Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2019 i Plane & Pilot

Derivation of “parachute:” From the Italian “para,” meaning “prevent,” and the French word “chute,” for fall. A device for preventing a fall. First known parachute concepts: China: Han Dynasty writer Sima Qian in a book of historical legends Qian’s parachute concept: Two big hats grasped by hand First modern parachute design: Leonardo da Vinci, 1485 Inventor of the modern parachute: Louis-Sébastien Lenormand, late 1700s, in France First successful parachute jump: Lenormand, 1783, from a balcony of Tour de la Babote Approximate height of balcony: 60 feet Outcome: Lenormand was unhurt Witnesses: Dozens First parachute jump from an aircraft: Jean-Pierre Blanchard, 1785, France Blanchard’s first “guinea pig:” A local dog, who survived the event First use of parachute as a rescue device from an aircraft: Blanchard again, when his balloon burst.…

By testing the structure of an existing Comet in a water tank under repeated pressurization cycles, the truth became clear when the fuselage of the test article came apart in an explosive decompression. This was after just over 3,000 pressurization cycles. The cause of the two planes breaking up in mid-flight was found. It was metal fatigue. Engineers redesigned the structure of the plane for what became the Comet 2, and that was the end of that issue. The company went on to produce 114 of the aircraft, ending with the Comet 4 model, which was last produced in 1959. Sadly, the Comet, even after the cause of its mystery woes was diagnosed, had a terrible safety record, with 26 hull losses during its short operational life, resulting in more…

E CHRISTAVIA MK 1 Grand Detour, IL/Injuries: 2 Serious The private pilot was flying an experimental airplane at a low altitude along a river when the airplane struck a power line suspended 30 ft above the river, causing the airplane to cartwheel. The power line wrapped around the airplane, and the airplane descended straight down, impacting the ice-covered river. A postaccident examination of the airplane showed that the fuselage forward of the instrument panel, the engine cowling, and the engine were bent upward about 30°. The forward fuel tank between the cabin and the engine had broken open, and the smell of fuel was apparent. The airplane’s propeller showed indications that the engine was producing high power when the airplane struck the power line. Flight control continuity was confirmed. Examination…

When I wrote my first article for Plane & Pilot, a meditation on flying for the airlines and reaching the milestone of 15,000 hours, I was excited at the prospect of having other pilots read my work. The feedback I received was largely encouraging. It seemed I had weeded out most of my dangling participles. What I was unprepared for was a few critical comments by GA pilots regarding not my grammar or style, but the nature of my job. One reader wrote: “15,000 hours, or the same hour 15,000 times?” Although I feel I could plea bargain this down to “the same three hours 5,000 times,” I was willing to grant the spirit of his argument. Flying for the airlines can be repetitive. Another likened airline flying to: “Empty…

While we’re discussing academic points, there’s a symbol on the DREEM TWO and ZELKA TWO that appears on many approach charts but is so small it’s easily overlooked. The standard waypoint symbol is a four-pointed star. These waypoints are fly-by waypoints. EXXRO shows this symbol circumscribed by a circle. That makes it a fly-over waypoint. Many missed approach points on RNAV approaches are also fly-over waypoints. There’s a misconception that “fly-by” is synonymous with “Eh, close enough.” So long as you pass within a mile or so, you’re good. While it’s true you don’t need to cross directly over a fly-by waypoint, that’s not the real point. You’re bound by FAR to fly the center of a route no matter how you’re navigating it. That includes fly-by waypoints. The reason…

Unlike small planes, airliners hardly ever crash. Their safety record isn’t perfect, but it’s close enough to that mark that when one does go down, the world takes notice. And when one crashes, especially when it’s under mysterious or particularly horrific circumstances, the aviation world comes together at its best to figure out just how to prevent such accidents in the future. And more often than not, we’re successful in doing just that. That’s why commercial air travel on per-mile basis is the safest mode of transportation the world has ever known. Only in this case, it doesn’t appear to have happened that way. In the crashes of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Lion Air 610, the answers we’re coming up with to explain why those two new Boeing 737…

Flying VFR at night is not for the unprepared. There are plenty of unlit things that would go bump in the dark if you met them doing over 100 knots. The caution meter should go up when landing at night. The KBVY RNAV (GPS) Rwy 9 approach chart has two valuable details for even a VFR night landing on Runway 9. One is in the mini airport diagram. The P in a circle means there’s a PAPI on the left side of that runway. This provides obstacle clearance up to 4NM from the runway, 10 degrees right and left of centerline—unless otherwise noted in the Chart Supplement. Always check for such a restriction. Also see in the notes on the top of the chart that landing straight-in or circling to…

Like most cities built on the edge of a large body of water, in this case the Cook Inlet, Anchorage, the town where I grew up had a warmer climate than much of the rest of the U.S. We often had brilliant night skies with the moon and a full panoply of stars, including Polaris, the North Star. As we all learned in survival training, the North Star is directly aligned with the Earth’s vertical axis, so Polaris is always true north. That meant if you could find Polaris, you could sometimes make a reasonable approximation of a course for home. It got tougher when you needed to fly straight south, and obviously impossible if there was an overcast. That’s probably the most primitive form of celestial navigation, but it…

European pilots have it bad, I know. They’ve got sky-high fuel prices, landing fees, and a nanny-state mentality to flying around in what we think of in the States as our airspace. No wonder so many European pilots come here to go flying. It’s what God intended flying to be. That all said, at some point in my life, I knew I just had to make the opposite-direction commute and go to Europe to fly—and this is really specific, I know—in the Alps. Why the Alps? Apart from them being incredibly gorgeous—have you ever seen them?—they are historically significant, too. I trace my fascination back to something from my youth, and, no, it wasn’t “The Sound Of Music.” It was a book called “Third Man On The Mountain” by James…

Okay, even the least risk-averse, crazy pilot generally knows we probably can’t load up our plane with lead bricks and still manage to defy gravity successfully. But where is the limit? Every day, general aviation pilots succumb to the pressure or temptation to “just put one more person” or “one more bag” into their plane when it will put them over the allowable gross weight for the aircraft. Sometimes it is justified through what seem to be “careful calculations,” such as “going up to 10 percent over gross weight as long as you allow for a 30 percent increase in required runway takeoff calculations.” Yeah. I have heard that used a lot. Well, as long as we add the caveat that you still land “under gross” or any other required…

One of my roles in life seems to be “The IFR Answer Guy.” Sometimes, I can toss off the answer as a one-liner between sips of morning coffee. Other times, I’m left scratching my head until I delve deep into the IFR minutia. That’s what happened with what seemed like a simple question about the RNAV (GPS) Rwy 34 approach at Beverly, Massachusetts (KBVY). The query was, “Why is radar required?” The answer requires a bit of theory. Chart design for IFR assumes the pilot will navigate the entire flight, from takeoff to touchdown, without any assistance from air traffic controllers (ATC). That means there must be some kind of connect-the-dots method of going from chart to chart by using a fix appearing on both charts. This almost never happens…

Feeling confident about yourself is an important part of piloting. After all, no one wants to fly with a nervous Nellie at the controls, and “no one” can be extended to include the person doing the flying. That appears to be where the pilot of a Beech A36TC got into trouble, according to the NTSB’s report on an accident that occurred on May 12, 2017, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The Safety Board concluded that it was the pilot’s overreliance on his limited instrument training that contributed to his intentional VFR flight into instrument conditions, which resulted in a loss of airplane control due to spatial disorientation. It’s good to be confident and rely on your experience and training when it’s justified. Not in this case, though, said the NTSB. “Some might…