’s quite accurate. While it’s true that the program was behind schedule, the real challenge for Gulfstream was ensuring the aircraft met the performance goals. Aircraft manufacturers start marketing and sales efforts long before the actual airplane is available to customers, and contracts contain guarantees that the jet will have specific range, airspeed, useful load, and runway performance. If the delivered product falls short, there are financial penalties for the manufacturer.

It can sink the whole program, in fact. Aircraft development is like opening a new restaurant: you’ve gotta spend ridiculous sums of money before you see the first dollar of revenue roll in. My friends in the restaurant business tell me it can cost millions. For a company like Gulfstream, development costs are measured in tens of billions. The stakes are high.

As it turns out, the G650 met or exceeded all the predicted performance metrics, in some cases by astonishing margins. For example, the airplane was originally designed with a 6,000 nautical mile range, but testing revealed that actual range is 7,000 nm. That makes the 650 competitive with Bombardier models that were predicted to outshine it. And Gulfstream’s model has come to market years ahead of what is predicted to be its primary competitor, the Global 7000, which won’t enter service until at least 2016.

The fastest business jet on the market.

From what I’ve been able to gather, the toughest part of the certification process was getting the airplane to meet the runway length requirements set out by Gulfstream. As with most aircraft, the Gulfstream G650 requires more runway to takeoff than it does to land. Oh, it can get off the ground pretty quickly, but runway requirements are not based on how much pavement you need to get into the air. Instead, it’s based on the distance required to accelerate to “decision speed” (the speed above which it is actually safer to continue the takeoff in the event of powerplant failure), and then bring the plane to a full stop.

The lower the takeoff speeds are, the less runway is required. The less runway required, the greater the number of airports that will be usable by that aircraft. Unlike your typical airliner, private jets go to some interesting places. High mountain resorts, tiny islands, and thousands of airports around the world which never see any airline service. Nobody wants to spend $65 million on a jet that can’t get in and out of the places they want to go.

The FAA requires an transport category jet like the G650 to be able to continue a takeoff with an engine out and still achieve specific climb performance. The test pilots on the 650 were required to use a very exacting technique to get the right airspeed, known as “V2″, when they reached 50′ above ground, pulling hard enough to reach altitude and airspeed simultaneously. The transcripts from the NTSB docket show them re-running tests when they were just one knot off the required number, an impressive level of resolution when the aircraft is accelerating so rapidly.

The remains of the ill-fated G650

The first wing stall the 650 encountered was attributed to pilot technique, and the second to an inoperative yaw damper. The software to electronically limit the AOA was not complete at the time of the test, and probably wouldn’t have helped anyway since everything was calibrated to what Gulfstream estimated the in-ground-effect critical AOA to be. Unfortunately that number was nearly two degrees off. When the airfoil stalls at just over 11˚, a two degree error is huge.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and perhaps Gulfstream really is where the finger should be pointed after this crash. It does seem like the IGE stall issue has been around at Gulftest for a long time. But as I said at the top, flight testing is by definition a hazardous activity. Pushing the envelope with new, high tech designs and building ever faster, larger airplanes in what is undoubtedly one of the most competitive industries will always entail risk. With all that goes into a modern test program, perhaps the biggest surprise is that accidents don’t happen more often.

Yet, like a moth to a flame, I never fail to check out what other pilots are wearing. I’ll read reviews and browse shop windows when I see Revos, Oakleys, Maui Jims, or Ecos peering back at me through the glass. There’s just something about sunglasses…

And yet they seem to be a constant disappointment in the cockpit. Maui Jim sunglasses are all polarized. Oakleys are too thick for the headset seal. Even the Vedalos, which are specifically made for pilots, seem to fall short because not only are they somewhat fragile, but the design I fell in love with are hinge-free and do not fold up so there’s no way to clip them onto shirt or store them in a jacket pocket.

So the search continues for the Perfect Pair. I was just thinking about that the other day when friend and fellow pilot Dean Siracusa emailed me to announce he was starting up a new company called Flying Eyes which (wait for it) manufactures sunglasses specifically designed for aviators.

I’ve known Dean for a long time; he’s quite the renaissance man. From owning the world’s largest stock transportation photography agency to directing TV commercials for major auto companies to running the infamously temporary airport at Burning Man, he’s been just about everywhere. One of Dean’s biggest pet peeves about flying was the way sunglasses would dig into the side of his head under the clamping pressure of a headset. Who hasn’t felt the wonderful sensation of a vice-induced headache or been frustrated by the ANR disturbances and increased noise allowed past the headset seal by the temples on a pair of otherwise lovely sunglasses?

