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Our airport has been in the news lately about its efforts to get rid of the Canada geese which hang around for months in the winter, get in the way of airplanes in the pattern, and leave messy little calling cards on the runways and taxiways.
A few months ago a C-152 from a nearby airport hit a flock of geese just after the airplane lifted off from a touch-and-go at our airport. One goose came through the windshield and wound up in the instructor's lap. Goose parts were found all the way back into the tailcone. The airplane landed safely but will need a new windshield, eight feet of leading edge of the left wing, and a super-deluxe interior detailing job.
It's not just our airport at stake -- commercial jets on the ILS to Portland rwy 10L cross over our airport just over 1,000 AGL, where the birds frequently fly.
Among the steps being taken are placement of cardboard cutouts of coyotes and other predators (as they're called here, "Coyote-on-a-Stick"). There are also now long runs of three-foot-high vinyl fencing near and parallel to the runway. The birds don't like the fence, because it blocks their view of predators and limits available space for their takeoff runs. These measures are reportedly up to 100% effective at other airports.
But geese aren't the only problem. Last weekend a friend's C-182 hit a seagull, doing substantial sheet metal damage to the horizontal tail. Ron kept his cool and landed safely.
A couple of weeks ago a reporter from a Portland TV station was at our airport to do a story on the bird issue. Coincidentally I picked that time to go out and shoot some landings for a little aero-therapy. Result, my airplane got her pretty yellow face on the six o'clock news, fortunately in a favorable light. Even more fortunately I didn't botch any landings!
Below are a couple of stills from that story. The vinyl fence is visible in the first photo.
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I posted the following on the blue board on November 29, 2005:
I've had almost nine weeks now, since the onset of my father's illness, to think of an appropriate tribute to him. During much of that time I feared with good reason that the tribute would be posthumous. I can gladly spare you the suspense, however, and tell you that he has pulled through and he will be all right. But the story still needs to be told.
He grew up in central Florida, spending long hours lying on his back in the grass, watching the Martin B-26 bombers ("one a day in Tampa Bay") and other wartime craft take off and land at his hometown field. At age 15, shortly after his mother died, he took a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles to live with his older sister. He married young, a child (yours truly) came along, and he had to set his love of airplanes aside for a long time. A young policeman's salary in those days was hardly enough to satisfy a craving for flight.
The flying bug is hereditary, and I was hooked at a young age. As I got into the awkward teen years, my dad seized the opportunity to forge a lasting bond between us. We both started flying lessons. As it happened I got my private license first, on my seventeenth birthday, in August 1968. He passed his checkride about three weeks later, and soon he bought a used Cessna 150 in which we both took our advanced training. We haven't flown together often (the few trips we did fly together were memorable), but for nearly four decades we've never lacked for exciting things to talk about, and we always look forward to the next chance to share our flying experiences.
In 1988 he bought a ten-year-old Skyhawk, and since then he has turned it into a real showpiece. Now it has a 180-hp Lycoming, Power-Flo exhaust, Lasar ignition, gap seals, new interior, etc., etc. The original exterior paint looks factory new.
When my mother became ill in the early 1990s, he didn't fly much. He was too busy taking care of her. After she died in 1995, the airplane and his airport pals became the focus of his life. Often he flew from his home in southern Oregon to airshows and fly-ins around the western states. In 1998 the Skyhawk took him to his 50th high school reunion, which was held in Laughlin, Nevada. There he met up with an old school flame. Three years later my airplane carried my wife and me to Southern California for their wedding. The wedding was performed by his grandson -- my son -- an ordained pastor, who himself had soloed a Cessna 152 the year before.
My dad and his new bride have two homes -- his Oregon property, and a condominium in San Diego County. Naturally the Skyhawk has been the primary mode of transportation between the two.
On September 30, 2005, at the San Diego condo, my dad suffered a ruptured thoracic aneurysm. He was airlifted by helicopter to a hospital in Escondido. It was almost his last flight. The helicopter crew did not expect to deliver a living patient. He was rushed into 3-1/2 hours of surgery, taking ten units of blood. The doctor told us he had a 5 to 10 percent chance of survival that night.
My wife and I bought tickets on the first airline flight from Portland to San Diego the next morning. I had a window seat. Weather was clear. As we flew over I couldn't help but stare at places that had been important to my dad and me over the years -- Yosemite National Park, where he took me camping; Columbia Airport, where he loved to go for fly-ins; places where we used to live; the college where he helped pay my tuition, and so on, all the way to San Diego.
He was comatose and on a respirator for three weeks. Circulatory complications forced amputation of his left lower leg. As late as October 20 the doctors were saying things looked bad and we should prepare for the worst. But he rallied and came out of it. He was finally transferred out of critical care, and spent a couple of weeks in rehab. Two days before Thanksgiving he was discharged to go home to the condo. He is receiving outpatient therapy and is looking forward to getting the leg prosthesis. He and his droll sense of humor ("Well, I don't have to worry about that bunion any more") are both alive and well.
We had much to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving holiday. Amid the feelings of relief for his recovery I am so grateful for what he did to bring us together as a family, through the magic of flight. I am grateful to my lovely step-mother for selflessly caring for him. I am grateful to my dad's mechanic and fellow "airport bums" for being such loyal friends.
Whether or not he will ever regain his medical certificate, I'm certain that he will someday soon fly that Skyhawk again, with another pilot -- maybe me -- alongside.
Y'know, there are some people who have this funny idea that airplanes are inanimate objects, just manufactured assemblies of metal, rubber and cloth. Uh-uh, can't fool me. I know better.
Fast forward two and a half years, to today. He's doing great and is living a normal life, though the leg prosthesis still causes considerable discomfort.
UPDATE: I flew with him in his Skyhawk, with my son in the back seat, on June 24, 2006 (photos below). He flew like he hadn't missed a day. He remained hopeful of regaining his medical certificate until the onset of kidney cancer in the summer of 2008. He left us as he lived, with quiet dignity and grace, on November 9, 2008.
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Just a couple of observations after the transition from a Bonanza to a Sport Cub ...
-- You get the same sensation of speed low & slow as you do high & fast -- except the cows are bigger.
-- It's easier to clean the bugs off the leading edge when they're not dead, just badly shaken up.
-- Bugs on the trailing edges too?!!
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I knew that trading in my IFR K35 Bonanza on a VFR-only S-LSA meant that my 38 years of flying IFR were probably over. No need to recite here the reasons for the move (if you're wondering, no medical issues or IFR "bad experiences"), but the decision was not hastily made and there are no regrets.
I always enjoyed IFR flying, though, and my last IFR trip was one of the very best and most meaningful of all.
It was in late August 2007, a business trip to San Luis Obispo on the central California coast, with a side trip to San Diego on the southbound leg to visit a dear friend who has been in failing health. Marine low overcast frequently invades the central and southern California coastal areas during the summer, so likely IFR was considered in preflight planning.
For the San Diego stop I selected Montgomery Field (KMYF), a few miles north of downtown San Diego. KMYF, well-known to me from my days of living and flying in Southern California, has an ILS approach, and is more GA-friendly and less expensive than Lindbergh Field (KSAN), the air carrier airport adjacent to downtown. Confident of this plan I made a pre-paid reservation at the hotel on the southwest corner of Montgomery Field.
I planned to leave Vancouver WA mid-afternoon on Friday, August 24. Around mid-day I printed out the full DUATS briefing. With all of the security notices, forecasts, METARS and NOTAMS for the 860-nm trip, the prinout (single-space, 10-pitch font) was 50 pages. It said that the San Diego area was forecast to go 1,500’ overcast right around my arrival time of 9 PM. Were it VFR all the way I could have made KSAN with just one fuel stop, but the prospect of headwinds and night IFR at the destination suggested two stops to leave more than ample fuel on the last leg. I decided on Red Bluff CA (KRBL) and Visalia CA (KVIS) as fuel stops.
It would have been easy to overlook the single line among the dozens of NOTAMS on page 19 of the DUATS printout:
!MYF 08/007 MYF 28R ILS LLZ/GP/DME OTS TIL 0709112300
The only other IFR approach at KMYF was an NDB/GPS procedure; but I had neither an ADF nor an IFR GPS. So a ‘Plan B’ was called for. I thought of Palomar (KCRQ) about thirty miles north, which also had an ILS. I looked at DUATS again, finding this on page 47 of the printout:
!FDC 7/3592 CRQ FI/T MC CLELLAN-PALOMAR, CARLSBAD, CA.
