Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2018 i Plane & Pilot

What is your responsibility when you’re flying with a friend or business associate and you see something that either looks flat-out wrong or maybe that you just don’t feel comfortable with? Most pilots would say, I’d say something. But my experience is that, we don’t. I know this because I’ve been that person who didn’t speak up and felt terrible about it later (though, thank goodness, nothing bad ever happened), and I’ve been that person who did speak up and who suffered because of it. There’s risk to speaking up, and it would be disingenuous for me to suggest that I haven’t done some kind of risk-benefit analysis before speaking up on many occasions. How bad is the situation; that is, how much danger is the flight in—including your own…

GARMIN ACQUIRES FLTPLAN.COM, BOOSTS AVIATION OFFERINGS Garmin strengthened its portfolio of aviation services in August with the acquisition of FltPlan LLC, which runs the popular flight planning website FltPlan.com and the FltPlan mobile app. The Connecticut-based Flt Plan team will continue to provide service to the platform’s 165,000-plus registered users as it integrates within the Garmin umbrella. AIRBUS PERLAN 2 REACHES RECORD HEIGHTS The team behind the Airbus Perlan 2, a research glider that aims to study giant mountain waves and their effect on climate change, set a new world record in August with a flight that reached over 60,000 feet. The record flight beats the team’s previous world record of over 52,000 feet, achieved in the fall of 2017. VAN’S AIRCRAFT TO BUILD RV-12s Van’s Aircraft has announced it…

MYGOFLIGHT Head-Up Display MYGOFLIGHT has branched out from its traditional realm of iPad gear and other flight accessories and into the sector of advanced tech with its introduction of a new head-up display system called SkyDisplay. SkyDisplay utilizes certified data from the airplane’s instruments in order to provide key info, including indicated airspeed, pressure altitude and attitude right within a pilot’s line of sight. In addition to traditional panel data, the HUD also features a flight path marker and a flight director cue that provides pilots with vital information for hand-flown approaches. The HUD operates automatically without the need for any pilot input. The product is currently in testing, and the first STC is planned for an Avidyne Entegra PFD with Garmin G430w nav radios and the Avidyne DFC90 autopilot.…

My first day as a newly minted co-pilot in a Hawker 700 jet was exciting and early on not what I expected. The weather was clear and a million. Positive ions in the air. Wind right down the runway. Passengers on board, lined up, we were going to San Francisco. We rolled down the runway and away we went. We climbed like only a Hawker 700 could climb with full fuel and passengers. Slowly. It took about an hour to get to flight level 360. Or so it seemed. Once at flight level, we were headed south from the Pacific Northwest. We finished with all the checks. We settled in to the two-hour flight. I did what I thought I was supposed to do, made a radio call, then looked…

Over the past couple of decades and change, I’ve flown behind a staggering variety of autopilots, from the always-active Mooney positive control, single-axis “wing-leveler” model to the remarkably sophisticated autoflight system in the Boeing 777, which will autoland the airplane in conditions too low for a human pilot to see to even taxi back to the gate. And over all this time, there’s been one constant: you get what you pay for. The more advanced the features, the better the performance, the bigger the airplane, the more you paid. With the exception of big bizjet and airliner systems being very expensive, the old adage is true no more. The GFC 500 is an autopilot that gives you a staggeringly sophisticated level of capability for a price, $6,995, that looks like…

Most people have some sort of bucket list. Sometimes we don’t get it on paper, but we all have goals we want to achieve or amazing feats we want to accomplish before we die. You know the list. Climb Mt. Everest. Fly around the world. Safari in Africa. Get over your fear of public speaking. My bucket list is probably not unlike yours: Buy an airplane, try out paragliding, fly around Alaska, write a book, learn to fly fish, and many other expensive and time-consuming things. I’m exhausted just looking at it. I, like many of you, don’t have enough money to buy an airplane, but from time to time, when I start to get ahead of the game financially, I think, maybe I’ll be able to buy an airplane…

First landing in a powered plane: Orville Wright, Wright Flyer, Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, December 17, 1903 First successful helicopter landing: Paul Cornu, November 13, 1907, Lisieux, France First landing on a heavenly body: Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong, Sea of Tranquility, Earth’s Moon, July 20, 1969 First landing on inflated rubber aircraft tires: Goodyear tires, 1909 Average number of landings before first solo landing: 50-100 Typical number of landings on first solo: One Definition of “cycle” with commercial aircraft: One takeoff and landing Reason for use of “cycles:” Each landing completes a pressure vessel cycle Oldest pilot, first solo flight/landing: Cliff Garl, 91 years old, April 24, 2006 Why landings must be to full stop for night currency: Safety and skill building First touch and go landing: Unknown…

