Also by Richard L. Collins

The Next Hour

Flying Safely

Flying IFR

Tips to Fly By

Thunderstorms and Airplanes

Instrument Flying Refresher (with Patrick Bradley)

Flight Level Flying

Air Crashes

The Perfect Flight

Pilot Upgrade (with Patrick Bradley)

Mastering the Systems

Flying the Weather Map, Second Edition

Logbooks - Life In Aviation

by Richard L. Collins

Sporty’s Pilot Shop

Clermont County/Sporty’s Airport

2001 Sportys Drive

Batavia, Ohio 45103-9747

sportys.com

Copyright ©2016 by Richard L. Collins

All rights reserved. This book, or any portions thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher.

Published 2016 by Sporty’s Pilot Shop

Printed in United States of America

ISBN 978-0-9830729-4-2

Cover design and layout by Blaire Price

Cover photo courtesy of Cessna Aircraft Company

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION

10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

Table of Contents

Preface

The Perfect Copilot of Many Years

Part One:

Adventures

Ten-Hut: Military Flying Adventures

Those Photo Missions – Smile!

Those Pilot Reports – Of the Magazine Variety

A Long and Wonderful Flight, With Beginning Turbulence…

Concorde Adventures

Check Rides I Have Known and Loved

A DC-3 Dream: Fleeting as it Was

Part Two:

Airplanes

Are Slow Airplanes Practical Transportation?

The Dream v. The Reality: It’s a Tough World

What’s In a Name?

A Dream of the 1970s: The Bede 5

Retractable Singles: The Good, the Fad and the Ugly

Part Three:

Safety

Personal or Business: Is One Riskier Than the Other?

The IFR Conundrum: Is it as it Appears?

Safety Crisis: What’s Going On?

Crashes: Then and Now

Part Four:

Technique

11 Keys to Safer Instrument Flights

The Weight – and the Balance

Technique Geek: Tailwind Landings

5 Key Flying Lessons – Some Things That Had to be Learned the Hard Way

Is Hard IFR a Myth? 5 Things to Keep it From Being that Way

Part Five:

Weather

Wind Shear: A Danger Vanquished, or, One Waiting in the Wings?

Weather Geek: Rules to Fly By

Ice: Gotcha…In a Heartbeat

Ice: Gotcha…Where is the Ice?

Part Six:

Flightstyles

A Solo or a New Beginning

Flying Clubs, Then and Now - Different?

The Ultimate Responsibility: Thoughts on Family Flying

The Great Debate: Too Old to Fly?

The Great Debate: Boy v. Girl Pilots

Nose or Tail? Wheel That Is

Personal Air Transportation in the Good Old Days

Preface

I have been involved in the publishing and aviation businesses since I was a teenager.

In 1949, I became the editor and publisher of our high school newspaper. One of the prerogatives of that lofty job was to sit atop the press (I think it was called a rotary press) and hand feed the sheets of newsprint on which our newspaper was printed. I’ll always remember the industrial smell of the hot lead used in the linotype (hot type) machine, the ink and the newsprint.

I started flying a couple of years after that and aviation was about as basic as the newspaper business. Most airplanes at our airport were hand propped because they had no electrical system. Fuel (80 octane) was 25‐cents a gallon and a J‐3 Cub rented for $7.50 solo or $9.50 dual. Cubs were plentiful and readily available for about $750.

This book is made up of posts from Air Facts Journal, posts that covered a lot of things that happened in aviation as I made my way in the aviation business and reflected on the changing scene. I was in the publishing business the whole time, too, and it changed as much or more than aviation, but that is not the subject here.

I was certainly involved in the heyday of both the private aviation and publishing business. The blush is off those roses now but I am confident there will be heydays aplenty in both areas in the future. I am also confident that neither business will leap back in its previous form. Everything will be new and different.

So, why a print book in this day of e‐books? I did the same thing in the 1960s, publishing two books that were collections of articles I did in the old AIR FACTS. They were reasonably popular so I thought I would revisit the good old days with this book.

I wrote 12 previous print books and now three anthologies of my writing. Previous efforts have mostly circled around one aviation‐related subject. This one is all over the lot, covering everything from history to current aviation events.

Rather than a dedication, the book starts with a tribute to my late wife, Ann Slocomb Collins, who was by my side, on the ground and in the air, for 55 years.

This book ends with something from 1929 and my father’s first experiences with private air transportation. Leighton Collins started out using biplanes for business travel and a bit later flew his two‐place, 90 horsepower St. Louis Cardinal from his Arkansas home to both coasts. The Great Depression was ravaging the country and he was looking for work. By 1938 he was tired of the work he had found so he started AIR FACTS magazine to, among other things, generate interest in private air transportation. The rest, as they say, is history. I hope you enjoy flying with us.

Richard L. Collins

Ijamsville, Maryland

The Perfect Copilot of Many Years

I took Ann for her first ever airplane ride on May 30, 1956, in my Piper Pacer. I had been flying for five years then. A couple of years later we got married and she had really signed on. I took her for her final airplane ride on August 19, 2007. By that time she was pretty much an invalid and mounting and dismounting my P210 was just too much of a struggle. By then, I had been flying for 56 years.

We flew together all over the country. In the early years our kids, Charlotte, Sarah and Richard were always with us. I think I remember that all three flew with us before they were a month old. We flew to weddings and funerals and family events and my logbook is a diary of sorts because we inevitably flew when there was a life happening and I made note of what it was.

We were truly a flying family, taking trips on our own and with other flying families like the Bedells. Rowland and Julie have four kids, Catherine, Bill, Rob and Pete, and we looked like a bunch of Okies when we showed up in two airplanes carrying four adults and seven kids and wanted to borrow the airport car. Rowland and I had served together in the Cub Scouts in World War Two and were lifelong friends until he died too young, in 1990. You probably know Pete Bedell from his work in AOPA PILOT.

Tireless in support of my efforts, Ann typed manuscripts for books and articles, did a perfect job of entertaining and made thousands of bologna sandwiches for meal service to FLYING staffers as we flew around the country. Bryan Comstock, who worked at FLYING for a while, once told her that even a bologna sandwich tasted good at eighteen thousand feet.

Most of all, though, Ann was my everything. I just played that song on my iPod and the memories flooded my mind as I listened. In the 55 wonderful years that we were married she was perfect. Well, nearly, and more so than I.

I thought back to a trip in our Pacer, when we were moving to New York from Arkansas and were going to visit in Alabama along the way. Mother Nature was on a rare widespread July rampage over our proposed Little Rock to Dothan route. There were thunderstorms all over the place.

At one point, I decided we needed gas. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, looked like the best place and the specialist at the FAA station there said it was pretty good at the airport and looked pretty good in the direction from which we would be coming. It didn’t look so good from the other direction.

A Piper Pacer isn’t the best airplane in the world for serious weather challenges and ours was being tossed around by the turbulence. There was a lot of lightning and it was raining. In the thick of battle, Ann asked “Are you afraid?” I told her I wasn’t and she said, “Well I won’t be afraid either.”

One of the last things she said to me while squeezing my hand before she died on March 26 was “I am not afraid.” We flew through every imaginable kind of weather over the years and after all those thousands of hours, I guess she had reached the point where she wasn’t afraid of anything.

After a turbulent trip I would always tell her I was sorry about the bad ride. Her reply was always “It wasn’t that bad.” She never complained about slow trips or changed plans. And in probably at least 5,000 hours of flying together, only twice did she request that I land, now. I took her seriously both times and made unscheduled stops at Gainesville, Florida and Morgantown, West Virginia. Both times were but 30 or 40 minutes from our destination but I knew she needed to land.

I could regale you with many more tales of her determination to be a good copilot and courageous flying companion but I will stop there.

Ann, I loved you and always will, more than anything else in the world.

Ann Slocomb Collins, Gone West on 3/26/2013, the saddest day of my life.

Part One:

Adventures

Ten-Hut: Military

Flying Adventures

Jets small and big, aircraft carriers and more...

For most people, jet airplanes are something taken for granted. Tickets to ride have been available for Boeing jets since 10/26/1958 and rare is the person who has not flown in a jet.

Jets were a great mystery to those of us who were around in the days right after World War Two. We knew they existed and that the Germans had actually deployed the ME-262 twin-jet fighter in the last phase of the war. Pictures had been published of the Bell P-59, also a twin-jet, which was first in the U. S. military inventory. That airplane was quickly made obsolete by the Lockheed P-80 that became our first real jet fighter and scored the first victory while flying over Korea. The venerable T-33 trainer was soon (in August, 1947) developed from the P-80. It was wildly successful with 5,691 built before production ended in August, 1959.

Which brings me to an Arkansas Air Guard T-33, ANG 19544, early on the morning of January 1, 1956. It waited on the Guard ramp at Adams Field in Little Rock.

Norman McCreary was a rated pilot, full-time Air Force, and was assigned to the ANG as a liaison officer. We had become great buddies, having met at Central Flying Service where I had worked as a pilot. Norman wanted to moonlight as a charter pilot and I had checked him out in a Bonanza.

When I got drafted into the Army and was saying goodbyes, Norman told me to look at the bright side. When I came home on leave, he could take me flying in the T-33 because of my active military status.

He remembered. We were at a New Year’s Eve party when he suggested an 8:00 a.m. hop the next morning. If you wonder about the January first timing of my first jet flight all I can say is that it sure was nice to be young.

The crew chief, remarkably cheerful, got me all plugged up, strapped in, and briefed on the ejection seat. Then the canopy was closed, the engine started, and we taxied out with Norman explaining things as we went.

I had no idea what to expect. I had talked to Norman and others about jets and I wondered if flying in it could possibly be as ethereal as described.

Acceleration on the takeoff was slow and the initial climb pretty meager. As we flew faster and put more air through that basic turbojet engine, though, things really picked up. Once it had its wind the T-33 became downright sprightly. And yes, it was as ethereal as described. To be flying like that without noise and vibration was something a piston pilot could only dream about.

We did some rolls and a loop and then Norman said we’d take the low-level scenic route back to Adams Field. That would be down the Arkansas River valley, from the northwest, with low hills on each side.

I don’t think I have ever flown in an airplane with a higher redline airspeed than a T-33. Five hundred and five is a whole bunch of knots and we were indicating about four hundred of those as we followed the river home. It was a visual sensation of speed that I hadn’t seen before, or since for that matter. I have flown at over 1,100 knots but that was up high where there is no visual sensation of speed.

A week later, as I tried to go to sleep in a pup tent during a snowstorm at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, I reflected that Norman had a better government job than I. Sadly, it didn’t turn out that way. He was killed in the crash of an ANG B-57.

I didn’t fly in a T-33 again until almost 30 years later. This next one belonged to the Ecuadorian Air Force. Sabreliner had rebuilt the airplane and it awaited delivery when I flew it. Nothing had changed. All those years later the airplane flew in its original form and was in use by air forces around the world though it was in the process of being phased out of the U. S. inventory.

A couple of years ago there were still a few T-33s on active duty (in South America), a few are operated as civilian airplanes, and squadrons of them are on static display around the world.

Later, but still before I got into the magazine business, I got a flight in one of the first Cessna T-37s, the original VLJ. That was while I was still in the Army, in 1957, and I got the ride from a friend who was with the T-37 test unit. The Air Force, probably to appease some politician, had loaned the Army three of the first copies of the little jet but they had no intention of letting us lowly ground-pounders have such grand hardware on a permanent basis.

My strongest impression of the T-37 is that it had the true potential to become a jet replacement for the Bonanza. With that in mind, Cessna did preliminary work on a four-place version but nothing came of that.

When I contemplate Cessna’s remarkable success with the Citation, I always reflect that it all started with the T-37 and I flew in one of those early-on.

After I became editor-in-chief of FLYING, in 1977, it became apparent that the military liked exposure in that magazine. It bought ads for recruiting but also liked editorial coverage.

This took me to the Jacksonville Naval Air Station on 12/04/1978. Using a military airport with a civilian airplane is up to the commanding officer of the base. Some say “y’all come,” others say “no way.” Jax NAS was accommodating and said they would take good care of my airplane while I was out for a visit on an aircraft carrier, the USS Independence, which was steaming around off the coast of Florida.

To say that this was anything other than fascinating highadventure would be an understatement. It was the first of three aircraft carrier visits for me and while it was pretty intense and informative, it was also a whole lot of fun and the type experience that you truly savor forever.

That trip to the Independence was choreographed by the Navy’s PR department and involved a moderate amount of red tape, some for using the military field with my airplane and some for me to ride in their airplanes and visit the ship.

A trip to a carrier is made in a carrier onboard delivery (COD) aircraft. In this case it was a Grumman C-1A, a piston twin that was clearly converted from a military role (anti-submarine) to a nine-passenger transport. It weighed roughly the same as a DC-3, was about half the size, had a lot more horsepower (1,525 a side), and wasn’t much faster. To me it was a perfect example of why they called the place at Bethpage “The Grumman Iron Works.”

The Navy gets up early and we met the COD before dawn. The briefing was quick and included word that the helmet was more for the ears than the noggin. The C-1A cabin is about as noisy as they get.

I had made a request to ride in the right front seat through a landing. That was not approved but the Navy did allow me to ride up front through an approach and a go-around that began as the airplane reached the fantail of the carrier.

Before we got our shot at the ship there was a bit of holding. Welcoming guests is not high on the priority list and the operational needs of the aircrews flying carrier qualification missions came first. They did fit us back into the landing pattern quickly after the low pass.

The Navy flies close VFR patterns and on downwind the carrier looked pretty small. As we flew the arc around to a short straightaway on final, it looked a little bigger and when the pilot, Lt (jg) Greg (Sky) King called the ball (in the visual approach slope indicator on the ship) I could readily see how this could work out. Regardless of where you are landing, if the sight picture is good and the speed is right (92 knots in this case) all is well.

After the pass, it was back to my rear-facing seat in the back for the landing, or trap as the Navy calls carrier arrivals. The windows are small but I was looking out to see what I could see, and wham, the view went from ocean to carrier and then abruptly to still as the arresting gear cable stopped the C-1 in a short distance.

There was some manner of a “first” on this trip. We had a female on board who was going for a carrier visit. It was never explained what was happening for the first time, but I do remember that they set aside part of the sick bay to provide her with private quarters including a head.

When carriers are cruising around off the coast, it is usually for the purpose of pilot carrier training and proficiency. Crews can fly out from shore bases, do the requisite number of traps both day and night, and then go home. When I was there they were doing it in F-4 Phantoms, F-14 Tomcats and S-3A Vikings.

In watching the landings it seemed obvious to me that of the three airplanes, the F-4 was the most demanding one. It looked like the pilots flying that airplane were clearly working hardest, especially at night. The F-4 also had the highest minimum wind across the deck requirement, at 19 knots. There is almost always a breeze at sea and the speed of the ship adds to that to generally exceed minimum wind requirements. If there is no natural wind, the forward speed of the powerful carrier can easily provide more than is required.

The F-4 also had the highest approach speed, at an average 146 knots, the wind across the deck was 25, and with 121 knots groundspeed at touchdown the dynamics of the arresting gear stopping the airplane in a few hundred feet was quite impressive. I got to watch some of this from the landing signal officer’s (LSO) station right by the flight deck which happens to be where the action seems the most intense. The tail hook grabs the wire right in front of you. There are four wires (three on newer carriers) and the best deal is to catch one that is in the middle.

Once the airplane is trapped, it is allowed to roll back a bit to take tension off the arresting cable, it taxies out of the way, and the arresting system is reset for the next arrival. There are settings for aircraft weight and speed. The deck can be made ready for the next arrival in as little as 31 or 32 seconds. The normal acceptance rate is one a minute.

At night and in IFR conditions the close approaches give way to four-mile final approaches and reduced acceptance rates just like at airports Night traps are far more demanding and there are a lot more missed wires and go-arounds at night. I don’t think a Navy pilot has ever referred to a night trap as “a piece of cake.” They refer to them in much more colorful terms.

One thing that was being done on the ship rather surprised me. To save time and keep things moving, they put fuel in airplanes with the engine(s) running. When I saw this, I had a flashback to a juvenile delinquent pumping avgas with a cigarette in his mouth.

When the Navy takes you on board as a guest it makes every effort enable your every wish. FLYING design associate (later art director) Randy Steele was with me to take photographs and they supplied two and sometimes three keepers to guide us as well as to keep us out of harm’s way. When Randy was shooting on the flight deck, he always had two keepers. I got the feeling the Navy learned the hard way that photographers sometimes walk backward when concentrating on a shot. It’s a long way from the side down to the sea and quite expensive to retrieve a man overboard.

They also let Randy ride in a helicopter that was orbiting the ship, ready to pluck any unfortunate crew out of the water if that became necessary. He got some really good photographs of the ship from that platform.

We were assigned a stateroom, like officers have. There were a couple of chairs, small desks, some hanging space and really comfortable bunk beds. One thing is stressed: The head is down the hall, and perhaps even on a different level, and you need to know your way there and back because there might not be anyone around to show you the way. Locations on the ship are identified sort of like lat/long coordinates only it is in reference to bow to stern and port to starboard locations as well as to the deck.

We ate with the crew. Having savored Army chow for quite a long while, I can readily say that Navy chow is better, much better. We were still occasionally enjoying C-rations from the 1940s when I was in the Army.

I was looking forward to our departure not because I wanted to leave but because a catapult launch, a cat shot, would be a new experience.

Acceleration was from zero to 112 knots in 300 feet. The seats were rear-facing so the belts needed to be tight. The big piston engines were wound up tight and boom, off we went. It was like an E-ticket ride at Disney. The acceleration was like nothing I had ever felt before as was what happened next. When that rapid acceleration stopped, it felt like the airplane stopped even though it was still accelerating though much more slowly. If you have ridden through a noise abatement departure in a jetliner and experienced the feeling that comes when the power is reduced, the sensation as a cat shot is completed is much the same though multiplied by, say, a hundred times.

As we left what has to be the most active 4.5 acre airport in the world, I hoped they would ask me to come back. The Navy did, about four years later, to the then almost new USS Carl Vinson, a nuclear powered super carrier.

The C-1 was still the COD of choice when I visited the Vinson in late 1982. Those piston engines were the last operated by the Navy.

The departure for the ship was before dawn and because one of the ship’s missions was sea trial work for the then-new F/A-18, there was an executive from an electronics company along to observe his equipment in action. When we gathered before boarding I could tell by his pale color, sweating, and actions that he was nervous. Or maybe even terrified. I hate to see scared people in airplanes.

After takeoff, I could tell that this guy might be about to melt down. I unhooked, moved to his side and shouted (to be heard over the shaking, rattling and rolling of the C-1), “You okay?” He looked at me, pointed out the window, and stammered “fire.” As best I could, I explained that it was just the exhaust flame from the piston engine.

Before I sat back down, I had a word with the crew chief to make sure he was aware that one of his passengers was a bit nervous.

When we got to the ship, the poor guy had been so tense that he had to be helped out of the C-1 and then to a location on the ship where he could calm down.

Later, a test pilot was flying an F/A-18 to determine the minimum end speed for that airplane. That would be the lowest possible cat shot speed that could still result in flying away.

One launch was memorable. I guess they were probing ever slower speeds and on this one the jet settled, nose up, almost to the sea after launch. Then the pilot lit the afterburners, the heat from which created a huge cloud of steam. Then, a moment later, the F/A-18 rose above the steam and flew away.

A lot of pilots were getting their first crack at a carrier. These pilots averaged 300 hours total time with 100 in type. They had trained on simulated carrier landings at an airport, with an outline of the deck painted on the runway. This was the real thing and for the most part it appeared that they were feeling their way but doing a good job.

Oh, but the sun sets every single day and on a carrier the operations keep going as the light fades. The procedures change to an IFR operation and the level of tension increases dramatically. One pilot remarked that “they wouldn’t have to pay me for the daytime flying, but they haven’t yet paid me for even the first night flight.” Not only are the traps more demanding at night, just imagine for a moment being shot into an inky black night and then handed a jet airplane to fly. As Goose said to Maverick, “It’s time to do some of that flying stuff.” Only he didn’t say stuff. It takes a lot of concentration to handle the disorienting sensations of strong acceleration that abruptly stops and of going from an environment with lights to one with no lights.

They know that their flying is a team effort and that it is not easy and without risk. But, as one said, “It sure is fun.”

When it came time to leave, three C-1s came out to take the large group of visiting firemen to shore. The captain wanted the least possible disruption of his training schedule so we weren’t to get a cat shot. The three C-1s were lined up nose-to-tail pointed down the canted deck for simple takeoffs. I was in the first one so we were short the length of two airplanes in available deck length.

In the briefing, the crew chief said that we would be going off the deck well below Vmc and in case of an engine failure the pilot would have no choice but to cut the other engine and ditch. “So,” he said, “if you hear a splash and see a butt disappearing through that hatch at the top of the cabin, it will be mine. Follow it.”

As I contemplated this, I thought back to April 18, 1942, and the unknowns faced by the crews of the 16 B-25s that were about to make takeoff runs on the USS Hornet and go drop some bombs on Tokyo. I could visualize that famous photo of the B-25 climbing steeply off the deck.

That made me feel better as we went off the end of the canted deck and the pilot let the airplane descend into ground (sea) effect to better enable acceleration to a safe speed. As proof that the Navy still had a few good men who could maintain piston engines, the Wright R-1820s faithfully pounded out 1,525 horses each and we were soon serenely cruising toward shore.

I had seen the fellow who was so nervous on the trip out a couple of times on the ship and he appeared calm. He probably wasn’t that way when he got back to shore. He was on the second C-1 to launch and it had an engine failure about ten minutes later and had to limp to shore on one engine. If there is a next time, he’ll probably send someone in his place.

My third carrier trip was a return to the USS Carl Vinson, about 19 years after the first visit. There was no Washington red tape this time. The invitation came in an email from Lieutenant Commander Craig Stapleton who was a classmate of our son at Auburn. After I accepted his kind invitation to come out to the ship, the details were handled by the ship’s public affairs officer. They agreed that an old friend, famous photographer Russell Munson, could come along too and they understood that no specific publicity was planned.

The arrangements consisted of a date and time to show up at NAS North Island (near San Diego) and word that we would be met by Ensign Ben Christen and Chief Chuck Rinesmith of the ship’s shore detachment. They would fit us out with the appropriate equipment for the flight to the ship and then get us on board the COD which was to be a Grumman C-2A twin turboprop, a much larger airplane than the old C-1, by now retired.

The C-1 had some windows; the 28-passenger C-2 was virtually windowless. The seats were rear-facing, too, and the combination resulted in some attention to mal de l’air in the preflight briefing. Boarding was through a ramp at the aft end of the cabin and when all were aboard, it was retracted and we were off.

Just droning along in an airplane with no windows is okay but once we started maneuvering for a trap on the carrier, the sensations became more interesting. I was able to follow along based on sensations and sounds and was pretty sure when we rolled out on a short final.

The deck wasn’t clear, though, so we got a wave off. The sounds and sensations of that were something else and I wasn’t able to follow too well but I did have it straight before our eventual touchdown and anticipated that and the rapid stop.

The visit was great. I stayed up late watching night operations and might as well have stayed up until they finished at one a.m. because our sleeping quarters were not far below the flight deck and every launch, trap, and runout of the arresting gear cables was duly noted from my cozy rack.

This was in the spring of 2001. The Vinson had been in service for 19 years, was preparing for a deployment to the Persian Gulf, and because the nuclear fuel had never been replaced or refreshed or whatever is done to fill ‘er up, the ship was due for a little downtime after that. When you consider the timing, though, it is obvious that didn’t happen on schedule. Gassing up the ship had to wait until some other important business was cared for. The ship took that in stride.

Because I wasn’t gathering material for an article, I had more time to look around and visit.

One pilot I chatted with on the flight deck did not hesitate when he told me he didn’t like FLYING magazine. He said it had too much in it about things most people couldn’t afford. His private flying was obviously pretty basic but then I mused over him hopping into his Tomcat and blasting off an aircraft carrier. As always, I appreciated the critique of our magazine and thanked him for his service.

The most lasting impression from that final carrier trip was of the people. They were dedicated, articulate and hard-working.

I watched a 19-year old sailor steer the ship when I was visiting on the bridge of what must be the most complex and expensive machine and system in the world. I admired the dedication the two enlisted photographers who kept us out of harm’s way when we were on the flight deck during flight operations. The way they all, officers and enlisted, work to carefully manage the operations of the ship and the aircraft is, well, amazing.

A large cruise ship is about the same size as the carrier and carries as many passengers as the carrier has crew. I cherish my carrier trips but have never wanted to go on a cruise. I guess I would rather hang out with young people acting responsibly than older people, well, doing whatever they do on cruise ships.

I was a soldier once, a long time ago, and it makes me proud to see the caliber of the people who serve today. Even though I am far removed, I like to think of them as comrades in arms. They are true patriots and if I were king I’d name a super carrier the USS Patriot to honor all who serve.

Back to the Air Force, that also has no shortage of dedicated professionals.

I had written enough about military operating areas (MOAs) in FLYING to attract the attention of Lieutenant Kurt Koerner, the civil aviation liaison officer at Williams AFB in Arizona. Kurt graduated from the Air Force Academy, was serving as a T-38 instructor pilot at Williams, and also enjoyed using private aviation. He contacted me with the thought that after spending so much time flying around MOAs I might find it interesting to fly around in an MOA, in a supersonic (Mach 1.3) T-38.

It doesn’t take long to accept an invitation like that. I quickly did and 30 years later I can add something to the story that I left out at the time.

Our son, Richard, was between his junior and senior year at Auburn that summer. Some of his buddies were in ROTC programs and he had developed an interest in possible military flying. I asked Kurt if I could bring him along and he said that would be fine, he could probably get him a T-38 hop as well. I had been taking Richard with me on trips since he was old enough to go (about 9) and I had never seen him quite so enthusiastic about an adventure. I didn’t include him in the FLYING coverage because I didn’t want to cause anyone a problem. Thirty years later, everyone involved has surely retired.

The Air Force doesn’t just strap you in and take you for an airplane ride. The preliminaries and preflight procedures are thorough and impressive.

All the emergencies are covered including bird strikes that could incapacitate the pilot (in the front seat) and leave you solo in a T-38. One choice would be to eject using two yellow handles, one on each side of your seat. The other choice would be to land the aircraft. Three ILS approaches in what was then a really good simulator give a clue into what that would be like. After that session they told us that we could land the airplane if it became necessary,

There’s an ejection simulator that gives you a kick in the pants that is estimated to be only a third or less of what the real thing feels like.

There is ground school on high-altitude flight and even a physical exam to make sure you are up for the mission.

A session in the altitude chamber is also included and is always worthwhile, especially for anyone flying turbocharged and/ or pressurized airplanes. The main thing I always got from that is the humongous difference between taking the mask off at 18,000 and at 25,000 feet. The former gives plenty of time to regroup, the latter dims and then extinguishes your lights almost instantly. My altitude chamber experience led me to seldom fly higher than FL190 in my P210 even though it was certified to 23.

Son Richard did all that with me and when finished and on to the next step, getting all g-suited, chuted and helmeted for the ride, the question of him going flying hung quietly in the air.

I would be going off in a four-ship T-38 training flight with two of the airplanes flown by a student under the supervision of an instructor pilot. The proposal was for Richard to fly in the back seat of one of the other T-38s. The rub was that they didn’t allow two members of the same family in a formation flight. Only the commanding officer could make the decision to look the other way and allow this.

Colonel John Jackson had his misgivings but when I pointed out that we had flown there in my Cessna, sitting only a few inches apart, and that surely we wouldn’t be getting closer than that in the T-38s, he relented.

We maneuvered some as a four-ship and then broke off as individuals. The MOA which had always seemed so big when avoiding it, seemed small when inside it in a T-38. Air traffic control monitored the flights and called when we got close to the edge. With four T-38s in formation, indicating almost 500 knots and pulling three Gs in turns and formation maneuvers, the calls came rather frequently.

It is permissible to fly VFR through MOAs and air traffic controllers might offer varying degrees of advice and help to pilots who want to do with this but after this flying I decided that I would just stay out in my airplane. It is definitely not a “see and avoid” environment.

I was flying with Captain Christopher Miller and after we broke the formation he asked me if I wanted to do a loop. He explained that it would be 5Gs for what would seem like a long time and that it took about 10,000 feet to contain the loop. I guess he talked me out of it because I settled for some rolls and steep turns. I did have on the G-suit but it was on a 52-year old body and having felt the squeeze of the suit at 3Gs, I thought that was enough.

We did some slow flight and the T-38 has fine flying qualities. It is extremely responsive and is flown with gentle control pressures. If you get a little slow or start loading the wing too much, an aerodynamic rumble tells you to let up and if you don’t then control is still possible in the resulting stall though the vertical speed is more than 6,000 fpm down.

All good things must end and the low fuel light had just come on as we landed after the hour and 20 minute mission.

The air conditioning in a T-38 was no match for the Arizona sun. The ATIS gave the outside temperature as 108 degrees F. and when Miller opened the canopy after landing the outside air actually felt cool.

It was a neat experience for me. Son Richard flew with Kurt Koerner, who actually made a sale. Richard was so taken that he applied for undergraduate pilot training and was conditionally accepted but later disqualified because of his vision.

After we flew, it was time for lunch and in that they bought the gas, I bought the lunch. Six of us went to McDonald’s and I saw a perfect example of command ability. Keorner was driving and asked everyone what they wanted. Everyone wanted something different and as he pulled to the drive-in kiosk I wondered if he would remember all that. “I want six quarter pounders with cheese, six small fries, and six Cokes.” That’s what you call taking charge.

Within a year I had gotten my son a ride in a supersonic jet and got to take my wife Ann to work with me, in London, roundtrip on Concorde. Tell me I didn’t have the best job in the world.

Before leaving the remarkable T-38 there are some interesting points to ponder.

The T-38 was put onto service by the USAF on March 17, 1961. In 2015 there were still 504 in use by the USAF. It replaced the T-33 as the jet trainer and when you add in the T-37, a primary trainer, there have been only three principle USAF jet trainers in my flying lifetime and I’m over 80 and have been flying since I was a kid. You don’t have to be good at math to see that the T-38 dominated that picture.

Upgrades and structural enhancements have extended the service life of the T-38 to 2029 and while there has been a potential replacement waiting in the wings for years, nobody seems in any rush to get rid of the T-38.

Like the T-33, the T-38 design was also built as a fighter, the F-5.

If the T-38 is the sleekest military airplane, the C-5 might be the unsleekest.

I first met the C-5 at Altus AFB in Oklahoma, in 1984. Major John Scherer had invited me to come look at the operation where they were training C-5 and C-141 pilots (still operating, Altus now trains C-17 and KC-135 crews) and to fly the simulator and take a ride on one of their really great big airplanes.

The simulator was one of the older ones where your ability to fly a simulator is more important than your ability to fly an airplane. I still got a feel for the big airplane, with its nicely balanced and relatively light control forces and the view of the runway from what seemed like the decision height while sitting on the ground. The main consideration of the eye height of the cockpit was in judging speed on the ground. Groundspeed is monitored on the panel while taxiing (20 knots maximum) and on takeoff the airspeed is used. The USAF equivalent of the civilian Vr was Vgo.

As you might imagine, flying away in a C-5 involves a little more than kicking the tires and lighting the fires. When we got to the cockpit of the airplane for our flight, technical folks had been busy for a couple of hours and the C-5 was ready for the pilot part of the checklists. That didn’t take long and we were soon airborne.

In flight, I was quite conscious of being in an extremely large machine that was actually flying. It did not feel much like flight in a light airplane where I always feel like I am part of the airplane.

Scherer did an ILS approach and then a missed approach followed by a VFR pattern. The tower asked for short approach, just as a tower might ask a 172 pilot for the same and as I watched Scherer maneuver the big airplane in the close pattern I could only think that it works the same in big and small airplanes. He arranged it so there was a little time to make sure things were stabilized on final and then he made one of the smoothest landings I have ever felt in any airplane. My thought was that if he can do that with hundreds of thousands of pounds of airplane, why can’t I do it with 4,000 pounds?

Almost 10 years slipped by before I got another call from John Scherer, now a Lieutenant Colonel and longtime veteran of the C-5. He was at Dover AFB in Delaware and invited me to come along for a refueling mission in a C-5.

I had seen airplanes swapping fuel in flight on trips in my P210. This was usually done at close to the altitudes I most often used (high teens) and controllers were always good about calling out such an event so you could have a look. There was no way to watch without wondering how it is done and I was to find out.

The simulator at Dover was much better than the old one at Altus and I got a big kick out flying some ILS and visual approaches. Then I got to a much more humbling simulator, the air-refueling part-task trainer. In this one you get just what is used for refueling, flight and power controls plus a windshield.

I have done a lot of formation flying for the air-to-air photography featured in the pages of FLYING and AOPA PILOT. So I thought I knew at least a little bit about what I would be doing in the refueling simulator. Wrong.

There is a light system on the aft belly of the tanker that tells you to move left or right and up or down. Once you get it just right, the boom operator (“boomer”) in the tanker can fly the tip of the boom into the receptacle which is just aft of the windshield on the C-5.

In 15 minutes of trying I was never able to get the C-5 in the right place. I was to learn why, in the actual airplane, a bit later. It has to do with the interaction between the tanker and the receiving airplane.

The mission was for air-refueling training and currency for four pilots. Scherer and Captain Trent Bigler were instructors and aircraft commanders. Captain Joey Hickox was an aircraft commander and Lieutenant Patrick May was checking out as an aircraft commander.

We would be buying gas from a Pennsylvania Air National Guard KC-135 out of Pittsburgh and would use a refueling track that runs westbound from a starting point just east of Pittsburgh.

Simple math was used for the join-up. The C-5 would be westbound at FL190 and the KC-135 would be flying in the opposite direction at FL200, on a track seven miles south of the C-5. The airplanes could “see” each other electronically and with the C-5 flying at 300 knots and the -135 at 275 a table showed that if the tanker entered a 25-degree bank left turn when 18 miles away it would roll out right on the C-5s track, three miles ahead.

The C-5 could then close to within one mile using radar at which time it had to become a visual operation though once hooked up they could fly through clouds.

The fueling was done at 252 knots and the actual mating started with the C-5 1,000 feet below the tanker and going just slightly faster. The closure rate was gradual and the final 50 feet was given up at a rate of one foot per second. This was timed, as a grade, and if a boomer calls “closure rate” that means the big airplane is getting bigger way too quickly.

Scherer was flying for the first approach and hook-up and when he judged that we were 50 feet away he called for the stop watch to begin. The distance was judged by the fact that the wingspan of the -135 filled the windshield. It did look close from the jump seat.

As we closed, the interaction between the bow wave (yes, there is such a thing) of the C-5 started interacting with the downwash from the KC-135 and the ride started getting bumpy. It was like a light to moderate chop and made this formation flying a lot different than any I had done because for photography we always sought out smooth air and none of the airplanes were big enough to generate a bow wave.

The interaction between the two airplanes actually causes the tanker to transition to a more nose-down attitude. The usual practice is for the autopilot to be used in the tanker but fueling has to be hand flown at regular intervals to maintain proficiency.

Once hooked up, the fuel flows into the regular wing tanks. That fuel is also available for use by the tanker which means he can go short and deliver a lot of fuel or go long and deliver less. This day we took 60,000 pounds. Scherer said the most he had ever taken was 100,000 pounds.

For practice, Scherer asked the tanker pilot to make 30-degree banked turns in each direction during which the relative positions of the airplanes had to remain constant.

We’d back off about 150 feet when it was time to change pilots. Then the next one up would do his thing. All four did some masterful flying and in the whole session the boomer called “closure rate” but once.

I just watched but it was easy to see that this is a most demanding form of flying. It is necessary, too, because with base closures around the world there just aren’t as many places to gas up. At that time, in late ’93, the goal was to have air refueling capability in all airplanes (including Air Force One) and to have all pilots qualified and proficient.

That flight lasted three hours but was so intensely interesting that it seemed much shorter. I left Dover with a heightened appreciation for the crews of both airplanes.

You can guess what comes next. I had seen only half of the air refueling story and wondered what the other half looked like. Nine years later, in 2002, I had a look, with the Ohio Air Guard, in one of their 18 KC-135Rs, out of Rickenbacker International (former AFB) near Columbus, Ohio.

My contact was Lieutenant Colonel Ruben Padro, who called and invited me to fly with them on a mission. My hosts were Padro and the rest of the crew, Major Jeff Greenberg, Tech Sergeant Mike Bursk and Staff Sergeant Josh Hanna. The tanker is usually flown with a crew of three, two pilots and a boom operator but a guest required two boom operators as well as sidearms. I felt flattered that they were packing heat just for, or because of, me.

The number of the airplane we would be flying was 60-0367. The 60 was a reference to the year of birth but actually the airplane rolled out of the Boeing factory on May 16, 1961. If you recall, that was also the year the T-38 got its start so it had to be a banner year for the USAF, which doesn’t have many active pilots who are that old.

The KC-135 was developed along with the Boeing 707 airliner, long since retired in most parts of the world, but there were differences to begin and upgrades and modifications have made the KC-135R an entirely different airplane.

The tanker never flew with the flight engineer who was standard equipment on the 707. It had been retrofitted with a basic EFIS and upgraded avionics so the panel looked pretty modern. The CFM56 engines, basically the same as used on newer 737s, are the biggest difference. The engines, rated at 21,634 pounds of thrust, were hung on this airframe in 1985. The old engines put out 13,750 with water injection, so there is a big difference. With the old, an all-up successful takeoff required all four engines do their best. With the new, they meet engine-out balanced field length requirements much like transports.

Yes, those more powerful engines are a lot larger, and no, there is not much ground clearance but this has not proven to be a problem in the airplane. One look and it goes without saying that the wing-down method of crosswind landing is a no-no in this airplane.

We were going to meet a Boeing E-8C, a spook version of the 707, on a refueling track near the Pulaski (Virginia) Vortac. We’d have 62,000 pounds of fuel on board at takeoff (maximum is 200,000 pounds) and the mission was more for the purpose of practice than the transfer of fuel. The indicated for the day’s work would be 275 knots. This varies, with the F-16 fueled at 315 and the A-10 at from 200 to 210.

The altitudes and method of joining would be much the same as used on my earlier C-5 flight.

There’s a boom pod at the back end of the airplane. The operator works from a center position with a right-hand control stick that is used to fly the boom and a lever for the left hand to use to extend and retract the boom. There is an observer position on each side. You are prone, on your belly, looking through a widow in the pod.

Mike Bursk said that being a “boomer” is the best job in the Air Force. Two officers drive him to work and when he gets there all he has to do is lie down and pass gas.

The E-8C looked plenty big as it closed and a slight pilotinduced pitch oscillation as it neared looked really weird. Then the pilot settled, moved in, and Mike flew the boom into place. It appeared to be a much more relaxed atmosphere in the tanker than in the airplane being refueled.

After some practice at hooking and unhooking, we parted ways with the E-8C heading toward Warner-Robbins AFB in Georgia and the tanker headed back to Rickenbacker. I moved back to the jump seat up front for the approach and landing.

The only power to the controls of this old airplane is for the rudder which has hydraulic boost as well as a rudder bias system to help in an engine-out condition. Remember how, before power steering, cars had really big steering wheels? Same here. A big control wheel gives lots of leverage and the required deflections of the wheel to manage roll definitely mean this isn’t a fingertip airplane. It’s more like a strong arm airplane.

After a perfect landing, I anticipated reverse thrust but it didn’t come. They left the reverse function off of the airplane to save weight.

That KC-135 might have been old but it was in near-pristine condition even though it had recently been deployed to the Middle East. It did take some effort to get the sand out of all the nooks and crannies but that had been done well.

This was my last flight in a military airplane. Like my first jet flight, in that T-33, the flight began and ended on an Air Guard ramp. Those good people are a big and important part of our national defense and they go in harm’s way right alongside the full-time military and they do the same things. The crew I flew with had just returned from the Middle East and Jeff Greenberg told a good war story about hand flying an ILS approach to minimums while there. The weather? Minimums on RVR in blowing sand.

I flew in other military airplanes, including all the fixed-wing and some of the helicopters operated by the Army when I was stationed at Fort Rucker in 1956 and 1957. I flew in a USAF T-6G when working as a link instructor at a contract school in Moultrie, Georgia, and got a ride with a friend in a Navy T-28.

FLYING had coverage of Coast Guard flying but I never went along. Most of what I know about that came from The Weather Channel’s Coast Guard Alaska. Watch that and I think you’ll agree that the Coast Guard folks do indeed let it all hang out from time to time.

One of the things I treasure most about my 57 years of flying is the mental picture I have stored of every part of our country. One picture in particular stands out when I think about our military. It is of West Virginia, which I have flown across hundreds of times. I often looked and wondered what it would have been like for one of my ancestors, a military man, who made his way, on foot or horseback, from Virginia to the western part of West Virginia to die for his country just as it was coming into existence.

I stand at attention with my hand over my heart whenever The Star-Spangled Banner is played. I have known the words since I was a kid and sing along when appropriate. And, yes, I have been known to get a little emotional. I do this to honor all who have served, on foot and in the cockpit, including the ones I have written about here and including my six-times great grandfather, Colonel John Field of the Virginia militia. He was killed at the Battle of Point Pleasant (West Virginia) on October 10, 1774. We are deeply indebted to all of them.

Those Photo Missions – Smile!

I flew a lot of photo missions, both air-to-air and otherwise, and will always remember a letter to FLYING about this. The reader had a serious question about why the pilot of the airplane being photographed was always looking at the camera. The suggestion was that those posing airplanes for photos must be a bunch of prima donnas.

If that had been true, we would have smiled more. Actually, when I learned formation flying from several World War Two pilots, I was taught that this is one of the few areas in flying where you need to fixate on something. By fixating on one bit of the other airplane you can pick up any relative motion much more quickly and formation flying is all about the relationship of airplanes to each other. Another reason to look at the camera was that it was held by the photographer who used hand signals to position you for a pose and you had to be looking to see those signals.

The main reason, though, was a desire to be around to fly another photo mission.

When I worked for the original AIR FACTS we didn’t fly photo missions. We used hand-out pictures from manufacturers or photos that we took with the airplanes on the ground. I did know my father’s old friend Hans Groenhoff who was the premier aviation photographer of the 1930s and 40s. His specialty was dramatic black and white pictures, many of which were air-to-air. If you would like to learn about his work, there’s a book available on Amazon.

When I went to FLYING in November, 1968, I came upon a whole new world of aviation photography. There we spent a lot of time and money on original photographs. No hand-outs were used because we wanted FLYING to be illustrated with uniquely beautiful photographs taken mainly by professionals.