ILS OR LOC RWY 24, AMDT 8C...
S-ILS 24 MINIMUMS NA.
S-LOC 24 MDA 1540/HAT 1214 ALL CATS.
CIRCLING MDA 1540/HAA 1209 ALL CATS.
TEMP CRANE 4196 FEET EAST OF RWY 24 THLD, 85 AGL/492 MSL.
KCRQ’s forecast was for lower ceilings than San Diego, so this NOTAM left KCRQ with no approach with minima below the forecast ceiling.
‘Plan C’ therefore was KSAN, despite its heavy jet traffic, nonprecision LOC 27 approach over Balboa Park and close-up views of downtown skyscrapers. At least there I’d be assured of finding a rental car to get me to my hotel, even late in the evening.
With full tanks I took off from KVIS at dusk and picked up the clearance to KSAN. The sun set through the smoke layer to the west while a huge, near-full moon rose in the east.
The route, LHS V459 SLI V23 MZB, took me right over West Los Angeles, where I could see the coastal overcast was already making its move onshore.
By Oceanside there was a solid undercast, surreal and luminescent in the moonlight. Though my last IFR trip to San Diego was more than a dozen years before, the vectors and frequency changes were all familiar. I was given the vector to the LOC 27 final, cleared for the approach, and was told to maintain at least 120 knots (Vle in my airplane) as long as possible for jet traffic following.
The runway came into sight from a couple hundred feet above MDA, I landed, and scooted off the runway as quickly as possible.
Parked at Jimsair, I was in the only piston airplane on the ramp – and for all I know on the whole airport. Service both on the ramp and at the desk was excellent if not inexpensive, and soon I made it to the hotel back at KMYF.
On Saturday I spent some treasured time on Coronado Island with George, for whom I worked for fifteen years (1974-89) and who had been my mentor in the practice of law. This visit made the whole trip worthwhile, and it occurred to me that it would not have been feasible but for a general aviation airplane – and IFR.
Not far from George’s Coronado Shores condominium was another friend (you all know him as Henning), who had time for a beer before I headed back across the bay. He asked me then, as I’m sure he will again, why I was even then thinking about selling the Bonanza and going the LSA route. It’s a long story.
The next morning, Sunday, August 26, I was to fly from San Diego to San Luis Obispo, where I would meet my clients in advance of their depositions on Monday. Saturday night I checked the outlook forecast. It called for low overcast at both the departure and destination, and all coastal areas inbetween. If navaids are working that would not be a problem. So I checked NOTAMs – lightning couldn’t strike three times on one trip, could it?
Yes, it could:
ILS RWY 11, AMDT 1...
PROCEDURE NA.
Again, the forecast ceiling was below MDA on any other available approach at KSBP. If the forecast proved accurate, I’d just have to go inland to Paso Robles and improvise my transportation.
Sunday morning I pulled the hotel room curtain, and in place of the forecast stratus, I was surprised to see towering CB to the northeast.
After a long hold short of the runway for a stream of airline traffic, I was cleared for takeoff and made the quick right turn to the northwest, the usual GA departure from KSAN. The route was V23 SLI V459 DARTS V186 V597 V12 V27 MQO at 10,000. I was in IMC intermittently from 6,000 until the cloud layer ended just east of KLGB, just occasional very light precip and no turbulence.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was likely my last IMC.
If that indeed was my last IFR trip, it was a good one.
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My new airplane was delivered here New Years Eve. In the ten days since then we've had rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog, wind, frogs, locusts, tornado, and everything else the weather can throw at me to keep me from flying.
Well, maybe I was exaggerating a little about the frogs and locusts, but not about the other stuff. Yes, we even had a tornado today, just a mile from my office. That's a rare event for Washington State.
I was finally able to take the Cub up for the first time yesterday, but just a short hop only within about 15 miles and below 1,500 feet AGL. Sunday and thereafter look better, but we'll see.
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In 1971 when I was 19 years old and a freshly-minted CFI, I gave a half-hour of dual in an early American AA-1 Yankee to Col. Glenn Eagleston, a WW2 & Korea ace with 18-1/2 kills.
I've had the son and grandson of a former President as passengers. I borrowed my dad's C-172 to take Michael and Cameron Reagan, along with my son, to a father-son weekend at Hume Lake CA in 1989. Mike's dad had left office a few months earlier, so the Secret Service was not involved.
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Mine (a 1966 VW Beetle) got hit by an airplane in 1969. I was flying my dad's C-150E and had parked the VW at our tiedown spot at Fullerton, CA. The pilot of the C-172 in the photo botched a go-around, hit my car, went through the boundary fence and hit another car on the adjacent street. Had I not been flying at the time, our airplane would have been hit. The VW was repaired and soldiered on.
I was on downwind for rwy 24 returning to Fullerton when tower suddenly said, "Emergency in progress," and told me to leave the pattern and come back later. When I came back and landed I saw the emergency lights down at the west end of the airport, where my car was parked.
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I have a little bit of Rangemaster time from long ago. Big, honest airplane, with a big cabin and big (104 gal. IIRC) fuel capacity. Did I say the cabin was big? When you're not flying it, you could rent it out for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
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I'm not flying today, either. It's raining now with low ceilings, embedded CB's are possible, freezing level is below the tops of the nearby hills, and then there's this urgent PIREP from a Dash 8:
FL120/TP DH8B/TA M20/IC SEV MX/RM A/C IN CLOUD 4 SECONDS-1/4 INCH ACCUMULATION
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnR
When the runway is closed and marked with X instead of a number.
If there's an 'X' at one end, shouldn't there be a 'XXVIII' at the other ... ?
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In the first year after we moved from California to Washington State, our son and his California-blonde then-girlfriend came up to spend the holidays with us. They went out to pick out a Christmas tree for us and brought back a monster -- the tallest Christmas tree we've ever had.
They told us that the tree salesman said he had already cut six feet off of it. The young lady looked quizzically at the tree then asked the salesman, "... Well ... how did you get it all pointy at the top again?"
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I thought he was terrific as Willie Moon, one of the search pilots in Island in The Sky. I don't know if Andy was a pilot himself, or whether it was William Wellman's outstanding direction, but Andy was thoroughly believable in the left seat of that C-47 (except maybe how someone of his size got in and out of it! ).
There were all kinds of aviation "bits of business" in that film, little things the actors did in and around the airplane that made you believe that they knew what they were doing. Watch when Andy figures a quick time-distance problem on an E-6B "whiz wheel". He doesn't make a big deal out of it, you can barely see it, it's just something he does every day.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flyingcheesehead
Of course, I have heard the saying "Cessnas are easier to land, Pipers are easier to land *well*" and since I'm really hard on myself when it comes to judging landings, I find the Pipers easier.
I see it the other way around. The Cherokee line is so forgiving as to yield safe, passable landings despite truly awful technique -- so forgiving that many instructors consider them inferior trainers for that reason. On the other hand, a solid-gold, gentle, nose-high, minimum-speed, tracking-straight-down-the-runway touchdown requires more effort in a PA-28 than in a C-172.
Also, bear in mind that a PA-28 might surprise an unwary pilot on a crosswind landing, as the directly-connected nosewheel might touch down pointed toward the downwind side of the runway.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by foka4
I've been kicking around a career move that would put me somewhere in the vicinity of Portland, OR (i.e., Lake Oswego). Can anyone comment on how aviation-friendly it is out there? Some things that come to mind (from the perspective of an Iowa boy) are:
hangar availability and cost
weather
salt
safety of single-engine xc flight around there
Rental/instruction costs of IFR training
Best non-turbine routes for flying between there and civilization (e.g., Iowa)
Matthew --
I lived and flew in Southern California all my life until 1995 when we had the epiphany and moved to the Portland metro area (actually we're just across the river in Vancouver, WA). It's a great place to live and fly (the two are synonymous), and a great place for a basic VFR airplane.
But you really need a hangar.
Yes, it rains a lot, mostly from late September through April, but while the airplane may have to sit for a few days while a series of systems roll through, there are plenty of good-flying VFR days even in the "grey" months. Except during strong Pacific storms, reduced visibility below the ceiling is rare; thunderstorms are rare; and strong winds are rare.
In the winter months, VFR is really the only way to go without FIKI, because the freezing level is often below most of the MEAs.