The Clarity Aloft headset

It’s interesting to see how various people solve this issue. My own personal answer has been to tackle it from the headset side. I’ve been using the Clarity Aloft headset for years and love it. It’s the only aviation headset I’ve seen that works in every single aircraft. It looks perfectly at home on the flight deck of the Gulfstream, yet has sufficient passive noise attenuation and low enough mass that I can wear it during strong negative-G aerobatics without it flying off. It has no traditional head band, so it can be worn with any type of hat — perfect for flights in RVs and other glass canopy style aircraft. It’s light and compact, so it stores easily when not in use. And finally, it’s relatively inexpensive.

Nonetheless, there are people who don’t like having foam earbuds in their ear canals for hour after hour. The Clarity is also a pain to put on and take off because the earpieces take time to expand and create a good seal, so a perfect pair of sunglasses would still be a welcome addition to my collection.

The Flying Eyes sunglasses with standard temples installed. Nothing exotic about them… yet.

I also thought about how many different types of airplanes I fly and figured I’d be a good guinea pig, so I told Dean I’d like to try a pair. And low & behold, they actually work! The Flying Eyes sunglasses are reminiscent of the Oakley Hijinx, but without polarization. The lenses are high quality, neutral density, anti-UV, and have most of the other standard features you’ll find on a pair of quality sunglasses.

What sets Flying Eyes apart from competitors is the temples. That’s what causes the headset interference and headache in the first place, so it’s a logical place upon which to focus. In fact, I’m surprised nobody’s tried this before now. Dean came up with a system whereby the temples are detachable. They can be replaced with a thin strap which provides no barrier to the ear seals found on a traditional headset.

Flying Eyes sunglasses with the standard temples replaced by the strap.

The difference in ANR performance with “active” headsets can be dramatic. For years I’ve had trouble using the trusty Bose X in just about any DiamondStar while wearing sunglasses because something about that airplane just doesn’t play well with the Bose’s circuitry. But when wearing Flying Eyes sunglasses, not only is the passive attenuation improved but the ANR cutouts are eliminated.

I also like the way the rubber nose piece is molded into the frame. This not only provides a wide bridge to distribute the weight of the glasses, but also eliminates the snagging, bending, and lost/broken parts issues I’ve had with the Vedalo HD and other such products. In theory, a quality pair of sunglasses would be kept in a solid case when not in use… but how many of us actually do that? In the real world, sunglasses take a considerable amount of abuse and while I haven’t owned them long enough to comment on the scratch-resistance of the lenses, the Flying Eyes seem to be built to withstand the punishment.

Speaking of lenses, all the comfort in the world is worthless if the optical portion of the glasses don’t perform, but the Flying Eyes design passed that test as well. In fact of all the sunglasses I own, this pair provided a better seal around the eye area than any other, blocking out most of the harsh light that often creeps around the edges of other glasses when the sun is off to the side or behind the wearer.

Dean and his classic Meyers 200D

I ran into Dean a couple of weeks later at the AOPA Summit in Palm Springs. He and his wife had a nice booth set up right next to their freshly overhauled ’66 Meyers 200D (a worthy subject for a future post). From what I could see, they seemed to be doing great business and generating substantial interest in their new product. I wish them well and look forward to telling people I was one of the first to discover these “convertible” gems.

The Summit is an annual aviation expo put on by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the largest general aviation organization in the world. Despite AOPA’s large size — they claim more than 400,000 members — the size of the event is nowhere near as large as EAA’s AirVenture. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. You can easily get overwhelmed at Oshkosh, whereas the AOPA shows tend to be smaller and more manageable.

Anyway, AOPA Summit alternates between the west and east coasts. Palm Springs has proven to be an ideal location for the west coast event for several reasons, not the least of which is the close proximity of the airport to a beautiful new convention center. The powers that be in Palm Springs simply close a few streets for a couple of hours and voila! A long taxiway is created direct to the site of the convention. You can see the 5g Super Decathlon taxiing along the street in this video.

Palm Springs is famous for golf courses, resorts, and spas, but even more important for pilots, it also has the advantages of good weather and a network of local reliever airports. For those stuck on the ground, the city is easily accessed from major metropolitan areas. San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange County, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and many other locales are just a short drive away.

