Plane & Pilot April 2019

First non-experimental airplane company: Wright Company Founded: 1909 Location: Dayton, Ohio First production plane: Wright Model B Total number of planes produced: About 120 Defunct: 1916 Number of planes produced worldwide for WWI: Around 200,000 Number produced by France alone: Around 70,000 Rate at which Allies outproduced Germans by war’s end: 5:1 Most-produced plane of WWI: British Avro 504 bomber/trainer Most-produced plane ever: Cessna 172, more than 44,000 and counting No. 2: Ilyushin Il-2 fighter/bomber: 36,183 Biplane production champ: Soviet Polikarpov Po-2, 18,000+ Helicopter: Soviet Mil Mi-8, more than 17,000 Most successful bomber by numbers: Consolidated B-24 Liberator, 18,482 Of top 10 most-produced planes, the latest to entry: Piper PA-28, 1960 Number of planes built in WWII worldwide: 786,553 Country with largest WWII total: USA, 300,557 Next most: USSR, 158,220…

It’s good to know people who went through aviation history and who saw big changes. I’m talking transformative technology introductions, like all-metal monocoque construction, the opposed air-cooled engine, the turbine engine, GPS and computers in the cockpit. Advances like these have reshaped aviation again and again since even before Kitty Hawk. Still, every time a new development comes down the pike, some pilots are unhappy with the change. In a way, I get that. For me, the sweet spot in aviation was the 1960s, when the Big Three, Cessna, Beech and Piper, were churning out tens of thousands of airplanes a year, and there were some great airplanes, too. I could talk about those all day long, and, to be honest, I sometimes do. I love the spirit of the…

In 1938, more than 10 years after Charles Lindbergh successfully crossed the Atlantic solo in the Spirit of St. Louis, another American, Douglas Corrigan, made the crossing as well, taking off from New York’s Floyd Bennett Field and landing 28 hours and change later in Ireland, where Corrigan asked where he was. You see, Corrigan wasn’t attempting to cross the Atlantic at all but to fly non-stop from the East Coast to the West Coast of America and got confused in the cloudy weather and wound up flying across The Pond instead of the 48 united states. He almost immediately got the nickname “Wrong Way Corrigan” for his famous flub. What an idiot. Except, he wasn’t. It was all a charade. We wouldn’t even call it a lie, because we’re…

ACROSS 2 First modular space station 4 Guy who made a big noise with a Bell 7 What to fly when getting there is pretty standard 8 Clyde of Silverwing fame 10 Mostly used in aviation instead of SM 12 Renaissance man who designed methods of flight 14 Air Force rank, for short 16 English engineer and aviator known as the “father of the aeroplane” 19 “Flight __”—with engines run back to a zero-thrust condition 20 The ancient Chinese “flew” in these “sky lanterns,” 3 words 26 Bond actor who hilariously “piloted” a Cessna in “Live or Let Die” 30 Testing area 32 First man to fly across the English Channel, Louis ____ 33 __ camera, action 34 Runway identifiers 36 One of the Wright brothers 38 A good spark…

EPS DIESEL ENGINE NEARS CERTIFICATION Engine Propulsion Systems plans to begin production in the middle of the year of its clean-sheet Graflight 8 diesel engine, the company recently announced. The engine, which will generate 320-420 hp, aims to bring better fuel efficiency to single and twin GA airplanes historically powered by avgas. FRASCA PARTNERS WITH GARMIN FOR RTD SIM Frasca International, Inc., has unveiled a reconfigurable training device that is the first to feature Garmin’s real G1000 NXi software. The company says the sim will allow pilots to train more effectively using authentic avionics software, as opposed to relying on imitations, by replicating exact cockpit conditions. PIPISTREL PAIRS WITH HONEYWELL TO ENTER EVTOL FIELD Pipistrel and Honeywell have announced they will be working together to create a Pipistrel eVTOL vehicle…

PEGASUS QUANTUM Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin/Injuries: 2 Fatal The sport pilot (who was not an instructor) and the student-pilot-rated passenger were making a local personal flight in the weight-shift-control (WSC) aircraft. The pilot was seated in the front seat, and the passenger was seated in the rear seat. A flight instructor observed the WSC aircraft make several stable visual approaches to a grass runway. The last approach was unstable, which the flight instructor attributed to the passenger attempting to fly the approach. A go-around was initiated, which transitioned to a diving left turn that continued to impact with a river. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The aircraft’s two “training bars,” which were designed for use…