Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2018 i Plane & Pilot

First helicopter capable of hovering flight with pilot: Paul Cornu’s unnamed helicopter, 1907 Height of that first flight: About 1 foot Duration: 20 seconds Fate of Cornu’s helicopter design: Abandoned Early design standoff: Dual contra-rotors vs. one plus tail rotor Early enabling technology: Swashplate for collective pitch changes First “practical” helicopter: Sikorsky VS-300 Fastest helicopter ever: Eurocopter X3 experimental, 250 knots Fastest military helicopter: Boeing CH-47 Chinook, 170 knots Largest helicopter ever: Soviet Mil V-12 Weight: 213,485 pounds max takeoff weight Payload: Approximately 60,000 pounds Rotors: Two main rotors, each 114 feet, 10 inches in diameter Number built: 2 Most-produced civil helicopter: Probably the Bell 206 Jet Ranger, 8,460 built Most-produced helicopter ever: Soviet Mil Mi-8, more than 17,000 Crew of Mi-8: Three—pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer Useful load: About…

ACROSS 1 The answer is right in front of your eyes! 5 A seal is used in one to cut drag 9 Long range (acronym) 11 Some flight crew in EMT planes 12 “American Champion” plane 13 Time-saving alternative to plans 14 World's biggest aviation marketplace 16 Flying prefix 17 Mathematical ratio 18 “Air capital of the world” 20 It’s a factor that will affect a used plane’s price 23 State where flying is a major form of civilian transport 24 Left tip color 26 Technically, gas piston, yes, but electric, no 27 This plane flew out the hangar door 28 Fokker Dr.-1 29 Douglas and Cessna both built one 31 Snoopy’s mount 32 What pilots can’t do when they get invited to fly 33 The founder of this company?…

At the Barnstormer’s Grill in Williamson, Georgia, I sat in a booth next to myself at age 20. Okay, so he was redheaded, and thin, but the parts that really mattered were all but identical. Similar socioeconomic upbringing, same struggle to continue higher education, same desire to fly airplanes for a living. And friends, this young man could fly the stuffing out of an airplane. Our paths crossed by way of mutual friend Kelly Leggette. Kelly, my friend, mentor and the benefactor who wrote a blank check noted “pay me back when you can” so I could finish the ratings to become a professional pilot back when I often searched my Toyota’s cupholder for gas money. Kelly owns two of the Zlin 526s that were part of the airshow team…

Lift off from Runway 25 at Four Corners Regional Airport in Farmington, New Mexico, turn slightly west to point the spinner at Shiprock, and you’re on track for some of the most remarkable views in America. If you’re a fan of old John Wayne westerns, you will already have seen the dramatic rock formations of Monument Valley on the big screen many times. Take away the screen altogether and translate those geologic images to reality, however, and you’ll gain a whole new perspective on what many pilots regard as the most spectacular terrain in the Mountain West. Columbia Aircraft had hired me to fly one of the longest and most challenging air-to-air photo formation missions I could ever imagine. Back in 2005, Columbia hoped to compile a library of dramatic…

I’ve been fascinated by the trials and tribulations of Tesla, the electric carmaker famous and infamous for both its cars’ capabilities and limitations. A high-profile crash while one of its vehicles was being “driven” on autopilot in Florida raised concerns about the readiness of the auto-drive feature, and the recent production and delivery logistics problems for the company’s new Model 3 have vexed buyers of that new car who have been waiting for ages to get their high-tech wheels. The thing about Tesla’s woes wasn’t that I’d never seen anything like it before. It was that I’ve seen exactly those same challenges time and time again in the aviation world. One of the coolest things in the history of aviation is the personal jet. So far there have been exactly…

JETBLUE’S USE OF RENEWABLE FUEL TAKES OFF JetBlue made its first flight using renewable fuel in September when an A321 newly delivered to the airline flew using a blend comprised of traditional fuel and 15.5 percent renewable fuel. The company expects to take delivery of four additional A321s that will run on the renewable mixture by the end of the year. FOREFLIGHT DELIVERS TEXT MESSAGE FLIGHT CLEARANCES ForeFlight and Satcom Direct have teamed up to provide a service that enables IFR pilots to obtain pre-flight clearances via text messaging, allowing them to forgo the traditional radio call. Pilots can currently utilize the feature at 76 airports throughout the country. RENO AIR RACES CELEBRATES 55TH EVENT Big crowds descended on Reno Stead Airport for the 55th edition of the Reno Air…

Garmin D2 Delta S Pilot Watch With a beige leather band coupled with a rose gold-tone bezel, this smaller-size aviation watch from Garmin provides a set of powerful features in a sophisticated and compact design. The Delta S syncs with your avionics panel so that you can view your GPS navigation straight from the watch’s full-color moving map, and its internal worldwide airport database allows users to view Direct-to and Nearest routing options easily. The D2 also features NEXRAD weather and the ability to set your own waypoints. In addition to its aviation functions, the watch provides a number of other features, such as email and text, as well as Garmin’s contactless payment service. The watch can connect to a plane’s audio panel using Bluetooth and can also store up…

