What's Up
by LeRoy Cook
6-16-2025
Suggested Banner: Wuz That A Wilga?
With patience and ingenuity, pilots dealt with a
near-stationary frontal system over our area, leaving us with periods of rain
and low ceilings, but thankfully only isolated heavy storms. We got in some
flying, even short cross-country hops, but had to time them right.
The FAA Flight Check airplane, a King Air 300 turboprop
twin, did make it up from Oklahoma City on Thursday to fly the certification
passes down the Butler runway, observing the operation of the new PAPI
(precision approach path indicator) boxes shining up the glideslope to runways
36 and 18. As with all things governmental, just having the inspection done
doesn’t mean they are OK to use; we still have to wait for a letter of
notification to arrive, saying the inspection was satisfactory.
Other traffic in this week included a rare PZL 104-80
Wilga STOL utility airplane, built in Poland in 1991. Owned by John Ford and
based at Lee’s Summit, he enjoys cruising around fly-in breakfasts and open
house events to show his unique bird. He even gave us a “smoke pass” on
departure, adding a little Corvis oil to the exhaust from the Ivchenko 260-hp
radial engine. Also visiting were a Cessna 182, an ATP flight school Piper
Archer and a Cessna 150.
Of the local-based fleet, Jon Laughlin had his Piper
Cherokee 180C out, Layne Anderson brought his Darter Comander in, the BCS
AirTractor made long-day missions spreading fertilizer from the air and Les
Gorden’s Beech Bonanza F35 got some attention. Delaney Rindal worked on and
flew her Cessna 150 trainers and son
Will and I exercised the Cessna 172.
While getting gassed up at Harrisonville on Saturday, the
nearest watering hole for our airplanes, we got to observe my old training
glider that I flew in the 1970s, still in service with Midwest Soaring at
Richter airport. The Schweizer 2-22 was being towed by a 180-hp modified Cessna
150E, from which it was released on its own to land while the towplane got
fueled up, after which it was pulled aloft to go home. Who said gliders don’t
need avgas?
The most-discused aviation topic of the week was the
Thursday crash of an Air India 787 Dreamliner, the first-ever accident for the
type. Even before the wreckage cooled, speculators were tossing out opinions
about what might have caused the plane to go down. Sadly, we need to step back
and let the investigation run its course, including analyzing the flight
recorders. About all we know at this point is that the heavily-loaded airliner
failed to climb, and instead sagged back into a built-up area where it
exploded. The miraculously-survived individual who walked out of the crushed
fuselage may give some insight.
The question from last week was
about a critical component needed on the Lockheed survey plane flown by Charles
and Anne Lindberg in the 1930s. It was cans of tetraethyl lead, needed to boost
octane at the often-substandard refueling stops they encountered. For next
week, our quiz is “which U.S. state has the highest number of winter thunderstorms,
those occurring from December to March?”
You can send your answers to [email protected].
