Indice dei contenuti per April 2015 in Flying

The crash in February of a TransAsia ATR 72, which was captured in horrifying detail by dash-cam as the big twin turboprop clipped a road and broke apart, should be an eye-opener to us all. Automation, or rather pilots’ inability to manage it or to fly without it proficiently, has become public enemy No. 1. It is without doubt the main culprit of airline crashes around the world. You know the list of pilot errors or suspected pilot errors that leads me to this conclusion. The loss of Air France 447 over the Atlantic in 2009 was due to the pilots’ inability to recognize a deep stall and react appropriately to it simply by pushing forward on the controls and regaining flying speed. The tragic crash of Asiana Airlines Flight…

Jeppesen has added new functionality to its low-cost iPad app, the Mobile FliteDeck VFR. While version 2.0 includes about 200 software and design improvements, including the addition of bearing and distance information for all airports in live mode and more detailed information for temporary flight restrictions (TFRs), the most significant update is the added weather capabilities. Weather data provided by Jeppesen’s forecasting team can overlay the map with the tap of a button. The data is based on three-hour forecast intervals and is updated every 12 hours. Color-coded squares based on weather conditions provide the pilot with a quick aid for go/no-go decisions and route planning. Each square covers a 10 nm by 10 nm sector. The color-coding is derived from visibility, ceilings and wind conditions and breaks down into…

The North Dakota badlands had fascinated John and me for a long time, and we couldn’t think of a better way to enjoy them than from our Comanche 250. In retrospect, we certainly could have chosen a better day. The day before, we had f own from our San Diego home base to spend the night in Minot to be positioned for our sightseeing flight the first thing in the morning. When we awoke, we realized the weather would be marginal for VFR with ceilings of 1,000 to 3,000 feet. But the visibility was good underneath the clouds, so we decided that our day of sightseeing was on. It was my turn to be pilot-in-command, and on departure I headed southwest to join the Little Missouri River. As we arrived…

I scratched my chin as I tried to discern the unfamiliar code that our airline computer system had attached to three days of my reserve schedule. A call to crew schedule offered only a verbal shoulder shrug. It was suggested that I call our flight standards department. Hmm … Flight standards is responsible for maintaining and tracking each pilot’s qualifications. When I was a check airman, I worked closely with this department. Flight standards assigned us the pilots who required IOEs (initial operating experiences) or regular line checks. I treated them like gold; my monthly schedule was under their control. Regardless, it was a great give-and-take relationship, an aspect of the check airman job that I miss. “Why would flight standards be calling me now?” I thought to myself. Did…

Designed as a step-up product for owner/pilots transitioning from light piston singles and twins to turboprop power, the M500 Meridian is a light plane (around 5,100 pounds max weight) with a true cabin and airstair door, the latest Garmin G1000 suite and a comfortable if cozy cabin. At around $2.2 million, the G500 is about twice the cost of the piston-powered Malibu Mirage. That low-$2 million price point is surprisingly lonely in the turbine world, as most light jets and turboprops have shot to near the $3 million figure or higher. Eclipse 550 At a price of around $2.9 million, the Eclipse 550 is a more expensive airplane. For that extra cost 550 owners get a lot of extra bang. With a top cruise speed of around 370 knots and…

FEEDBACK FROM OUR READERS THE ADS-B MANDATE The editorial by Robert Goyer in the February 2015 issue [“ADS-B Solved,” Going Direct] is the best article on the subject I have seen. It proposed a real solution to the ADS-B Out mandate, which is a huge problem for many general aviation plane owners and one that could compromise the future of GA in the United States. I hope that, despite certain pressure from avionics manufacturers and push-back from the FAA, you will promote this idea hard in the coming months. I would hope you could link arms with AOPA and EAA (and perhaps even NBAA) to form a unified voice on this subject. Good luck, and thanks. Jonathan Paul Salinas, California For some time now I’ve been suggesting to my pilot…

The FAA has corrected a long-standing “error” in the rule making for ADS-B that will bring down compliance costs for thousands of U.S.-registered Experimental and Light Sport aircraft. When the FAA published its 2010 mandate to install equipment that complies with the automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) rule, it left out a key word in the policy. The notice required all aircraft to carry transponders approved by the FAA under the technical standard order (TSO) certification process. The new rule changes that policy, removing the TSO wording to allow for experimental aircraft and LSAs to meet the “performance” of TSO hardware. Immediately after the announcement on Feb. 9, NavWorx introduced a $699 ADS-B In/Out product, the ADS600-EXP, for Experimentals and LSAs that’s based on its TSO’d ADS600-B product, which carries a…

