Some steamy signs of summer arrived last weekend, accompanied by pop-up showers and thunderstorms. It was possible to fly with proper timing, and the interludes of post-frontal skies were clear and clean. Current airport manager Chris Hall has had his hands full keeping the property mowed nicely, with all the wet growth this year.
The noted visitors this week included a King Air C90 turboprop, a nice 1948 Beech Bonanza 35, a Cessna 182, a Cessna Skyhawk and a Piper Archer or three. A much younger Beech Bonanza V35 dropped off passengers on Thursday and a really sharp 1946 Ercoupe refueled early last week.
The local traffic moving was Jim Ferguson's Cessna Skylane, Jay McClintock's Piper Tomahawk trainer, and the Cessna 150s, making trips to Joplin, Nevada, Garnett and Olathe. Lance Dirks took the club Cessna Skyhawk up repeatedly and I managed to evade embarrassment making night qualification landings one evening.
The Butler Airport Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. this Thursday afternoon. These bi-monthly sessions are held in the Butler City hall downtown.
The aviation world was saddened over the weekend by the death of Astronaut Bill Anders, who was lost in the crash of his Beech T34A out in Washington state. An Annapolis grad, the 90-year-old Anders was a retired USAF Major General who gained fame for his photography during the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon in 1968. He took the forever-famous “Earthrise” picture of the blue-white Earth looming over the lunar surface, speaking volumes without any words of embellishment.
In further spaceflight news, it was a big week for launches; Boeing's Starliner capsule finally got its boost into orbit from Cape Canaveral with its first human payload, docking at the Space Station with the requisite boy and girl astronauts aboard, and SpaceX's Super Heavy Mars-rocket booster with a Starship second stage made a sub-orbital flight halfway around the world from south Texas; the first stage was recovered from the Gulf of Mexico and the Starship made a soft landing in the Indian Ocean. And the Red Chinese lunar explorer vehicle Chang'e-6 lifted off from the Moon's south pole with a load of moon-rock samples, to be returned to Earth for study.
Last week's question was about the expected range of Bye Aerospace's eFlyer 4 electric-powered plane. The answer is 300 nautical miles, according to a press release issued last week by Hopscotch Air charter company who signed up to buy three of them. Top speed is to be “upwards of 200 knots.” For next week, when did the first aerial bombing in wartime take place? You can send your answer to [email protected].
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