It didn’t take long for me to learn that this is demanding work and that it has to be carefully managed.

Photographers will not shoot through airplane windows. They demand a clear view of the other airplane with those optically perfect lenses.

The airplanes we used most for this were ones with doors, preferably back doors, that could be removed. The Bonanza 36, Baron 58, Cessna 206 and Piper PA-32 and Seneca airplanes were the ones we most often used. On the Beech airplanes and the 206, the back half of the door could be removed, leaving the front half in place to minimize the wind flow in the cabin but, even in brutally cold weather, most photographers wanted the whole space wide open.

Most single-engine Cessnas had windows in the door or doors that could be opened and with the removal of one screw they would open fully and rest against the bottom of the wing. This was a last resort because the angles were limited due to things like wing struts ad wheel pants. It was also awkward for the photographer because on the left side the pilot was clearly in the way. The right front seat could be removed to give the photographer freedom to move around but the pilot would get pretty unhappy if the photographer happened to lean back against the control wheel.

I once had a control tower operator nit-pick a little about either a Baron 58 or Bonanza 36. He asked me if it was legal to fly the airplane with a substantial portion of the registration number on the doors that we had left behind in the hangar. I don’t think I answered nor do I think it was ever mentioned again. After all, the complete number was on the other side of the fuselage.

Another question came up about the removed door. Beech had a new person overseeing such activities. I guess he was ex-military, and the thought of people cavorting around unrestrained in front of an open door led him to say that anyone in the back with the door off had to wear a parachute.

To counter this, I explained that a photographer is busy and moving about a lot and if somehow he accidentally pulled the rip cord the odds were you would lose both airplanes with all aboard. The compromise was that the photographer would have a rope around him that was anchored to the airplane. I guess if he fell out we would have been expected to give the photographer the option of having someone cut the rope, or, landing on a foamed runway. I think we used the rope once and then forgot about it.

There were usually two people back there, too. The heyday was in the time of film and most photographers liked to have a person to reload the camera for them. Otherwise, the pilots would just have to stand by while the photographer loaded his own film.

In all the years and missions, we never even came close to having anyone fall out of an airplane. I had lens shades, sun glasses and ball caps whiz by and if they failed to get all the paperwork out of the rear end of the airplane, as was covered in the briefing, the occasional registration or airworthiness certificate would go by. I think we saw all the weight and balance papers go by once, too. When something would come out of the other airplane it would seem to just appear and then accelerate rapidly by.

Flying with doors off was neat in warm weather but we also had to fly for photos in cold weather. Here, depending on the airplane, either the pilot or the photographer literally froze his ass off.

In the Pipers, the front seats were frigid even with full heat on. For some reason you couldn’t feel any warmth coming from anywhere. Photographers got a lot more heat in the back even though they were sitting in front of an open door.

The front seats of Beech airplanes were much warmer and if a flight were shortened because of cold, it was usually the photographer who made the call in a Beech.

We took off at Beech Field in Wichita on a morning when the surface temperature was plus five F. The only comfort in that is in knowing that with such cold at the surface, it usually about 15 or 20 degrees warmer at, say, 2,000 feet. That is still pretty cold and that photo mission, with a Bonanza 36 and a Duke, did not last long. In fact, I was maneuvering for landing when the photographer whimpered that he was getting too cold.

They made what they called “air dams” for some of the airplanes. These were fitted at the front of the opening to deflect the air but they were seldom used because the flow behind the dam was turbulent.

We got FAA field approval to fly a Skyhawk with the right door removed and that was not only uncomfortable it also practically slaughtered the climb performance. I remember one such approval requiring a restraining cable across the center of the opening.

Cessna always had a 210 or two with removable rear cabin windows. Those worked reasonably well.

The Baron 58 was the best airplane to use with jets because it was the fastest but it was just barely fast enough for most jets. If flying a jet in formation with any piston airplane I always asked the keeper in the right seat to keep an eye on the angle-of-attack indicator and tell me if it was moving toward the bad side of good. When flying formation you had no idea what was going on with the instrument panel if you were doing a proper job.

One day we were flying a Baron on top of an overcast where a Falcon jet joined up and we got our pictures. Photography done we went our separate ways, with my conclusion being an IFR approach back into Trenton, New Jersey.

The cleared altitude put the Baron close to the tops of the stratus layer and quite a bit of ice started forming. I thought nothing about cycling the boots to get rid of it. Can you guess what happened next? There were angry and hurt cries from the two guys in the back followed by, “please don’t do that again.” Those chunks of ice apparently smarted. I never thought about that.

Another airplane we used occasionally was an AA-5, usually the Tiger version of that airplane. The canopy could be slid back in flight. It was in a formation with three other AA-5s, one shooting and three posing, that I learned a lesson. The lesson was to always have extra eyes along to look for traffic. The pilot flying the photo platform has to concentrate on smooth flying, the pilots flying the other airplanes have to concentrate on formation. So who is looking for other traffic? Nobody, unless you have people along tasked with that duty.

The lesson was learned on a hazy day in the Cleveland area. I was on the outside of the formation, stepped down, as we orbited to the left. I became aware of something not being right. What I sensed suddenly became an Aero Commander that was unknowingly (I hope) busting through our formation. I always flew locked and loaded with a plan to break formation and in this case I rolled rapidly right and let the nose drop.

I was too enthusiastic because my next chore was to get the Tiger back right side up. I had rolled way past vertical.

We tried to always know the other pilots and to have confidence in their abilities. If things started going sour with a new pilot, we’d announce that we had what we wanted and it’s time to go home. That only happened a couple of times.

If the mission was to photograph on top of a cloud deck, the usual drill was to rendezvous on top. With similar airplanes and with pilots who knew each other well, we did occasionally climb through a deck in formation. When doing that, you are usually surprised at how well you can see the other airplane as long as you are reasonably close. That changes the closer you get to the cloud tops. The clouds are thicker there so for the last 500 feet or so of climb to on top you needed to be tucked in tight.

Most of the pilots we flew with were employees of aircraft manufacturers and they were good. Other pilots were always open to question so we’d take a close look and call the mission if they seemed out of their element.

The most difficult formation I ever flew was in a DC-3 with a Bonanza photo airplane. The skilled pilot in charge of the DC-3 just flat out told me he was not a formation pilot and suggested that I fly. The reason it was so difficult is that a DC-3 is not very nimble, and the keeper of this airplane was justifiably demanding that the engines be babied. Rather quick power adjustments are a staple of formation flying but on this flight I was dedicated to making the changes so gently that I would not endanger those wonderful round engines. That made it take a little longer but, hey, anything to prolong the time flying a DC-3.

This was all easier in airplanes that were at least somewhat alike. For example, if the wing loading were close, then the reaction to turbulence would be about the same. Also, flying turboprops in formation was a lot more difficult than jets or pistons. At the average speed of a platform airplane the turboprop’s power was usually at a sensitive spot where a slight movement of the power levers would result in a relatively large change.

Was there a lot of risk involved in photo missions? It is like so many other things in flying because risk does increase whenever you do anything other than cruise serenely around on a clear and calm day. Sure there was some increase in risk but managing increases in risk is what proficient flying is all about.

The best start to keeping the risk down was to have two competent pilots, a plan, and a thorough briefing. The pilot flying the platform had to understand that he was pilot-in-command of the mission, responsible for just about everything including navigation, terrain and obstacle clearance, and avoiding regulated airspace. The pilot flying the subject airplane needed to convey any special requirements. For example, if the platform airplane was to turn away I didn’t need advance warning of that. If the platform was going to turn smartly toward me, I wanted to know that he was about to do that.

Most photographers did want turns, too, because orbiting gave continuously changing light and professional photographers are quite light-conscious. I don’t think I ever worked with one who did not know exactly where the sun would rise or set on the day we were flying.

Turns have an effect on speed, too. If on the inside of a turn you will have to fly slower where on the outside you will have to fly faster. The only time that was a problem was when flying a jet on a piston platform. Then, having the jet on the inside of the turn was a no-no unless the piston could fly really fast, which most could not do.

Something that was settled in advance was the maximum angle-of-bank that would be acceptable. Formation flying becomes more challenging as the bank angle steepens, especially if the photographer wants the airplane posed farther forward as opposed to in-trail. When wingtip to wingtip, the closing or widening of distance was pretty difficult to perceive.

Thought had to also be given to mechanical or power problems. If a pilot flying a photo platform ran a fuel tank dry, for example, that could cause a real problem if the formation was tight at the time. An asymmetric power event on a twin could also cause a problem if the offending powerplant was on an unfortunate side of the airplane.

In all the years I did this, I know of only one power problem that occurred on a photo mission. I wasn’t there but it was a FLYING mission that I had approved and so I had the responsibility for it. The airplane being photographed was experimental and for a reason that was never found, the engine just flat-out quit. Because it was the subject airplane this didn’t result in a threat but our man in the platform airplane was quite startled when, as he described it, the other airplane just disappeared.

The sound of the other airplane was something that I had a hard time getting used to. If flying the platform you could actually hear the propeller sounds of the other airplane, especially if it was a twin, or was substantially more powerful. A twin with the props not synchronized really made weird sounds in the platform airplane. It did sort of make you think about a propeller flailing away not far from your wing or fuselage.

We routinely did formation takeoffs so we’d be joined up from the start. Joining with the other airplane once in flight was not a problem but it could take a little time. The best way to do it was to have the other airplane orbit, in a standard rate turn, so you could fly quickly to the rendezvous point and then join.

I think all of us who did this enjoyed doing it. There was only one thing that I definitely did not like to do and that was to check another pilot out on formation flying. As a flight instructor, I can tell you that it is a lot easier to tell when a student is ready for first solo than it is to tell when a pilot is ready to do formation flying. You can explain the basics and demonstrate but that is about all. From there, the pilot just has to learn by doing.

I had a contact with a professional aviation photographer while still at AIR FACTS. An engaging young guy came to our office in Princeton in 1964 to say hello and ask if he could look at back issues. Russell Munson was doing some photo work at the Princeton department that dealt with the history of art. He was making slides for the professors to use in classes. He had been flying and reading our magazine for years.

Later that year Russell opened a New York studio to do both advertising and magazine editorial photography. His father had been an airline captain, Russell learned to fly in a U. S. Army flying club, and naturally he wanted to find at least some work photographing airplanes.

Russell first got work at FLYING after I went there. He did the photography for a December, 1969, barnstorming story written by Richard Bach.

Russell and Richard became friends and when Richard would come to New York to try to interest publishers in his work, he would sleep in a sleeping bag on Russell’s studio floor because he couldn’t afford hotel rates.

Later in 1969 Richard had a meeting with Eleanor Friede about his book “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” (Eleanor was the major published of aviation titles at the time. I did eleven books with her.) Eleanor liked “Seagull” but said it needed pictures. When he heard this from Richard, Russell asked if photographs would work and produced a box of seagull pictures he had taken for no particular reason. Eleanor liked the photos, Russell took even more, and “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” became a wildly popular book. No, it wasn’t about private aviation but it was a creation of two of ours and we were all proud for them.

After that, Russell and I worked on many air-to-air photo projects as well as a number of photo-supported essays. I once told Russell that if he got good photos, I’d write something around them.

Because of our long association and friendship of 50 years, when I started working on this I asked Russell for his favorites among the things that we did together. He came up with two and I’ll tell you about those now, without further ado.

In 1975 the Cessna 210s, especially the Turbo 210s, were really popular airplanes. We wanted to do a story on the T210 with photography that would show the airplane in its element. Where else to do this but in the Rocky Mountains? Cessna ponied up a pair of T210s and a pilot, Chuck Hinson of their air transportation department. Russell and I made the trek to Wichita with both of us eagerly looking forward to the project.

Before going on, I want to share a funny that made the FLYING editorial staff blush to the point of being almost bright red. The creative folks cast about for a title for this story and came up with “Rarified Air.” It was in big type and was repeated several times. All those Ivy League diplomas and nobody knew how to spell “rarefied.” The mistake was not caught until about a half a million magazines had been printed. Somebody told me that then-editor Bob Parke sent someone to the New York Public Library to try to find an excuse for spelling the word as we did. As I look what I type on the screen now, “rarified” is not flagged as incorrect so maybe, somewhere, that is an acceptable spelling. Bob would feel better.

Back to the mission: It was springtime and the weather out there is not noted for its calm at that time of the year. Our westbound flying started with a wet and bumpy IFR leg from Wichita to Gunnison, Colorado.

The minimum en route altitude from Pueblo to Gunnison was 16,000 feet so as we were bumping along over the plains I knew we would have to soon climb, per the plan, to Flight Level 200. For a time I felt like I was flying a submarine in a hurricane so decided to go higher earlier than necessary to see if conditions would improve.

The instruments hooked to the static system were acting like there was some water ingestion so right after I started to climb, I selected the alternate static source. When I did this, the airspeed started increasing. I listened to the sound of things, looked at the pitch attitude, checked the power, and decided that the airspeed increase was in error. Then I followed the good practice of undoing the last thing I had done (the alternate static source) and that restored some order. The airplane was new and the alternate static source had been plumbed incorrectly so the system was effectively blocked when that was selected and the airspeed would increase as the airplane climbed.

There was to be more new-airplane related excitement this day.

The other T210 was ahead of us by some miles and was at FL220. We were in clouds with some bumps and some snow plus a bit of light ice. I was about to call Chuck, in the leading T210, and ask if he was getting ice at 220 when Chuck told the controller that he had lost his engine and was descending.

Whoa. I was not many miles behind and the thought of a powerless airplane descending through my altitude was disquieting.

I didn’t ask, I told the controller I was starting an immediate 360 turn to the left and would orbit where I was until the other airplane was out of 200. I honestly don’t remember whether or not we were in radar contact but I think not because at the time it appeared that separation would be ours to provide.

Russell was with Chuck and it was his plan to snap pictures to the conclusion of the event, even if that included climbing down off a mountain. Chuck’s wife was with me and I uttered something encouraging though I well knew this would not be comfortable territory for a forced landing.

As Chuck descended he realized the engine was still putting out some power and that it would be possible to get to Montrose, Colorado. I followed him there where we took the top cowl off his airplane and found that the turbo hose clamp had been incorrectly installed and had come loose, making the engine normallyaspirated. Years later I had the same thing happen on my P210 a couple of times.

We hopped from Montrose to Gunnison where we’d launch the next morning’s photo mission.

At that time, Gunnison was a small town. Old, too. The cemetery was bigger than the town. The one hotel was quite basic and we had a ground transportation problem. No rental car was available and there wasn’t any early-morning taxi service.

Being the true artist that he is, Russell likes the low and soft light that lasts for an hour or two after sunrise and begins an hour or two before sunset. In the summer, this can make for a long day. That morning in Gunnison my challenge was to get us a ride to the airport early enough to be airborne in the two airplanes at sunrise. The alternative to a ride would be a substantial hike to the airport, carrying Russell’s considerable amount of gear.

I pondered the problem and I all could think of was to call the police station. I explained it to the officer who answered and he sounded almost insulted by my insinuating that taxi service for wayward aviators might be part of the line-of-duty. In other words: not no but hell no.

Neither Russell’s nor my memory is clear on how this worked out so I get to offer my recollection, fuzzy as it might be 39 years later.

We divided up the cargo and set out on foot. I think I remember seeing a police car shadowing us for a bit and finally pulling alongside. The patrolman asked if we were the clowns who had called about a ride. I assured him we were and he told us to get in, he’d take us to the airport. All is well that ends well. That photo gear was sure heavy.

We had a wonderful time darting around over beautiful mountains, often draped with clouds. It was a fine place to be and one airborne moment stands out and, in fact, gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.

We were flying maybe 1,000 feet above some relatively flat terrain when we flew out over a canyon. The ground beneath, as seen in my peripheral vision, just fell abruptly away. I had not had a feeling like that before. It was like we had suddenly gone into orbit. I was close to the platform airplane and had to doubledown on my concentration to keep the spacing right.

Next, a small-world story: We wanted to take a break and Russell wanted some ground shots so Chuck pointed out what was then a relatively small airport with a paved strip, North Fork Valley. The runway was on a plateau and there was a parking area off to one side.

After we landed we found that the only attendant was a beautiful and friendly Husky dog. He liked our company and would pull a chock and bring it to us with the clear message that it was to be thrown for him to retrieve. In turn, we truly enjoyed the dog’s company.

Several years later I was invited to make a talk at Embry- Riddle in Florida. There, I was chatting with the person who invited me, Craig Sabatke, and in the usual small “where are you from” talk he mentioned that he had lived near that airport. And, you guessed it, that was his Husky.

I also remembered that I had some much earlier contact with Craig’s father, Oliver, who had been a Navy pilot in the Pacific and an airline pilot as a civilian. He was captain of a United Viscount turboprop airliner that was lost when an in-flight fire either rendered the airplane uncontrollable, or smoke and flames disabled the crew.

Years later, when researching this, I wondered what had become of Craig. So, I Googled him. Sad news: He was lost in a Mooney about three years after our visit, flying in those same Colorado mountains that Russell and I so enjoyed, and where we had met Craig’s Husky.

The results of that trip yielded a pretty photo essay in FLYING and I have to agree that it was a favorite.

Russell’s other favorite was a mission to get photos to illustrate a feature that I called “Continued VFR.” The NTSB had issued a study on accidents that resulted when pilots flew VFR into bad weather and crashed. The numbers were awful. This was a lethal thing to do and it happened quite often.

The plan was to show what this looked like as it unfolded. How to do that other than to do it?

When we had the idea formulated I called my friend Hank Newman who was the director of the FAA’s Southwest Region, which covered my Little Rock home base. I explained to Hank what we proposed to do and, as he always did, he asked what I needed from him.

It was pretty simple. If I was to continue VFR into IFR conditions while Russell took pictures I needed the minimum en route altitude of the airway above us blocked. Then I would have a de facto if not actual clearance to fly IFR at that altitude. When VFR turned to IFR I could pull up and climb to that IFR altitude where I’d announce my presence and get a clearance to somewhere to fly an instrument approach and start all over again.

With everything set with the FAA, the next deal was with Mother Nature. It was late winter and at that time of the year cold fronts sometimes become stationary in that part of the country to make for several day’s worth of clouds and rain.

Russell was in New York so I had to look ahead at potential and suitable weather systems and then get him headed for Little Rock. Actually he got there a day or two ahead of schedule and I got to take him on an adventure and introduce him to new critters. I was doing a map reading thing with our son’s scout troop and the National Guard had furnished charts and a wooded and hilly area at Camp Robinson for us to go chart reading. Everyone had a good time and Russell learned that those little bitty red things were chiggers. Such were the hazards of photo missions with Richard.

The weather cooperated perfectly and, as photographers do, Russell wanted to keep snapping shots as long as the weather was there. In total we had flown on five different days and flew 14 IFR approaches after using that Hank Newman furnished “get out of jail free” card.

One of the sequences was flown on Interstate 40 west of Conway, Arkansas. The weather was rainy but VFR when we started out, following the Interstate, then the rain got harder, scud started to form, and Russell got the money shot of the transition to IFR conditions.

That’s not flat country but it was home country for me and I knew the terrain well and all my pull-ups were in the direction of low or lower terrain.

We also ventured out into the mountains west of Little Rock, where a huge fleet of general aviation, airline and military airplanes have probed the sides of mountains, and got some pretty neat pictures of some of the visual traps that can snare a VFR pilot trying to sneak through there.

Russell photographed all that in color and black and white. The feature ran in black and white because it was more dramatic that way. Cheaper, too, because four-color printing was still expensive at the time.

I did some other similar features with pictures that I took and while the quality of the photography was far short of what Russell did, mine still told the story as I chased weather all over Arkansas in the active springtime season.

I was up around Fort Smith one day photographing some nasty looking thunderstorms while communicating with Fort Smith tower because of my proximity to their airport. They had been silent for quite a while when a controller called and asked me if I was still there. Seems they had looked out the window and decided to evacuate the tower for a bit. I think it was the same day, but closer to Little Rock, when I photographed a rapidly developing strong storm that later blew away a small town north of Little Rock.

The FAA loved our “Continued VFR” coverage and approached us about doing a video or movie like that. We talked to them about it and when I explained how it had been done, the folks in Washington were horrified and said they could never condone anything like that. I think some legal weasel probably spent days researching what FARs we might have fractured. I told Hank Newman that I hoped he didn’t get in trouble for enabling that project and he just laughed.

Before I go on I want to tell you another story about an irate bureaucrat and a FLYING cover. I think the cover story was about conflicts between general aviation and airline aircraft. To make the cover we used an over the shoulder shot of a pilot in a Bonanza with a windshield full of DC-8.

Manipulating photographs was possible then but nowhere nearly as possible as later or now and the FAA guy who called me apparently didn’t know it was possible at all. He demanded to know where and when that picture was taken and if an incident report had been filed on the event. I just hung up.

The last photo mission that I participated in as Editor-in-Chief of FLYING had some interesting twists.

The subject airplane was a Beechjet. It had a new avionics package from Bendix/King that was a combination of EFIS and mechanical elements and Beech was interested in exposing the airplane to the public.

The first airplane with the new avionics had been sold and delivered to a customer. As was sometimes done, Beech arranged for me to fly that customer’s airplane and use it for photography. It was based in Morgantown, West Virginia.

The logistics were a bit of a challenge. I would be flying east from St. Louis where I had been doing some research in a DC-9 or MD-80 simulator. For a photo platform, I chartered a Baron 58 from Ronson Aviation at my home base of Trenton, N. J. I was using a staff photographer, Gordon Bowen, for this and he and another staff member were to get with the Baron at Trenton and fly to Morgantown.

It was early December and if you have ever spent any time hanging around the mountains of West Virginia at that time of the year you know then the weather is not exactly clear and subtropical and that the days are short.

The weather on the day of our project wasn’t outright hostile with a cloud deck over the area with relatively low tops. The deck was not thick enough for any ice to be a problem. As usual, it was turbulent below and in the clouds but smooth on top.

I flew the Beechjet to try out the new avionics system and it was really pretty crude compared to what would come next. Those first EFIS systems basically just substituted electronic for mechanical attitude and heading information while everything else remained mechanical. I wasn’t the only pilot who felt like the mixture of the two forms of display was less than ideal.

By the time the Baron arrived, I was getting antsy about time. Sunset waits for no man, the sun is low in the sky early at that time of the year, and I was looking frequently at my watch as they removed the doors from the Baron and prepared the airplane for the mission.

The drill was for the Baron to take off first with us following in the Beechjet. The professional pilot of that airplane was acting as a demo pilot for this mission. We didn’t consider taking off together and climbing to on top in formation because of the big difference on the two airplanes.

Air traffic control for that area was handled by Clarksburg approach control and my demo pilot had a little influence there. His wife was an air traffic controller at Clarksburg and was working that day. She would get us together with the Baron once we were both on top.

As soon as we were on top it was obvious that time was short. The beautiful low light was getting lower and would not be around for too long.

Once I called the Baron in sight I guess everyone relaxed. Everything was set. It wasn’t though. As I moved closer to join up with the Baron I was struck by the realization that the Baron looked a lot like a King Air 90. After a hasty conference with the controller we figured out that I had gone after the wrong airplane. The King Air was cruising through the area VFR on top and never knew that he almost had company.

We finally got to the Baron when there was maybe 15 minutes of good light left, joined up, and started making a shallow turn to the left to give photographer Gordon Bowen changing light to choose from. We might have made two 360s before the light was gone.

As short as the time was, we were rewarded with a strikingly beautiful cover for the April, 1988 issue of FLYING. I thought it was one of the best, if not the best cover of the time when I had the editorial responsibility for the magazine. The timing had been scarily close but all that counts is the final result.

After we landed and got the doors back on the Baron what I thought was an interesting thing happened. I was headed to Trenton, as was the Baron. It was night and a lot of the trip would be over mountains. I suggested that Gordon and the other staffer might want to fly home in the Baron but they chose the singleengine Cessna for the night trip over rough terrain.

Not all the photo missions that I was involved in were to take still pictures for magazines. After I left FLYING I worked at AOPA PILOT for 19 months and when the 50th Anniversary issue of that magazine was done I had completed what I had promised John Baker, then president of AOPA. I could have stayed but, to be honest, I was a magazine person not an association person and it was awkward for me to show such little interest in an important part of their business.

That’s a long way of telling you that when I retired from fulltime magazine work I signed on part-time at Sporty’s to work on the many video projects that were being developed there.

One video mission that we did was related both to Sporty’s and the Department of Justice. I had been approached about being an expert witness for the DOJ and thought I would give it a try.

My first case involved a Cessna 210, on a charter flight with four rodeo cowboys on board, in the Pacific Northwest. That was before single-engine IFR was approved in air taxi operations so the 210 pilot was flying VFR in mountainous terrain in lousy conditions.

The pilot was talking to the controller who asked him if he had the mountain in sight. He was referring to Mount Rainier which would be hard to miss if you could see. Anyway, the pilot said he did have the mountain in sight. That was followed by a brief exchange on a heading to fly which was followed immediately by the airplane crashing into the side of Mount Rainier. The FAA was being sued because it was alleged that the accident was the fault of the controller.

My idea was to plot the path of the 210, put it in my KLN-89B GPS as a flight plan, and fly it while Mike Rosing of Sporty’s captured the view out front on video.

Mount Rainier is a National Park. I was well aware of the sensitivity about such areas and got the approval of the ranger in charge to fly close to his mountain. I also took the U. S. Attorney from Seattle along as an observer.

Someone asked if I got FAA approval for the flight. I didn’t because I wouldn’t be flying closer than 500 feet to any vessel, vehicle or structure, I had the approval of the government agency in charge of the place, and I had the U. S. Attorney’s blessing for whatever that is worth.

The video was pretty spectacular and at the very location where he said he had the mountain in sight, the windshield was literally full of it. Lots of rocks and as soon as we reached that point I turned away from the mountain.

Settlements are not made public but I later heard that a seven figure suit was settled for an amount in the low five figures.

That was an interesting flight and project but I didn’t really like the thought of being an expert witness because in many or most cases what they want you to do is say what they need for you to say. On the Mount Rainier project I got to do what I thought would work and I doubted that would always be the case dealing with other DOJ lawyers.

We did a lot of air-to-air video at Sporty’s and I also did a lot of weather video, both by myself and with Mike Rosing who was in charge of Sporty’s video department at the time.

I wrote a book, Flying the Weather Map, in 1979 that met with reasonable success. (Commercial break: it is still available.) It showed the weather map for a trip plus a narrative that described the actual conditions encountered. This was done for the four seasons with multiple trips in each season.

They make books into movies in Hollywood so we decided we would do the same. The video series is now marketed by Sporty’s as “Advanced Weather Flying” and it is based on the same idea as the book only with video you can share both the weather synopsis and what it actually looked like from the airplane.

We flew a lot of dedicated trips for this project. When I would see what looked like a promising bit of weather I’d call Mike Rosing and he would either come to Maryland, where I was, or I would go to Ohio where he was and we would set out to capture the actual weather on video.

One thing I especially wanted to show was ice and that was pretty easy to do. The Great Lakes are reliable airframe ice makers and I had dealt with the weather in the area enough over the years to know exactly how to use the lake effect clouds to best advantage.

The tops are usually around 18,000 feet on the lee side of the lakes when there is a strong northwesterly flow so we would, in my P210, head up that way at 17,000 feet. The most ice in clouds like that is usually close to the tops and conditions didn’t disappoint on the day we selected to take video of ice.

Air traffic controllers were quite cooperative, as they have always been on photo projects, and when we’d collect some photogenic ice we could pop into sunshine and take its picture. I think we also got footage of how dramatically the tops drop off as you move from the lee to the windward side of the lakes.

There is one discipline to shooting video of weather and it is that the first time is the one and only charm. There are no reshoots unless you rewind and fly the whole flight again and even then it would probably be different. That meant the camera was always rolling when in an interesting situation as well as in advance of what was expected to develop into an interesting situation.

We even got some good weather footage on that trip to the Seattle area to do the video of Mount Rainier for the DOJ.

It was always my desire in the magazine and video business to illustrate things with the best possible photography. That could get expensive at times but I always thought it was worth it and spent pretty freely on a lot of photo projects. Just ask the old bean-counters. I could at times make them squirm.

It was fun, too. Having a photo mission go as planned and result in a formation flight with another airplane (or two or three) as the sun rose or set put the participants in a place of serene beauty and it was rewarding to share that with our readers and viewers. I have wonderful memories of all that stored safely away. It was a thought that I often had, but on some of those flights I knew I had the best job in the world.

Those Pilot Reports –

Of the Magazine Variety

Actually there is not a lot of difference between a pilot report (PIREP) of conditions encountered on a flight and the pilot reports that have long been a staple in aviation magazines. Both report on what was encountered while flying though the ones about airplanes often go into all aspects of research, development and manufacturing.

Over my 50 years in the print magazine business I would estimate that I wrote at least 300 pilot report features plus a lot of other airplane coverage in columns. I started to go back and count exactly how many there were but decided that wouldn’t be any fun. Instead, I’ll tell you about some that were different enough for me to vividly remember.

I flew airplanes for reports as if I were considering a purchase. That way, I tried to see the airplanes as a real buyer. I couldn’t come close to affording a lot of them, but, hey, there is always the lottery and the dilemma of what to do with all that cash.

I do want to make note of one thing to begin. The technology involved in low speed aerodynamics and piston engines had reached a plateau when I wrote my first pilot report in 1959. That plateau had actually been reached in 1947 with the Bonanza.

The Bonanza was designed to cruise at the same speed as the dominant airliner of the day, the DC-3. The latest Bonanza will go a bit faster than the original, but the airliners of today cruise almost three times faster than a DC-3. The amazing thing about airliner technology is that they have seen that amazing speed increase with an actual reduction in what it costs to fly one seat one mile. Nothing in private aviation has even come close to that feat. So, what I wrote for 50 years was about, for lack of better words, a stationary target.

A note of irony to begin: Over the years I was branded as “anti-twin” because I often wrote about that fact that from a statistical standpoint twins can be less safe than singles. I did always hasten to add that this is not the case if the pilot is truly proficient. Trouble is, most pilots who buy twins fly them safely until an engine quits and then that is often the end of the story. They just were not proficient enough to handle the real thing.

The note of irony is the fact that my first pilot report, in the April, 1959 issue of AIR FACTS was about a twin, the Aero Commander 500, and my last, in the July, 2006 issue of FLYING was also about at twin, the Diamond Twin Star. The only significance is that it happened that way but a difference in the two airplanes reflects one of the few changes in light airplane engine technology over those years. The Twin Star uses Jet-A burning diesel engines. This would likely never have happened had 100-octane fuel remained available worldwide and had not been under fire domestically because of lead content.

I was 25 when I went to Oklahoma City to fly the Aero Commander 500. I was a hot-shot twin pilot, with a substantial amount of time in a Twin Bonanza as well as Travel Air and Apache experience. I had also instructed some in twins. I thus had no qualms about checking out in the airplane and flying it to its new owner, Reading Aviation Service in Reading, Pennsylvania.

I wrote quite a bit about the manufacture of Aero Commanders because their factory had burned down and the new factory was coming fully on-line at the time I visited. Because they didn’t yet have avionics installation capability, the 500 I would be taking east had a Narco Superhomer running off a cigar-lighter plug-in. That radio was VFR-only and provided a little navigational guidance plus the ability to talk to control towers and the FSS stations of the day. (I think they were called INSACs at the time, for Interstate Airways Communications Stations.) The desired avionics would be installed in the field.

I also wrote a lot about the ground school. The ground school covered all Aero Commanders of the day. The 500 was the runt of the litter, followed by the 560E, 680E and pressurized (barely) 720.

The big deal for the pilot report should have been the flying but I only wrote a little about the checkout and not a lot more about the trip from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania. I guess I got carried away with those other details.

Maybe the reason I didn’t give the trip a lot of ink was that it didn’t work out according to plan. It was a long VFR trip in late winter and plans for such are hard to make and even harder to follow.

I left after lunch and only got as far as Springfield, Missouri, before a combination of darkness and weather made a stop and hotel for the evening seem like my only option.

I was used to IFR flying and when I got up the next morning and looked out the window, I had to adjust my thinking from IFR to VFR. What I saw was obviously not VFR and I wasn’t surprised when a call to the weather bureau suggested that I enjoy the day and another night in Springfield.

The offending cold front passed, moved rapidly eastward, and deposited VFR weather over the route. As I was to learn, that wasn’t all it deposited.

Up to this particular winter, all I knew about flying in that season had been learned in the southeastern United States. My weather wisdom there was pretty good where it was nonexistent in the north central and northeast U. S.

The strong gusty wind at an Indianapolis fuel stop was no surprise. My first landing on a snow covered runway was and I was amazed at how fluffy the landing in the white stuff felt. I was also amazed by how much power it took to taxi.

At this time we got weather briefings from real people and the fellow I talked to in Indianapolis was clear and concise. It was a typical post-cold-frontal situation with strong northwesterly winds, snow showers over the mountains but with relatively low cloud tops, and clear to scattered clouds at my destination. No problem, in other words.

The flight went as planned. The clouds beneath were solid over the mountains but they broke up as soon as I got over toward the coastal plain. Gee, everything sure was white, though.

Reading Tower told me the runway had been cleared and the braking action was fair, as reported by a truck. I had never gotten a braking action report before but figured that “fair” was fair enough. The tower added that snow removal was just beginning for the taxiways and ramps. After I landed, the tower directed me to a cleared spot on a taxiway and said to park there and someone would be out to get me.

There was over a foot of snow and I could tell that the folks at Reading thought I should have waited another day before delivering their new airplane. That was water under the bridge and getting to our apartment in West Orange, New Jersey, was far more stressful and time-consuming than the flights of that day.

I agonized over that pilot report but finally finished. My father, the editor, said that it was okay and it was cast in print if not stone. I don’t remember what grade I might have given it at the time but I read it again just now and a C-minus would be a generous grade.

I spent days with that airplane. My exposure to the Twin Star many years later amounted to a couple of hours and a local flight. That was the way a lot of pilot reports worked and the drill was to learn about and report on the important features and differences in the airplane in that brief time. In my role as a potential customer, I did come away from the Twin Star with a strong feeling that it would make a fine personal airplane if trips were not too long. I did get a hoot out of flying a twin with a control stick and those diesel engines were fascinating.

Where I knew that the 500 was my first pilot report, I didn’t know at the time that the Twin Star would be my last. As a result, I didn’t go through the process of ruminating about all the ones in between. I think I have heard country songs about stuff like that and I do like country music. I have since done the appropriate ruminating and will share a bit of it with you.

Were there bad airplanes along the way? You bet:

February 13, 1986, Prescott Pusher, N41PP, 3KM – Local, Finally met one I didn’t like. Not good.

March, 4, 1986, Prescott Pusher, N41PP, 3KM – Local, Still not a good airplane.

The pitch control system of the airplane was modified after my first flight in it. That’s why I made my way from New Jersey back to Wichita to fly it again and give it the benefit of any doubt. It was still unsatisfactory in pitch.

Another FLYING staffer had written about the airplane and, while acknowledging some tenderness in pitch, he said it was acceptable. A little birdie told me that was a whitewash and, as Editor-in-Chief, it was my responsibility to check that out. I put my observations in my column and was criticized by some for doing so. One pilot who had finished one of the kit-built Pushers read me the riot act about my comments. He later sent me a picture of the wreckage. Even though he was an experienced pilot, the Pusher had gotten away from him on a go-around.

The Pusher was allegedly the first general aviation airplane that was computer designed and it allegedly met Part 23 standards though it was to be offered as a kit. The project never got off the ground and few kits were delivered. I guess that meant it was back to the old slide rule.

Over the years, I did not shy away from flying experimental airplanes though I did go at this with a great deal of caution. Some things are evident. The Prescott Pusher was a short-coupled airplane and by nature it suggested the pitch instability that was there.

When I opened the throttle of Ed Swearingen’s SX-300 kit airplane to go flying, I glanced at what were tiny-looking wings and thought that if I hadn’t known Ed since we were in our twenties and starting out, I might not have flown this airplane.

The SX-300 turned out to be fine and was an airplane I would liked to have had and used if the need for a speedy twoplace had been there. The airplane had great handling qualities but there was no doubt that it had to be handled with care. A small airplane with tiny wings and a humongous engine can’t really keep a secret.

I also flew the Questair Venture, rather a direct competitor to the SX-300, and found the flying qualities to be good though there was some awkwardness in ground handling and the cabin was far from being as nice as the SX-300. Jim Griswold, who had done the Piper Malibu, designed the Vantage and he contended that it was a scaled down Malibu.

Neither the SX-300 nor the Vantage found any degree of success in the kit airplane market even though both were good airplanes.

The Glasair airplanes did find a market and I made my way to Arlington, Washington, to fly and report on that company’s offering with a big engine. With the Glasair, you could actually put bigger wings on by adding outer wing panels. I flew it with the short wing. The flying qualities were fine but a successful power-off approach and landing would have taken a lot of practice. Energy management there would have been similar to that found during an autorotation in the Hughes 300 helicopter that I tried to master at one point.

One experimental airplane I didn’t get to fly was the Piper Advanced Technologies PAT-1. Designed at least in part by Howard “Pug” Piper, it was a futuristic-looking canard. I didn’t get to fly it because the airplane was lost with three aboard on a demo flight at NASA Langley. My flight was to be next.

NASA has toyed with the general aviation business over time and I always got the impression that it did this when it didn’t have anything else to do. Some of the early research by NASA’s predecessors did result in good things but in later years they seemed to tilt at windmills.

I found an example of this at Lawrence, Kansas, in the form of the Redhawk. The airplane was developed at the University of Kansas under a NASA contract or grant. Cessna also participated by selling them a Cardinal for a dollar and offering other support.

To say that the Redhawk was a highly modified Cessna Cardinal is a bit of an understatement. At least I thought replacing the wings with ones of not much more than half the size (110 square feet v. 175 square feet) was pretty radical. The thickness of the new wing was also greatly reduced from the old.

The idea was that the smaller wing would allow for a better ride in turbulence and a higher cruise speed because of less drag. To keep the stalling speed down, full span leading edge Krueger flaps and 70-percent span trailing edge Fowler flaps were fitted. Primary roll control was with spoilers atop the wings. Small ailerons were also fitted, just in case, but they were controlled only by the control wheel on the right side.

Dr. Dave Kohlman of KU was my demo pilot. The airplane was experimental and if I remember correctly, we wore parachutes.

For my first takeoff, full leading and trailing edge flaps were deflected and Dave said to lift off at 65 mph and climb at 85. The airplane lifted off on cue but the rate of climb was poor to nil and my full attention went into dealing with rising terrain up ahead. I think I remember something about a tree, too.

Dave said that getting rid of the leading edge flaps should help and he started milking those up. When a little speed was gained he started retracting the trailing edge flaps and the airspeed moved up to 95 and the rate of climb increased. The drag from those flaps was apparently a bit much for a 180 hp engine.

I thought that initial climb was pretty precarious and for a few moments had been looking at good places straight ahead to put the airplane. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that.

Dave later told me that there was a problem with the spoilers floating up and spoiling lift at low speed with all the flaps out. Presumably they fixed that and finished the program though this project and another one like it that modified a Piper Aztec didn’t lead to any advances in the design of production airplanes.

As to my flight, I guess Dave and I both made a mistake in thinking that the other one was more of an experimental test pilot than he was. That was one of many things that I filed for future reference: In the BS session before such a flight, learn something about the other pilot.

Here I must digress for just a moment. I wrote about the Redhawk in the December, 1972 issue of FLYING. I also wrote the editorial in that issue about the user fees that we all felt were about to come down on us in the near future. Some things never change because while those fees have never come, they still loom 42 years later. Other things do change. The circulation statement in that issue showed that 466,420 copies were printed. The latest circulation statement I could find for FLYING was for December, 2012 and showed 200,737. Private aviation has indeed become smaller.

Where possible, I used to like to make pilot reports about trips, where I used an airplane as if it were my own. One of the more interesting reports I did was on the Cessna 402B in the March, 1974 issue of FLYING.

The significance of that point in time will not be known to you unless you are, as I am, older than dirt. It was one of the most precarious times in general aviation history because of the Arab oil embargo. (Yes, those are the same Arabs we are still buying oil from 40 years later.)

Our government had proposed Draconian allocations, or rationing, of fuel and precious little was to be available for our type of flying. Because of this, business flying was heavily stressed by our fact spinners. It was as if we had to carry a brief case and not smile while flying. In pilot reports we were devoting a lot of ink to fuel efficiency.

My evaluation of the 402B had been planned well before the fuel crisis so I went ahead with it. What I didn’t reveal in the pilot report was the nature of my mission. Because of the public sensitivity to fuel use, I thought it best not to write that I used the airplane to take my family to Disney World for Christmas. My mother, mother-in-law, and aunt-in-law also went along so all eight seats in the 402B were filled with five adults and three kids. That might have been passed off as efficient squandering of precious fuel.

As I often did, I flew my airplane to Wichita to pick up the 402B at the Cessna factory strip. In the interest of saving fuel, there was no checkout because I was current in Cessna twins.

Because of the fuel shortage and the rush to efficiency, Continental had approved the use of peak exhaust gas temperature operation so long as the power was set at 55-percent or less. That was hard to swallow for a person who always felt like his role in life was to go fast, burn all the fuel, eat all the steak, and drink all the Jack Daniel’s but, hey, patriotism wins out every time and I would fly slow at peak EGT. We were all serious about using as little fuel as possible.

There was a real shortage of fuel in some areas so I made sure I could get what I needed. It helped to have friends who were FBOs, Claud Holbert in Little Rock, Hugh Wheelless in Dothan, Alabama, and Bob Showalter in Orlando all assured me that I could get fuel at their places.

I was pleasantly surprised at the speed v. fuel numbers on the 300 nm first leg. The lightly-loaded airplane delivered 165 knots on 130 pounds per hour.

I had noted that draining the sumps on a Cessna twin of that vintage was a chore because there were so many drains and the ones on the tip tanks could send gas cascading down your arm if it wasn’t done just right. And yes, we did then let fuel run onto the ground (where it came from) because the PC police had not yet gone berserk on that subject.

On the second and longer leg of the trip I got into the complexity of the fuel system.

There were five tanks to feed the two engines and, no, that does not come out even, thus complicating fuel management. There were the two main tip tanks that Cessna used on its twins at that time, plus an auxiliary tank in each wing and, finally, a wing locker tank in the left nacelle. (Locker tanks were optional and you could install left, left and right, or none.) Total fuel capacity on this airplane was 1,080 pounds.

