Getting airborne required some patience and ingenuity last
week, waiting out some storms stagnating over the mid-section of the country.
The sun popped out for brief periods last weekend, and the Blue Moon on Sunday
night beamed brightly.
Local flying activity included Randy Miller and myself,
taking the club Skyhawk out for separate spins. The SkyDive KC Cessna 182 flew
a few sorties with jumpers but had to stand down for much of the weekend.
It’s a good idea to check Notices To Airmen before flying
around the metro areas. If you’re heading to St. Louis, be aware of the big
airshow at Spirit airport this weekend, starting Friday. It’ll tie up airspace
below 15,500 feet as the military struts it’s stuff. And the much-vaunted FIFA
World Cup soccer tournaments in Kansas City are already generating TFRs over
the venues, primarily drone-free areas right now, but certain to expand to
inhibit general aviation as the games run through mid-July.
In week-ago-Saturday news out of Austria, a
paraglider pilot flying over the Alps was ran over by an errant Cessna. The
plane sliced through the powered-parachute’s canopy, escaping unharmed, but the
paraglider pilot had to go to the manually-deployed reserve chute, landing with
bruises after the harrowing descent. Pilots need to look outside for canopies,
not just stare at navigation screens.
A Washington state study has
determined that the 3 billion gallons of “sustainable” jet fuel that was
supposed to be produced each year by 2030 is more likely to be just over 2
billion, due to a shortfall in feedstock material used to make the non-petroleum
fuel. One can make burnable diesel-type fluid out of almost anything, but not
always in a practical fashion. We’re going to be flying on dinosaur juice for a
long time yet.
In a similar hoped-for Green
initiative, Dutch airline easyJet is considering “taxiing” their Airbuses to
the runway with an electric robot tow tractor, rather than firing up the
plane’s engines at the gate.
They would start only at the last minute. The cabin comfort will still have to
be maintained by the ship’s auxiliary power unit. It will save, they
say, about 55 gallons of fuel per flight. The lowered emissions have to
be considered in light of the electricity used.
Back in April, a Cirrus SR-20
pilot flying near Chanute, Kansas heard a loud noise up front and determined he
was now flying a glider. Unable to coast to CNU airport, he did as he was
trained and pulled the Cirrus whole-airplane rocket-deployed parachute, which
worked as advertised. They floated down under canopy and upon hitting the
ground found themselves being drug downwind by the big chute, across fences and
ditches. They were able to get the doors open and extricate eventually, after a
pickup driver blocked their careening plane. That’s one Cirrus that won’t fly
again.
The week’s question was “what nation was second to put a
jet airliner into service, after England’s Comet in 1952?” That would be the
Soviet Union, with a TU-104 in 1953, a
Russian bomber modified with windows and seats. For next week, we’re asking
“how fast do jet airliners move when taxiing with idle power?” You can send
your answer to [email protected].
.JPG)