Getting some air-to-air shots of the Decathlons for 5g’s sales literature.

I’d been to two previous AOPA conventions as a visitor, but this was my first time as an exhibitor. A colleague recently started an American Champion Aircraft sales dealership and I was in Palm Springs to represent his company and sell a few airplanes. He had just taken delivery of a new fire engine red Super Decathlon to use as a sales demonstrator, and that was the plane we had there at the show.

It was interesting sitting on a city street with the airplane. Normally that sort of thing would bring out the authorities with sirens and lights blaring, but we were in good company with about 50 other aircraft surrounding the convention center as well. Speaking of which, I was pleased to see that about a dozen of the planes were tailwheels. I counted three Waco YMF-5s, two Aviat Huskies, an RV-8, a Carbon Cub, a Corsair, a Bearcat, a Bigfoot, a C-195, a couple of Kitfoxes, a Glasair Sportsman, and at least a few others I’ve forgotten about.

Meanwhile, Cessna was completely absent from the show. How’s that for a reversal? Ten years ago you would have seen a huge display from Independence and virtually no tailwheel airplanes.

My wife and her cousin discuss flying under the wing of the Decathlon. He’s a pilot and firefighter based near Palm Springs.

American Champion’s line of products is quite interesting. Some of them don’t really have any competition in the marketplace at all. The Decathlon is a good example. At first look it seems the Cub, Husky, and Maule would be direct competitors, but none of them are built for aerobatics. In fact, there are no other certificated aerobatic trainers being produced right now. The Decathlon not only serves that market, but also functions as a roomy and comfortable traveling aircraft with plenty of cargo space.

The Super D’s good visibility and short field performance even make it a respectable back country platform. It’d also fit right in towing banners, functioning as a primary and/or tailwheel training aircraft, or appearing in the lower levels of aerobatic competition. Even if the airplane is never used for aerobatics, the +6/-5g load limit certainly inspires confidence in the Decathlon’s structural integrity.

Just another day at the office. 5g’s Decathlon demonstrator sitting on the streets of downtown Palm Springs.

And ACA is constantly improving the airplane. Over the past few years the airplane has gained metal wing spars, aluminum gear legs with internal brake lines, modern avionics, exterior LED lighting, and a wide variety of high performance composite propellers.

The latest iteration of the airplane is the Xtreme Decathlon, which includes a 210 hp engine, a new wide-chord prop, redesigned ailerons, shorter wings with squared-off wingtips, a better cowling, and — most exciting of all — I understand they’re pursuing IFR certification for the airplane. In addition to everything else, the Decathlon will be able to function as an IFR trainer and give sufficient instrument flying capability to allow passage through the coastal stratus often present along the west coast.

Don’t be fooled. This “antique” is brand new and sports a full glass panel with IFR certification.

I know, I know: an aerobatic taildragger with IFR certification? It may sound sacrilegious, but at the AOPA Summit there were three huge open cockpit Waco YMF-5 biplanes with more glass panel instrumentation than you’ll find in any Cirrus. Like it or not, this is the wave of the future and it’s enveloping everything that flies. Anyway, suffice it to say there’s a lot of excitement over the Decathlon for what it can do, and what they’re making it capable of doing at the factory in Wisconsin.

Another interesting offering from ACA is the original Champ. Designed in the early 1940s, not many people at the show were aware that the Champ is Sport Pilot-compliant and is still being produced by American Champion. Talk about a classic and timeless design! The Champ was the progenitor of so many classic airplanes, including the the Citabria, Scout, and Decathlon.

Anyway, after spending three days at the convention, I’m starting to get a picture of what the world of light GA flying will look like in the years to come. It’s in vogue to say that general aviation is dying off; I’ve even lamented the decline in activity myself. While it’s true that things are unlikely to return to the heyday of the late 1970s when it comes to sheer numbers of aircraft being produced by the big airframe manufacturers, it seems clear that market forces are driving the GA world toward the kit-built airplanes and the refurb/retrofit market for existing airframes.

The total number of RVs being constructed each year is approaching that of the entire certificated factory-built industry. Reason? You simply get more for your money. Way more, in fact. Maintenance and operating costs are lower. Best of all, you gain additional freedom — the reason many of us got into aviation in the first place — not available to certificated aircraft owners.