And summer is absolutely spectacular.
The Portland Class C is easy to deal with. The controllers there are among the best I've ever dealt with, and are hospitable and cooperative with VFR traffic.
You have a wide selection of excellent airports around the Portland metro area and environs. From Lake Oswego, a few that come to mind are Aurora (KUAO), McMinnville (KMMV), Newberg (2S6) and Mulino (4S9). I fly out of KVUO (Pearson Field in Vancouver), where modern T-hangars rent for $276/month (there is a short waiting list) and outside tiedowns are $25/month.
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Something tells me it wouldn't be a happy place for my VFR-only, corrosion-free, non-oxygen-equipped, 90-hp, 60-year-old, single-engine, non-FIKI, Cessna 140.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I'm selling my IFR Bonanza and replacing it with a VFR-only, corrosion-free, non-oxygen-equipped, 100-hp, single-engine, non-FIKI, Sport Cub. What a great area to fly low-and-slow through the Columbia Gorge, following Lewis & Clark's route; along the Oregon coast; around Mt. St. Helens; and to any number of inviting, out-of-the-way destinations. You can go from the Canadian border following I-5 all the way to Roseburg, Oregon, and never have to climb above 2,500'
Best route to Iowa in a low-and-slow airplane? Probably east through the Columbia Gorge to Pasco, then northeast toward Spokane and pick up I-90.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Teller1900
We got a lot of wild turkeys on the runway in Lebanon. Now it's mostly idiot sea gulls that won't move now matter how close we get or how high we rev them.
Just a few miles north of our airport is a charted wildlife refuge. Pilots are requested to stay at least 2000' AGL in that area to avoid disturbing the sensitive waterfowl. So where is the favorite hangout of the timid, sensitive Canada geese in our area? Our airport itself! They have no fear of the airplanes. Cleaning tires and wheel fairings can be a messy job at Pearson that time of the year. Ask me how I know.
The airport has a coyote on the "payroll". So many drumsticks, so little time!
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It's a long story, but we're toying with the idea of replacing our beloved Bonanza with a Citabria or the like. The Bo has been reliable and more economical than we'd expected for this class of airplane. But the notion of fun flying in the local area, with the fewest possible hinges, bushings, valves, electric motors, pumps, bearings, seals and moving parts, has a certain charm at this stage of life. Posts by folks here like Diana, dbahn and NC19143 have been inspirational.
So we may be embarking on a new journey here. We realize that we'd be giving up the long trips, but it seems there may be something else of value to be gained. No, owning two airplanes isn't in the cards, nor are there any likely rentals available in the immediate area.
If anyone has gone through a similar downsizing, I'd be interested to hear from you.
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The actual language in FAA pamphlet P 8740-48 ("On Landings, Part I") is:
"One final point: full flaps should be used for all normal landings unless the manufacturer suggests otherwise."
WRT the C-150 and C-172, among others, Cessna says,
"Normal landings are made power off with any flap setting."
--and--
"When landing in a strong crosswind, use the minimum flap setting required for the field length."
(emphases added)
So I am compliant with the published FAA guideline if I land a C-150 with 20 degrees of flap down. Would the same be said of a pilot who prangs a 150 in a strong crosswind with full flap on a mile-long runway?
(No, those aren't lawyer-written recommendations in the manuals. The manufacturers didn't care much about product liability in the '50s when those recommendations were first made. It's a mighty slippery slope to start red-penciling manufacturer's recommendations based on presumed ulterior motives. If that were just a "CYA" recommendation, you'd think some knowledgeable inside aerodynamicist or test pilot would have copped to the conspiracy by now.)
I agree with the general principle that consistency is a good thing. In a perfectly consistent world we would always fly at the same weights, at the same temperatures, with the same winds, etc., etc. Some day a student may fly a high-performance airplane that requires partial flap for takeoff. Does that mean he must use partial flap for every takeoff in his trainer (within the allowable range), for consistency's sake?
Ron, I understand and appreciate your point. I just maintain that with lightweight, underpowered airplanes with oversized flaps (i.e., larger than those for which the airframes were originally intended) like C-150 and C-172, and where the manufacturer expressly approves multiple configuration options, there is another side to the issue, and merit to the idea of the student becoming familiar with all allowable configurations.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gprellwitz
It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
A group of greedy clowns tears up the countryside in search of buried treasure.
(Yeah, I know the last one isn't aviation, but it's a fun movie!)
Whaddya mean it isn't aviation? This film contains complete ground school courses in aviation subjects such as flying a Beech 18; maintenance of fabric-covered aircraft; ATC procedures; emergency preparedness at general aviation airports; and a tour of the now-closed Rancho Conejo Airport in Newbury Park, California.
(Photo of the Twin Beech flying through the billboard: http://members.cox.net/mkpl4/mmmmw/thumb.htm )
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Bill
My 18 y.o. son is learning to fly. This is good! His instructor is teaching him to make all landings with 20 degrees of flaps. I'm a 40 degree/ full stall kind of guy.
You didn't specify what type of airplane, but I assume it's a C-150 or 172.
For most airplanes I agree with "full flaps all the time." I landed my Cheetah with full flaps all the time, and do so now with my Bonanza -- except the two times when the flap motor quit. IMHO the C-150 and C-172, lightweight, relatively underpowered airplanes with oversized flaps, are exceptions.
Their manuals all say "[n]ormal landings are made power off with any flap setting" [emphasis added] I've flown both extensively since the 1960's, have owned both, and my experience is that their handling and control response in the flare is better at flaps 20-30 than at flaps 40.
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It's slower, so crashes break less (equipment and crew)
Saves brakes
Saves tires
Is touchdown faster at flaps 20? More wear and tear on the gear and brakes? According to the C-150 manual there is a one mph (0.87 knot) difference between power-off stall at flaps 20 vs flaps 40. So if a proper approach speed is maintained on final, there will not be excessive float and the full-stall touchdown speed will be virtually the same as at flaps 40. I would routinely land my C-150F with flaps 20, gently on the mains with stall horn blaring, and hold the nose off until elevator power dissipated (longer than is possible at flaps 40) and the nose gear touched at a speed barely above a fast walk, and make the first turnoff with no braking or added power at all. I'd submit that's easier on the undercarriage (especially the relatively fragile nose gear). Less wear on the flap motor and flap tracks, too.
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Runway efficiency (possibly clears rwy quicker)
Depends on the airport. If the first turnoff is 600 feet down the runway, full flaps may help. If like at my airport it's 1500 feet away, a full flap landing might slow things down, require the use of power to 'expedite' to the turnoff, and increase pilot workload.
At flaps 40 a Cessna 150 is not a healthy bird. In event of a balked landing drag is so great it ain't gonna climb worth beans until flaps are milked up to 20. (If you gotta go around at flaps 40 what do you do if the flap motor quits?) On approach with flaps 20 the potential pilot workload is decreased and safety margin increased.
At flaps 40 the airplane is more affected by gusty conditions, with less control response to deal with it. For crosswind landings the C-150 book calls for "minimum flap setting required for the field length," and the late Bill Thompson (former Cessna Manager of Flight Test & Aerodynamics, in his book Cessna -- Wings for The World, The Single-Engine Development Story, p. 41) said that was "for better rudder control."
Quote:
Pro's: It's designed to do it (POH)
With regard to the C-150 and C-172 I don't buy that. The C-150 and C-172 are direct descendants of the C-140A and C-170A, respectively. Those models did just fine with the much smaller, plain flaps (of about the same chord as the ailerons) with which they were originally designed. The C-120, the low-cost version of the C-140, had no flaps at all. The "barn door" flaps were later adapted for the civilian models from the specialized, grossly overpowered L-19/O-1 Bird Dog. They give the C-150 and C-172 wonderful extra short-field capability, but they do not fundamentally change the way the basic designs were "meant" to be flown, as borne out by the "any flap setting" language in the manual. And I think it's telling that the factory limited flap travel to 30 degrees in the latest iterations of both designs (C-152 in 1978; C-172P through S since 1981). That the 30-degree limit allowed gross weight to be raised a little bit (70 lb on the C-152, even with a 10% increase in horsepower) suggests that full-flap performance was marginal to begin with.
Thompson wrote that he was initially unenthusiastic about the "projected low-performance C-150 with enlarged tail surfaces and more powerful flaps." So why did the C-150 have the big flaps?
