Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2020 i Plane & Pilot

There’s an old ethos in flying that pilots should never speculate on the cause of aviation accidents, especially when a high-profile crash hits the news. Some folks are vocal and passionate in sharing their feelings about this unofficial rule, which they often see as an almost religious absolute. But the world has changed, and with it, aviation. And some of the most important reasons that anti-speculation gatekeepers give for onlookers keeping mum simply don’t make sense anymore, even though admittedly, there are a number of really good reasons to temper our views anyway. When an aviation accident occurs, pilots understandably want to know why it happened. There are a lot of aviation accidents, too. Too many. In the last calendar year for which the NTSB published end-of-year statistics, there were…

Let’s face it. Your logbook has dust on it, and your pilot certificate has rust on it. Your flight review is still current, but you haven’t been flying much lately. Be honest—how long has it been since you’ve done some serious flying? A month or two? Last spring? A year ago? Passing a flight review doesn’t exactly make you a sharp pilot. A couple of hours of training every two years may satisfy the regulations, but between those endorsements, you must satisfy your own standards of excellence. After all, you have to be pretty sloppy to keep a CFI from signing off a flight review. Rather than accept your deteriorated state, take some steps to hone your skills to a fine edge when you go back into the air after…

Some countries play it close to the vest when it comes to controlling the investigations into airplane accidents. This is especially so when initial evidence calls into question the competence of a state airline or the government’s air traffic control system or pilots from their nations. More typical, however, is that nations welcome participation by expert investigators from other countries. That’s the way it was with Costa Rica when, on December 31, 2017, Nature Air Flight 9916 crashed shortly after departing Punta Islita Airport near Corozalito, Costa Rica. Flight 9916 was a Cessna 208B Caravan operated by the Costa Rica airline Nature Air, which was based in San Jose. The flight operated as a commercial charter to carry 10 passengers, all U.S. citizens who had been staying at a resort,…

Overshadowed by Concorde where it sits, a Cessna 152 Aerobat occupies a spot in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum. One might wonder why a common little plane sits in such a hallowed hangar. After all, the Cessna 152 Aerobat, a mildly aerobatic version of the long-running Cessna 150/152 model, one of thousands built, was pretty commonplace, its sporty checkerboard paint scheme and skylight windows notwithstanding. There’s really nothing extraordinary about the plane, is there? Owners would certainly disagree, and besides, N7557L is no ordinary bird. It was owned by a man who launched untold thousands of dreams of flight (including mine) with his gift for writing flight manuals and instructing. I visit N7557L every time I am at Udvar-Hazy in reverence of its history and its former…

1. JATO BOTTLE ON AN ERCOUPE: Back in 1941, engineers wanted to know how much improvement to takeoff performance strapping a small rocket to the side of an Ercoupe could make. Answer: a lot. The test, conducted at March Field in Southern California, used a solid fuel rocket—yes, they still call it a JATO (jet-assisted takeoff) and not a RATO—that put out a modest 28 pounds of thrust for 12 seconds. Doesn’t sound like much, but that Ercoupe really went up fast! 2. 1,200 PEOPLE ON A 747? In the early 1990s, regime changes in Ethiopia sparked renewed concerns about the welfare of Ethiopian Jews, prompting Israel to launch Operation Solomon, which airlifted nearly 15,000 refugees to Israel in a span of just 36 hours. One of the planes pressed…

ACROSS 1 _____ Action, from good to nil 6 Palindromic surveillance tech 9 Aviator-controlled runway illumination (acronym) 10 Slight drop 11 A good one is said to be when nothing falls off 13 The first airport with one was Cleveland in 1930 15 Slang for parking ramp area 20 ____ burst, strong downdraft 21 What comms are based on, abbr. 22 Effects rudder pedals fight 24 Less-urgent relative of an RA 26 What we might call an antenna on our car 28 The person on the other end of the conversation, for short 29 High-performance singles love these “teen” altitudes 31 Devices used to increase lift 33 Change of the wind’s direction or velocity, 2 words 35 Pressure measurement, abbr. 36 GPS lays it out, abbr. 37 Force acting on…

