June-July 2020 Archives - FLYING Magazine https://www.flyingmag.com/tag/june-july-2020/ The world's most widely read aviation magazine Fri, 14 Jul 2023 10:38:41 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 Down to Empty Fuel Tanks https://www.flyingmag.com/ilafft-down-to-empty/ Tue, 08 Dec 2020 19:38:52 +0000 http://137.184.62.55/~flyingma/down-to-empty-fuel-tanks/ The post Down to Empty Fuel Tanks appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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Every summer for several years, I have been flying my Varga from my home base about 25 miles south of San Francisco—San Carlos, California—to Ashland, Oregon, to take in a play at the Shakespeare Festival and then proceed to Idaho for some camping.

The Varga is a low-wing, two-place, tandem-seat airplane with a 150 hp Lycoming—sort of a poor man’s T-6 but with tricycle gear. Like many aircraft manufactured outside of the “Big Three” (Cessna, Piper, Beech), it has a checkered history. It was designed by Douglas Aircraft Company’s chief test pilot, William Morrisey, who manufactured a few bearing his name. Then Shinn Engineering took over, and a few more were built under that name. Finally, George Varga acquired the tooling and type certificate, and production really got underway in Chandler, Arizona. More than 150 were produced in all.

Getting back to our story, Ashland is a pretty little college town situated in a valley just over the California-Oregon state line. The Shakespeare Festival is produced by a professional theatrical group founded in the 1930s by Angus Bowmer. No small-time amateur operation, this is the real thing. Stacy Keach played here early in his career, and Dick Cavett put in a summer as a spear carrier in various plays. There’s an indoor theater for matinees and an elaborate outdoor Elizabethan theater where evening performances take place.

After flying in on a late afternoon for one of my visits, refueling and tying down, I cadged a ride to town with an ex-United Airlines pilot who had retired with seniority number 9. This was a lucky break—usually, I had to walk the 2 or 3 miles, with a refreshment stop along the way. After hanging about, killing time until dark, I took my reserved seat for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After that most excellent entertainment, I had a late dinner and took a taxi back to the airport, where I broke out the air mattress and sleeping bag from my camping gear and sacked out under the Varga’s wing. Awakened by sunrise the next morning, I drank my thermos of coffee and took off. Destination: Smiley Creek, Idaho.

More than a matter of the distance covered, this was a transition from high culture to barren wilderness. Located about 50 miles north of Sun Valley, at an elevation of more than 7,000 feet, Smiley Creek was the jumping-off point for a return-to-nature sojourn. With my backpack buckled on, I hiked a couple of miles and another thousand feet of elevation farther up into the Sawtooth Mountains: a place so pristine, the water in the streams can be potable without purification. Here, I communed with nature for a full week, living on freeze-dried food, a jug of wine and a couple books. After seven days of this idyll, I emerged unshaven and unwashed (a shallow icy stream is a poor substitute for a bathtub). Camping gear stashed in the airplane, I had a bite to eat at the lunch counter/general store across from the airport. Then I made a high-altitude, grass-strip takeoff for the short flight to Hailey, Idaho, to gas up and head for home.

Read More: I Learned About Flying From That

Lovelock, Nevada, has always been my refueling stop on the way home because it’s at approximately the halfway point, and the avgas, sold by a flying club, is relatively inexpensive. But on this trip, the usual prevailing westerly wind was absent, so I still had more than half of my fuel remaining when I arrived overhead Lovelock. Because landing there would involve descending down into the hot—probably bumpy—air and then climbing again to clear the Sierra Nevada mountains, I elected to bypass it and refuel somewhere farther along. After all, the Sacramento Valley ahead was practically wall-to-wall airports. Not to worry. With plenty of airports to choose from, I saw no need to decide on one; I would just play it by ear.

A little later, I was over the Sacramento Valley, and the fuel supply was still comfortable. Because of the shape of the tanks, the movement of the fuel-quantity indicator tends to speed up as the tanks empty. I was aware of this characteristic but hadn’t planned ahead for it. There’s a temptation, when running low on fuel, to speed up in order to make the airport before running out of fuel. That would be nonsensical; the proper course of action would be to slow to best lift-over-drag speed, where the aircraft is at its most efficient. I didn’t do either but proceeded anxiously over the short distance remaining.

If the San Carlos tower controller hadn’t cleared me for a direct base entry, I would have declared an emergency, but he did. When the engine quit at 400 feet on short final, I wondered if I would have enough momentum to clear the runway. My bemusement was short-lived, however, as the enormous speed-brake effect of the windmilling propeller set in. Flying with a windmilling propeller is something that most pilots rarely practice—so it comes as quite a surprise when it is encountered. I know that a stationary prop has less drag than a windmilling one, but I wasn’t about to slow to a near stall at 400 feet. I touched down about 100 yards short of the runway, hit a ditch and flipped inverted. I was uninjured, but the Varga was extensively damaged. It flew again after about a year and the expenditure of vast sums of money.

It’s easy for second-guessers, myself included, to speculate that a base flown closer in would have saved the day. But this presumes either prescience or a lucky break because it only shifts the margin of error from too low to too high, from where an overshoot might have been unavoidable and a go-around out of the question. And it misses the point—that a fuel stop alone would have prevented my accident.

This story appeared in the June/July 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

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Icon Aircraft: Behind the Scenes https://www.flyingmag.com/icon-aircraft-behind-the-scenes/ Tue, 22 Sep 2020 15:47:10 +0000 http://137.184.62.55/~flyingma/icon-aircraft-behind-the-scenes/ The post Icon Aircraft: Behind the Scenes appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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Understanding what’s happening at Icon Aircraft today demands a quick look at continuous quality improvement, a culture-driven process widely used in automobile manufacturing to help companies manage an unwieldy production process often caused by rising costs, poor planning or a lack of innovation. But continuous improvement isn’t simply about cost cutting. It’s also about refining the quality of the finished product. In order to succeed, however, a good CI system requires the buy-in of every company employee. Toyota created one of the most well-known versions, which they called TPS for Toyota Production System.

The classic CI system employs a feedback loop to track every production element required to create a product, the cost of each individual part, the number of hours of labor, and most important, the “why” behind every single action. Waste, in either time or materials, is not simply tossed in a corner trash can. These byproducts are examined closely to understand the reason behind the waste—was the part built incorrectly, did the cost of materials unexpectedly increase, or was the person on the line not adequately trained in some element?

All the data is fed back to the managerial team to guide them in eliminating wasted time and materials to improve the overall efficiency of the manufacturing process. The automobile industry learned the hard way that increasing the cost of creating a simple part such as battery bracket by just a few pennies can create manufacturing chaos.

Thomas Wieners brought years of manufacturing experience to Icon Aircraft in 2015 when he became the company’s vice president of manufacturing. He’d honed his skills at automakers such as Mercedes-Benz and Audi, as well as engine builder Rotax. By June 2018, he was the company’s chief operating officer and president, with total responsibility for every aspect of building the light-sport A5.

A devotee of continuous-improvement manufacturing, Wieners understood early that quality absolutely was job number one if the niche A5 was to have any chance at succeeding in an already-crowded world of light-sport airplanes. If a part on the assembly line didn’t fit within tolerances, everyone in the company needed to know why to prevent the same problem from recurring.

Icon Aircraft
Icon’s design team came up with its own instrument designs, including the angle of attack instrument on top of the panel. Courtesy Icon Aircraft

Wieners faced enormous challenges when he arrived at Icon, not the least of which were the criticisms of the A5 some within the industry were only too happy to share—starting with the fact that the airplane’s a slowpoke at 95 knots with two people on board. Also, when two people climb aboard, the A5′s useful load drops precipitously with just enough room for about three hours of fuel and little else. And you can’t fly an A5 in the clouds.

Then there’s the Icon’s $359,000 price that some see as an affront to the light-sport design concept originally meant to deliver a solid yet affordable airplane. The price just recently declined from an even loftier $389,000, a figure boosted by a quarter-million dollars from the $139,000 price first announced in 2008. Furthermore, the A5′s not great in a high wind, with a demonstrated crosswind component of just 12 knots. One benefit: The A5 is spin-resistant—not spin-proof—thanks to the prominent wing cuff about halfway along the leading edge. Even being spin-resistant hasn’t prevented a few pilots from pranging their A5s in a number of fatal high-profile accidents. After a couple recent accidents, the harshest critics said production should have been halted.

Despite these drawbacks, the light-sport A5′s eye-catching, sports-car-like charm had already captured the attention of thousands of potential buyers. Created by an Icon design team led by Klaus Tritschler, following his 16 years at European auto giant BMW, the A5 truly stands out because Tritschler focused from the beginning on “bringing a high level of design quality to every element of the aircraft.”

What the company didn’t have when Wieners arrived was a process to efficiently build the design. “The only guide was a booklet of engineering drawings,” he said. “There were no work instructions, no visual aids, no sequence of events, no tooling or real process description. This all needed to be made up.” At the beginning, the company didn’t have the industrial and manufacturing engineering expertise or support in-house.

Engineers are terrific for building one airplane, Wieners said, but “I didn’t want engineering involved in building a series of airplanes. I think they underestimated how complicated it was going to be to build the A5 if you’re solely focused on an airplane’s flight characteristics and aesthetics.” He also realized early on that the company couldn’t afford to redesign the airplane in order to make it easier to manufacture. “I totally underestimated how difficult it was going to be to bring this prototype into serial production. The whole supplier relationship was nonexistent, except for some prototype suppliers, some of which developed into real suppliers. But we needed contracts with suppliers and price-negotiated commercial agreements with those suppliers.” The only solution was to create a quality manufacturing system that would build the A5 the company already had.

That took time. Still, some current owners are quick to point to the quality of their airplanes and Icon’s support of even the early serial numbers. Many said they couldn’t imagine owning anything else, despite the airplane’s perceived shortcomings. While the airplane’s potential weaknesses were always front and center to Wieners, he knew that neither the criticisms nor the accolades would matter much if he couldn’t better organize the helter-skelter system of building the A5; Icon employees were building great airplanes, but it was simply taking them much too long.

Icon Aircraft
Visitors to Icon’s Tijuana ­facility will be impressed with the cleanliness of the production floor. Courtesy Icon Aircraft

Change Begins

Consider the carbon-fiber parts—the heart of the A5. Early on, the company lacked the in-house expertise to create those parts and outsourced the needed work to Cirrus. But the quality of the products was not up to the standard Wieners expected. By early 2016, Icon decided to bring carbon-fiber manufacturing in-house. That plan evolved into a 300,000-square-foot facility in Tijuana, Mexico, that opened the following year among a cluster of other brands well-known in the United States, such as Boeing, Bose and Medtronic. There’s an ample local labor force in the Tijuana area that Icon has spent time and money to train. “I want Icon to be an employer of choice,” Wieners said. “It takes three to six months to train an employee through the entire process of building an A5—although most tend to specialize in one or two areas based on their skill sets. I want them to be challenged, not simply standing around doing repetitive work.” Employees can watch training videos and practice what they’ve learned on mock projects while they work with a mentor to hone their skills. True to its holistic continuous-quality-improvement roots, Icon offers employees items such as a free hot lunch daily, as well as no-cost transportation to and from central locations in Tijuana. A finished A5 sits prominently on the factory floor, so each and every employee can see where their efforts fit into the finished product.