The Minimum Equipment List (MEL) may be the airline world’s most deceptively titled document. By its title, one might expect to open a single-page document of the bare necessities required to be operational in order to dispatch an airliner. Instead, it is a labyrinthine document that, contrary to its name, spells out what items you can have inoperative and still fly. Airliners have a lot of redundant systems to ensure safety. The Canadair Regional Jet, for instance, has three hydraulic systems, all of which are connected to the flight controls. Any one system can fail in flight, and the other two systems have enough power to move the controls. Even losing the two most critical systems shouldn’t result in bent metal. Dual-loop fire and bleed air leak systems greatly reduce…

Fly IFR, and you’ll run into this situation soon enough: You’re on a base-leg vector to the localizer or inbound course. This means you’re perpendicular to the final approach course—the course that takes you to the runway—and the next heading you receive from ATC should result in a 20- to 30-degree intercept to that final approach course. You should also get clearance to hold that heading until you join the final course and fly the instrument approach. The catch is that a kickin’ tailwind has you screaming over the ground, and you can see the course needles for final course already moving toward center. You know you need to start the turn now, or you’ll overshoot. However, ATC seems to have forgotten you and is currently talking to someone else.…

It’s probably not all that often that an airplane owner brings their plane in for an annual inspection and leaves with a smile. However, for seven years, I was lucky enough to have that experience. During that time, I lived in Delaware, and the shop I used for my annual was located a short flight away in an adjoining state. The shop owner and IA retired from a major airline and was widely viewed in the area as one of the nicest people you would ever meet. I agreed with that assessment. I also agreed with his general philosophy on airplane maintenance, namely, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. There are exceptions to this, of course, when it comes to safety-related items and FAA regulations, and I have always…

A lifetime ago, but almost like yesterday, and a little more than 34 years ago, I went to my first Oshkosh. My husband and I drove from Fond du Lac, a few miles south, where I was flying in my first aerobatic contest. I had gotten my license four years earlier and, so far, being a pilot was a great adventure. New to general aviation, I had read about the big annual gathering in Oshkosh in the aviation magazines I so eagerly consumed. I like to explore new things and places without a lot of expectations, preferring to be surprised rather than disappointed, but for a new pilot in love with airshows and all things aerobatic, I couldn’t wait to see what the performers were like and to watch them…

ACROSS 1 Lance-like 5 What some brakes help you do 8 Waggle 9 Dutch or barrel 11 Activity when you’re riding in back 12 65 is an important one 14 Good policy for renters 16 Hall of fame aviator Scholl 17 Most ORDinary airport 19 Don’t forget to pull this one 21 Negative prefix 22 Husky or Pitts 25 Title for Branson or Whittle 28 What you do to figure your glide distance 31 ____ P2006T 32 Old name for the ramp still used 36 Suitable 37 You need to do this to the props 38 Not every 182 is one of these DOWN 1 180, 185, 205, 206, 207 were all one 2 Steam gauge type of data 3 One might have a big fan…or a prop 4 Maker…

A few months ago, I posted a video on Facebook of a takeoff I made in what was pretty much a zero-zero visibility and low-IFR-ceiling situation. The post, as many do, generated comments and opinions. And a few questions. The most interesting question it generated was from a fellow examiner. He asked, “What are the lowest conditions you would take off in?” My answer was, it depends. A “zero-zero” takeoff is generally considered to occur when the pilot is taking off into low IFR conditions in which runway visibility is limited to the length of the runway or less and very low ceilings. Things like fog, snow squalls, heavy precipitation, or other similar conditions many times cause this to happen. When this is the case and a pilot feels the…

IN an iconic piece of aviation advertising, Belford D. Maule, universally known as B.D., used to tail his demonstrator ship deep into his Moultrie, Georgia, hangar. In a blast of noise and a cloud of dust, he shot out the front door with the nose angling sharply to the sky, the giant “MAULE” letters on the front face of the hangar clearly visible. Captured on film, that image formed the centerpiece of Maule marketing materials for decades, and Sam Lyons later immortalized the act with his painting ”Be Back In A Minute.” Fifty years later, Spence Air Base doubles as a fairground. Taxiing to the nearest runway is now a 10-minute affair of nosing through chain-link gates, slaloming light poles and picking between the buildings that house Moultrie’s Agricultural Exposition.…

It was mid-August, 1991, and California had been baking under a seasonal high-pressure system, pushing temperatures well above the century mark from Baja to the Oregon border. I’d departed early from my home base of Compton in the Los Angeles Basin to meet a SOCATA TBM-700 in Concord, a few miles inland from the coastal hills of Oakland. I’d climbed high in hopes of missing the major heat of the San Joaquin Valley on the outbound leg to Concord. The SOCATA (now known as Daher) team was on time, and I flew the TBM for two hours above the Sierra Nevada, then another hour for an air-to-air photo session above Lake Tahoe. After a brief interview with the SOCATA execs, I launched for home in early afternoon. My Mooney wasn’t…