"Our experience with tricycle gears on other airplanes, indicated that most low-time pilots use about 10-mph excess speed in the approach glide, and then they would float many hundreds of feet before touching down. Thus the C-150 would need lots of drag with big flaps."
[Thompson, p. 8]
I looked my old Piper Cherokee 140B manual. It says:
"The amount of flap used during landings and the speed of the aircraft at contact with the runway should be varied according to the landing surface and existing conditions, both windwise and loadwise. It is generally good practice to contact the ground at the minimum possible safe speed consistent with existing conditions.
"[...] In high wind conditions, particularly in strong crosswinds, it may be desirable to approach the ground at higher than normal speeds or with partial or no flaps."
That said, please don't interpret my comments as disdain for the use of full flaps, and I certainly don't agree with training for only flaps 20 landings. The pilot should be proficient in all of the configurations as recommended by the manufacturer, so that he/she is familiar with all of the options available to complete a safe flight with minimal physical or emotional trauma to machine and occupants. Full flap? Partial flap? No flap? Sideslip? Forward slip? No slip? Oversquare or undersquare with a controllable prop? Wheel landing or full-stall in a taildragger? If it's recommended or permitted by the book (as it is in the case of the airplanes we're discussing), be familiar with it, know its advantages and disadvantages, and use your judgment to fly the way that is best for you under the circumstances.
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Just some things I would not have been able to enjoy without an airplane this evening ...
-- This stunning sunset over the Columbia River (Longview, WA);
-- A controller calling out traffic ahead, saying, "... you're overtaking by seventy knots";
-- aaand ... the opportunity to practice using the hand crank to lower the landing gear after the gear motor quit!
(Ah well, it's due for annual in a few days anyway.)
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I've got a '59 K35 with a 260 hp IO-470-N. Sweet handling, runs smooth and cool LOP with GAMI's. Most of my trips are at higher altitudes (10K+), cruise 156 KTAS @ average 12 gph including takeoff and climb, and that's with no speed mods. It holds 63 gallons usable (standard main and aux tanks), useful load is 900 pounds. I've posted some photos and stories about it at www.oocities.org/grumman365ps/bonanza1.
I recommend any prospective Bo pilot get a copy of Flying the Beech Bonanza by John C. Eckalbar, a thorough analysis of handling and performance characteristics of the entire Bonanza line.
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Here is an accident with which I am quite familiar (http://www.airdisaster.com/reports/ntsb/AAR76-17.pdf), as its denouement took place in 1976 just down the street from where I was living at the time.
It happened to be the very first DC-6 (XC-112A) built, flying for Mercer Airlines. The trip was to be from KBUR to KONT with only three flight crew, two cabin crew and a deadheader aboard. As it lifted off KBUR Rwy 15 a blade separated from the #3 engine, tearing the engine from its mounts. The engine landed on the intersection of the two runways. The airplane's hydraulic system was trashed as well. The pilot continued the takeoff (there is a cemetery and mausoleum immediately south of Rwy 15) and nursed the airplane through a low-altitude 270-degree right turn and landed successfully on Rwy 7 (now Rwy 8). But he realized that without brakes there was no chance of stopping before running through the fence, across Hollywood Way and into the gas station across the street. So he made it a touch-and-go.
He flew at about 250 AGL six miles west to KVNY, which had a longer runway. What he didn't realize at the time was that #2 engine oil was also lost and failure of that engine was imminent. When #2 quit the airplane could no longer maintain altitude, coming down just south of the approach end of KVNY Rwy 34L in an under-construction golf course. They might have been all right had they not hit the concrete foundation for what was to be the golf course starter's shack. The three cockpit crew died; the three in the cabin walked away.
My wife and I came home from church that rainy Sunday morning to find Woodley Avenue blocked off by emergency vehicles just south of our apartment.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gkainz
ok, I'm somewhere between uber-pi$$ed off and jaded by the whole outsourcing game ... I wonder how long it will be before your "2 minutes and then transferred" phone call will be answered by "This is Flight Service Specialist Raj in New Dehli, and how may I be helping you today?"
Could be worse:
"This winds aloft forecast has been brought to you by the new Lincoln Zephyr. I'll have the Papa John's Pizza Pireps for you in just a moment, but first, there is a convective sigmet all along your route of flight. But I have good news. I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance ..."
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Wow, it looks like it was an interesting few days for several of us in Arizona.
Cheryl and I flew to KIWA (Williams-Gateway, ~20 SE of Phoenix) for the holiday weekend to visit the grandkids. While there I PM'd Mike and tentatively arranged to drop in at Lake Havasu for a cup of coffee on my way home Tuesday. He said Richard might be there, as well, and I was looking forward to the visit.
That changed Monday morning when I loaded the grandkids into the Bonanza Monday morning to take them for a ride. The starter wouldn't budge, although there was enough juice to run the electric fuel pump. Well, there is no maintenance available at KIWA, and nobody anywhere working on the holiday. So I waited until early Tuesday, when a mechanic drove 15 miles from another airport. He said the Arizona heat is brutal to batteries (mine is nine years old), and they see this all the time. So he took it out and drove it back to his shop to see if it would hold a charge.
Hours later, with the battery back in, still no action from the starter. Then the mech discovered that the clamp that connects the battery cable to the starter had sheared. We didn't notice it earlier because the break was hidden by the rubber sleeve. So the mechanic had to make a second trip back to his shop to repair the clamp, and I was finally off the ground just after noon, too late to make the Havasu stop. (I hope someday they'll get a mx facility at KIWA! But in the meantime, here's a big shout out and a thank you to the nice folks at Arizona Aviation at Stellar Airpark.)
Near St. George, Utah, at 14,500', the engine starting running a bit rough, and the EGT on #4 went up about 75 degrees. A mag check inflight showed no difference on either mag, so I deduced it was a fuel issue. Further leaning caused #4 EGT to drop off the bottom of the scale while the others were still rising, supporting the notion that something was blocking fuel to that cylinder. When I stopped for fuel at Elko a mechanic cleaned the injector on #4. That fixed it, but delayed me yet another hour, and I finally got home to KVUO at 8 PM.
So by comparison with Richard, Nick and Michael, my problems were minor. But it's odd we all had "issues" at the same time. Full moon, perhaps?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bbchien
Just got back from a Lifeline flight from C16 to LUK. Yup, FSS sucks.
We flew from southwest Washington State to Phoenix yesterday. Unforecast convection along our planned route in southern Utah and northern Arizona ultimately prompted us to go the long way around the "Area 51" restricted areas to western Nevada. FSS personnel answered quickly, were friendly and tried to be helpful, but their resources and equipment frustrated them and inconvenienced us on every call, in the air and on the ground. Worst FSS experience I've had on a single trip in 40 years of flying. It's all too involved to describe here, but if this wasn't a service critical to aviation safety it would have been funny.
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Neville Duke, WW2 British fighter ace, test pilot, celebrated author and world-renowned ambassador for aviation, left us on April 7. He became ill while flying his beloved Grumman Tiger (registered G-ZERO), landed safely and was taken to a hospital where he died.
At the 1952 Farnborough Air Show a tailless DH.110 broke up in flight during a supersonic fly-by, killing the pilot and 28 spectators. Duke immediately climbed into another supersonic aircraft and as soon as the runway was cleared of debris, took off and continued the show. The next day he received this letter: "My dear Duke, it was characteristic of you to go up yesterday after the shocking accident. Accept my salute. Yours, in grief, Winston Churchill."
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My wife and some of her girlfriends drove to the Oregon coast, where one of them has a timeshare, for an overnighter. A couple hours after they left I thought I'd leave work a little early and fly out there to a nearby airport to surprise her. The trip was 0.6 on the tach. When I landed I phoned her, and found out they were still on the road. Because of the winding two-lane roads through the coastal mountains, and a bad accident that stopped traffic on US 101 in Lincoln City, I had to wait nearly an hour for them to catch up to me at the Siletz Bay State Airport (S45). We chatted and laughed a bit, then I flew home before dark.
It was a nice day to fly, and underscored the value and convenience of G.A.
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Just seen on DUATS:
TTD UA /OV TTD/TM 2010/FLUNKN/TP UNKN/RM CAN SEE PDX NO BIG DEAL
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You know you're an old pilot when...
-- You remember when "upgrading avionics" meant trading in the radio with "whistle-stop" tuning for a complete "1-1/2" system.