Wieners said the expenditure on employees has worked out well—though, at first, the building process was not remotely efficient and “included plenty of double-checking and a lot of unorganized work, which, of course, is more expensive. The work process wasn’t smooth; there was no rhythm. We decided to cut labor hours by getting the quality right the first time.” He said one indicator that the CI efforts were beginning to work appeared as the defects per unit began to decline.

“By bringing composite fabrication in-house, Icon has been able to ensure that components meet strict quality and cost standards while also allowing us to more rapidly implement changes as we continue to improve our process,” Icon spokesman Brian Manning said in late March 2020. “As a result, we have improved the efficiency of the manufacturing process and supply chain. Our capacity, tooling, precision equipment, and highly skilled and trained technical team rival the top carbon manufacturers in the world.” The turnaround on carbon-fiber manufacturing in Tijuana “has been featured in numerous industry and aviation publications over the past year. We’re actively considering partners interested in leveraging our resources and expertise for contract manufacturing across composites, assembly and engineering services.”

While no company has yet signed on to let Icon manufacture their composites, it highlights the manufacturing changes from just a few years ago. Manning said: “We’ve started to realize efficiencies in our manufacturing process and recently elected to shift most of the final-assembly process to our manufacturing facility in Tijuana. We are happy to see our decadelong investment in manufacturing start to pay off so we can pass those savings on to new owners.” That savings registered directly into the A5′s price reduction from $389,000 to $359,000 for one with standard equipment.

Icon Aircraft
The ICON inflatable dock makes it easy to take boating to the next level. Courtesy Icon Aircraft

Building Airplanes Is Hard Work

No matter the manufacturer, history has proved that building airplanes is a process littered with potholes, including the machinery and processes needed to create the product, training employees, dealing with regulators, and maintaining a steady flow of customers to the front door, eager to take home the finished product. Icon has had more than its share of problems here too—some related to cash flow, some to bad public relations generated by the aforementioned accidents in the A5. In spring 2016, Icon experienced a cash shortfall, which they managed to overcome.

Other hurdles appeared, however. In August 2019, the company announced a reduction in head count—decreasing the employee base from nearly 650 to about 400 and then down to 200—as part of a revised business plan focused on improved operational efficiency. The move “reduced the cost structure of the airplane across the organization and right-sized the business for current Icon A5 demand,” according to a company press release. Wieners later said: “The company had been structured for higher-volume production, but after producing more than 100 aircraft, we now have a very good understanding of costs. New and existing owners will continue to receive a first-class ownership experience with personalized, one-on-one relationships. Our adventure-seeking owners love that the A5 delivers an unparalleled flying experience.”

Icon had a dozen or so airframes in progress when I visited the company’s Tijuana composite center and later the Vacaville, California, headquarters and delivery center in September 2019. There were another six to eight A5s on the ground in Vacaville to serve the flight training side of the company. Icon extended the invitation not to simply tour the company’s facilities but to watch its employees create a finished A5.

Upon entering the Tijuana facility, I was immediately impressed with its cleanliness. There wasn’t so much as a stray coffee cup or can of pop anywhere. Inside the plant, the temperature is held at a constant 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Even before a formal tour, the progression was clear of how a roll of carbon fiber on the building’s east side and across the well-organized shop floor moved along to the point where the fuselage halves were mated—as well as the wings, that big T-tail, the sea wings, interior, engine and more.

A major component is the A5′s main wing spar, some 120 carbon-fiber plies thick, each laser-guided for placement before the entire spar is vacuum-bagged to begin the curing process. It then spends an additional six hours at 260 degrees F in one of the company’s two pressurized autoclave machines that creates a spar as hard as steel but much lighter.

Icon Aircraft
The A5’s wings can be easily ­removed and tucked around back of the ­fuselage, making the aircraft easy to tow. Courtesy Icon Aircraft

Icon said technicians use iPads that display detailed graphics for each of the 190 different operations necessary to create an A5—a process that consumes about 500 hours of labor for each airplane, down from 700 hours not long ago. The plant uses virtual parts tracking each time the tiniest part is pulled from stock. The system subtracts each part from inventory to ensure no one runs short. Tijuana is also the quietest manufacturing facility I’ve ever been in, partly because the company is building between only three and four aircraft per month. Wieners said his goal is a healthy backlog with a two- to four-month delivery window for a finished airplane.

Once a completed airplane rolls off the line, it’s shipped to the Vacaville delivery center, where another team of Icon employees perform a detailed condition inspection prior to the customer accepting delivery. That inspection begins with a close look at every spot on the airframe to be sure no cosmetic details were missed, such as stains on a seat. The delivery team rechecks the accuracy of every flight instrument and warning light, and ensures that no aircraft leaves Vacaville without all of the latest updates—such as the new muffler system Icon retrofitted to the fleet not long ago. Finally, the aircraft is flown through an intensive series of maneuvers to ensure customers receive exactly what they paid for.

Speaking to the attractiveness of the finished product, Wieners said: “I truly believe we have an opportunity to not only disrupt an industry but also change peoples’ lives, enabling them to do things that they previously only dreamed about. Our entire team is determined. We have the tools and capabilities to be successful, and we will continue to build out the organization with strong talent across all levels. We want customers to realize [once they climb into the cockpit] that this looks like their car. We’re after people who can appreciate an airplane that’s not technically overwhelming.”

In another custom touch, pilots can use the trailer that Icon now builds in Tijuana to bring home their A5 after a day of fun at the airport or lake. Wieners admits that the A5, while standing out from the crowd, is still just one of many LSAs being offered for sale in the US. That’s why the company is after customers in search of a fresh lifestyle experience, rather than only established pilots.

Icon Aircraft
The Icon looks as if it emerged from a 3D printer with hardly a sharp edge anywhere. Courtesy Icon Aircraft

A Dose of Reality

As Wieners knows well, “creating a new category is challenging.” But Icon seems more than up to the challenge. He said: “In the beginning, when there was a higher demand [for aircraft], our production capacity couldn’t deliver, and people were calling and waiting. Now, I can produce way more airplanes, and yet, I’m always surprised at the number of people I meet who say: ‘Yes, I like the A5. Let me know when you’re in production.’ I have to tell them we’ve already built 100 airplanes. It’s mind-blowing to me that people don’t know more about us.”

But he’s also realistic. “While not giving up on driving for higher volumes, we can’t fool ourselves into thinking we’re going to sell thousands of airplanes per year. I don’t think so. But I think we can still sell many aircraft if we accept this moment of truth, if we accept this reality check, and are courageous enough to make the right call, which I think is our managerial responsibility. Then I think this company, this brand, this product has enough to forge a solid path forward.” As a testament to Icon’s audacity, Wieners asked if I knew why so many of the initial run of A5s delivered came with a registration number that ended in “BA.” He smiled and said that stands for “badass.”

With so many of the nation’s airshows in the first half of 2020 having fallen victim to the COVID-19 virus, Icon’s marketing people clearly have their work cut out for them—especially because Wieners believes that “airplanes sell airplanes,” emphasizing the need for more people to see an A5 up close. He said the company is exploring cooperative marketing efforts with automobile companies such as Mercedes and Tesla. If Icon should falter, however, it won’t be because of the quality of the aircraft’s fit and finish.

This story appeared in the June/July 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

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Icing Out of Options https://www.flyingmag.com/ilafft-icing-out-of-options/ Thu, 17 Sep 2020 15:36:37 +0000 http://137.184.62.55/~flyingma/icing-out-of-options/ The post Icing Out of Options appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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In 1980, as a local banker for 15 years, I was asked by the bank’s directors to become more involved in community affairs—specifically, to take over the position of chairman of finance on the executive board of the Boy Scouts of America in our town of Greenwich, Connecticut. In that position, I was responsible for the finances of the organization, and much of my time was devoted to increasing its income in order to fund projects.

As a pilot with 400 hours under my belt, I decided to get creative and use the talents of others on our finance committee, which included a CPA and an advertising executive. We decided to inform every registered aircraft owner in the Northeast about the substantial tax advantage of donating their (mostly unused) aircraft to our organization and utilizing the IRS tax deduction allowed for the donation. In turn, we would dispose of the asset to create income to fund our community projects.

The advertising executive board member donated his agency’s time and talent to create a brochure picturing hundreds of aircraft parked in a line at our local airport, Westchester County Airport (KHPN) in White Plains, New York, with the caption: “Thinking about selling your aircraft?” We purchased a list of registered aircraft owners from the FAA and mailed out the brochures. The response was absolutely amazing—five aircraft in various stages of condition, ranging from excellent to unflyable were offered to us.

One of the letters we received was from a professor at one of the foremost colleges in New Jersey, who was getting close to retirement and wanted to donate his 1961 Cessna 210, which was located at his vacation-home airport in Marathon Key, Florida. We would have to fly down to Marathon Key commercially, and after giving us instruction on his 210, he would transfer the title to our organization.

It was January 1981 when the time came to depart for Marathon Key. I asked a friend—a young, newly minted CFI—if he would fly back with me to White Plains in the 210, and he agreed. We got a motel in Marathon Key and began the indoctrination with the owner on the nuances of the older Cessna 210. After a full week, we decided it was time to get going and return to White Plains.

After charging an almost-dead battery and discovering an inoperative voltage regulator, we filed for the airport at New Smyrna Beach, Florida. The CFI had worked for the FBO at that airport for the past three years, so we had little difficulty with the repairs. The next morning, we discovered that the weather along our route was absolutely horrific IFR—ice everywhere, with no hope of clearing up for days because of a stationary trough between us and our destination. After three or four additional days of waiting, we had terrible “get-home-itis” and decided to fly part of the way to Wilmington, North Carolina. The plan was to refuel and then punch through the trough with enough fuel to break out on the other side, hopefully, with much better weather.

The weather at Wilmington was IFR, and when we attempted to shoot the ILS back-course approach, we discovered that our localizer and glideslope had become inoperable. Fortunately, Wilmington had one of the few functional remaining precision approach radar procedures, and we made an uneventful approach and landing. While the airplane was being refueled, we met with a pilot who had just flown a single down from Washington, DC, and he convinced us the route home was doable—as long as we remained above the tops (which we were told by the briefer were at 9,000 feet).

After a detailed weather briefing, we were cautioned that getting into the clouds would be extremely hazardous without anti-ice equipment because all reports indicated heavy icing. We departed Wilmington with intentions of overflying the storm ahead of us at 9,000 feet and sat back for what we were convinced would be an uneventful flight. After only half an hour, and in order to remain clear of clouds, we had climbed to 11,000 feet and, subsequently, to 13,000, checking our fingernails every few minutes to see if they’d turned blue.

