Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2020 i Plane & Pilot

Rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay and the “Winter Dance Party,” a tour featuring Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Frankie Sardo, Tommy Allsup, Carl Bunch, Ritchie Valens, Dion DiMucci and “The Big Bopper,” J.P. Richardson Jr., was heating up across the snowy Midwest. Things weren’t going so hot behind the scenes, however. The musicians’ route had been poorly designed, zigzagging them hundreds of miles a day in an exhausting effort to play 24 shows in as many days. Less than a week into the tour, the heating system on the bus broke, leaving Bunch hospitalized with frostbite. Richardson and Valens began coming down with flu-like symptoms, and the artists, whose moods had grown dark, dubbed the trip “The Tour from Hell.” Little did they know just how much worse the…

IT WAS A HOT BUT PRETTY DAY IN KANSAS as we strapped in and got the big Pratt fired up on the Piper M600 SLS, the latest model. We agreed that we were thankful for factory air-conditioning. The taxi was short, the takeoff even shorter—we were pretty light—and even before we had gotten much past the end of the runway, New Century Tower directed us to contact Kansas City Departure, which we did. It was all pretty standard stuff, that is, until Departure asked us what our intentions were. Hmmm. Well, what we wanted to do was turn loose a new feature on this Piper M600 called Autoland. At that point, the plane would be doing the flying and the thinking for us. We were there almost as observers. But…

On the same day that Garmin announced its Autoland feature and Piper made its new M600 SLS public, Cirrus Aircraft announced that it, too, had incorporated Garmin’s Autoland feature into its single-engine jet. In the SF50 Autoland, which Cirrus calls “Safe Return,” will be an additional safety feature on top of and not separate from the small jet’s whole-airplane-recovery parachute system. In a press release accompanying the introduction of Safe Return, Cirrus CEO Zean Nielsen said, “Our mission is to make personal aviation more accessible by continuing to improve passenger comfort and safety. Safe Return delivers the next step towards autonomous flight, bringing a new level of confidence to the overall flying experience.” Cirrus has created an Autoland activation button to initiate the Autoland sequence that’s mounted on the ceiling,…

When the BD-10 was announced, it was billed as the world’s first and only supersonic jet kit aircraft. Designed and promoted by Jim Bede, a talented and charismatic aeronautical engineer with a history of failed businesses, the BD-10 was touted as an everyman’s personal supersonic fighter that could fill the “need for speed” at a relatively low cost. Bede was a controversial figure among homebuilders, and for good reason. His BD-5 and BD-5J, which even today are well-regarded designs, were heavily promoted, and the company accepted thousands of orders and deposits before the project ran out of money, causing customers to lose their deposits. As a result, the Federal Trade Commission banned Bede from accepting aircraft kit investments for a period of 10 years. BEDE REDUX Shortly after the FTC…

Public-use airports in the U.S.: 5,173 Towered: 550 (9.4%) Percent lighted: 77% Unpaved: 25% State with the most: Texas, 394 Fewest: Rhode Island, 8 World’s oldest continuously operating: College Park (KCGS), Maryland Established by: Wilbur Wright, 1909 Nickname: “Cradle of Aviation” Runway dimensions: 2,600 ft. x 60 ft. Flights/week: 62 Top destination airport: Orlando (MCO), Florida Probable cause: Disney World Busiest non-commercial airport: Van Nuys (VNY), California Size: 730 acres FBOs: 4 Takeoffs & landings/year: ~230,000 Compared with Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta (ATL): ~900,000/yr Height of control tower at ATL: 398 ft. Ranking: Third highest in the world Elevation of highest public-use airport (KLXV): 9,927 ft. Home of: RAVCO, the world’s highest helicopter flight school Runway dimensions: 6,400 ft. x 75 ft. Longest runway: 16,000 ft.; Denver International (DEN) Most ominous name:…

GARMIN UNVEILS GAME-CHANGING AUTOLAND Garmin, Piper and Cirrus recently introduced a new emergency autoland system, which brings unprecedented new capabilities to the modern cockpit. The technology, which will be available on select Garmin G3000 aircraft, is the first of its kind in the GA world, but it also surpasses the capabilities available even in today’s most advanced airliners. Autoland is intended for use in emergencies only. It can be activated manually by those in the aircraft or automatically if the system detects pilot incapacitation. Once initiated, the technology not only declares an emergency to ATC but also selects the best airport for landing, configures the airplane appropriately and puts it down safely on the runway. During each step of the process, the system takes into account a breathtaking number of…

From about the age of 4, I knew I wanted to fly. Nobody in my family was an aviator, nor did we know anyone who was, so I don’t know where that passion came from. My mother was a stay-at-home mom at the time, and my father was a musician. I just knew that was what I wanted. My parents divorced when I was 5, and I lived with my dad and stepmom. Weekends were spent at my mom’s. When I was 7, my mother went to work for an oral surgeon who, it turned out, owned some airplanes. I begged my mom to ask him for a flight, which he gave me in a C-172 that same year. My stepmother knew I wanted to be a pilot but continually…

Years ago, I flew an autoland in a Boeing 777 simulator. It was at the end of a two-plus-hour session in what was then a cutting-edge plane—it’s still pretty remarkable. In the dark, we flew toward a landing at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. Well, to be specific, we watched the airplane land itself. Now, the idea of monitoring a plane while it’s on autopilot is no big deal to pilots. We don’t even think twice about it. But keeping an eye on a plane that’s landing itself? Well, that’s a whole different story. So Garmin’s Autoland isn’t breaking new ground in being able to land the plane, though there are very few planes that can do it. But those planes are much more limited in what they can…

ACROSS 1 High Sierra Fly-In mainstays 8 Chopper blade 9 Generic term for a plane’s heat engine 10 New landing light 12 ____ Prentice plane 14 Time just before an event 16 John Wayne’s plane? 17 Related to light 21 Naval rank, for short 22 Sporty’s training courses, for example 25 2,000 lbs. 26 Word after flight and before pilot 27 ____ VK-30 29 You can’t be this at its namesake (ID) airport 30 ____rotor 32 Kerfuffle 34 Catalina and San Juan, for example 35 Under a bridge, maybe. Though one of these? Never. DOWN 1 Twisting force 2 It captures air for use in an internal combustion engine 3 Board member, abbr. 4 Cubs have a lot of this, 2 words 5 Rare find 6 What an SR22’s gear…

One of the most remarkable things about Autoland is the way it transitions the instrumentation on the Garmin displays from pilot-centric to passenger-focused. The kinds of things we pilots understand intuitively when we glance at a display, things like airspeed tapes and vertical rate, are next to meaningless to a non-pilot passenger. So the key to the successful implantation of Autoland was for Garmin’s and Piper’s user experience engineers to stop thinking like pilots and start asking questions like any non-aviation savvy passenger might. Here’s a rundown of what the Autoland system will display to passengers after the autoland sequence is activated. ThefirstthingAutolandwants to communicate is that it’s active. To activate it, you press a guarded switch framed in red. If someone accidentally activated Autoland, now would be the…

Ideally, everything that’s part of our plane is supposed to be working before we go flying. Planes are designed with a minimum of extras to increase reliability and save weight. In the design of an airplane, each item has to do its part, and all superfluous pieces are (hopefully) engineered away. “Simplicate and then add lightness,” said one great designer. Therefore, because every part of a plane has a larger-than-life importance, compared to many machines, aircraft must not be allowed to operate with something not working. So, does it follow that all of its parts are essential and must be present and working before flight? Well, that’s what the FAA thinks. To be in airworthy condition, our airplane must conform to the condition in which it was certificated originally or…