I had one guy at the Summit regale me with a 20 minute tale about how difficult it was to obtain a battery for his Champ. Even the factory wouldn’t sell him one because of some obscure FAA approval which didn’t apply to his serial number because it was built before they started putting electrical systems into those airplanes. The fact that they’re building the same airplanes now with an electrical system using that exact battery apparently meant nothing.

The homebuilt trend extends pretty far up the food chain, too, with companies like Epic and Lancair producing pressurized turbine airplane kits meant for serious high-speed, high-altitude travel.

The other emerging trend — one that will undoubtedly continue over the long term — was that of rebuilding and retrofitting older airframes with new technology. Engines, avionics, interiors, lighting, entertainment systems, airframe upgrades, etc. There were a surprising number of turbine and diesel engine conversions on display in Palm Springs. Bonanzas, Skylanes, Centurions, Caravans, Skywagons, and even a C-340 with Rolls Royce 250 engines.

The O&N Cessna 340 turbine conversion

Turbine conversions make particularly good sense as an upgrade for pressurized piston twins today, because high prices for fuel, parts, and the questionable future of leaded avgas has many twin owners headed for the exit. Instead of two finicky and maxed-out piston engines, drop in a pair of highly de-rated turboprops and you’ve got a whole new airplane. Expensive, sure, but the reliability, ease of operation, and long TBO of those powerplants should serve the cabin class twin fleet very well for decades to come.

Advances in airframe design are still occurring, but not at a sufficient pace to warrant the high price required by the OEMs. There will still be sales of new aircraft, but I would not expect the pace to return to the “good old days” — even if your definition of that term only goes back to the 1990s.

Speaking of airframes, I was intrigued by a new modification for the Cirrus from Tamarack Aerospace Group which adds winglets to the SR22. Winglets are not new technology, but the way Tamarack has gone about tackling the certification challenge certainly is innovative. They’ve adopted a design that incorporates a control surface on the horizontal portion of the winglet. It’s like an aileron, except both winglets’ control surfaces are automated and move in tandem.

The purpose of the control surface it is to aerodynamically “cancel” the added lift provided by the winglet during high load conditions, thereby moving the wing’s center of lift back to it’s original design location during turbulence. The only alternative to the “active winglet” method would be to re-certify the wing for the full range of load factors with the center of lift in a different location. That would be expensive enough on a single type of airplane, especially if the wing were found to need further modification to withstand the added stress.

Winglets are an ideal modification for nearly any airplane, as they improve efficiency and reduce fuel consumption, but this one comes with considerable added complexity. Instead of two control surfaces on each wing there will now be three. The system has only one electrical circuit, meaning any failure of the active winglet electronics will reduce the Cirrus’s maximum allowable speed to 120 knots indicated. In addition, there’s always the possibility of a “split” or even a physical jam of the control surface which would impart a rolling moment.

If the active winglet gets FAA approval, in theory winglets could be added to virtually any fixed-wing aircraft with minimal certification hassle. And that’s really what stops innovative ideas from coming to market: the cost — both in time and money — of getting the nod from the Feds. As the market gets smaller, the stifling effect of certification requirements will only continue to grow. I believe even the FAA would agree with this, as they’ve recently announced a goal of reducing the burden of certifying new products.

It will be interesting to see what kind of reception Tamarack will receive from the Cirrus community. They are, to a large degree, eager adopters of advanced technology: composites, glass avionics, airframe parachutes, side sticks, balanced fuel injectors, lean-of-peak operation, etc. But in these austere times, will that reputation remain intact? The list price for Tamarack’s SR22 winglet installation is $60,000.

Finally, I’d be remiss in not taking note of the ever decreasing cost of those glass panels. It wasn’t long ago that a Garmin G1000 added $50,000 to the cost of an airframe. In Palm Springs, the Dynon SkyView was on display for about 1/5th the price. To be sure, the Dynon is not an FAA-certified avionics suite, but it portends a future of better products, stiffer competition, and lower price points for those computerized goodies regardless of certification status.

Glass may be seen as a luxury rather than a necessity. For airplanes like the Super Decathlon, that’s definitely true. In fact, a few people remarked that the 5g Decathlon was the only airplane they’d seen at the show which didn’t have a GPS. Truth be told, we were sort of proud of that fact. But with the impending requirements of the FAA’s NexGen program, it behooves all of us to stay abreast of what’s coming onto the market. Eventually we will all be beneficiaries (or victims, depending on your point of view) of the relentless march of computer technology into the cockpit.

