Table of contents for November 2017 in Flying

This normally nontowered airport was probably the busiest it had ever been. The airport needed to land an airplane about every minute and a half to accommodate the arrivals in the time available between sunrise and 10:30 a.m., when everyone wanted to be on the ground. The trick was getting everyone off the runway and into parking to clear the way for those behind. The big show was supposed to be at 11:50 a.m., but John and I had a great time watching all the airplanes long before then. Every kind of airplane you could imagine was joining the party, from homebuilts to jets. And a great party it would be. Nature would be providing us a rare show — a total solar eclipse. Over any given spot on Earth,…

“WITH THE CJ3, CESSNA GOT IT RIGHT.” SO I WAS TOLD WHEN I EMBARKED ON A L IFE OF FLYING THI S AT TRACT IVE AIRPLANE. SOME 1 ,200 HOURS OF CJ3 FLYING LATER, I CAN TELL YOU THAT THE AIRPLANE IS MORE THAN ATTRACTIVE. IT IS AMAZING. IF YOU PUT A GUN TO MY HEAD, I WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO TELL YOU HOW TO IMPROVE IT. Cessna is now producing the CJ3+, and I was eager to see what could possibly have been done to make it a better airplane. A great deal, it turns out. In a way, the introduction to the CJ3+ is a little like going to your high school reunion and finding that the place has been completely renovated. The exterior looks pretty much…

So you’ve decided to become a professional pilot. Congratulations! There are few careers that offer as many job options and opportunities for adventure. Now comes the hard part: Deciding between training at an independent flight school, or earning your ratings as part of a four-year degree program. Both options have a lot to offer. But, if your goal is to be a fourstriper for a major airline then a four-year program is your best allaround choice. Why? More airlines than not are requiring that their new hires have a Bachelor’s degree. Also, under the new Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) regulations, there is a significant advantage to having a four-year aviation degree when it comes time to earn your Restricted ATP certificate. Even if your goal is to fly for the…

Mainstream media and social-network users have not been kind to the airlines over the past several months. In some cases of less than exemplary customer service, the negative publicity is well-deserved. That being said, the handful of edited YouTube snippets being broadcast on network television can be mischaracterized, overblown, distorted and taken out of context. I won’t use this forum to otherwise defend or condemn my industry. However, when you cram people into a long, narrow aluminum tube for an extended period of time, the worst in humanity is sure to surface. And in some circumstances, the results fall into the bizarre category of “You just can’t make this stuff up.” I had the pleasure of being the captain on one of those flights. Shortly after our exit from the…

PERLAN GLIDER REACHES NEW HEIGHTS The Airbus Perlan 2 glider has reached a new high, breaking the world record for a nonpowered flight as it soared to 52,172 feet. The previous record was set in 2006 by the first version of the Perlan, which reached 50,727 feet with the Perlan Project’s founder Einar Enevoldson and lead project sponsor Steve Fossett at the controls. An Aero Boero AB-180 towplane pulled Perlan’s chief pilot Jim Payne and copilot Morgan Sandercock off the ground at Comandante Armando Tola International Airport, which sits at an elevation of 669 feet in El Calafate, Argentina. The area around El Calafate is one of only a few places on Earth where mountain waves combine with a high-altitude polar vortex — a phenomenon critical to providing enough lift…

With the early morning sun just beginning to brighten the sky, my 1966 Piper Cherokee climbed from Meriden Markham Airport’s (KMMK) Runway 18. The conditions in Meriden, Connecticut, were clear, with calm winds — a perfect day for flying. Armed with a Special Flight Rules Area VFR flight plan, I turned toward my destination, Tipton Airport (KFME), adjacent to Fort Meade, Maryland, and 7 nm south of Baltimore/Washington’s Thurgood Marshall Airport (KBWI). On July 3, the Trump National Golf Club hosted President Donald Trump, with his accompanying 30 nm presidential TFR. It was a hurdle in my path, but not enough of one to deter me from reaching my family for a reunion and trip to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. After all, I bought the PA-28-140/160 for time building, so…

