What’s Up
by LeRoy Cook
10-23-23
Suggested banner: Hold Your Fire
We had a good run of fall flying weather, but nothing
lasts forever. Hopefully, there'll be enough rain in this week's cloudiness to
make a dent in the drought. Many aviators took advantage of last week's
wide-open skies to get late-season trips in.
Visitors spotted this week were a nice Mooney M-20 on a
quick Russian mission—Peekup Andropov-- and a return refueling visit by the
Dream Flights PT-17 Stearman open-cockpit biplane that was here two years ago
to give a couple of Veterans a nostalgia ride. This Dream Flight was being
flown out of San Diego, CA to Jefferson City, where the two pilots were staging
a similar event. Also seen were a Piper Cherokee, a Cirrus SR-22 making night
landings, and several Cessna Skyhawks. Dr. Ed Christophersen was over from New
Century in his Piper Archer. Locally, Gerald Bauer was up in a Cessna 150 and
Eric Eastland had his Cessna 172 out.
Last Tuesday was the 20th Anniversary of the
final flight of the Concorde supersonic airliner, a sad end to the great
Anglo-French aircraft. Only accomplished by huge government subsidies, its
27-year career set records and made lasting memories. I regret that I never got
to ride in it at Mach 2. Its official British Airways call-sign was “Speedbird”
but among the other names was “Droop-snooted Money Sucker”, for its fold-down
nose to improve landing visibility and its thirst for fuel.
If you are a frequent visitor to the NOAA Aviation Weather
website, at aviationweather.gov/adds, you will now be rejected when attempting
to log-in. Rumors of coming site “improvements” came true last week, as it was
replaced by the kind of trendy new graphics IT designers like to splash around
to confuse those of us who just want our familiar old tabs and terms. Simply
load unsuffixed “aviationweather.gov” into your browser and you'll find the new
site. Clicking on “products” will turn up the usual list of charts and
forecasts.
Much ballyhoo was focused on the recent announcement that
CVS pharmacy is going to be offering drug deliveries by drone, within a short
radius of outlets in certain cities. Within minutes, we're told, a quad-copter
will come to a hover over your address at 13 feet AGL and drop a padded package
on the lawn. Keep your chewing dog tied up and don't practice your skeet
shooting.
Our week's brainteaser from last time wanted to know the
voltage of a typical light aircraft's electrical system. Nope; it may have a
12-volt battery, but the regulator is set to about 14 volts, to account for
line loss. Now, for next week, what is the better-known name of the Boeing
model A75? You can send your answers to [email protected].
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