-- ... when sectional charts were only printed on one side;
-- ... when VORs had voice identification (I recall the recorded nasal voice repeating "Los Angeles [pronounced 'Angle-less'] Omni");
-- ... when aeronautical chart symbols included airway beacons, drive-in movies and mooring masts.
-- You have ever had to circumnavigate around a Military Climb Corridor.
-- You know what "one for the run and five for the hive" meant.
-- You have drained green or purple avgas from the sump.
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Quote:
Along the lines of this thread what model numbers have what horse power engine
There's no rhyme or reason to it, and sometimes it varies depending on the year. For example, there have been various incarnations of 172s with engines rated from 145 hp to 210 hp. As was mentioned earlier, only one postwar Cessna model number matches the rated horsepower (the Model 175/Skylark - 1958-62 - had a 175-hp engine).
Quote:
and how does the designation XP and SP fit it with the 172 line?
'XP' and 'SP' are marketing names, not model numbers. The name "Hawk XP" was used only in connection with the fixed-gear Model R172K (1977-81) with a 195-hp, six-cylinder Continental IO-360 engine and constant-speed propeller.
The R172 series was developed in the mid-1960s with a 210-hp Continental engine. It used the same Type Certificate as the discontinued Model 175. It was first produced (R172E) in 1967 as the military T-41B trainer. The following year a civilian version went into production at Cessna's affiliate in France as the Model FR172E Reims Rocket, but not in the US.
In the mid-1970s Cessna decided to discontinue the Cardinal. To fill its niche in the product line between the Skyhawk and Skylane, they introduced an "Americanized" version of the Reims Rocket, the R172K Hawk XP. Mainly for noise reasons, the engine was de-rated to 195 hp in the US version, though there are conversions available to get that extra hp back.
When Cessna stopped building light singles in the mid-1980s it had two versions of the fixed-gear 172 in the catalog. There was the 172P Skyhawk with a 160-hp Lycoming O-320, and the 172Q Cutlass with a 180-hp Lycoming O-360, both carbureted and both with fixed-pitch prop. The retractable "Cutlass RG" (Model 172RG) had the same O-360, but with constant-speed prop. When they resumed production in 1995, it was at first only the Model 172R Skyhawk, with a fuel-injected Lycoming IO-360, de-rated to 160 hp to match the old Skyhawks. A couple of years later they responded to customer interest by bringing out the "Skyhawk SP" (Model 172S), with the same engine and a different prop, allowing it to put out a full 180 hp. Both the 172R and 172S are in production now, but without looking at the logos or the tachometer it's near impossible to tell them apart.
One of the least-known 172 variants is the Model P172D "172 Powermatic" and the deluxe version, "Skyhawk Powermatic." Only 65 were built, and only in the 1963 model year. The slow-selling Model 175 was discontinued after the 1962 model year, but for one year its 175-hp power plant and constant-speed prop were merged into the restyled 172 line, along with the usual 145-hp 172 and Skyhawk.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
I use full flaps for ALL landings in my Tiger in all conditions. However, this is plane specific. [snip] YMMV on other planes, as the POH may recommend different techniques.
Indeed they do, such as the POH's of many Cessnas, which say normal landings are made with "any flap setting"; and in the case of strong crosswinds use "minimum flap setting necessary for the field length." Bill Thompson, Cessna's former Manager of Flight Test & Aerodynamics, said that was "for better rudder control."
Cherokee manuals say,
"The amount of flap used during landings and the speed of the aircraft at contact with the runway should be varied according to the landing surface and existing conditions, both windwise and loadwise. It is generally good practice to contact the ground at the minimum possible safe speed consistent with existing conditions.
"[...] In high wind conditions, particularly in strong crosswinds, it may be desirable to approach the ground at higher than normal speeds or with partial or no flaps."
I agree with all those who say that in most circumstances in tricycle-gear airplanes touchdown should be at or very close to the lowest possible airspeed (wheel landings in tailwheel airplanes are another kettle of fish altogether). By definition stall speed is the lowest possible airspeed. In most airplanes, full flap gives the lowest stall speed by a significant margin compared to partial flap; and in those, full flap should be the normal procedure. In a Cessna 150, however, the difference in stall speed between 20 degrees and 40 degrees of flap is one mile per hour -- 0.87 knot.
For the steepest approach and shortest possible rollout, the drag of full flap is helpful. But if your C-150 touches down in a full stall with 40 degrees of flap (at same slow speed as you would be at 20 degrees) and you have to roll out another 1,000 feet down the runway to the first turnoff with a King Air on a one-mile final behind you, how are full flaps helping? As another poster said above, the key here is energy management. Also, once on the ground the C-150 manual recommends retracting flaps "to increase brake effectiveness" (don't do this in a retractable). It'll take that leisurely Cessna flap motor a lot less time to raise the flaps to effective-braking configuration from 20 than from 40.
In calm or steady light wind down the runway, normal approach, and where no turnoff is available in the first 1,500 feet of runway (as at my home field, where we just have one mid-field turnoff), I prefer landing with 20 degrees of flap in a Cessna 150. It provides a moderate power-off glide angle; there's less change in deck angle in the flare to a nose-high arrival that will be kind to the nose gear; there's less to do in transitioning to a go-around if necessary; and subjectively it just feels better. Less wear on the flap motor, tracks and bushings, too. I'll be at a fast walk when the nose gear finally touches and ready to make the turnoff with no braking or power at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by flyingcheesehead
Most planes with no flaps are already capable of flying very slow, and are also very light. Thus, they already touch down slower than your bird, and they don't take much in the way of braking to stop, if anything.
Your plane DOES have flaps, for a reason.
Agreed, and it is important to consider that reason in the context of your specific type, as it might be incorrect to assume the engineers put the flaps there because they need to be used at full deflection every landing.
A Cessna 150 is just a Cessna 140A with tricycle landing gear. The 140A, and the rag-wing 140 before it, had small, plain flaps, less than half the size of the 150's barn doors. The bare-bones version of the 140, the C-120, had no flaps at all. So the design, for the reasons Kent states, doesn't have to have them. Cessna's engineers and test pilots were, as Bill Thompson wrote, "unenthusiastic" about the idea of such huge flaps on a light, low-performance airplane like the projected Model 150.
So why did Cessna put the big flaps on the C-150?
"Our experience with tricycle gears on other airplanes, indicated that most low-time pilots use about 10-mph excess speed in the approach glide, and then they would float many hundreds of feet before touching down. Thus the C-150 would need lots of drag with big flaps."
[Thompson, Cessna -- Wings for The World, The Single-Engine Development Story, p. 8]
And I think it's telling that the factory limited flap travel to 30 degrees in the latest verstion of the design, the C-152. That the 30-degree limit was needed in order to allow gross weight to be raised by just 70 lb -- even with a 10% increase in horsepower -- suggests that the 150's performance with full flap was on the ragged edge to begin with.
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If it wasn't for a 48-year-old fuel boost pump that decided to start leaking, my Bonanza and I would be in Arizona right now with my wife celebrating our grandson's sixth birthday.
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He was the first President my wife and I ever saw in person. We wheeled our two-year-old son in a stroller to the Air National Guard base at Van Nuys Airport in 1976 for a quick early-evening campaign stop. We'll never forget the awe-inspiring sight as Air Force One landed (the first time AF1 had ever landed at KVNY) and taxied up. The President strode down to the podium next to the airplane, and began his speech.
"I love you, and it's great to be here," he said. "My message to the wonderful people of the Fan Sernando Valley ... San Fernando Valley can be summed up -- [pause] It's been a long day, folks."
Nice guy. Seemed to be one of us. He was never elected to anything other than one congressional district in Michigan, but he was right for that moment in the nation's history. And he turned out to be the nation's longest-living President, beating Ronald Reagan by just a few weeks.
Farewell, Mr. President, and thank you.
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Photography and acoustic guitar (Martin D-16, fingerstyle, mostly classical and '60s folk).
For 44 years I've been a fan of The New Christy Minstrels. Now that the group is performing again with its founder, Randy Sparks, and several of the original members, I've been privileged to produce or co-produce a couple of their concerts here in Vancouver, WA.
Quote:
Originally Posted by smigaldi
Did you see the movie Mighty Wind? Check it out if you are a folkie it is even more hilarious.
Yes. The movie came out while I was busy with putting together the Minstrels' concert here in September 2003. My son saw the film before I did. He called me and said, "Dad, do you realize you're living a movie?!"