When the time came to get into that wing locker fuel I made sure I had used the prescribed amount out of the left tip and then turned on the transfer pump which would send the locker fuel out to the left tip tank. There was no gauge on the locker tank but a light did illuminate when it was all transferred.

The product of that was a lot more fuel in the left tip than in the right tip. To fix that, the drill was to crossfeed and run the right engine off the left tip tank to balance the fuel load. When I set up to do that, the engine protested, followed by a passenger protest, but the engine quickly smoothed out. There must have been some air in the long fuel line from the right engine to the left tip.

That was the sort of thing that I felt had to be explained in a pilot report because if it wasn’t discussed you wouldn’t have much credibility with someone who learned about it by flying the airplane. It was a convoluted system and it was appropriate that I explored it on my way to see Mickey Mouse. Most all fuel systems became simpler later on.

I also picked on the autopilot because it was a bit unstable in pitch and it was all or nothing so you couldn’t opt to use just the roll function. I would add that I mentioned many time that I didn’t think much of the Cessna 400 autopilot. In fact, I don’t think I ever returned a Cessna with one of those autopilots still fully functional at the end of a trip.

I had harped on that so much that a Cessna executive insisted that I get a complete demonstration of the autopilot so they could be sure I knew how to operate it properly. Guess what? The autopilot that was demonstrated to me crapped out after about five minutes. When I got my P210 I ordered it with the standard 300 autopilot, which was equally worthless but weighed and cost less. I think mine was the only P210 built without a 400 autopilot.

The 402B had a good useful load but when the load got up to eight, fuel had to be restricted a bit. Any cabin weight over 770 pounds had to subtracted from fuel.

We had a good time at Disney for Christmas. The other day, John Zimmerman e-mailed that he was taking his wife and kids there after the 2014 NBAA Convention in Orlando and would be exhausted when that was over. I observed that three-generational trips there were something more than exhausting.

The TV weather map for the day we would start returning everyone and everything to its rightful place had the word “tornado” neatly positioned along the route.

The 402B had airborne weather radar and I knew the principles of using this for avoidance. I used one of the more basic principles after examining the path ahead in the vicinity of Albany, Georgia. I landed at Albany to get some lunch while the weather passed overhead.

After getting all the people back to the proper place, I had to return the 402B to Wichita, where winter had set in with a vengeance. There was a lot of snow so I called Chuck Hinson, who ran Cessna’s air transportation department at the time, to inquire about airport conditions. He called back a little later and said the runway was covered but he had driven it and conditions were not bad. It was one of those granular snows with a lot of water content in really cold air and not too much snow depth. I have only seen it in places like Arkansas and Kansas and, up to a point, it is quite manageable.

It was slow IFR going all the way to Wichita and when I broke out and started maneuvering for a landing on the Cessna factory strip, my then 9-year old son asked, “Dad, where is the runway?” It was hard to see because everything was a shade of white but it was there, I knew where it was, and the landing was uneventful.

The only ice we had collected was unusual. It was inboard of the prop heating elements, on the prop hubs. It looked like dry ice and when we made an effort to get rid of it, it would not budge. Chuck Hinson, who was going to take us back to Little Rock, wanted to know if the engines were smooth on the way in. They were and we had an uneventful last leg in the 402B.

I flew that airplane about 20 hours and felt like I really understood it. It was great that the manufacturers encouraged use of their airplanes for more than a local hop and I made many long trips in airplanes being evaluated.

One thing I liked to do was, for lack of a better word, race competitive airplanes. We had short, wide open races in some more basic airplanes but when I wanted to explore something like the virtues of a pressurized piston twin and a turboprop on a 1,000 mile trip, Cessna furnished a 421 and Aero Commander a 690. When Cessna came out with the turboprop 425 we ran it against the piston 421.

In most of the flights to compare airplanes there were no great surprises but we did learn a lot about the virtues of various types. One I remember well was a comparison of the Cessna P210 and Piper Malibu. The Malibu was definitely faster but when it came to dealing with the tumbleweeds racing across the runway at Dalhart, Texas, the P210 was hands-down more manageable in the strong crosswind.

A comparison that was done in 1975 further illustrates the good support we got on these flights. Everyone still had a fuel hangover from 1973 and we liked to show how even fancier general aviation airplanes could deliver seat miles per gallon on a par with jetliners. Piper furnished both a piston-powered Pressurized Navajo and a turboprop Cheyenne for us to use in comparing a top-of-the-line piston airplane and an entry-level turboprop.

Trips of 1,000 nautical miles were still the hot button so I decided I would look at the airplanes as they might be used to connect a small city in the middle of the country to the ultimate destination, the Big Apple. The small city chosen was Neosho, Missouri, and we used LaGuardia as the New York airport of choice.

I flew the trip in the Navajo first. It was January so the winter winds were blowing and it was a relatively quick nonstop to LGA. I worked in FLYING’s One Park Avenue (a fancy address but a grungy old building) office the next day and then headed to LaGuardia after work, to return the mythical Neosho businessman home.

Payback: The west wind that speeded up our eastbound trip was still there. That meant we could not fly non-stop back to Neosho. A fuel stop was made at Lexington, Kentucky, and we even picked up hot cheeseburgers and fries there to have for dinner on the next leg. That was arranged using an airborne telephone which was a relatively new thing at the time.

I flew the identical trip in the Cheyenne a couple of weeks later. At the time I thought that the big piston twins had a limited future and would be replaced by basic turboprops. A lot of people shared that thought. We were all wrong. It is true that 40 years later nobody is building big piston twins but only one basic turboprop twin, the Beech King Air 90, is rolling off an assembly line. Corporate America just has limited interest in airplanes like that.

The Cheyenne flew the trip in less time, 33 minutes less each way, and burned 166 gallons more fuel (663 v. 497). Both airplanes turned in seat miles per gallon that were comparable to Boeing jetliners.

In 1982 Learjet invited me out to Tucson to fly and compare some of their airplanes. First would be an original Lear 23, an airplane I always admired after seeing the first one fly at the Reading Air Show in 1964. In the true spirit of the airplane and the company, the demo pilot did vertical rolls into a cloud deck after a blistering low pass. In protesting his innocence to the FAA he said the airplane had gotten away from him.

Learjet wanted to demonstrate how far their product line had come since the beginning so I would be comparing the 23 with a turbojet 25 and a 35, the first Learjet with fan engines. They wanted realistic comparisons so I flew cross-country legs in all the airplanes for a total of four hours and 40 minutes of Learjet flying.

In comparing the 25 and 35 the obvious difference was in the greater fuel efficiency of the airplane with the fan engines. Learjet had also worked hard over the years at improving (taming) the flying qualities of their airplanes and that would be one of the reasons for the comparison with a 23.

While the airplanes looked a lot alike, there were substantial and important differences. Perhaps the biggest was the fact that the 25 and 35 were certified as transport category airplanes where the 23 was certified under the same rules as, say, a Piper Twin Comanche. At the time, some of its detractors even referred to it as a 500 mile per hour Twin Comanche.

The 23 was, though, a pleasant airplane to fly if you treated it gently. When it talked to you it was basically saying, “Treat me nice and I’ll respond in kind; treat me rough and I’ll beat the crap out of you.”

It was fun to revisit the airplane that, more than any other, set the pace for business jets. Yes, it was relatively small (some called it “Bill Lear’s executive mailing tube”) but it was comfortable, quiet and smooth in the cabin, and it went fast but not for too long because the fuel flow was high and the tankage relatively low. On the popular New York-Florida winter runs it could usually go nonstop with enough fuel remaining to fill your Zippo lighter.

An earlier Learjet flight, this one in 1979 in a Longhorn 28, was shorter but equally meaningful. A question from the Trenton, New Jersey, controller:

“Learjet Nine Kilo Hotel, say your filed altitude.”

“Flight Level Five One Zero.”

“Is that a modified airplane?”

“No, it’s a factory-built Model 28.”

It was the first airplane certified to FL510. The wings, with no tip tanks and with winglets, were the same that would be on the upcoming Model 55. It had turbojet (instead of fan) engines and was to be a limited production airplane because most of the wing production would go to the larger and more expensive 55.

Harry Combs, the eloquent head of Learjet spoke almost reverently about FL510. The sky would appear darker there and you would see the curvature of the earth according to Harry. He made it sound like this was just one step short of low earth orbit.

The 28 took five of us on a round-robin flight that reached FL510 and then brought us back to Trenton in an hour and 27 minutes. A substantial part of that time was spent at the low altitudes required to thread through the maze of Philadelphia terminal airspace before reaching a point where we could go higher.

Philly had finally given us a climb to 17,000 and on first contact with New York Center, the following: “Learjet Nine Kilo Hotel is cleared to Flight Level 510. I’ve never cleared an airplane to that altitude before but I could get used to it.” I had not been above the high 30s before that and I later flew other airplanes that were certified to 51,000 feet, but was never able to quite reach that altitude again. The Learjet 28 thus has a special meaning to me. I had my son along on the Learjet 23 flight previously mentioned and he was along on the 28 flight as well. At 14 he was probably the youngest who had flown at FL510. That too made it special.

I did a lot of comparison pilot reports when I was at FLYING but there have not been many since. They were a challenge to arrange because it meant doing two things (airplanes) at once so there was the requirement for two evaluator-pilots if the flights were to be flown at the same time. Still, I thought it was interesting and informative enough to do and it’s too bad it wasn’t continued.

I did a few pilot reports where the pilot who came with the subject airplane was as or more interesting and notable as the airplane itself.

I want to use these next pilot reports for something else, too. Some pilots feel that the primary purpose of these reports is to sell advertising to aircraft manufacturers. The ad-strokes, as we called them, might see it this way and there was some angst there when we devoted a lot of space to airplanes where there was little or no advertising possibility. Too bad. When I was in charge of editorial at a magazine, the potential for reader interest was foremost in choosing airplanes for reports.

Have you ever seen a Partenavia P.68 light twin? It was from Italy and was around in the 1980s. I am sure someone still dreams of making it a product.

Have you ever heard of Mira Slovak? He has been gone for a while now, but he came onto the free-world aviation scene when, as a Czech airline pilot, he flew his DC-3 west and defected. After that he became an aerobatic pilot, airline captain, and true aviation character.

Mira was involved in Partenavia sales and when they hung a couple of Allison turboprops on the airplane and stretched the fuselage, the first one of those, called the Spartacus, came to Mira’s base at Santa Paula, California. I flew my P210 there to fly the airplane with Mira.

I had flown and reported on the piston-powered airplane, with 200 hp Lycomings, and enjoyed the extra performance with the turboprops. The cruising speed was somewhat higher and the rate of climb was a lot higher. The engine-out climb was pretty good too and, in all, the airplane was appealing as well as accommodating for as many as eight. It had a lot of doors with one for the pilots, one for the center club seating section and one for the two seats in the rear.

Mira asked me what kind of buyer he might find for the airplane. At that time, in 1985, a lot of people were asking the same question about any airplane. Airplane sales had fallen off a cliff about five years before that and there hadn’t been much recovery.

The Spartacus never got going and just sort of faded away. As in so many other cases, it was probably a lack of access to capital. Nobody with the required bucks was apparently able to see where those bucks would find a good return if invested in a program like this.

The main thing I got out of all that was flight in an interesting airplane and a wonderful day and evening with Mira Slovak. He was fun, witty and interesting with some fascinating stories to tell, both about flying and boat racing. On the latter, he said it was a good way to meet nurses.

I had flown the piston-powered Extra EA-400 pressurized single earlier and was looking forward to evaluating the turboprop (Allison) Extra EA-500. I was also looking forward to doing so with Walter Extra. Walter is known primarily for his relationship to aerobatics and his EA-300 which many feel is the best all-around aerobatic airplane ever.

Some were surprised when Walter put his hand and mind to a pressurized single but the product does reflect the depth of his talent. He told me that the airplane was actually designed for the turboprop engine but the piston airplane came first and a few were built.

The most interesting thing about flying the EA-500 with Walter was that he provided the power settings and calculated the true airspeeds that were actually short of what had been claimed for the airplane. When things like that came up, the demonstrator pilots almost invariably said that when the airplane got into production, it would meet those speeds (never happened) but Walter never once mentioned this. He just sat contentedly in the right seat, let me explore his airplane, and did those true airspeed and fuel flow calculations.

It was interesting that the fuel flow read out was in liters per hour. I sure couldn’t convert that to gallons in my head and Water couldn’t either. The airplane flown was still under German registration and had not yet been certified by the FAA.

The Extra airplanes have been in limbo for almost ten years now and I am sure there will be efforts to revive and produce them though it is becoming ever more difficult to make a case that an investor can make a bundle by betting a bundle on something like this.

Another interesting demo pilot was F. Lee Bailey who I had known for a long while when I flew with him in his Bailey Bullet, a modified Twin Comanche.

The Bullet was a remanufactured airplane with all new systems, or, more accurately an all new system. With two large generators or alternators, I can’t remember which, the little 160 hp engines were cranking out a lot of electricity to cover heating and air conditioning and everything else.

Generating that much juice took horsepower and on the initial climb out of a Florida airport in Bailey’s Bullet with Bailey, my thought was that the airplane had two engines because it needed two to fly. Bailey and I are the same age and my other thought was about two old guys out having a lot of fun playing airplane. Nothing ever came of the Bullet.

Another airplane that never made it to production but that did prompt a pilot report was the Adam 500 push-pull piston twin. The demo pilot, Glenn Maben, was not famous but was a fine person and pilot and was later tragically lost while test flying an experimental jet.

The Adam 500 was a big composite airplane that flew quite well though when I flew it certification seemed a lot more distant than what the Adam people were projecting. The airplane I flew wasn’t pressurized, it had no heat, some of the envelope had not yet been defined, and the performance fell short of projections. I was told that the cruise speed would increase by a lot when main gear doors were developed but it didn’t seem to me like they would make that much difference.

The Adam 500 also faced the ever-present battles with weight and cost and investor interest and, in the end, lost. Both it and the jet-powered version of the airframe joined the long list of airplanes that I wrote about but that never came to fruition.

All the pilot reports were not about airplanes. There was a lot of action and innovation in avionics 40 years ago and both Collins Radio and King Radio approached me for some ideas about the faltering acceptance of some of their new equipment.

Collins (no kin) proposed that I take their Beech Duke demonstrator for some days and see what I thought about their new system. The main difference was that most everything was controlled by push buttons and displayed on the screens of that time. Wizened old veterans were used to knurled knobs and white numbers on black backgrounds and most had no interest in the new equipment.

I did have a little background on this because King Radio had sent someone to demonstrate their similar system to me. He was a fine fellow but lacking in demonstration skills. He was like those service people you get on the phone after waiting for half an hour. There is a spiel and please don’t dare ask a question because they might forget their place on the page they are reading from.

Collins had a different approach: no demonstration, no checkout. The only requirement was that I leave their Cedar Rapids base on a perfectly clear day and not try to use the equipment in anger until I had it figured out.

I had a secret weapon. Our 11-year old son was with me and then, as now, kids can quickly figure out technical things that are mysterious to old fuds.

It only took him a little while to perfect his technique at tuning and selecting things with the system and after watching him for a while, I caught on and by the time I returned the Duke to Cedar Rapids some days and flying hours later I was pretty proficient with the new avionics system.

When they asked how to best market these avionics, I had no suggestion other than to sell to 11-year old kids. That wasn’t much of a market and the equipment didn’t go far. And looking at what has developed since, it is obvious that they were just 30 years early. The fantastically successful Garmin G1000 and subsequent equipment would probably not have flown off the shelves in 1975, either.

What I always thought was petty politics even had a role in pilot reports a couple of times.

In the early 1950s a person at another publication complained that favoritism was being shown to my father in the availability of airplanes for reports. AIR FACTS was a small magazine (in size and circulation) at the time and the person complaining wrote for a much larger magazine (in size and circulation). I never knew the basis for that complaint which fell on deaf ears.

Thirty years later a different editor from that same entity complained that the manufacturers were showing favoritism in generously providing airplanes to FLYING, and, basically he demanded equal treatment. His complaint was rather late because it was in the 80’s, the blush was off the rose in the airplane business, and pilot reports weren’t what they used to be.

The last complaint came up in regard to an evaluation of a specific airplane, a 58P Pressurized Baron. I wanted to use the airplane some because I was thinking about getting one and had a tentative agreement from my employer about expanding the old travel budget to fit. Beech was all for it.

When the other editor heard about this, he basically put Beech on the spot by suggesting that whatever I got to do, he should get to do.

I gave them a way out. I would pay an amount equal to a monthly lease or payment installment to use the airplane for that period of time. It was something like $6,600. They made the other guy the same offer but in the end I guess I had a bigger budget than he did. Then it got scaled back to a couple of trips for both of us. I had no ill will toward my competitor because in his shoes I might have done the same thing. The fact that the complaint was made twice from the same pulpit did however make me wonder if the folks there just didn’t like the Collins boys.

I think that everyone agrees that new things like airplanes, cars, TV sets, whatever, often have technical or mechanical problems early in life. Manufacturers acknowledge this with warranties. Such things can also be discovered while flying for pilot reports.

I was headed southwest in that new 58P, en route from New Jersey to Oklahoma, when I noted that the left fuel gauge was going down faster than the right. I checked everything and the instrument panel offered no reason why this might be true. Next, I looked out at the left side of the airplane and, lo and behold, there was what looked like a vapor trail behind the left engine.

It could only have been fuel that was escaping from the left engine. My next thought was about what I should do. I ran through the options, considered all, and then decided that the prudent thing would be to shut the engine down and go to the nearest suitable airport and land. Why not leave the engine running and do that? I had flown Barons enough to know that when you retard the power to land they often belch and pop and I had no idea whether that could ignite the fuel that was streaming out of the engine. The thought of a blazing rollout was not appealing.

I shut it down, landed at Huntington, West Virginia, and finished my trip on the airlines.

The fuel pump had suffered an internal failure and was dumping fuel overboard. Beech sent a new pump, the excellent shop at Huntington installed it, and a Beech pilot came and got the airplanes.

The Beech pilot did ask if I would have shut the engine down on my P210 under the same circumstances. My answer was that I probably would if I smelled fuel but a later event suggested that I wouldn’t have smelled anything. The alternator fan on my P210 came apart one day, slinging stuff around in the cowling, and the primary fuel line got nicked in the process. I never smelled any fuel but when I landed about 20 minutes later it was flowing onto the ground pretty freely.

I had other engine problems with new twins while flying for pilot reports.

I was leaving Piper’s Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, airport in the third Twin Comanche they built and the right engine quit running soon after takeoff. I had turned off the electric fuel pumps (sooner than I should have) right before the engine failed so I turned the pumps back on. The engine didn’t spring back to life, the performance and the view outside (the airport is in a deep valley) was not encouraging so I thought I had best feather the prop and fly the airplane back around for a landing. That failure was related to a plumbing problem that they fixed.

In another event, we had gone to a nice grass strip west of Piper’s Vero Beach plant in a new Seneca to let our photographer shoot the airplane in an idyllic setting. Once that was done, we headed back to Vero. Soon after takeoff, the photographer, who was riding in the back, asked me if the airplane had a skywriting option, He was pointing at the right engine.

White smoke was really pouring out and my thought was that it had to be from a copious amount of oil coming in contact with the turbocharger. That was nothing I wanted to mess with so I shut the engine down and landed at Vero. The oil filter had actually fallen off.

That made it three v. none on twins v. singles in the engine malfunction department on flight evaluations. I would say that was nothing more than a happenstance.

When flying airplanes for reports, the demo pilot was always a key ingredient. Over the years, most I flew with were really good guys and pilots and they were pleasant to deal with. In all that time, there was only one glaring exception, a European pilot who had quite obviously gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that morning. He didn’t really want to brief before the flight and during the flight all the wanted to do was be quite loud and shrill. Fifteen minutes into the flight I told him I had seen enough and we could go land. I later met up with the airplane at another location and with a calmer demo pilot and did the report.

To me, a briefing was absolutely necessary unless I had flown with the other pilot a number of times and we knew each other well.

To begin, unless there was a general understanding about this, which pilot would be in command? I always wanted that understood. In the case of the Seneca with the trailing smoke, I was with a Piper pilot but knew that the decision on what to do was mine. In another case, with a pilot I knew well, I knew it would be his airplane when a tire blew on a relatively short and narrow runway. In fact, he had said, “my airplane,” and had taken over within seconds after we realized what happened.

I also wanted it understood what we would be doing. Often, demo pilots would tend to over demonstrate airplanes and I didn’t really want to venture even close to the edges of any envelope. The most trouble I had with this was when modifying existing airplanes with STOL (short takeoff and landing) apparatus was the rage. Demo pilots would have you believe that they had all but repealed the laws of gravity.

To me, a lot of it was voodoo but I had no problem with other pilots opting for mods like that if it made them feel good. Basically when I flew mods it was mainly to see if any harm had been done. No harm, no foul, even if some of the claims were preposterous.

I remember one proposed demo flight in a turboprop. From what was proposed, I thought maybe the keeper of the airplane was aware of those 1,000 nm trip reports I had done in the 1970s and that was what he wanted to show me.

It was winter, the wind was blowing, and the trip was westbound. I did the numbers and decided that the airplane might or might not make the long trip with a good reserve. I didn’t know the pilot and had no idea how he felt about fuel reserves so I took the easy way out. I had a place I needed to go that was 450 nm down the line so I asked if we could fly there where I’d get off and he could go on his way.

Something happened to a FLYING staffer that made me insist even more on full briefings about everything before flight, with no exceptions. The demo pilot in this case was something of a hot dog and, in a Normal Category airplane, he started showing off to our guy by doing aerobatic maneuvers. Being responsible for FLYING things like that, I had no choice but to tell the demo pilot’s employer that this was completely unacceptable. There was agreement on this and to my knowledge it never happened again.

There were a couple of business jets lost 30 or more years ago because of low-level aerobatics by demo pilots. All the more reason to be careful.

I did pilot reports on everything from motor gliders to airliners and always thought that was one of the most rewarding aspects of my job. Learning about the airplanes and then writing about what I had found was quite challenging.

Some thought that all pilot reports were flattery because we profited from advertising placed by the manufacturers. In closing, I’ll offer an example for the skeptics to mull over. It is also an example that new doesn’t always mean better.

Remember the Beech Starship? I do because a number of people told me they could sure tell from my pilot report that I did not like the airplane. I took some heat, but the airplane was noisy, it wasn’t that pleasant to fly, the performance seemed lacking, and it had some handling quality quirks, all of which I pointed out. Most of all, though, it was far from as good an airplane as the venerable King Air which it might have replaced had it been more acceptable.

I flew the first King Air 90 for a pilot report when I was at the old AIR FACTS, in the August, 1964 issue. King Air 90s are still in production and fly on where Starships are gone and all but forgotten. If I hadn’t retired from that sort of thing I might have recently written a pilot report about the latest model of a remarkable airplane I first reported on 50 years ago and that has outlived all challengers.

A Long and Wonderful Flight,

With Beginning Turbulence...

Date: 04/09/1979 – 09/17/2007

Aircraft Make & Model: Cessna P210N

Aircraft Ident.: N40RC

Route of Flight:

From: Here

To: 48 States and Canada

Duration of Flight: 8,963.44 hours

Actual Instrument: 795.2 Hours

Night: 273 Hours

Pilot-in-Command: 8,963.44 Hours

Yes, it was many more log entries than that and they spanned about half of the total calendar time that I flew as pilot-incommand and not far short of half of the hours that I flew as pilot-in command.

In flying this one airplane so much I learned a lot of things about every element of light airplane operation. Weather, mechanical considerations, insurance, flying technique, malfunctions, the pitfalls of building a new type based on an old certification and having fun dealing with all of it were part of my trip in N40RC. It was also quite an education on the shortfalls of FAA approval and certification of airplanes and accessories. It did a poor job on this one.

Back in the 1970s I knew that Cessna was developing a pressurized version of the 210 and I was convinced that this would define an important new class of personal and business airplanes. It was my thought that piston-powered pressurized singles would be a big factor in the market for years to come. (For the record, I was wrong.) Mooney had built the pressurized Mustang M22 but it was a slug, few (32 as best as I could figure) were built, and not much was learned about this general class of airplanes from it.

I wanted a P210. The process started as I expanded my editorial travel budget at FLYING to wrap itself around such an airplane.

It was a logical and easy case to make. I had been based in Little Rock, covering the middle of the country for the magazine and flying a Cardinal RG. Then I became Editor-in-Chief and moved to the New York office. Little Rock had been in the middle of everything. New York was far removed from everything and I needed a more capable airplane in which to run the traps, which were still mostly in the middle of the country.

Because FLYING was a business, there were considerations like the identities of our best customers. I was the employee chosen to do business with Cessna, I liked the company and its products, and I had previously bought a new Skyhawk and that Cardinal RG. Russ Meyer, who was running Cessna at the time, was a good salesman. I made a deal for a P210 to be named N40RC.

I originally leased the P210 from Cessna Finance but later financed it through one of the organizations that specialized in aircraft financing and it became mine, so to speak.

I followed the construction of 40RC, with the help of friends at Cessna. I already had experience with the P210 through evaluation flights, some of which were long. I also knew that the airplane had growing pains. After a nonstop from Wichita to Trenton, N. J. with a Cessna pilot we were greeted with an urgent phone call. The airplane we flew was supposed to have been grounded because of an exhaust system problem.

When we took the cowling off it was apparent the exhaust system was a basket case. It was a wonder the system had been able to maintain manifold and cabin pressure on the trip east but we decided that it must have started really coming unglued toward the end of the trip.

The quickest way to fix this was with a visit to a master mechanic, Jack Poage, at another airport. He was the only person in range who could weld an exhaust system.

Jack, who later became the FBO at Westminster, Maryland, where I based for a while, fixed the system and remarked that it looked pretty Mickey Mouse to him. Everything went back together and the Cessna pilot headed back to Wichita.

I filed this away and would revisit the exhaust system problem as time passed.

The P210 had a lot of what you might call design problems. You might not anticipate this because Cessna had built a lot of 210s and should have known what they were doing. That turned out to be true regarding the airframe, but the interaction between the pilot and engine and systems and the way the airplane was used turned out to be all-new and quite troublesome, to Cessna, to the FAA, and to the users of the airplane.

The turbocharged T210 had been around for a long while, and I am sure Cessna felt like they had learned much of what there was to know through their experience with this airplane. Little did they know that the pressurized airplane would be used in ways that would compromise what had been considered wellproven systems.

At that time, the rules allowed for the development of new airplanes based on existing type certificates. Most existing certificates had been issued based on CAR 3 (Civil Aviation Regulations Part 3) which dealt with certification standards. This had been upgraded to FAR Part 23 on the same subject but quite a bit of time elapsed before a new airplane was developed to the new standards.

A CAR 3 airplane was every bit as good as an FAR 23 airplane structurally but they were from a simpler time. You might say those requirements did an excellent job if setting the standards for a Cub. To be sure, there were special conditions and changes applied to subsequent airplanes built under an existing TC, and the P210 is listed as certified under both CAR 3 and FAR 23, but it still has the same basic certification basis as the original 1960 210 with which it has nothing in common. The date on that first 210 TC is April 20, 1959.

I don’t think anyone envisioned a pressurized airplane that was certified to 23,000 feet and had equipment approved for flight in icing as a CAR 3 airplane. Certainly in the P210 (and P337 which preceded it) many of the systems were pushed to (and sometimes beyond) the limits they had been exposed to even on the turbocharged but unpressurized versions of those airplanes. Neither CAR 3 nor Part 23 paid much attention to systems. As my use of the airplane unfolded, those systems got my undivided attention. A lot of other folks joined in and it was quite a learning experience.

I was a proud pilot when I took delivery of 40RC on April 9, 1979. I had a mission to fly that day, from Wichita to Houston. That flight, flown at a low Flight Level, went just fine. A day or so later, though, when headed home, things changed a bit. When I landed for fuel at Knoxville, Tennessee, the landing gear and belly of the airplane were awash with oil and a substantial discoloration on the cowling was external evidence of an exhaust leak.

I had to leave the airplane for repair and make my way home in a rented airplane. Ironically, it was a Cardinal RG.

A few days later I went back and fetched my P210. I vaulted up to Flight Level 190 for the trip to New Jersey and learned on the way up that the climb rate didn’t qualify as “vaulting” on a warm day. Climbing was not one of the airplane’s strong points. I got some ice at FL 190, the deice handled it okay, but the engine temperatures advanced almost to the redlines. That was probably caused by some loss of airspeed even while operating at high power, and ice on the cowling inlets causing a slight restriction to the cooling flow through the cowling.

When I put the airplane in the hangar it was with the thought that this would be an easy airplane in which to hurt myself. I was no longer the invincible young soldier that I once was and now had a family and the attendant responsibilities so I thought more about stuff like this than I once did. Everything about this new airplane needed to be watched.

The first “failure” was of the charging system. The alternator drive belt broke which disabled the system. The airplane was only a week or so old at the time.

I stopped at Savannah for mechanical service and didn’t realize how perceptive a remark made by the technician would turn out to be. After he removed the cowling and started looking for the alternator he said, “You have got to be kidding.” There was indeed a lot of stuff crammed in there and as I would slowly learn, this would mean more than busted knuckles and swear words for the technicians who worked on it. At the time, I (nor Cessna nor the FAA) realized what a profound role heat in the accessories section of the cowling would play in the life of this airplane.

The heat was pronounced both because of crowding and because the airplane was flown much higher more often that T210s had been flown and the higher you fly a turbocharged piston, the hotter it runs.

About a month after that belt failure, the alternator itself failed.

In total, there were seven charging system failures in the first few years of operation. Many involved a broken drive belt.

The alternator belt looked small for a 95 amp alternator and I started having it checked frequently. It would often be frayed and changing it would reset the clock on that problem. I made a discovery a few years later that resolved the belt question. Cessna used basically the same alternator as a second unit on the turboprop Caravan. A triple-V drive belt was used in that application. I finagled the triple-V pulley for both the engine and the alternator, got it all approved and installed, and never had one of the stouter belts break.

Some years later a small standby alternator became available and I got one of the first of those. Like so many things, buying one of the first meant the cost was much higher than it later became. The standby wouldn’t run everything but it would run enough to complete any trip where the electrical load could be minimized.

One alternator failure was rather memorable. I had left Fort Worth headed eastbound and was climbing in the vicinity of Dallas Love Field when I heard electrical arcing and could smell electrically-induced smoke. The alternator had failed in a rather grandiose manner. When it did go, it fried the big circuit breaker that was supposed to pop and protect everything else though nothing other than the alternator and breaker was damaged.

Love Field was closest so I landed there. Love was (and is) more of a heavy iron location and finding someone to work on a light airplane was a problem. I finally found a sympathetic shop foreman and they quickly came to the conclusion that something had to be done about the alternator.

The shop had no quick way to get another alternator or to fix that one. In a rather conspiratorial voice, the shop man told me that my alternator was identical to ones on Ford trucks. He told me where there was a shop that repaired truck alternators, loaned me a car to go there, made a call to a person he knew at that shop, and they did a complete overhaul on the alternator in just an hour or so. The parts were interchangeable. I paid up, took the alternator back to Love Field where they put my airplane back together and sent me on my way.

Someone asked if I replaced that alternator with an FAA-approved one as soon as possible. What do you think? I think that one lasted longer than any other.

Concurrently, I was learning a lot about the other systems on the airplane, especially the vacuum system. Where a charging system failure usually had slow motion consequences because the battery was available for a while, vacuum was a different story. The instruments started giving false readings quite soon after a failure.

On December 15, 1981, I had my fifth vacuum pump failure. Some actual instrument flying was involved after three of the five failures. On one, a partial panel descent from the flight levels through a lot of clouds was required and following that, I started adding electric standby instruments to my panel.

I had long discussions with Cessna about the pump failures and had other failures after the one in December, 1981 but the subject was made totally pertinent by something that happened soon after that one, on January 21, 1982.

There were four people in a P210 when it departed from Boise, Idaho. The doctor who owned or operated the airplane was flying. He was apparently in clouds and climbing through 10,000 feet when the vacuum pump failed. He knew he was in trouble and declared an emergency.

The pilot was not able to maintain control without a full complement of instruments, the limits of the airplane were exceeded, the airframe failed and all four high-earners perished.

I don’t think the alarm bells have ever rung louder in the offices of lawyers dealing with general aviation litigation. The plaintiff’s lawyers knew a gold mine when they heard about one; the defense lawyers knew a requirement for a lot of money and damage control when they saw it.

My aircraft logbooks were going to be subpoenaed for this case but I saved them the trouble and sent copies of the pages in question to both sides.

Cessna and the pump manufacturer knew they had a serious and potentially expensive problem. Because I was flying my airplane more than any other in the fleet, and because I had a good working relationship with Cessna’s engineering folks, they asked if I would come to Wichita, allow them to instrument my airplane, and run tests on the operating temperature of the vacuum pump.

We flew at all altitudes and the flight test engineer made records of everything. Then they altered my airplane by adding a cooling shroud to the vacuum pump and we flew all the tests again. The vacuum pump temperatures were substantially lower so the shroud was left in place and a deviation to the type certificate was issued. It was interesting to me that Beech had been using a similar shroud on Barons and I didn’t really get an answer when I asked if my shroud was a Beech part.

After the shroud was installed, the pump manufacturer asked me to change the pump after every 500 hours of operation and return the old pump to them for examination. After that, 500 hours became the recommended (but not required) life limit for the large vacuum pumps that were used on airplanes with deice boots. The boot manufacturer was also involved in this because the boots used the pressure side of the vacuum pump for inflation.

At about the same time I finished the pump test Cessna removed a VGH (velocity, g-load, height) recorder that that been installed at the request of NASA. They wanted to develop a picture of the typical use of a pressurized single-engine airplane. I guess I wasn’t the only person who thought this concept would go farther than it did. I think the data from my year of flying around with the recorder was used by Piper as they developed the Malibu.

The bureaucrats soon started going ballistic about the vacuum pump problem. Even though they had certified the airplane as airworthy, and had been wrong, the FAA and NTSB both thought they had suddenly sprouted the intelligence to solve both a real problem and a perceived problem.

The FAA acted as if it had just realized that it had certified a single-engine airplane for flight in icing (the work “known” hadn’t crept into the vocabulary at that time), that this would push systems beyond where they had been pushed before and thus make things less reliable, and that there was no system redundancy.

An airworthiness directive is issued when they think an airplane needs to be modified to meet the requirements under which it was certified. In effect, the FAA issues ADs to cover its screw-ups. They are usually issued with some time allowed for compliance. If the issue is immediate, they issue an emergency airworthiness directive. This effectively grounds the airplane until remedial action is taken “before further flight.”

The almost hysterical emergency AD on the T210s and P210s with boot systems came less than 60 days after that P210 was lost in Idaho.

All the AD did was “remove approval of these airplanes for Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) operation unless they are modified in accordance with the provisions specified in this AD.”

The immediate requirement was to alter the placards that approved IFR and icing flight. Then the airplane could be flown VFR. They gave two choices on returning the IFR approval. You could install an attitude indicator powered by an independent power source or you could change vacuum pumps and disable the deice system, thus ending the icing approval.

I already had an electrically-powered attitude indicator so was covered and by virtue of this kept both the IFR and icing approval.

Cessna made available a dual vacuum system that would satisfy the AD. They and the pump manufacturer wanted users to install that. They did not approve of the separately-powered attitude indicator because with it you would not retain the services of the autopilot. I was one-up on this because I had only a wingleveler autopilot that didn’t use the attitude indicator.

All the while, there was skullduggery behind the scenes. Many in the FAA and NTSB had become convinced that the approval of the airplanes for flight in icing was a mistake and that the approval should be rescinded.

I thought that would set a bad precedent and, among other things, had a rather testy exchange about it with Lynn Helms, who was FAA Administrator. I knew Lynn well enough to know that he was as stubborn as I. I also knew that he might well have been right, but that I would win the argument.

The reason I think they quietly dropped the idea to rescind the approval is that it would have been admitting a big mistake on their part. By approving the equipment they signed on to doing this in an airplane that lacked one item of redundancy that every other icing-approved airplane had: two engines.

A single-engine airplane has no secrets. Ask any layperson what happens if that engine fails and they will get it right every time. The FAA had gone down the slippery slope of approving a single in icing for the first time and there is no graceful way to go back up a slippery slope.

They were not going to go down that particular slope again and no other airplane has ever been approved for icing flight without full dual systems. That is called learning from your mistakes.

At the same time they were doing all these other things to and with my P210, Cessna replaced the magnetos with pressurized mags. I had not had any trouble with my old mags but the new and improved units were supposed to address some problems that other P210 operators had been having. More on this later after a little time had passed.

As I bring up more bumps in the road for the airplane, you will no doubt wonder how much more could happen. Rest assured, I, and a lot of other people wondered the same thing in the early 1980s.

The P210 had vapor return issues from the start. On my airplane, vapor problems would appear when cruising above 10,000 feet, from 15 to 35 minutes after I did the routine switching of tanks after one hour of flight. After the first few of many occurrences I was ready to pounce on this before there was a substantial loss of power.

When the engine would go rough enough to get my immediate attention, I would turn the aux fuel pump on low and switch tanks. I later learned that just switching tanks back to the one that had been used for the first hour would solve the problem. Then after a while you could go back to the tank that had the vapor problem and, for me at least, it never reappeared for an encore on a flight.

The fuel injection system on these Continental engines fed more fuel to the system than was fully used. This resulted in some vapor that needed to be returned to the fuel tank that was in use. Cessna had always used the fuel feed line for vapor return. This line ran from the tank down the side of the fuselage and into a small reservoir tank under the floor, one for each wing tank. The fuel would run down and the vapor would bubble back up.

The vapor problem had occurred on some T210s but it really came to the fore with the P210.

At one point, Cessna stripped most of the interior out of an airplane and put in transparent fuel lines so they could see what was happening in those lines. Seeing what was going on made you wonder why the engine was running at all. It was not a pretty sight as the engine-bound fuel seemed to fight its way through the returning vapor.

Again, Cessna wanted to use my airplane for a field trial of a fix that they developed for this. I had kept and provided Cessna with detailed records of each vapor event and the idea was to compare the “fixed” system with the old system. I think it basically added some check valves to the old system.

The “fix” didn’t work. Nothing changed. After a little interval they said they had another fix, one that was logical to me. Separate lines for vapor return would be added to the fuel system to leave the delivery lines alone and let them do their job properly.

It was back to the Cessna shop for my airplane for an installation of the new system. We were literally wearing out a relatively new airplane by working on it but I was determined to be part of the solution.

It took a while to install the new plumbing and Cessna let me have another P210, from their fleet, to use.

I have to report on something amusing that happened while this was going on. In every activity there are folks who look under stones in search of an “aha” moment. In this case it was alleged that I was so in bed with Cessna that they were doing all the maintenance on my airplane at no charge. It had certainly been frequently seen in both the experimental and regular shop but it was there to help understand all the problems that developed, it was not there for routine maintenance though I probably did get a few free oil changes.

Cessna engineers were not the only ones interested in my airplane. Piper was developing the Malibu in the early 1980s and I visited Piper’s Vero Beach facility frequently. More than once Piper engineers asked if they could move 40RC into their experimental hangar to look at some things. “Certainly,” I said, “just don’t copy the mistakes.”

Before I tell you about any more problems from that time, I want to fast forward to now and offer an illustration of how things from the distant past can bite you on the butt if you change anything about the way you operate an airplane.

Mike Busch, one of the smartest and savviest people on piston airplane issues, writes for the Cessna Pilots Association magazine and he recently did a story on a normally aspirated 210 that was having vapor problems that seemed almost identical to the ones I had over 30 years ago and that everyone thought had been put to rest or at least were fully understood.

When I asked Mike about it, he came up with an excellent explanation. The reason normally aspirated airplanes are having the problem now where they didn’t in the past relates to the technique of operating on the lean side of peak (EGT) for better efficiency. When operating lean of peak, the system returns more vapor and the old problem resurfaces. Years ago, Cessna modified the fuel system at the request of the owner but I doubt that they will do so today after a change in the method of operation causes the problem to return. Actually, not many took advantage of the old offer because retrofitting the new system took a lot of time.

As an aside, Mike Busch wrote his first magazine article for AIR FACTS, in the May, 1970 issue. Also, Mike will help you take care of your airplane and if you are interested go to savvyaviator. com to get the scoop. As these airplanes get older, more expert help is needed.

Then there was yet another emergency AD, this one prompted by engine failures that were caused by detonation. I felt like I was really part of this one because I had flown the very airplane that had the engine failure that led to the issuance of the AD. It wasn’t just a short hop, either. I used the airplane while Cessna was installing that NASA flight recorder in my airplane, it took a while, and I flew P210 N4967K for 36 hours and 30 minutes.

I always kept records on all engine operating indications on my airplane and did the same in 67K so when it hit the fan I basically knew why.

The engine instrumentation on these airplanes was approximate at best and what they called the fuel flow gauge was really a pressure gauge. Because an EGT was optional ($180) and not required equipment, the Pilot’s Operating Handbook had to tell the pilot how to do it based only on manifold pressure, rpm and fuel flow.

As the airplane was originally built, word was to use 38 inches, 2,700 rpm and 186 pounds per hour for takeoff. For climb, it was 33 inches, 2500 rpm and 125 pph. Cruise was per the power chart. As it turned out, setting power using only the approximate engine indications could result in serious damage to the engine. In the amplified procedures section of the POH they addressed use of the EGT, ranging from 75 degrees rich of peak at 80-percent power down to peak EGT at 55-percent or less. Using EGT was, at the time, far from as well understood as it is today.

There had been detonation-related failures before the one in 67K. That one just happened to involve someone who was politically connected. I know that at least one of the previous failures had happened as the airplane was being flown away from the factory after delivery. I heard that there had been more like that but never verified it.

As emergency ADs tend to be, this one was pretty Draconian about what had to be done before further flight. Some testing of the engine to determine it hadn’t been damaged was required, the timing had to be changed, and leaning was restricted. No leaning was permitted above 60-percent unless an EGT was installed. Under the provisions of the AD, in most normal operations, the fuel flow would be a lot higher and the endurance would suffer.

Of course the first thing that I did was look back at my records on 67K. From this I learned that the engine instrumentation in that particular airplane would result in excessively lean operation unless the EGT was installed (it was), was understood, and was used properly. I don’t think the last two requirements were met. Certainly, the way the readings went, the airplane was faster on less fuel than was my 40RC if the power was set per the POH and without regard to the EGT. There is no free lunch in airplanes and in the case of 67K, blowing the engine was a certainty unless the EGT was considered the primary judge of correct mixture settings.

FYI, I never embraced or used lean of peak operation and will let someone who does address why it doesn’t cause detonation, which it doesn’t seem to do.

