Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i Plane & Pilot

There are a couple of big battles going on in Washington D.C. today for control over the future of personal and business aviation. The combatants aren’t new to the game. Congress and the airlines and the administration are fighting it out on various fronts to remake the national airspace system in a shape that is most to their liking. As many of you likely already believe, it’s a great fight to fix something that isn’t’ broken. And that’s a sentiment shared by pilots of all kinds of machines. Of course we need technological advancement. Is ADS-B the best path we could have chosen? I have issues with it, but they’re issues that are no longer addressable, and in the end ADS-B will work and it will greatly benefit all of…

With many of the big decisions in life, and buying an airplane is definitely one of them, it takes a bit of discipline to make decisions that balance practicality and emotion. That’s understandable, as those kinds of decisions, from buying a house to deciding on a new job, revolve around some of our most important hopes and dreams. So when it comes to finding that perfect set of wings, emotions, understandably, are in the mix. After all, the reason we want to buy an airplane in the first place is because we love flying, and we should never forget that fact. At the same time, emotion can lead us to forget the practical considerations in buying a plane, and after the first blush of that new plane is gone, the…

Life as a long-haul pilot explored and explained You came to flying later than some pilots, after starting careers in the academic world and management consulting. Why the change? I’d always been in love with flying, but I didn’t have any relatives or neighbors who were pilots, and it wasn’t on my high school guidance councilor’s radar, as it were. Becoming a pilot seemed as unlikely as becoming an astronaut. So I followed an academic career and then worked as a management consultant for several years, flying all over the world to do research and visit clients. By then I knew that my love of flying wasn’t going away, and I thought, hmmm, I’d better have a careful think about how I want to spend the rest of my working…

GLOWFLY IS A COOL PROJECT to be sure, and its combination of an electric-motor driven dual-wheel monogear—yes, many sailplanes have a monogear—and a jet engine for the remainder of the takeoff and climb is the only one we’ve ever heard of to entertain such an arrangement. But it will not be the first jet-powered glider; they’ve been around for awhile in very limited numbers. For a number of reasons, there probably won’t be a groundswell of them either. After all, the whole idea of a glider or sailplane is to not have an engine. It’s true that motor gliders are somewhat popular because they free the pilot of need for launch assistance, and jet engines are an intriguing solution because they’re small, light, low in vibration and powerful for their…

SITTING IN THE PITTS FOR HOURS IS WHERE I REALLY LEARNED TO BE ALONE WITH MY THOUGHTS. MOVING FORWARD BUT SITTING INSIDE A BUBBLE CANOPY MUST BE AKIN TO BEING SUSPENDED IN SPACE In mid-October I left Texas in the single seat Pitts S-1S, N8078, and flew west to compete in my second and third contests respectively. I knew where I was going, but didn’t really know what I was getting into yet. Other than that I loved to be around aviation and loved to fly aerobatics, all I knew was that this was the moment I had been waiting for my entire life. I had the airplane, the time and the freedom and so I was going for it. After great flying experiences at the Avra Valley and the…

Without a doubt, the ticket that most changes the way we fly by giving us new tools and new strategies is the instrument rating. After you’re an instrument pilot who practices the craft, you look at flying in a whole new way. With an IFR rating on the certificate in your wallet you are no longer held hostage to the whims of an otherwise benign cloud deck. With an IFR rating, an overcast layer at 800 feet is hardly even considered weather. With this in mind, it makes sense to think about how your next airplane will work as an IFR platform. There are several big considerations here, but none is as important as having a decent (or better) autopilot. We live in a strange time when many student pilots…

3 In some respects, takeoffs can’t get no respect. It seems there are a myriad of mistakes pilots can make on departures, and studies show that near ly one of every five general aviation accidents are directly, or indirectly, related to a poor decision or omission during takeoff. Yet, pilots rarely practice aborted takeoffs, preferring instead to concentrate on emergency landings, usually from a relatively high altitude that allows plenty of time for trouble shooting and searching for a place to perch. The first three minutes are perhaps the most critical, as that interval after the throttles go full forward can define what happens if the pilot experiences a real emergency. Three minutes will normally allow most aircraft to clear the active runway, so landing on the asphalt straight ahead…