We billed it as a "Homecoming Concert," because Randy Sparks invented the New Christy Minstrels, came up with the name, and recruited its first four members while he was working a gig here in Vancouver in 1961. So the local paper did a nice write-up about our concert, headlined "A Mighty Coincidence." The timing was also fortuitous in that PBS was frequently airing the "This Land Is Your Land" special at that time, featuring the Minstrels. We sold out.
Fortunately, The New Christy Minstrels are much more talented and serious about their craft than the fictional "New Main Street Singers" in the movie -- though they drifted aimlessly in that direction after Randy sold the group to investors in 1965. He has re-constituted the group, now with five of the original ten members (seven originals in one recent concert) and got the name back just recently. They have a new contract for 90 concerts here and overseas, and are recording again.
We've also had original Minstrel Barry ("Eve of Destruction") McGuire here for a couple of solo appearances.
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We live a mile north of Portland Int'l, Oregon (KPDX). Last night there were 50-knot gusts, and several airliners missed the approach due to wind shear warnings. This morning it was calm and sunny, enough to even make me think of pulling the airplane out. Then an hour ago it started raining. Hard. Then it turned to pea-sized hail, enough to turn the streets and lawns white. Now it's snowing heavily.
I grew up in Southern California, where 12 months out of the year the weather was "morning low clouds and fog, burning off to hazy afternoon sunshine."
This is fun!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank Browne
Quite a number of years ago, we had a shrimp trawler run aground and broke up in the surf at Jacksonville Beach, spilling it's cargo of marijuana into the surf. For two days and nights all the cops could do was try to patrol the beach to keep people off. Bails of pot kept washing up on the beach from Jax to Ponte Vedra. The vast majority of the stuff ended up reaching it's original destination..
... leaving no tern unstoned.
(Sorry, I can't pass up a straight line like that! )
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A university linguistics professor told his class, "There are many languages in which a double-negative means a negative; and many in which a double-negative means a positive. But in no language does a double-positive mean a negative."
As the professor paused to let this sink in, a bored voice piped up from the back of the room: "Yeah, right."
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This brings back a lot of memories.
I was a 20-year-old CFI at Bel-Air Aviation at KLGB, right at the foot of the then-new control tower, watching the first DC-10s undergo flight test. Several of my primary students were McD-D engineers who had been working on the DC-10.
One memorable sight was the unpainted prototype making a max-effort landing on runway 30. There was noise, fuss and feathers, but that behemoth came to a stop before the intersection of 25L, just 3250 feet down the runway.
In August 1971, the first two DC-10s were delivered to customers, one to American and one to United. Douglas employees had the day off, and the airport perimeter was jammed with spectators. VIPs were shuttled out to the middle of the airport, close to runway 12/30, to watch the airplanes take off (we'd been watching DC-10s take off for months, so this was no big deal for us). Runway 12 was in use. The AA airplane taxied out from the Douglas ramp and took off, to the oohs and aahs of the assembled multitude. Then the UA airplane taxied out. It rolled majestically down the runway, rotated and ... then the nose came back down, spoilers and reversers deployed, and the airplane coasted ignominiously down to the southeast end of the runway. VIPs cleared their throats and looked around nervously.
We heard later that the captain aborted the takeoff because his window was not properly latched. Thus began the DC-10's star-crossed career.
Farewell, old girl.
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I thought The Aviator, the recent flick about Howard Hughes, was pretty bad physics-wise. The computer-generated airplanes looked great, but didn't move anything like real airplanes would move.
The HR-1's power-off, gear-up slide through the berry patch -- after a cartoonish "flareout" -- lasted eighteen seconds before the camera cut away, the airplane still moving at a good clip, seemingly a constant speed (maybe they were greaseberries?). Plenty of time for Leo to mug for the camera. Plus he handles the controls like it was a skiploader, rather than a high-performance airplane. Jimmy Stewart, at least, knew how to "fly" an airplane in the movies.
And how about sound? Over the Hollywood Hills Leo and Cate whisper and coo to each other in the cockpit of a Sikorsky S-38 (Hughes' real airplane was an S-43) as "Moonglow" plays softly in the background. That would have been kinda tough with the din from the unmuffled R-1340's and prop tips mere inches from the cabin roof.
In the interview on the bonus disc, director Scorsese admits that before making this movie he knew nothing about aviation. No kidding. Howard Hughes was passionate about technical accuracy in his films; he would have hated the aviation scenes in this movie.
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I own a K35 (V-tail) Bonanza. Before that I owned a Grumman Cheetah. Before that I put a couple hundred hours in rented T-tail Turbo Arrows. All three wag their tails in turbulence, the Bo no worse than the other two.
All Bonanzas exhibit some yaw response in turbulence; the 36 series somewhat less so, because of the longer fuselage. The question of whether or not the 35 series oscillates more than the 33 series will be debated long after the Bernoulli/Newton issue is decided to everyone's satisfaction.
All else being equal, a straight-tail 33 series airplane will weigh about 19 pounds more empty than a corresponding V-tail 35-series example. The straight-tail design does give the 33 series a wider allowable CG envelope, and the 36 wider still, but CG is an issue in all Bonanzas.
To learn more about the Bonanza line:
1. Get a copy of Larry A. Ball's Those Incomparable Bonanzas. It has interesting stories about the development of the design, and charts the changes in each model, year-by-year, up through the 1972 models. The sequel volume, They Called Me 'Mr. Bonanza', continues the list of changes from 1972 up to the early '90s.
2. Get Flying the Beech Bonanza by John C. Eckalbar. Excellent summary of handling and performance of the various Bonanza models, including performance parameters not covered in the POH.
3. Join American Bonanza Society, probably the best owners group on the planet. A wealth of maintenance, parts and operational resources are at your fingertips.
Happy hunting!
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Or you can make a scale model of the solar system, with Earth a ball the diameter of a 25-cent piece.
The moon is the size of a shirt button, 30 inches away.
The sun is nine feet in diameter, 968 feet away.
Mars would be about the size of a penny, at its closest about 500 feet away.
Use a soccer ball for Jupiter, and put it about a mile away from the quarter that represents Earth.
A baseball would work for Neptune, and it goes about 5.3 miles away.
The nearest star (other than the sun) is 48,000 miles away at that scale.
I'm not sure all that makes us any more or less important, but when you think about the interplanetary probes that have been sent up there, that's pretty good shootin'.
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Reminds me of when an airplane made an out-of-fuel forced landing in Burbank, California, a few years ago. One of the responding firefighters, with a microphone in front of his face and a news camera pointed at him, commented that there was no post-crash fire, and added, "Those passengers are awfully lucky there was no fuel aboard."
Honest. I saw it.
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"U.S. Army Weighs Blimp Fleet for Iraq"--headline, WorldTribune.com, May 23
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Sounds like we'll soon be getting a graphic like on the TV weather ... a smiley-face sun over one corner of the country, a frowney-face raincloud over another, Mister Snowflake in the north and Willard Scott in the middle saying happy 106th birthday to Maudie Shmertz of Kenosha, Wisconsin.
I think this behooves us to learn to root around as many sources of weather data as possible, and to learn how to interpret the raw data as best we can. In addition to DUATS or the live briefing, search through ADDS, and the narrative forecast discussions from local NWS sites. Air Sports Net has a nice graphical interpretation of forecast models as well (free).
The imminent dumbing-down of AIRMET information will make timely pilot reports all the more important.
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A few months ago I searched the NTSB accident database for N-numbers of airplanes in my logbook. I go back to the mid-sixties, so there were a lot of airplanes in my search, mostly trainers (as student and CFI) and rentals.
It was a little disheartening. A surprising number of them had been in some kind of accident, some very serious or catastrophic. Many of the trainers had hard-landing accidents, some more than one. A lovely Piper Warrior that I had once enjoyed renting was destroyed years later in an apparent suicide crash, and a Navion I once flew also went down under very suspicious circumstances. A Cessna 152 fell victim to a mixture of alcohol and fog, and a Saratoga and its pilot were lost to an overabundance of air in the fuel tanks. A Mooney 201 hit a house when a go-around somehow went bad.
My only accident (thankfully) was a landing rollover back in 1971, while receiving dual instruction in a McCulloch J-2 gyroplane. It was a little comfort that of the 60-some J-2's built, it was hard to find one that had not been in some sort of serious mishap.
