What's Up
by LeRoy Cook
12-15-2025
Suggested Banner: Space Station Unsupported
Airplanes don’t like to left sitting. Even when not
flying, there seems to be deterioration taking place. We’ve had tires go flat,
batteries refuse to take a charge, and fuel levels mysterious drop, all without
movement. A planned flight last Tuesday had to be scrubbed because the plane’s
right brake wouldn’t work. And the 50-mph winds Wednesday blocked that
morning’s flying. Thursday, while flyable, was spent fixing mechanical
glitches.
There was some transient traffic coming through last week;
a Cessna Skyhawk trainer made approaches and a 172 from Central MO University
at Warrensburg landed. An Army Reserve Chinook twin-rotor helicopter came by
and there was the usual B-2 Stealth bomber activity. Locally, Roy Conley had
his Grumman Tr2 up and Les Gordon’s Cessna 310R departed.
In out-of-this-world news, the International Space Station
is being threatened by a lack of Russian launch capability, following a Soyuz
rocket’s departure on Thursday, when damage to the launch pad occurred,
rendering it unusable. Although SpaceX and maybe Boeing can fly to the ISS,
NASA depends on the Russian supply ships and Soyuz capsules to keep the bulk of
cargo and personnel transfers moving. The old space platform, built by U.S.
Space Shuttle flights in the 1990s, is scheduled to be deomissioned in 2030.
Back on Planet Earth, it was recently learned that the
Federal Aviation Administration is considering eliminating Designated
Engineering Representatives, or DARs, the self-employed individuals that
historically work as go-betweens for inventors and small companies to get FAA
approval to make products (not just aircraft.) The FAA doesn’t actually oversee
development of new aviation gadgets, like improved replacement parts, it
depends on DARs to look them over and submit them as okay to approve. The FAA
now wants to work only with Organizational Designated Representatives in big
companies like Boeing. If that route is taken, there will be no more innovation
by little firms.
Last January’s horrible mid-air collision at Washington,
DC between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a landing PSA regional airliner
from Wichita may not have been preventable even if the Army copter had been
using ADS-B equipment required for civilian planes. Lack of ADS-B by the
military was often cited as causing the crash. As the NTSB pointed out last
week, traffic alerting is normally inhibited when jets are close to the ground,
because nuisance alerts are distracting. Sometimes technology isn’t enough.
It was announced last week that ICE has bought some old
Boeing 737’s to create its own fleet of deportation airplanes, rather than
charter the flights sending captured illegal aliens back home. In an unrelated
news release, we see that NASA has begun testing unmanned Cessna Caravans for
the Air Force, to haul cargo and do other missions without pilots on board.
Perhaps the two projects will meet up someday...
Our weekly brain-teaser wanted to know why the Boeing B-17
bomber initiated the use of operating checklists, back in the 1930’s. It was
because a government test pilot mistakenly took off with the controls lock
engaged, with bad results. For next week: Does a compass in an airplane sitting
in St. Louis point to True North, yes or no? You can send your answers to [email protected].
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