What’s Up
1-15-2024
Suggested Banner:
Most little airplanes stayed snugged down in their beds over
the past weekend, waiting for warmer weather to return before stirring from
their nest. Plane owners generally don’t want to go through the pain of dragging
out, pre-warming and preparing for flight when the wind chill is 20 below. Once
running, aircraft perform well in the cold. I made a run to Clinton on the last
semi-warm day before the Big Freeze and my old EZ climbed and cruised better
than new, even with barometric pressure a half-inch below standard.
The week’s sparse traffic included a Cessna Skyhawk, a Piper
Cherokee and an itinerant Army Guard Black Hawk chopper. Local pilots out and
about were Roy Conley in his Grumman Tr2, Les Gorden with his Beech Bonanza and
meself with a student in a 150.
One gets a unique perspective on local weather flying
cross-country. Butler’s runway accumulated no snow from the first storm, early
last week, but when I got to Clinton the pavement had been plowed and the
landscape was white. On the way back, I could see what appeared to be a dark
cloud shadow on the ground ahead. Nope, it turned to be bare dirt, starting
around Ballard; everything east of there was white. The snowfall had mainly
followed MO7 highway to the southeast.
If it wasn’t so serious, the recent hoo-raw surrounding the
Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 shedding a door panel inflight would be almost
comical. Everybody is suddenly an expert, seizing the opportunity to pursue
their agenda, be it beating down ol’ Boeing, disparaging the FAA, suing the
airline and planemaker for non-injury, or wanting the guvinment to fix it. What
we do know is that we got lucky this time, and everyone involved needs to shape
up so it never recurs.
A sudden loss of pressurization at 16,000 feet with a door
departing is noisy and cold, but hardly life threatening; our own SkyDive KC
routinely dumped skydivers at 15,000 feet and as long as one gets down promptly
there’s no threat. The faulty plug panel let go because the pressure build-up
grew too strong as the Boeing climbed; it wasn’t likely to have lasted until
getting up to a more hazardous altitude. You better believe those previous
warning light indications won’t be ignored again.
Our question of the week was what the “V” stands for in
airplane limitation V-speeds, like Vs for stall or Vne for never-exceed. It’s
engineering shorthand for “Velocity”, denoting the airspeed indication. For
next week, name three commercial jet airplanes with three engines. You can send
your answers to [email protected].
Posts