Many have expressed a certain wistfulness that the shuttle’s flying days are over. It’s an understandable sentiment. Much like the retirement of the Concorde and the Starship seems to have left the aviation world a less colorful and futuristic place, the end of the shuttle era leaves America — for the moment, at least — not only without a way to get into orbit on our own, but also without what is arguably the most complex piece of machinery every created. One day there will be a Next Thing, but for now we have the same human space-faring capability that we had before Sputnik.

Most people watching the festivities probably missed the irony of a shuttle being shuttled into retirement on the back of an airliner so old that if an airline actually used it for passenger service, it would make headlines for doing something unsafe.

But I find today’s event sad for another reason: the attention paid to it. Surely I’m not the only one who noticed that society seems far more interested in the space shuttle now that it’s becoming a dusty museum relic than they ever did when it was actually flying into space. This shouldn’t be a surprise, I suppose, because it happens over and over again. Space flight was no less dangerous on Apollo 12 than it was on Apollo 11, but few paid any attention to the mission because they’d already seen a moon landing.

Whether you consider the space shuttle program a rousing success or a government boondoggle, it makes little sense that an orbiter being ferried across the country at 300 mph would garner more attention than the many other things it accomplished over the years. Like coming back in one piece, in many ways the most impressive achievement of all.

The public is like that, though. They take aviation for granted, as they have done for many decades. It’s unlikely that will change until the day we no longer fly at all. For many individual aviators, that day has already arrived. The saddest part must be looking back and realizing that we weren’t thankful enough while we still had the opportunity to break the bond of gravity and soar among the clouds.

In that way, the real lesson of today’s arrival of the Endeavour is to treasure the here-and-now, because though we may not know the day or time of our last flight, it is an absolute certainty that sooner or later it will arrive.

We demand a level of safety, comfort, and security today which far exceeds that of the early 70s. Between litigation, regulation, and new technology, the cost of flying was bound to be higher today than it was in the foggy memory of the so-called good old days. As for middle-class incomes, his argument centers on the detrimental effect of “rich people”, something I can’t help but take issue with.

First of all, “three or four decades ago” was the 1970′s and early 80′s — the era of Vietnam, high inflation, the energy crisis, Mideast turmoil, political upheaval, the long decline of the American steel industry, and more. Is that really what we want today? Spangler is the first person I’ve ever heard refer to the 70′s as an era of “economic vigor”.

Secondly, general aviation is not doomed. It’s simply changing. Instead of a certificated aircraft, people are voting with their wallets and moving into the Experimental-Amateur-Built category of GA aircraft. Van’s Aircraft designs alone account for as many airplanes produced each year as all the commercial builders combined.

It’s not by mistake that this is happening. Aviators are realizing that can get better performance for far less money when the government stays out of it, and the result is 500 new airplanes produced this year, one by one in garages around the country. That’s the product of a middle class he denigrates as un-thinking.

It’s definitely too expensive. But then again, if JetWhine had existed in any other decade of the 20th century, a poll of readers would have revealed that it was too costly during that period as well. As I’ve previously noted, aircraft have been expensive to operate since the day the Wright brothers invented them.

If that’s his mindset, then yes, he’s probably done flying. On the other hand, I’ve known individuals who overcame heart transplants, serious brain surgery, the loss of multiple limbs, an eye, even their sense of hearing, and who got back into the cockpit. I had a student who literally had no address — he couch-hopped and rode a bicycle in order to save enough to fly. Later on he got hit by a car on his way to the airport, and even that didn’t stop him.

I’ve known a wide variety of individuals in my life, many of them through aviation. The most dedicated and hard-working among them were also the most successful financially. I’ve also found them to be some of the nicest and most generous people I’ve encountered. Even among those who were light on the yen, with enough determination I’ve seen them accomplish amazing things.

Harrison Ford, rich guy… and pilot.

From manufacturing to finance to doctors to engineers, it runs the gamut. I’ve trained dot-com legends, brain surgeons, entrepreneurs, titans of Wall Street, Hollywood directors, and plenty of people who were “ordinary Joes” like you and I. I’ve never gotten the impression that rich people — regardless of whether I’ve known them in the aviation world or from “the outside” — didn’t work damn hard to build their success. And lately, that they haven’t worked even harder just to keep it afloat.

