Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2019 i Flying

I do most of the cooking in my house. My wife thinks this is wonderful, but the truth is she has the tougher job. Since she’s the one who does the grocery shopping and knows what she bought, she usually has to tell me what to make. She’ll often ask why, after all these years, even for the simplest of dishes, I still insist on following a recipe. I tell her it’s because I’m a pilot. And pilots use checklists. A recipe, like a checklist, lets you impose order on a complex process. When it’s taken too far, of course, you risk getting mired in the status quo, which is normally fine for flying but not always the case with the culinary arts (or, I might add, magazine publishing). That’s…

It’s a rainy, blustery October night in New York City, and the lineup for takeoff here at Kennedy International looks to be a good mile long. Lots of heavy metal around, much of it headed across the pond with us. We’re the “light twin” of the bunch in our Boeing 767-300ER. I’m in the right seat and will be the flying pilot to Frankfurt, Germany, an attaboy from the skipper after serving as relief pilot for the first two crossings of this six-day trip. I glance across the cockpit and see JetBlue’s Terminal 5 through the captain’s rain-streaked windscreen — and peeking out from behind it, the real Terminal 5, the 1962 modern masterpiece that famed architect Eero Saarinen sculpted for Trans World Airlines shortly before his untimely passing. It’s…

ENJOY YOUR RETIREMENT, LES Les Abend’s retirement story in the December 2018 issue brought a tear to my eye. Les is the consummate professional pilot. Consider the thousands of passengers he transported safely in the air for so many years. It is really mind-boggling when I think of this accomplishment. My respect for him and others like him is off the charts. Best wishes for your future, Les. Frank Mutz via email Congrats to Les Abend on his retirement. I eagerly await my monthly copy of Flying and always go straight to his column. Les is a wonderful writer who made one feel they were sitting in the right seat of that 777 along with him. Although he was flying heavy iron, one always came away with something they can…

GARMIN EARNS MORE AUTOPILOT STCS GFC SYSTEMS CERTIFIED IN CESSNA 210 AND 208 Garmin continues to expand the list of airplanes certified to receive retrofit installations of its GFC 500 and 600 autopilots. The latest supplemental type certificates include installation approval of the GFC 500 in the Cessna 210 and GFC 600 in the Cessna 208 Caravan. The GFC 500 STC covers the Cessna 210K, T210K, 210L, T210L, 210M, T210M, 210N and T210N. For the GFC 600, the STC covers the cargo-podequipped version of the 208B. The GFC 500 autopilot integrates with Garmin’s G5 electronic flight instrument or a combination of both the G5 electronic flight instrument and the G500 TXi or G500 flight displays. The GFC 600 is designed as a stand-alone autopilot and also boasts improved integration potential…

The 225-hour commercial pilot, 55, had built his JD-2 Dyke Delta in St. Louis and, after several test flights there, took it to Safford, Arizona. Originally intended as a roadable aircraft, the JD-2 had folding wings and sufficiently springy main gear and large tires to allow it to be towed behind a car. It made the 1,400-mile trip without incident. The airplane failed, however, to return from its first flight out of Safford. It was found the next day 10 miles from the airport, in a designated practice area, having crashed on the downhill side of a 50-foot knoll. The pilot was dead. According to the owner of the local FBO, who visited the site, the airplane must have been descending at a high rate to have cleared the top…

Look at her. A double amputee fastened to a cart. My N4984M was totaled in a wind-shear incident back in May and has been sitting in a hangar in Greeley, Colorado, patiently awaiting her fate. As you can see, a decision was made. An airplane without wings is utterly helpless. It’s as if the straps are there to steady her from falling over. The interior looks no better. Holes in the panel expose a tangle of wires. Pulled up carpeting reveals raw aluminum. Seats, side panels and headliner all unceremoniously removed. Slowly she is being picked apart and parted out. It doesn’t feel very good. It’s a constant reminder of my own errors, my own shortcomings. Whatever remains after this process will be trashed. Thankfully, there won’t be much left…

