Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2021 i Plane & Pilot

RASH OF FATALITIES LEADS NTSB TO CLAMP DOWN ON PART 91 REVENUE FLIGHTS Parachute jumping flights, “doors off” helicopter tours, hot air balloon rides, some warbird rides and cost-sharing for other GA flights, among others, fall under a gray area of FAR Part 91, the section of regulations that govern non-commercial operations. Eight recent fatal accidents that killed 45 people and injured 12 have led to scrutiny of the rules surrounding such hybrid revenue passenger flights. In most cases, the operations took place with agreement from the FAA specifying particular levels of oversight, enforcing agreements similar to a Part 91 corporate flight department’s formal Safety Management System. The NTSB argued that the nature of the accidents shows the FAA was not executing enough of that oversight, and operators were not…

You Fly Without One? This portable carbon monoxide detector alerts pilots to danger at extremely low levels and responds quickly. The LED alarms flash with increasing intensity that corresponds to the level of contamination in the cabin, alternating with an audible 87-dB alarm. Its sensors never require calibration and have a 10-year lifespan. The detector comes with a visor clip and a one-year warranty. Price: $74.95 Available at www.mypilotstore.com Sporty’s CleanWing Scrubber Hasn’t Met a Dead Bug It Doesn’t Like The weather is warmer, and the bugs are back. Every airplane owner knows the joy of clearing the leading edges of a pound or two of bug juice after every flight (you renters can feel free to gloat). But Sporty’s CleanWing Scrubber makes short work of that post-flight nastiness. With…

In July 1973, when I was 15 years old, my family moved from Bellevue, Nebraska, to Clark Air Base on Luzon Island in the Republic of the Philippines. This was our family’s seventh move in 12 years because of my father’s service in the U.S. Air Force. We lived in a comfortable house in Angeles City, the town adjacent to the airbase. Not far from our home, and just inside the base perimeter, was the Clark Aero Club—one of many popular Air Force recreational flying clubs providing service and family members a safe and less-costly way to learn to fly. The Aero Club was a modest facility, consisting of two small buildings, a partially covered maintenance shed and concrete hardstands scattered in the grass for parking airplanes—mostly Cessna 150s and…

The history of light plane aviation might seem like a steady arc from Kitty Hawk to Wichita (and beyond), but nothing could be further from the truth. Even at the beginning, the creation of what we now think of as the light aviation segment was hardly a given, and even once it had achieved some kind of nascent status, it faced a series of obstacles that threatened its continued growth toward an activity that offers the average person remarkable opportunities and powers. In fact, along the way, the future of light aviation was threatened by a number of events, both beyond our control and entirely of our own making, the outcomes of which were anything but a given, the results of which could just as easily have been an aviation…

It was early 1964, and Howard “Pug” Piper, one of three sons of founder William T. Piper and the driving force behind so many of Piper’s new-product development efforts, was looking to develop a new single-engine airplane. It would climb into the flight levels without turbocharging and transit the distance between Lock Haven and the new production facility in Vero Beach at great speed. An improved variant of the Piper Comanche, which had debuted under his guidance in 1958, seemed the perfect candidate. Piper Aircraft, famous for Cubs, Tri Pacers and, more recently, the all-metal Cherokee, had a real success with this handsome retractable-gear, four-place beauty. However, with only 180 or 250 horsepower currently on hand, more ponies were needed under the hood to turn up the wick on the…

First Successful Aerial Refueling: 1921 Altitude Accomplished: 1,000 feet Gallons Transferred: 5 Transfer Method: Wingwalking, plane hopping Refueling Hoses Introduced: 1923 Nickname Of Flexible Hose System: “Probe-and-Drogue” Primarily Used By: U.S. Navy, Marines Hose Location On Tankers: Wingtips Speed Fuel Can Be Transferred: 420 gallons/minute Alternate Aerial Refueling System: “The Flying Boom” Primarily Used By: U.S. Air Force How It’s Different: Hose replaced by telescoping tube Tube Location On Tanker: Underside of tail Popular Boom Tanker: Airbus A330 MRTT (multi-role tanker transport) Length Of Boom When Retracted: 38 feet Fully Extended: 60 feet Speed Fuel Can Be Transferred: 1,200 gallons/minute Pounds Of Fuel Tanker Can Hold: 250,000 Single-Engine Aircraft Able To Be Refueled In One Flight: ~15 Able To Be Refueled At Once: 3 Maximum Altitude Of Operation: 35,000 feet…