Cessna was busy trying to make the P210 engine a bit less fragile and in the process they developed a new turbocharger with a larger turbine section. This was included in all new airplanes built after mid-1981 and was made available free for retrofit to existing airplanes. It was not made mandatory with an AD but Cessna insisted that everyone have it and touted a bunch of performance improvements with the new system

With the new turbocharger, most of the restrictions on leaning were lifted and Cessna made much of the fact that all performance parameters were improved by this mod. The improvements, though, were as compared to the old system operated under the AD restrictions, not the old system if operated properly.

My first few trips with the new turbocharger were disappointing. High cruise speed was lower and where I had occasionally been getting a true airspeed of 195 knots at FL210, with the new system I was running five to ten knots less. The critical altitudes were lower, too. To me, the main benefit of the new system was found in making the airplane a bit less vulnerable to pilots who didn’t care enough to study the old system and operate it properly.

Another engine-related item prompted yet another AD. Earlier I related a tale of a problem with the exhaust system on one of the first P210s. That devil jumped up and bit the airplane hard after some had a little time on them.

The shop called me one day, somewhat breathless. They were doing a routine oil change and “discovered” something that didn’t look right. In one of the bends in the exhaust system a bulge had appeared. The technician said it looked like a growth. Did my airplane have gout? (Too?)

I was in my office in New York and my airplane was at the airport in Trenton, New Jersey, so I couldn’t rush right out and look at this. I told them I’d be there the next day and then called one of my new best friends in Cessna’s engineering department.

I didn’t get far into a description of what the technician had said when the person at Cessna interrupted me. He knew what was happening and didn’t need to hear the details. He said he would call the shop, find out exactly where the bulge was, and would send a new piece.

After that, they again wanted to experiment using my airplanes. I went to Wichita and they installed a new exhaust system on my engine. The problems had been limited to sections where there were bends and the experiment used Inconel for those sections where the rest remained stainless steel. Cessna had long since gone to Inconel for the exhaust on their turbocharged twins but these airplanes, and their engineering department, were located on the other side of town and there apparently wasn’t a lot of back and forth on things like this.

The exhaust parts were joined with slip-joints. Each piece fitted snugly into the next piece. The first question that came to my mind was how dissimilar metals would work in such a system.

They didn’t. I hadn’t gone much above 5,000 on the climb out of Wichita, headed home, when I could see that this exhaust system was leaking like a sieve. My airplane got to spend yet more time in the shop and this time was fitted with a complete Inconel system that was apparently fabricated in the experimental shop.

If I ever had a cracked exhaust part, I honestly wondered how a factory-built part would fit into my system and some years later I found out that it would work just fine. I think in the many years and hours with the new system, I only replaced that one piece plus one exhaust pipe.

I mentioned earlier that Cessna had put pressurized magnetos on my airplane for me to test out. That turned out to be a disaster.

The pressurized mags started failing not too long after they were installed. The engine has two mags so it can continue running if one fails but nobody said they would run smoothly on one mag. The P210 literally demanded that you land immediately after one mag failed.

This happened to me in a particularly inconvenient place. I had been to Calgary, in Canada, to fly off to the Arctic and land on a gravel strip at Resolute in a Pacific Western 727. After that excitement I was headed home when 40RC decided to provide more excitement. It was the most spectacular mag failure I had and there was absolutely no choice but to land at the closest airport, which was at Regina, also in Canada.

I would have even been tempted to try to get back to the U. S. if had known what was going to happen next. The friendly technician didn’t take long to verify that a magneto had failed. He also didn’t take long to tell me that getting a replacement magneto into Canada was simply not a service they could render. His suggestion was that I go home on the airline, get another mag, bring it back, and he would put it on.

The mag manufacturer actually sent me a set of mags, complete with harnesses. I usually travel light but it took my biggest suitcase to hold all the hardware plus clean underwear. This was well before 9/11 but they were X-raying luggage and that suitcase with two mags and all those wires passed X-ray muster at LaGuardia and Toronto as I made my way back to Regina. I never did think anybody looked at those X-ray machines and I must have been right.

That was the last straw on the mags. They said the problem was with the pressurized air being contaminated. My thought was that it increased the already high temperature in the mags and made their service life quite short.

Spare mags went onto my list of parts that I always had in the baggage compartment. From previous experience I already had a spare alternator, voltage regulator (alternator control unit), spare belts and a vacuum pump back there and I flew with this array of spare parts for over 20 years. Several times I landed with a broken something and surprised the technician when I told him I had a spare, all he had to do was install it.

Over the years, 40RC needed care in the field a lot of times, in all parts of the country. I can honestly say that each and every time it got prompt attention from the shop wherever I landed. My thanks to all those good people.

The bulk of the problems came when 40RC was relatively new and after a few years the airplane actually became reasonably reliable. Sure, stuff broke and cylinders cracked and only a couple of engines made it to TBO but the airplane had finally reached the state you would expect of an FAA-approved and certified airplane. It had been lacking, it was expensive for the manufacturer and should have been embarrassing for the FAA (which is not capable of being embarrassed) and was inconvenient at best for the user.

So for most of the life of the airplane it worked well and I got to enjoy all the plus factors without having to spend so much time on the problems, of which there were still a few.

When I got the airplane it had those basic Cessna avionics that everyone disliked so much. It wasn’t long before I had switched to King equipment and when I retired the airplane it had a Garmin 530 and a full Bendix/King IHAS 8000 package which included a vertical profile radar, traffic and ground prox.

It had one of the first IFR-approved GPS units (Garmin) and 40RC actually flew the first fully legal and approved GPS approach ever, by any airplane. The FAA Administrator and AOPA president claimed to be first, the same day, but a little birdie who knew told me that their database was out of date so their approach wasn’t legal. My database was current. I had gotten it from that same little birdie who also had one for the other airplane but it wasn’t yet installed.

When I first got the airplane, insurance wasn’t a problem. I was using it on the business of large companies and corporations and they naturally had liability concerns. I carried high limits ($10-million) on my airplane and bought (from the same company) a bigger $100-million umbrella policy for my employer.

As time ran, insurance became an ever bigger problem for two reasons.

The poor accident history of the P210 caused insurance folks to become leery of the airplane. In fact, the P210 had the highest fatal accident rate of any certified airplane and all the underwriters knew this. One insurance executive told me that his company would not insure a P210 for anybody, at any cost.

The second reason was my personal relationship with the calendar. They started getting sticky about insurance when I turned 65, they got worse when I was 70, and when I retired the airplane just before my 74th birthday I was operating with lower liability limits.

When I made the decision to retire (scrap) the airplane, it was based on a lot of things.

Good old 40RC was, to me, just about worn out. Even though I wasn’t flying it much, the cost of maintenance was sky high and going higher. There was a time limit of 13,000 hours on the windshield and windows but no time was specified for anything else.

I once asked a Cessna engineer how long he would fly one of the airplanes based on the testing they had done. He pulled 10,000 hours out of thin air and said that was not really supported by any testing that they had done except maybe on the pressure vessel. N40RC was just under 9,000 hours when I threw in the towel.

The lack of reliability on so-called overhauled accessories was becoming big trouble, too. Things like alternators and vacuum pumps and starters and fuel control units could either be junk in a box or, at best, serviceable for a while. I understand that some order has been restored to the accessories business and that is excellent news for anyone attempting to keep an old and complicated airplane viable.

Finally, I guess I just decided that the airplane was about worn out. I had always said that I was going to make me and 40RC come out even, but not in the same place. I guess that sort of worked because while I am still here, like the airplane I am no longer flying. I flew a little after it was gone but not much and it was never the same.

Despite all that initial trouble, there was a lot more good than bad about the airplane. I still think it is a viable concept but for it to really work well it needed an on-purpose from-scratch airframe and a turbine engine. That is called a TBM 900, is available today, and costs a bunch of money.

The P210 was probably the most comfortable and useful piston single ever and even with twins included it was close to the top of the list on comfort. My wife, Ann, who flew with me in everything from a Piper Pacer to Concorde said that of all the seats and chairs in her life, on the ground or in the air, hers (right front) in 40RC was the most comfortable of all. She loved that airplane.

Pressurization, modest as it was, made possible comfortable trips that would otherwise have been bumpy ordeals. The airplane was not air-conditioned and didn’t climb strongly but in hot weather it was almost always possible to cruise in cool and smooth air.

With standard fuel, the P210 was not a long-range airplane though it would go a good distance at low power with a tailwind. After I added a 30 (29.4) gallon aux tank in the baggage compartment the range stretched out and I don’t think I ever failed to go non-stop from Maryland to and from Florida. Eastbound, it would easily get home non-stop from Dallas or Wichita, or, one stop from Las Vegas.

The airplane was not particularly fast unless there was a tailwind. My record groundspeed was 324.7 knots during a three hour and five minute flight from Kansas City to Hagerstown, Maryland. I won’t detail the flights with groundspeed below 100 (actually as low as 80) but there were a few of those. The airplane actually averaged a takeoff to touchdown groundspeed of 156 knots, as recorded by my Garmin GPS, against an average true airspeed of 175-180 knots. The average is lower because of climbs lasting longer than descents, maneuvering, and headwinds lasting longer than tailwinds.

I still have the pilot’s control wheel in my man-cave and every time I look at it I get a little wistful but I always tell myself I have been there and done that. And when a friend pointed out how rich I would be if I had spent that $1.4 million on Wal-Mart stock, I replied, “Yes, but you can’t fly Wal-Mart stock.”

I close like I started, with a log entry:

Date: September 17, 2007

Aircraft Make and Model: Cessna P210N

Aircraft Ident: N40RC

Route of Flight:

From: HGR

To: 6A2

Duration of Flight: 3:00

Remarks: 40RC’s final flight. A much loved airplane!

Concorde Adventures

In my long career in the aviation business it was no secret that I didn’t care for overseas junkets. I never attended the Paris Air Show or Farnborough and I remember passing up boondoggle trips to Brazil and Japan among other places.

This probably explains my getting several “what’s going on” calls when my name showed up on a list of participants for a French trip to attend the first rollout of the Falcon 900 business jet. I had declined on many such events but this one came with a carrot that I simply couldn’t resist. Dassault, builder of the Falcons, had chartered an Air France Concorde to whisk us from New York to Paris for the May, 1984, festivities, and then bring us home.

They laid on a grand party with food and wine that I didn’t know existed, entertainment, the rollout, and a tour of the Normandy beaches.

To this country boy at heart airplane nut, though, the Concorde trip was the really big deal. I was first smitten when I saw the first Concorde landing in the U. S. at the grand opening of DFW airport on September 20, 1973. I have read that the airplane was SN 002, the first built in England, but I have a picture of it that says “Air France” on the side. I did once hear that on some of those proving/test flights they put British Airways décor on one side and Air France on the other.

I also remember what the Concorde captain reportedly said when he stepped from the airplane out onto the air-stair landing and was asked what he thought about the new DFW airport: “My, concrete must be cheap in Texas.”

My original impression of the airplane, based on the ride in the cabin of the Air France Concorde on that charter flight, and a brief visit to the flight deck, was of a fast, noisy, complicated machine that operated without a lot of margins. I still remember that first takeoff from the wavy runway at JFK. It felt like a run to the end of the runway followed by a stagger into the air and an initial poor climb gradient.

I wrote about that in FLYING. There was no reaction from the French but the British, who also operated Concorde, sounded off loud and clear. I first heard from Captain John Bradshaw, one of the original Concorde captains, and then from John Silver of British Airways public relations. They proposed that I learn more about the airplane. I thought that was a fine idea.

I realized that they didn’t want me in their Concorde until I had learned something about the airplane when they sent me a First Class ticket on a 747 from JFK to Heathrow.

What followed was a fascinating immersion in all aspects of the Concorde.

It started in a pub in Bristol which is near Filton, where much of Concorde training was done. The simulator was there and the British airplane was built there and first flew from that airport on April 9, 1969. Concorde development and construction was concurrent in Britain and France and the first French airplane had flown a little earlier.

My pub briefers were Captain John Cook, First Officer W. D. “Jock” Lowe and Senior Engineering Officer George Floyd. Cook and I later became close friends and enjoyed family visits back and forth across the Atlantic. Lowe went on to become a captain, then Concorde chief pilot and later chief pilot of all British Airways.

It was pretty fine hangar flying and between sips of warm beer I managed to take a few notes. It was interesting to me that they thought Concorde had flown more supersonic hours than all the air forces in the world.

Starting the next morning I was given what amounted to a condensed version of the ground school on the airplane. I took pages of notes as I listened to two different instructors, and I wrote quite a long article about it in FLYING.

Here, I’ll just pass on some interesting and fun facts and not go into all the technical details.

The airplane

One of the first things folks noticed when Concorde was on the ground was the famous drooped nose. This was seen primarily when the airplane was landing and provided pilots with a view out front when operating at high angles of attack. The delta wing had to operate at high angles to develop lift at slower speeds. There were no flaps (or speed brakes) so the shape of the wing does it all and the drooped nose allowed pilots to see what was going on.

The nose drooped 12-degrees for approach and landing, when the nose-up attitude was greatest, and five degrees for takeoff. When the nose was fully retracted, a visor was brought up that streamlined the whole thing and resulted in a perfect pointed nose. The visor had to be in place at Mach .95, before the acceleration through Mach 1.0. In most air-to-air photos of the airplane the nose is fully up and the visor down. In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen an in-flight photo of Concorde with the visor in place. When the airplane was parked, the nose is up and the visor down which is when the airplane is at its photogenic best. I think this is the way it is now displayed in most museums.

The maximum indicated airspeed down low was 300 knots. That increased to 400 at 5,000 feet and to 530 knots to 30,000 feet where the limit became a maximum of Mach 2.04. Going fast makes heat and the limit temperature at the nose (the hottest spot) was 127 degrees C, which is pretty warm for an aluminum airplane.

The speed resulted in considerable heat generation over the entire airframe and passengers with window seats sometimes mentioned noticing some heating of the sidewalls. The airplane had four air conditioning systems and with one inoperative the airplane had to be slowed below the normal Mach 2.0 cruising speed to manage the heating of the cabin. That heat caused the cabin to be nine inches longer at cruise than at rest.

Fuel was transferred aft, to a tail tank as the airplane accelerated and the center of lift moved aft. This was done to keep the control surfaces in a near-neutral position to minimize drag. There were six elevons across the trailing edge to control roll and pitch plus two rudder elements. Fuel was also moved to change the shape of the wing slightly near the top of the climb, for optimum cruise performance.

The pilot’s controls were like in any airplane and utilized a dual early version of a fly-by-wire system. If there were a problem there, the system had strain gauges that would measure pilot force on the controls and move the surfaces accordingly.

I hadn’t been in ground school for long when I began to really appreciate George Floyd’s Senior Engineering Officer title. That side-facing crewmember, with a massive panel of gauges and switches, was critical to the operation of Concorde.

It’s not possible to cram air into jet engines at Mach 2 so a complex system modulated the intake air to Mach .5. This was done automatically but in the event of a problem, the engineer could handle it manually. The four engines generated 32,000 pounds of thrust each with 38,050 available through the use of the afterburners, which the British called “reheat.” By comparison, the most powerful engine available on a twinjet 777 puts out 115,300 pounds of thrust.

New Concorde pilots, who all came from the left seat of subsonic jets, got six weeks of ground school before going on for 64 hours in the simulator, which is where I went next.

Simulator time

At that time it was an early-generation simulator. The visual was produced by a camera moving about over a diorama in a large room. The scenery was thus limited and the view was far from as good in today’s digital visual displays.

Rotation speed, Vr, was 200 knots for my first takeoff. There the nose was rotated to 14 degrees nose up (13.8, actually) and then to 19 degrees when the airspeed reached 250 knots to keep the speed at the limit below 10,000 feet (in the U. S.)

I quickly learned why the airplane had been so lethargic after that French takeoff at JFK. Concorde is simply not comfortable at lower speeds. There is a buffet because of the low speed drag and when the airspeed went above 325 knots the aerodynamics smoothed out and the rate of climb increased dramatically. There is also some vibration from the drooped nose when it is down.

John Cook was my simulator guide and he continually stressed that Concorde has to be flown with precision, with attitude the primary guidance. When he said 10.5 degrees nose-up on approach, that is exactly what he meant. The power was set by an autothrottle system so the airspeed would be correct.

Concorde had mechanical instruments including a quite large attitude indicator with a bug to set for the target pitch attitude. The flight director display was the old original cross-pointer style which I had flown, but not in a while. It took a little flying to become reacquainted with this display.

I flew a passable ILS and landing and was told that after touchdown the nosewheel had to be flown onto the runway. It’s pretty far off the ground in the landing attitude so letting it plop down was not an option.

Flying at low speed and low altitude, the controls were light and pleasant and after a while I sort of forgot about the differences in the delta-wing airplane that was following me around and enjoyed flying it.

We flew the simulator through a bit of a flight to New York which brought up the transition from departure to en route climb and the cruise. The latter two events are the same, really, because the crossing was with a block altitude assignment of FL480 to FL600. The speed was held constant at Mach 2.0 and after reaching FL480 the altitude drifted up as fuel was burned off. FL600 was not often reached on the crossing as by the time it was close, in the high 50s, it was time to start a descent.

I hand flew the simulator through Mach 1.0 and up to 1.7 where the procedure calls for turning the controls over to the autopilot.

The supersonic part of a flight couldn’t begin until over water and when leaving London this happened over the Bristol Channel. There, at an altitude of FL280 and speed of Mach .95 the afterburners were relit two at a time (they had been used for a short while on takeoff), the nose-up attitude was increased about five degrees and the airspeed was held right on the never-exceed barber pole.

The airplane became less stable in both pitch and roll as it accelerated and maintaining a precise airspeed was hard work. Deviations of just a little bit set off a warbler which told you both that the speed was off and who would buy a round at the pub after the flight. I hoped someone warned the barkeep at the Barley Mew to have plenty of suds on hand. The good stability returned after the speed reached about 1.2.

When we got to Kennedy the simulated weather was down so I could see an autoland Category IIIa ILS to runway 31R. A logical question was asked here: Why did they put the Category IIIa ILS on the shortest runway at the airport? I told them that I would look into it. The answer had something to do with the environment around the runways.

A few years later I had a two and a half hour session in their completely upgraded Phase II simulator with a digital visual display which made that part of the flying far more realistic. That time I did such dicey things as have two engines out on one side. I found things like that to be manageable only if strict attention was paid to the drag characteristics of the delta wing.

Back to my first visit: When I arrived at Heathrow for the flight to JFK in the real airplane I felt like I knew at least a little bit about it.

Flying the airplane

It was an evening flight, with departure after dark in London in December, and with the almost ever-present fog. The estimated flying time for the trip was 3+22 with a fuel burn of 165,214 pounds. Fuel was added for an alternate, and more fuel for this and that, and, as it almost always did, the airplane had full tanks, 208,775 pounds. That made sense when headed for JFK on a foggy night.

I had been in the cockpit of the simulator but somehow the airplanes seemed different. There was not the sense of complexity in the simulator that was felt in the airplane. It seemed to have more switches and dials than I had ever seen in a cockpit. Certainly a modern-day captain of a two-crew jumbo with a glass cockpit would have looked around and said “What in the hell is all this?” Good question but, rest assured, the three people I was with that night knew all the details of every switch and gauge.

John Bradshaw was the captain. At our scheduled departure time the visibility (runway visual range, or, RVR) was 100 meters with 150 (about 450 feet) required for a Concorde takeoff. The RVR was variable and Bradshaw wanted to be at the ready and not sitting in a long line of jumbos waiting for his turn if and when the visibility hit 150 meters. Concorde did burn a lot of fuel on the ground. In fact, on takeoff, with afterburners, the fuel flow was 180,000 pounds per hour for just a few minutes.

I guess engine start and push back was based on a hunch but it was a good one. As we crept along in the fog, only a 747, a 737 and an Airbus were ahead of us for the runway. We could only see the dim outline of the Airbus, directly ahead.

Our turn came after an Aeroflot Il-62 landed and we were cleared into position and hold, as was the terminology at that time. When the -62 went by, it could be heard more than seen.

Vr was 197 knots and the midpoint RVR was 250 meters. Bradshaw placed a damp cloth atop his head, donned leather gloves like racecar drivers wear, and the countdown, “three, two, one” was followed by the application of power and then the afterburners, two at a time. Power settings were electronically set based on power lever positions so the levers could be moved rapidly with no bad consequences. This was an early version of the power control systems (FADEC, for full authority digital engine controls) that have come to all modern jet engines.

Before going on, I can honestly say that the only thing that might have been more exciting would be a rocket launch into space.

The view of the runway lights whizzing by in the fog was pretty amazing as the speed reached Vr and the airplane was rotated to 14-degrees nose up. There was a bit of a strange sensation as the power was reduced to follow the noise abatement procedure. It felt a little like the world had stopped, like the feeling when the cat shot off a carrier is completed and the acceleration drops from that of the cat to that of the airplane.

When we got over the Bristol Channel and it was time to light the burners again and accelerate through Mach 1, the first officer got up and I was invited to take his seat, put my hands on the handlebars, and fly for a while. And I had thought the takeoff was exciting.

I didn’t write about this at the time except in my logbook. (“Capt. John Bradshaw let me hand fly accel from M .95 to M 1.7. Thrill of a lifetime!”) Nobody said not to write about it but I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble and had no idea how far up the line something like that was approved, if at all. I did feel it was probably something they had done before, more than once. We won’t go into what the Dom P sippers aft might have thought about it.

I had flown the acceleration in the simulator the day before so knew what to expect. But, believe me, I had that old “Mach 2 with my hair on fire” feeling that was expressed in “Top Gun.” As of the evening of December 11, 1984, I had actually flown an airplane supersonically, with a great deal of help. I filed that with other milestones.

All too soon we were approaching Mach 1.7 and I relinquished the controls and the right seat and returned to the jump seat.

An hour and 14 minutes in, we had drifted up above 50,000 feet and were indicating Mach 2.01. The groundspeed was 1,148 knots and the fuel flow 54,674 pounds per hour. An hour and seven minutes later we were at 56,600 feet doing 1,098 knots on 42,328 pph with 64,154 pounds remaining.

When we were an hour out of JFK all options were under review. The suitable airports from Halifax to Dulles were within reach and if JFK were questionable, the best time to plan a diversion would while still at altitude, doing Mach 2, which happens to be the best-range speed of the airplane.

The peak altitude on this crossing was 58,800 feet. To make the peanut butter and jelly come out even that altitude and all those knots had to be parlayed into a stop at the gate, near sea level.

Concorde had no vertical navigation system. Captain Bradshaw patted his head and said, “Use this computer right here. A lot of people don’t use it enough.”

Bradshaw’s personal computer worked perfectly and we hit every altitude restriction right on the money. Because we were still far enough at sea, the 250 knot restriction below 10,000 feet did not apply until near the end.

The view from the jump seat was quite good and to my eye the approach looked high. A glance at the glideslope showed that it was bang-on. The autothrottles were maintaining 162 knots on final and the engineer called out the radar altitude readings. At 15 feet, the power was retarded, a slight nose-up pitch adjustment was made, and Captain Bradshaw really greased it on. The turn off was 6,600 feet down the runway. Fuel remaining was 32,628 pounds.

That was a wonderful trip and the beginning of a great relationship with the airplane, the crews, and with British Airways. Needless to say, I came up with a number of article ideas and they were always ready with a Concorde jump seat ride to get me to London and back. (A seat in the cabin was also required in case an emergency called for clearing the flight deck of non-essential personnel.)

Oshkosh ‘85

Early in 1985, John Cook came by my office in New York for a visit and lunch. While there he shared exciting news: He would be bringing Concorde to Oshkosh. The first thing that came to my mind was the length of the longest runway at OSH. It was substantially shorter then than now.

John assured me that he had been practicing short field landings and that they could actually make approaches at lower speeds than used for the big city airports. It takes a lot more power on final approach at the slower speed, that makes correspondingly more noise, and normal approaches to big airports all have a noise abatement element. No problem with that at Oshkosh. There, airplane excellence is judged more by how much noise they make than by quiet flight.

For the Concorde arrival at Oshkosh, I was stationed at the building right by the runway from which the air show was run. We spotted the eagerly-awaited airplane on a long final and as it drew closer I wondered what John would do to make the arrival a grand affair.

He touched, lowered the nose, applied full power and lit the afterburners for a touch-and-go. He passed where I was just feet away and the nose level was nothing short of spectacular. No other machine could turn fuel into noise like that one.

A low level turn followed, a chandelle off the runway, after which he came back for a normal landing and enthusiastic welcome.

For years, I was the unofficial estimator of the crowd at Oshkosh. I would look, guess, and put a number in the daily newsletter we published at the show. Everybody, including the newspapers and TV stations, would embrace my number so, accurate or not, it became the number. And I will say to this day that there were more people on the field at Oshkosh for the Concorde arrival in 1985 than ever before or since. The ground traffic jam that developed after the show was over that day became legendary and prompted a complete overhaul of the road traffic patterns as well as some road construction, all because of Concorde.

They stayed at the show a few days, flew every day, and hopped passengers just like we used to do at the local airport. The tariff was a bit steep and everyone was disappointed the FAA would not come to some agreement where they could go supersonic over the Great Lakes but it was still a sell-out.

While Concorde was at Oshkosh, John Cook arranged for me to have a free run of things. That was fun, being part of the Concorde family, and I got more insight into the special nature of the airplane.

At one point, John asked me to step from the cabin out onto the wing of the airplane. We used one of the over-wing exits to get out there and when I straightened up and looked around, I felt so discombobulated I almost sat down. We are used to standing on level surfaces and Concorde’s sensuous wing has some interesting shapes and is far from flat. The visual illusion sure isn’t one of standing up straight.

John and I did a program together one evening at the Theater in the Woods. We yukked it up a little and got a few laughs but one member of the audience greatly upstaged us. In a quiet pause, this attendee was overcome by a pronounced moment of loud flatulence that echoed through the woods and into the Wisconsin night air. John looked at me. I looked at John; then we, and the audience, spent a few minutes laughing.

There was a moment at Oshkosh when I had second thoughts about being considered part of Concorde’s family. A group was gravitating toward the flight line so I went along. I didn’t realize what we would be doing there until it came my turn to ride in, or on, a Breezy Pusher. What could I do but hop on and enjoy the ride. It was fun but something I probably would not have done otherwise. They had apparently given a free Concorde hop to the Breezy pilot.

Concorde came back to Oshkosh but on subsequent trips they toned down the nature of the air show participation. John Cook was on one of those trips, in 1988, and I took his son, Chris, out to Oshkosh from Maryland to meet him. Chris had flown into Dulles the night before.

The British Concorde was due to appear at Oshkosh again in July, 2000, 15 years after the first appearance, but on July, 25, the French Concorde crashed on takeoff. Initially, the British said they would still come but that changed rather quickly.

To commemorate the tenth anniversary of Concorde scheduled service, British Airways took 100 (the capacity) of its friends from JFK to Bermuda for lunch. Operating at much lighter weight than for a crossing we vaulted right up to FL 600. Because we had high officials from both the U. S. and Bermuda on board the customs business was handled en route.

After lunch, as we were preparing to launch for the return to JFK, a honcho from Bermuda asked the crew if they would show the airplane to all the residents of the island. What an airplane for a loud and highly effective buzz job. It was fun to ride through but both the flight crew and the folks on the ground had the most fun.

Memorable trips

One special thrill for me came when they suggested that my wife, Ann, come along on one of the trips. I took her for her first airplane ride in our Piper Pacer many years prior and this was to be quite a step up. I was button-busting proud to be able to take her along on Concorde, to be able to take her to work with me. She enjoyed it greatly and loved telling friends about the trip. I had to work a bit while there but while that was going on, John Cook’s wife, Joy, took Ann for a tour of the sights in London. She saw more than I had ever seen there. After that we played tourist for a few days and then dashed home.

On the trip with Ann, the return was a morning flight. I had a car meet us at JFK and the plan was to let me off at my One Park Avenue office in Manhattan and then take Ann on home to New Jersey.

One of the passenger-friendly features of Concorde’s speed was that it minimized jet lag. I got from London to One Park by nine that morning. Could I put in a productive day in the office and then ride the commuter train home to New Jersey at my normal time? The productive part was open to question and I did almost sleep through the station that afternoon. As for Ann, the trip on home after they let me off was pretty slow and her time en route from JFK to home was a few minutes longer that our Heathrow to Kennedy time.

On one trip I actually came back the day after I flew over. I worked all day at British Airways and took the evening flight back. When I was going through U. S. Customs, the agent looked at me with great suspicion and questioned why I had gone to England on Concorde and returned the next day. In fact, he insisted on knowing why. I gave him an honest answer: “I went for the airplane ride.” That wasn’t good enough for him but the supervisor who was called knew of my coming and going and told him it was okay.

At that time, the foreign airplanes had pretty liberal policies about cockpit visits. One night, I was on the jump seat watching the proceedings when a frequent Concorde traveler wandered onto the flight deck. He recognized me, introduced himself, and we had a nice visit. Some months later, I was again on the jump seat and lo and behold the same fellow came forward. He took one look at me and said, “Richard, you are still here!”

Another night, I was standing in the galley having a coffee with a Concorde captain who was deadheading to JFK. In the middle of our conversation he cracked a wry smile and asked if I thought I would ever be standing up enjoying a coffee while going 1,100 knots. He allowed that it still amazed him and he had been flying the airplane for years. Somehow standing close to that pointed nose and going that fast boggled the mind. The coffee was pretty good, too.

Still another night I peered down and saw some lights that appeared to be headed the other way. I asked the captain of that was a 747 going to London. “No,” he said, “that is one of our 747s going to New York. You know, we are 700 knots faster than a 747.”

Most of my Concorde flying was when I was Editor-in-Chief of FLYING, and living near Princeton, New Jersey. So a big challenge was getting to and from JFK in less time than it took to fly the Atlantic. After Ann’s long ground trip, I mentioned this to John Cook and he gave me a number to call to make better arrangements. The number was for the British Airways operations office at JFK and I quickly made arrangements for a Bonanza from Ronson Aviation in Trenton to come to the BA ramp at Kennedy and pick me up after the next trip back. The 25-minute flight was much nicer than a lengthy limo trip.

John and Joy Cook were over visiting once and I took them to JFK in my P210 so John could fly the morning Concorde to London. They parked us on the ramp right by the airplane. Another time, I was going to meet someone and the BA ramp agent told me to follow him into operations, he wanted to show me something. Right there on the arrivals board, with Concorde, was Cessna N40RC.

I only got to fly Concorde with John Cook as captain once, from London to New York, and got a special treat at the end of that trip.

The Canarsie (now Parkway) visual approach to runways 13R and 13L at JFK has always been considered an airmanship challenge. It is truly visual, with landmarks (including a road to follow) and light clusters to use in navigating to the appropriate runway. Any experienced JFK controller will tell you that more than one airline pilot has screwed up on this approach.

I had flown the approach several times in my P210 and when it was assigned for John to fly this day I eagerly awaited his performance.

There are times when you are watching someone fly that you feel like they are wearing the airplane like their skin. John was erect in his seat. Head up. Doing the visual part, with an occasional glance at the panel to be sure everything was in its place. As he flew the beautiful supersonic transport around that pattern I just had the strong feeling that he was in his element, in his groove. Everything, including the landing, was perfect. I was truly in the company of a master of the art.

John Cook retired at age 55, as was the British rule at the time. He tried to stay active in aviation, and did so for a while but he finally just retired to the golf course. He died a while back and I miss his good company and wit.

We had moved to Maryland when I made my last crossing on Concorde and this one was from Heathrow to Dulles. We left London after the sun had set, I watched the sun rise as we outran it on the trip west, a car met me at Dulles, and when I watched the sun set for the second time that day I was enjoying a cool one on my deck in Maryland. Concorde was the only way in the world that a civilian could enjoy such an experience.

The beginning of the end

The crash of the French Concorde in Paris in 2000 dealt a harsh blow to Concorde. I am sure there was thought of throwing in the towel and I had actually heard that if there was ever a fatal accident in the fleet of either airline, British Airways or Air France, that would be the end of it.

The Paris accident was one of those freaks, caused as it was by a foreign object on the runway that was picked up and thrown by a tire into the underside of the wing where a fuel tank ruptured and a fire started. There had been a somewhat similar incident years before, where something punctured a fuel tank on takeoff but there was a difference. No fire the first time, disastrous fire the second time.

I wrote about the French accident in my book The Next Hour, and the final moments of that airplane were an interesting commentary on how, when everything that can go wrong does go wrong, a flight crew comes upon the impossible.

They didn’t give up on the airplane after the accident, though, and modifications were developed to protect against wing punctures by foreign objects. This added some weight to the airframe but I know the British compensated for this with a new lighter interior.

The British had always been more enthusiastic about the airplane than the French and what happened after the crash was further illustration of this. The British modified and put five airplanes (of seven) back in service, the French three. They flew them until 2003. It was said that the drop in airline travel after 9/11 caused the end of Concorde service but I always suspected there were many other reasons.

Concorde had been flying with its original avionics the entire time and the equipment was, to say the least, obsolete. According to one source an avionics retrofit would have cost British Airways a minimum of 200 million pounds, to be spread over a maximum of seven airplanes. That would have been a steep hill to climb.

I recall a problem they had when TCAS (collision avoidance) had to be added to the airplane because that was the law of the land. I never heard how they solved the problem but in the beginning it was acknowledged that no existing TCAS antenna or external sensor could survive the high surface temperatures at cruise so they would have to start over on that. They did and it apparently worked.

Fuel costs were also a problem for the airplane. With the advent of twins for ocean flying, airplanes like the 777 and A-330 delivered over four times better seat miles per gallon than did Concorde. When jet fuel was cheap, this didn’t matter as much but as the cost escalated, it did.

Concorde always had a higher load factor coming this way than it did going the other way. The math is simple on that. Using local time, coming here you arrive before you leave there. Going the other way, you get there over eight hours after you leave here, again using local time.

For a while, they did a cruise deal with Cunard: one way on the QEII, the other way on Concorde. My friend John Cook did a number of these and one of the attractions was having the Concorde captain lecture during the ship part of the trip. Dinner at the captain’s table involved both captains, too. Guess which direction was the ship and which way Concorde? It was a way to fill eastbound seats that might have otherwise gone empty. I heard them say that Concorde would be wildly profitable if they could only fly the westbound trips.

Another Concorde advantage was that it flew above the often-howling winter winds so didn’t have the slower trips that bedevil the subsonic airplanes flying at lower altitudes.

I have forgotten the last one-way fare I heard about but a moment with a calculator and knowledge of rules of thumb suggests that the cost to the airline for each passenger would have been a minimum of $7,000. At that time, that was probably at least double (or more) the highest 747 fare. Since then, the airlines have discovered super luxurious accommodations, including privacy and beds, for First Class and are getting correspondingly high prices. The price of a “compartment” on a coastto- coast or international flight would probably be about what a Concorde ticket would run today. Time will tell whether or not the super-expensive service will endure.

There are some who hold that Concorde was a failure. It was noisy and expensive, true, but it was really fast and that is what airplanes are all about. There is also the fact that Concorde flew passengers from 1976 to 2003, less a little time out for mods after the French accident. So, it basically flew passengers for 27-percent of the time that powered airplanes had been flying when it was retired. It had a perfect safety record in scheduled service. The French accident was on a charter flight.

No, the original order book of over 100 airplanes from 19 different airlines didn’t work out. In the end, only 20 Concordes were built. Four of those were for testing, eight each wound up at British Airways and Air France. These were basically given to those airlines. Both airlines operated only seven of their fleet, holding one for spares.

The British and French taxpayers picked up the tab so the rest of us could have access to the best airplane ride of all time. Our heartfelt thanks to them.

The two airlines flew Concorde for about a quarter of a million hours, with the British flying more than the French. Several of the British airplanes had over 23,000 hours on them when retired. That was against a life limit of 45,000 hours on the airframe.

Maintenance was exhaustive and I had a look at a Concorde in the throes of major maintenance. The structure that I could see was complex and strong in appearance. When the airplane was first put into service, it was predicted that the first skin cracks would come at the top of the fuselage just ahead of the wing. The sole cause of those cracks would likely be the uneven runways at JFK. This was watched closely and it came true.

Despite the sturdy appearance, the design load factor of Concorde was plus 2.2 g and minus 1 g. That compares with 3.8 g for a normal category general aviation airplane. The nature of the airplane was such that turbulence would place far less stress on the airplane than on our airplanes. Concorde’s wing span of 84 feet compares with 212 feet and seven inches for a 777 so the wing bending loads in turbulence would be quite different.

A final flight

Before Concorde’s retirement, British Airways flew some flights to give friends of Concorde one last ride in the airplane. Mine came on August 9, 2003.

We launched from JFK at mid-morning, went to FL600 and Mach 2.0, had a nice lunch, circled around out about Bermuda and returned to JFK. That was my 14th and last Concorde flight.

The airplanes are now on display in museums if that turns you on. To me, though, Concorde in a museum is like a wild animal in a cage. It was an airplane of superlatives and my exposure to it was one reason why, when I was Editor-in-Chief of FLYING, I knew for certain that I had the best job in the world.

That last ride was a great day for me but a sad day for aviation technology. The fact that there was no further interest in an airliner that flew well over twice as fast as any other is, I think, one of the most regrettable aviation milestones in the history of our activity. Shame on us for not continuing the quest to always fly faster.

Check Rides I Have

Known and Loved

Most of us remember notable things about our flying, check rides for example. When I was starting out and collecting certificates and ratings, it seemed like I was constantly either preparing for, or taking check rides. Some were more fun than others and I can honestly say that none made me nervous.

Like most all pilots, my first check ride was for the private certificate. It was conducted by Lamar Brodnax, designated examiner who was the manager of Camden Flying Service in Arkansas, where I took my initial training. The airplane used was a Cessna 140, N1808V and the date 2/14/1952.

Lamar was a pretty laid-back guy. We basically just went flying. First, he had me plan a cross-country trip and the ride started as we began that trip. After a few miles he was satisfied that I had noted the time off, and was flying the heading and identifying the landmarks as they passed beneath. Then we did some of the maneuvers I had been practicing and after an hour and a half we landed and Lamar congratulated me. I was a new private pilot. As best I recall, he didn’t make the speech about it being a license to learn.

The commercial came next, five months later on 7/14/52. I flew with Bill Carson, the FBO at another airport, and we used a Champ, N1154E. This one didn’t involve a check of my navigational skills, was almost entirely spent on maneuvers, and took just over one hour. It was a lot like the private check ride.

A couple of months later I took my multiengine check ride in a Cessna T-50 (Bamboo Bomber) and it was pretty simple. The airplane didn’t have feathering props and on one engine it would go forward and down. Vmc was not a problem because of a huge rudder compared with pretty wimpy 225 horsepower Jacobs engines.

At that, I was done with the easy part. Next would be what was then called a flight instructor rating. It could be conducted only by an FAA inspector from what was then called the GADO and is now called the FSDO.

When I first talked with the inspector, Al Meyer, who had a reputation as a hard-ass, he asked me how old I was and how many hours I had. I was informed that he would give me the ride if I insisted but added that I was really too young and inexperienced, to come back later.

I waited a while and spent some time talking to other pilots who had flown with Al. By the time I took the ride on 8/24/53 I was 19 and had 730 hours.

We flew in my Super Cruiser, N3389M. I was familiar with the airplane and had practiced everything I had been told to expect.

The precision spins, lazy 8s and chandelles went fine and then we turned to one of Al’s favorites, spot landings.

I did a couple, hitting the spot. Then Al told me to fly my normal pattern but not to pull the power until he said so.

I was on final, ridiculously high, when he said to pull the power and hit the spot without slipping or s-turning.

What the FAA wanted at the time was to see how an applicant did at flying the airplane right at the edge of the envelope.

I slowed to well below the normal approach speed, close to a stall, and the rate of descent increased by a lot. I could feel it as the airplane almost stalled and I played it down a final approach slope that led to the spot. As it was going, I knew I didn’t have enough energy to flare so the last little bit of technique was to gauge the right time to reduce the angle of attack and gain enough energy to flare.

I managed the last little bit of that game of aerial chicken well and the landing was on the spot and normal.

After spending but an hour with me, Al said it was a good ride and that I was ready to start signing off the dual that he knew I had been giving but that someone else was signing off.

It had been the most intense hour of flying I had done to that point but I thought Al was imminently fair.

To show that over the years the FAA has never been consistent, the recently issued Advisory on stalls and stall training is pretty far from that slow final they wanted way back when. After the ride, I took that out of my repertoire and resorted to much safer slips to deal with a high approach.

I flew with Al Meyer again for my instrument rating, on May 9, 1955. The ride this time was in my Pacer, then N7785K, later to become N125RC.

At the time the only acceptable view-limiting technique was to cover the inside of the windshield and the side windows with specially-fitted orange plexiglas and to wear goggles with blue lenses that precluded seeing anything through the orange. It was cumbersome but I had been doing it for my instrument training so was used to it.

The instrument ride took but an hour and included a low frequency range and omni (VOR) approach, some partial panel and a couple of unusual attitudes. Al did remark that my Pacer looked like a flying bird cage because of all the antennas on it.

The next notable check ride didn’t come until 7/10/58. I had no real use for what was then called an ATR (now ATP) but I wanted one. Few pilots other than airline guys had this and I was told that I had best get one of them to prepare me for the ride and make the recommendation.

It was required that an ATR applicant fly with an FAA air carrier inspector so after the Trans-Texas DC-3 captain I had been flying with said that I was ready, the GADO set the wheels in motion to get the appropriate inspector.

I was in Little Rock at the time and the inspector had to come from the FAA regional office in Fort Worth. Inspector Joe Werbke made a special trip to Little Rock to administer my test in Twin Bonanza N4305D, which I was flying for a highway contractor.

The oral exam took a while and covered such minutia as required tire pressure and minimum and maximum allowable engine parameters. This was all learned without the benefit of ground school or special courses but I was told what to expect and was ready.

The flight lasted two hours and 20 minutes, my longest check ride. We did everything in the book and by the book. One maneuver was the canyon approach. Descend straight ahead for 1,000 feet, then a steep 180 degree turn (to get out of the canyon), climbing at max power and the best angle of climb speed. The angle of bank had to be considered when calculating the speed.

I had been told to expect an engine failure in that climbing turn and Joe did not disappoint. I had also been told that you had a 50-50 chance of picking the wrong engine in a steep turn and that if I wasn’t certain I should complete the turn and get the wings level before identifying and securing the dead engine. That was what I did and it was okay.

It was July in Arkansas and by the time we finished the inside of that Twin Bonanza smelled like a gymnasium. I passed, which was what counted.