The sun was beginning to set when we spotted what looked like an impenetrable white wall, impossible to circumnavigate. Up to this point in the flight, we had to climb every hour or so to stay above the clouds without oxygen, but up ahead, there were cloud tops as high as we could see, with no chance to get above the severe icing.

We now had two choices: Try to get down through the severe icing to the nearest airport without picking up more ice than the airplane could carry and retain enough lift to stay in the air, or—the choice we decided on—to punch through the wall of clouds as expeditiously as possible and hope for dry weather on the other side. We were unable to return to Wilmington because of the short-range fuel tanks in the 210.

Read More: I Learned About Flying From That

As we entered the clouds at about 13,000 feet, we immediately encountered horrendous icing, and the windshield defroster became ineffective very quickly. I shone my flashlight on the wing strut and saw ice forming at an impossible rate. The pitot tube’s heat had been on the whole time but was now struggling to keep from freezing up, which was reflected in the sporadic airspeed indication, with the needle dropping to zero and then back to normal.

Things got worse from there, beginning with prop ice that caused enormous vibration of the engine and cowling. The engine’s oil-temperature gauge began to surge upward to the redline, and we knew the oil cooler had frozen over, and complete engine seizure was not far away. We opened the cowl flaps to full in an attempt to bring down the temperature. There was so much ice on the airplane and propeller, we could not maintain altitude. In that regard, having short-range fuel tanks and the associated lighter weight turned out to be a blessing. We called center and told them about our problem, and they gave us a block altitude.

We continued to pick up ice and could not remain inside the authorized block altitude. We saw no point in declaring an emergency because we were already receiving priority treatment, and there were no other sane pilots flying aircraft in this icing nightmare. We asked the controller for vectors to the nearest airport, which happened to be Salisbury, Maryland. We could see absolutely nothing out of the windows, had no airspeed indicator, could barely read the instrument indications because of the violent shaking, and could not maintain altitude.

At 6,000 feet, we heard a tremendous bang and then another. Large chunks of ice began breaking off the airframe and windshield, opposite the defroster, striking the empennage. We knew enough about control surfaces to know we needed to land very clean and fast, except for lowering the gear at the last possible moment in order to avoid the inevitable stall from so much ice on the wing and control surfaces. Once we touched down in that configuration, we heard what sounded like a storefront glass window shattering—it was ice breaking off of the airplane.

The flight-service station we visited on the field said that we had entered an “unforecast warm-air stream” at 6,000 feet that was around 32 degrees Fahrenheit—just enough to free up some ice so we could both see and control the airplane. After drying the upholstery on our two seats and a weather check with the FSS on the field, we refueled and preflighted, took off for KHPN in VFR below the clouds, and arrived back home in White Plains at 7:40 p.m.

As I mentioned earlier, the main reason for the flight was to bring the airplane to White Plains, sell it, and assist in the funding of the Scout programs with the net proceeds. I flew the airplane from Westchester County Airport to Schneider’s Air Service at Sky Acres Airport in Lagrangeville, New York, to get an annual before advertising it for sale.

After working on the annual for a couple of weeks, the mechanic called me at the bank. He asked, “Are you sitting down?” He said the airplane had been completely painted seven years prior, and there had not been an annual performed for the past seven years—and maybe even before that. All the inspection plates had to be forced open because they were painted shut. Most concerning to me was the fact that two or three of the control cables were in shreds and almost broken, just held together by a few strands of the cable.

There are a number of morals to this story—any pilot can figure them out. No doubt some pilots reading this will criticize our decisions, and many of our decisions do deserve criticism. All we can say to them is: Be glad you weren’t there, and learn from our experience so you will never be there. CFI Joseph J. Mocarski is presently a senior captain with Hawaiian Airlines, flying wide-body aircraft internationally, and is nearing retirement. He fully admits that he probably knows more about icing from this experience than any of his other flying experiences. I am now retired, and I continue to be an active commercial/instrument pilot—and I have never allowed myself to be in any type of icing situation since.

This story appeared in the June/July 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

The post Icing Out of Options appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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Embraer’s Phenom 300E Full of Bossa Nova Style https://www.flyingmag.com/we-fly-embraer-phenom-300e/ Tue, 15 Sep 2020 19:15:52 +0000 http://137.184.62.55/~flyingma/we-fly-embraer-phenom-300e/ The Brazilian OEM celebrated its golden anniversary in 2020 by giving its popular business jet some impressive enhancements.

The post Embraer’s Phenom 300E Full of Bossa Nova Style appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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On the outside, Embraer may look like just another bottom-line-driven international aircraft manufacturer—and the recent headlines covering its courtship breakup with Boeing regarding the joint venture involving its commercial aircraft division only seem to add to this image.

But when you pull back the layers, at the heart of the company stands a person who worked hard to build it from his dreams of designing aircraft. In the Portuguese-speaking world, the title “Engenheiro,” or engineer, is one of respect conferred in a similar manner to that of a doctor—and from the very beginning, Engenheiro Ozires Silva wanted more than anything to be an aeronautical engineer.

Embraer Phenom 300E at a Glance

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Silva fed his dream as a young boy by crafting airplane models in the suburbs of São Paulo, Brazil, where he grew up in the 1930s. He had to translate his desire to build a wholly Brazilian aircraft into piloting for the military for a decade because there was no way to pursue an aeronautical engineering degree in the country until the 1950s. Once he found a way, his path led to the foundation of Embraer, 50 years ago, in 1970.

These dreams—and the transformation of them into action—show up in many facets of the current company and its aircraft. I had a taste during my visit to Embraer Executive Jets in Melbourne, Florida, in early March, to fly the company’s latest waking dream, the updated Phenom 300E.

From the outside, the 300E shows off its latest cosmetic upgrades in a sleek new paint scheme and enticing interior. But as the team took me through the detailed briefing prior to our flight, the jet impressed me in a number of other ways—almost enough to compel me to break out into a little jazz turn on the ramp. OK, not quite, but there’s more to the updated certification than what catches the eye.

Embraer Phenom 300E
Probably the most compelling enhancement to the 300E lies in this term, one I hadn’t used before: the ROASS. [Courtesy: Embraer]

Performance Upgrade (We Mean Speed)

Alvadi Serpa, Embraer Executive Jets’ director of product strategy, laid the cards on the table (figuratively): A little competition (OK, a lot) from the Phenom 300′s category rivals, such as the Cessna Citation CJ4, spurred them on to go faster and further, both on paper and in performance, pursuing a new type certification—under EASA, FAA and Brazil’s ANAC—that came through in late March.

Simply stated, the new 300E has achieved a maximum Mach operational speed (MMO) of M0.80—at FL 330, that translates to 464 ktas, based on a basic operating weight of one pilot plus four passengers plus 50 percent maximum usable fuel weight. That beats the previous 300E’s MMO of M0.78, or 453 ktas, under similar conditions—and puts it in range of the CJ4.

Thiago Bernini, Embraer Executive Jets’ senior product strategy engineer, walked me through the genesis of that upgrade, beginning with the source: more-powerful engines. The new Pratt & Whitney 535E1 engines produce an extra 118 pound-force (lbf) of thrust over the previous PW535 engines—a total 3,478 lbf of thrust—with no increase to the operating costs, according to Embraer.

Plus, range now tops the magical 2,000 nm number—2,010 nm, to compete with the CJ4′s range at 2,165 nm. That’s with five occupants, and NBAA IFR reserves with a 100 nm alternate, long-range cruise power configuration, ISA temperatures at sea level, and weighing in at maximum takeoff weight.

Put six people on board, and you can still see 1,865 nm at high-speed cruise and 1,990 nm at long-range cruise. You can reach Denver, Colorado, or Guayaquil, Ecuador, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that way—at high-speed cruise, with five 200-pound occupants and NBAA IFR reserves.

Embraer Phenom 300E
The sleek Bossa Nova interior looks enticing, and it also features a number of technology upgrades. [Courtesy: Embraer]

Pilot Assist

Enhancements abound up front on the flight deck, with some of the most important updates hiding in small details. For example, Eric Le Blanc, flight test engineer, explained how the new processors in the G3000 will ease pilots’ frustration from the moment they start throwing switches. “[The new system features] a solid-state hard drive on each component, which allows them to boot quicker, so it takes a lot less time for the airplane to power up.”

Expanded checklists—powered by this new processing power, and accessed through the Garmin touchpads—make procedures run more smoothly, especially when conducted by a two-pilot crew, because the more-detailed checklist steps can be ticked off right on the display and picked up instantly by the other pilot, with the ability to follow hyperlinks to additional checklists.

A graphical weight-and-balance system eases pilot workload—especially when last-minute changes take place. “If you went to an airport to pick up a customer, and they were supposed to come with two people, and they show up with three or four people, you can quickly update your weight and balance, and see if you can make the trip or not,” Le Blanc says. With the visual presentation already made, the pilot can easily point to the graph to back up their determination. Takeoff and landing data residing in the G3000 keep you from having to whip out the quick-reference handbook for those numbers prior to pulling the chocks.

More workload-reducing features include the ability to import FMS speeds directly into the autopilot rather than relying upon manual input. When in FMS mode, the system automatically populates the speed when the pilot enables flight level change on the autopilot.

A Garmin TCAS system replaces the prior traffic alerting system—and many of the physical controls all around have been moved into the Garmin GTC controller. The 300E now features ADS-B In, which gives the pilot traffic in flight and on the ground, and is generated through the TCAS box, not the transponder.

The flight deck also includes an enhanced HSI, allowing the pilot to overlay a map on the display. The FIS-B traffic data and info block are also visible so you can verify your aircraft registration data is correct. Both Garmin FliteCharts and Jeppesen charts can be accessed—and FliteCharts are now geo-referenced on the display. Data Comm Tower Service—automated ATC datalink communication available at certain airports—is preloaded so that wherever it has been adopted, it’s already in there, ready to go.

Two more additions go beyond the nice-to-have and into the safety realm: the option for a coupled go-around—with the pilot still responsible for flaps and gear—and emergency descent mode (EDM). To initiate the EDM, the autopilot must be engaged and the jet must be flying above FL 250. If the cabin altitude EICAS message is illuminated (for example, if it reaches 10,000 feet), it will trigger the system, which waits five seconds before initializing a rapid descent.

The EDM targets a top speed of 250 knots in the descent to a preselected altitude of 15,000 feet utilizing flight-level-change mode, with a turn 90 degrees from the airplane’s current track on heading mode. The 300E doesn’t have autothrottles, so the pilot must pull the throttles back to increase the descent rate once 250 knots is reached—so that descent may be shallower than optimal until the pilot commands reduced power and speed brakes. The idea is to begin the jet’s progress to a safe altitude and hope that the pilot wakes up to the situation at hand.

Embraer Phenom 300E
Upgrades include the inflight entertainment system and the option of Avance L5 connectivity, with Wi-Fi service to support streaming. [Courtesy: Embraer]

Optimized for the Mission

When I climbed on board and into the left seat, other details from the briefing made sense. Case in point: the 40 percent increase in pilot and copilot seat tracks—the better legroom should please pilots who have suffered a bit in the previously more cramped quarters. I’m about a foot shy of the target benchmark of 6 feet, 4 inches, but I did feel comfortable in the seat, and I could easily adjust it to suit my preferences for sight picture and proximity to the flight controls and touchpads.

