Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2015 i Plane & Pilot

Exactly 50 years ago, Plane & Pilot published its first issue. It’s 1965 and LBJ is sworn in as president, Martin Luther King, Jr., leads the Civil Rights March to the Selma courthouse, the Beatles perform at Shea Stadium, My Fair Lady wins eight Academy Awards and, in December, publishing executive (and amateur pilot) Don Werner decides to start a magazine about small-craft aviation (cover on bottom right). As our Staff Report details in a thorough survey on the magazine’s history (see page 24), Werner was inspired, personally and professionally, by aviation pioneer Max Conrad, who brought his rich experience onto the pages of Plane & Pilot. More importantly, Conrad shared his passion for planes and flying with the magazine’s staff and readers. Current publisher Mike McMann came aboard Plane…

Sporty’s CFI Flight Gear Bag Flight instructors now have a sturdy flight bag to make their jobs easier. This compact bag will hold a headset along with other aviation accessories, but remains lightweight and perfect for short flights. The CFI Flight Gear Bag has a padded external transceiver pocket with Sporty’s patented split flap. Another padded external pocket is designed to hold a water bottle. The bag also has an internal padded ADS-B receiver pocket and a quick-access iPad pocket. A front organizer section has room for those small items such as fuel testers, flashlights, pens and more. The Flight Gear CFI Bag is available for $39.95 with an optional embroidery personalization for $9.95. For more information, visit www.sportys.com or call (800) SPORTYS. Your Next Aviator Watch Meet the Garmin…

As the FAA’s 2020 ADS-B Out mandate approaches, an increasingly wide array of products are available for operators needing to retrofit their airplanes. There’s one class of airplanes, however, for which the upgrade path hasn’t been at all clear—those that came from the factory with a glass panel. While brand-new glass-panel airplanes today typically come equipped for ADS-B Out, older airplanes with glass panels that predate the mandate typically will require an upgrade—and that raises issues: Do you get the upgrade from the avionics vendor, or from the aircraft manufacturer? Do you have to upgrade the panel, or can you add something like a stand-alone Universal Access Transceiver (UAT)? And what about “orphan” airplanes that are no longer supported by the original manufacturer? Usually, in these columns, I take pains…

ONE OF THE TBM 900’s most impressive talents is its ability to outperform virtually every other turboprop on the market, do it with better economy and even keep up with some light jets in cruise. George Schaeffer of Schaeffer Industries in California is one example of a TBM 900 owner who uses his airplane to maximum advantage. Schaeffer operates a series of steel processing facilities in Linden, Utah, and Mira Loma and Stockton, Calif. His company services clients all along the West Coast, and Schaffer is a hands-on kind of owner. “This is my second TBM. I traded a TBM 850 for this airplane and flew a Mooney Bravo before that” Schaeffer was building an Epic until that company went bankrupt “and things got pretty murky,” he said. “I looked…

On September 8, 2015, British Airways flight 2276 was scheduled to fly from McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nev., to London’s Gatwick Airport. There were 157 passengers and 13 crew on board the Boeing 777-200ER. During the takeoff roll, the left engine sustained an uncontained failure, and a fire broke out. The left engine and its pylon, and part of the left side of the fuselage and the inboard part of the left wing, received substantial fire damage. Fortunately, the pilots were able to bring the airplane to a stop on the runway and an evacuation was conducted, which resulted in only a few minor injuries. A huge column of thick black smoke rose from the airplane as the fire raged, providing grim evidence of the destructive forces that…

LSA Adventures The LSA segment has a lot of terrific aircraft. They take off quickly, climb quickly, glide far and use little runway on landing. Many have ballistic airframe parachutes. These attributes increase the margin of safety. Plus, they’re economical to operate. Most of all, they’re fun. And when I personally see airline pilots, current and retired (with 30,000+ hours in big iron) sing the praises of LSAs, I’m listening. I bought an FK-9 eight years and 1,400 hours ago. Learning to fly was one of the best decisions of my life. —Peter McCook, Online The Joys Of Flying I didn’t know how much I’d enjoy learning to fly until I had lesson for a 70th birthday present. Then I realized it was something I had always wanted to do!…

If speed is aviation’s ultimate excess, altitude is its great equalizer. Fly high enough, and the sky washes the Earth clean of the soiled hand of man, hiding the blemishes inflicted in the short span of a few hundred years. Even if you’re flying in the bottom two miles of sky, altitude helps smooth out the wrinkles, softening the hard lines of age, leaving the land looking more peaceful and unspoiled. Twenty-seven thousand feet is a good compromise, more than enough but less than too much, especially if you happen to be cruising effortlessly above Northern Spain in a Piper Cheyenne III propjet. From five miles high in skies as clear as Chablis, you can see forever, or at least the land that helped spawn 2,500 years of recorded history,…

Reducing the likelihood of aircraft stalls Aircraft stalls are a major concern for every pilot. So much so, that the FAA has identified it as one of its key safety issues facing general aviation. Aspen’s innovative Evolution AOA indicator provides the pilot a visual display of the AOA trend and the approximate available lift simultaneously in all phases of flight. With a simple software upgrade, Aspen’s AOA uses unique, patent-pending technology to calculate and intuitively display the aircraft AOA for both flaps up and flaps down aircraft configurations on Aspen’s Evolution primary or multi-function displays without the need for additional hardware or aircraft modifi cations. For more information, visit www.aspenavionics.com/aoa Copyright 2015 Aspen Avionics Inc. “Aspen Avionics,” “Evolution Flight Display System,” “Connected Panel,” and the Aspen Avionics aircraft logo are…

One of the advantages of visiting a friend in his home and/or office is that you get a sense of their environment. From that point on, every time you talk on the phone or exchange emails, you can visualize the face and the setting that belong to the words you’re hearing or reading. It adds another dimension to the conversation. If that visit never takes place, your imagination fills in the blanks. The following is meant to eliminate those blanks. The words on this page, Grassroots, have always come out of a defined space that I call an “office.” Regardless of the size of my apartment or house, a single room was always appropriated and was modified to be a workspace. One was actually a converted closet. Most who have…

Small general aviation airports around the country, indeed around the world, are the safest, most hospitable places I know. I can leave my car unlocked; I usually don’t even shut my hangar door when I’m out flying locally and, to this day, I doubt I’ve ever had anything taken. Airport people and pilots in general are an honest and respectful sort—a cut above the rest. Since 9/11, Homeland Security has mandated fences—big chain-link fences—at most small airports, particularly those with commercial airline service. In the interest of security, the fences and gates are designed to keep people out, but as I’ve found when I forget my gate card, they’re also designed to keep people in. The gate near my hangar even has an annoying speed bump because an eager TSA…

Maybe it’s the heightened visibility of the Valdez Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) competition, persistent messaging from the Recreational Aviation Foundation or just some aerial extension of the back-to-nature movement, but interest in bush flying and STOL aircraft is trending. Surely, neo-Cub manufacturer CubCrafters belongs on the list of contributing factors. The “Reimagined” Piper Cub Originally founded to provide aftermarket upgrades to the Piper Cub, CubCrafters (CC) began creating composite, “better than original” versions of the iconic bush plane—the Top Cub, Sport Cub S2 and Carbon Cub SS—in the last decade. Its amateur-built kit Carbon Cub EX, introduced in 2010, furthered the refinement process. Wrapped around a chromoly-steel cage, the airframe is stronger than the original Super Cub, yet weighs almost 300 pounds less and has fewer than half…