Accident reports and the "Never Again" articles in AOPA Pilot are valuable and sobering lessons to us all. But it is all the more compelling when you realize you have sat in that very same seat.
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,191164,00.html
I was chuckling about this until it occurred to me to wonder how much Federal grant money went into this study.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by smigaldi
I just want to know how is it that ATC always seems to know the worst time to give you course and altitude changes when poping in and out of the clouds. You cannot tell me that their radar does not see these clouds and that they are all having a good laugh at the pilots they give the leans to
The controllers I deal with have honed it into an art. They delight in giving me a new heading and altitude, timed perfectly so that I have to roll out on the new heading, at the precise moment that I reach the assigned altitude, resulting in a three-axis acceleration guaranteed to induce vertigo -- while I'm reaching for the radio to tune to the new freq he just assigned. I bet if he keyed the mike a little early I'd hear him say, "Hey, Fred, watch this!"
(Just kidding, guys ... you know we love you! )
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AOPA's online tribute to the Cessna 172 is very nicely done, but there is one glaring omission.
Few remember that a 1958 Cessna 172 (this one) with a stock Continental O-300 engine, set and still holds the world record for flight endurance by a heavier-than-air aircraft. With two men aboard it took off from Las Vegas on December 4, 1958. They landed on February 7, 1959 -- 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes and five seconds later! That's 1,558.3 hours of continuous flight -- one logbook entry!
This achievement boggles the mind, yet so few people are even aware of it.
Here's a link to a newspaper article about the airplane, its crew and its amazing flight.
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My curiosity about ice was satisfied one December, enroute from Portland to Medford in IMC, about -2C. Descending was not an option. I could see a buildup of about an inch on the leading edge of an antenna, which started whipping back and forth like a happy greyhound's tail, so wildly I thought it would break off ...
... so I pulled over at the next rest area and scraped the ice off the radio antenna, as well as the rest of the front of the car.
(The "IMC" was freezing ground fog, and this was in a Ford Explorer on Interstate 5.)
I'm cured, thank you very much.
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JFK Republican, Reagan Democrat and passionate centrist
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DanB
As far as I understand it, it's an old myth. Something to do with when you have the flaps down, the air doesn't flow over the tail the same way and reduces your rudder control.
It's not a myth, but it's not a big deal, either.
Here's what Bill Thompson, former Manager of Flight Test & Aerodynamics at Cessna, had to say about the issue of slipping with full flaps in the 172 (Cessna -- Wings for The World, by William D. Thompson, Maverick Press, 1991, p. 41):
With the advent of the large slotted flaps in the C-170, C-180, and C-172 we encountered a nose down pitch in forward slips with the wing flaps deflected. In some cases it was severe enough to lift the pilot against his seat belt if he was slow in checking the motion. For this reason a caution note was placed in most of the owner's manuals under "Landings" reading "Slips should be avoided with flap settings greater than 30 deg. due to a downward pitch encountered under certain combinations of airspeed, side-slip angle, and center of gravity loadings". Since wing-low drift correction in crosswind landings is normally performed with a minimum flap setting (for better rudder control) this limitation did not apply to that maneuver. The cause of the pitching motion is the transition of a strong wing downwash over the tail in straight flight to a lessened downwash angle over part of the horizontal tail caused by the influence of a relative "upwash increment" from the upturned aileron in slipping flight. Although not stated in the owner's manuals, we privately encouraged flight instructors to explore these effects at high altitude, and to pass on the information to their students. This phenomenon was elusive and sometimes hard to duplicate, but it was thought that a pilot should be aware of its existence and know how to counteract it if it occurs close to the ground.
The "oscillation" mentioned in this thread is an unrelated phenomenon that Thompson described in newer models in full-flap slips: "a mild pitch 'pumping' motion resulting from flap outboard-end vortex impingement on the horizontal tail at some combinations of side-slip angle, power, and airspeed."
So although the 172L's larger dorsal apparently solved the pitch-down issue, they kept the cautionary note in the POH because of the latter phenomenon.
Unfortunately Cessna contributed to the "end of the world" fear of slips with flaps, by not explaining the phenomenon in the manuals; and in fact, many earlier C-172 manuals expressly said that slips with full flap were prohibited. I rummaged through my collection of old Cessna owners manuals:
1958 C-172: "prohibited"
1959 C-175: "prohibited"
1966 C-172F: "prohibited"
1972 C-172L (first year of the big dorsal): "should be avoided"
Maybe the manuals for these older models have been revised since then, but that's what a lot of us old-timers read back then and remember.
That quake damaged such a wide area because the movement was along a shallow-angled fault close to the surface; and because of the nature of the soil in areas many miles away, such as Santa Monica. Seismologists came on TV grinning like kids with a new toy, saying, "Wow, we sure learned a lot from that one -- we didn't even know that fault was there!! For all we know, this might have been a foreshock to an even bigger one!!" (Thanks for sharing.)
It was not just the original quake that drove us nuts; it was the thousands of aftershocks that went on for months after. You went to bed every night knowing you'd be awakened by at least another one (maybe the ... BIG one?? )
Our firm had a branch office in Palmdale, usually a 45-minute drive from the home office in Woodland Hills. The freeway interchange collapse in the quake made it a 3-hour-plus drive. So I flew files and supplies from KVNY to Lancaster (KWJF), only 15 minutes away. On one such trip I was taxiing out when a sharp 4.1 aftershock hit. I called VNY ground to make a pilot report of moderate turbulence on the East Taxiway. Y'know that control tower in the film One Six Right? All the glass was knocked out by the quake.
If you do a whole month's worth of grocery shopping while pushing your shopping cart backwards through the supermarket, you might be a tailwheel pilot!
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Nowadays many cash-strapped local governments are forcing "non-essential" public properties (such as golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools and airports) to operate as self-sustaining enterprises. Such properties receive nothing from the general fund, and are even "charged" by the governmental entity for things like maintenance, clerical and legal services, billing and postage. If the airport has received FAA grants no revenue from the airport can go to any non-aviation-related purpose; in other words, the county's general fund doesn't get any "profit" from the airport.
Most voters have no clue about G.A.'s true value to the non-flying public, so it will be tough to find a local politician with enough intestinal fortitude to tell his constituents that their tax dollars should be supporting a "playground for rich pilots" instead of schools, crumbling highways, etc.
So ... I don't like it at all and I wouldn't try to defend it ... but it may come down to a choice between an airport with a landing fee or no airport at all. Boycotting the airport because of the fee may in fact produce the exact opposite of the desired result and seal the airport's fate.
It goes back to the widespread ignorance about G.A. on the part of the public, politicians and the press. If there are 175 airplanes based at XYZ public airport, the public believes that the airport serves 175 people [read: rich people] in the community, and that's how they value it.
Our industry has been preaching to the choir for far too long, and this is the result.
Private airports have to operate as businesses, by definition. The Brave New World of aviation is that public airports have to sustain themselves, too. This is where FAA is a huge friend of G.A., because FAA grant assurances prohibit municipalities from siphoning off money generated by the airport, or using airport land or facilities for non-aviation purposes.
Sources of airport revenue are limited: fuel flow surcharges, hangar rent, tiedown fees, FBO and other commercial leases. Expenses are everywhere, from routine maintenance of the physical facilities, environmental regulations -- even state leasehold taxes on hangar rents. If the airport's books are running into the red, what do you do?
Put an initiative on your local ballot asking the voters for a 1/2-cent increase in the local sales tax or some increase in the local property tax to support your airport. What result?
Now exorbitant "ramp fees" charged by private businesses who lease from the airport are a different kettle of fish. They can charge what the market will bear and enjoy the profits however they see fit, and the customer is free to shop around for the best deal.
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If you were in Phoenix [in January 2008] you'd have to be comatose not to know that the Super Bowl was in town and dragging a special TFR with it. But there's a larger question.
The standing TFR (3/1862) applies to "any stadium having a seating capacity of 30,000 or more people in which a Major League Baseball, National Football League, NCAA Division One Football, or major motor speedway event is occuring."
Lessee, there's upwards of 2,500 MLB games a year (including playoffs and exhibitions in big stadia), 330-some NFL games, who-knows-how-many NCAA Div. 1 football games, plus "major motor speedway events."
That's a lot of uncharted, unbriefed TFR's. Guess every time we fly we have to call AFSS then ESPN.
Y'all keepin' track of where NASCAR is every weekend?