I’ve gotten to know many of them on a personal level, and they get up earlier, work later, stress more, and sleep less than I do. They take critical phone calls and emails at all hours of the day and night. I don’t envy them at all in that regard. Their lives are complex, myriad people depend on them, and they seem to work 24 hours a day.

Finally, I look at the fact that I wouldn’t have a job without them. I don’t understand the vilification of these individuals. They hire the Gulfstream I fly. They indirectly employ the mechanics, charter personnel, line guys, flight attendants, pilots, catering companies, airframe manufacturers, outfitters, flight training companies, and many other people. Because of them we use hotels, eat at restaurants, rent cars, buy fuel, pay taxes, hire handlers and drivers. And those aren’t even their direct employees.

When one takes the time to add up the economic effect of just one of these flights, it’s astronomical. The dollars are flying out all over the place, and some of those greenbacks literally put a roof over my head.

I read the Rumpus article that Spangler references and it’s hard to believe anyone would champion those ideas. Triple the salaries of teachers? Please. The Chicago strikers, who make an average of $76,000 per year already, come to mind. While I have the greatest respect for educators, isn’t $228,000 a year a bit much for nine months of work? No matter what I fly, I could never approach that level of income and get a quarter of the year off.

The last time I checked, the state of California was already spending the vast majority of it’s badly overxtended budget on education.

I’ve known a few pilots who make that kind of money, but they do other things in addition to flying. They’ll broker trips, manage aircraft, assist in the sale or purchase of an aircraft, and so on. They are entrepreneurs themselves, in fact.

As for the proposed 90%+ tax rate, that would assuredly put me — a pilot — out of work. It would destroy the business aviation sector and the millions who depend on it for their livelihood.

Perhaps instead of calling for the financial heads of those “fat cats”, we should be looking closely at their success to see how we can replicate it. At the end of the day, though, it’s probably a message many Americans don’t want to hear: decades of hard work, unstoppable determination, years of experience and learning from a variety of inevitable failures, continuous networking, better-than-average creativity and problem-solving, and yes, a fair bit of luck.

Is it possible there’s another reason that our economy is suffering? Another cause for the middle class malaise? I try to avoid delving too much into politics here; there are plenty of other places on the internet for that sort of thing. I can only say that when it comes to the wealthy, my family and I do not see them as the enemy.

From my days in the opera and theatre world to my time as a full time CFI to my current job as a charter pilot, they’ve been a critical part of putting food on the table and keeping the lights on, and I say thank God for ‘em.

However, unless you’re flying a Category III-B approach, at some point prior to landing the pilot must still make the transition to flying visually. That’s where the Visual Descent Point (VDP) comes in. It’s described this way in the Pilot/Controller Glossary:

The problem with a VDP is that once a pilot meets the following requirements for descending below MDA, they are assumed to be also be flying with sufficient visual reference to avoid any obstacles that may stand in their way even though that is not one of the regulatory requirements for using a VDP.

It stands to reason that if you can see a runway three miles away, you should also be able to see a tree half a mile away. Unless you’re flying at night, of course. In that case, you could end up like the pilot of this Lear 45 whose wing cut eight feet off the top of a tree while properly flying a VDP into Sarasota Springs, NY.

You might be thinking that he must have made a mistake somewhere, but it turns out that the procedure was flown exactly as charted. Read the full article. Since the whole raison d’etre for having instrument procedures is to avoid hitting things, this is worrisome.

Visual descent point on the GPS approach into Sarasota Springs

Most VDPs utilize a standard three-degree descent angle to the runway. According to TERPS criteria, a 34:1 obstacle clearance plane should be kept clear to ensure aircraft can fly the charted VDP path safely. In this guy’s case, he was flying — at night — into an airport which had numerous trees sticking up into that three degree path.

His story raises several questions. Are the VDP portions of instrument approach procedures flight checked by the FAA, and if so, how often? Does anyone monitor the area around an airport for tree growth or the unannounced addition of man-made structures? If so, how often? How often are charted obstacles re-surveyed? And most importantly, what accommodations should pilots make to charted Visual Descent Points at night for dark, unlit areas likely to contain things that grow larger on their own?

Unfortunately, I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. But it has me thinking about the large turbojet aircraft I’m flying these days. The G-IV demands a well-stabilized approach if you want to stop before the runway does. And as a charter pilot, I’m often headed into some very random airports at the behest of clients.