There was one big difference in my check rides and the ones given today. I never paid for a ride. All were free.

There were other check rides along the way but those were the main ones. I always wondered exactly what a check ride accomplished. A lot might have been learned preparing for the ride but nothing new was learned or uncovered during the ride itself. In retrospect I guess a check ride is just a hurdle and we all need occasional hurdles to keep us sharp.

A DC-3 Dream: Fleeting as it Was

Confession: almost 60 years ago I wanted very badly to become an airline pilot.

It actually started almost 70 years ago, in 1943. An uncle in Arkansas died. We lived in Queens, in New York City, and my mother wanted to go the funeral. It took a little doing to get a couple of round-trip airline tickets because a priority was required. My godfather was Senator Joseph T. Robinson (D-Ark.) so that was accomplished in short order.

American Airlines flew a DC-3 from LaGuardia to Little Rock (and on to California). It took all day to get to Little Rock with en route stops in Washington, Richmond, Roanoke, maybe Lynchburg, Tri-Cities, Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis. The flight was named the Sun Country Special.

I was nine at the time and was totally smitten by the experience. I even remember the stewardess’s name: Madeline Condon.

The American DC-3s were called Flagships and were named for a state or city where the airline stopped. I later rode on Eastern DC-3s, part of the Great Silver Fleet, and United Mainliners.

When World War Two started, the military took 200 airplanes from the airlines leaving them with 160. The airlines were still able to fly their routes but with less frequency.

By 1953, I was a flight instructor, working at Camden, Arkansas. One day the powers-that-be told us our office would be moved so an airline could have the space closest to the runway. We were also told that the runway would be extended from 3,000 to 3,600 feet because that is what was required for the Trans- Texas Airways DC-3s that would soon start coming to call.

The runway extension was somewhat of a joke. It was squirt and gravel where the runway itself was concrete but it satisfied the need for length though I don’t think anybody ever used it.

We had not heard of Trans-Texas before because it just flew in Texas. It was one of thirteen local service airlines that were created and subsidized by the government to make air travel available to folks in smaller cities. The Civil Aeronautics Board regulated all airlines and subsidized many but the local service concept was new and was probably the most strictly regulated. Basically the CAB told them where they could fly, when they could fly, what they could fly, and how much they could charge. They did get to pick the paint job for the airplanes.

Virtually all the local service carriers flew DC-3s but one, Central, started out with eleven new Model 35 Bonanzas. They soon switched to the DC-3.

One day a truck showed up. In it was a non-directional radio beacon, a VHF radio, weather observation equipment, a teletype machine and some baggage carts. The new Trans-Texas station manager was in charge of the installation and did much of the work himself. He soon hired two more employees and they were ready to go.

There were four flights a day, starting with one in the morning that left Shreveport, Louisiana, and made stops in Magnolia, El Dorado, Camden and Pine Bluff, all in Arkansas, before terminating in Little Rock. Then it would go back to Shreveport, making all the stops. The process would be repeated in the evening.

Shreveport to Little Rock took just under two and a half hours. The straight line distance is just over 170 statute miles so all those stops did add time to the trip. If it sounds like a fast car would have been competitive, it might have been except for the fact that there was no Interstate highway system at the time.

Camden was roughly half way and the fare from Camden to Little Rock was $7. Camden to Shreveport was $9.

For the first time, our airport had an instrument approach. The NDB was on the airport so the TTA pilots would overfly it and then fly a complete instrument approach. There was no radar and no DME so that was the only way to have a point of reference from which to start the approach.

TTA did the weather observations, I think only in support of their inbound flights. I don’t recall the minimums for the approach but would imagine that if an approach was successful, the reported weather was at or above minimums. Likewise if an approach was missed, the reported weather would likely be below minimums.

This was done mostly in uncontrolled airspace so no clearances were actually required. I don’t recall the exact interface between TTA and the rudimentary air traffic control system of the day but do remember them talking about “through clearances” which I presume meant the airline dispatch system approved the approach and departure in the same breath.

None of the pilots at the airport had an instrument rating so all this was truly fascinating to us. There was a camaraderie between the locals and the TTA pilots and they shared with us the approach chart in case we wanted to use it. This came with the admonition to stay the hell out of the clouds when they were coming and going.

To me, what they were doing was the finest possible form of flying. It couldn’t get boring, what with all those stops, and the weather wisdom required to run those traps in thunderstorm season (most of the year) was considerable.

I was talking to one of the captains about thunderstorms one day and he told me he had spent many an hour sitting on the edge of the seat, hoping they would miss the maelstrom that is a thunderstorm. Most of the time they were successful. If they got into a storm, the way to fly was pretty standard. Trim for the proper speed, keep the wings level, and ride with the up and downdrafts. It was widely thought that if you got into a storm, the best way out was straight ahead. That might well still be true sixty years later.

There was plenty of flexibility in the TTA operation. The airplanes were self-supporting so if thunderstorms ran them off the route, they could land anywhere there was a 3,600 foot long paved strip. There were not too many of those around but I do remember a couple of diversions to Monroe, Louisiana. They would occasionally miss an approach due to low weather, but I remember only a couple of times when they overflew because of a crosswind on our single north-south runway.

The operation was dirt-simple when compared with today. Virtually all information related to the flights was via teletype. There was a message posted giving the times on and off the stops, the estimate for the next stop, the crew (Landers/Ferry/Clark is one I remember) and whether the airplane had a left or a right hand door. TTA had both military surplus DC-3s and some ex-American Airlines aircraft, thus the differences in the door location. That was important so the ground crew would know how to park the airplane.

To keep ground time at a minimum, only the engine on the side with the door would be shut down on most normal stops. They carried enough fuel to fly the whole trip without adding fuel.

We all lusted for one of the front seats of a TTA DC-3 and we asked their pilots about that possibility. It was between none and none. They didn’t have a lot of pilots, probably about fifty at the time, and virtually all were ex-military. Waiting in the wings were squadrons more with DC-3 and weather flying experience. It would be an impossibly long line in which to stand.

That was the last thought I gave to an airline job. I got involved in the aviation magazine business and the rewarding career that I found there made me happy the airline option wasn’t quite available to me when I wanted it.

The last DC-3 airline flight that I rode was on Central Airlines, from Kansas City to Wichita with a stop in Topeka. I had left Newark on TWA and was supposed to change to another TWA flight but it was delayed.

I walked down the line of ticket counters to see if I could do better. Central had that DC-3 that was about ready to go and they had a seat.

It was a dark and stormy night and we flew all the way through an area of widespread thunderstorms. There was lightning and thunder and heavy rain when we were on the ground at Topeka.

En route, the stewardess served drinks despite the inclement weather. We never hit any really bad turbulence and when we got to Wichita I walked around to the front of the DC-3 to give the pilots a thumbs-up. That was when I learned that this DC-3 didn’t have the weather radar that had come to most airliners by then. No radome. Those pilots were the last of a breed, never to be replaced.

The object of all the local service carriers was to generate enough revenue to fly without subsidy from the Feds. That was not going to happen with DC-3s on short hops so they started flying larger airplanes and the CAB allowed longer legs.

Most eventually got jets, DC-9s mostly, but by then the airlines were deregulated and the mergers made most of the local service names go away. For a fact, Trans-Texas Airways is a granddaddy of today’s Continental.

The local service airline system was a noble experiment, destined not to last for a number of reasons. One was the fact that the airplane they could afford, the DC-3, was relatively primitive. We pilots get all misty-eyed when we think about the grand old Douglas but airline passengers hated it. The steeply sloped aisle, the lack of pressurization and air conditioning, the relatively slow speed, and the not too roomy seats were all points of contention.

Most of the locals flew the airplane with 28 seats, seven rows of four, where the major carriers flew them with 21 seats, seven rows of three. On speed, if following a highway with a strong headwind, most pilots would fly directly over the highway so the passengers couldn’t look down and see the cars passing the airliner.

If you are interested in the history of local service carriers, “Airlines for the Rest of Us” by Stan Solomon is available from Amazon. It is a truly interesting book for airline buffs.

Part Two:

Airplanes

Are Slow Airplanes

Practical Transportation?

Flying at 140 knots or less…

In a posting about the future and the relationship between present and past costs, I referred to transportation airplanes as those cruising at 140 knots or more. At least one reader questioned this and noted the value of slower airplanes for transportation, at least over shorter distances.

I tend to base opinions on personal experience and am certainly no stranger to using slower airplanes, even for relatively long distance transportation. When I was really young, in my twenties, I flew my 125 horsepower Piper Pacer 800 hours, virtually all for personal transportation. Twenty years later I gave the subject another go in a new 1974 Skyhawk that I fitted with a custom panel and top-of-the-line King avionics. In fact, I think my Skyhawk was the first customer airplane to fly with the then brand-new KCS-55 compass system and HSI.

Most of my Skyhawk trips were 300-400 nautical miles but I did fly it all over the eastern U. S. and as far west as Albuquerque. I was working out of Little Rock at the time, for FLYING, and flew the Skyhawk for just about 1,000 hours.

I’ll tell you about using the Pacer first.

My father bought it new in 1951 and flew it until 1955 when he got a new Cessna 180 for his business transportation at the original AIR FACTS, the one that used paper and postage and all that.

The Pacer was IFR-equipped when I got it and less than a month later I earned an instrument rating so I could use all that finery. I won’t bore you with all the details but the avionics included a Narco Omnigator, which was the first general aviation ILS/VOR receiver that achieved the accuracy necessary for IFR flying. There was also a Lear ADF-12, which was the gold standard in ADFs, and a Javelin wing-leveler.

The airplane had a vacuum system, rare in light airplanes at the time, and what we then referred to as a “full gyro panel.” The arrangement of the instruments was a little convoluted with the artificial horizon mounted in a bracket atop the instrument panel, in the middle.

One thing my Pacer didn’t have was a static system. Airplanes didn’t have to pass a static system check (or anything else) to be operated IFR at the time and I wonder how the FAA would now deal with an airplane that lacks a static system. In the Pacer the instruments were vented to the cockpit, much as is done now with an alternate static source.

The Pacer held enough fuel to go about five hours at a speed of 100 knots on a good day.

Piper said in ads that you could fly a Pacer for bus fare. That was fortunate for me because about six months into my ownership, friends and neighbors drafted me and I became a Private E-1 in the United States Army. My pay was well under $100 a month, paid in cash, and rations and quarters were provided.

That wouldn’t cover much bus fare, or flying, but I had an ace in the hole, an inheritance of about $4,000. After basic training I was assigned to the Army Aviation School at Fort Rucker, Alabama, and decided to use that four grand to enhance my Army lifestyle, mainly by running around most of the southeast in my Pacer plus trips home to Little Rock, Arkansas. It was also used as a shield against too much mess hall chow. It came out even and was worth every penny.

It was always possible to find a buddy or two who wanted to go along and would share the fuel costs. Those costs weren’t much. The average fill, when it needed it, would leave enough change from a ten to buy lunch for two or maybe three. In a liberal interpretation of the FAA (then CAA) rule about sharing expenses, my passengers would sometimes pick up my hotel bill and meals at the destination which was sometimes New Orleans. That was a fine city for soldiers to visit.

My Pacer would fly fine with three average troops but any more was out of the question.

The Army had a rule about how far away you could go on a weekend or three-day pass but I could rationalize greater distances by considering the distance as being applicable to cars. I never failed to get back on time so didn’t have to plead that case.

My IFR flying was limited to times when that was the only way to go so I didn’t build up a lot of actual instrument time in the airplane but I was never hesitant to fly it in clouds when needed. I found one two-leg flight in my logbook where I flew five hours and 30 minutes of actual in the Pacer in one day. I think I remember feeling like I had been pulled through a keyhole at the end of that day.

At that time we didn’t make log entries of instrument approaches so I have no idea of how many actual instrument approaches I flew in the Pacer but it was a good number.

When the weather was bad over a large area a careful plan was required and it had to be changed at the drop of a hat. There were relatively few airports with instrument approaches in the southeast and you had to always be sure to have the fuel to make it to an airport with minimums for an approach. That could give new meaning to the term “sniffing for asphalt.” No light airplanes had glideslope receivers at the time so the lowest minimums were for the localizer approach at ILS-equipped fields and 400 & one was about as good as that got. Alternates were based mainly on wishful thinking.

After I got out of the Army, I moved back to Little Rock, where I had a job, but the girl I left behind in Alabama (Ann, who became my wife for 55 years), had to be revisited frequently so the Pacer got a workout there. One night IFR trip through a rare snowstorm is still fresh in mind. Then we were wed and a bit after that moved to New York for me to start my long career in aviation publishing at the old AIR FACTS.

The limitations of a Pacer for long distance travel, especially in the wintertime, were underlined the first Christmas we were in New York. We flew the Pacer for visits in Little Rock and in southeast Alabama. There seemed to be a headwind for every leg and when I made one log entry for the whole trip it was for 32 hours of flying, two hours 30 of which was actual instrument and five hours 30 was night.

The night flying was for the trip from Linden, New Jersey, in the New York area, to Little Rock. It accounted for close to half the flying time on the trip. I had never actually figured it before but that was an average groundspeed of 54 knots. It kind of took all day and half the night. I mentioned in another post that my wife Ann was a perfect copilot. She never complained that day and when I offered to stop for the night in Bowling Green, Kentucky, she said to carry on. She was five months pregnant to boot.

AIR FACTS had faster airplanes to fly, a Skylane to start and later a 210 and 250 Comanches and Twin Comanches (all on short term leases) so I sold my beloved Pacer and moved up in speed. The proceeds also helped on the one-third down payment (required then) on our first house.

The increase in speed did wonders for my traveling. More about that in another post.

I stayed with AIR FACTS for over ten years before moving on to FLYING. There, I negotiated a deal where I could buy an airplane and got first a Skylane and next a Cherokee Six. Those airplanes were not as fast as the AIR FACTS retractables but they were mine and that makes a big difference to me. I always considered airplanes to be personal possessions. I could talk with mine but could never strike up a conversation with a leased airplane.

By that time we had moved back to Little Rock, which was at about the geographic center of the places I most often visited on business. I thought I would try a basic airplane once again and figured the twenty knots the Skyhawk had over the Pacer would make a difference. So I put all those fancy avionics in, got the N-number I used until I retired my P210 in 2007, and N40RC started charging around, mostly to places within 300 to 400 miles of Little Rock. (I also had N40RG reserved so when I sold the Skyhawk it was easy to change the “C” to a “G” and save 40RC for a future airplane.)

I flew a lot of no-autopilot IFR in this airplane and it gave good reliability except for two occasions when the Lycoming reverted to three-cylinder operation because of 100 octane lead fouling of the plugs. Three out of four is not bad on some things but it was disconcerting in this context.

I owned and flew that Skyhawk for just over two years and 1,000 hours and had only six weather-related cancellations in an area of the country not known for its excellent weather. One trip was not flown because of extreme surface winds, one was canceled for ice and four for thunderstorms. I flew 52 instrument approaches in conditions of less than 1,000 and three in the airplane.

I dealt with weather exactly the same way that I did in faster airplanes and some thought this was a little foolhardy but there was really no difference in the relationship between clouds and a Skyhawk or Comanche or whatever.

I do remember one day when a characteristic of the Skyhawk was limiting. I can’t recall the exact passage in the POH but there was word there that in very heavy rain, carburetor heat might be required to help manage the water ingestion. I learned that the effective ceiling of a Skyhawk in those conditions is about 4,000 feet. That only happened one time and fortunately it was over nice flat terrain.

I did some weather research flying and photography in that Skyhawk. Russell Munson and I came up with the idea of shooting a VFR entry into IFR conditions and showing the reader what it looked like when you pushed weather beyond the point of no return.

A good friend, Hank Newman, was head of the FAA Southwest Region and he told his folks to accommodate us in whatever we wanted to do. So, they would block the MEA over where we were poking around and we would press on into instrument conditions, snapping shots all the while. When we were actually in the soup, we would climb up to the MEA, call the controller, and he would clear us to go somewhere and fly an instrument approach.

In doing this series I was out poking around snapping pictures of some particularly mean thunderstorms and got the beginning of a tornado that later ripped a small town to shreds.

In retrospect, IFR flying in the Skyhawk was fun, interesting and educational. The airplane was so simple and easy to fly that I could concentrate on learning the characteristics of the clouds that I was flying in. I was completely comfortable with and in it and when we parted ways there were only a few really memorable slow trips. None of them came close to trips in the Pacer where I would look down at the cars going faster and wonder about an airplane/auto trade.

So, yes, I agree that an under-140 knot cruiser can be quite useful over distances of from 250 to 400 nautical miles. I did a lot of one-day out and back trips between Little Rock and Wichita, Oklahoma City and places in central Texas and other than a requirement for some night flying when the days were short, things worked about the same as in faster airplanes.

I would be telling a fib, though, if I said I didn’t fly along wishing mightily that I could be going at least 140 knots.

In a couple of additional posts, I’ll regale you with tales of using 140-plus cruisers and a pressurized single for transportation. For now, do you think I was nuts to be out flying IFR in a Cessna Skyhawk and especially in a Piper Pacer, and especially in a Piper Pacer at night in a snowstorm?

The Dream v. The Reality:

It’s a Tough World

It might also be true in other areas, but it has always seemed to me that general aviation is littered with more broken dreams than any other field. As an observer for about 60 years, the length of the list of failed projects amazed me when I wrote down the ones that I remember.

I will use one project that I watched closely for a while to begin the discussion.

Back in the 1970s, I heard that there was a futuristic light twin in Mississippi that already had FAA Part 23 certification and that would soon be in production. That news surprised me because in the magazine business we usually learned of new airplanes as soon as they were drawn on a napkin in the bar.

The Burns BA-42 was a conventional mid-wing light twin. The only break with tradition was its t-tail. That had not yet become a rage in general aviation design.

The BA-42 had a pair of Continental engines similar to those that power the Cessna 337 Skymaster. I think they were rated for the same 210 horsepower as those in the 337.

Sam Burns had big dreams for the BA-42 and I spent quite a bit of time at his modest facility in Starkville, Mississippi, also home of Mississippi State University.

Sam had done the development and certification of the BA-42 on a shoestring though he never did divulge how much money was invested in the project through certification. He never said, but I always guessed he had informal help from Mississippi State’s legendary aeronautical engineering department.

The project was begun in the 1960s and lasted into the 1970s. Two airframes were built but I don’t remember that both were actually flying. One was, for sure, because Jack Olcott of FLYING flew it and gave a good report on its flying qualities.

The next step after certification is production and I think Sam Burns thought he could smell the roses at one point. Another town in Mississippi had floated revenue bonds to build a factory and I visited that factory. There was nothing in the plant other than one BA-42. No tooling. No nothing.

Sam and I drew numbers in the dust on the floor and the conclusion was that there was no way he could achieve a positive cash flow unless a lot of money was poured into the project. Sam did not have that kind of money and had failed to find a backer who was willing to gamble on the project. It would have been a gamble, too, because the light twin market was well-populated with products from existing manufacturers and his BA-42 did not offer any clear advantages.

The difficulty of certification has often been cited as the reason more new airplanes are not developed. This did not deter Sam and his small band of workers. What did was a lack of capital, something that has doomed many an airplane project. The best way to lose a sum of money on something like this is to start out with just a little less money than you need. In the end, it always seems to cost more, sometimes much more, than any original estimate. Maybe it is better to start with at least twice as much money as it is estimated to cost.

The Windecker Eagle was the first composite airplane certified. I flew it once and it was just okay. I learned quickly that being inside a composite airplane with a big engine out front was a lot like being in a bass drum while the band is playing. It seemed like there was no way for the sound to get out. The project died before it really got started. Perhaps they could have quieted the cabin if they had been able to continue.

The pressurized Mooney M30 flew but was not certified. It was a big airplane and when watching it first fly, I was struck by the apparent struggle it had getting off the ground. Mooney had previously certified the pressurized Mooney Mustang single but it didn’t find much market. I never flew that airplane but, by all accounts, it was quite a slug.

A recent piston airplane that didn’t make it was the composite Adam 500 push-pull twin. A proof-of-concept airplane was built by Scaled Composites and then a full-size 500 was built by Adam.

I flew the Adam 500 with my friend Glenn Maben and found it good but not exceptional. They were projecting certification at an early date but the airplane I flew wasn’t pressurized, didn’t have any heat in it, and entry was by a ladder after which the ground crew fitted the door in place and latched it. In other words, there was still a lot of work to be done. It also didn’t meet the cruise speed projections but Adam said they would be installing gear doors and that would fix the speed. I don’t know whether they ever did this but I doubt if the speed would have gotten up to what was projected.

This is a good place to look at factors that can doom new designs.

The Adam and the certified and produced Beech Starship had things in common. The Adam weighed well over 1,000 pounds more than its projected empty weight. The Starship weighed an extra ton or more.

In that both were composite airplanes, with proof of concept airframes built by Scaled Composites, the first conclusion might be that designers using this method of construction have extra sets of rose-colored glasses. There are successful composite airplanes, such as the Cirrus, but I have never seen a composite that weighs less than a like metal airplane and I have seen at least two that weigh a lot more.

The simple fact is that composites are not magic and in the best of cases have not offered either weight or cost advantages.

Another thing that makes it tough for new designs is competition. Is it a better airplane? Will it have equal or better reliability? Will the available service and support be as good as for other airplanes? Both the Adam 500 and the Starship fell short of being better airplanes.

There have been a lot of turbine airplane projects that barely got off the ground while some did.

In the early 1960s, Beech built a full-scale mockup of a Model 120 turboprop. It was to be a fairly large airplane, to take the place of the twin Beech, Model 18. The proposed powerplant was from Turbomeca in Europe and was to develop almost 1,000 shaft horsepower per side, compared with 450 for the Model 18.

It would have been an expensive project for Beech and Olive Ann Beech, and her nephew Frank Hedrick, were talented but fiscally conservative managers. For a less expensive airplane, they mated the Army U-21, an unpressurized turboprop Queen Air derivative with PT-6 engines, with the airframe of a pistonpowered pressurized Queen Air Model 88, and, presto, an almost instant King Air, a design that will celebrate 50 years of production in 2014 and is the only turboprop twin left standing except, perhaps, for the Piaggio Avanti which shipped five airplanes in 2012.

The King Air is especially remarkable when you consider that it outlasted the Cheyenne family, two Cessna turboprop twins, the turboprop Commanders, the Mitsubishi MU-2, the Merlin twin turboprops, and the Starship, all of which were certified and produced and all of which have faded away.

The Avtek 400, Beech Lightning and OMAC-1 (later Laser 300) were turboprop designs that never made it to production. The Avtek was a twin, the other two were singles. The Avtek and OMAC were unusual in appearance, to say the least, and while the designers were probably proud of their handiwork, many observers looked at the airplanes, scratched their heads, and thought, “Why did they do that?”

Other turboprop singles are in the development stage and time will tell whether or not they work out.

Pure jets are the sexiest airplanes of all and there has been no shortage of new design proposals there, both single-engine and twin.

The Eclipse 500 twinjet was the vehicle for what has accurately been called the largest financial failure in the history of general aviation. Everybody — suppliers, customers, depositors, investors (including Bill Gates), got screwed, for lack of a better word. The down-the-drain total was close to a billion dollars. That is a lot of money to bleed out of a small (and, right now, struggling) activity. Worse, it provides an object lesson that will deter investment in aviation products for decades to come.

The Eclipse 500 was certified and produced with 259 airplanes delivered. Like everything else about the project, the certification was controversial. There were suggestions of FAA favoritism toward Eclipse, if you can believe that. The first airplanes delivered were short of what had been promised and in the end, the airplanes that were delivered were sold at a price far short of the actual cost of building those airplanes.

A charter operator, DayJet, had a business plan that was just as bad when it ordered 1,400 Eclipse 500s, or, over half the order book. That company folded after it took delivery of a handful of the jets and operated them for a short while.

The Eclipse promise was to deliver a lot of jets at a low price, even lower than the piston twin unpressurized Beech Baron. It was a false promise from day one and when investors decided to quit shoveling money into a bottomless pit, that was the end. A lot of us said from the beginning that the project could not work as planned but the true believers stayed loyal right up to the bankruptcy.

Another company bought the Eclipse assets and plans to put the airplane back into production in 2013 and to sell it for a realistic price. How that will go remains to be seen. Right now the entry-level jet market is so soft that Cessna has “paused” production of all its more basic jets.

The Swearingen SJ-30 twin jet made it through certification and into limited production though not much is going on there at present. It might be another case of a designer coming up with an airplane he thought people should have as opposed to an airplane that people might actually care to buy.

A lot of other twin jets have been proposed and a few have actually flown. The Spectrum S-33 Independence was in a flight test program when it was lost because the ailerons were hooked up backwards after some maintenance. The pilot I flew with in the Adam 500, Glen Maben, was lost in that accident.

There is a bright spot in the jet business. Embraer is a new entrant in the basic twinjet market with the Phenom 100 and that airplane has been successful and has an excellent reputation.

There are also the single-engine jets that have gotten publicity out of all proportion to their progress toward certification and production. I would imagine the one thing that deters investors from putting money into a single jet would be the minuscule market size that might exist for this product. To me, a total of 50 airplanes a year would be quite optimistic.

So, there have been a lot of broken dreams, one of which might constitute the end of such for a long time to come if people look at the history of the Eclipse before deciding to roll the dice on a project. It was, purely and simply, a travesty. We might also be learning that all-new airplanes are also risky for the folks who build airliners. Who knows what additional evils lurk in the shadows of the 787?

What’s In a Name?

Admittedly trivia…

Names for various airplanes have always been interesting to me. After World War Two, Beech came up with the hands-down best name ever for an airplane: Bonanza. It flies on 67 years later and is, and has always been, a survivor. That is probably because the airplane is as good as the name. My second choice in the name game is Gulfstream.

Most other Beech airplanes got names that stuck. Barons and King Airs are staples in the fleet as well as still being quite viable production airplanes.

Right after the war ended, Piper airplanes were usually called by their names, like Vagabond and Clipper and Pacer. Then, in what would probably not be politically correct today, they started naming them after Indian tribes. The first was the Apache, followed by Comanches and Aztecs and Navajos and Cheyennes, among others. Most everyone refers to Pipers by their names.

Today, Piper still does Senecas and Seminoles but most of their other airplanes got unrelated names like Malibu and Meridian.

Cessna used numbers, with the 120, 140, 195, 170 and 180 coming along after WWII, in almost, if not quite that order. When they made a trike out of a tailwheel the last digit became a “2” as in 172 and 182.

Names started coming to Cessnas with deluxe versions of the 172 and 182, the Skyhawk and Skylane. Some airplanes got names that were not as popular, like Centurion, Stationair, Golden Eagle and Chancellor. Those airplanes were more often referred to as 210s, 206s, 421s and 414s. The Citation name stuck to their jets but was modified many times to reflect different capabilities and they did name a larger jet the Sovereign though I have also seen it called the Citation Sovereign. Maybe Citation, not Cessna, is the true brand name of their jets.

In any case, if you bought it or flew it you could always call it whatever pleased you. I have even heard a few airplanes referred to as turkeys.

The plot gets thicker with trivia when you get to the four letter identifier used for flight plan filing. There are never more than four digits but there can be fewer.

A while back the FAA fiddled with flight plan designations to better identify airplane climb and descent capabilities to controllers. I had some interesting conversations with controllers about this. (The FAA has a publication on this: Order JO 7340.2C, Contractions. This contains all contractions used by the FAA. If you want to peruse flight plan designations, they start on page 439.)

Originally, all 210s were filed as C210 but in its infinite wisdom the FAA decided that pressurized and turbocharged versions were different enough that they should become P210 and T210.

I dutifully started filing my airplane as a P210. Apparently little effort had been put into telling controllers about the change because when I was given as traffic something like this would follow: “It is a Pilatus or a Piper, I don’t know what it is, but it is out there so look out for it.” That went on for several years. More than one controller suggested that I should just file as a C210 to avoid confusion

It’s up to the pilot to know how to identify his airplane on a flight plan but there are some quirks that are not totally logical. Any Aerostar is an AEST. A Beech King Air F90 is a BE9T, presumably because it has a t-tail. Cheyennes used to be PAYE but because of the differences in performance they became PAY1, PAY2, PAY3 and PAY4. The Piper Aztec is a PA27 which was the original drawing number for that airplane. It is really a PA-23- 250 and I would lay odds that most Aztec pilots file them as a PA23.

If you are filing for a hop in your U-2, just U2 will do on the flight plan. In your Collins Dipper (whatever that might be), DIPR will do. The most obscure airplanes all have a designation so it is easy to see why the FAA list of contractions is not a memory item for controllers.

The flight plan equipment suffix that comes after the slash takes many different forms, related to navigational capability. The owner pays for all the good things and surely the avionics shop tells him what suffix to use. I can remember, years ago, when the suffix came into being to identify airplanes with and without transponders.

The plot (and the amount of available trivia) really thickens when you consider official type designations.

These can be found on the FAA web site, www.faa.gov by clicking on Type Certificate Data Sheets (TCDS). Then you can look at them by the make of airplane and can open pdf files on the sheets which contain, among other things, the operating limitations of the airplanes.

There is a lot there. For example, I learned from the TCDS on my P210 that the windows, windshield and deice light lens have a life limit of 13,000 hours. That was well buried as a footnote and it took a while to find after I heard a rumor to that effect and wanted to verify it.

When CAA was running things, we had Civil Air Regulations. When the FAA took over in the 1950s, they became Federal Aviation Regulations. Where CAR Part 3 covered the certification of general aviation airplanes, FAR Part 23 took over. Even though that happened a long time ago, the airplanes that most of us fly today were certified under CAR 3. The FAA allowed the continued manufacture of these airplanes though they could put special conditions on the certificate with the result that the certification of many airplanes is a blend of CAR 3 and FAR 23. This is on the TCDS.

Years ago, the FAA allowed model changes by an amended certification. For example, the first Cessna 205 was added to the 210 certificate and became a 210-5. The Baron was added to the Model 95 Travel Air Certificate and became the 95-55. Even the first King Air was an addition to the Model 65 Queen Air and became the 65-90. Structurally the airplanes were similar but the resemblance ended there.

Does it matter whether an airplane is certified under CAR 3 or FAR 23? Not really. Some things were changed, but the basic parameters were similar and the structure of an old CAR 3 design is just as good an FAR 23 airplane. There was a change in the manner the onset of a vertical gust is considered in relation to limit loads and though this has been used to suggest that Part 23 airplanes are stronger than CAR 3 airplanes, there’s not much truth to that assertion.

Some Piper airplanes have interesting type designations. For example, a t-tail Turbo Arrow is a PA-28RT-201T. PA-28 is the basic Cherokee design. The “R” designates this one as a retractable. The letter “T” that follows identifies the t-tail version. The “201” is the horsepower with the 201 signifying that is has a 200 horsepower engine and tapered wings. Who knows why they added the wing change to the horsepower in the type designation? The final “T” is for the fact that it is turbocharged. Next time you see a t-tail Turbo Arrow, think PA-28RT-201T. Catchy name.

Trivia. Next a quiz. Who knows what a BA-42 is? Clue: it is certified under FAR Part 23.

A Dream of the 1970s:

The Bede 5

To say that Jim Bede was controversial is an understatement. Some called him a visionary, others had descriptions that were not so kind. The undisputed fact, though, is that Jim Bede excited and then disappointed a lot of pilots in the 1970s. He was a hard guy not to like and he exuded infectious enthusiasm even if he didn’t always deliver.

Bede had started his company in 1961 to develop the BD-1, a kit airplane. This evolved in to the AA-1 Yankee which was produced as a certified airplane by American Aviation in Cleveland.

Bede put numbers on other BD designs including the BD-2, a powered sailplane he used to set a distance record and the BD-4, a rather conventional four-place kit airplane that met with some degree of success.

Those aside, the one that got the most attention and created the most excitement was the BD-5. It was a diminutive single-seat airplane. It was a low-wing, with a canopy. It came as a pistonpowered airplane and a pure jet (BD-5J). The promise was a low price and high performance.

The BD-5 started life with a fiberglass fuselage but that was quickly changed to metal to better strengthen the area where the tail attached. Everything else was metal and was designed for easy building.

The total size of the airplane was best summed up by a comment from Burt Rutan’s mother. Burt was working with Bede in 1972 when I visited Bede’s facilities at Newton, Kansas. He invited me to try out the “cabin” for size. You reclined in it and when I got settled in Mrs. Rutan said, “Richard looks just like he is in a coffin.” That was about the size of it.

Rutan was joined by Les Berven, another engineer who had been working on Air Force projects at Edwards. Berven was the chief test pilot and was the only pilot who had flown the BD-5 well into the program.

Bede also hired Herb Sawinski, a respected avionics executive to better organize the operation and it didn’t take Sawinski long to make great strides. In 1972 Bede had finished putting together a team that he thought would see the project through to a successful conclusion.

There were three camps when it came to Jim Bede and the BD-5.

The true believers ordered as many as 11,000 kits and made a deposit. That is the highest number I saw but I don’t think it was ever verified.

The skeptics hoped that it would work but had plenty of doubts.

The non-believers thought it was some kind of hoax.

I spent quite a bit of time with Bede and vacillated between the last two camps. Even at that early time in my career (twelve or so years in) I had seen a lot of things that didn’t work. There were many false promises in general aviation. I quickly recognized that Jim Bede would share his vision with everyone who would listen before he fully understood his vision. Grains of salt were in order.

As with so many projects, the BD-5 was initially offered at a price that was hard to resist. The deposit started off at $200 against a total kit cost of $1,799. I think I recall the deposit increasing to $400. I am sure the total kit cost also increased but I couldn’t find an exact final number for that though I did see at least $3,500. The deal was that the full kit cost would be due when the first parts shipped.

The BD-5 assembly line was to be in the basements and garages of the builders. Bede had suppliers who would fabricate the various parts and where the indication was that it wouldn’t take a lot of tools to build, the final list of desirable tools was both long and expensive.

Bede estimated that 600 to 800 hours would be required to build a BD-5 but most observers put the number at or above 1,000. Later, some builders who actually completed a BD-5 reported build times of up to 3,500 hours. It apparently wasn’t so simple to build.

It was obvious from the start that everything about this airplane would be different. You could tell by looking that it certainly was not designed to be powered by any existing aircraft engine.

The heart of the airplane was to be a two-cycle Hirth snowmobile engine from Germany. It had to turn at 6,500 rpm to develop the roughly 65 horsepower that Bede wanted so a reduction system was required to make the prop turn at the desired speed. The snowmobile engine sold for $240 and the goal was to adapt it to airplane use without spending too much money. I saw an estimated price of both $480 and $640 for the engine with dual ignition and other mods. Bede ordered 5,000 of these engines.

Concurrently, Bede was developing the BD-5J, powered by a small jet engine that produced 200 pounds of thrust. A lot of eyebrows arched when Bede invited some journalists to fly the BD-5J before anyone other than Berven had flown the piston airplane.

I was working for FLYING at the time and we selected colleague Jack Olcott to fly the BD-5J. Jack’s aeronautical engineering background and test flying experience made him the best man for the job.

Bede had said that when it came to stability and control and structure the BD-5 would be tested to the same standards as Part 23 production airplanes.

Virtually everyone though the short-coupled little airplane would be a handful to fly. Jack met the reality of the matter right before Christmas, 1973, at Bede’s Newton facility.

As part of his preparation for the flight Berven wanted him to accelerate to Vr, rotate, and then quickly abort before the airplane flew. By doing that Berven felt like Jack could get some feel for the pitch sensitivity of the airplane before actually flying away.

The event didn’t follow the script because when Jack rotated, the BD-5J hopped into the air. Jack had to then land and a pilotinduced oscillation that developed right after liftoff complicated the touchdown. The nosewheel was damaged but the airplane was simple and a new nosewheel was in place in short order.

The next day Jack flew away in the BD-5J and in a relatively short flight he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t a bad airplane to fly. I was flying the photo airplane and he formed up without a bobble. A minute later he asked to be excused for a moment. The BD-5J accelerated, pulled up into a beautiful loop and, presto, at the bottom of the loop Jack was right back in formation with us. I’ll never forget that.

I was relieved when Jack’s flight ended with a quite nice landing. I am godfather to Jack’s oldest son, David, and I sure didn’t want to go beyond the birthday present part of that role.

It didn’t take much imagination to understand why they were letting people fly the jet and not the piston. Rumors were flying about the trouble they were having with the Hirth engine and, as we later learned, Berven got a lot of forced landing practice in the airplane.

By this time, Bede was shipping airframe kit parts with word that the engine would follow soon.

As an aside, the structure of the BD-5J got a severe test when famed aerobatic pilot Bobby Bishop had a canopy fail and depart the aircraft. As you would imagine, there was a lot of startle-value in that and Bishop inadvertently applied quite a bit of back stick. The result was a 15-g pull and after he had been talked through a successful landing everyone marveled at the increased dihedral of the wings, 24 degrees in one wing and 19 in the other. The stick force had been calculated at 3 pounds per g in flight testing. That is lighter than anything most of us have flown but it still took a bit of a pull to get to 15-g.

About six months later Jack Olcott got a call from Bede telling him that the piston airplane was ready, to come on out and fly. Jack would be first to fly that airplane for a pilot report.

Because of the light pitch forces, Bede had come up with a unique simulator to break pilots in gently on the landing characteristics. They had a BD-5 airframe suspended from a trapeze in front of a pickup truck. The trapeze had springs that kept it from having any effect on the BD-5 except to keep it tethered.

The throttle in the cockpit controlled the speed of the pickup and the drill was to accelerate down the runway to 55-60 mph, rotation speed for the airplane, where the pilot would then rotate and climb to as high as ten feet. The airplane could also be rolled 10 degrees in either direction. Then the throttle could be retarded followed by a landing. An instructor in the truck could communicate with the pilot and give appropriate advice.

Jack passed his truck check ride and graduated to the real airplane. Because this one had no starter, it was cranked with a rope pull, much like the power mowers of old.

Jack put the airplane through its paces, including spins. The climb was good and he reached 10,000 feet in 12 minutes to begin those spins. In level flight, the best indicated airspeed he saw was 152 mph which was short of what was advertised. Earlier, Jim Bede had shown me a projected speed readout on one of the relatively crude computers of the day. It showed over 200 mph. I asked Jim Bede who programmed that computer. Grinning from ear to ear he said, “I did.”

On Jack’s last spin the engine quit. With no starter he got to join Berven in the ranks of those who flew to a successful forced landing in a BD-5. Jack hit the spot on the airport perfectly.

Because of reliability issues the Hirth engine had been cut back to about 50 horsepower but was still unsatisfactory. They started looking for another engine but ran into delays on a Japanese design.

According to one account, Bede shipped 5,100 kits. I don’t know whether they were full or partial kits but it probably didn’t matter because by this time the company was insolvent and headed for bankruptcy.

A number of people figured out how to power their piston BD-5s and more than a few of the jets were completed. The BD-5J was on the air show circuit for a long while and I think one of the last uses was as a cruise missile simulator for military training purposes.

The great Richard Bach built a BD-5J and had quite a love affair with the airplane. It drew such crowds everywhere he landed that he made a sign he put in the cockpit for people to read. The information was realistic, not promotional, and reflected the true ability of the airplane. He gave the high cruise as 250 mph, stall speed as 82 mph with a range of 300 miles. He reported it had been as high as 18,000 feet where it was still climbing 400 fpm.

Some of the early kits were shipped with short wings. A longer wing was also available and after some flying it was decided that all piston airplanes should have the long wings. The jet’s wing span was somewhere between the long and the short.

The Bede bankruptcy was not final until 1979 but activity had ceased long before then. During the bankruptcy hearings there was some question about money being diverted from kits to other projects. The only legal fallout from this was said to be a Bede agreement not to take deposits on aircraft for a period of ten years.

I have seen estimates that as many as 150 piston BD-5s were completed with a wide variety of engines. Because of the power requirement and the center of gravity an engine of under 100 pounds that developed from 60 to 70 horsepower was an absolute necessity. One Rotax fit the bill and in fact a BD-5 with a Rotax 74 hp engine set a weight class speed record of 218 mph. The original promise turned out to be possible in that case.

It goes without saying that a lot of people felt betrayed when the dream turned into a nightmare. That has happened in this business more than once and I wonder if there is anyone out there who made a deposit on a BD-5 and later made a deposit on an original Eclipse jet. An old saying comes to mind: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Jim Bede was never a person to quit smiling and trying and has worked many projects since the BD-5.

According to an article he wrote in FLYING, Richard Bach had this to say at the conclusion of the information he placed in his cockpit for viewing by the public: “There is a lot of controversy about the promotion and sales of the BD-5 aircraft. The pilot of this plane does not have many facts or answers to give. The airplane itself, however, ranks among the very best flying machines ever built.”

Richard did love his BD-5J. And who could ever forget Corkey Fornoff flying a BD-5J through a hangar in the Bond flick Octopussy. I think it is safe to say that the pilots who did complete and fly BD-5 and BD-5Js had fun. Too bad more weren’t able to do it.

Retractable Singles:

The Good, the Fad and the Ugly

All but one had a single goal…

It was my pleasure to fly virtually all the airplanes that were offered from the end of World War Two up to 2008, when I retired. I knew the people who designed, built and sold those airplanes and the combination of the people and the airplanes resulted in what I came to consider a personality. No, a Piper Comanche didn’t look like Mr. Piper but they did share personality traits because in those days folks created airplanes in their own image. There was no well-defined market so they built what they thought people would buy.

Over those years a number of airplanes impressed me as being “good” airplanes. I thought of many airplanes as “fads” because they burst on the scene and fizzled. A few were “ugly,” maybe because of their looks or maybe because of other things such as flight characteristics or poor performance. Rest assured that these are all personal opinions and I am sure many will differ.

I always thought that four/six place retractable single-engine piston airplanes offered the best possible balance of cost and performance. I thus paid special attention to what went on in this area. I will say that it was a lot of fun to fly and explore these airplanes when they were new and writing about them now kindles fond memories.

My “good” list here is topped by the Bonanza. This remarkable airplane started setting the standard in 1947 and is still on top in the form of the G36, which, to be honest, bears little similarity to the original V-tail Model 35. The last V-tail was built in 1982. The 36 offered a lot more utility for a little more money and won out.

Certainly every one of the many other airplanes I will mention here had the goal of besting the Bonanza. It still rolls off the assembly line, 67 years later, having shattered the dreams and fortunes of many others. It is the sole survivor of the first batch of airplanes in this class despite the fact that it costs about a hundred times as much today (in dollar dollars) as it did in 1947.

