Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2016 i Plane & Pilot

In two months, with the May cover date, we’ll be launching the new Plane & Pilot. In that premier issue, just about everything about the magazine will have changed, while, somewhat paradoxically, all the important things will remain the same. The new magazine will feature award-winning authors, illustrators, and columnists, and there will be brand- new spaces designed to entertain and enlighten. I won’t spill the beans about the details quite yet—there will be big surprises—but I’ll characterize the kind of experience you’ll be getting. The essential nature of Plane & Pilot won’t be changing. We’ve always been a brand that focuses on the flying experience, as seen from the left seat—okay, or the right seat, if you fly helicopters, or the back seat, if you fly J-3s, or, sigh,…

Phenomenal jet streams in the high sky were first discovered by WWII B-29 bomber crews in the mid-1940s on the way from Tinian, Marianas, to Japan. Winds were reported as high as 100 knots on some of those missions. Here at home, the reality is closer to 50 knots or less above FL300. If corporate or airline jets can pick up even 10 minutes on a four- or five-hour trip, however, that represents a major fuel savings, not to mention a reduction of crew duty time. (Airliners can burn huge amounts of fuel; just under a gallon a second on a 747 at cruise. In practical terms, a 10-minute reduction in flight time in a 747 results in roughly 600 gallons less fuel burn.)…

Flight Control And Trim Anomalies These are reader reactions to our article by Peter Katz on the NTSB and aircraft maintenance, which you can read on www.planeandpilotmag.com/pilot-talk/ ntsb-debriefer. As an A&P/IA, I am NEVER offended when an owner/pilots ask me to demonstrate the correct operation of any system on the aircraft after maintenance, especially flight controls. It is also fair game to ask how many sets of eyes will be on critical operations, such as rigging flight controls and engine controls. Our CRS demands at least three sets of eyes. —Dave Johnson, Online I took my DR 400 for a checkflight right after a star annual and did not check my speed on takeoff because I knew the feel of the aircraft so well. I began to climb out and…

I’D SOMETIMES CALL AHEAD ON A PAY PHONE AND ASK PERMISSION TO LAND OR, FAILING THAT, I COULD FLY OVERHEAD AT 1,500 AGL, WAG MY WINGS AND WAIT LOOK FOR A LIGHT GUN FROM THE TOWER—WITH RED FOR “HOLD” AND GREEN FOR “CLEARED TO LAND.” The Eagles: “…so put me on a highway and show me a sign, and take it to the limit one more time…” In 1984, I bought into a Pitts S-1S biplane—a single-seater with a 180 hp Lycoming engine and a fixed-pitch propeller. The S-1S was state-of-the-art at the time, and my half interest gave me “unlimited” opportunities to move to higher categories of aerobatic competition. I had flown to Texas to compete at the U.S. National Aerobatic Championships. We were rained out, and while it…

LEADED AVIATION GASOLINE (AVGAS) was developed in the 1940s as a means of suppressing “knock,” or detonation in supercharged engines used in military aircraft. Detonation is the premature ignition of the fuel-air mixture in the engine’s cylinders due to compression; normally, the ignition is triggered by the cylinder’s spark plug. Sustained detonation can have catastrophic affects on an engine, and many engines that power general aviation aircraft require 100LL (low lead) avgas for the same reason. Tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) is the ingredient that gives this avgas its lead, and consequently its high-octane rating. But lead is also a known neurotoxin shown to interfere with children’s brain development, among other health consequences. Though levels of TEL in avgas have been reduced 50 percent since the 1970s, 100LL is now the only…

Almost regardless of our age, 20-something to gray dog, it’s impossible not to engage in those “Hey, do you remember when…?” moments, where we look back at experiences, people and times in our lives when something memorable happened. Then as we progress through life, we find ourselves hitting milestones that make it impossible not to look back because of the amazement attached to specific numbers. Fifty is one of those numbers. When we’re student pilots, 50 hours hang in front of us as some sort of incandescent carrot urging us on. Even though at that stage in our av-development we know 50 hours isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, to us, it’s a big deal. The next flight-hour big deal is 100 hours, then 500 hours, then the…

AT ANY GIVEN TIME, HALF THE COUNTRIES ARE IN OR APPROACHING REVOLUTION, THERE’S NOT A MCDONALD’S WITHIN 1,000 MILES, AND ANYTHING THAT DOESN’T BITE, POISON OR STING IS PROBABLY A ROCK. The Navajo Chieftain seems to grumble at flying so early in the morning. The engines come up to speed as they have before, the airplane lumbers down the runway at 1,000 pounds over gross as always, but it feels somehow disquieted at the prospect of its first trip to Africa. This is my 25th, and I’m equally reluctant. I lift off the runway at Las Palmas, Canary Islands, retract the gear and turn southeast toward the coast of Africa. Only about 170 nm of ocean separate me from the sandy beaches of Western Sahara, and considering that I’ve just…

FIGURING OUT WEIGHT AND BALANCE SHOULD BE SECOND NATURE FOR A PILOT, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE USED TO CRAMMING AS MUCH INTO AN AIRCRAFT AS YOU SAFELY CAN BEFORE TAKING OFF FOR AN EXOTIC HUNTING OR FISHING LOCATION IN THE ALASKA WILDERNESS. This past October, the NTSB issued its final report on the July 7, 2013, crash of a de Havilland DHC-3 single-engine Otter just after takeoff from the Soldotna, Alaska, airport. The Otter is a high-wing, tailwheel, single-engine airplane designed for heavy hauling. It was in production from 1951 to 1968, and has been popular among bush pilots in Alaska and elsewhere. The U.S. Army used it to haul personnel and supplies around Vietnam during the war. It originally was powered by a radial engine, but turboprop conversions were developed…

While GPS navigation transformed general aviation in 1995, all eyes are now on the federal ADS-B mandate that will go into effect January 1, 2020. “ADS-B” is the acronym for Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, which is a whole new way of tracking and controlling aircraft using satellites instead of ground-based RADAR. ADS-B is a key component of NextGen air traffic modernization, and holds benefits for both pilots and controllers. At its most basic, the 2020 ADS-B mandate will require all aircraft operating in airspace that today requires a Mode C transponder to be equipped with new hardware that will transmit ADS-B Out. ADS-B Out transmits information about altitude, airspeed, and location which is derived from GPS satellites, then transmitted to both ground stations and to other aircraft equipped with ADS-B In…