February isn't always a good flying month, but this one has
started out with perfect conditions hereabouts. Even the weekend cold front
didn't produce anything but some scattered clouds, and the surface winds
remained light. There were reports of turbulence aloft, mostly affecting jets
flying in the upper 30s.
On Thursday morning, we heard and observed three CH-53
Sikorsky helicopters cruising overhead, up at 8-10 thousand feet, similar to
the one that crashed east of San Diego last week, a very tragic loss. Another
chopper went down south of Las Vegas on Friday, after departing Palm Springs.
We also saw two reports of airplanes
making emergency landings on roads; last Friday, a Challenger business jet
flamed out on approach to Naples airport in Florida, setting down in traffic on
I-75, with some survivors. And on Saturday, a Cessna 172 had to make an
engine-out landing on a street in Phoenix, resulting in bent metal but nobody
hurt. The latter shows the advantage of having a good old slow-landing airplane
in an emergency situation; there's a lot less kinetic energy to dissipate.
We often get asked why pilots spend so much time discussing
wrecks. It's because they want to find out what caused it and how it could be
prevented from happening to them. It's not morbid fascination, it's continuing
education. It's a lot cheaper to learn from other people's mistakes, rather
than your own.
Quite a few visitors came into the airport last week, the
bulk of them being training flights out of Kansas City, but some staying a
while. A Cessna 182 was in, a Piper Cherokee refueled, and a Piper Comanche
stopped by. From the local hangars, Les Gorden's grandson Patrick took the
family Piper Twin Comanche up to Kansas City, Jim Ferguson pulled his Cessna
Skylane out, Jon Laughlin took his Cherokee 180 up, Eric Eastland flew his
Skyhawk and Christian Tucker kept the Mooney M-20 out overnight.
Rumor has it that the SkyDive KC parachuting operation will
be starting up under new management at the end of April, using the Cessna jump
planes. Further details will be forthcoming in a separate article. It'll be
nice to see cars gathering on the SkyDive parking lot once again, and nylon
canopies floating down.
The week's quiz asked “what color are the runway lights at
our airport, as seen rolling down the centerline?” Well, it depends on your
location. They are white as one initially touches down, but turn amber for the
last 2,000 feet of the rollout, alerting the pilot that he or she is running
out of stopping room. For the next time, a history test: During WW-II, Adolf
Hitler sent unpiloted V-1 “buzz bombs” across the Channel to attack London.
What did the “V” stand for? You can send
your answers to [email protected].
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