Some suggested that without the V-tail, no airplane should be called a Bonanza. What did those folks want them to call the 36, the Prince Air? I thought that continuing the Bonanza name after the V-tail was a fine thing to do because the newer airplanes were definitely evolutionary. Plus, if you have the best name going, why give it up?

Over the years, the Bonanza was stretched and improved and the horsepower almost doubled. Yes, it has changed but the fact is that the Bonanza has been in production longer than any other airplane. Ever. Over 17,000 have been built. More straight 1947 Model 35 Bonanzas, 1,500, were built than any other model of the V-tail and more than half the Bonanzas built have V-tails.

I became friends with Bonanzas as a kid charter pilot in the early 1950s. Subsequently, I flew every model of the Bonanza that was built before the G36. That would be all the 33s, 35s and 36s. Some of the 33s were called Debonairs but they were Bonanzas at heart. If Bonanza was the best airplane name ever, Debonair would be at least close to the worst. Later model Debonairs dropped that name and became Bonanzas.

On the occasion of the Bonanza’s 50th anniversary, in 1997, I got to put bookends of a sort on my Bonanza flying. The official 50th anniversary Bonanza was a 1997 B36TC. I got together with it and a beautifully restored 1947 Model 35 on a fine day to fly and enjoy both airplanes. I thought it was a nice thing for the Beech PR folks to do, especially for someone with Bonanza roots. They might not have been too impressed by the fact that I seemed more enamored with the old than the new.

When I mounted the old 35, N3307V, I thought back to an airplane that I flew a lot on charter flights, N3358V. The latter was probably 51 units down the line from 07V because they often used blocks of sequential N-numbers. They were building Bonanzas at a fast pace in 1947 so the age of the two airplanes was likely close.

When I was flying 58V some of the other pilots avoided it because it was a “light-wing Bonanza.” Those original airplanes did have some wing problems but all were modified and the wings looked just fine to a 20-year old Bonanza captain. I never really gave it much thought.

Legendary show-pilot Bevo Howard apparently didn’t think Bonanza wings were weak, either. Showmanship was the name of the game at that time and Bevo put on a show (in an A35) at the 1948 Cleveland Air Races. He did rolls, loops, snap rolls including one at the top of a loop, and a host of other maneuvers. Lore had it that he did an outside loop but I don’t think that happened.

I was working for Central Flying Service in Little Rock, a Beech dealer, and most of our charter flights were within the State of Arkansas simply because most businesses then were intrastate. Using our service, a customer could hit several job sites or prospects in a day and be home for dinner.

A lot of the towns that they wanted to visit didn’t have a formal airport. Those in the farming part of the state, the east and southeast, did have duster strips and we were always welcome to use those. Central was also in the dusting business and I guess there was some reciprocity at work.

The duster strips were plenty long for our Bonanzas and the landing gear didn’t mind the unpaved surfaces at all. If there was a drawback, it was the Bonanza’s low wing which was not ideal in the summertime. We also had a Cessna 195 with an air ambulance kit but it was occasionally used for regular charter. With it, I could take a folding chair in the baggage compartment and sit under the wing, in the shade, while waiting for my passengers to come back from town. With a Bonanza, I had to sit under a tree and feed the chiggers, or sit in the hot airplane. There were usually no buildings or other facilities at duster strips.

Few of our Bonanzas had other than a primary instrument panel. The restored airplane that I flew years later had a full panel. That was available as an option in 1947 but almost nobody flew IFR then so there was little demand for a full set of gyro instruments.

That first Bonanza did not have nosewheel steering, nor did it have an electric fuel pump. There was what was called a “wobble” pump that was combined with the fuel selector to put the pilot in charge of the fuel system. If the engine-driven fuel pump failed, the pilot had only to use one of his left hands to pump while using the other left hand to fly. The handle moved left or right to select the desired tank.

The allowable center of gravity range on all V-tail Bonanzas was rather small with the aft limit being the most restrictive as well as the most critical. In the 1950s we didn’t think a lot about that and CG was not even covered on the 25 true-false question private pilot written.

The Bonanza had a unique way of telling you about this. If you were loading two passengers in the back seat, large passengers would cause the tail of the airplane to settle to the ground. That meant moving a portly one to the front and putting a skinny one in the back. Once loaded, if the load was too far aft, the airplane was difficult to steer on the ground because when the nose strut was fully extended, the nosewheel locked in the center.

We actually had one pilot who, cognizant of degraded handling qualities caused by aft CG, asked his passengers to lean as far forward as possible for takeoff and initial climb. Maybe that helped or maybe it just made him feel better.

Beech did like to promote its airplanes and some of the flashiest early Bonanza promotions included long distance record flights.

The first was flown in 1949 by Bill Odom and was to be from Honolulu to New York (Teterboro). Nasty weather in the vicinity of Reno cut this one short but he landed at Oakland 22 hours and a few minutes after takeoff and set a record for the airplane class. He tried again a couple of months later and made it to Teterboro in just over 36 hours and set a number of records in the process. The same airplane, the fourth Model 35 built, was used for both flights. Sadly Bill Odom was killed in a P-51 at the Cleveland Air Races a few months after the last record flight.

I was not yet a pilot at the time, but I read about the flights and wondered what it would be like to sit in an airplane for 36 hours.

Then, in 1958, Beech upped the ante by sponsoring a 6,856 statute mile flight from Manila to Pendleton, Oregon. This one was flown by (airline) Captain Pat Boling and took 45 hours and 43 minutes. The takeoff weight was almost double the maximum allowable weight of the original Bonanza. Unlike Odom’s airplane, modified mainly by the addition of fuel tanks, Boling’s airplane was built up especially for the flight and included sections of the Model 95 (Travel Air) wing.

Beech decided that was enough and when Peter Gluckmann approached them about beating Boling’s record they declined to sponsor or support the attempt but they did sell Gluckmann the airplane. He and the airplane came to rest at the bottom of the Pacific, leaving the record unbroken, for the time being. More about that later.

The B36TC of 50 years later was unquestionably an entirely different airplane than the 35, including a longer fuselage and better CG range. A lot of basic shapes remained the same but few if any parts were likely interchangeable. The only one I could see was the little rod that props the door open.

I flew both airplanes and they were nice to fly but with a difference. Mainly the 35 flew like the lighter airplane that it is. The pitch forces were lighter but both airplanes were Bonanzacrisp in roll.

It was interesting that most of the speeds for the two airplanes were little different despite the difference in weight (2,550 v. 3,850 pounds) and horsepower (165 max continuous v. 300). The difference was that the 35 flew in miles per hour and the B36TC in knots. Even the cruise at 10,000 feet was about the same, at 175. The gear and flaps extension speeds on the old airplane were almost ridiculously low at 100 mph. Slowing down in advance was definitely a technique item in an old Bonanza.

V-tail Bonanzas had a safety record that was average at best. It was often a high-performance airplane in the hands of a lowperformance pilot which put it at a disadvantage. When a pilot would blunder VFR into clouds and lose control, the airplane’s speed would quickly move outside the envelope and an airframe failure would often follow. No meaningful research was ever done into what role the degraded handling qualities caused by the CG being aft of the limit might have had in this context even though the passenger/baggage load in many of the accidents suggested that the CG was aft of the limit.

Much was made of the airframe failures by naysayers, one of whom will likely comment on this for you after it is posted. I did do enough research to learn that the Model 33 with a conventional tail had just as many loss of control accidents as the V-tail with the primary difference being the 33 breaking up as it hit the ground where the 35 would break before it hit the ground. That made little difference to the people inside.

Extensive testing was done on the V-tail and a mod was developed that strengthened the usual point of first failure. The mod was for C35 and subsequent models which had wider chord tail surfaces.

The old 35 and the new B36TC are both airplanes of their time and the Bonanza’s reign was a result of all Beech did to improve the airplane over the years that it has been built. They used to change the letter designation every year, A35 to V35 for example, and some models were changed a lot and others a little. My pick of the litter was always the P35 when they transitioned to a far more professional instrument panel and made other good changes. It still flew with the 260 hp Continental which I always liked.

One thing that never changed was the flying qualities that most pilots dearly loved. Flying a Bonanza was always a pleasant experience for most and well as for me. I would go back to the jargon of the 1950s and say “It was a joy to fly!” but that sounds hokey as all get-out in 2014.

Beech did build another retractable but it was definitely not a competitor for the Bonanza. The Sierra was a retractable version of the original Musketeer design, with a 200 hp engine and a lot of refinements. An oddity was that the main landing gear retracted outward. Can you think of another airplane that did this? Hint: Liberal, Kansas, where the Musketeer was built, was a B-24 base during World War Two. Must be something in the water.

The Sierra was comfortable and pleasant to fly. I once made an IFR trip through an occluding front in a Sierra and while the ride sucked, hand flying the airplane in the wind shear turbulence was not that demanding.

The Sierra was painfully slow. If you beat it with a stick, it might get close to 130 knots for cruise.

A lot of other retractables came along to challenge the Bonanza. Beech was dedicated to high-quality airplanes at correspondingly high prices so it was easy for other manufacturers to offer airplanes with similar performance at a lower cost.

The first direct challenge to the Bonanza by a similar airplane came from the North American Navion. This airplane was at a disadvantage from the start. Earlier I mentioned personalities. In 1950, Olive Ann Beech took the reins after her husband Walter Beech died. She had been involved with the company for years and was invested in general aviation. Mrs. Beech would accept nothing but excellence in quality and performance. I don’t think the Navion enjoyed that level of management interest.

North American was a big company that was famous for the P-51, one of the premier fighters in World War Two. I guess there was some feeling that this success could morph into light airplanes, thus the Navion.

The Navion was a great flying airplane but, using the same engine, its performance was quite far behind the Bonanza. To some, the Navion seemed more macho than a Bonanza but that didn’t translate into a lot of sales. I flew Navions from the first (actually an L-17 to begin that I converted from military to civilian for use in our Army Flying Club) to the last Rangemaster. My strongest impression was that, while nice to fly, it was not competitive.

North American gave up in 1948 and sold the design to Ryan. That company upgraded the design and built over 1,000 Navions but it ran out of steam there, too, and has passed through various owners since. There have been and probably always will be noises made about resurrecting the Navion but the usual result has been a flurry of activity that uses up a set of money and then goes away. Navion lovers love their airplanes and I don’t blame them, but as a product the Navion was a fad that passed in a few years after World War Two.

I did once fly one of the most unusual Navions ever. Two were operated by the Princeton Flight Research Laboratory, headed by my old friend Dave Ellis, and they were modified to be variable stability airplanes. Computers would drive all manner of different control surfaces to make them fly like anything the computer told them to fly like. Flying some of the things Dave loaded in for me to try in one of the airplanes made for some of the most intense aviating that I have ever done.

Last I heard, the variable stability Navions were at the University of Tennessee Space Institute.

The “Big Three” in post-World War Two general aviation were Beech, Piper and Cessna, always listed in that order for no reason that I ever understood.

Piper set out to defrock the Bonanza with a brand new airplane, the Comanche. It was flying in 1956 and the prototype was on the cover of the July issue of AIR FACTS.

The first Comanche flew with a 180 horsepower Lycoming where the Bonanza G35 of that year had a 225 Continental. The prototype Comanche had a little austerity in the form of a manually operated landing gear and the main gear itself looked almost exactly like a Mooney gear (which was also manually operated). Otherwise the Comanche that was produced looked just like the prototype except the gear was electrically operated and the main gear used oleo struts.

The Bonanza had a comfortable four-place cabin with plenty of room for baggage and the Comanche aimed to match that. I think the cabin was actually a little wider though the Bonanza was taller.

What was sensible about both airplanes was the fact that the cabin was designed for four and only four. The day was yet to come when manufacturers would cram more furniture into the cabins than might be found in a New York apartment. However, putting five or six seats in a four-place cabin didn’t really mean much because of weight and CG considerations. For a fact, one manufacturer used dummies instead of people on photo missions showing six occupants in what was really a four-place airplane. Trouble was dummies couldn’t smile for the camera.

The very first production Comanches were late 1957 models and the 180 Comanche was joined by the 250 Comanche in 1958. AIR FACTS leased first a 180 and then a 250 Comanche and we flew them until the Twin Comanche came out in 1964.

The 180 Comanche was short-lived. It wasn’t a bad airplane but, hey, more horsepower is better so the 250 outsold it by a lot from the start. I remember talking to the pilot of the first 250 Comanche I saw out in the field. I asked him how he liked it. He said “Anybody who doesn’t like this doesn’t like airplanes.” Of course, he was a Piper salesman.

The Comanche was a pleasant airplane to use and when the fuel supply was increased from 60 to 90 gallons it became a true long-range airplane. I was making frequent 900 nm trips at that time and a 90-gallon Comanche would almost always do the eastbound version nonstop.

There was a lot of family flying being done at the time and the Comanche was adaptable to this in more ways than you might imagine.

With really little kids, you could take out the right front seat, easily done, and put a baby carrier on the floor, right in front of the right rear passenger. That made diaper changing easier though the captain would usually choose not to have his peanut butter sandwich at that time. If there was another child, she could ride in the back, by her mother.

That right front seat that was removed would actually fit into the baggage compartment, along with quite a bit of luggage, so when you offloaded the kids with their grandmother and were taking another couple to the Cotton Bowl, the four seat configuration could be restored in minutes.

If it sounds like I did all that, I did, more than once, but not always to a game. If you want the Cotton Bowl score from that year, it was Duke 7, Arkansas 6. The Hogs didn’t “go” that day.

Competition is a wonderful thing and Piper had its eye on a Bonanza prize in the form of those long distance records.

Where Beech had enlisted experienced professionals for their long-distance flights, Piper took a different tack. They enlisted a flying grandfather, the legendary (at that time) Max Conrad who had earlier set a transcontinental distance record in a Piper Pacer.

Conrad’s first and longest record hop was in a 250 Comanche, from Casablanca to Los Angeles, 7,668.5 statute miles, easily beating the Bonanza record. He did it again a bit later, in a 180 Comanche, Casablanca to El Paso, 6,966.71 miles for a record in a different class. Conrad set a number of other records over the years.

I didn’t know the pilots who set the Bonanza records, but I did know Max Conrad and to know him was to understand how he could manage to sit in a Comanche (or a Pacer) for enough hours to fly those long distances. He had both great self-discipline and the ability to relax, or to zone out. I always imagined that at the end of one of those long flights he looked up at the destination airport and thought, “What, I am here already?” He was an interesting and fun person and he loved to square dance.

Flying IFR was becoming much more common in the early Comanche days and one with the top-of-the-line avionics package was well equipped for IFR flying. Only Narco radios were offered and that was really the only choice because King Radio had not yet become a big factor in the avionics world. You might say that Pipers of that era were all-Pennsylvania airplanes with Piper in Lock Haven, Lycoming in Williamsport, and Narco in Fort Washington.

I learned a couple of IFR lessons in our 250 Comanche.

The first came after an IFR departure from Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania. I had to get a clearance on the phone and so armed I launched into low clouds. Hello. Hello. I couldn’t make contact with air traffic control. On top of that the nav needles, while alive, were flopping about aimlessly.

I climbed to the assigned altitude and knew that it would be a safe altitude in the direction I was flying. Then I set out to see if I could identify the problem. This was distracting, I was hand flying, and at one point I noticed that I was inadvertently in a 45-degree bank. Whoa, time to just fly straight and level. A good friend and experienced pilot was with me but he was apparently as discombobulated as I was.

I knew the weather was better in the direction I was going so I quit trying to solve the problem and just concentrated on flying. The clouds came to an end and the radios started working, sort of. I did finally make contact with ATC and cancelled IFR and flew on home VFR and then called and explained the situation.

The airplane had sat out in heavy rain for a number of hours before takeoff. There was an air scoop atop the fuselage for cabin ventilation and the system had a drain at the low point to get rid of any water. The drain was clogged so a copious amount of water had dripped on the aft-mounted remote power supplies of the Mark V radios. Nothing worked until they dried out.

It’s easy to say that I should have ascertained that the radios were working before takeoff but there was no way to do that. I think they had Unicom at Mount Pocono but there was nobody there where we left. In later years, I never departed IFR without a radio check.

The other lesson learned came in one of the few substantial icing encounters I had in 57 years of flying. I was headed southwest, actually en route to the Cotton Bowl that I mentioned earlier. I had a one-on-one weather briefing at Nashville that suggested there would be ice-free altitudes all the way to a stop at Little Rock.

Not so and I broke a rule that I followed since. Treat ice like smoke in the cockpit. Do something now. I started picking up light ice first and changed altitude. I could tell by the outside air temperature that it was going to be close and it was. More ice started forming.

By the time I was just south of Memphis, it was clear that I had flown for too long in the ice and had to land as soon as possible. I flew the ILS to a long runway (9) at Memphis, left the flaps up, landed hot, and taxied a well-iced Comanche to the Memphis Aero ramp. They put the airplane in the hangar to deice it but I told them I would pass on further flying that day. The Collins family spent New Year’s Eve in one of the first, if not the first, Holiday Inns that was ever built.

Piper built 148 Comanches with an eight-cylinder, 400 hp engine up front. The increase in cruising speed was minuscule when compared with the fuel flow and noise. It was not a particularly pleasant airplane to fly. Increasing the horsepower does all manner of things to screw up the pitch stability of an airplane and the things that have to be done to offset that often result in degraded handling qualities.

I have fond memories of the 250 Comanche and always thought that while it certainly did not match a Bonanza, it was a good useful airplane. It lasted from 1958 to 1972 and a total of 4,857 were built.

One reason the Comanche came to an end was a historic flood at Lock Haven that ruined the factory and destroyed a whole lot of airplanes. After that, Piper shifted to Vero Beach and developed the retractable versions of the PA-28 and PA-32. They were the Arrow and the Lance (later the Saratoga) and while both were useful airplanes, they lacked the performance of the Bonanza. Currently Piper builds a few Arrows on special order for training institutions.

Piper put a T-tail on both the Arrow and the Lance and the less said about the flying qualities of those two airplanes, the better. Bad idea, and the airplanes went back to low tails.

I had a Cherokee Six for quite a while, a fixed-gear Lance, so to speak, and it suited our growing family perfectly. Each kid had a chair, with one to spare, and there was plenty of luggage room (but not more than you can carry, only the pilot got that allowance back in the days of heavy Jeppesen chart books).

Piper also developed the last piston retractable to be certified. Thirty years ago the pressurized PA-46 Malibu was introduced and while successful, it came after the general aviation boom had fizzled and a big market share didn’t mean much in the way of volume.

The Malibu was and is hands-down beautiful and has a handsome six-place cabin but it lacks the useful load to be a real six-place airplane. The handling qualities are nothing special and the ride in turbulence is a bit bouncy.

The Malibu had engine problems from the start and a Lycoming engine took the place of the original Continental. I don’t know how much better it worked but I do know that the vibration level in the Lycoming airplane seemed a bit higher.

The PA-46 is currently offered in three versions: piston unpressurized (Matrix), piston pressurized (Mirage) and turboprop (Meridian). All sell slowly and steadily with the turboprop usually the best seller of the lot.

The Bonanza’s Wichita neighbor, Cessna, offered the 190/195 as its high-performance single right after the war. It was a curious choice for the marketplace. It was a new airplane based on the prewar wooden Airmaster but of all-metal construction. The airplane had a fixed landing gear and used a radial engine of which there were thousands upon thousands available in the surplus market. The most-built 195 used a 300 hp Jacobs; the few 190s that were built used a lower-horsepower Continental. The round engine dictated a bigger fuselage to follow it around and the result was a spacious cabin for four or five (three across in back).

The Jacobs was reasonably efficient with a specific fuel consumption (pounds per hour per horsepower) that was much like the horizontally opposed engines. It was pretty standard, though, to add a few quarts of oil and then check it before further flight. If the Jacobs had a weakness it was the tendency to “swarm,” as we used to call a catastrophic engine failure. A friend was taking an instrument check ride in a 195, the engine swarmed, he landed it on a levee, and the FAA (then CAA) inspector promptly issued his instrument rating. If you are working on an instrument rating, do practice your levee landings.

I always thought the 195 was fun to fly. This was a time when most of us didn’t care whether the airplane had a tailwheel or a nosewheel. You had to pay attention to land both, but you did have to pay a little closer attention with the tailwheel. The 195 just seemed like a big, tough airplane and you could actually roll the pilot’s window down with a crank. For some reason, that was, to some pilots, a complete turn-on.

The military also bought the airplane, designated LC-126 for that purpose, but the 195 was short-lived, 1947-1954, with most built early in the period. It was simply not a competitor for the Bonanza.

It took Cessna a few years, a little bit longer than Piper, to come out with a true Bonanza-competitor. The 210 was introduced in late-1959 as a 1960 model.

That first 210 was basically a retractable 182 but with more horsepower, 260 v. 230. I have seen a picture of the first effort and it was literally a 182 with folding wheels. By the time the transformation was completed, Cessna had switched to a rakishly swept vertical tail and made other changes that gave the airplane an entirely new visual personality. It was a handsome airplane.

When the 210 was first introduced, everyone was curious about how the main gear went from extended to stowed in the belly of the airplane. Someone came up with a simple paper clip explanation. I actually still have a paper clip and just tried to do this but all these years later I couldn’t remember how. In the unlikely event you have a paper clip, see what you can do. It has to do with an angle.

AIR FACTS had one of those first 210s. My father flew it most of the time while I used the Comanche most, but I flew the 210 enough to come to like it. For one thing, it had fuelinjection which meant that for the first time I didn’t have to fool with carburetor heat. It was a good smooth-running engine, too.

The 210 lasted from 1957 until 1986 when it fell victim to the cataclysmic decline in general aviation aircraft sales. Cessna opted not to bring it back when they resumed production on the 172, 182 and 206. A total of 9,240 were built so while it was a good competitor for the Bonanza, and outsold it when both were on the market, it fell far short of Bonanza total production.

The 210 was altered greatly over its life. It went from being a retractable 182 to a full six-place airplane (with enough space and useful load to make that a reality) to a turbocharged and a pressurized airplane. See the post about my P210, N40RC, for more information on the latter.

One thing that I didn’t mention about the P210 is the fact that I flew the type with three different piston engines and two different turboprop engines. There was always interest in making it into something more powerful.

There was a P210 mod that fitted a Lycoming. This looked good but, in fact, little was gained from it. I flew a photo mission in that airplane, using a Bonanza 36 as the photo platform airplane, and was constantly asking the Bonanza pilot to power down so I could keep up. Some airplanes were converted under an STC. I suppose those who enjoyed the Lycoming v. Continental debate might have taken comfort in the fact that a switch could be made.

Cessna put a geared 421 engine in a P210, 375 horsepower, and I flew that off the Cessna factory strip with the chief engineer. The view out front was somewhat obstructed by the hump on top of the cowling that housed the gear box for the big prop. One advantage was the prop being farther off the ground so they could have a larger prop to take proper advantage of the horsepower. The ride was amazingly quiet and smooth. Cessna was apparently not serious about it as a product because they only flew it for a while and then put it back into the original configuration.

The Silver Eagle Allison turboprop conversion offered by O&N aircraft for the P210 is an excellent mod. Cessna actually did the same thing, built two airplanes that would have been the Cessna 250 if produced, and then the bottom fell out of the market. I always wondered if O&N had benefit from the work Cessna had done but could never get anyone to comment on this.

I also flew a P210 with a PT-6 turboprop. That was way too much engine for the airplane and the prop size dictated by ground clearance was far from ideal. The Allison turboprop was a much better fit for the airplane. The PT-6 mod did get an STC but it was never really marketed.

The 210 was, simply, an airframe that was adaptable to a lot of different things and it offered a lot of utility and performance at a relatively reasonable price. The handling qualities did suffer as horsepower was increased and CG limits were stretched out a little past where they should have really been set.

Right up until the end of production, the nicest 210 to fly was the plain old 210 with no turbocharging and no pressurization. Three of us from FLYING took one of each out for an evaluation, swapping airplanes for each leg, and everyone agreed on which was the most pleasant to fly: the plain old 210.

One curiosity about the 210 v. Bonanza competition relates to turbocharging. Both airplanes were offered with it and in later years the great majority of the 210s produced were T210s. Over at Beech, turbocharging for the Bonanza was far less popular. Maybe it was the personality of the buyer or maybe it was because Cessna did a better job of adapting their airplane to turbocharging.

There is evidence of this. Cessna never went for distance records with the 210 but the airplane was used to set notable records. On 1/11/1966, Walter Cable set an altitude record of 39,334 feet in a stock T210. Shortly after that, he did it again in a modified T210 (more horsepower) by climbing to 43,699 feet. Top that. I don’t know that Cessna actually had anything to do with these records.

In later years, airplanes had maximum certified altitudes but when those 210s were built there was no limitation.

Back in the 1970s Cessna was building an airplane for every conceivable niche and had RG versions of the 172, 177 and 182. I had a 177 (Cardinal) RG for a while and it served well. It was about five or eight knots faster than the Piper Arrow III I had for a while but it always seemed to lack spirit, whatever that might be in an airplane. Turbocharging was also offered for a while in the 182RG as well as in the Piper Arrow, Lance and Saratoga. None of these were too well done.

A lot of other companies tried to compete in the retractable single market and Mooney probably tried harder than anyone else.

Mooney Aircraft actually started in 1929 but that was a bad time for anything and it went bankrupt in 1930.

Mooney resurfaced after World War Two and I have heard many wonderful tales about how it wound up in Kerrville, Texas. No two were alike so I just always chose to believe the one I liked best. It involved old family friend George Haddaway, a consummate Texan and publisher of FLIGHT magazine. He sold the Mooney folks on Texas in general and Kerrville in particular and I am sure he helped arrange tax incentives and such.

Mooney’s first retractable single definitely did not target the Bonanza. The M-18 was a single seat airplane that looked like a miniature version of the Mooneys we have known and loved since the first M-20 was produced in 1955.

For some unknown reason, we had an M-18 at the FBO where I worked for a short while. To check a pilot out, we’d get some muscle, put the M18 up on saw horses, and show anyone who wanted to fly it how to retract and extend the landing gear.

The main thing I remember about my one M-18 flight was wondering how long it would take me to get it back on the ground. It did not feel right to me. I was surprised to learn these many years later that Mooney built more than 300 M-18s. I thought it was a much smaller number.

I rode in, but did not fly the first production M-20 in 1955, out of Linden Airport in New Jersey. My father was evaluating it for an AIR FACTS pilot report and my recollection of the flight was that I thought the cabin was awfully small for a four-place airplane.

The many entities that built Mooneys went in and out of business on a fairly regular basis. The question often comes up about how many owners Mooney as a company has had over the years. The only accurate answer would be “a lot.”

There were some good Mooney years in the 1960s and 70s and there were probably years when the company turned a good profit, or at least a profit. However, it always managed to run aground one more time.

For years, efficiency was the hallmark of the Mooney, I think more were built with four-cylinder Lycomings than any other powerplant but the Mooney got one six-cylinder Lycoming (the TLS), a six-cylinder Porsche engine (the PFM), and a whole host of six-cylinder Continentals. For the most part, the company did a good job of turbocharging on the airplanes offered with that feature.

Why, with the price of fuel going through the roof, did they abandon the 200 hp 201, which would cruise not much slower than a Bonanza on not much more than two-thirds of the fuel? Simple math. The fancier airplanes with the bigger engines could be built for not much more money (the increased cost of the engine and prop) than the 201 and they could be sold (in smaller numbers) for a lot more money. The Mooney airframe was laborintensive and the man-hours of labor required to get one out the door was an expensive proposition regardless of which engine was used.

In the 1960s there was a lot of talk about Mooney overstating the cruising speed of their airplanes. When they came out with the Super 21 with a 200 hp Lycoming everybody wondered if the claimed speed was fact or fiction. Mooney wasn’t alone here as most manufacturers looked at performance through rose-colored glasses at that time.

I liked to race airplanes to get a true measure of speed so told the Mooney demo pilot that I wanted to race his airplane against our 250 Comanche. He agreed.

The rules of the race were simple: full power at 1,500 feet. Do that and there is no doubt about which airplanes is fastest. In relative terms, any difference would be the same as the difference at cruise.

The 250 Comanche was ever so slightly faster than the Mooney. This was pre-knots and I counted on 170 mph (145 knots) as the normal cruise for the Comanche so the Mooney would be about the same.

I’ll hasten to add that those old Mooneys had terribly inefficient cowlings and when this was addressed with the 201, the Mooney speed actually went up quite a bit and was as advertised.

Mooney developed a pressurized single, the Mustang, but it was expensive to build and was described by one pilot as “a slug.” Not many were sold and the airplane is often cited as the reason for one of Mooney’s many sinking spells.

I flew a lot of different Mooneys over the years and rented a turbocharged 252 for a month while my P210 was in for an engine overhaul. The 252 was a capable airplane that I enjoyed flying but I always thought the 180 hp Mooney with the manually- retractable gear was the most enjoyable to fly. It is rather like something simple that you put on and then fly away.

Mooney is running with new investors today and last I heard they projected a gradual return of Mooney production. I hope they make it. The good people of Kerrville, Texas, have stood by Mooney through thick and thin and renewed activity at the airport would be well deserved.

North American Rockwell badly wanted to be in this business and bought the Meyers 200, a mostly hand-built four-place airplane with a 285 hp Continental. It was renamed the Aero Commander 200 and was built in a new factory on the Albany, Georgia, airport.

The trouble with the 200 was the cost to build it. Like the Mooney, the airframe was expensive to build and what little tooling they got with the purchase was not of much help. They admitted to spending $4-milion to build $3-million worth of product but it was likely worse than that. The design was sold and another company put a turboprop engine on it but not much came of this.

I flew the 200 a couple of times and it was a pleasant airplane to fly. The ride in turbulence was a bit busy but that was all I really noticed about it. It was probably about the same speed as a Bonanza but the cabin was far from being as comfortable.

You have heard the old saying about throwing good money after bad. The art of doing this has been practiced almost to perfection in the general aviation airplane business. After the discontinued the 200, Rockwell set out to develop and all-new retractable. The first version was the Rockwell Commander 112, a 200 hp retractable. It was followed by the 114 with a 260 hp engine.

The 112/114 airplanes had a big cabin and flew reasonably well. They were both slower than like-powered airplanes but after a lot of airframe problems in the development and early production of the 112 they finally seemed to get most of that right.

The airplane was never a big success and the design has been sold several times and there have been good-faith efforts to revive it. So far, each has reached a conclusion that did not include producing airplanes on a regular basis.

Over time, a lot of smart (in other areas) people have looked at general aviation, decided that the manufacturers don’t know what they are doing, and set out to demonstrate how it should really be done. This was done on a massive billion-dollar scale with the Eclipse jet. The Aero Commander 112/114 program was on a far smaller scale but I’d still bet it was an expensive lesson. The inside joke then was that when a Harvard Business School grad showed up to run an airplane company, the end was near. (My father attended that school for a while and never argued with this theory.)

Another lesson was learned in Midland, Texas, where I once flew the Windecker Eagle, the first “composite” general aviation airplane.

First, are you ready for some corny? The FLYING blurb on an Eagle story: “A Resin in the Sun.” Barf.

The Eagle had a 285 engine and was actually quite pretty to look at. It was certified when I flew it but there were some rough spots.

The wing carry-through structure the FAA wanted all but dictated legless passengers in the back seat. Windecker was working to modify this but give the company credit for dealing with a bureaucracy that was gun-shy about certifying anything new especially a construction method. It is a wonder they got it certified at all.

The Eagle that I flew was incredibly noisy. One problem was that the main cabin door didn’t fit properly; the other was that nobody knew how to deaden sound in a composite airframe. I well recall Beech learning that lesson years later with the unconventional Starship composite turboprop twin. It was loud to begin, especially in the cabin. I likened it to being inside a bass drum with the band playing. I guess Cirrus and Lancair had this figured from the beginning because the SR airplanes and what later became the Cessna TTx have acceptable noise levels.

The Windecker Eagle had okay handling qualities and the performance was what would be expected from an airplane of this horsepower and configuration.

A few Eagles, nine, were built but like so many others, this airplane could never attract enough capital to become a competitor in the marketplace. The design has been sold and there have been the usual noises about bringing it back, turboprop power, and all the rest.

Walter Extra, of aerobatic airplane fame, designed, certified and built a retractable single. The pressurized composite Extra EA-400 used a liquid-cooled Continental that was barely used elsewhere (on a Cessna twin conversion) and everything else about it appeared unconventional. It did have a cavernous clubseating cabin.

Like the 210, the EA-400 main gear retracted into the fuselage. But where you could simulate the 210 landing gear action with a paperclip, it would take a top-of-the-line Erector set to match the complexity of the Extra landing gear.

As far as I know the EA-400 never could attract the capital required for production and the airplane is pretty much in limbo. A turboprop version, the EA-500, was developed and certified and, to me, it was a far better airplane but they are not rolling off a production line anywhere.

Look at the picture of an EA-400 and make your own decision about the appearance of the airplane. Personally, I would never call anything designed by Walter Extra “ugly.”

Bellanca is one of the oldest names in general aviation, dating back to 1927. To most today, Bellanca is or was the Viking, a four place retractable that, as the Super Viking, had a 300 hp Continental and Bonanza-like performance.

With its wood wing and steel tubing and fabric construction elsewhere, many felt like the Bellanca was still being built after its time had passed. The airplane had fans, though, along with the dedicated folks at the Alexandria, Minnesota, home of Bellanca, and production started and stopped as demand ebbed and flowed amidst financial upheavals.

The Bellanca Viking was neither pleasant nor unpleasant to fly. I remember once thinking it reminded me of an old Pullman railroad car. I guess that meant I felt it was a bit cumbersome as well as out of date.

As with so many other old names, Bellanca wound up attached to an all-new airplane, the Bellanca Aires T-250, in 1977. This metal airplane was designed in Texas, by Anderson, Greenwood and Company and was an FAA-certified T-tail four place with a 250 hp Lycoming. It became a Bellanca because of some connection between the two companies.

The T-250 was a nice airplane to fly and might have made its way if the capital had been around to fund it. Only five were built and the airplane was never really “produced.”

I vividly recall the first time I saw a T-250. I was with a photographer and Marvin Greenwood, a fine fellow and one the airplane’s designers.

Marvin showed us the airplane in its hangar. I raised an eyebrow but the photographer slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand and said something like “Holy Cow, you have got to be kidding.” His outburst in front of the person who designed it was embarrassing to me but Marvin just laughed.

The T-250 was a bit on the boxy side and the narrow track of the main landing gear was a bit different. Out of the hangar it looked better and in fight it looked even better though still boxy.

The Bellancas, both wooden and metal, are bits of history and I will say that I admired the tenacity of the folks who tried to make them a factor in the market. Tenacity, though, can get pretty expensive.

The more popular of those single-engine retractables accounted for tens of thousands of sales over the years. They were the darlings of manufacturers and airplane owners. Now, only three are in regular production: the two Piper PA-46s (Malibu Mirage and Matrix) and the Bonanza G36. A big-engine fixedgear, the Cirrus SR-22, outsells the retractables by a huge margin and I guess it does so because it offers about the same performance without the complexity of folding wheels. As a purist, though, I have to say: “Yes, but it is no Bonanza.”

Part Three:

Safety

Personal or Business:

Is One Riskier Than the Other?

Someone called my attention to an Avemco-sponsored newsletter that makes some ridiculous assertions. One is that aviation publications do not accurately report on the safety record in general aviation, painting a brighter picture than exists. Only this newsletter tells it straight.

That is a sanctimonious and incorrect observation. I have been writing for aviation publications since 1958 and have continuously editorialized about the poor safety record in general aviation flying. I have even been accused of making it look worse than it actually is.

It might be true that associations have downplayed the unfortunate safety record but I think even that is getting better.

Worse, the newsletter perpetuates the myth that personal flying has a far worse safety record than business flying by like pilots in like airplanes on like missions. Business flying is defined as that flown by a nonprofessional pilot for business reasons.

That myth is supported by NTSB graphs showing what they call the relative records of personal and business flying. It shows the fatal accident rate in personal flying to be four times worse than in business flying.

The simple fact is that nobody knows how many hours are flown for business and how many hours are flown for personal reasons. Thus any reported accident rate for either activity is fiction and anybody who repeats it without verification is making a mistake.

All business flying is for transportation so the only comparison that would have any meaning would be between transportation flying for business and for personal reasons.

I have done more research on the accident records than anyone and learned long ago that there are few absolutes. The safety potential of any flight is affected by countless variables, none of which relate to whether a flight is for business or pleasure. I have read every fatal accident report issued since 1958 and have never seen any indication that there is a safety difference between the two activities.

One variable that I have seen mentioned is the pressure on a pilot to “get there.” This, though, would exist in both forms of flying. There would be no difference in wanting to get to Thanksgiving dinner and wanting to get to a big meeting to close a big deal.

I have developed accident rates for individual airplanes, using hours flown by type from Aircraft Bluebook, fleet size from Vref, an aircraft value reference, and personal examination of the fatal accident records.

Fatal accident rates vary widely among types that are used for both business and personal flying, accurately reflecting how the airplanes come out while being used as they are by the pilots who fly them. There was nothing found in this research that suggests any difference in risk between using these airplanes for business or personal reasons.

For a fact, the Cessna 172/Skyhawk has the best record that I researched at .56 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours and it is probably flown more than other airplanes for personal reasons. (It does fly in instructional flying which has a stellar safety record but that is a relatively small use of a huge fleet of 172s.)

The worst airplane is the Cessna P210 with a rate of 2.33 per 100,000 hours and it is more likely flown for business. The overall general aviation fatal accident rate runs at about 1.20 per 100,000 hours according to the NTSB.

In some years, twins have a higher fatal accident rate than singles, according to NTSB numbers. Keep in mind that singles also include experimental airplanes which have a worse rate than certified airplanes. Twins are also more likely to be used for business flying. On the flip side, twins are also faster so the fatal accident rate per mile would be better.

I suspect that disdain for personal flying has some background in the oil crisis of 1973. Because of an Arab oil embargo, the politicians tried to scare everybody silly about the availability of fuel. Draconian cuts were threatened for general aviation.

Russ Meyer, who would later head Cessna, led the fight to preserve our fuel supply. One of the keystones of his strategy was to show that most GA flying was serious business and vital to the national economy. Pilots flying for personal reasons almost felt like they had to take their peanut butter and jelly sandwich along in a briefcase and never smile when within 500 feet of an airplane.

The business about business has persisted over the years with many campaigns championing the increased productivity that is available if you fly for business. That is all well and good but personal flying can add a lot of increased productivity to your lifestyle.

Something else precludes rational thought on this subject. If a person flying an airplane owned by his business crashes on a trip to the beach, business flying likely gets credit for the hours and personal flying gets credit for the wreck. I am sure nobody who uses a business airplane has ever flown for monkey business but that remote possibility could skew any numbers on the subject.

Recreational flying is a different matter. Everything is in the personal column there and when pilots seek enjoyment by playing with their airplanes it opens up a wide variety of hazards when compared with transportation flying. The risk here is easily managed by flying the airplane well within its envelope but, sadly, many pilots fail to do that.

It is my thought that the risks pilots want to take are their own business. There is great personal freedom to be found in flying and that is as it should be.

Really, all flying is private or personal flying, too. The company that took delivery of the first Gulfstream G650 bought the airplane because somebody wanted it, not entirely because somebody truly needed it. Few businesses would own an airplane unless the manager or management wanted an airplane. That makes it all personal which means the business/ personal comparisons relate only to the deductibility of the flight for tax purposes.

My contention is that this has no relationship to the relative safety of a flight. What do you think?

The IFR Conundrum:

Is it as it Appears?

Back in the good old days, there was a lot of scud running and not much real IFR. A lot of us thought that the best way to improve the general aviation safety picture would be to get more people into IFR flying. My father, Leighton Collins, started this, in the old Air Facts, soon after World War Two. He wrote many words encouraging light airplane IFR and printed many more by other folks. I came along a bit later and joined in. Both of us practiced what we preached.

One of life’s simplest pleasures comes in realizing that you were wrong about something and that is true here. There is almost infinitely more IFR flying now than there was in the 50s and 60s yet the accident rate where weather is involved has not improved much. The simple pleasure is found in the challenge of trying to figure out why we were wrong.

There are many potential reasons why IFR flying falls far short of realizing what should be a safety advantage.

For starters, IFR today is an almost completely different activity than it was 50 or 60 years ago. It is more complicated and far harder to master.

To examine this subject we have to separate instrument flying from IFR flying.

Instrument flying is simply the art of controlling the airplane by reference to instruments with no outside visual references.

IFR flying is operating in the air traffic control system.

There is a third element: weather flying. That relates to the interface between the airplane and the weather and the pilot’s interpretation of that weather. It goes without saying that you have to be good at instrument flying to do well in IFR and weather flying.

Instrument flying has not changed much since I got my rating in 1955. The relatively recent introduction of electronic flight instruments didn’t really change the way it is done. We still look at and interpret the readings and operate the controls accordingly.

IFR and weather flying have changed a lot. The combination of the two is the only place we can look for the reasons that the safety potential of IFR is unrealized.

IFR flying used to be deceptively simple. As late as 1954, when I was a Link instructor at an Air Force contract school, we were teaching navigation using the four course low frequency radio range as well as the ADF. Both are simple to use. Many words have been written about using the ADF to maximum effect but the main thing you have to remember is that it points to the station.

The four course range was even simpler. The pilot did not have to look at anything. Navigation was by ear. You could hear when you were on the beam and could come and go along any of the four beams. There was no flexibility but it worked as long as you wanted to go where a beam went.

When VOR (called “omni” at the time) came along there was a lot more flexibility but there was also a learning curve. Everything had to be set correctly for it to give the navigational commands for tracking an airway. A lot of people had trouble with this and VOR navigation was many years down the road before there was general understanding of everything about it. It required eye time, too, which took away from the time the pilot had for instrument interpretation.

The next complication came with glideslope receivers, enabling full ILS approaches. Many hours were flown as pilots mastered the art of tracking both a localizer and a glideslope while doing a good job of instrument flying. To try to simplify this, some instructors actually taught students to descend below the glideslope to the localizer-only minimums and then to intercept and track the glideslope for just the last part of approach, to the lower minimum that it afforded.

To that point, IFR flying was still relatively simple. Then it got more complicated. There was more traffic and the interface with air traffic control became more time-consuming. GPS was implemented and was soon the cornerstone for all the current gee-whiz navigational systems, some of which are pretty complex. A pilot has to be technologically capable to operate these systems and they require a lot of hands and eyes-on time. An autopilot has come to be quite necessary simply because the pilot can’t fly instruments and manage the electronic store at the same time.

