March switched back and forth, lamb to lion to back to
lamb, keeping pilots on their toes last week. On the days when skies cleared
and the wind laid, quite a bit of traffic was seen. War news kept everyone
jittery, but stateside activity has to continue to keep things moving. Losing
an old KC-135 refueling tanker plane’s crew in a midair collision over Iraq was
a sad blow, a needless waste of resources.
Traffic observed included a Beech Debonair, a Cessna
Skyhawk and a Piper Arrow. Also, Mike Golden was over from New Century, KS in
his Cessna Turbo Centurion and Tom Bowles flew in from Kansas City Downtown
with his Cessna Turbo Skylane RG. Locally, Layne Anderson made a couple of
sorties in his Darter Commander, one of our Cessna Skyhawks went up and the old
1946 Aeronca got some exercise.
In national and world news, airline passengers at the
Washington, DC airports were stuck in their terminals last Friday evening, when
noxious odors were detected in the Potomac approach control facility, which
handles traffic for Dulles, National and Baltimore. The origin was undisclosed,
but things got moving again after a few hours. This stinks, on top of the TSA
screeners having to work without pay due to the blockage of Homeland Security
funding in Congress.
The first of a burgeoning category of eVTOL “flying
taxis,” the JOBY Aviation electric six-rotor four-passenger carrier for
short-range urban travel, has entered FAA conformation testing. Based in
Marina, California, JOBY is not building drones, but piloted (for now) aircraft
to perform up-and-over commuting. We’ll see how the market reacts; costs and
competitiveness have yet to be established.
The city of Superior, Colorado, a town near Denver,, has
brought suit against businesses at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport over
alleged noise and lead pollution falling from skies filled with flight training
aircraft. The suit was dismissed by district and appeal courts, who both
determined that only Federal government can regulate noise, not municipalities.
The lead pollution has yet to be established. These cases can have
industry-wide ramifications, by setting precedent.
Long-time automatic pilot maker S-TEC prime product, the
3100 autopilot, has been sold off to
Innovative Aerosystems. In a market largedly defined by Garmin’s G500
and G600 autopilots, the S-TEC unit provides a needed alternative to ripping
out everything to install a Brand G upgrade. The 3100 can work with earlier
S-TEC autopilot servos and communicates with Aspen glass panels. Competition is
a good thing.
A report out of the Middle East says a pro-Iran terrorist
group in Iraq has offered a $1 million bounty for a USAF pilot who was
supposedly shot down over its territory. They only pay for the severed head of
the American, not his intact body; let’s hope there’s no takers.
In our previous weekly quiz, we wanted to know why a
Cirrus airplane wouldn’t fit in the old original hangars at Butler airport,
built in 1948. It’s because the modern Cirrus tail is too wide for the
cinder-block T-hangar’s tail slot. For next time, our question is, “Did Piper
Aircraft Co. ever build a jet?” You can send your answers to [email protected].
.JPG)
