Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2021 i Plane & Pilot

With the passing of Chuck Yeager late last year, the era of the World War II aviator is symbolically gone. Along with it, the living memory of the war is fading, as well. Which is a direct challenge to all of us in aviation, not so much to remember—we will—but to adjust to a future none of us had imagined. The twilight of World War II is upon us. When I started flying in the mid-1970s, the U.S. aviation scene seemed a direct outgrowth of the Second World War. I think younger me was right. It’s not hard to trace the lines from Gemini and Soyuz back to the development of rocket planes and jets immediately post-war by the world’s surviving major powers. And the migration of GIs back home…

Poberezny ACRO SPORT II A Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania/Injuries: 2 Fatal The pilot had purchased the experimental, amateur-built airplane about 3 weeks before the accident. The airplane was partially disassembled, transported to an airport, and then reassembled. The pilot flew the airplane for the first time 2 days before the accident. The pilot and a pilot-rated passenger departed for the pilot’s second flight in the airplane. A witness at the airport stated that he spoke to the pilot before he took off on the accident flight and that the pilot stated that he was going to fly his new airplane. The witness watched the airplane take off from runway 27, make a circle, and conduct a high-speed fly-by over runway 9 about 150 ft above ground level (agl). The witness reported…

In the days before the arrival of the Boeing 757 and Airbus A 320, with their glass cockpits, full-feature autopilots and autothrottles, most airline pilots flew their aircraft by hand from takeoff until reaching the flight levels and then all the way back down again. Even though we’re talking big and complicated systems, they could do it with great precision. How? They knew their configuration settings down cold. A few years back, a good friend and experienced former B-52 instructor returned to the cockpit after a four-year absence while he was busy flying a desk. During his first takeoff, flap retraction, and climb to FL 310, the airspeed was never more than plus or minus 5 knots, the altitude plus or minus 25 feet, and the heading right on the…

A stabilized approach is, without a doubt, more likely to result in a safe landing than one that becomes unstabilized. Most of us know this intuitively. The accident data has proven it over the years, also. This becomes especially true when flying an instrument approach coming out of IMC conditions to a circle-to-land. Circle-to-land approaches are a misnomer. They can be rectangles, squares or trapezoids. The common denominator is that they all require the pilot on an instrument approach to do some serious maneuvering after clearing the clouds, sometimes with that cloud cover just overhead. If this sounds risky, you’re right. Some charter and business operators prohibit circle to land approaches outright, and just about all of them prohibit this kind of approach at night. “Some charter and business operators…

MY instructor and I were quiet as we flew, winging along, a couple of hundred feet above the starkly beautiful western Mojave Desert. I was doing the flying, working on my commercial certificate (which I would not complete for another decade and a half), and the guy in the right seat, Si Campbell, was doing the instructing, which he mostly did without saying a word. When he did say something, it carried weight. That early-spring day was perfect for flying. The winds were a whisper, and the air was crystal blue. Such spring days pass for a near-miracle in those parts. From January through around May, the wind mostly whips in from the southwest, stirring up dust and turning the air light dusky brown. Not that day. We were flying…

A yellowed clipping pinned to the Carrollton, Georgia, FBO’s bulletin board outlived all other media stapled to it. Inkjet-printed pages of airplanes for sale came and went, whether they were smoking bargains or overpriced clunkers that only moved after the owner passed on. But this clipping persisted, a faded photograph of the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, with a line of men posing before it. Someone had annotated the photo with a ballpoint pen, pointing out Wilbur and Orville Wright and their alleged flight instructor, Owen Virgil Gray. O.V. Gray, the subject of the good-natured ribbing, wasn’t quite that old, but he also wasn’t far from it. Mr. Gray was a fixture at the Carrollton Aviation FBO, where he shared duties with me every Wednesday and Saturday, as we tried…

FlyGirl Pajamas This pajama set from flyGIRL is a great go-to for lounging around after a long day of flying. Made of a cotton/polyester blend, the set features a royal blue V-neck shirt with the flyGirl logo and a pair of drawstring shorts covered with swirling airplanes. The set, priced at $39.95, is available in sizes XS-XL. On top of providing great flying attire, flyGirl strives to help more women realize their aviation goals. A portion of every flyGirl purchase goes to the organization’s scholarship fund, which awards several thousand dollars each year to help a woman pursue pilot training. Learn more at sportys.com. Fisher Space Pen If you’re trying to jot down frequencies or other important info while in the cockpit, you need a writing tool you can rely…

When Chuck Yeager, the legendary pilot whose flight in the Bell X-1 in 1947 made the West Virginia-born test pilot the first to ever exceed the speed of sound, died at 97 in Los Angeles, aviation lost not only a record setter but also a legend whose great fame couldn’t do justice to a life lived in the air. Charles Elwood Yeager was born on Feb. 13, 1923, in Myra, West Virginia, the son of a coal field driller. It was a hardscrabble existence, one that Yeager embraced. Unlike many pilots who reached the pinnacle of test flying with engineering or aerospace degrees from Purdue or USC, Yeager’s military career started as an enlisted man, serving as a U.S. Army private in World War II. In fact, he began his…

In July 2017, after flying for about 12 minutes over Missouri, a Zenith Light Sport Aircraft crashed while turning back to the airport from where it had just departed. The 41-year-old pilot and his wife were both killed in the crash. The pilot was a passionate outdoorsman, loving every sport he participated in. The list included motocross racing, hunting, skiing, scuba diving, skydiving and flying powered parachutes. In fact, most of his flight experience was in motorized parachutes, a glorious way to experience the air and slowly unrolling landscapes below. He had logged 162 hours in his Pegasus-powered parachute, cool flying that was seen in a local TV news story a year before the crash. KFSM 5NEWS captured attractive aerial views 800 feet above Arkansas, with the pilot saying, “There’s…

From the 1940s to the 1960s, the headlines were full of the exploits of the test pilots and the famous X planes. From the Bell X-1 and the North American X-15 to the North American XB 70, these planes were designed to fly faster, higher and farther. And their pilots—Chuck Yeager, Scott Crossfield, Neil Armstrong—became household names. The same could be said of the air racers of the 1930s—Roscoe Turner, Jimmy Doolittle, Louise Thaden—and their magnificent machines, such as the Gee Bee R1 and the Travel Air Mystery Ship. Yet this lust for speed, altitude, distance and heroes did not start here. In 1909, just six short years after their first flight, the Wright Brothers created what was arguably the first X plane, the Wright Model R Baby Grand. Six…