Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2022 i Plane & Pilot

A critical component of an aircraft is its landing gear, which is either in the tricycle or conventional configuration. In addition to the wheels located on either side of the fuselage, known as the main landing gear, just about every plane has either a wheel beneath the nose or one beneath the tail. These aircraft are commonly referred to as nosewheel or tricycle landing gear planes and taildraggers, respectively. Taildraggers tend to get most of the glory in the aviation world, with many pilots adamantly claiming they are the superior aircraft to fly. However, most modern aircraft have nosewheels. This is primarily because the tricycle landing gear configuration provides better visibility for pilots during taxiing, takeoff and landing and handles better overall than taildraggers, especially in crosswinds. Because of this…

A STRONG OCTOBERWIND WAS SCOURING the hard-packed playa of a remote Nevada dry lake, whipping up the dust as the temperature dropped to multiplelayers territory. If this seems like one of the last places on earth any sane person would want to be, you’re only half right. As you probably know, the annual High Sierra Fly-In got its start as a small gathering (small as in five guys) of like-minded backcountry flyers getting together to meet at Dead Cow Dry Lake, hang out around the campfire and, during the day, go flying to cool backcountry destinations within easy reach of Dead Cow. High Sierra is no longer that cozy gathering. Though, in a way, it is. It’s just scattered widely about the lakebed and multiplied by nearly a thousand. Though…

AS CAREFULLY AS YOU MIGHT MANAGE your plane’s manifest, unwanted passengers can still make their way onboard, and they could wind up posing a risk you hadn’t considered before departure. Okay, so unless you are getting hijacked, which we certainly hope no one reading this ever experiences, a person stowing away on your personal or corporate aircraft is pretty unlikely. However, as sure as there were way too many snakes on that one plane, there are often smaller living things, creatures, if you will, that might go unnoticed without a good, thorough check. I have had a couple of these over the years pose a heck of a surprise on takeoff or during flight, and in a couple of cases, they could have posed a risk that could have been…

ROLLS-ROYCE BLOWS AWAY ELECTRIC SPEED RECORD The record isn’t official yet, but the celebration has already begun. In November, Rolls-Royce’s Spirit of Innovation electric-powered clocked better than 387 mph, shattering the existing speed mark for electric-powered planes. Electric-powered aircraft are an emerging technology, so it’s natural that new records would appear, but this one is remarkable for how much faster it is than the previous top mark, around 213 mph for an electric-powered Extra 300, making the new speed mark 175 mph faster than the previous one. Which isn’t quite twice the speed, but not far from it. The company will also be issuing the claim for a climb record, of up to 3,000 meters (just under 10,000 feet) in around 3 minutes and 22 seconds. Spirit of Innovation is…

ACROSS 1 TikTok handle for a lady creating wildly popular aviation video shorts 6 Pilot’s playground 8 Atop 9 Airstrip material, often 11 Tire pressure and monitoring system using sensors 12 Use a parachute 14 ____ Baron 16 Aluminum and titanium are important ones in aviation 18 TTx has one, SR22 technically doesn’t 22 Top grades 23 Major auto company 26 Daily weather statistic 28 Critical figure for pilots 30 At this time 32 Venture-backed aerospace company developing electrical vehicle takeoff and landing aircraft 33 Flew a racetrack pattern 35 It’s bad if the wing fabric did this 36 Manufactures 37 Aviation speak for waggle 38 Lucky charm DOWN 1 Slang name for the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, 2 words 2 Without this part of its name, a plane won’t…

We’re not going to talk about “winter flying.” Come October or November, every flying magazine in the world runs a special about “winter flying.” By now, we all know the ins and outs of winter flying or, at least, we’ve read everything about winter flying that we care to read. This is about flying in winter—when you are on a scheduled commute. It’s about adding extra time to warm up the plane and clear the ice and snow from in front of the hangar. And it’s about all the things that go wrong when you are trying to warm up the plane and clear ice and snow from in front of the hangar. If you’re going to commute year-round by plane and you live anywhere in North America north of…

Diamond Aircraft announced recently that it would build an electric version of its four-seat single-engine, the DA40. The electrified version is called the eDA40. There are questions galore about this project, some of which have to do with its very viability. Here are the details. The eDA40 is, as you can tell from the name, based on the DA40, an all-composite personal/training aircraft that’s been around for a couple of decades now. (How did that happen?) The DA40 is not only a popular model—the company has produced more than 2,200 of them. It’s also roomy, with excellent visibility, Skylane-like (or slightly better) speed and advanced avionics. One other critical feature is its high-aspect ratio wing (long and short chord, like a sailplane). High-aspect ratio wings are very efficient, which is…

Cubcrafters founder Jim Richmond passed away on Sunday (November 21, 2021) at his home in Yakima, Washington, surrounded by his family. He was 67. While Richmond had retired from day-to-day work at the company, he continued to help guide CubCrafters’ direction until the end. Richmond avoided the spotlight, but the company he created had a profound impact on the world of backcountry flying, as well as injecting the Light Sport Aircraft segment with a spirit of innovation arguably unrivaled in the world of sport aviation with its introduction of the Carbon Cub 14 years ago. While a true LSA, the Carbon Cub combines great power and performance with rugged construction and classic good looks, essentially offering customers a J-3 alternative that does everything the original Cub did and much more.…

Flight Outfitters Headlamp In challenging flying situations such as night or weather flying, leaving your hands free can be lifesaving. This dual-colored headlamp allows you to select the kind of lighting you prefer in the cockpit—either white or red—without tying up your hands. Preserve your night vision with an easy click of a button—no other unnecessary light colors to cycle through. Each color choice has a high and low setting to maximize battery life. It has an elastic, adjustable band for ultimate comfort on long flights, a pivoting attachment point and a focusing white flood light that allows for it to be used as a flashlight as well. Price: $29.95. Available at sportys.com. Modern Plane Tee The Ascend T-shirt is a fresh take on the design of the classic paper…

THE MYSTERY The Big Sky Theory holds that pilots are protected from midair collisions to a great degree based on how vast the sky is and how small planes are, making the chances of a collision slim. But does this theory hold water (and I’m not talking water vapor)? THE BACKSTORY Before the development of radar, before the development of TCAS and other traffic avoidance systems and long before the birth of ADS-B, many pilots held that the big sky was their form of collision avoidance. Tiny planes and a giant sky, they argued, equaled very long odds against a midair collision. But were they right? “If a plane takes up roughly 300 cubic meters of space, you could stack around 50 billion planes without them touching, all within the…

There are usually good reasons for design weirdness, but they are usually hard to see through the unexpected angles and appendages. The odd approaches to configuration that you’ll see here don’t usually reflect the designer’s aesthetic sensibilities but, rather, the design performance or mission goals that wound up driving the design decisions. These decisions, like the giant balloon-like forward fuselage of the Airbus Beluga, are for a specific reason, and the same is true for every one of the planes in our lineup here. One thing most of these planes have in common is the commitment by the designer or the manufacturer to the unusual aspect of the design, and while some of the creators celebrated the design as much as the performance improvements or mission capabilities they bring, most…

My student, Sarah, was on her very first solo flight, negotiating for room in the traffic pattern after I had hopped out and situated myself in my “lucky spot” beside the taxiway intersection. I knew she could do a good job because I had only been an observer in the right seat for the past hour. She was consistent with her outcomes, and, more importantly, I was satisfied with the decisions she was making to create that consistency. So, it was without trepidation that I watched her opt for holding short instead of rolling out to take off when unannounced traffic entered the downwind. Her subsequent circuit of the pattern was uneventful, and she was quickly back in the air for another landing. That time, her approach came up a…