So, how did Embraer’s engineers get here? It was a combination of improvements behind the scenes—well, aft of the cockpit. They reconfigured the racks for manuals, the fire extinguisher, protective breathing equipment and crash ax, and relocated the water barrier (required in the event of water landings, and the placement of which differs for Brazilian ANAC and FAA certification versus EASA certification).

Several redesigns in the cabin reduce noise: those of the thermal acoustic installation package, the noise barrier, and three check valves—specifically, to get rid of an irritating flapper noise often experienced during descent and final approach phases of flight—plus the addition of a muffler to the vapor cycle machine.

We’d briefed the flight before our walk-around, so I proceeded with a flow around the cockpit, followed by the checklist—a little sprinkle of rain tapped on the windshield as I familiarized myself with the lay of the land. Demo pilots Sebastian Arrazola and Chris Rogers had given me a heads-up about taxiing, that the way forward as a new Phenom pilot would probably result in some fits and starts until I got the feel for the ground handling. Nevertheless, we made it out slowly to Runway 9L at Melbourne and took off in 2,960 feet with a V1 of 104 knots, VR of 105 and V2 of 116 knots—at a takeoff weight of 16,482 pounds.

After the first segment climb speed of 131 knots, we cruise-climbed up to an intermediate altitude for ATC. Just as we got there, the controller cleared us on up to FL 330, where we made our speed run. As the G3000 ticked over 464 ktas, we smiled. There it is. A few steep turns back down at about 15,000 feet msl gave me a sense of the 300E’s handling characteristics—solid and stable, no surprises there. Then we talked about how we would set up our demonstration of another primary upgrade for the 300E, the runway overrun alert safety system, known as the ROASS.

Embraer Phenom 300E
A. The Garmin G3000 in the 300E now includes ADS-B In, emergency descent mode, and coupled go-arounds as standard features.

B. A graphical weight-and-balance system makes last-minute changes in passenger and fuel loading a lot easier to manage for the pilots.

C. How about more legroom up front? A 40 percent increase in the pilot and copilot seat tracks eases entry and exit, as well as inflight comfort.

D. Engine start and power management come with partially automated settings for reduced pilot workload.

E. Other pilot-pleasing upgrades include fly-by and flyover waypoints, and VNAV guidance for nonprecision approaches.

F. The Concorde-style control yokes add a distinctive look—you know you’re in a Phenom.
Courtesy Embraer

What’s the ROASS?

Probably the most compelling enhancement to the 300E lies in this term—one I hadn’t used before. The optional system takes a familiar concept—and unfortunately, common accident profile—and gives it real substance.

As pilots, we’re all familiar—or should be—with a stabilized approach. One form of stabilized-approach mode or another has been in place in light jets on up the food chain for some time—but those systems typically just tell you that your flight path is unstable, or varies too greatly from a steady vertical descent rate and airspeed within a couple of knots over—not under—VREF.

The ROASS takes the stabilized approach function much further. Using the current runway length, VREF and descent-rate data, the system not only warns the pilot, but also nudges them into action, providing timely and compelling alerts to the crew.

The day’s planned flight profile took me through the elements of the ROASS. To the outside observer, we made two go-arounds and a landing. Inside the cockpit, a lot more was going on. Arrazola set up the G3000 to trick it into thinking the available runway distance was 3,000 feet instead of the actual 10,000 feet for 9L. Our VREF for our landing weight (14,400 pounds) on the first approach was 111 knots.

On the first approach, we set the autopilot to fly a coupled missed approach, with VREF flown to plus-20 knots to trigger a secondary alert from the ROASS: “Overrun. Go around. Overrun. Go around.” For the second approach, we set up for a normal landing, hand-flying, but I purposefully flared a bit too long, triggering the warning: “Long flare…long flare…go around.”

Embraer Phenom 300E
A single-point refueling port on the 300E adds a lot of convenience in servicing. [Photo: Stephen Yeates]

For our final approach, I prepared to make an actual landing—but with the shorter runway data dialed into the G3000, the ROASS sounded another warning sequence as I touched down too long for the system’s taste. “Overrun. Brakes. Overrun. Brakes.” In reality, we only used about 2,350 feet of our allotted pavement—without anything more than normal braking action. Our total fuel burn for the one-hour, 20-minute mission? Right at 2,082 pounds—penciling out to 1,565 pounds per hour for the demonstration flight, including the go-arounds.

Hand-flying just isn’t something that you do very often in day-to-day ops for the Phenom’s usual flight crews, so though I had a little fatigue after levering around the Concorde-style yoke for an hour during our demo flight, that’s not a likely problem to replicate itself in everyday operations.

I found a similar ergonomic state involving leverage in turns the first time I flew an early model of the Cirrus SR20—I’d never encountered the combination yoke/stick in a single-engine production airplane before that point, and the move was unfamiliar, and required new and finely tuned muscle engagement. My experience with the yoke in the Phenom echoed that initial experience—easy enough to overcome with time.

The Bossa Nova interior is based on the award-winning design installed on the Praetor 600. Textures on the seats reminded me of calçadas—the sidewalk pavers that are ubiquitous around Brazil and Portugal—and it turns out, I wasn’t far off, according to Serpa, who took me through the inflight entertainment system and upgrades in the back.

A variety of cabin layouts house between a maximum of nine to 11 occupants, with an optional belted lav. And about that lav—you can now service it from the outside, a real customer-pleasing upgrade. Who wants to deal with the consequences of, um, a spill during a transfer in the interior? This new feature joins another operations-level pleaser: single-point refueling.

The sum of the standard upgrades adds about $200,000 to the list price of the 300E—up to $9.65 million from $9.45 million. The Bossa Nova interior is a $133,000 option—as is a connectivity package priced at roughly $160,000. For those looking to reach a top speed in serious style, though, it’s a compelling choice to make, and a fitting tribute to the company’s five decades in business.

Embraer Phenom 300E
The Global Customer Center at Melbourne, Florida, hosts completions as well. [Courtesy: Embraer]

Parabéns a Você! Happy 50th Birthday, Embraer

In 1958, Ozires Silva entered the aeronautical engineering program at the newly founded Institute of Aeronautical Technology (ITA) in São Jose dos Campos, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, that had opened in 1950. He was already 27 years old—and he clearly wasted no time in finally pursuing his childhood dreams.

At work on what would become the EMB 110 Bandeirante project—launched in 1965, code name IPD-6504—after graduation, at the Technical Center for Aeronautics (CTA), Silva saw the twin-engine turboprop first fly on October 22, 1968, powered by Pratt & Whitney PT6A engines. A chance one-on-one meeting with the president of Brazil at the time, Artur da Costa e Silva, led to the go-ahead to produce the aircraft under the government’s direction. Ozires Silva was 39 years old when the company—Embraer—was founded and he was appointed CEO. The Bandeirante gained Brazilian type certification late in 1972. A total of 499 were produced.

In 1979, Embraer launched its first US facility in Florida; it had already developed Brazilian military aircraft since its inception, including the EMB 312 Tucano, which first flew in 1980. The company was privatized in December 1994 while the ERJ 145 was under development—and hard times plagued the regional jet’s trajectory, but it successfully launched with a delivery to Continental Express in 1996. Embraer diversified its focus to include business aviation, with the unveiling of the Phenom 100 and 300 mockups in November 2005 at the National Business Aviation Association trade show.

Today, Embraer’s Executive Jets division takes advantage of the company’s production facilities in Brazil, along with its development facility in Melbourne, Florida. Components of the Phenom 100 and 300/300E, such as the wings and fuselage, are brought into the United States from Brazil, and then final assembly takes place at Melbourne, adjacent to the company’s Global Customer Center.

Runway Overruns: A Case Study

The runway overrun accident class drives the impetus behind the ROASS now available on the Phenom 300E—and this category of pilot error continues to induce more than its fair share of mishaps. The National Business Aviation Association offers a complete study on runway excursions on its website, pointing out that “most business aviation accidents occur in the landing phase,” for which it references a Business Aviation Safety Brief published by the International Business Aviation Committee in 2013. One-third of the studied accidents were runway excursions. “Despite efforts to improve it, the worldwide business aviation excursion accident rate has changed little over the last decade, hovering around 3.6 per million flights, or some 60 percent higher than the corresponding commercial aviation rate,” according to the brief.

A common scenario occurred in May 2018, when a Gulfstream G200 landed with excess speed at Tegucigalpa-Toncontin Airport in Honduras. The pilot had been cleared to land on Runway 2, with an available landing distance of roughly 5,436 feet—not a lot at the airport’s altitude of 3,294 feet msl, but enough. However, the accident report indicates the G200 clocked 142 knots as it touched down—well above the calculated 128-knot VREF speed. Combined with a touchdown more than 3,000 feet down the runway, the overrun came as no surprise—except perhaps to the crew. Fortunately, the pilots and all passengers survived. Would an alerting system such as the ROASS prevent such an excursion and the loss of an airplane? It’s impossible to say—but at least the crew would likely have had a series of hard-to-miss indications that something was going very wrong on the approach.

This story appeared in the June/July 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

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Unknown Fuel System Problem Leads to Unfortunate Ending https://www.flyingmag.com/aftermath-fuel-crisis/ Thu, 10 Sep 2020 15:35:30 +0000 http://137.184.62.55/~flyingma/unknown-fuel-system-problem-leads-to-unfortunate-ending/ If you don’t know where it went, is it really gone?

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A Cessna 210L left Bozeman, Montana, with five men aboard and full tanks for a 700-nautical-mile flight to San Carlos, California.

Four hours and 48 minutes later, the airplane crashed near Lodi, California, 60 nm short of its destination. The 1,200-hour pilot, 60 years old, died two weeks later of his injuries; the four passengers, also seriously injured, survived. One of them told the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident investigators that they were about 30 minutes short of the destination when the pilot said that they were getting low on fuel, and he was going to turn around and land at an airport they had just passed. Shortly thereafter, he announced that they needed to find a road to land on. The engine then quit. The pilot switched tanks and tried to restart it but failed.

As the pilot turned back, hoping to reach the airport, the gliding airplane “lost momentum,” in the words of a passenger. It dropped, collided with trees and crashed in a dry riverbed.

The numbers appear difficult to reconcile. Seven hundred nautical miles is well within the range of a 210. Handbook performance gives a fuel consumption of around 14 gallons an hour at 160 ktas. A trip of 700 nm, with allowance for taxi and climb, ought to require around 65 gallons of fuel. The 210L’s tanks have a capacity of 90 gallons; 87 gallons are usable in all flight conditions and probably 89 or more in level flight. What happened to the remainder?