The Friday afternoon weather was clear and visibility unlimited (CAVU), and we were heading south at 7,500 feet to Key West, Florida, with a planned one-night stop in New Port Richey to visit my brother and his wife. What could go wrong? The trip had been planned for a couple of weeks, so when I got home from work, my wife was packed and ready to go. It took about an hour to drive from our home north of Atlanta to our hangar in Rome, Georgia. Hangars are as scarce as hens’ teeth in the Atlanta area, which is why we ended up in Rome…64 miles from our house. Our airplane, a beautifully restored J-Model Bonanza, was fueled and ready to go. After a thorough preflight, we took off and…

A most interesting experimental aviation movement is taking place in the backcountry aviation community, a segment where few outside observers, myself included, would’ve expected it to happen. Projects like Mike Patey’s Draco, a turboprop-powered dragonfly of a Wilga conversion that captured the imagination of the aviation world when it burst onto the scene two years ago, was an instant-winner of short takeoff and landing contests, as well as hearts and minds. Draco didn’t happen in isolation, however, but as part of a community of likeminded bush plane flyers who bond over gravel bars, near-hovering landing and outrageous hardware. Among a number of excellent design adventures taking place among this group, one really got my attention recently: the reconfiguring of a vintage Cessna 175 into something entirely different. I say “Skylark”…

You can breathe a partial sigh of relief when you depart Henderson Field on the island of Guadalcanal and point the nose southwest toward Australia that you have only one semi-short leg to go to reach the land of Oz. You’d never know it today, but Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands were the sites of some of the fiercest fighting of World War II. Most of that was in defense of the world’s largest island. These days, the town of Honiara on Guadalcanal is just another sleepy Pacific fuel stop, the last one you’ll need if you’re destined for Cairns, Darwin, Brisbane or Sydney. In a few hours, you’ll have beaten the odds over five days and 6,000 nm on the trip from California to the world of koalas, wallabies…

MYSTERY Roughly 2,000 aircraft have vanished within a 25,000-square-mile area known as the Nevada Triangle. What’s behind the mysterious disappearances, and why have most of the aircraft never been found? BACKGROUND While much of the world has heard of the infamous and ever-mysterious Bermuda Triangle, of similar intrigue is the lesser-known, but equally fascinating, Nevada Triangle. The area is bounded by the cities of Fresno, Las Vegas and Reno, and is speckled by the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks lie beneath, and tucked along the Triangle’s edges, adding to the sense of mystery, is the super-secret government facility known as Area 51. “Around 2,000 aircraft have gone missing in the Nevada Triangle over the past 60 years. That’s approximately three…

Earlier this year, when Garmin made the surprise launch of the GI 275 lineup of retrofit flight instruments, designed to be close to plug-and-play replacements for aging small, round, analog flight instruments, the company once again changed the used-airplane game. It’s not the first time that it has done that. The company had previously introduced an affordable electronic instrument, the G5, affordable flat-panels, low-priced autopilots and even a couple of new lower-priced navigators, all of which have already gone into a lot of airplanes. Still, the GI 275, in terms of overall impact, will likely eclipse the importance of all of those new products, and by a big margin. A 3.125-inch panel-mount round gauge that does the jobs of several different analog round gauges—and for a low price, too—the GI…

Imagine a world where complete strangers can track your every move with the click of a mouse. You start your car in the morning, and someone you’ve never met gets a text message telling them that you’re leaving as soon as you pull your car out of the garage. Along the way, they can track your route and how fast you’re driving. They even know your destination before you get there. As you drive through a neighborhood, a curious resident hears your car go by, taps their computer screen, and gets info on your car, who owns it, and even your address. They can even tell how many people are with you in the car and how much gas you have in the tank. Replace the word “car” with “airplane,”…

Ask most any pilots how the rubber is holding up on their plane, and you’ll most likely get a quick reply along the lines of, “Oh, the nose tire is good; one of the mains is a little worn. Overall, the rubber is okay.” As a new caretaker of an old airplane, I did have to replace a tire before our big trip west, but I also quickly realized there was a lot more rubber on the plane than I expected, and almost every bit of it needed attention…if not immediate replacement. AN OLD CONCEPT, BUT STILL IN USE Many warbirds and many postwar aircraft had rubber shock mounts holding the instrument panel, or at least some portion of it, in place. Gyro instruments were often so mounted; delicate electronics…