The fault may have been in their stars — it would be easy to check with the help of a good astrologer — but amateur-built and otherwise non-type-certificated aircraft hit an especially rough patch in April 2014. The run of bad luck actually began a couple of weeks earlier, on Feb. 16, when the 77-year-old unlicensed pilot of a RANS S-10 crashed inverted into an open field in Texas. He had announced over the radio that he was going to attempt a roll. Witnesses saw the plane roll inverted and go into a steep dive. The elevator moved rapidly up and down and then the left wing separated. A friend of the pilot said he had been trying out some aerobatic maneuvers but had not had any dual aerobatic instruction.…

It’s Saturday morning in small-town America, circa the early 1990s. My five younger siblings, flannel-clad in pastel jammies, are sprawled across the living room furniture watching Bugs Bunny gleefully thwart Elmer Fudd’s latest wabbit-hunting schemes. Mom is in the kitchen whipping up a batch of pancakes for her hungry brood. Dad and I are on the living room floor, hunched over the yellow pages of a monthold Trade-A-Plane that I purloined from the local airport pilot lounge. “Wow, Dad, look at this one!” I exclaim, pointing to a three-line ad for an early- model 172. “Four thousand total time and under 1,000 on the engine, and they’re only asking $18,000 for it!” Dad agrees that’s quite a bargain and I circle the ad in red ink just as Mom pokes…

The fast-moving cold front bristled against the western edges of Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Rain showers and gusty winds swirled through the valleys as thick clouds enveloped the rising terrain. Darkness had long since fallen that February night as clock hands edged past 10 p.m. Air traffic controller Jared Mike plugged his headset into the workstation at Seattle Tracon (terminal radar approach control). Housed in a nondescript building just west of the Sea-Tac Airport, the facility handles arriving and departing aircrafit transiting the southern and central Puget Sound area. Sea-Tac, Boeing Field and McChord Air Force Base are just a few of the busy airports within its airspace. Mike would be working through the night amid the control room’s hushed dimness. His flat-panel “scope” depicted aircraft as uniform blue blips moving…

The day began benignly enough. I few to Las Vegas in midmorning to pick up a couple of friends and bring them back to Los Angeles. The flight up was routine, cruising at 7,500 feet, 15-knot headwind, but smooth and clear with unlimited visibility. We put in 20 gallons at North Las Vegas, where the price was a bit lower than at my home field of Whiteman (WHP). During the takeoff roll something went wrong: a change in the exhaust note, a drop in the manifold pressure. I aborted and taxied off the side of the runway. We quickly diagnosed the problem. A slip joint in an exhaust collector on the right side of the engine had come apart. Nothing was broken. The pipes have lugs that are supposed to…

25 YEARS AGO OUR COVER FEATURED A CITATION III, CESSNA’S CLEANSHEET MIDSIZE TWINJET THAT ENTERED SERVICE IN 1983. WITH A RANGE OF BETTER THAN 2,300 NM ALONG WITH A TOP SPEED OF MORE THAN 470 KNOTS, THE III WAS BY FAR THE HOTTEST CESSNA CITATION TO DATE. We reported that deliveries of the Beech Starship would finally commence, more than two decades after development of the all-composite bird began. At the time, Beech had sold 40 of the Starships, which went for $3.88 million apiece. In “Thunderstruck” we unraveled the facts behind a thunderstorm’s most visual element — lightning. We found that airplanes were more likely to be hit by lightning strikes — which are typically hotter than the temperature of the sun — when flying in cooler temperatures as…

Torrance, California-based Robinson Helicopter is offering new panel options for its popular R66 Turbine, adding a new autopilot and glass-panel offerings. While Robinson already offers Aspen Avionics’ PFD and MFD systems, customers can now also choose Garmin’s G500H. Robinson redesigned its avionics panel to suit the G500H primary flight and multifunction displays; hence the new option is not available as a retrofit. The system receives navigation information from one GTN 700 or either one or two GTN 600-series touch-screen navigators, which are mounted below the main screens. Garmin’s Helicopter Synthetic Vision and Terrain graphics and a choice between either Garmin’s or Jeppesen’s instrument charts are features R66 operators are sure to enjoy. XM Weather and radio can also be added through a GDL 69A XM receiver and displayed on the…