From the fact that the airplane covered 640 nm in 4.8 hours, for an average groundspeed of 133 knots, we can infer that either the pilot used a very low power setting—which seems incompatible with fuel exhaustion—or there was an average headwind of 20 knots. The NTSB report is silent on the subject of en route winds.

Teardown of the engine revealed no mechanical failure, but a seal on the fuel-pump drive shaft was found to be damaged by rust and leaked at the remarkable rate of 3 to 4 gallons an hour. This fuel would have gone to an overboard drain, and this would roughly account for the difference between the theoretical fuel requirement for the trip and the amount actually used.

It is unusual for a crashed airplane to burn if there is no fuel in it. Nevertheless, the fuselage and the inboard portion of the left wing were consumed by fire. The passengers, despite their injuries, had helped extricate one another from the wreckage.

The pilot was not the owner of the airplane. It’s possible that the rate of leakage from the fuel pump suddenly increased just before the final flight. It’s also possible that the owner had been making short flights and had not fully appreciated the catastrophic rate of leakage. Perhaps the owner warned the pilot that the airplane had been using a lot of fuel lately and that he should keep an eye on the gauges. Equally plausible is that the pilot did not have a clear idea of how severe the fuel leakage actually was. At any rate, the accident report says nothing about the pilot’s knowledge, or ignorance, of a preexisting fuel leak.

There are several ways to judge fuel consumption in flight. The manufacturer’s information manual contains tables of fuel flow for various combinations of manifold pressure and rpm at a specified mixture, but obviously cannot consider fuel-system anomalies or variations in leaning technique. The basic fuel-flow gauge actually measures pressure in the fuel-distribution manifold—the little round “spider” on top of the engine—and is inherently imprecise. A digital meter and totalizer keep track of fuel consumption much more precisely, but know nothing of leaks upstream.

The only direct way to know how much fuel is in the tanks is from visual inspection before takeoff and, once airborne, from the fuel gauges. If the gauges do not agree with expected fuel flow, and you do not have positive knowledge they are faulty, you have to believe the gauges.

The pilot found himself in a perplexing position. According to the gauges, the airplane had used a great deal more fuel than it should have. Presumably, he had leaned the mixture; he would have run out of fuel even sooner if he hadn’t. The fuel-flow gauge—the NTSB report does not say what type the airplane had—showed the expected rate of consumption. The engine was running normally, and yet, 60 nm from the destination, both fuel gauges were reading near empty.

It seems that, rather than the normal “both” setting, the pilot had at some point selected the right tank. He probably thought that he would run it dry and then hope to have enough fuel remaining in the left tank to reach an airport. When the right tank ran dry, he switched to the left and tried to restart but failed. Most likely, there was some fuel in the left tank, as suggested by the post-crash fire, but it’s not unusual for an engine to be slow to restart after it has swallowed a lot of air.

From the passenger’s description, it sounds as if the airplane must have been quite low at this point and stalled or mushed in—possibly because the pilot’s attention was divided between flying the airplane and trying to start the engine.

The NTSB’s “probable cause” made no mention of the pilot’s in-flight decision-making. It blamed the accident on “fuel exhaustion due to a leaking engine-driven fuel-pump nose seal, which increased the engine-fuel-consumption rate above the published performance-chart values.”

The implication of the NTSB’s finding is that a pilot would plan a flight based on “performance-chart values” and, after that, have no information about the fuel state. But that is obviously not the case, unless the fuel gauges in the airplane are not working at all. That was evidently not true here because the pilot knew, and stated at a certain point, that the fuel level was dangerously low, and moments later, the airplane ran out of fuel. Apparently, the gauges were working just fine.

So, turn back the clock. Two and a half hours or so into the flight, the gauges would have been indicating half. Something had to be wrong. But what was it? Everything else seemed normal. Were the gauges faulty? Possibly. But an hour and 15 minutes later, they would be indicating one quarter. It was not difficult to extrapolate that, at this rate, the airplane could not possibly reach San Marcos without the gauges hitting rock bottom. That is not a place you want them to be.

Most pilots who run out of fuel do so near their destination. Wishful thinking operates powerfully on our minds, obscuring evidence and distorting reason, so obvious decisions elude us. When fuel appears to be in short supply, there is only one rational thing to do: land and get more of it. But that is not always what pilots do. Instead, they try to make the most of what they’ve got, sometimes with tragic results.

This story appeared in the June/July 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

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Giving Up Flying…Again https://www.flyingmag.com/unusual-attitudes-giving-up-flying/ Tue, 08 Sep 2020 15:28:46 +0000 http://137.184.62.55/~flyingma/giving-up-flying-again/ The post Giving Up Flying…Again appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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In “When to Give Up,” an article from several years ago, I recommended giving serious thought before every takeoff about how to handle an emergency. Rather than trying for a “miracle save,” it was usually better to accept the unpleasant certainty of bending some metal but probably surviving.

The classic example is losing an engine on takeoff in a light twin at max gross weight at a high-density-altitude airport. While the book says it’ll fly, you aren’t the uber-proficient test pilot who generated those numbers—and your airplane ain’t what it used to be when it came off the assembly line. So, it’s statistically better to chop the good engine and put it down off the end of the runway but into relatively benign terrain. In a single, the decision involves—depending on your altitude—landing ahead after loss of power instead of attempting the “impossible turn” back to that temptingly safe piece of concrete behind you. But you have to consciously remind yourself about these possibilities and your reaction—in advance.

Here I’m thinking about another time to “give up.” Knowing when it’s time to recognize, accept and deal with aging—yours, not your airplane’s—and deciding if and when it’s time to gracefully hang it up, has to be one of the most difficult challenges in a flying career. I’m becoming something of an expert here, which is hard to believe because everything still works, and in my head and my heart, I feel the same as I did 50-some years ago. OK, I do seem to be shrinking, and my hands—well, I’ve always admired weathered, gnarled hands adjusting throttles and props, and now I’ve got ’em.

Anyway, if you’re blessed with a love of airplanes and also blessed with a long life, you’re eventually going to be faced with the dilemma of when to stop flying airplanes…at least, flying them alone.

I’ve done a number of reexams (709s, after the FAA form number) with “senior” general aviation pilots who’d come under FAA scrutiny because of an accident or violation. Some were still amazingly sharp and adept, easily leaving me in the weeds. Others raised genuine concerns about the mental and/or physical capability of this pilot who had been flying for a lifetime but was now involved in some kind of trouble.

I’ve told you about a few: watching an ugly approach and “arrival” of a Cessna 182 full of passengers flown by an irascible old guy I knew. Trying to handle it as expeditiously as possible, I discovered he didn’t have a valid medical (because of heart problems). Curiously, after initially calling me the “bad guy,” his airport buddies said they’d “known he was losing it” but were reluctant to say anything.

Martha Lunken
Classic airplanes seem to go on ­flying forever—but not so with “­classic” pilots. Courtesy Martha Lunken

Then there was the elderly guy who flew into Cincinnati’s Lunken airport for his reexamination and wandered around the airport, lost and unable to communicate with the tower. I had to physically help him out of the airplane when he arrived on the ramp, in obvious pain, quite deaf and with a speech impediment. Instead of doing the check ride, I called the operator who’d rented him the airplane and told them to send somebody to collect him. A sad, embarrassing end to a long flying career.

And there was the legendary man who had built a family-owned airport 50-some years before and had taught hundreds, maybe thousands, of people to fly. On a reexam of his CFI privileges in a Piper J-3—after he ended up in the corn with a pre-solo student—I found he had some unique and charming ways of teaching coordination. Beyond sight of his home field, he was hopelessly lost. Right or wrong, I passed him with a reluctant promise from his sons that he’d fly with only licensed pilots. A few months later, I’d learned they’d grounded him; to their credit, somebody flew with him around the patch in a Cub every day until he died.

And then there was an aging man flying a Beech Bonanza from Florida who blundered into Charleston, West Virginia. When the FAA inspector who met him found he had no medical, the old guy agreed to park the airplane. Instead, he blasted off without talking to the tower and ended up at Lunken.

And another mishap from an aging aviator: flying IFR but disregarding ATC’s altitude assignments—by thousands of feet. He insisted it was the logical thing to do; he had to stay out of the clouds because “everybody knows there’s ice in there.”

Read More from Martha Lunken: Unusual Attitudes

Heartbreakingly, a dear friend—a brilliant lawyer, entrepreneur and pilot who built a wildly popular local FM radio station—fell to the same fate. After years of flying with him in a succession of his beloved Aero Commanders, I finally told him we simply couldn’t do another flight review…and why. But he was a beautifully stubborn old thing, so I finally called his lawyer brother and successfully made the case of why he had to stop flying alone. It broke my heart—more so when he died of Alzheimer’s a few years later.

The man who owned ’72B before me, a retired professional pilot, decided to quit and sell his airplane after somehow spooking himself on a solo trip out west. I don’t think that’s unusual, but others hang on until something unfortunate happens. Especially before BasicMed, you’d think aviation medical examiners would catch the problem, but that doesn’t always happen. An AME once called me at the flight standards district office, saying: “You guys need to ground this man. He shouldn’t be flying, but I couldn’t find a reason to deny his medical.”

There isn’t—and shouldn’t be—just one solution. But think about being “your brother’s keeper” and have the guts to talk to an aging pilot friend if you notice obvious degeneration. For yourself, maybe decide to schedule an annual proficiency check with a good instructor or take somebody with you, especially on long flights. Maybe limit yourself to VFR or “soft” IFR, such as a climb to get on top, and forego night flying. Know that your insurance carrier will likely impose some of these restrictions if you don’t—or you’ll be looking at much higher premiums.

While most of us know when it’s time to quit, there are hard cases (you’re reading words written by one). A friend at the ’drome and I talk flippantly about it and make silly pacts: “Launch me toward the nearest thunderstorm or mountain over unpopulated territory, or launch me toward Europe with an hour’s fuel.” But I think at 35 minutes, I’d have serious regrets.

Well, any of these would mean the waste of a perfectly good airplane and leaving an ugly legacy: “She used to be quite a pilot… She just didn’t know when to quit.”

This story appeared in the June/July 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

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We Fly: Piper Archer DX https://www.flyingmag.com/we-fly-piper-archer-dx/ Tue, 01 Sep 2020 19:19:39 +0000 http://137.184.62.55/~flyingma/we-fly-piper-archer-dx/ The post We Fly: Piper Archer DX appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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Turning to Bart Jones, who was sitting beside me in the cockpit as we flew over the Florida coast, I told him the battery wasn’t working in my headset. The whomp that active noise reduction creates when the power’s going made for quite a distraction. After a beat, and with a nonchalant shrug, he took off his headset. I did the same. It was actually quieter in the cockpit without my headset than with it, and we could hear each other just fine. We shared a laugh and looked out over the Atlantic Ocean spread before us. After a moment of companionable space, and listening to ATC on the speaker, he said, “Maybe we’d better replace the batteries and put them back on.”

Piper Archer DX at a Glance

FLYING exclusive offer: Unlimited access for Conklin&deDecker piston aircraft data.

