Suggested Banner: Lamar Airport Had A Party
Once again, I failed to alert readers to an opportunity to
attend a fly-in breakfast and open house, this time at Lamar, which held an
Airport Anniversary event last Saturday morning. The overnight weather was
pretty horrendous so attendance was capped by threats of storms, but a
half-dozen planes flew in and a decent crowd showed up for the festivities.
The Zenith Aircraft Company in Mexico, Missouri put on its
annual Homecoming weekend last Friday and Saturday, when builders of Zenith kit
airplanes return to the factory to show off their completed projects. Randy
Shannon, a two-time Zenith constructor, reported in on Friday that a strong
attendance was arriving.
Here at Butler, a Hangar Party was held Saturday evening as
a Celebration of Life for the late Peggy Gorden, a gathering of friends and
members from the sky diving community, as she had expressed in her last wishes.
It was a great send-off, with many good memories.
Transient traffic continued steady over the past week. Tim
Hill's Cessna Skylane dropped in from Drexel, a Cessna 172 and a Piper Archer
competed for airspace, a Tecnam Mentor arrived from Olathe, Mike Golden passed
by from Florida in his Cessna Turbo Centurion, enroute to New Century, and a
Cessna 182 parked for a few days. Locally, Jay McClintock's Piper Tomahawk was
flown in night proficiency landings, as was my Cessna 150, and the SkyDive KC
Beech King Air relieved itself of several loads of parachutists.
In national news, Boeing Airplane Co. was hit with a
Machinist Union strike at the main Seattle plants, shutting down badly-needed
deliveries of 737 airliners and triggering company-wide cost-cutting measures.
As if BA hadn't had enough trouble, the FAA is looking into a pressurization
issue aboard a departing Delta Airlines 737 from Salt Lake City last week that
left some passengers with damaged ear drums. The airplane continued in service
after repairs, but the bad press left a stain.
What can go wrong with cabin pressurization? Mostly leaks,
leaving the crew no choice to return for a landing because they can't climb to
cruise altitude, but sometimes it's stuck valves or a controller that fails to
work properly. The problem with a pressurization system is, there's no good way
to test it on the ground; the final analysis is to see if starts pumping the
cabin up after takeoff. And if the outflow valves cycle open and closed you can
get “spikes” in the air pressure that are hard on the ears.
In a lighter vein, a Cape Air Cessna 402 commuter airliner
had to make a two-wheel landing at Boston last week, when its right maingear
wouldn't extend. The pilot executed a successful slide-in with minimal damage
and no injuries.
Meanwhile, it was announced last week that Alaska Airlines
has gone ahead with its $2 billion merger with Hawaiian Airlines, creating a
single airline out of the two, making it the 5th largest U.S.
airline.
Our weekly question concerned the difference between the
Cessna 190 and 195 airplanes. Both are 5-seat radial-engine tailwheel planes
from the late 1940s, identical except for engine type. The 190 had a 240-hp
Continental W-670 and the 195 used the Jacobs R-755 with up to 300 hp. For next
week, tell us which U.S. airline has never had a fatal accident in its 85-year
history? You can send your answers to
[email protected].
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