Bates County News

Monday, December 16, 2024

What's Up LeRoy Cook

 What's Up

by LeRoy Cook

 

12-16-2024

 

Suggested Banner: Far Out Aircraft Accident

 

Now that official winter arrives this weekend, the variable weather is upon us with front after front passing through.  Good days for flying are interspersed with nasty spells, so we must take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. Last Thursday was such a day, seeing lots of planes take to the air, but by Friday everything had reversed itself.

 

Visitors dropping in over the past week included a Beech Baron twin, a pair of Piper Archers and a Cessna Skyhawk, along with the usual Army Reserve CH-47 helicopter executing a practice VOR-A approach. Locally, Jim Ferguson flew to Higginsville in his Cessna Skylane, Instructor Delaney Rindal made a Harrisonville stop while giving instruction and Josh Poe took a Cessna 150 to Lamar on a night mission.

 

The renovations of the Butler airport’s self-service fuel system have turned into a full-on overhaul, as it turns out that the interior of the fuel tank needs recoating. It’ll be some time before it’s back in service. Tankering in fuel is the order of the day for now.

 

Aircraft maintenance is becoming a critical need, as older mechanics retire or move on to more lucrative fields. The shop at Clinton is dark as Mark Bentch quit to teach college tech courses, and Ted VanMeter at Pleasanton is no longer working, having taken a position with the FAA at Wichita. Keeping airplanes in the air as they age requires skilled hands and regular infusions of money.

 

NASA announced the results of an out-of-this-world aircraft accident investigation last week. The Mars explorer helicopter Ingenuity is no longer flyable, having shed rotor blades in a hard landing in poor surface visibility, but the craft wasn’t supposed to last only 30 days and it actually operated nearly three years. Unlike surface landers, the flying eyes of Ingenuity made 72 flights over the Martian terrain to give lots of data.  It will be missed.

 

We had a report of a low-flying twin-engine survey airplane in the area last week, equipped with a tail-stinger sensor to detect magnetic anomaly. Hopefully, its mission was more successful than the Piper Navajo that crashed on a road at Victoria, Texas on Wednesday. The pilot evidently ran out of fuel while trying to get back to base, after flying his planned grid route. At least no severe injuries occurred.

 

My question for last week asked which famous fighter pilot crashed on his first solo flight. That would be Manfred Von Richthofen, the World War I “Red Baron” who went on notch up 80 kills with his Spandau machine guns after his rough start. For next week, Beech Aircraft started naming its airplanes after royalty, following the Bonanza. What plane was called the “Marquis?”  You can send your answers to [email protected].



 

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