I made my first trip to Oshkosh in 2007 to unveil the Redbird FMX simulator prototype at AirVenture. That was the start of what would become an annual tradition for me, a pilgrimage north from Austin, Texas, along with 500,000 fellow general aviation disciples, to take part in the “World’s Greatest Aviation Celebration.” Last year, I traveled on the airlines. The journey became a 33-hour ordeal that would have made Odysseus feel bad for me. I won’t recount the entire saga here, but suffice to say it was a two-day ordeal that calls into question the wisdom of handing our nation’s air traffic control system over to the major air carriers. At the time, I made a very public resolution: “Next year, I’m flying GA.” My initial plan wasn’t very…

When it is not occupied with extravaganzas like sending people to Mars, NASA does some interesting work on terrestrial aerodynamics. Three years ago, I wrote about a NASA project called LEAPTech (Leading Edge Asynchronous Propeller Technology) that involved stringing 18 electric motors and propellers along the leading edge of a very skinny wing. The idea was to blow high-speed air over the wing during takeoff and landing, augmenting lift and allowing the wing area (and weight, and drag) to be reduced by two-thirds. In cruise, 16 of the motors would shut down and their propellers would fold flush with the sides of their nacelles; thrust would then be provided by two motors at the wingtips. These would rotate top-blade outward, weakening the tip vortices and shaving off some induced drag.…

RELEVANT DISCUSSION: FAR 71.61, 91.117, 91.129, 91.155, 103.17, 103.23, AIM 3-1-3, 3-1-4, 3-2-1, 3-2-5, 3-5-6, 4-3-2, 8-1-8, FAA-H-8083-15, 8083-16, 8083-25 1. Generally, Class D is controlled airspace from the surface to 2,500 feet agl (charted in msl rounded to the nearest 100 feet) surrounding an airport with an operating control tower (but often no radar). It is delineated with a dashed blue line surrounding the airport on VFR sectional and terminal charts and a boxed “D” in the airport information on IFR Enroute Low Altitude Charts. The ceiling is marked with a blue number (msl altitude in hundreds of feet) surrounded by blue brackets. Class D includes some of the busiest general aviation airports in the world. 2. It’s individually tailored, but normally a circular area with a radius of…

An old TWA captain once told me that the definition of a successful aviation career is when the chief pilot meets your retirement flight and wonders aloud, “Who the heck are you?” There’s some good advice buried in that witt icism, and I’ve tried to live by it over the course of my career. I had a few friends go to work in the chief-pilot office at my last airline, and they claimed that 5 percent of the pilot group created 95 percent of the problems. I’m pretty sure that’s true clear across the aviation industry, and likely within general aviation as well. My key to flying under the radar is to stay diligent, to keep my screw-ups small — and, when I do mess up, to readily confess and…

The Navy says Paramount’s 1986 classic fighter-pilot flick Top Gun persuaded men and women to join up in numbers not seen before or since. Over a cup of coffee near St. Maarten’s famous Maho Beach (pre-Hurricane Irma), Rob Ceravalo told me the film worked some of its magic on him and was at least partially responsible for him joining in 2001. “My entire life I wanted to be a fighter pilot. It’s so cool, I thought. They get to ride motorcycles, go to Top Gun, wear flight suits and cool sunglasses and date their instructors.” He went on to fly F-14s before moving on to the F-18 and finally the F-5 after completing Top Gun’s Red Air training. All that fighter-pilot bravado took a back seat on the day Ceravalo…

Note to readers: What follows could be considered obnoxious. Or maybe it is a cautionary tale. It is a story of a man about to turn 72 who has been flying for 50 years and owned airplanes almost continuously since 1972. This is a description of this man’s thought processes as he navigates the realities of airplane ownership and simultaneously sails into old age. The obnoxious part should be pretty obvious. I’ve been privileged to make a good living as a cancer surgeon, had the good luck to fly jets for three years for a Part 135 company in my late 60s and I’ve got a supportive wife, Cathy. I am acutely aware that this state of affairs is not common and that I am lucky. Longtime readers will know…