Consider that substantial groupings of large trees are often found in rural areas — the same kind of areas that also have rural airports with shorter runways and little, if any, lighting of the surrounding area at night. See where I’m going with this? In a smaller aircraft with a slower approach speed, no problem. But for a Gulfstream, I can see ending up in the same situation as the highly experienced pilot in that Learjet.

And that’s just domestic flying. Think about international destinations where our TERPS criteria are not always complied with. I can’t even begin to quote the differences between U.S. and ICAO approach procedure design standards.

The Lear pilot had it right when he said it was a false impression to believe that as long as you “fly the plate” you are guaranteed protection from things that go bump in the night. Next time you’re flying an approach after dark, keep that in mind. Buyer beware, my friends.

The latest hit comes from Long Beach, where activity has declined 24% year-over-year and a staggering 47% over the past five years.

As a commenter on that article noted, with the numbers that bad, why would there be a need for Class C airspace at LGB? The one good thing we might expect out of a slowly declining airport might be less controlled airspace, but it’s doubtful the FAA will see it that way.

At Ontario, once the bright shining hope for a new international airport in Southern California, the news is not much better. Though it’s mainly an airline and cargo destination these days, passenger counts are continuing their long-term slide.

Speaking of Van Nuys Airport, the venerable GA airport might be the ultimate example of what’s happening around the Los Angeles basin. At one time, it was the busiest general aviation airport on Earth. In 1999, the airport had about 607,000 takeoffs and landings. By 2010 it had declined to 339,000 — the lowest traffic count since 1963.

Orange County’s John Wayne Airport recently posted the numbers for June, 2012. Compared with the same period last year, GA activity declined 7.1%. The current avgas price at SNA is now $7.52 a gallon. Could that have something to do with it?

Meanwhile, in the past two years, Superior Air Parts, Cirrus Aircraft, Glasair Aircraft, Hawker Beechcraft, and other U.S. aviation assets have been sold to China. The Chinese are building general aviation airports as fast as they can. We, on the other hand, shut down an average of one airport a week in the United States.

Here in Southern California, Rialto Airport is slated for closure. Santa Monica residents are trying to close one of the world’s oldest and most historic airports. You get the picture.

If there’s a bright side to the current economic picture, it’s the “Experimental-Amateur-Built” (also referred to as “homebuilt” aircraft) category. These are aircraft which ordinary people build in their garages. If that sounds crazy, let me state for the record that the finest quality and craftsmanship I’ve seen in the aviation world comes from this segment of the aviation world.

The experimental aircraft industry is growing by leaps and bounds. Total piston aircraft shipments by professional airplane manufacturing companies was 860 units in 2011. That’s for the entire industry, mind you. By contrast, Van’s Aircraft estimates that about 420 of their experimental aircraft kits were completed the same year. That’s just one company, albeit the largest one in the industry.

Why is Van’s doing so well? As Deep Throat famously said, “follow the money”. Whether it’s airports, airplanes, or aviators, the level of activity will directly follow the money. The more it costs, the less activity you’ll find in that area. That’s why pilot training and airport usage is down. It costs too much. On the other hand, experimental aircraft give twice the performance of a comparable factory-built airplane at about 1/4 the cost. The result? More economic activity.

As this chart from EAA’s 2012 Report to Homebuilders shows, the number of registered Experimental-Amateur-Built aircraft has doubled in about 15 years.

Compare that with the factory-built general aviation fleet, which the FAA estimates will shrink for the foreseeable future:

Sadly, the NTSB and FAA are zeroing in on the Experimental world in an attempt to make it safer. As I noted previously, GA safety must originate in the cockpit, not the Federal Register. If history is any guide, their efforts will result in a massive increase in cost which will do to the E-AB sector exactly what it did to the rest of general aviation.

Remember the joke which asks if a tree falling in the forest makes a sound if there’s no one there to hear it? I can only hope we won’t find the answer to that question at your local airport. It’s getting awfully quiet out there, my friends.

Breakfast? Nah — I almost always trade it for a few extra minutes of rest.

Once “up and at ‘em”, there’s also the trip to the airport, the weather check, the preflight inspection, fueling, catering, baggage, paperwork, clearance, FMS programming, and a big bill to pay. We might even throw a few passengers in there for good measure.

But once that’s done? Then the real fun begins.

(Recommend watching this in full-screen, 720p or greater)