The FAA issued a Notice in October that allows more flexibility in how Designated Pilot Examiners (DPEs) conduct practical tests. These changes are poised to help alleviate some backlogs in the scheduling and conducting of practical tests in the United States for pilots and students. Specifically, the major points of change included allowing DPEs to conduct tests without being limited geographically (previously they were limited to operating only in their Flight Standards District Office—FSDO—area) and that applicants seeking initial CFI practical tests will no longer be required to contact those FSDO offices to assign an examiner for those tests. The FAA also increased and removed some limitations on the numbers of tests DPEs are able to conduct in a day. These may seem like small changes, but the effects can…

Without a doubt, the hottest January destination in 2019 will be the 15th annual U.S. Sport Aviation Expo in Sebring, Florida. The event, which started as a modest LSA gathering in 2004, has evolved into a good sized get together that spans the sport aviation world, with everything from big-tired taildraggers to jumping gyroplanes, from slick and sleek LSAs for getting around to powered parachutes for going nowhere none too fast. Located in Sebring, Florida, the event is well removed from big cities and congested airspace, which is one of the main reasons it’s such a great destination. The airspace is, well, if not wide open then pretty close to it, the airport management are gracious hosts in a way that only Southerners truly know how to be, and there’s…

Not everyone in the world gets to be a pilot. In fact, a fraction of 1 percent of people in the United States ever get their wings, and worldwide it’s a fraction of a hundredth of a percent. Being a pilot sometimes seems common to us, because so many of our friends are pilots, and with social media, well, we know pilots from around the world. But the truth is, we’re a tiny group of people who get to say that they’ve commanded a plane. It’s something we shouldn’t take lightly and that we should take great pride in. I do. And of that group of pilots, there’s a sub-group, airplane owners. What percentage of active pilots are also airplane owners? It’s not an easy figure to come up with,…

Round airports have been around since the early days of aviation, because that layout allowed the notoriously lightly wing-loaded planes of the day to land directly into the wind no matter which direction it was blowing. But circular runways are another thing altogether. And while the idea might seem totally crazy at first blush, there’s some serious research being done to see if circular runways could achieve increased airspace system capacity, which absolutely is limited by the number of available runway ends. With a circular runway, there would be, theoretically, an unlimited number of runway “ends” at any given airport. THE IDEA With a circular runway, planes could approach to land from many different angles, so you could have multiple planes on approach simultaneously. And you could have planes taking…

For people looking for an industry with exciting jobs, high salaries and attractive benefits packages, not to mention numerous quality-of-life perks, there probably aren’t a lot of options. But there are a few, if you’ve got the right stuff and get the right training. And aviation is one such industry, and there are a lot of aviation jobs just waiting to be filled. According to studies by Boeing, Airbus and others, the need for skilled workers is immense and will continue to be so. The number of pilots the industry needs to hire over the next 20 years is a staggering figure, nearly a million, and the growth will likely be linear, without a lot of the burn and churn from previous employment spikes. Bottom line: The world’s airlines and…

Most people are surprised when I tell them that I don’t love to fly. They don’t understand why I would engage in a risky and expensive activity without loving it. Although I have often wondered about that myself, over the years I have come to understand it better. While I don’t love to fly, I fly to love. That’s going to require a bit of explanation, so bear with me. While I don’t love to fly, I feel compelled to do it. Flying for me fulfills a need, and after struggling to understand that need, I recognized it as a need for mastery. The desire to become the best we can be appears to be built in to the human character; it allows us to withstand abusive coaches on the…

At my airport, it’s rarely ever quiet; that’s a price we have to pay while flying at one of the busiest general aviation airports in the country. It’s not often that I get to fly in the morning with my busy schedule, but I woke up extra early to do a quick engine break-in flight before work. It was the time of year in Colorado where the mornings are cold and the afternoons are hot, in between summer and fall. As I walked out to the Cessna 172 I was supposed to fly, I felt ecstatic about the chilly morning; it meant I’d get better performance with the 160 horsepower engine the Skyhawk was equipped with. Taxiing out to the runway that morning was quiet. I was the only one…

IN 2018, WE WATCHED AS AVIATION CAME face to face with new technology on several important fronts. Of course, anyone who’s been around flying for very long knows that almost nothing changes fast in aviation, so the coming together of light-speed tech advances and fully developed, if not perfected, aviation systems has got to lead to big crashing sounds, and it has. The world of drone implementation is a huge mess. The old-school FAA is coming face to face with cries for modernization, and the agency is predictably unhappy with changing its game. Fuel continues to be an issue. We have yet to develop a way to get unleaded avgas to pilots, and ADS-B is a looming disaster, with January 1, 2020, the day the mandate goes into effect, looking…

In the sticky southern Georgia afternoon, the air was flat and heavy as we turned final for Runway 6 at KCSG. It was our last fuel stop after a long day, and we were ready to call it quits for the evening. Following my flight lead, an A36 Bonanza, down the imaginary glideslope, I flew close enough to his right wing that I could see the rivets. Out of the corner of my peripheral view, I saw the white stripes of the approach end of the runway, and we continued to descend. Landing in formation is something I have done many times. It is intense and takes focus to stay in position, and a lot of small adjustments must be made with dissimilar airplanes and when there are flaps and…