Suggested Banner: The Force Wasn’t With Us
No Millennium Falcon lookalikes were spotted on Star Wars Day, observed
on last Saturday, May The Fourth. There is a strikingly-painted battle-scarred
Embraer Phenom 100 business jet, flying around for the past several years,
dubbed the “Millennium Phenom”. Its owner just wanted to pay homage to his
favorite movie saga.
Visitors dropping in this week were headlined by our friend Tom
Turner, up from Wichita in the American Bonanza Society’s Beech Bonanza A36
flagship airplane. Tom is the executive director of the ABS Air Safety Foundation
and presently doubles as ABS’ executive director as well. He was in town to
drop off his wife who is a Rich Hill native. Other movements noted were a
Cessna Skyhawk, a Sikorsky Black Hawk Army Guard helicopter and a Diamond
DA-40.
Local traffic included the BCS turbine AirTractor sprayplane,
SkyDive KC’s turboprop -converted Cessna 206 jump plane, Les Gorden’s North
American T-28 trainer and the club Skyhawk, flown by Gerald Bauer. Jay
McClintock’s Piper Tomahawk made some first-passenger flights with a
new-graduate pilot at the helm.
In national news, the periodic battle to pass a funding bill for
the Federal Aviation Administration is going on in Congress. What should be a
simple reauthorization of the bureaucracy always turns into a turf war over pet
projects added in, plus unrelated amendments that get attached. Would that all
federal agencies had to hold their tin cup out for such Congressional
oversight, rather than run on automatic budget increases.
Republic Airlines’ Lift Academy training center has placed an
order for 50 more of Diamond Aircraft’s DA-40 trainer versions, along with a
half-dozen DA-42 twin-engine diesel-powered trainers. The
Astro-Canadian Diamond is about the most cost-effective glass-cockpit training
tool on the market. Meanwhile, a Utah-based company has announced a 50%-better
storage battery that can improve the chances of electric-powered training
airplanes becoming viable. Presently, the electric planes are good for about 30
minutes before having to head back to base; the new batteries are supposed to
extend that to an hour.
The week’s brain teaser asked for the location of an airport known
by its ICAO code “MIA”, and it was correctly answered by Rodney Rom, who knew
it was Miami, Florida. That was one of the easy ones, just like “BUM” for
Butler, Missouri. Some tougher-to-decypher codes are “ORD” for Chicago and
“MCO” for Orlando. For next time, what direction provides the most stable
magnetic compass indication, in the Northern Hemisphere?. You can send your
answers to [email protected].
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