Compared to early screaming turbine engines (thanks to continuous improvement in design), airplane noise over the past 60 years or so has been reduced to a whisper of its former self. But a recently published FAA Neighborhood Environmental Survey, the first since 1992, reveals that a large majority of people who live near airports are “highly annoyed” by aircraft flying overhead. And while the survey focused on neighborhoods surrounding 20 large airports, the results show that public sentiment is largely against anything that flies. The survey included 10,000 respondents and was filtered by noise level. The level of animosity that people have had toward airplane noise is really nothing new. But the strangest takeaway is that quieter airplanes have not made airport-adjacent residents happier. They have had the opposite effect.…

ACROSS 1 Swiss plane maker 5 Parallel and opposing force to the aircraft’s motion through the air 7 Airplane sales argument or one of the axes 8 Experienced decreased lift by exceeding the angle of attack 10 Runway visual range, abbr. 11 Watch closely 12 Landing zone abbreviation 13 New prefix 14 Lindbergh or Earhart, for example 16 D.C. org behind military aviation programs 18 The ground station that speaks to our ADFs 20 Tail waggle 22 A useful thrust direction for braking 26 Casual debt record, abbr. 27 Assist 28 Alternative to lease 29 Combination of an engine compressor and high-pressure turbine that drives it using a connecting shaft 30 In the U.S., it’s “point.” In Canada, it’s this. 31 Allow 33 Avgas-less rental term 34 Becomes adept at…

EVEN AS LATE AS 35 YEARS AGO, twin-engine aircraft occupied a special place in the world of light aircraft. There were more than two dozen models on the market, and the launch of an exciting new model was an important moment for the plane’s manufacturer. Pilots of every experience status north of absolute beginner were candidates to buy a twin, and buy them they did. The Piper Aztec, Twin Comanche and Seneca, the Beech Travel Air, the Barons models 55 and 58, the jaunty high-spirited Duke and the lower-cost Duchess were all popular models. Cessna, with its uber-popular 310 (and derivatives), the cabin-class pressurized 421 Golden Eagle and the 340, among a handful of others, filled the market to bursting, along with the oddball but very popular 337 push-pull twin.…

BACKGROUND It’s a beautiful day—the sky is clear, wind is calm, and you’re ready to go flying! Donning that sweet leather jacket your spouse gave you for Christmas, the one with all the aviation patches you think make you look all “Top Gun,” you complete your preflight, give a couple winks to some admiring kids nearby, and climb onboard your rocket to the sky. Even though there are two perfectly good front seats, you nestle into the one on the left. Normally, you don’t think anything of it, but for whatever reason, today it hits you—why do you always fly from the left? Why not the right? Curious, you text your buddy across the pond to see if they happen to do the reverse in England—because they’re weird like that…

In addition to being first through the sound barrier, Chuck Yeager was the originator of that low-key distinctive West Virginia drawl that generations of military pilots mimicked if they wanted to be guilty of having the “right stuff.” No matter how serious the emergency, pilots have taken his lead and sounded cool, calm and in control. But more than that, General Yeager had the gift of transmitting the most information in the fewest words. With his recent passing, we owe it to him to follow his lead to be excellent pilots and accurate communicators. Flash forward to today. Airline pilots and air traffic controllers handle some of the busiest airspace in the world, with considerable skill, brevity and poise. However, spend a little time monitoring the local airport frequencies, and…

Many primary flight training customers come to training with the assumption that all instructors are pretty much the same, and training success is determined almost entirely by the talent of the learner. But it’s not true. CFIs come in a number of varieties. Many become CFIs to build needed hours for their next flying job, and often those follow-on flying jobs are dictated by airline hiring. If the major airlines are hiring, they draw from regional carriers, and those companies hire, in turn, from the general pilot population. The number of flight hours you need varies with different carriers and is significantly influenced by the number of seats that carrier needs to fill. I can remember an era when you needed 3,000 flight hours, an ATP certificate and a type…

As the world neared the end of a year in the COVID-19 pandemic, one of those significant birthdays drew near—the one that signified my appointments to maintain a first-class medical would happen twice a year moving forward. Social distancing ensured there’d be no surprise party, no crowd of friends telling me I was over the hill, and that was fine by me. It was a much simpler affair than all that. On the big day, I woke up, cooked a pan of biscuits and unwrapped a John Prine album that Amy gave me. But for several days before and several days to come, my brain was deeply preoccupied with the maze of wires that had exploded like a major spaghetti catastrophe in the Mooney. I’d bought an engine monitor to…