Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i Plane & Pilot

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…

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…

Pan Am Boeing 707 Bottle Opener For airline history buffs, this bottle opener is a great conversation starter. The product is made of metal taken from the fuselage of a Pan Am Boeing 707, the world’s first jet airliner, which revolutionized mass air travel beginning in the late 1950s. The product features the body’s original rivets and is hand-polished for a clean finish. The opener is handmade in northern California. The product comes with a certificate explaining the origin of its materials as well as a box featuring the Pan Am logo. It is priced at $125.00. • uncommongoods.com GoTenna Mesh GoTenna Mesh is a lightweight portable that allows users to send text messages and GPS locations directly from their phones in areas without cell phone service. The product works…

As I looked around the room at the 25 or 30 other pilots taking a seminar on aeronautical decision-making (ADM) led by American Airlines captain and flight instructor Brian Schiff, I had a flashback to about 35 years ago, when I was a young psychologist. At the clinic where I worked, I received a command from on high that I was to teach a parenting class. I was reluctant to do it, given my lack of experience (having, at that point, no kids of my own), but I had not yet learned how to say “unable,” so I studied the curriculum and forged on. The parents who attended were enthusiastic, and I thought I did a pretty good job helping them support each other, think through their actions, and become…

ON THE RAMP IN THE MIST, the Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet, which many still call the “Cirrus Jet,” is a figure of some mystery. When I posted a photo on my Facebook page of the plane viewed from the rear, its distinctive V-tail prominent, a friend asked if it was a “Bugatti.” Now, the Bugatti, developed at the tail end of the Golden Era of air racing, was a single-engine speedster with a distinctive V-tail. The slick little number makes a lot of lists of the most beautiful airplanes of all time. The Vision Jet…not so much. It is, in contrast, the AMC Pacer of planes, a deeply polarizing aesthetic experience. Me? I like it. Then again, I’ve flown it a few times, so I’m biased. It’s an airplane unlike…

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…

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…

“There’s less to hit up there, so I don’t really think texting while I am flying is a big issue,” a friend retorted to me while we were having a conversation about the risks of texting while operating his personal aircraft. To some degree, his isn’t wrong. And I will be honest: I do it too. Typically while cruising along on autopilot, and I feel a need to send out a couple communications. It might be as simple as to tell my wife when I expect to be home. But when isn’t it appropriate? That is where the discussion becomes more of a debate. Is it okay to do while you are taxiing? How about while parked in the runup area with the brakes on after your run up is…

Many VFR-only pilots are familiar with how instrument approaches offer the safe paths that take us from the air to the ground. Each approach gets a snazzy chart, rich with black lines, zigging arrows and lots of numbers, and the skill at decoding said charts is a time-honored right of passage into the IFR illuminati. New IFR students also learn there is departure equivalent from some airports called the Obstacle Departure Procedure (ODP) designed to get them safely around obstacles on their journey from the runway to the sky. ODPs are rarely charted. Instead, they are published in a somewhat cryptic text that requires study and visualization, plus cross-reference to instrument Enroute Charts (the IFR equivalent of the Sectional Chart) to really work out. It’s like they’re a test: If…

As an aviation community, we make a lot of noise about getting a good pre-buy inspection and thoroughly reviewing aircraft logbooks before making the leap into aircraft ownership. But can we say the same about encouraging our fellow owner/pilots to be meticulous in maintaining their planes? We do an even worse job of educating new owners on the subject of deferred maintenance. Renting a safe, well-maintained airplane from your local FBO does not adequately prepare you for ownership, as I found out during that first year or two of aircraft ownership. I learned only through trial and error—I made the errors, and it was a trial on my patience, not to mention my bank account. Some of the mistakes I made were on the conservative side of the coin, having…

When it comes to high-risk flight, we usually think VFR into IMC, low-level maneuvering or run-ins with thunderstorms. Rightly so, too. Those scenarios, along with the ever-present villain “loss of control” lurking nearby, are the riskiest in flying. Training, on the other hand, is, statistically speaking, the safest aviating you can do this side of hangar flying. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that it’s risk free. It’s not. Instructors need to know when the limits of safe flight are being approached during training and when to step in to keep safety from being compromised. At the opposite extreme, avoiding all abnormal parameters, merely lecturing or taking over controls too early, leaves the student to find things out by experimenting on his or her own, later in the…

There was no other traffic in sight or on frequency for the runway at Majuro International in the Marshall Islands, 4,000 miles southwest of California. I pulled out onto the runway in one of the most sophisticated piston twins on the planet, a Cessna 421C. Like most Golden Eagles, this airplane had been well used by a succession of owners, but unlike some others, it had been religiously maintained, a practice that should be mandatory in such an exotic pressurized piston twin. Majuro isn’t an especially challenging airport. Air Micronesia (a subsidiary of Continental Airlines) flies Boeing 737s out of the island’s 7,900 foot strip on a regular basis. The single runway is on a semi-straight section of a half-moon coral atoll, elevation 6.6 feet, according to AirNav, with waves…