L-3 Aviation Products has unveiled a family of ADS-B products with a long list of features and capabilities, including the world’s first Mode S transponder with a touch-screen moving map allowing display of ADS-B traffic and weather data without the need to interface with an MFD. L-3’s Lynx NGT-9000 is a Mode S transponder with 1090ES ADS-B In/Out capability that lets users swipe between menu pages on its LCD touch screen to view nearby traffic targets and call up free FIS-B weather information uploaded over the ADS-B network. Priced at $6,800 plus installation, the NGT-9000 incorporates a 1090 MHz Extended Squitter transponder and 1090 MHz ADS-B Out links, and also receives 978 MHz ADS-B In data. The unit includes built-in Wi-Fi as well for output of its display information to…

CESSNA 150 Watkins, Colorado/INJURIES: 2 Fatal The airplane departed on the local night flight in instrument flight rules conditions with 7 miles visibility and overcast clouds at 300 feet above ground level (agl). Radar data showed that the airplane departed the runway, made one flight around the traffic pattern, and landed 6 minutes later. The airplane departed again to the west, did not remain in the traffic pattern, and reached an altitude of 740 feet agl. The airplane made a left turn, which tightened as the airplane descended about 1,900 feet per minute. The airplane impacted a field and bounced one time before it came to rest upright. An onboard recording device (GoPro) was found near the wreckage and the files were recovered. Based on the available information, it is…

On some days, the stars just line up perfectly. So perfectly that I become reluctant to touch or perturb anything. This day I was on a roll. “Just keep quiet and try not to attract attention” was my mantra at London’s Heathrow Airport. It all started with Virgin Atlantic’s winter sale. Upper class was going for close to coach fares from New York to London and return. I don’t have a lot of transoceanic travel experience by most measures, but I have some. And I still think it is a thrill. I haven’t crossed the Atlantic on Singapore Airlines or Emirates (often said to be excellent), but I have experienced Virgin’s upper class and found it to be fabulous. The “problem,” if you could call it that, was that my…

Significant advances in aviation technology usually arrive not with a brilliant flash of light and poof of smoke but over many years, in a slow, inexorable evolution of products that we sometimes don’t even recognize as signifying a momentous change until, suddenly, the next incredible new capability is in our midst. When we stop to think about all the marvelous innovations that have emerged in the last 20 years — precision satellite-based approach capability, synthetic-vision flight displays, integrated terrain and traffic alert systems, inflight datalink weather graphics — none of these appeared in our cockpits overnight. They migrated, drifted down, sometimes with imperceptible slowness from business jets and airliners, eventually into the airplanes we fly. But isn’t it kind of amazing that light general aviation airplanes by now don’t come…

In the 1960s, Ohio Gov. Jim Rhodes committed to putting a 4,000-foot paved runway in every county — an idea promoted by his friend Norman Crabtree. Both men were from rural southeastern Ohio and proud Bobcats — graduates of Ohio University at Athens. Norm, director of the Ohio Aviation Division, flew the governor around in the state’s DC-3, but he’d flown B-24s in World War II, sung professionally with Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians, taught at Ohio University and was a recognized aviation authority, a fierce general aviation advocate and one of God’s more splendid creations. State road crews poured concrete, and 84 of the state’s 88 counties got airports with lighted, paved runways, avgas and terminal buildings. In places where the airports stimulated the local economies, they grew with longer runways…

VOL. CLVII....No. 30,000 “It’s About Time” Super Light Titanium Timepiece Loses Only One Second Every 20 Million Years. BOULDER, Colorado The U.S. government has engineered the most ingenious, most accurate clock in the world: the F-1 U.S. Atomic Clock in Boulder, Colorado. Our extraordinary new Stauer Titanium Atomic Watch utilizes the transmissions directly from that remarkable cesium fission atomic clock to report the most precise time. This scientifically advanced timepiece will gain or lose only one second over a 20 million-year period. It is that accurate! This perfectly tuned technological invention with the super light strength of titanium is now available for UNDER $130. Super Light Titanium has two big advantages over steel. One is corrosion resistance and the other is that titanium has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any…

Margaret joined WAI for the community of supporters who could encourage and inspire her big goals. She has joined the ranks of thousands of other women who aspire to make their mark in the aviation industry. Margaret’s goals came naturally to her. She grew up in Oshkosh, earned her pilot’s certificate (with the support of the WAI Oshkosh chapter) and now has set her sights ever higher—to space and beyond. Her current position is at the Mojave Air and Spaceport with The Spaceship Company, which is building the world’s first fleet of reusable commercial spaceships. With WAI, Margaret has found the encouragement and camaraderie to make her dreams come true. You can do the same. Being part of WAI means you can surround yourself with like-minded women who support you…