Índex per December 2017 a Flying

GLOBAL 7000 DEBUTS AT NBAA IN VEGAS The National Business Aviation Association’s annual Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition in Las Vegas was devoid of any major announcements, but Bombardier Business Aircraft made a big introduction, bringing its Global 7000 for the first time to a public event. The airplane on display was the fourth flight-test vehicle, referred to by the company as FTV4. The airplane took its first flight only a couple of weeks before the event, and it’s the first test-bed with a complete interior. Bombardier has tested the interior configuration on a pneumatic test rig that simulates the motions and loads of flight. Interiors are produced by cabinetmakers, woodworkers, upholsterers and other specialized personnel at Bombardier’s Centre of Excellence in Montreal. Flight-testing was conducted in Wichita, Kansas, and…

About halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, in California’s vast Central Valley, lies Harris Ranch, an unlikely and welcoming island on an otherwise uninterrupted sea of drab and dusty farmland. The “ranch” is actually a complex of steak restaurants, a hotel, gas station and other amenities designed as a destination rest stop for drivers on Interstate 5, the busy asphalt ribbon stretching from Mexico to Canada. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, the hot, dry air can be pungent with the heady aroma of the ranch’s vast feedlot, where thousands of head of beef cattle await their certain doom and whence its dizzying array of thick, fresh USDA steaks derives. For aviators, Harris Ranch is home to a 2,800-foot lighted runway and plenty of free tiedowns, making…

LIGHTSPEED ZULU 3 The Zulu 3 active noise-reduction headset from Lightspeed is hard to beat, with exceptional sound quality and extra features, such as Bluetooth, cellphone interface and auto-shutoff, plus supreme comfort, all for a price of some lesser headsets. The durability of the Zulu 3 sets its apart as well. It features a stainless-steel headband and Kevlar cable that can withstand years of abuse. $850 at sportys.com FOREFLIGHT SCOUT ForeFlight’s Scout is a compact, easy-to-use ADS-B receiver that transmits traffic information and subscription-free weather to the ForeFlight Mobile app. The more we fly with it, the more we like it, especially for the weather tools, such as icing and turbulence forecasts, that work so well in the app. To keep it simple there’s no battery, so throw a portable…

PETER MCEVOY WHAT COMES NEXT As a retired physician and pilot, I read with empathy Dick Karl’s lamentations after selling his Cheyenne [“She’s Gone,” October]. I am about to sell my Piper Navajo, having owned it for 27 years. Buying a TBM will allow me to fly faster and higher. I know what he means when he says it is a defining airplane of an aviation career. I know we will both survive, mixing regret with the excitement for whatever comes next. Lawrence Beroza EXPANDING HORIZONS I enjoyed your great Aviation Career issue [September]. I would suggest there are even more interesting and fun ways to build hours than instructing. I started my career flying on floats in northern Canada. While I had hoped for immediate multiengine experience, this was…

I grew up and learned to fly on the snow-swept plains of Minnesota, but I really grew up in the crowded, smoggy skies over Southern California. It’s where I spent a couple of lean years flight instructing and freight dogging, making lifelong friends while scrambling to make ends meet on some vanishingly small paychecks. I left SoCal when I started working for the airlines 14 years ago, but flying back here still feels like a homecoming. The descent into LAX takes me right over all the airports and landmarks I knew then, and a flood of memories accompanies each one. Back then, flying a Boeing 767 from New York to Los Angeles seemed like a pleasant but impossibly distant dream; now it’s a perfectly routine workday, and I don’t feel…

The 1993 movie Groundhog Day is an American classic. The film has become synonymous with routine and repetition. Recalling the final scene, Bill Murray wakes up to the radio alarm clock when the last digit clicks to 6:00, just as it had done hundreds of times before. The same Sonny & Cher lyrics of “I Got You Babe” blare from the speaker. Instead of Murray mashing the off button, Andie MacDowell reaches across him and silences the alarm clock. Murray’s today had finally become tomorrow. Time had moved forward. The routine had been broken. Because of the movie, characterizing an event as Groundhog Day suggests that circumstances are exactly the same as they were during a prior time period. After months of flying the same two-day London trip on the…

FOR THE INTERACTIVE VERSION OF CHART WISE, VISIT FLYINGMAG.COM/CHARTWISE NORTH WINDS CAN QUICKLY TURN TETERBORO’S ILS RUNWAY 6 INTO A CHALLENGING CIRCLING APPROACH Teterboro is one of the busiest business aviation airports in the United States, handling 178,000 takeoffs and landings annually, many on IFR flight plans. Most runways offer a straight-in approach, except Runway 1. KTEB’s proximity to nearby Newark Liberty means the best approach available to Runway 1 is the ILS Runway 6, circle to land Runway 1. Circling approaches can be challenging, as a Learjet 35A crew tragically learned in May. They failed to begin the circling maneuver early enough, and the aircraft crashed near the approach end of Runway 1. Obstacles, such as a tower nearly 700 feet high sitting just east of the final approach…

A NEW BREED OF MOONEY PISTON SINGLES IS EMERGING OUT OF THE STORIED MANUFACTURER’S KERRVILLE, TEXAS, FACTORY. Named the Ultra models, Mooney’s modernized Acclaim and Ovation are now FAA-certified and rolling out of the factory at an increasing rate. As a Mooney pilot and owner, I was excited to evaluate the M20U Ovation Ultra in conjunction with Mooney Aircraft Pilots Association’s annual Homecoming Convention, which was held in late September at the Inn of the Hills in Kerrville. My Mooney gal-pal Jolie Lucas and I piled into my 1974 M20C at my home base in Camarillo, California, and headed east along Interstate 10 to meet up with Richard Simile, a Mooney sales representative from Delta Aviation, at his home base in Chandler, Arizona. After a quick lunch, we transferred our luggage…

She’s sitting there, right outside those double glass doors, resplendent in the Midwest afternoon sunlight. I am imprisoned with three others in a conference room just a few feet from the ramp. If I lean back I can see her, all detailed, shiny and standing remarkably tall. No Ferrari ever looked better on the delivery floor, and this is no automobile. This is the distillation of 50 years of yearning, months of planning and a lifetime of work and saving. This is to be my first jet and very probably last airplane. It’s a Premier 1. So near, yet so far. There is a lot to do before those doors swoosh open and I climb aboard and fly off into the sunset. The process has been long and more complicated…