The original Cincinnati Frisch’s Big Boy restaurant, which opened in the 1930s, even today sports a somewhat modified but still charming version of the original retro airplane on its large outdoor sign. This popular hamburger joint (and much more) is on a busy street, about 2 miles north and slightly right of Lunken Airport’s southwest parallel runways. Last week, having lunch with my sister and half listening to her prattle on about her spoiled mutt, Ben (named for aviator Carl Ben Eielson), I was munching on a Big Boy and thinking about an aircraft accident that happened some years ago — very nearly in this restaurant’s parking lot. It was back in my misspent days working on the dark side, posing as an FAA operations inspector while surreptitiously trying —…

Jean-Claude was in the left seat. He was senior to me, but I was flying. We were near the equator, where Mermoz and Guillaumet had once flown — but they, poor fellows, had not been at 35,000 feet! We entered the clouds at what looked like a soft spot in a squall line. At first it wasn’t bad, but then the turbulence came, and with it lightning that never stopped, as if ogres with lanterns were laughing around us. Captain Dubois had gone to his bunk a little while earlier. Dubois was one of the vieux tiges, the rootstock onto which all us young vines were grafted. Behind his back, everyone called him le père Dubois — Old Dubois. I think he was kind, but it was hard to tell;…

While most general aviation pilots, such as those flying Mooneys, Cessnas, TBMs and Embraers, have as much need for a helmet as drivers of Fords and Lexuses, there are many pilots for which a helmet is a critical piece of equipment. Pilots pushing the limits flying aerobatic routines, formation aerobatics or battling it out in air races would be foolish to strap themselves into their cockpits without one. Lift Aviation recently released its AV-1 KOR helmet, incorporating a lightweight honeycomb material called Koroyd, which offers exceptional strength while also providing ventilation and absorbing the shock of an impact. Lift claims the material reduces the strike forces by 32 percent over the EVA foam that is commonly used in helmets. Covering the Koroyd on the inside is a breathable liner that…

Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (KFXE) sits just beneath the international airport’s (KFLL) busy Class C airspace, intertwined at the north edge of Miami’s (KMIA) even busier Class B. KFXE runs about 183,000 takeoffs and landings each year — no surprise to the pilots who want to avoid the cold weather up north in the winter. The airport is also home to more than two dozen aviation businesses and half a dozen flying clubs. Surprisingly, with as much traffic at KFXE as there is, the airport has only three instrument approach procedures: two GPS approaches, one for Runway 9 and the other for 27, and the ILS/LOC Runway 9 approach. The ILS is often used even with a light wind from the west to help avoid making pilots fly long, low…

That’s what notams are. They are just a bunch of garbage that nobody pays any attention to.” It would be a dramatic statement regardless of who said it. But this was Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, speaking at a hearing. Sumwalt had reason to be upset. An Air Canada jetliner had come within 13 feet of another airliner on a go-around after having made an approach to Taxiway Charlie at San Francisco International Airport instead of Runway 28R. The left runway was not illuminated, because it was closed. The pilots lined up with the right of the two remaining sets of lights. The frustrating part is the notice to airmen (notam) system is in place to help prevent exactly this kind of mistake. And the pilots…

Well, the cops say, “nobody knows what goes on in a squad car.” And all married people know that no one outside ever knows what goes on in a marriage. My particular racket is show business, and I can report, from 40 years’ experience, that nobody who wasn’t there knows what happened on a movie set. The set is particular in this way too: One must be a working part of the operation to understand the things one hears and sees. One cannot “visit” the film set, the squad car or the marriage. Interactions in these hermetic environments are, to the passers-by, incomprehensible, where they are even perceived. For the byplay in these close, mutually dedicated and profoundly busy associations, in addition to being rapid and technical, is intimate. Folks…

It is said that a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. The same might be said of a second attempt at buying a jet just a few months after having suffered a painful breakup. Things are surely different the second time around. My first jet-buying experience was mostly characterized by lust. I just wanted a jet, and a Beechcraft Premier 1 at that. Rational thought and careful analysis were overwhelmed by emotion. As I was late in my flying career, a sense of urgency suffused the entire process. I wasn’t oblivious, but I was not cautious. When presented with an unpleasant fact or two, I disregarded or diminished their importance. Like a man advised that his intended lover had flaws, I didn’t want to hear it, excused…