Late last year at the NBAA Convention in Las Vegas, GE introduced its new turboprop, simply called (in GE’s current preference for brands over numerical designations) the Advanced Turboprop, and it did so with an air of understatement admirable in this age of the hype machine. Brad Mottier, the head of GE’s remarkably successful and sudden effort to establish itself as a big player in private aviation, made the detailed presentation almost casually, as though the announcement of a next-generation turboprop was just another day at the office instead of what it really was: a watershed announcement. At the press conference, nearly as casually, Textron Aviation’s Christi Tannahill was on hand to confirm that Textron would be the launch customer for the new engine, which it would use to power…

I’m not much on book reviews, but recently, I came across a new, coffee-table book I couldn’t put down. In fact, it was more likely a book I couldn’t pick up. “The Complete book of the SR-71” is a massive, 10” x 13”, 260-page work by Colonel Richard H. Graham, USAF (retired). Following 210 combat missions flying an F4C in Viet Nam, Col. Graham volunteered for, and was selected to fly the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird in 1974. He became the squadron commander of the SR-71s, U-2s and T-38s based at Beale AFB 40 miles north of Sacramento, California in 1980, and went on to command the entire 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale in 1987. Colonel Graham is probably the ultimate expert on the SR-71, and this is the latest and…

“I DON’T SEE ANY PRIMARY [RADAR RETURN] NOR DO I SEE ANYTHING UNDER AT ALL . . .LIKE HE DISAPPEARED.. . I JUST TURNED AROUND AND CAME BACK AND HE WAS GONE.”—KANSAS CITY CENTER CONTROLLER HANDLING THE FLIGHT. The NTSB recently finished its investigation of the October 28, 2013, accident involving a Cessna Citation 500 in which a nationally-known minister and the pilot were killed. Pastor Edward Dufresne, who was 72 years old, led the World Harvest Church in Murrieta, California, and used the twin-engine jet in his travels around the country for preaching engagements. His 49-year-old pilot was properly certificated and experienced for single-pilot operation of the Citation. Dr. Dufresne had made an appearance in Wichita, Kansas, the day before the accident. His next speaking engagement was at a…

“I still occasionally see passengers who have made this same arrangement of window, music, and paper—travelers who have taken an old-school approach to their geography, their writing of the world.” EDITOR’S NOTE: From the first instant we have our hands on the controls, moving an airborne craft though an initially startling number of dimensions, we are pilots. The pilot we were at that moment is alive in all of us still, but as we fly we learn to experience flight in new ways, and that sense of who we are as conductors of the aircraft strengthens, as we grasp connections and fundamentals that escaped us entirely in those early hours. In his instant aviation classic Skyfaring, A Journey with a Pilot, commerical aviator Mark Vanhoenacker, like Mark Twain, a commercial…

The term “hybrid” gets used a lot these days, even when it doesn’t really fit. Of course most people hear the term and think of a car with a combination drive system: an electric motor assisted by a small gasoline engine to take up the slack and charge the batteries if need be. In aviation, there aren’t any production “hybrids” yet, but we’re close, and leading the way is one design that pushes the envelope both in terms of technology and believability. Okay, this might be April, but this design is no joke. The airplane I’m talking about is called “Glowfly,” and it’s still in development but looks promising. The name, as you migwht have noticed, hints for us to just “go fly.” It can also refer to the glow…

Our Christmas morning wasn’t what it should have been: we got a call early on that my ex-brother-in-law had just unexpectedly died. He was only two years older than I am and a health freak. The net effect on me was stronger than I would have expected. It was as if the concept of mortality suddenly became real and I began looking at my life with a different eye. I thought back on that this morning, as I strapped in to fly, and a thought clicked through my mind that was as bright as a neon sign, “Someday you’re going to fly for the last time. Is this that time?” There’s an old, rather macabre saying that the only thing worse than knowing the next flight will be the last…