The solutions that pilots used to find in that three pound computer in the skull are now available electronically. Is it easier to do it that way? Open to question, I think. Where solving a square root problem with a calculator will always be a marvel to those of us who learned to do it with a pencil and paper, some of the electronic calculations done with avionics systems seem rather like counting cows by counting the teats and dividing by four.

More important than the “easier” question is one about its being a distraction. I think that, without question, it is distracting. That is why the autopilot has become such a vital bit of equipment.

All the electronics have added a wealth of weather information to the cockpit but this has to be retrieved and looked at, which is also a distraction. Back in the simpler days, pilots listened to scheduled weather broadcasts at 15 and 45 past the hour to keep up with weather conditions. That was quite effective. Having weather radar information available in the cockpit is today’s big advantage but, guess what? We still lose airplanes in thunderstorms.

The time spent training for an instrument rating has been minimized. It simply does not allow enough time to learn all the things a pilot needs to know to safely operate IFR in instrument conditions. I learned to swim when my mentor threw me into the deep and suggested I have at it. I think that is how people are “learning” IFR flying today.

I am going to digress here and use a couple of war stories to illustrate how much instrument flying has changed and how some of us used it before it became so complicated.

I was a Link instructor before I got an instrument rating. I spent a lot of time flying the Link, just for practice, so I was a pretty good instrument pilot before I flew IFR.

On March 27, 1954, I was in Meridian, Mississippi in my PA-12 Super Cruiser, N3389M, with a strong desire to fly to Little Rock. The weather was not cooperating.

Meridian was barely VFR. Greenwood, Mississippi, the only reporting station along the way, was not quite VFR. Little Rock was virtually clear.

Planning was pretty simple. I would take off and head out to see what it looked like. If the view wasn’t good, I could land, or, I could climb to a safe altitude and concentrate on the needle and ball (all I had) and fly northwest until I got to the good weather. No air traffic control interface was required to fly instruments in uncontrolled airspace which was more the rule than the exception at that time.

I flew at an altitude that would clear everything along the way by 1,500 feet and started reaching better weather about a hundred miles from Little Rock.

That was my first instrument (but not IFR) flight. We referred to such flying as bootleg instrument flying and it was widely done, probably accounting for more hours than IFR flying in light airplanes. It was a simple plan in a simple airplane and the only computer involved was the pilot’s brain. Looking back, it still appears a low risk operation.

It was about fifteen years later, on December 6, 1969, that a more notable bootleg instrument flight occurred

The football game was Arkansas v. Texas, number two v. number one. President Nixon went to the game at Fayetteville, Arkansas. Air Force One landed at Ft. Smith where Marine One and two other like helicopters were standing by. The weather was awful.

Any local knew that a scud run from Ft. Smith to Fayetteville wasn’t likely possible because of higher terrain between the two points.

The flight of three helicopters headed north, toward Fayetteville. It was soon apparent that it couldn’t be done VFR so the pilot flying Marine One told the other two helicopters to break it off. Marine One pulled up into the clouds and flew to the vicinity of Razorback Stadium where the crew descended to VFR conditions, found the landing zone, and delivered President Nixon to the game, on time. (Unfortunately, Texas won. There is extensive coverage of this game on Wikipedia, if you are interested.)

There was great official consternation over this flight but it was actually a simple thing to do and most of us could see nothing wrong with it. The pilot had a simple plan and he knew what he was doing.

Those two flights are representative of what went on in the good old days, may they never return.

They also shed some light on why IFR flying has failed to realize its safety potential. Compare the simplicity of such flights with the distracting complexity of IFR flying today and it is easy to see how marginally-trained pilots can be overwhelmed and make mistakes, too many of which lead to serious accidents.

Bootleg instrument flying has no place today and the electronic marvels that many pilots now enjoy are real assets. They won’t, however, part the waters and make possible things that belong in the “impossible” column. I think that it is possible that some pilots feel the electronic finery absolves them of the responsibility to plan and think. Just load the flight and fly. No planning required. No flying required, either. Let the autopilot handle that. No thinking required – plenty of time to do the crossword puzzle while en route. Bad ideas, I think, that might be at least some of the reasons for the unrealized safety potential of IFR flight. What do you think?

Safety Crisis: What’s Going On?

A common staple of Internet garbage has become those inane lists of 10 Best....10 Worst....10 Most. Cuss ‘em but you do look at them and recently I got a jolt when one I read said that “airline pilot” was the third most dangerous job in the country, with 50.6 fatalities per year for every 100,000 people involved.

Of course, that is absurd. Our airline transportation system is the safest form of transportation that has ever existed, by far, and to suggest that the job of flying airliners is that dangerous makes no sense. Neither does the sensationalism that comes after a bad landing or a small panel falls off an airliner. But the media does love to trot out the talking heads and warn of disasters lurking just around the corner. Every slight airline incident seems to get the scrutiny of a major disaster. As they used to say, it sells papers – even if it is misleading.

What is most bothersome about that listing of “airline pilot” as the third most dangerous job is that it came from somewhere and I looked into the source and found out where that was. The general aviation accident record can be interpreted to show that there are 50.6 annual pilot fatalities for every 100,000 pilots. I am not saying that is an absolutely accurate interpretation, just that it is possible.

Where a compilation of dangerous jobs listed it as “airplane pilot” someone preparing a sensational item for msn.com listed it as “airline pilot.”

It’s a little sobering that our avocation can be that high on a list of dangerous things to do. Equally bothersome is the fact that the NTSB’s preliminary fatal accident rate in private flying showed a relatively significant spike in 2014, to 1.4 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours. That would be the worst record since 1996. Recently, in another post, I said that the accident rate had remained about the same for years. Now that has changed, and not for the better.

Talking heads were quick to point out that, given the relatively small nature of the activity, this jump in the fatal accident rate could be an aberration and that the rate will settle back to the “no change” range of the past couple of decades. That is something to hope for but not to anticipate. And is no change in what has been a bad accident rate for years a good thing?

The airlines have been able to parlay advances in technology and training to their near-perfect safety record. We have available every bit (and possibly more) in the way of high-tech stuff and yet the safety record doesn’t improve and has now apparently gotten worse. There is no question that something is badly out of place. Our tech improvements have been around for long enough to have started making a difference but things seem to be going the wrong way.

You know what comes next: Unless the pilot is improved, no amount of high-tech stuff will ever have a beneficial effect on the safety record. Large sums have been spent by entities like the AOPA Air Safety Foundation (now Institute) and over the years millions of words (some mine) have been printed in aviation journals trying to promote flying safety but it has all apparently been to no avail. The money has been wasted and the words have fallen on deaf ears. The record has actually gotten worse.

If the safety effort has not worked and all the new equipment has not helped, what might be done next? Certainly to say that a worse safety record in one year doesn’t really mean anything is not productive.

Something that makes the next step hard to determine is the fact that the nature of the pilot population has apparently changed. Thirty years ago reader surveys at FLYING showed that the most popular subjects were safety, flying technique and weather. Today I note in our AIR FACTS numbers that these subjects are not the key things that they once were.

Almost 40 years ago I wrote a book on this subject. Flying Safely sold about 35,000 copies in its original and revised versions. A few years ago I wrote another book on safety, The Next Hour. The total sales of that one were tiny by comparison. The interest just seems not to be there now. I have also seen an increase in the number of pilots who question why we even talk about safety. They don’t want to hear about it and don’t want the spouse to find out that private flying is not safer than driving or riding the airlines. It is a real challenge to find a solution to a problem that the participants won’t acknowledge.

That sure doesn’t mean we should quit trying.

I asked one CFI, with experience in a wide range of airplanes, why he thought the record might be worsening. He said he expected this to happen it because pilots have become more interested in high-tech and less interested in flying. He thinks pilots fly around with their heads down, mesmerized by screens, and not really interested in what is going on with the airplane which is still there and has to be flown. Certainly we see people spending an inordinate amount of time staring at and thumbing smart phones everywhere else. Why expect it to be any different in airplanes?

I agree that the interests of new pilots, and born-again older pilots, have changed. Years ago I could write an article about crosswind landings and pilots would lap it up. Now I can do a post on crosswind landings and a relative few people will look at it. If you want to draw a crowd, write about iPads in the cockpit.

I guess the inescapable conclusion is that today’s pilot does not think flying is inherently risky so he is just not willing to put a lot of time into thinking about that. What danger does lurk can be managed on the screen. What is going on makes me wonder if today’s pilot really wants to be what we historically thought of as a pilot. If the abiding interest in aviation and the camaraderie that existed among the faithful is gone, what else can be found to build on?

This is where the desire to attract new people and ensure some sort of future for private aviation and the desire to try to make it less risky collide head-on.

It is my opinion that while attracting new people is of primary importance, this will become ever-more difficult if the accident rate worsens. Trying to sell something that is increasingly risky to people who are increasingly risk-averse is more than a challenge.

I have been around for a long time, working this subject for most of that long time. I’d be the first to say that my two-bits worth might not have the value of a quarter but here it is anyway: I think we need to be up front and vocal about the fact that flying as it is being done today is probably more dangerous than most like to admit. That would cause some to turn away from the activity but we might be doing them a favor. Flying is totally unforgiving of carelessness or inattention. Any pilot who doesn’t recognize this and acknowledge the potential hazards is likely to account for one more uptick in that unfortunate accident rate.

The other thing that has to be acknowledged and talked about is the fact that the high-tech is great, but having it does not automatically equate to safer flying.

For example, it truly bothers me to see angle of attack instrumentation presented as some new device that will save your butt. It is old and like other devices it gives information about something that can be easily managed without the device. I hasten to add that the importance of angle of attack management is not stressed nearly enough in training and testing. You can’t buy safety, you have to learn it. It has to become a state of mind.

One more thought on angle of attack: It has been suggested that having the instrumentation enables safe flight closer to the edges of the envelope. To me, anything that pushes pilots closer to the edges of the envelope doesn’t decrease risk, it increases risk.

The FAA and NTSB might be pushing angle of attack instrumentation but the FAA’s sample 60-question knowledge test has only one question on the subject and it is in reference to the definition. On the one hand they want you to buy expensive angle of attack instrumentation and on the other hand they don’t even ask a question about the importance of angle of attack. Go figure.

It has always been true that the people who don’t need it are the ones who seek out useful safety information. The ones who badly need the information don’t want it and have always been difficult if not impossible to reach. The latter used to be the macho hairy-chested guy wearing a leisure suit and gold chain, with an attractive lady on his arm. Maybe he is now the technerd flying along poking his devices while totally oblivious to the fact that he is pilot in command of a real airplane that is governed by the laws of aerodynamics, not software.

I guess this leaves safety-minded folks two choices: Either combine real flying with high-tech and connect with the new breed of pilot, or, watch the accident rate gravitate to new highs.

Crashes: Then and Now

Carnage in the beginning...

In a recent post I bemoaned the fact that the fatal accident rate for private flying had gone up to 1.40 per 100,000 hours after remaining level in the 1.20 range for almost 20 years. Guess what it was when AIR FACTS started in 1938? Would you believe 16.6, or, a fatal accident about every 6,000 hours. In another place I saw it as high as 30.0. At the time, the airline rate was 2.0. The trash media would have a field day if it were that today.

It is interesting that the airline rate in 1938 was a bit worse than private flying is today. At that time the airlines were flying mostly no-tech DC-3s which had about the same performance as high-performance singles and light twins. They flew in most all weather, probably more than they fly in today, and did so over a lot of really rough terrain at night as well as day. The only advantage they had was a crew of two but in those days the co-pilot, as he was called, was usually told to shut up and not touch anything.

A reader commented that in the previous post I hadn’t given credit for all the improvement in private aviation safety prior to the last 20 years. Well, I just did. Another reader emailed that the current lethargy in general aviation has little to do with cost and the other familiar whipping boys but it has a lot to do with the public perception of danger in private flying.

AIR FACTS was all about safety from the start and it has always tended that subject. How did we evolve from that bloody 16.6 or worse in 1938 to the 1.2-1.4 range where it has been for the last 20 years?

It was slow going and has more to do with pilots than technology.

The accident rate has always varied pretty widely among airplane types. I have always thought that was true because different airplanes attract different pilots.

After World War Two the majority of the pilot population was either ex-military or trained under the GI-Bill. Where in 1938 there had been only about 9,000 “sportsman” pilots, as they were called then, the number moved quickly into the hundreds of thousands after the war.

Pilots of that day weren’t much interested in safety. It was a fatalistic group that had been to war and back and part of the romance of flying came from risking your life. Safety features in airplanes, or in cars, were far in the future and the public was not clamoring for such. “Cheated death again” was a pretty standard post-flight remark.

The Civil Aeronautics Board (forerunner of the NTSB in this regard) and Beechcraft both did a study of accidents in 1952. It gave a good picture of what was going on with the pilot population while flying airplanes built after the war. The overall private aviation fatal accident rate per 100,000 hours was at about 4.8 in 1952.

Think of these numbers in relation to the current 1.2-1.4 rate. The CAB and Beech numbers were pretty close and these are the CAB numbers.

The original Bonanza 35 had a fatal accident rate of 4.9 where the A, B and C35 had a rate of 2.5. Why were the newer airplanes better? I think it was because pilots were becoming more accustomed to what a bad idea it was to lose control of such an aerodynamically clean airplane.

I have flown all models of the V-tail Bonanza and can see no other reason why the newer ones had a better record. It was simply a matter of better pilots or at least pilots who were more aware of the characteristics of the airplane. Even though the Bonanza was frequently referred to as a V-tail doctor killer, the 35 was average and the newer ones above average.

The Model 18 twin Beech had the best record in 1952 at .90. It was usually flown by professional pilots who were simply about five times better than average at the art of flying.

The Cessna 170 and 170A came in at 4.8, or right at average. Today’s version of that airplane, the Skyhawk, always has one of the best records, substantially better than average, so why wasn’t that true in 1952? The only answer I can think of relates to the fact that the airplanes were largely owner flown then and were widely used for travel and, when the weather was marginal, for scud-running. Today, the Skyhawk is flown a lot for instructional purposes where the safety record is excellent, and by more sedate pilots for private flying.

Two-place airplanes were a large part of the fleet and the airplane that was designed to be safer (because it was stall-resistant and spin proof and had no rudder pedals to fool with), the Ercoupe, had the worst record at 10.4 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours. Shades of 1938. The Cessna 120/140 had the best twoplace record at 3.0 and all the rest fell somewhere in between. The Taylorcraft was definitely on the high side at 8.7. I have instructed in both 140s and T-crafts and it is a mystery to me why the T-craft would have a record almost three times as bad as the 140.

Anecdotally, a jeweler who based a Taylorcraft at the airport where I worked in 1952 would fly his airplane in and out of some farm fields that were more suitable for helicopters. We were all convinced he would come to grief. He didn’t but an Ercoupe owner at the same airport did.

Why was the Ercoupe so bad? It could only be charged to human nature. Pilots thought the airplanes were “safe” where in truth Ercoupes were every bit as dangerous as any other airplane. Maybe they resisted stalls and wouldn’t spin but if flown too slowly they would develop a high sink rate, especially if there was even a little wind shear, and they could and did hit the ground hard and nose down. There was a special certificate for two control airplanes that required less training. That was a sad and tragic mistake.

The next time I sorted out accident rates by type was in the late 1970s. That was at the peak of the best-ever private aviation boom, when all the World War Two folks were in their peak earning years.

By this time the fatal accident rate was down to 2.02. Did the fact that it was twice as favorable as in 1952 have anything to do with the booming sales? Nobody will ever know, but by this time the average age of pilots had reached a much more mature number and pilots might have started giving more thought to safety. By the late 1970s, more attention was being paid to crashworthiness and shoulder belts had come to new general aviation airplanes.

Against that 2.2 rate, how did some of the airplanes of the day stack up? An NTSB study pegged the Bellanca as the worst, at 5.68. The best was the Piper Navajo at 1.13.

Something that had been pointed out in AIR FACTS years before was verified in this NTSB study: when high performance singles other than the Bellanca were compared with similar light twins, Bonanzas v. Barons for example, the rates were similar and most fell just above the 2.2 that was average for the time.

A lot of thought was given to that Bellanca record because there was no valid reason for it to be so high. It could have been an aberration caused by a relatively small fleet size and inaccurate estimate of hours flown. Also, when the safety record was calculated in other ways the Bellanca came out much closer to the other retractables.

The fixed-gear singles all came in under the average 2.2 number with the Cessna 150 best at 1.34, the 172 at 1.47 and the Cherokee at 1.97.

The stall/spin is a leading killer on these simple airplanes. The Cherokee has the tamest stall characteristics of the bunch, especially when the older 150/172 airplanes are considered, yet it had a worse record. What was the story there?

One semi-explanation was/is the fuel system. In a Cherokee you select between wing tanks. Both Cessnas can or do draw from both tanks at once and no fuel system management is required. And, you guessed right, the Cherokees had a bunch a fuel system mismanagement accidents where the Cessnas had none. Other than that, the conclusion might be that more docile stall characteristics don’t mean that an airplane will have a lower accident rate.

The most recent time that I delved into this was in the early 2000s, when the fatal accident rate had settled down to the 1.2 per 100,000 hours rate. Much of the following is from research I did for the book “The Next Hour.”

Against the average, higher performance airplanes again did not fare as well as lower performance airplanes. The worst record was in the Cessna P210 at 2.33 followed by the Piper Malibu/ Mirage at 2.04. Make it a simpler retractable, without pressurization, and the Saratoga, 210 and Mooneys were all close to the average. The Bonanza A36 was a little high at 1.81. The Cirrus is not a retractable but has similar performance and the SR20/22 was slightly above average at 1.52.

The Cessna 172 was best at .56, the 182 next at .74 and the Piper Archer below average at 1.06.

More aggressive pilots fly more aggressive airplanes and this is clearly illustrated in the Cirrus record of that time. The SR22 is clearly the more aggressive of the two Cirrus airplanes and it appeared to have a four-times greater involvement than the SR20 in fatal accidents.

The economy took a humongous hit right after those numbers were developed and the price of 100LL went through the roof. Flying activity went way down. Most of the airplanes in the fleet have gotten a lot of years older, too, and older airplanes tend to fly less. Thus any current calculation of hours flown by type would have to be taken with so many grains of salt that it would not be worth much.

It is my opinion that nothing has changed much since that last calculation. I think the Cirrus is likely doing better, maybe even substantially better, because of educational programs that include more aggressive use of the airframe parachute.

Whenever the overall private aviation accident rate is mentioned there was always a chorus of “yes, but” comments. A primary one is about the fact that accidents in experimental airplanes count here and the record there is worse. We are still all members of the same community and experimental airplanes and pilots are an integral and important part of that community. They are simply part of what we do so they count.

The NTSB has in the past shown rates for various fleets of airplanes. In that early-2000s period I was just talking about they showed fatal accident rates per 100,000 hours as follows: experimental 4.65, single-engine piston 1.50, piston twin 1.95, turboprop .69 and jet .24. Most experimental airplanes are singleengine piston types so those numbers could be used to suggest that singles are a lot safer than twins.

With the accident rate all but stagnant for the least twenty years, and with more high-tech innovation during that period than any other in our history, I can only conclude that there is no safety advantage to all those wonderful gadgets and gizmos. I always had the latest and greatest in my airplane and I loved having them. I never deluded myself into thinking they reduced my personal risk except in one area, collision avoidance. Having traffic information on the panel was, to me, pretty wonderful. Maybe my thinking on that is skewed by the fact that the only accident I had in 57 years of pilot-in-command flying was a midair collision.

If anything stands out as a growing problem today, it is piston engine failures, and my thoughts on this are anecdotal. I look at the press reports of airplane accidents every day and the number of airplanes damaged or destroyed in forced landings is almost mind-boggling. Where the old airframes are doing okay, the old engines might be giving up the ghost too frequently. This is something that needs to be watched closely, to see if there is a disturbing trend here.

If I could pick one factor that I think resulted in many years of improvement and now almost 20 years of no further improvement, it would be the nature of pilots. We became steadily more risk-averse over the years and then that got as good as it was going to get and no other factor had a measurable influence on safety.

In the end, there’s only one question that really counts: “How safe is my flying?” Those of us who work in private aviation safety might not be able to do anything to further improve the overall accident rate but we might be able to help individuals come up with the best possible answer to that important question. So we will keep trying.

Part Four:

Technique

11 Keys to Safer Instrument Flights

When you are doing it by yourself...

What we are going to look at here is instrument flying, as opposed to IFR flying. The latter relates more to the interface with the air traffic control system and is the basis for much instrument training. Flying by reference to instruments in clouds is a whole ‘nother matter and is often not addressed at all in training for the instrument rating which in reality is an IFR rating.

I would like to add one thing about IFR flying. If you plan on doing instrument flying, best fly IFR all the time. By doing this even in good weather, you will be comfortable in “the system” and when clouds come along the only change will be the fact that you can’t see outside. Everything else will be old hat.

Let’s look at some of the things we can do to minimize the chances of hurt while instrument flying. All along the way, remember that an important part of the operation is to continually ask yourself what comes next and what comes after that, and on and on. You have only yourself to ask, too, because we are discussing single-pilot operations.

1. Be prepared

A scout might check that his knife is sharp. A pilot must check to see if he is sharp. Back in the good old days, being sharp related more to stick and rudder skills but now the subject is much deeper than that.

I think it is probably true that most pilots flying technically advanced airplanes don’t know all there is to know about the equipment in the airplane. The confusion caused by uncertainty about how to operate flight control systems has led to accidents that could have been avoided if only the pilot had been proficient.

In airline and bizjet training, much of the emphasis is on the avionics systems at hand. Gone are the days when a checkout in a new type involved only flying the airplane. Now there is an absolute requirement to deal with the whole thing.

The best way to do this is to get the proper training and then operate the system in good weather. Clouds shouldn’t be entered until it can be operated intuitively. Also, if software is updated make sure you know what changed. Some software updates have been confusing to a lot of pilots.

2. The plan

Not to belittle the importance of planning to all flights, but it is true that planning is a primary key to instrument flying and it could be safe to say that failing to plan properly is more hazardous when clouds are involved than when they are not.

It is also primary that avoiding surprises is mandatory when cloud flying. Surprises serve up distractions and those are harder to handle in clouds than in clear weather.

The plan for the flight needs to look carefully at everything, and especially at the interface with air traffic control. A flight will always go more smoothly if “cleared as filed” and the way to have a better shot at that is to do a little homework.

The best way to find out what to expect in the way of a clearance is to ask the locals. If there are departure procedures for the airport find out if they are normally assigned to piston airplanes.

Look at the chart (or, more likely, the screen) and become familiar with the area and the route. If busy airports are along the way you can bet in advance that a low altitude IFR flight will be routed around the busy airspace. Word on this is sometimes published but it is still related more to agreements between en route and terminal facilities and these agreements don’t always make it into print.

An important part of the plan relates to a clearance that comes as a complete surprise. In this case, make sure you understand the clearance and have the initial points in the navigator before heading out so the first part of the flight will be covered. The rest of the route can be programmed once droning along in cruise.

One word on published departures: In mountainous terrain there might well be a minimum requirement for climb capability. This will be expressed in feet per mile so it is a product of groundspeed and rate of climb. That means that the wind aloft comes into play and if there is a strong tailwind in the climb then a higher rate of climb (in feet per minute) will be required.

Weather is a critical element of the plan. Just remember that weather is what you find, not what is forecast, so part of the plan has to be how you will deal with unforeseen weather.

3. Confidence & comfort

All the training and all the planning should result in a high level of confidence in the ability to handle the task at hand. “I think I can do this” is not a proper frame of mind. You don’t want to take off unless you know you can do this and unless the airplane has passed an extra thorough preflight inspection. A door coming open right after a low-visibility takeoff can be a fatal distraction which it has even been in clear weather.

Approaching a flight with confidence means you have been methodical and left no stone unturned. The old saying “haste makes waste” is more applicable in airplanes than anywhere else so if you feel rushed, just call a time out and sit quietly for a moment.

If after all this you don’t feel like you will be comfortable flying in the clouds at hand, go to a movie instead.

4. Dealing with the first minutes

The first minutes of an instrument flight see a proportionately high number of accidents. That means you have to be at the top of your form.

On takeoff, the best practice is to check for proper indications and sound when the power is brought up. If a needle is not in the correct place or if the engine doesn’t sound right, abort the takeoff.

I always thought the best place to start the real instrument flying is at liftoff. Go to the instruments then and forget about looking outside to see when it becomes absolutely necessary to go to the instruments.

The sensations of flight at, and right after, takeoff are pretty wonderful but they can also be discombobulating when you are on instruments. That means that absolute concentration is required and it is a good practice to do as little as possible until, say, 1,000 feet above the ground. Retract the gear, if applicable, as soon as a positive rate of climb is noted but then leave everything else alone and concentrate on basic flying. At 1,000 feet the airplane can be configured for the cruise climb and any required turn can be made. In the event that a departure procedure or a frantic word from the controller requires a turn sooner, fly through it carefully and with deliberation, paying attention to nothing else.

Many pilots turn the autopilot on right after takeoff. This is okay but do be aware that an improperly set autopilot can be an ultimate distraction when it starts to do something you didn’t think it was going to do.

5. Busywork in cruise

With a good autopilot, some pilots have been known to read or watch a TV show on an iPod or iPad while droning along at cruise. That is not what it is all about though. Cruise should be a busy time with a constant check of everything about the airplane, the navigation, and the weather.

Cruise is a good time to play “what if” and mentally work your way through every imaginable malfunction or other emergency. There are checklists for this but a good pilot will instinctively respond with at least the first and most important elements of that checklist. It goes without saying that he will keep a running tab on the closest suitable airport in case the need to land as soon as possible presents itself.

Toward the end of cruise is time to prepare for the arrival and have everything ready for that event.

6. Managing the descent

This sounds quite basic, but a poorly managed or rushed descent can get an arrival off to a bad start.

I always used a rule-of-thumb: five miles per 1,000 feet, on descents. If you start down five miles out (or five miles from a crossing restriction) for each 1,000 feet to be lost, a 500 foot per minute rate of descent would be required at 150 knots groundspeed. Of course it doesn’t happen that way every time, or even most of the time, but that rule of thumb will tell you when a greater (or smaller) descent rate will be required to descend a given number of feet in the distance left to fly. Faster, more descent, slower, less. There are other formulas that can be used; pick any one you like but don’t fail to have a descent plan which could also rely on the Vnav function in a navigator.

7. Into the Terminal area

All the good work done in advance means that you should enter the terminal area with a good expectation of what will happen next and next and after that and with everything set. If there is a change in the approach, don’t let it become a problem. Know whatever navigational system you are using and take the time to make sure the new approach is programmed correctly. If the controller is pressing you, just tell him you need a moment to reset everything.

I have a lot of experience flying with relatively new instrument pilots and they always seemed to have the most problems dealing with what happens in the terminal area. I think the nature of training has a lot to do with this.

You can often hear simulator folks say you can practice more approaches in a simulator per hour but that misses the point. Resetting the sim to a point on the approach cuts the pilot out of what happens when you actually have to fly to that point. For my money, simulators should be used to fly whole flights.

Before navigators, pilots had to visualize where they were sort of like we had to visualize our favorite radio programs before TV. The educators called this “situational awareness” which actually covered everything that went on in and around the airplane.

Even with navigators, pilots get caught up short, usually because the information they put into the navigator is not correct. It is still a requirement to know where you are and how many miles you have to fly until touchdown. When we got the first Loran C and GPS navigators that started to become easier and as the navigators became more sophisticated it became even easier.

The miles to fly business tells you what remains and when you need to do certain things like configure the airplane for the final approach. On many airplanes that means slowing down and if a pilot blows into the last part of an approach with too much altitude or speed, the approach won’t likely go well. The goal is to stack the deck entirely in your favor before the actual approach commences.

8. Verbalize the approach

One thing has not changed with all the latest avionics. The ILS approach works, and is flown, like it has always worked and been flown. The GPS approaches with vertical guidance work the same way though the lateral displacement indications have a different basis.

Whichever type approach you are flying, there is a lot going on. Both the vertical and lateral guidance has to be minded and a keen awareness of altitude is required.

Some pilots find it helpful to verbalize what is going on during an approach. The feeling is that this stimulates the thought process and helps avoid fixation on any one thing.

In a crew operation there are required altitude callouts. In light airplane instrument flying these might well be 500 feet above minimums, 100 feet above, and minimums.

Other callouts that might help could include airspeed, sink rate, heading and needle position, and needle movement. If you don’t want to talk to yourself at least think about all of these things as the approach progresses. When I was flying solo, I would actually talk to myself but did so silently with others in the airplane.

9. Minimums

The minimums call is bingo time. The best way is to consider the time when minimums are reached as a one shot deal. Look up, runway, continue. No runway, go around. Sniffing around for asphalt when you can’t see anything is quite dangerous. So is flying another approach at the same airport unless something has changed about the weather.

If the weather is low, should the autopilot be used to fly the approach?

Look at it this way: If the autopilot is flying, the pilot can super-alertly monitor the proceedings. If a single pilot is flying, there is no monitor. Your choice: backup or no backup.

10. Dark? Beware

I have studied general aviation accidents for years and in many different ways. One fact always raises its ugly head: instrument flying at night is the most dangerous thing we do in airplanes flown for transportation. Nothing else comes close.

There are possible reasons for this.

Few pilots fly instruments at night more than occasionally. So, when we do so most of us are inexperienced low-time night instrument pilots. Not a good combination.

Instrument flying is harder at night because visual illusions are magnified and everything is harder to see. Pilots make more serious procedural errors at night. To err might be human and to forgive divine but nobody told the airplane about that.

A pilot flying a night instrument flight is probably a person who has worked (or played) all day. That means fatigue and fatigue breeds errors. There is likely also a compelling reason to want or need to reach the destination that night.

Mechanical failure doesn’t have much more to do with night accidents than it does with day accidents. In either case the end of the flight usually comes when the pilot loses control of a perfectly functional airplane or flies it into the terrain.

11. Debrief honestly

You can wait until you get home or wherever but before the end of the day an honest assessment of the flight should be made. Mistakes? Sloppiness? Poor technique? Any doubt about the outcome? Certainly if you have a bad taste in your mouth after a flight, that is not a good sign. You might have used up one of your nine lives. Personally, I used up eight in my first few years of driving and flying so had to be extra careful with that ninth one.

The Weight – and the Balance

The video of the 747 crashing after takeoff from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan is hard to watch. The airplane had climbed only a few hundred feet and was flying quite slowly when it rolled a little to the left and then rolled off to the right, obviously out of control, as in the beginning of a spin. The only thing similar I can remember was video of a USAF B-52 starting to spinout of the bottom of a really steep turn years ago. In both cases, the airplane was quite low to begin and hit the ground shortly after control was lost.

The B-52 was to be flown in some sort of demonstration and the pilots were really throwing the big airplane around. In that steep turn, the angle-of-attack was apparently not minded and the airplane did what any airplane, large or small, will do when AOA (or alpha) is allowed to reach the stalling point.

The 747, on the other hand, was on a routine mission to fly military equipment to another air base. Certainly nothing unusual was planned but something unusual certainly happened.

As pilots will do, after watching the video I came up with an idea on what I thought might have happened. If the center of gravity moves aft, stability deteriorates. Far enough aft, there is no pitch stability and it can finally reach an aft point where the airplane will stall regardless of what the pilots do with the controls.

The 747 had a loadmaster as a crewmember and with a lot of eyes on the weight and balance, I doubt seriously if the airplane was loaded with the center of gravity beyond the aft limit. This would mean, in this scenario, that the heavy load of vehicles could have shifted aft. To do so, it would have had to be improperly secured and that has certainly been known to happen.

Apparently this subject had come up because in a statement, National Air Cargo, operator of the 747, said that the airplane was loaded at another base and stopped at Bagram only to refuel. After the original loading, the statement said the cargo was inspected and was found to be properly loaded and secured and had passed all the necessary inspections. The cargo was again inspected prior to departure from Bagram.

The NTSB is investigating and someday we will learn the probable cause. For now, for me, it raises an important question. Most pilots know that overloading an airplane is bad but a lot of pilots do it anyway. They know that some performance and a little structural integrity is sacrificed when an airplane is flown overweight and they are willing to risk that. What I don’t think many pilots fully understand is that a transgression in the balance of an airplane can be lethal, especially if the aft limit of the CG range is exceeded.

This got a lot of attention a number of years ago, in 1977. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania leased and then crashed one of the first turboprop Piper Cheyennes. Control of the airplane was lost shortly after a departure in instrument meteorological conditions. The investigation revealed that the CG was as much as 3.2 inches aft of the limit. There were eight adults on board which could explain this. Two would have had to be seated aft of the standard club arrangement.

Pitch stability had been a big question in the certification of the Cheyenne. In fact, to meet the regulations, Piper had to include an active stability augmentation system (SAS). Manufacturers had long used downsprings and bobweights in pitch systems to buttress longitudinal stability but the Cheyenne’s SAS was a first in light general aviation airplanes. Some pointed to it as a weakness in the design.

The Cheyenne was basically a piston-powered Navajo converted to a turboprop with a lot more horsepower. Horsepower is destabilizing in pitch, thus the problem.

The Cheyenne SAS kicks in when the airspeed drops below 125 knots. Then it starts applying forward pressure on the control wheel through a spring and at 100 knots it reaches the maximum push. The effect of this is to provide artificial control feel.

The stability requirements call for an airplane to always seek a trim speed and to return to that speed when disturbed. To go progressively slower or faster than the trim speed requires more pull or push.

At some point an aft CG condition can cause an airplane to reach what is called the stick-free neutral point where there is no feel in pitch. You don’t have to exert force to go slower or faster, you just have to move the elevator control. As you would expect, the aft CG limit is set ahead of the stick-free neutral point. It would be possible to control an airplane with the CG aft of the stick-free neutral point but it is difficult.

I have flown both a simulator and a variable-stability Navion operated by Princeton University and looked at both possible and impossible aft loadings and at best it will make you sweat and at worse control will be lost. It is a bad feeling, one you surely would not want to replicate without a way out.

After some original controversy about the SAS, the Cheyenne flew on. The pilots flying the airplanes apparently understood there was no margin in the aft CG limit and most kept it forward of that limit. Many disabled the SAS system because they didn’t like the way it messed with the controls when the airspeed dropped below 125 knots. I don’t think that ever contributed to an accident.

All stayed quiet until December 15, 1983, when The Wall Street Journal published a sensationalist, paper-peddling article that implied that the Cheyenne was unsafe because it lacked longitudinal stability. The report cast doubt on the FAA certification process for all airplanes.

There was so much wrong with the article that we at FLYING worked to set the record straight. Mac McClellan and I traveled to Florida, where the Cheyenne was produced at the time, and flew the FAA-mandated stability tests in each model of the airplane. It was an interesting exercise and I learned a lot about the stability characteristics of the airplane.

The hardest test to pass comes in a climb with the airplane trimmed for the best-rate-of-climb speed, with takeoff flaps, and with full power. Here the airplane must have a stable stick force curve, meaning pull for slower and push for faster, it must seek the trim speed when away from it and the controls are slowly released, and any change is speed must result in a stick force that is clear to the pilot.

At the time we flew, the Cheyenne IA was the basic airplane. It differed from the original, with 500 hp per side as opposed to 620 and with an aft CG limit two inches farther forward. In the full power climb test, this airplane had light stick forces but it had acceptable control feel and was easily controllable.

Next up was the Cheyenne II, which was the current name for the original with 620 hp per side. With the SAS operative it met the requirements though not quite as well as the Cheyenne I. With the SAS inoperative, it was at the stick-free neutral point in that full power climb and was flyable only if you knew what to expect and how to deal with it.

At the time, Piper was also building a Cheyenne IIXL with a longer fuselage than the basic Cheyennes and to keep from using an SAS system the company decided instead to limit the 620 hp engines to 500 hp for climb. Even at that, in the 500 hp per side climb the airplane was close to the stick-free neutral point and the return to a trim speed was not strong. It was the weakest of the Cheyennes that we flew.

Piper was also building the even longer-body Cheyennes III and IV and the WSJ article suggested they also had longitudinal stability problems. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. The original prototype did have problems and Piper addressed them with a new design that included a huge tail. When one of these airplanes is viewed from behind the tail almost looks bigger than the airplane.

What this means to pilots in every day flying is that any airplane will be less stable with the CG aft. A pilot who learns in a Skyhawk might find it a much different airplane after he gets a certificate and starts taking friends and relatives for an airplane ride.

The wider the CG range, the more pronounced this can become. The V-tail Bonanza had a narrow range and had to be loaded with care but the handling qualities didn’t change a lot within the CG range. The P210 that I flew for 28 years had a wide CG range and went from an airplane with strong longitudinal stability to one that was honestly hard to fly accurately when the CG moved aft. It was so bad that I arbitrarily limited loading to two inches ahead of the aft limit, or, 50 inches aft of datum. In flight testing for supplemental type certificate mods to the airplane, the last time I looked nobody had been able to certify to the 52 inches aft that Cessna had certified. I know that one, and possibly two, P210s were lost in testing at that 52 inch aft limit.

There is one other thing to consider on the 747 in Afghanistan. There are bad guys with guns there so most operators climb to gain altitude as quickly as possible. The result is less airspeed margin above a stall than would be found in a normal climb. One report said there were thunderstorms in the area and the possibility that wind shear caused that loss of control has to be considered.

Technique Geek: Tailwind Landings

More to it than meets the eye...

Both the FAA and NTSB tend to suddenly discover things that have long been a factor and make a big deal out of them. One or more accidents usually gets this ball in motion.

The latest hot button, from the NTSB, is what they choose to call tailwind landings. In what could have been a deadly serious accident, but wasn’t, an American Airlines 737 went off the end of the runway at Kingston, Jamaica. There were injuries but no fatalities. The 737 was pretty broken up about the matter.

You guessed it, the crew was landing with a tailwind.

The runway in use was 8,911 feet long. It was wet and there was a 14 knot tailwind component. The airplane touched down about 4,000 feet down the runway and the crew was unable to stop it in the remaining runway. It went through a fence, crossed a road, and stopped on the sand dunes and rocks just above the Caribbean Sea.

The regulations do not require any training on tailwind landings, nor does American Airlines provide any such training for its pilots. The airline does require that pilots perform an arrival landing distance assessment and that was not done by this crew.

I have studied other airline overrun accidents as well as similar general aviation accidents and there are always common threads. Too much speed at touchdown, whether from a tailwind or poor airspeed management, is almost always there along with wet surfaces and a touchdown well beyond the touchdown zone which starts 500 feet from the runway threshold.

As an aside, many (or even most) pilots do not fully understand the significance of runway markings. Those big thick white stripes that start 1,000 feet down the runway are aiming points, not touchdown zone markings. The touchdown zone markings start 500 feet from the threshold.

The American Airlines Flight Manual defines the desired touchdown point as within the first 800 to 1,500 feet beyond the landing threshold.

Clearly, if a tailwind landing is going to be attempted in any airplane, consideration has to be given to all factors.

When approaching my base at Hagerstown, Maryland, from the west I would request a straight-in to Runway 9 as long as the tailwind didn’t exceed 10 knots. The runway was uphill and the tailwind landing didn’t result in an abnormally long roll. The pilot’s operating handbook specified that it was okay to land with up to 10 knots of tailwind.

The airplane did feel different landing with a tailwind and I never managed smooth touchdowns though all were acceptable. I suspect that all airplanes are at least a little squirrely when landed with a tailwind.

The pilot’s operating handbook for your airplane should address the maximum acceptable tailwind for landing and give a method for calculating the amount of extra runway that will be required. On American 737s the maximum allowable tailwind is 16 knots. Southwest says 10 knots for the 737; five if the runway is contaminated.

There is one major factor in a tailwind landing that never seems to excite the curiosity of the investigators. It could have had a direct bearing on why this 737 crew wasn’t able to touch down until 4,000 feet of runway had passed beneath the airplane.

In theory the only increase in landing distance should be whatever is required to lose the additional groundspeed created by the tailwind. That would assume the same airspeed and altitude over the threshold and at touchdown as on an upwind landing. That, though, can be easier said than done.

The wind is almost always substantially stronger at, say, 2,000 feet than at the surface. At times it is quite a bit stronger.

For an example, say the wind at 2,000 feet is at 34 knots compared with the surface wind at 14, both acting as tailwind components for the approach and landing.

For the sake of argument let’s say the desired approach airspeed is 125 knots. At 2,000 feet the groundspeed would be 159 knots (125 plus 34 for the tailwind). If everything worked perfectly, the touchdown groundspeed would be 139 knots.

The twenty knot difference in the groundspeeds means the airplane would have to decelerate that much as it descends into the changing wind. This is easier done in a light airplane than in a heavier one, but it is something that a pilot has to think through ahead of time.

While decelerating on approach is something that had been done in heavy airplanes in USAF operations, it is probably not normally done in airline simulator training. There are even pilots out there who don’t actually believe this could be a factor.

A decreasing tailwind will, though, result in an increase in airspeed as the airplanes descends and if no accommodation is made for this, you might well land 4,000 feet down the runway. For this to happen you either have to be higher than the threshold crossing height or at an airspeed greater than Vref and with a contaminated runway either of those events should be cause for a go-around.

Back before we had GPS, a pilot had to use a little weather wisdom to anticipate this. There had to be some idea of the expected wind at 2,000 feet and the surface wind. Now there is nothing to it. Look at the groundspeed on the GPS while flying at 2,000 feet. If it is twenty knots greater than the airspeed, then you know how much you will have to decelerate while descending.

That changing wind with altitude is wind shear. Some pilots think of this only in connection with thunderstorms and there have been serious airline accidents caused by the failure of pilots to deal with storm-related shear. But a benign wind shear can also cause trouble and if a pilot doesn’t understand and anticipate this, he might find himself wondering what is going on with the speed on an approach. Wonderment is not one of the better sensations in a cockpit.

5 Key Flying Lessons – Some Things

That Had to be Learned the Hard Way

You can’t say “been there, done that” until you have actually been there and done that. Then you should be able to add “and learned that.” The alternative is for someone else to check the “Gotcha” box for you. In my experience, all this is especially pertinent in light (under 6,000 pounds) airplane flying.

In the beginning there are many unknowns up ahead. When we fly up on something that we have never seen before, or experienced, there is a big challenge at hand. We might have theoretical knowledge, or have had a bout with it in a simulator, but when the chips are down only the real thing matters. The grade comes on how well the challenge is met and what lessons are learned along the way.

I think that most lessons to be learned relate to weather, especially for a pilot who uses an airplane for transportation. There are other challenges, for sure, but fortunately they are relatively rare. Engines do quit and systems fail and avionics sizzle and fade, but weather is out there to challenge a pilot on far more flights than those other misadventures.