Jones—the chief pilot for Piper Aircraft—and I go back probably 20 years, and I’ve had the pleasure of following developments in the company’s training-aircraft series with his guidance. The Piper Archer DX, with its diesel engine and full authority digital engine control system, now tops the list in evolutions that the long-lived Cherokee has made to march forward with the times—but in ways beyond the obvious. I checked in with the company to see what those changes brought to the legendary trainer.

William T. Piper
William T. Piper (left) and racks of legacy parts (right) speak to the company’s heritage. Courtesy Piper Aircraft

The Engine

The Continental CD-155 engine starts with a block that has Mercedes heritage. Built by the Technify Motors GmbH division of Continental in Germany, the engine produces 114 kW or 155 hp at maximum power—the same as takeoff power—at 2,300 rpm, which it can maintain up to 8,000 feet msl.

The CD-155 can burn diesel or jet-A, at a compression ratio of 18-to-1. Because jet-A is more efficient than avgas, and the fuel tanks on the DX essentially replicate the volume of those found on a standard Archer, the DX can stay aloft for longer than its traditionally fueled siblings. Best economy power (65 percent) runs at 1,960 rpm and provides 105 hp in comparison—enough to keep the Archer DX aloft for nearly 7 hours at 4,000 feet msl, based on a fuel flow of 5.4 gph. The throttle quadrant holds a single power lever for the fadec system, making fuel and power

management simple for the pilot.

We saw the results during our demo flight: At 75 percent power, with a fuel flow of about 6.3 gph and a true airspeed of 120 knots, we could fly around far longer than most folks have the desire to. The advantage for a busy flight school operation lies in the number of flights able to “turn” before refueling becomes necessary. Half tanks (24 gallons) easily allow for a two-and-a-half-hour flight with ample reserves.

The walk-around reveals just a couple differences—most notably in the fuel-port placards for jet fuel and up front behind the spinner. The engine inlets are shaped to optimize airflow for the CD-155, and the three slender blades of the MT propeller gleam white in the sunlight.

Piper Archer DX flight deck
A. The standby EFIS, the EFD1000 from Aspen Avionics, provides a backup attitude indicator, airpseed and altitude, and heading ­indicator, along with a wide range of other functionality. B. The Garmin G1000 NXi avionics suite features FliteCharts and SafeTaxi for better situational awareness on the ground. C. What’s different? For one, the engine information is shown on the multifunction display, which is customized for the diesel-engine operations. D. The fadec’s single power lever in the throttle quadrant also ­signals that this is not your usual Piper Cherokee. Courtesy Piper Aircraft

Start It Up

The fadec system turns engine management into a straightforward exercise, and that begins with the change to the startup sequence. For those of you who recall the hot start of certain aged Warriors on a summer’s day, you can look forward to—fondly—a much simpler, responsive procedure, with a couple new tests to run before takeoff.

That said, the procedure will feel a little different for those without much experience operating a fadec-equipped aviation diesel engine. And it takes some planning ahead; starting the aircraft with external power is not allowed, per the pilot’s operating handbook. You’ll need to use extra master-switch discipline to avoid draining the battery accidentally—but you probably should anyway.

Jones walked me through the prep for my first engine start: setting the thrust lever to idle and turning on the alternator, battery and main electrical-bus switches. Because the fadec requires electrical power to operate, all three switches must be on for normal operation. In case of a loss of alternator or the main ship’s battery, a standby battery will power the fadec, but that standby shouldn’t be activated in normal ops—so it’s there when you need it.

Next, I turned on the electric fuel pump and the engine master—a guarded switch, one you definitely don’t want to bump against in flight. Jones pointed out the glow control light, which we checked on and then off. At that point, I engaged the starter, and it swung the prop through for a quick start. Once it was up and running, we went through the checks of the fadec backup battery, switching off the alternator and main battery in sequence to ensure the engine kept purring along. Red warning lights should illuminate at this point if anything’s amiss.

After the engine warmed up for a couple minutes, we also went through a check of the fadec and propeller adjustment. With the thrust lever at idle, I pressed the fadec test button to see if the indicators would come on and prop rpm would increase. Behind the scenes, the system is moving between its B component (or channel), with rpm decrease, and its A component, with another rise and fall in prop rpm to show the engagement of the prop control. It returns to idle on its own at the conclusion of a successful test. With one more run-up bringing the lever fully forward to check maximum rpm (at 94 percent power, it should be between 2,240 and 2,300 rpm), and then back to idle, we were assured of the engine’s readiness for flight.

With one more reassuring look to see that the alternator, battery and main bus switches were on, the rest of the checklist proceeded on course in a familiar way. The fuel-selector valve still allows for a left-right-off position, but the valve lever itself felt a little different in my hand; you have to lift out on a knob to slide it into the off position—a good safety feature when switching tanks is the norm. Frankly, we won’t have to use the selector quite as often, given the lower fuel burn as compared to traditionally powered Archers. Still, we could set a time-based reminder in the G1000 NXi in the panel to keep us on track.

Continental CD-155
The Continental CD-155 is a four-cylinder, inline ­diesel-cycle engine, with dual overhead cams and four valves per cylinder with direct fuel injection. It’s turbocharged and liquid-cooled, with a reduction gear (­­­1-to-1.69 ratio) bringing the engine’s higher rpm down to an ­appropriate, subsonic speed for the prop. Courtesy Piper Aircraft

Operational Elements

Taxiing out on a busy day at Vero Beach, Florida, generally takes patience closely followed by decisive action. Jones manned the mic while I lined us up amidst the trainers from various schools taking advantage of the gorgeous spring day, still a couple weeks ahead of what would become a massive slowdown in flight training. None of us knew that was imminent, but I would love to be back in that conga line, regardless of how many gallons I burned waiting my turn for takeoff—which were not many in the DX.

We had a breezy day in Vero, but the DX handles the crosswind takeoff without much fuss. Jones had me keep full power in until we reached about 1,000 feet, and then I brought the single-lever fadec smoothly back to 75 percent power. Our climb rate met expectations on the just-warmer-than-average day; we were at ISA 4 degrees Celsius at our maneuvering altitude of 4,500 feet msl. After leveling off, we made a few runs in a racetrack to check the airplane’s speed and fuel flow.

Cruising at more than 75 percent power (about 2,030 rpm) is not recommended—and that’s good advice for long engine life whether it’s running on 100LL or jet-A. You’d get a few more knots of speed from cruising at what the POH calls the “percent load” of 90 or 100, but the fuel burn shoots up to just under 9 gph, and you lose the key advantage of the engine-airframe combination—its endurance—without much payoff and increased stress on the engine itself.

With our main goal being to try out the engine’s performance and operational differences, we didn’t spend a lot of time on airwork; the wing is the same as on the Lycoming-powered Archer TX, as is the aircraft’s max gross weight. I checked on those handling characteristics by pulling back the power lever for slow flight and engaging the manual flaps using the familiar lever between the seats. We gently mushed around the sky a bit as I turned and then went into a power-off stall, at roughly the book speed of 45 knots. Anyone transitioning from another PA-28-181 of pretty much any vintage since the mid-’80s will feel right at home. The airplane really has good low-speed habits, with no surprises.

The odor of the jet fuel is one difference, though, to become accustomed to, but I figure that’s because we’re used to avgas, which is another acquired taste. The whiff—like a passerby’s transient drift of cologne—came to me at points throughout the flight, but my registration of it faded away as we flew.

Piper Aircraft factory
The ­Piper Aircraft factory in Vero Beach combines ­historic ­hangars with modern production. Courtesy Piper Aircraft

With a VFR descent back through the lifting condensation level—the happy little layer of fair-weather cumulus marking the coast—we made our way back into the fray at Vero. Other than the usual monitoring of engine gauges on the G1000 NXi, the descent, approach and landing speeds and the configuration targets were roughly the same as in the TX.

All of the functionality within the integrated flight deck is available to the pilot, whether the Archer DX is used for primary or instrument training—or privately owned as an efficient, friendly personal airplane. The standard avionics package includes Garmin’s SafeTaxi and FliteCharts, for situational awareness on the ground and in flight. The DX also comes with an Aspen EFD1000 standby flight instrument, which has integrated within the single unit a 3.5-inch diagonal primary flight display showing attitude, altitude and airspeed and a 3.5-inch heading indicator with navigation-display functionality.

You can add a slew of options, with some skewed toward training or international ops, such as the BendixKing ADF and DME. Most add either connectivity (GDL 59 Wi-Fi Datalink or Flight Stream 510 with Connext) or situational awareness tools such as weather, traffic and flight recording (GDL 69A with SiriusXM radio and weather, GTS 800 traffic advisory system, or the Appareo Vision 1000 flight-monitoring system).

If I were fitting out the DX for myself—a fun exercise, to be sure—I would opt for the GFC 700 autopilot and exchange the standard ADS-B Out-only GTX 335R transponder for the GTX 345R that includes ADS-B In. I’d also spring for the satellite radio. Flying cross-country with tunes is a luxury that’s hard to walk back from—though I could always plug in my iPhone to the standard twin USB ports, I suppose.

Piper ­Archer DX
The ­primary differences between the Piper ­Archer DX and its brethren pertain to the fuel and engine differences, such as the fuel ports for jet-A, streamlined intakes, and a sleek 3-blade prop behind the spinner. Stephen Yeates

Factory Evolutions

An original part of the Vero Beach factory built in the 1960s remains, and the plant has witnessed a lot of change over the course of those decades. You can see that building when you’re standing on Piper’s ramp near where they make customer deliveries. A couple were in process during our visit, for schools such as Middle Georgia State University in Macon, Georgia, and CTI Professional Flight Training in Memphis, Tennessee.

Inside the factory, only a handful of tooling from the first run of Cherokees remains; their brethren have been replaced incrementally with modern machines as Piper makes continuing investment in its production lines. Still, an inventory of parts, forms and tooling lies ready, stacked up in a library of towering shelves in case a piece needs to be called out of storage to craft a legacy Piper part.

I walked through the plant with Jackie Carlon, senior director of marketing, who gave me a detailed tour and history. Carlon has been on board with the company since 2007, watching it navigate through the Great Recession of 2008, as well as the ramp-up of university flight departments and training organizations around the world in response to the determined rise of airline travel and subsequent pilot shortage. Though that expansion—predicted by Boeing’s Commercial Market Outlook of 2019 to continue through the next 20 years—is on hold for the moment because of the novel coronavirus outbreak this past spring, Piper’s manufacturing unit can scale up or down to readily support the existing fleet while continuing to build up new models through the pressurized, turboprop-driven M600.

Piper put together the DX in response to customer feedback, including that from international operators who needed a diesel solution as avgas gets more expensive—and sometimes impossible to obtain—in various countries. There’s also an application for the model among high-volume training customers stateside, who could gain real economies from the use of a more efficient engine-airframe combination. As finances tighten across the globe in response to market contraction heading into the second half of 2020, the DX may indeed find a ready home. The model may also resonate with prospective students who want to fly an airplane that’s just a bit “greener,” fitting more readily into the sustainable aviation future, all the while supporting them faithfully through every maneuver.

