What’s Up
by LeRoy Cook
11-13-23
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‘Twas nice while it lasted, but the chill last weekend was
but a harbinger of things to come. Fortunately, the flying weather was great
and the cabin heater worked, so we got in some good flying. Just bundle up for
the preflight on a windy ramp.
Seems like everybody was out committing aviation last
week, given the yakety-yak on the Multicom frequency. Butler is paired with
such hotbeds of activity as Warsaw, Lamar and Vineland, KS, all of whom had chatty
circuits, so sometimes we just have to turn the volume down for relief.
Among the swarm circling our hive were a Cessna Skylane, a
Piper Cherokee, a Mooney M20C and a Piper Archer from the ATP school at KC. A
nice 1964 Cessna 182J came in from Colorado. Local flying was done by Jim
Ferguson in his Cessna Skylane, Les Gorden in his Piper Twin Comanche and
meself test-hopping a cranky Cessna 150.
News of the week included the passing of Apollo astronaut
Frank Borman, most noted for the risky Apollo 8 mission that circled the Moon
at Christmas 1968, when he read from the Book of Genesis on live TV. He was 95.
The Switchblade “flying car”, another one of those
pipedreams that won’t die, took off for its first flight last week at Moses
Lake, WA, after 14 years of investor-funded development. It climbed to a lofty
500 feet for a few minutes, landing uneventfully. A two-seat trike with a
shrouded fan for flight, two driven wheels for road use, and foldaway wings and
tail to change modes, it is to sell for $170,000 unassembled. To get
Experimental category certification, it needs to be built by the owner.
For the last four months, the big University of North
Dakota flight school has been testing an unleaded 94-octane aviation gasoline
in its fleet of Piper Cherokees, and it’s now given up and gone back to leaded
100-octane. In 46,000 hours of monitored testing, UND found too much recession
of exhaust valve seats in the Lycoming O-360s. Spark plug fouling showed no
improvement over the leaded gas. The evil old tetraethyl lead in 100-low lead
not only boosts octane, it lubricates valve seats.
Our week’s trivia test was about the type of engines that
were used on the venerable DC-3. As Rodney Rom knew from his wrench-work on the
Navy’s carrier-based planes, they could be fitted with the Wright R-1820
Cyclone or the Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp. For next week, tell us if
any airplanes have ever been fitted with brakes on the nosewheel. You
can send your answers to [email protected].
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