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This has made the internet rounds over the past several years ...
One fine, hot summer afternoon a Cessna 150 was flying the pattern at a quiet country airfield. The CFI was getting quite bothered with the student's inability to hold pattern altitude in the thermals and was getting impatient, at times having to take over the controls. Just then he saw a twin Cessna 5,000 feet above him and thought, "Another 1,000 hours of this and I qualify for that twin charter job! Ahhh...... to be a real pilot...going somewhere!"
The Cessna 402 was already late and the boss told him this charter was for one of the company's premier clients. He'd already set MCT and the cylinders didn't like it in the heat of this summer day. He was at 6,000 feet and the winds were now a 20-knot headwind. Today was the 6th day straight flying and he was pretty tired. Maybe if he got to 10,000 feet, the wind might die off .... geeezzzz, those cylinder temps! He looked out the window momentarily and saw a 737 leaving a contrail at 33,000 feet in the serene blue sky. "Oh man," he thought, "My interview is next month. I hope I don't blow it! Outta G/A, nice jet job, above the weather..no snotty passengers to wait for....ahhhhhhhhhhh".
The Boeing 737 bucked and weaved in the CAT at FL330 and ATC advised the captain that lower levels were not available due to traffic. The Captain, who was only recently advised that his destination was below RVR minimums, had slowed to LRC to try and hold off a possible inflight diversion, and arrange an ETA that would hopefully ensure the fog had lifted to CAT II minima. The Company negotiations broke down yesterday and it looked as if everyone was going to take a pay cut. The F/O's will be particularly hard hit as their pay wasn't anything to speak of anyway. Finally deciding on a speed compromise between LRC and turbulence penetration, the Captain looked up and saw the Concorde at Mach 2. Tapping his F/O's shoulder as the 737 took another bashing, he said, "Now THAT's what we should be on..huge pay packet........super fast..not too many routes....not too many sectors...above the CAT. Yep! What a life!"
FL590 was not what he wanted anyway and considered FL570. Already the TAT was creeping up again and either they would have to descend or slow down. That rear fuel transfer pump was becoming unreliable and the F/E had said moments ago that the radiation meter was not reading numbers that he'd like to see. The Concorde descended to FL570 but the radiation was still quite high even though the NOTAM indicated hunkydorey below FL610. Fuel flow was up and the transfer pump was intermittent. Evening turned into night as they passed over the Atlantic. Looking up, the F/O could see a tiny white dot moving against the backdrop of a myriad of stars. "Hey Captain", he called as he pointed. "Must be the Shuttle". The Captain looked for a moment and agreed. Quietly, he thought how a Shuttle mission, whilst complicated, must be the "be all and end all" in aviation. Above the crap, no radiation problems, no fuel transfer problems ... ahhhhhhhh. Must be a great way to earn a quid.
Discovery was into its 27th orbit and perigee was 200 feet out from nominated rendezvous altitude with the COMSAT. The robot arm was virtually OTS and a walk may become necessary. The 200 feet predicted error would necessitate a corrective burn and Discovery needed that fuel if a walk was to be required. Houston continually asked what the Commander wanted to do, but the advice they proffered wasn't much help. The Commander had already been 12 hours on station sorting out the problem and just wanted ten minutes to himself. Just then, a mission specialist, who had tilted the telescope down to the surface for a minute or two, called the Commander to the scope. "Have a look at this, sir, isn't this the kind of flying you said you wanted to do after you finish up with NASA?" The Commander peered through the telescope and cried "Ohhhhhhhhh yeah! Now THAT'S flying! Man, that's what it's all about. Geeezz, I'd give anything just to be doing THAT down there!"
What the Discovery Commander was looking at was the Cessna 150 flying the pattern at a quiet country airfield on a nice bright sunny afternoon.
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Somebody made mention of the old Narco Mark 12 the other day. That brings back memories of hours spent at the vacuum tube testing machine at the local Thrifty Drug Store ...
I got my Instrument Rating in a C-150E with a single 90-channel Mark 12 (no glideslope), a marker beacon receiver and a stopwatch. 90 channels meant 118.0 - 126.9 with 100-kc spacing.
LGB Tower: Cessna 94J, contact departure 127.2.
Me: Unable 127.2.
LGB: <sigh> OK, departure on 118.1, g'day.
Every time you transmitted on a Mark 12 the CDI would go dead until you unkey the mic. And of course when you start up you had to wait a couple of minutes for the vacuum tubes to warm up. It's no longer legal to transmit with a Mark 12, as frequency tolerance rules have been tightened.
Before the Mark 12 there was the Mark 5. It looked like a Mark 12, but the left dial was for the transmitter and the right dial was for the receiver (for com or nav, not both at the same time unless you're receiving com through a VOR voice facility), and you had to tune both of them every time.
The Narco "Dream Package," 1962 style, was a Mark 10 with VOR/LOC/GS head, a Mark 5 with VOR head, a primitive Narco analog DME, an ADF-29 and an MBT 3-light marker beacon receiver. They called it a "two-and-a-half system," meaning that stack included two transmitters and three receivers (a com transmitter and receiver plus a nav receiver in the Mark 10, and a transmitter and a receiver in the Mark 5). $8,000 in 1962 (over $57,000 in today's dollars), and all of this weighed almost 65 pounds! Narco was the top brand for G.A. avionics in those days.
What we often take for granted these days is that modern avionics are self-contained in-the-panel units. The old vacuum-tube Mark 12's and most of its contemporaries had heavy power supply units that had to be installed elsewhere in the airframe.
Nor did we always enjoy the luxury of using a single VHF frequency for both transmitting and receiving with ATC. When aircraft radios had but a handful of transmitter crystals, all towers could receive 122.5, but they transmitted on various discrete frequencies. Likewise FSS stations received 122.1 and transmitted over VOR's. This inspired the mnemonic, "One for the run and five for the hive." Later 122.6 and 122.7 were also used as tower receive-only channels.
With their hand-crank-tuner receivers, aircraft radios could hear ATC transmissions on any frequency. But the analog tuners were not precise and pilots often had to call ATC in the blind and ask for a "short count" -- where the controller slowly recites "one - two - three - four - three - two - one" while the pilot furiously spins the tuner knob hoping to dial in the "count" in time.
As more and more "simplex" (transmit and receive on the same freq) channels became available, some radios with analog-tuned receivers offered a feature that made simplex tuning easier. Called "whistle-stop" tuning, a feedback tone could be heard in the receiver only when it was tuned to the exact frequency of the selected transmitter crystal. So you would select a transmitter frequency crystal (a good radio in the late 50's might have as many as 27 of them), then spin the receiver dial until you heard the tone, and you're set to communicate.
Friends, I'm here to tell you that the avionics suite in a modern, bare-bones LSA, such as a Garmin 496 tied into an SL40 transceiver and a transponder, is abso-bloomin'-lutely miraculous!
I was a CFI at a Piper dealer at Long Beach CA, then the country's fourth busiest airport, with many airline operations and McDonnell-Douglas flight test operations (the first DC-10s were completing flight test at the time). Our 1969 Cherokee 140 trainers each had one Narco Mark 12A navcom. Period. None of our single-engine fleet had transponders ("Cherokee 434, for radar identification turn right heading 120 ..."). N95174 was our instrument trainer -- because its Mark 12A had 360 channels (!!!) and a glideslope receiver. Then we got a 1971 Cherokee 140 with two radios -- -- a Narco Mark 12B and an Escort 110 (similar configuration to the Genave Alpha). That was really the cat's meow -- finally we could identify fixes without switching one radio back and forth -- except for most of the time, when there was a hole in the panel where the Mark 12B was supposed to be, when it was on a radio shop bench. At least the Escort 110 could communicate and navigate, but not both at the same time.
Early DMEs were a lot of fun, too. My '77 Cherokee 140 had a Narco UDI4 DME with analog read-out. The dial had a three-position switch - at one position the dial had a range of 30-100 NM, at the second position the range was 0 - 35 NM, and in the third position it read groundspeed within a range of 75 - 250 knots. When you first tuned in a DME station the needle waved back and forth like a windshield wiper until it "locked on" to the station. If it ever did. That unit was notoriously unreliable.
Except when we flew the incredibly noisy McCulloch Gyroplane, we never used headsets. We relied on hand-held mics and tinny cabin speakers. The speakers alone were the cause of about half of the com failures I experienced.