This story appeared in the June/July 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

The post We Fly: Piper Archer DX appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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How Does an Airplane Glide? https://www.flyingmag.com/technicalities-how-airplanes-glide/ Thu, 27 Aug 2020 15:28:28 +0000 http://137.184.62.55/~flyingma/how-does-an-airplane-glide/ The post How Does an Airplane Glide? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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I was quite young when I first fell in love with gliding. It may have been even before I fell in love with Cecilia Revilla, who sat in front of me in the fourth grade. When I say gliding, I don’t mean flying a sailplane; I was much too young for that. I mean just the fact of something gliding—a butterfly, a model airplane, a folded-up sheet of paper. That a balsa-and-tissue model my father had made would sail out, bobbing on the ripples of the air, circling, swooping or even merely tracing a long, straight, gently descending line from the brow of a hill as if it were rolling on invisible wheels down an invisible road – that was sweet, magical and, as it turned out, life-shaping.

It was a lucky thing for the pioneers of flight that birds existed. Without them, it would not have been apparent that something rigid could fly. Birds flapped their wings to take off and land, so flapping must have seemed somehow essential to their mysterious powers of levitation; yet they could obviously stay up, and even ascend, while holding their wings perfectly motionless. How did they do it?

Five centuries ago, Leonardo da Vinci sketched a hang glider. It was an odd-looking thing, essentially an oval kite, quite a bit longer than it was wide, and lacking—as birds did—a fin or rudder to keep it pointed in the right direction. Strangely, for such an acute observer of nature, Leonardo apparently did not perceive the importance of wingspan for reducing the effort needed to fly. But his glider was still a plausible improvement upon the proverbial barn door.

Da Vinci recognized that it is not necessary to flap in order to fly: A flat surface with a weight suspended from it in the right place would slide forward along the air rather than drop vertically. This was a foundational insight, but another 400 years would pass before Otto Lilienthal built the first practical hang gliders. These were strikingly similar to da Vinci’s batlike ornithopters, which tried harder than his hang glider did to mimic the shape and anatomy of natural wings. Lilienthal successfully flew his gliders 2,000 times before an untimely gust upset one and killed him.

Today, gliding is so commonplace, we do not ask ourselves what’s happening when an airplane glides or, for that matter, when a helicopter does.

Go back to the basic ground-school diagram of the four forces—lift, weight, thrust and drag—that must be in equilibrium. Lift is an arrow pointing upward, and drag is one pointing backward. Gravity—no surprise—points downward. But the glider has no thrust. So why does it go forward?

One way to look at it is to remember that “lift” and “drag” are defined with respect to the airstream. Drag is parallel to the direction of flight; lift is at a right angle to it. So, when the glider is going downhill, its lift arrow is tilted a little bit forward and counteracts its drag.

That, at least, is the official explanation. A skeptical person will object that the definition of lift as a force acting at a right angle to the airstream is arbitrary. It’s just a verbal convenience. Why shouldn’t lift be defined as a vertical force, like gravity, or one acting at a right angle to the chord line? For that matter, why should we think of it as a single arrow at all? Physical reality holds no lift arrows. There is only pressure and friction on the surface of the wing—also on the rest of the aircraft, but for the purposes of thinking about gliding, it’s enough to consider only the wing. These forces can be represented as one arrow or two arrows, or a whole slew of arrows bristling from the airplane, porcupine fashion.

Read More from Peter Garrison: Technicalities

If we forget the arrows and consider only the pressures, we discover that high-velocity air flowing around the leading edge of the wing creates low pressure there, pulling it forward. At any sufficiently downward-inclined flight-path angle, there is some angle of attack at which the forward pressures acting on the wing and the backward ones on the rest of the airframe are in equilibrium, and the airplane does not speed up or slow down. Furthermore, its rate of descent at any speed is such that the potential energy it gives up by losing height is precisely equal to the energy needed to overcome its drag.

Wait, isn’t this perpetual motion—and illegal? No. The wing has to be descending for this to happen, and it cannot descend indefinitely. Eventually, it will reach the ground.

The case of a gliding helicopter is somewhat more perplexing. Think of a fan. When a fan is driven by a motor, air enters the back and accelerates out the front. But if you blow air at the fan from the front, it spins in the opposite direction. The rotor of a helicopter is analogous to a fan, but obviously, it does not stop and begin turning in the opposite direction if the engine quits and the helicopter starts to descend. It continues turning in the same direction, and at the same speed, as before.

The rotor blades glide just as an airplane does. It would be more precise, however, to say that only part of each blade glides because only part of each blade has the right combination of speed and angle of attack to achieve the proper balance between thrust and drag. The outermost portion of a rotor blade is moving too fast, and its angle of attack—the resultant of its circumferential velocity and the helicopter’s rate of descent—is too small; the sum of its forces is drag. The innermost portion is moving too slow; its angle of attack is too large, and it is stalled. Again, it exerts drag.

The middle portion of the blade is the sweet spot, generating enough excess thrust to keep the rotor spinning against the drags of the tip and the root. Unlike an airplane, a helicopter can even glide vertically because the blades do not see a vertical descent as truly vertical. For example, consider a hypothetical helicopter with a 30-foot rotor turning at 400 rpm. The circumferential speed of a blade at the midspan point is 315 feet per second. If the helicopter is descending vertically at 1,800 fpm, the angle of attack at midspan is about 6 degrees, which is a typical angle of attack for a gliding airplane. Adding, say, 50 knots of forward speed requires cyclic adjustment—that is, the pitch angle of the advancing blade, relative to the rotor disk, needs to be reduced and that of the retreating blade increased—but the average angle of attack remains around the same 6 degrees.

Gliding is the visible manifestation of invisible forces, the solution of a puzzle in which speed, rate of descent and angle of attack are the clues. The riddle would be maddening, but nature is kind: She gives us birds. And even a folded paper airplane, tossed from a third-floor window, instantly solves the equations of flight and knows, without instruction, how to glide.

This story appeared in the June/July 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

The post How Does an Airplane Glide? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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Flying During Coronavirus: Threat-And-Error Management From An Airline Pilot https://www.flyingmag.com/jumpseat-threat-and-error-management/ Tue, 25 Aug 2020 15:57:59 +0000 http://137.184.62.55/~flyingma/flying-during-coronavirus-threat-and-error-management-from-an-airline-pilot/ The post Flying During Coronavirus: Threat-And-Error Management From An Airline Pilot appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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One of the most common questions asked of me as an airline pilot—and now as a former one—is, “Did you ever have any really close calls?” My coy response is usually, “The espresso maker on the Triple Seven quit just as we reached our North Atlantic oceanic entry point after departing from London.”

The inquiries emanate from a respectful and innocent perception that my “always” glamorous career was mostly routine but sometimes fraught with the perils of flying a potentially flawed monster jet airliner through the stratosphere. The question really involves threat-and-error management, a term that most of us had never really defined until the airlines and the FAA directed that the concept be included in our training.

For the most part, my colleagues and I thought we were doing the job all along, ensuring the safety of our passengers and crew by simply upholding recurrent training criteria and adhering to standard operating procedures. So, when we were introduced to a color-coded concentric circle that offered a methodology to visualize the intrusion of threats and errors—with green being normal, yellow being a potential problem and red being a serious threat—we skeptically accepted the new model as a tool to better assist in managing a safe flight.

Though I would not characterize the unceremonious spool down of the right engine on our Boeing 767 while en route from New York’s LaGuardia to O’Hare in Chicago as a “close call,” it was certainly an illustration of TEM. The event occurred around the time I was contemplating the eye-watering amount of sodium in the cheese omelet that made an appearance as my crew meal. I was halfway through breakfast when Capt. Jack and I were rudely interrupted by caution lights on the engine-indicating and crew-alerting system’s screen. My immediate reaction was to rapidly toss the breakfast tray behind me onto the jumpseat. Jack did the same, albeit while depositing some hot coffee into his flight bag. We were entering the yellow zone.

With a hint of annoyance in his tone, Jack announced, “Crap, we lost the right generator.”

I glanced at the overhead caution lights that were illuminated and then studied the EICAS screen for a brief moment. “Uh…actually, Jack, we lost the right engine,” I said almost sheepishly, watching the rpm needles spin counterclockwise.

“S—t! You’re right.”

Hesitating for a second, I waited for Jack’s next command, but he seemed busy assimilating the reality of the situation, so I simply said, “Checklist, please,” which was correct protocol because it was my leg.

Other than the interruption from a flight attendant who called us via the intercom within seconds of the engine failure, announcing a life-threatening loss of galley power, the transition back toward the green zone was progressing as we neared completion of the emergency checklist.

The blue airport circle depicting Detroit (KDTW) appeared on our moving-map displays. It offered us an alternative to continuing the flight. But, no, Jack wanted to complete the mission into O’Hare (KORD). His reasoning was that we didn’t have that much farther to fly. Back into the yellow zone.

Read More from Les Abend: Jumpseat

As I adjusted my rudder-pedal pressure to the new normal of flying on one General Electric engine, Jack informed ATC that we required a slow descent. Inevitably, Flight Level 350 would be unsustainable. Though he articulated the engine failure, Jack never declared an emergency. Hardly a seasoned veteran of the airline at 29 years old and three years’ worth of seniority, I didn’t assert myself in suggesting an emergency declaration would be a wise decision. We moved further into the yellow.

Our transition to O’Hare Tracon provided me an opportunity to at least persuade Jack that we should request that the emergency equipment stand by. He agreed. We moved toward the green.

While I focused on the task of maneuvering a wounded airplane to begin the approach, Jack indicated he wouldn’t be informing the passengers via a PA system that their airplane was operating on only one engine so as not to alarm them. I didn’t object. He would save the announcement for me to accomplish once we were safely on terra firma and the flashing red lights chasing us down the runway were blatantly visible to everybody on board. We remained in the yellow.

While maintaining a heading to intercept the final approach course, I offered my captain control of the airplane. After all, he would be responsible for the outcome regardless. Jack accepted. Depending upon one’s perspective, we moved either closer to the green or further into the yellow. (You can munch on that for a moment.) Except for the sea of suits and ties with furrowed brows that greeted us on the jet bridge, the story had a happy ending. We never entered the red.

Transitioning to present day, it never occurred to me that a 20-minute flight would have the serious consequences of revisiting the TEM model. My friend Daryl Hickman, Mexican-food aficionado and founder of the aviation charity KidsFlyCubs.org, had been suggesting lunch at a restaurant within a block’s walk from municipal grass strip in Pierson, Florida. Notably, Pierson claims to be the fern capital of the world. Because of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 social distancing guidelines, we would operate separate airplanes. Daryl would fly his Legend Cub, and I would fly my Piper Arrow.

My first threat was the unfamiliar 2,600-foot grass strip. I flew a complete circuit around the pattern in order to appropriately assess the environment. Other than some tall trees at the approach end of the runway, and a no-excuses calm wind, the challenges seemed minimal. I was mostly in the green.

While turning onto the downwind leg, and smiling at the pure joy of landing on a turf runway absent of touchdown or centerline markings, I recalled Daryl briefing me that the primary airport traffic were the gopher turtles—and they don’t announce their position. One of the larger residents had strutted his bad self onto the touchdown zone precisely on the centerline at the time I chose to begin my flare. I was in the yellow.

An unpleasant outcome for all concerned was possible, but a go-around seemed an overreaction. Instead, I altered my course away from the turtle with a gentle drift to the right. I couldn’t help but glance at the creature as the left wing passed over him after touchdown. The turtle was unimpressed. Defiant, he continued his painfully slow march across the runway. I was back in the green.

After our walk—6 feet apart—to the restaurant and back, we dined with the best view in the house, underneath the wing of Daryl’s Legend Cub. The serenity was a stark contrast to the health crisis crippling the world. My inability to keep the hot sauce from dripping out of the burrito put me back in the yellow, but my shorts apparently took a trip to the red zone.

The gopher turtle reemerged for my departure out of pure spite but remained away from the centerline. I’m certain his raised head was acknowledgment of my superior TEM skills.

This story appeared in the June/July 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

The post Flying During Coronavirus: Threat-And-Error Management From An Airline Pilot appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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Pathways to the Airways https://www.flyingmag.com/pathways-to-the-airways/ Thu, 20 Aug 2020 14:56:45 +0000 http://137.184.62.55/~flyingma/pathways-to-the-airways/ The post Pathways to the Airways appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

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The dream of achieving a pilot certificate is one that some people think is impossible, particularly if the cost of flight instruction feels like a challenging barrier. While many pilots save up or take out loans to pay their way, there are other roads to the ultimate destination that not only lower the cost—and in some cases foot the entire bill—but also include the support and mentorship that greatly increase the chances of success. Here are some alternatives to help you on the road to the airways. While most of these paths are limited to youth still in school, there are options for adults too.

Young Eagles

With the exception of those who were fortunate enough to grow up with a family member who is a pilot, many aviation enthusiasts found or reaffirmed their passion for aviation through a flight with the Young Eagles, a program conceived by the Experimental Aircraft Association. Since the program started in 1992, more than 2.2 million kids have experienced the magic of observing life on Earth from above in a private airplane, flown by one of about 40,000 volunteer pilots.

There is no cost for that first flight, but you have to be between 8 and 17 years old to qualify. A parent simply needs to connect with a Young Eagles coordinator, who will schedule a flight with a qualified pilot. You can also search for scheduled Young Eagles events in your area.

After the introductory flight, young aviators can continue their flight education and training through the Young Eagles Flight Plan program. The program provides a free EAA Student Membership, which includes access to Sporty’s Learn To Fly online ground-school training materials, a voucher to cover the cost for the first flight lesson, access to multiple flight scholarships and more. You must be at least 13 years old for the first official lesson through the program.

Whether young or old, you can apply for the EAA’s many flight training scholarships, which offer as much as $10,000 toward a private, sport or recreational pilot certificate, as well as funding toward aviation-related postsecondary education.

Going through the Young Eagles program is also a great way to become a competitive applicant for the Civil Air Patrol’s Cadet Wings program.

Young Eagles
After the introductory flight, young aviators can continue their flight education and ­training through the Young Eagles Flight Plan program. EAA

Civil Air Patrol

Formed in 1941 to assemble civilian pilots willing to assist the military during World War II, the CAP is an auxiliary of the United States Air Force. Today, the CAP has three main missions: emergency services, aerospace education and cadet programs. As a CAP cadet, you could potentially earn your private pilot certificate at no cost.

The CAP offers various scholarships toward academic programs and flight training. It also offers the Youth Aviation Initiative. The YAI is broken into three segments: the Take-Off Program – TOP Cadet (a weeklong powered- and glider-flight academy), Lift Program (a weeklong career exploration initiative) and Cadet Wings, which provides funded training for the private pilot certificate in a powered airplane, glider or balloon. Not only is the funding for the certificate covered, the structured program helps candidates stay on track, which increases the chances of success.

Candidates must complete their certificate within six months of starting the Cadet Wings program. “It gives aviation-crazy cadets who have the drive and discipline the chance to get their license,” says Emma Herrington, who became the first CAP cadet to earn her PPC through the Cadet Wings program in early 2019. “Without the help of Cadet Wings, I would have been unable to afford my flight training.”

Acceptance into the Cadet Wings program is competitive, and cadets must earn their way to the cockpit by developing knowledge related to leadership, fitness, character, aerospace and core values of the CAP through several activities, courses and tests. Cadets are expected to wear a uniform and attend regular squadron meetings. Along the way, cadets are encouraged and motivated through achievement awards, which are granted after completing a list of tasks that fulfill each one of four phases.

Cadets who have completed phase two of the Cadet Wings program—the leadership phase—earn the Mitchell Award, which gives cadets a greater chance of being accepted into one of the pilot programs in the US Air Force. In fact, the CAP says 10 percent of the cadets in the US Air Force Academy came from its programs. If your ultimate goal is to be a fighter pilot, the CAP is a great place to start.

Young Eagles
At most airports around the country, aspiring young aviators can get their first flight experience from volunteer pilots, young and old, who participate in the EAA’s Young Eagles program. EAA

Military

If you are one of many young men and women who think military aircraft are the coolest, you’re in luck. Like the airlines, the military has been begging for pilot candidates for the past few years (though the novel coronavirus has put the brakes on pilot hiring in the near-term).

Taking the military route to becoming a pilot won’t require a financial commitment but rather a commitment in time—generally about 10 years, not including the time in school. There are several military-pilot service opportunities: Navy, Air Force, Army, National Guard, Coast Guard and Border Patrol.

One way to get to a military aircraft seat is through one of the service academies. These four-year universities, which are limited to people between the ages of 17 and 23, offer elective aviation classes that include flight training. After graduation, you can apply for Specialized Undergraduate Pilot Training. The SUPT flight training program is rigorous, to say the least. “You go from first flight to first solo in under 10 flights,” says Matt Beaubien, a U-2 pilot at the Beale Air Force Base in California, of his experience at the US Air Force UPT. “Then you learn instruments and formation flying. It all happens in a matter of months.”

Another route to a military aircraft seat is through the Reserve Officer Training Corps. ROTC programs vary and are offered through 1,700 colleges and universities around the country. The ROTC scholarships at the University of North Dakota, for example, cover tuition, room and board, books and supplies, and flight training fees, with no commitment to sign with the military. However, many of the students do commit to the service once they graduate.

USAF graduation
For the price of a lengthy time commitment, the US military will cover all of your flight training and make you a top notch pilot. Courtesy USAF

Scholarships

Whether you’re younger or older, there are a slew of scholarships available to pay for part of or, in some cases, all of the cost of initial and advanced flight training. Here are just a few examples of organizations that, like the EAA, offer multiple scholarships.

AOPA

This past year, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association handed out 123 scholarships totaling more than $1 million toward primary and advanced flight training. The bulk of the scholarships, 80 to be exact, went to high school students who each received $10,000 toward a recreational, sport or private pilot certificate. Flight training scholarships of $10,000 were also awarded to 20 teachers who used AOPA’s High School Aviation STEM Curriculum.

Aspiring pilots who are not high school students or teachers are eligible for AOPA’s general scholarships for primary flight training, ranging from $2,500 to $7,500, and advanced ratings—such as an instrument rating or commercial, CFI, CFII or MEI certificate—with awards ranging from $3,000 to $10,000.

Minority Organizations

Women still represent only a small fraction of the pilot population. As a result, several associations exist that focus on helping women enter aviation fields. Two of the most prodigious women-pilot organizations are Women in Aviation International and the Ninety-Nines. While the mentorship and millions of dollars’ worth of scholarships offered through these groups are targeted toward women, men are not excluded.

I personally benefited greatly from scholarships granted by both the WAI and the Ninety-Nines. A WAI scholarship sponsored by AOPA paid my way to attend the Women in Aviation conference in 2000, right after I started my initial flight training. The experience was invaluable because I was able to network with professional pilots and learn about other jobs in the industry. I also received a financial scholarship from the San Fernando Valley Chapter of the Ninety-Nines that helped pay for my initial training. Most chapters—there are 155 of them—offer scholarships for local members, and the national organization grants high-valued scholarships toward initial and advanced pilot certificates, jet type ratings, college degrees, technical training and emergency-maneuvers flight training.

The Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals, the Latino Pilots Association and the National Gay Pilots Association are other minority groups that offer scholarships that might help on your quest.

Gopher Flying Club
There are seemingly endless numbers of associations, organizations and clubs that offer scholarships for people from all backgrounds, helping enthusiasts and career aviators alike achieve their goals. In addition to funding, these groups offer invaluable mentorship. Chris Gregg

Flying Clubs

Flying clubs are groups of pilots who gain access to airplanes through a membership fee. Members can generally access their airplanes at a lower hourly cost than conventional flight school rentals. Many flying-club members and private owners are often looking for an excuse to fly. If you’re in pursuit of your first flight experience but don’t have the means to pay for it, simply head down to your local airport and transform yourself into an “airport bum.” You are almost guaranteed to find someone who is willing to take you up. If that person is a member of a flying club, you could have a foot in the door.

Chris Gregg, a private pilot who is currently working on his instrument rating while building time toward his commercial certificate, is a member at the Gopher Flying Club at the Crystal Airport in Minneapolis. Gregg completed his private certificate at a local flight school. Currently, the school is charging $144 per hour for its Piper Cherokee fleet. The cost is charged by the hour on the Hobbs meter, so as soon as the airplane cranks up, the bill starts accruing.

The Gopher Flying Club cost, on the other hand, is around $90 per hour for a Cessna 172, according to Gregg. Adding to the savings, the tachometer (which is based on engine rpm rather than the time the propeller is spinning) is used to charge for flight time. Furthermore, the instructor cost ranges from $50 to $65 per hour, as opposed to $70 to $85 at the local flight school. There is an initiation fee of $300 and $60 in monthly dues, so you really only have to fly an hour or two a month to make the club membership worthwhile.

There are, however, some potential drawbacks with flying clubs. Gregg has had some problems accessing airplanes because of maintenance. While flight schools often have a mechanic on-site or agreements with local mechanics to get the work done quickly, maintenance for a flying club can be more unreliable. Generally, flying clubs offer access to fewer airplanes, making maintenance cancellations more likely than at a traditional flight school. Likewise, flight-instructor availability is generally more reliable at a traditional flight school.

The quality of flying clubs varies widely, so whether they can provide a viable alternative for you really depends on where you live. AOPA has an extensive, countrywide searchable database that includes 1,431 clubs (some of which are in the formative stages). They are worth exploring.

As you can see, there are many pathways to the air that won’t require a large financial commitment. You might find many more with thorough research. While some of these suggestions require a significant commitment in time, others only make you pay with the time it takes to fill out an application. A little effort can go a long way toward achieving your dream.

This story appeared in the June/July 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

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