Unfortunately some pilots grade themselves on weather with the thought that, “I made it so I must have done okay.” Then they give it no further thought. Those who wish to keep on “making it” delve more deeply into the subject. In fact, I don’t think a pilot can ever really say “been there, done that and learned that” in relation to many things in flying, especially weather, because nothing is a stationary target.

I consider my weather education to have lasted for 57 years. Actually maybe longer because, since I hung up my headset in 2008, I have continued to vicariously fly trips whenever the weather is bad.

Let’s look at some logbook lessons that helped greatly in subsequent encounters with the elements.

Thunderstorms

There is enough to say about thunderstorms and airplanes that I wrote a whole book with that title. Here I’ll tell you about my introduction to the big T and a few key things I learned since.

In the late 1950s, there was little radar coverage either by weather or air traffic control radar. The only way you could tell for sure there was a thunderstorm was when one was reported by a weather station. Those were few and far between with no reports along my Fort Smith to Little Rock, Arkansas, route.

Forecasters would use information from upper air soundings, plotted on a Skew-T Log-P chart, to alert pilots to the possibility of thunderstorm development. Guesses, in other words.

At this point, my experience with storms was limited. I flew IFR a lot in my Piper Pacer, but when storms were about I would go VFR or not at all. When I worked at a USAF contract flight school, I heard some of the instructors talk about flying into storms intentionally in the T-6Gs used at the school. Likewise, when I was in the Army and pilots there were just beginning to sample instrument flying, I heard talk of intentional thunderstorm penetrations in L-23s (Twin Bonanzas).

Whether all this was bar talk or straight scoop, I knew not but there was general agreement that thunderstorms did not disappoint.

My flight was eastbound, in a Twin Bonanza, one of the most robust general aviation airplanes ever built. The sky ahead became dark, the rain started, and the turbulence set in. At first I thought it wasn’t so bad. Then the sky got darker, the rain heavier and the turbulence more enthusiastic. I don’t remember seeing any lightning while in the clouds, but I did smell the ozone, a nice odor anywhere but in an airplane.

After the flight I decided that while the turbulence was manageable, the whole package was pretty bad. The noise and view of the extremely heavy rain hitting the windshield was distracting as all get out. So was the screeching in the radios. The rain water dripping on my left leg was an annoyance. Most of all, the thought that I had no clue about whether it would continue to get worse was particularly unsettling. In short, it was a mind game. All I knew for sure was that I had to keep the airplane under control.

Paint was knocked off the leading edges, I think the fine man I worked for had some misgivings (and some Jack Daniel’s to help deal with them) and I was convinced that it was not something I ever wanted to do again.

I had never thought about the fact that a storm would look more benign from the trailing side or that it would get worse as you flew from the back to the front of the storm. That was a lesson learned and one I contemplated many times in the future.

In subsequent years, I flew a lot in tornado country and had excellent views of some fearsome storms. I even saw and photographed two developing tornadoes, one of which developed fully and blew a small town to smithereens. I was doing weather photography so was actually looking for bad stuff.

I’ll give you some ideas that I developed along the way.

If severe weather is forecast, or if the actual weather looks severe, it is best to stay out of all clouds associated with the severe weather. The guidelines for staying so many miles away from precipitation just don’t work here. All clouds associated with severe weather are terrible places to be, especially in light airplanes.

Beware wispy clouds in the vicinity of thunderstorms, even well away from precipitation. These can be signs of greatly disturbed air. This is also true in frontal zones where the disturbances are milder but still enthusiastic.

Learn to visualize the flow into and out of thunderstorms. This can help avoid wind shear encounters.

If you come upon a broken line of garden-variety thunderstorms, don’t expect a smooth ride through even well clear of any precipitation. The disturbance that is causing the broken line to develop will be present to some extent all along the line even though storms don’t come to maturity all along the line.

Toward the conclusion of my flying, I always looked in wonder at all the weather information on my instrument panel. Between Nexrad and the latest and greatest vertical profile radar from Bendix/King, I no longer flew along in clouds wondering if the next bump was going to a really big one.

Even with all that good equipment, though, I never forgot the basics which had served me for many years. With or without the equipment I never flew through another thunderstorm. I did fly around them and under them many times and had plenty of wet and bumpy rides caused by factors other than storms, but I had learned a lesson from that first encounter. I had been there, done that, and learned that I didn’t want to do it again.

Fog

My first real encounter with fog was while flying a Piper Apache at night in the late 1950s. Fog was not forecast until later but the controller mentioned when I was an hour away that my destination was fogged in.

There were two of us, each flying an Apache with three passengers, bringing a group home from a meeting. I was trailing the other airplane which was flown by a far more experienced pilot. I thought my work would be simple. Just follow him and do what he did.

Even though the weather was virtually zero-zero, he landed. Like an obedient servant, I followed.

The Apache did not have a glideslope and I flew the localizer. At the middle marker I was just at the tops of the fog and I set up a gentle descent and was determined to be steady and let the airplane continue tracking the localizer until I saw something. I had enough sense not to turn on the landing lights and when I picked up a couple of runway lights to my left I landed the Apache. Taxiing in was difficult in the low visibility.

It wasn’t until later that I thought about the fact that the runway lights I saw to my left could have easily been ones on the right side of the runway in which case I would have landed in the weeds.

It didn’t take long or much sense to realize what a dumb thing I had done. The other pilot was an old aviator who often told us young pups that he had more time sitting in crack-ups waiting for help than we had total time. Instead of admiring his bravado, I should have questioned why he had so many crackups. In retrospect, I thought I knew and later he had his last one.

The only time I ever did a similar thing was years later, in a British Airways Boeing 757 simulator. I hand flew a low visibility landing in that, it looked a lot like it did in the Apache, and I must say that the head-up display made it easier but not by much.

I never messed with real fog again. If the weather was reported as below minimums, I might take a look and I might not. But I had learned never to go below a published minimum altitude until I had the proper things in sight.

Ice

Ice has always been a hot topic among instrument pilots and vast fortunes have been spent on ice-protection gear. When it became available, I bought it for my P210 and flew with it for 28 years, perhaps because I had had two notable encounters in unprotected airplanes. One should have been enough.

The first bad ice was in a Piper Comanche. The weather briefer had said there should be an ice-free altitude, but I couldn’t find it and I flew along for a bit too long before deciding that I had best get this popsicle on the ground.

This was in the early ‘60s so I hadn’t been flying for too long but I had heard all the stories and the one I remembered about ice was to fly fast on the approach and leave the flaps up. I did, I used a lot of the long runway, and, with my family, spent New Year’s Eve in one of the first (if not the first) Holiday Inns near Memphis airport. We were glad to be there.

There was a developing low pressure system south of the route and that is a classic setup for ice in that part of the country. The low brings moisture up from the Gulf, there is lifting, and presto, when that mixes with the cold air north of the low all Hell freezes over. The wings, too.

I have told the story of the next one, in my Cardinal RG, many times. Simply put, I again got suckered in by the possibility of an ice-free altitude and a weather map that should have warned me off. There were several weak lows shown and where I did know that several weak lows usually turn into one strong low, I didn’t know when this would happen until it did, just south of my route as I flew along in the dark sky. I got to fly another one of those fast approaches with the flaps up and use a lot of a long runway. Of the two airplanes, the Comanche did best with the high speed touchdown. It was smooth where the little tires of the Cardinal RG shook and rattled but at least they rolled.

Another lesson from the Cardinal encounter was that you can’t see the worst of the ice in that airplane because it is atop the wing, back a bit from the leading edge. You have to judge the effect by the sluggishness of the airplane.

I flew my P210 with approved ice protection for those 28 years and almost 9,000 hours. I flew with it as if in an unprotected airplane, always trying to minimize ice accumulation. I did use the ice gear many times but can honestly say that it never enabled the completion of a flight that would not have been possible without the equipment. It did lower the pucker factor enough to justify the cost, though.

Wind

I suppose there are guidelines to use on wind and most flight schools prescribe wind limits, especially for student solo. I have always read these when they were posted or otherwise available and the way some were written implied that if you had an instructor along, there was no limitation on wind. There is.

Surface wind forecasts seldom call for gusts of over 35 knots in anything other than a storm situation. The wind that we deal with before and after the passage of a typical front is usually forecast at a maximum of 35 knots and that is not above the practical wind limit of most light airplanes so long as the pilot is proficient at dealing with wind.

Most airplane handbooks give a maximum demonstrated crosswind which is not a limitation. The real crosswind limitation is based on the airplane and the proficiency level of the pilot. The airplane reaches its limit when there is not enough control authority to manage the crosswind. The pilot reaches his limit when he realizes that he isn’t sure of what he is doing.

I flew tailwheel airplanes in most normal wind conditions and never had a problem. After watching ground personnel wing walk a Cessna 182 to the ramp after a windy landing one day in Dallas, I did leave my Piper Pacer in the hangar until the wind subsided.

When I got to Olathe, Kansas, one windy day in my Skyhawk, the gusts were over 40. The taxiing was a challenge and a couple of times I had to just let the airplane turn into the wind and wait for a lull. I was visiting King Radio that day and when I got to their hangar they had the door open for me to taxi in. I was relieved.

In my P210 I saw what I thought was close to a limit one day in Tulsa, to the east of a strong low and front. Reported gusts were to 48 knots. There was strong wind shear on final and taxiing was a challenge but not a problem. At the ramp the airplane was seemingly dancing around and the line crew didn’t want to pump gas into it but when I said I would do it, they did it.

Wind shear has been a bigger problem for heavy airplanes than for light airplanes but it can still have an effect on how our airplane behaves.

We most often see wind shear when changing altitude and encountering a different wind at a different level. It is also present where the wind is shifting, as in a frontal zone, or flowing into and out of a thunderstorm.

Basically, if you have an increasing headwind or decreasing tailwind, the airplane will perform better until it adjusts to the new wind. A decreasing headwind or increasing tailwind will do the opposite.

Back in the good old days we had to visualize and imagine how wind shear would affect, for example, an instrument approach. GPS changed all that. All a pilot has to do is look at the existing wind before starting down on approach and compare that with the surface wind and the amount and type of wind shear is obvious.

Nobody knows the exact altitude range over which the wind will change on an approach but in my experience, with shear of 20 knots or less, I have found that the wind usually starts to adjust at about 500 feet a.g.l. and finishes at about 200 feet.

Wind makes turbulence and putting a limit on this is related to comfort. If anybody, pilot or passenger, is truly uncomfortable in anything more than light to moderate turbulence, a light airplane can become an unpleasant place to be.

In rough terrain, visualizing the flow of wind over the terrain can help keep things on a more even keel. Asheville, North Carolina, is in the roughest terrain in the eastern U.S. I flew there often for a long time and could slip in and out on the windiest of days with an acceptable rough ride and no problems from downdrafts because, well, I knew from experience where the bumps are and followed a route that minimized them.

One day I was headed for Asheville with the strongest imaginable motivation to get there and came upon a dilemma. Given the strength of the gusts in a developing storm system, and the wind direction, and the pouring rain, I simply could not formulate a good arrival plan. In over 50 years that was the only time I missed AVL because of wind. Low weather sent me to an alternate a few times but not many.

I would hasten to add that I knew my Asheville experience wouldn’t be valid at any other mountainous airport. You have to learn about each the hard way.

The wind lesson? Pick the battles carefully and keep a white flag handy.

Charts, Forecasts and Reports

The proper use of what we used to see on paper and now see on screens is definitely an important part of flying technique and there are many lessons to learn. The key is in separating fact from potential fiction.

The facts in weather information are found in the reports, the current surface charts, and the picture on the weather radar.

To me the most important scoop has always come from the weather map. For a trip, I wanted to know both where I was going and what sort of sky I would be flying in. The only way to get any idea about the latter was by knowing the location of the highs, lows and fronts in relation to your flight path.

The most important lesson I learned about weather is that what you see and feel is what you get. The reports are for one spot at one location. The radar is for a few minutes ago and the forecasts are guesses. The actual conditions encountered are real.

Years ago, in the publication Aviation Weather, the FAA and what was then called the Weather Bureau, included words on the accuracy of aviation weather forecasts. Apparently this was embarrassing to some because, to my knowledge, it was included in only one edition of the publication. I guess they thought it was dirty linen, not to be aired.

Over the years I have taken great pleasure in airing this dirty linen for them because I think pilots have a right to know. Certainly if you were going to do something adventuresome like have a heart transplant, you would want to know the odds.

I’ll summarize, with the caveat that this was what they found to be true 40 years ago. Forecasting has (hopefully) become better but Mother Nature hasn’t changed.

A forecast of good weather is more likely to be correct than a forecast of bad weather for a period 12 hours in the future.

Three or four hours in advance, a forecast of below VFR conditions is likely accurate about 80-percent of the time.

Forecasts of specific ceiling/visibility values are not likely accurate beyond the first two or three hours of the forecast period.

Forecasts of poor flying conditions are more likely accurate when there is an active weather system in play though the weather associated with a fast moving cold front of squall line is difficult to forecast accurately.

Surface visibility is more difficult to forecast than ceiling height and snow makes visibility forecasting “rather wild guesswork.”

Forecasts of the time rain or snow will begin within plus or minus five hours are accurate 75-percent of the time.

Things that are most difficult to forecast include heavy icing, severe or extreme turbulence, and ceilings of 100 feet or zero before they exist.

Those are some of the high spots. And I think that this reinforces my thought that the best weather flying lesson that I learned over many years is the one about what you see and feel being what you get. Do have a Plan B (and C and D) if what you see and feel doesn’t satisfy.

Remember that, and y’all be careful out there while you learn your lessons.

Is Hard IFR a Myth? 5 Things to

Keep it From Being that Way?

To begin, I never knew what people really meant when they talked about flying “hard” IFR. The implication is that there is also “easy” IFR but nobody seemed to know the exact difference between the two.

The nature of weather means that, in most weather conditions, you don’t know what you will find in those clouds until you actually find it. The nature of instrument flying is such that you either can or can’t and the air traffic control system actually works the same whether you are in a busy terminal or out in the boonies or in clouds or in clear sky.

Given that, the most logical thing we can do is examine things we can do to keep instrument flying from becoming “hard” IFR.

Fly IFR on all cross-country flights.

It always made me cringe when someone said “I had to file.” All I could think of was the good experience that was being missed by not using the air traffic control system on all flights. There are two good reasons to do this. One is to learn to operate comfortably in the system and the other is to keep pressure on the system so that it will be there when you need it.

Don’t confuse IFR with flight in instrument meteorological conditions (clouds, in simpler terms). One is about conforming to the rules and procedures of IFR, the other is about flying or operating the airplane when you can’t see outside. If you do the IFR part routinely it will be second nature when you add the clouds.

There might be as many clouds out there as you might think. In an unscientific examination of my logbooks, I deduced that I probably flew in clouds only about 10 or 15 percent of the time I flew on an IFR flight plan. Anyone who knows my history will tell you that I was no shrinking violet when it came to flying in challenging weather.

Work hard on weather wisdom.

Some pilots are content to have only the weather knowledge required to pass the FAA test. When it comes to real weather flying, though, that equips a pilot with a really short paddle. The pilot who goes far beyond the FAA weather knowledge requirements finds that far fewer surprises await when cloud flying.

I spent a lot of time studying weather as it relates to light airplane operation and as a result can make some observations about weather that underline the value of weather wisdom.

Certainly the weather was not always as I thought it would be but I can honestly say that I was never surprised by how weather developed even when it was quite contrary to the forecasts. Why? Because I modified my thoughts about what was happening now and what was about to happen on a minute-to-minute basis. The nature of atmospheric pressure, wind, temperature and moisture, can vary from moment to moment and those are the factors that make weather.

If ever you feel angry or betrayed because of a bad forecast, pick a grungy day, put your zip code in the NWS site, and read the forecast discussion. I learned to decipher these a long time ago and in a changing situation the variables the forecasters deal with are almost startling. The same forecasters who turn out the ones for the general public also do the TAFs.

I can also say that I never considered weather to be “good” or “bad.” Weather is just weather and as pilots we have to deal with it. The level of challenge can sure change but that is what makes weather flying so interesting. I was never concerned about the weather in which I was flying because I was in it voluntarily and on the basis that I felt as if I understood it. Once in a great while I would delay a flight because I just didn’t feel like I fully understood what was going on.

I could almost always tell you whether or not a flight would be turbulent and when my thoughts about that turned out to be flawed, I always learned why that happened. The greatest challenge I found in anticipating turbulence came when a front occluded. That happens when a strong circulation causes a cold front to overtake a warm front. Occlusions tend to show on weather charts only after they have happened so there’s often no advance warning other than the pounding that your airplane is taking right now.

I have heard pilots talk about cells when there is an occlusion but the turbulence is usually wind shear turbulence, not convective turbulence. It can still beat you up pretty badly. Wind shear makes for bumps and airspeed excursions but there are no up- and downdrafts as such. There will be wind shear turbulence in any front; it’s just more pronounced at and soon after an occlusion starts. To understand shear turbulence you need only to look at illustrations of frontal slopes and visualize the different wind flows rubbing up against one another.

Checklists are important.

I always used a printed checklist simply because that suited me better. I took the P210 checklist and customized it for my airplane. That is actually necessary if you fly a mature airplane that has been heavily modified, or, customized, over the years. The P210 I was flying after 28 years bore little similarity to the one I started with except for the airframe and powerplant items.

On the two airplanes I flew a bit after retiring my P210, a G1000 Skylane and Columbia 400 (Cessna 400 then TTx), I used the manufacturer’s checklist and felt it was important to do so, especially in the case of the 400. Both airplanes had important checks of electrical systems which had become even more important with the advent of glass cockpits.

The 400 had a true dual electrical system and there were several things to check on that to make sure it was ready to deliver your money’s worth if something in the system failed.

Some pilots prefer to avoid printed lists in favor of organized cockpit scans. That is okay too but I just always thought I was less likely to miss something with the printed version.

Checklists were a long time coming to private aviation. It wasn’t until the airplanes reached a certain level of complexity, and training got some semblance of standardization, that pilots started using the lists.

There have been a lot of notable checklist related accidents. More than one airliner has crashed because the crew neglected to select takeoff flaps before rolling. That caused enough trouble that in transport category airplanes the function was automated with a warning system as well as a flaps/power lever connection that ensured the flaps were correct when the power was advanced.

In simple terms, a checklist is your last shot at getting everything properly prepared for the flight. That is especially important when there are clouds about. There are also checklists for the various phases of flight but these are generally done from memory with some using crutches like “GUMP” for the prelanding checklist.

I was searching my memory for a good example to show how important it is to have everything just right before flight when I recalled an accident from over 30 years ago that filled the bill.

The owner of a single-pilot Citation flew the airplane himself, without a co-pilot, even though a professional pilot was part of the operation.

That other pilot did preflight the airplane for the morning departure. The pilot called from home and got an IFR clearance with a void time 21 minutes in the future.

The pilot lived close and reached the airport from five to ten minutes before the void time. Two passengers and whatever gear they might have had were loaded and the pilot made an immediate start and taxied the short distance to the runway and initiated a takeoff.

The ceiling was right on the deck and the visibility was restricted in fog. True cloud flying.

The professional pilot who was watching observed that only two minutes elapsed between engine start and the beginning of the takeoff roll. Four minutes after the takeoff, notification was received that the aircraft had crashed. It hit 1.75 miles from the airport in a 30-degree nose-down 90-degree left bank attitude.

Not only wasn’t there enough time for the pilot to have run any semblance of a checklist, it was noted that it generally took three minutes for the gyros to spin up after the power was turned on.

Yes, that is an extreme case but it is a good example of what it can cost you to not spend the time making sure the airplane is really ready to fly. That is what checklists are all about.

Use your crew.

Okay, I know you might not have a crew but it’s a good idea to think of yourself as a crew. You do, after all, have to do everything from the preflight work to loading the baggage, to, in many cases, getting the airplane out of the hangar and pumping the fuel. Then comes the flying part.

Perhaps the main caution here is to not get in a hurry. When I was instructing and was preparing to go on a dual cross-country with a student I did a simple thing when I felt the student was feeling harried or rushed: I bought him a Coke and we sat and talked for a minute about anything but the upcoming flight.

You can be the best possible crewmember for yourself by being methodical both when preparing and while actually flying.

A good example while flying comes on an approach flown in minimum weather. If there is ever a time when you need to be both observer and pilot, a crew of two in one package, it’s on a low approach.

I would talk to myself on an approach, describing what I was seeing and making the appropriate callouts. Why do this? It keeps your mind active. Forget that passengers might think you are daft. Just tell them what you are doing and do it. It is important to do this even if the autopilot is flying. It helps keep the old brain from fixating on one particular thing.

Perhaps the most important event on a low approach is at the decision height. There you must look up and if the runway and/ or appropriate lights are not in sight, immediately call a missed approach and get with that program. I have seen more than one pilot become totally flustered when nothing is in view at minimums and have told more than one that it is past time to push the power up and pitch up.

Another example of a place where it pays to communicate with yourself is when making both strategic and tactical decisions about convective weather. This depends a lot on the equipment available but for most pilots the strategic decisions are now made using Nexrad information. Make a grand plan with this to avoid areas of weather because it has been proven many times that Nexrad should not be used for close work in convective areas.

There are only two viable things to use in making tactical decisions. They are airborne weather radar and your vision. When doing this, it’s good to remind yourself of one absolute truth: regardless of what the electronic finery suggests if, when viewed through the windshield, it looks mean it is mean. I learned that a number of times before I was convinced that I should never learn it again. Whatever system is used, be sure to ask yourself if you are doing the right thing. “I think I can make it” is not an acceptable answer. Best know you can make it.

Be nice to your crew of one, too, and never fail to buy him a good steak and appropriate potables at the end of the day.

Beware that greener grass.

When the light twin first appeared, in the 1950s, I well remember a lot of pilots flying one and saying they could never go back to a single-engine airplane. When glass cockpits came along, I well remember a lot of pilots flying with that equipment and saying they could never go back to steam gauges. In both cases the people most adamant about not going back were also people who could well afford the latest and greatest.

Despite that, the fact remains that how you fly counts for a lot more than what you fly. Until you get to transport category airplanes, all airplanes are created equal. And a pilot who will do things in a twin that he wouldn’t do in a single, or with a glass cockpit that he wouldn’t do with steam gauges, is actively looking for trouble. The weather doesn’t care how many engines or tubes are on or in the airplane.

I know that a lot of pilots fly with avionics envy and feel that life would be so much easier if they just had that latest piece of gear. I am not saying that it can’t help, just that it won’t change your flying life. The best deal is to relax and enjoy using whatever is in your panel.

Pilots flew instruments for years with basic navigation and communications gear. We had to be able to visualize our position based on the available data and those of us who could do that didn’t have any problems. Maybe the fact that we grew up with no TV and had to visualize everything when reading or listening to the radio helped us to do that. Pilots who could not continuously visualize their position had problems.

There were for a fact a lot of accidents related to pilots losing an awareness of position, especially in the mountains. I am sure you all remember the TWA DC-3 crash that killed Carol Lombard. (If you have to ask, you are under 80.) It happened simply because the crew lost an awareness of their position in relation to mountains. That sort of thing happened a tragic lot in the good old days. The last one like that I remember was the American 757 approaching Cali, Colombia, about 20 years ago. One would think that with the current array of electronic help such a thing would never happen again but saying “never” is at your own peril in aviation.

The point is that you can fly instruments safely with the basics but the art can certainly be dumbed down with equipment if you want to go that route.

I can honestly say that my favorite type of flying was cloud flying in active weather systems. It was as challenging as anything that I have ever done and there is nothing aeronautical that is more satisfying than patting the airplane on the spinner after a good cloud flying workout. I always felt the equipment I had was adequate and if I were still flying, I would fly with any of it today.

To some pilots, though, cloud flying will always be “hard” and they may never be comfortable bumping along with no view outside. The good news for them is that there is plenty of flying to be done on clear days. That takes some of the utility out of flying if you want to travel in an airplane but it leaves all the fun firmly in place. If the weather is bad, that is what you see and experience. If the weather is good you get to see our beautiful country. Go for it.

Part Five:

Weather

Wind Shear: A Danger Vanquished,

or, One Waiting in the Wings

“Lightning coming out of that one…”

The following conversation happened between 18:04:21 and 18:05:56, August 2, 1985, on the final approach course to Runway 17L at DFW airport in Texas. It was captured on the cockpit voice recorder of Delta Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011.

First Officer – Lightning coming out of that one

Captain – Where?

FO – Right ahead of us

Flight Engineer – You get the good legs don’t ya

FO – Garbled

Capt – I don’t have a DME on mine

FO – I don’t know, you haven’t had it for the last five minutes

Capt – A thousand feet

Capt – Seven sixty two in the baro

Capt – I’ll call ‘em for you

FO – Aw right

Capt – Watch your speed

Sound of rain begins

Capt – You’re going to lose it all of a sudden, there it is

Capt – Push it up, push it way up

Capt – Way up

FE – Way up

Capt – Way up

Sound of engines high rpm

Capt – That’s it

Capt – Hang on to the (expletive)

FO – What’s Vref

GPWS – Whoop whoop pull up

Capt – TOGA (takeoff/go around, ed.)

GPWS – Whoop whoop pull up

Unidentified – Push it way up

GPWS – Whoop whoop pull up

GPWS – Whoop whoop pull up

Sound of noise similar to landing, sound of takeoff warning horn, continues for 1.6 seconds

Unidentifed – (expletive)

Unidentied – Oh (expletive)

Second impact

Tower – Delta go around

By that time, Delta 191 was beyond going around. The airplane touched down 6,000 feet short of the runway just after emerging from a rain shaft. The airplane bounced across a highway, an engine hit a car and a wing hit a light pole. Then the airplane touched the ground again in a left wing low attitude and careened to the left, hitting two water towers (tanks really), and exploding.

The flight crew didn’t talk much about what was going on with the airplane when on final approach. Instead, they were trying to deal with it, and, “it” was a lot.

The airplane had penetrated a thunderstorm just as it spawned a strong downburst or microburst. A Learjet had flown the approach just a minute earlier and had no problem. Then things changed, drastically.

The gyrations and airspeed fluctuations were remarkable. For example, the input on the control column went from a 22 pound push force to a 25 pound pull force in about four seconds. Full lateral control was required to keep the wings level. Power varied from flight idle to full as the pilot flying tried to make the airplane track the ILS final approach course and glideslope while maintaining airspeed. At one point the airspeed dropped by 44 knots in ten seconds.

In addition to huge airspeed fluctuations caused by changing wind, there were strong up and downdrafts. When the airplane was but 200 feet above the ground, the rate of descent was about 5,000 feet per minute. It was speculated that once the airplane descended below 800 feet above the ground it was doomed.

It was a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t think many pilots of that day would have figured it out in advance, either. The weather was typical of an August day with air mass thunderstorms around. It was not a condition that would dictate halting air commerce and indeed flight operations were pretty normal except for that one flight. There was no mention of severe weather.

The accident prompted a great flurry of hardware, software and educational activity and while there have been wind shear problems since, and will probably always be wind shear problems, we did go from having a lot of trouble with the phenomenon to having much less trouble. In other words the smoke and flames driven FAA activity seems to have helped.

My first in-depth exposure to this came when we published, in the January, 1962 issue of AIR FACTS, an article that was lifted from a TWA technical bulletin, prepared for the pilots of that airline. The title, “Wind Shear Effects on Airspeed,” pretty well summed up meteorologist J. A. Browne’s effort.

The airlines were transitioning from pistons to jets at the time and everyone knew that the power response of a jet would be slower. Also, there would be no big props blowing lots of air over the wings. In other words, wind shear would be more challenging to big jets than to big pistons.

What everyone didn’t know, or at least didn’t acknowledge at the time, is that wind can and does affect the airspeed of an airplane in flight, drastically in some situations. Many pilots didn’t, and some still don’t, think that wind can be a big factor in this regard. A steady wind can’t, but wind that changes in direction or velocity over altitude or distance can have a profound effect on airspeed. The spotty requirements for meteorological knowledge had, over the years, done little to educate pilots on this. Delta 191 changed all that.

I think that airline pilot understanding of this phenomenon has probably done more to eliminate wind shear accidents than have the hardware and software solutions. Once a pilot understands that an increasing tailwind or decreasing headwind can result in airspeed loss and a real sinking spell, then all else that is required is a basic understanding of the atmosphere to keep the old guard up. One airline advises pilots to execute a missed approach if an updraft or increase in airspeed is experienced on final approach because the situation will almost surely reverse.

Thunderstorms huff and puff and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that, when flying through one, you’ll pass through up- and downdrafts and a change from a headwind to a tailwind as you move into the outflow from the storm. Delta 191 was an extreme and classic example of this. I think that the study of it prompted pilots to carefully consider any interaction between the airplane and the various wind flows around a thunderstorm.

When we ran the TWA paper in 1962, we noted that while this was written for pilot of heavy airplanes, it was also applicable to light airplanes. On one hand, our airplanes have less mass and far better acceleration characteristics; on the other hand we fly approaches at fewer knots above the stall than do heavier airplanes so a 44 knot wind shift will be working on a smaller number.

Wind shear can be a factor in more benign conditions, too.

When the Ercoupe came to the fleet in numbers after World War Two, a number of pilots of that airplane were victims of a mild version of wind shear. The airplane was stall resistant and spin proof, yet a number of them impacted the ground nose low and with great force. They didn’t spin in but if an Ercoupe was flown too slow and the headwind decreased rapidly when, for example, the airplane descended below a tree line around the field, the airplane would pitch nose-down to regain the lost airspeed and there would be no elevator authority until the nosedown attitude generated some airspeed. The ground often got there first.

When I first heard about Dr. Richard Rockefeller’s tragic accident on departure from HPN, White Plains, New York, one the first things that came to my mind related to wind shear and my experience with the hairy instrument departure off Runway 16 at that airport.

Because LaGuardia airport is not far to the south, with a high volume of airline traffic, they require HPN traffic off 16 to turn back to the northwest ASAP. The departure calls for a right turn when about 400 feet a.g.l. The initial assigned altitude is low, too, at 3,000 feet, so if you are flying a high performance turboprop Piper Meridian, as Rockefeller was, not much of that high performance will be used on this departure.

Take off, turn, begin working the power back, level off, and do it all in a short period of time. It is demanding. If there is an increasing tailwind as you climb and turn, as is often the case in weather like it was for Rockefeller’s departure, it is just one more factor working against success. The increasing tailwind can have a big effect on acceleration and climb. I have flown the departure many times and there is little margin. If the increasing tailwind is strong, it feels weird, as if something is not right.

I have no idea whether or not that had anything to do with the Rockefeller crash, and the NTSB’s preliminary report suggests that the airplane was not far enough into the departure for it to have been a factor, but that is an example of how understanding the wind aloft, and, the air you are about to fly into, can help avoid surprises.

GPS did wonders for pilots who want to understand everything about what is coming next on approaches. Say, for example, the ATIS shows a calm surface wind at the airport you are approaching, and as you come up on the final approach fix the GPS shows a 20 knot tailwind, that outlines something that will have to happen as the approach unfolds.

When a tailwind decreases as you descend, the airplane will trend toward high and fast. The airplane will have to decelerate, by 20 knots in this case, to keep the airspeed in the right place as the tailwind goes away. Knowing that is going to happen makes that easier to handle.

Also, if you have, say, ten degrees of drift correction on final and the surface wind is calm, at some point you will have to take that correction out to remain on the final approach course. That usually starts to happen when descending through about 500 to 600 feet a.g.l. and again, if you know it is coming, it is easier to handle. GPS makes this easy.

In studying overrun accidents, there is often a common thread: a decreasing tailwind during the descent on final. When there is an overrun, it is usually because of a long and hot touchdown or an excessive period of floating while excess airspeed is dissipated. A pilot who can anticipate that this is going to happen has the advantage – as long as he does something about it.

When dealing with big wind shear, as in a thunderstorm or at altitude when nibbling at the edges of a jet core, or jet streak as some call it, there is a lot of turbulence. The reports you hear of folks getting tossed about in the airliner cabins during cruise flight are directly related to wind shear.

Like so many other things related to meteorology, there are no absolutes. I flew my pressurized 210 a lot in the high teens and low twenties and got to play with the occasional jet streak. One day it got so rough I just said to heck with the big tailwind and went back lower for a smoother ride. Another day I punched into a strong jet streak that eventually reflected a tailwind of over 140 knots and after flying in it a while, I punched out the other side – all with no more than light turbulence. When I was losing the tailwind, I had to work to keep the airspeed in the green because it wanted to increase by a lot as the tailwind rather slowly went away.

The wind shear we see on an IFR day, when descending or climbing into a stronger head or tailwind usually does not result in turbulence of note but you can tell when the wind change is being experienced by some light bumps and, of course, the effect on airspeed.

The wind shear that is most obvious comes on a gusty day with the wind highly variable in both direction and speed. This results in airspeed and height fluctuations. It is short term but can be challenging.

Some airports are more challenging than others on this. Runway 34 at White Plains was always a special challenge to me. A look at the airport diagram suggest that it will be a piece of cake to land on 34 and make the first left turn off for a straight shot to Panorama, the friendliest FBO for light airplanes.

On gusty days, with a crosswind from the left, there was often some wild turbulence that made the airspeed jump around and caused a sinking spell when on short final. Where I had been thinking about landing and making that first turn off, my thoughts turned to getting the airplane onto the runway in one piece and still able to turn off the runway anywhere.

When I got my ATP (ATR then) in 1958, I hired a Trans- Texas Airways DC-3 captain to help me prepare for the checkride because it would be given by an FAA air carrier inspector.

At that time there were not a lot of ILS approaches around but the TTA pilot passed on a word of wisdom about this. Most ILS approaches were to the northeast. I think there were more Runway 4 ILS approaches than any other. His word was that when flying one in actual weather the atmospheric conditions would almost always dictate a decreasing tailwind on final that would cause the airplane to trend high and fast on the approach.

Why did he tell me this? He told me because he said you don’t see that phenomenon when flying ILS approaches in simulated conditions in good weather and you have to see it to understand it. Then, we didn’t have GPS to give us an idea of how much wind shear there would be on the approach but forewarned was still forearmed. As a teacher he wanted me to learn from his real experience as opposed to simulated experience. He also said that pilots who only fly VFR probably never notice this because it is virtually unique to inclement weather. There can be strong wind shear in a cloudless frontal zone or in a dry microburst, however.

Wind shear is still out there. Let us hope we have learned enough lessons the hard way to avoid future smoke and flames FAA action.

Weather Geek: Rules to Fly By

In a recent blog John Zimmerman quoted from my book, The Next Hour:

“One thing is always true of weather….Regardless of what is reported, what you see is what you get….we have to always fly with a complete distrust of reported weather conditions.”

John suggested that was my first rule of weather flying. Colleague Pat Luebke jumped on that and wanted to know what my next four or eight or twelve rules might be.

Okay, I’ll give that a try but I’ll warn you that they are all sort of connected to the first rule which I will expand a bit to read “what you see and feel is what you get.”

1. If your destination is in an area covered by fog, be especially distrustful of the timing of a forecast for improvement.

You sure wouldn’t want to be headed for a foggy airport with minimum fuel. Forecasts of fog lifting are pure guesses and several factors can be at work here. For example, if there is a higher overcast, that means the sun won’t be shining on that fog and this can slow down or even preclude improvement. The layer of fog might be thicker than usual which means it will stay around. Or, if it is an upslope condition, where the circulation is moving over rising ground, the fog can persist. There can be huge and lasting areas of fog with a weak east or southeasterly flow over the rising terrain in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado, for example.

2. If the wind aloft forecast is substantially in error then it is likely that other forecasts will also be in error.

A wind aloft that is more southerly and stronger than forecast means that the low pressure system to the west is likely deeper than anticipated. A more southerly wind carries with it a likelihood that the temperature aloft is warmer than forecast and that means it will involve more moisture. The ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture doubles with each 11-degree C. rise in temperature. From that you can gather that the surface weather might well be worse than forecast.

I would add that wind aloft forecasts are a lot better than they used to be. When I first started using computer flight planning programs, the estimated times en route were often pure fiction. Then they got a lot better thanks to programs that look live at actual winds aloft through sensors on airplanes. If an error is made, it can be quickly fixed.

3. Scattered clouds can have the same effect as an overcast on approaches in IMC.

When we are sniffing for asphalt on a low approach we are looking at a slant for the runway. On the ground looking straight up, as an observer or sensor does, clouds might well appear scattered but they might not allow that timely view of the runway if you are atop those clouds at your minimum height. Also, the conditions that lead to low scattered clouds only need to change a little bit for broken clouds or an overcast to form at that level.

4. The nature of turbulence tells us a lot about what is going on in the clouds.

Putting aside what happens when wind flows over mountains, we find two primary kinds of turbulence in clouds.

When the wind changes in velocity or direction over distance or with altitude we have wind shear turbulence. This can make flying (or riding and watching the autopilot fly) a chore but it doesn’t cause any real problems in cruise flight. Wind shear turbulence results in airspeed fluctuation and the airplane responds to this by lurching around. Big fast airplanes are more affected by wind shear than light ones.

Convective turbulence is found in cumulus clouds and is characterized by updrafts near the centers of the clouds. This can make it difficult to hold altitude and airspeed. The ultimate convective turbulence is found as a cumulus cloud morphs into a cumulonimbus, a thunderstorm. There you have strong up and downdrafts and some pretty wildly turbulent air where the up rubs against the down. Please avoid thunderstorms.

5. Nobody gets trapped by weaher. There are always signs.

The clearest example of this comes as we fly toward a low or a front. Wishful thinking will not keep the cloud tops from becoming higher. Thus a wise pilot will know the synopsis and be forewarned when flying toward a system.

6. The cloud tops are always 1,000 feet greater than the ceiling of the airplane that you are flying.

Senator (and General) Barry Goldwater, an accomplished pilot, used this line in speeches before aviation audiences and I don’t think anybody ever argued with his observation.

7. If there is a gusty crosswind for takeoff or landing, the most reliable source of information is the old-fashioned windsock.

In general terms the wind will shift in a clockwise direction with an increase in velocity. This needs to be considered if there is what appears to be a direct crosswind. You can watch the windsock for a minute to see which direction will be best for takeoff or landing.

8. If you like to get off to an early start, be aware that there can be a substantial change in the weather at and shortly after sunrise.

It is natural for the temperature to drop a bit just as the sun starts to come up. The dewpoint will stay the same so, if they were close, the temperature and dewpoint might get together with a resulting fog formation. This can also result in the formation of frost on the airplane if the temperature was close to freezing and then drops to or just below freezing at sunrise.

9. If you are flying VFR, the onset of rain is bad news. Not only does it cut visibility but lower clouds often form after it starts raining. Likewise, rain can make flight visibility worse than the visibility that is reported at the surface.

It is not uncommon to have a reported visibility of, say, two or three miles in rain but have an IFR approach requiring a mile flight visibility to actually be below minimums which is the case if you can’t see the runway at the proper time.

10. If, following passage of a cold front, the wind shifts from northwest, to north, then to the northeast, that means the front has stalled and is becoming a stationary front.

Stationary fronts can linger long and while they usually pose no real problem for IFR flying (other than occasional thunderstorms) this condition can preclude VFR flights for long periods of time.

Those are just a few things to add to the main “what you see and feel is what you get” rule. The VFR pilot actually has the easiest time judging weather because it is always in plain view in the windshield. Either you can see enough to fly visually or you land. It is much more difficult for the pilot flying instruments because on an approach the determination has to be made at the last minute. That determination can’t be based on a surface weather report. It is to be based on what you see. See?

Ice: Gotcha...In a Heartbeat

The flight, in a TBM 700, looked like a piece of cake. The weather appeared good and, in fact, there was no record of the pilot even bothering to get any weather information. There are, however, many ways to check weather without creating a record.

The flight started at Teterboro, New Jersey, and was bound for Atlanta. The sky was clear at Teterboro and there was a surface cold front just to the south. Nearby Morristown, N. J., was reporting ten miles visibility with a ceiling of 20,000 feet. The surface temperature was plus six C.

As is almost always the case in the cold months, there was an Airmet for icing. The current Airmet called for moderate icing to FL200. An earlier one had the same but with the top of the moderate icing at FL180.

Pilot reports told a grimmer tale. In the time before takeoff, there had been reports of severe icing from a Citation and an MD-83. One report put the condition between 13,000 and 14,000 feet; the other between 14,000 and 16,500 feet. One of the crewmembers of the MD-83 said it was the worst icing he had seen in 38 years of flying and that he had never seen ice accumulate so quickly.

There were definite warning signs but nobody knows whether the pilot was aware of any of this.

The tendency when you are flying a high-performance airplane like a TBM 700 is to head out, planning to vault up into the sunshine in no time at all. This pilot had filed for Flight Level 260 which would be well atop the icing covered by the Airmet.

When the airplane was passing 8,000 feet for 10,000 feet, the controller cleared it to 14,000 feet and advised of moderate rime icing from 15,000 to 17,000 feet with light rime ice at 14,000 feet. The controller asked the pilot to advise if the icing got worse and the pilot responded, “We’ll let you know what happens when we get in there and if we could go straight through, it’s no problem for us.”

Ten minutes after the pilot had called ready for takeoff, the flight was cleared to 17,000 feet where the pilot was told light icing would be encountered. The pilot reported that he was entering instrument meteorological conditions when climbing between 12,800 and 12,900 feet.

When the airplane was at 16,800 feet with a groundspeed of 101 knots, the pilot said “Light icing has been present for a little while and a higher altitude would be great.” Not many seconds later, the pilot reported, “We’re getting a little rattle here can we ah get ah higher as soon as possible please.” Twenty-five seconds later, the pilot was cleared to FL200. A minute and nine seconds after that, the airplane reached an altitude of 17,800 feet before it turned left and entered a descent. Twenty-one seconds later, there was a final abbreviated transmission that included the word “declaring.” The final radar return, less than a minute later, was from 2,000 feet. That was only about 17 minutes after the pilot reported ready for takeoff.

Witnesses reported seeing the airplane descending at a rapid rate, shedding parts, and a wing was reported as missing.

A Bombardier CRJ crew operating in close proximity to the TBM 700 reported that their wing anti-ice system could not keep up with the ice accumulation and that 2.5 inches of ice collected on protected surfaces and four inches on unprotected surfaces, all in about five minutes.

In its infinite wisdom, the government approves properly equipped airplanes for flight in icing conditions and then defines severe (or heavy) icing as that which can’t be handled by deicing equipment.

The NTSB’s probable cause: “The airplane’s encounter with unforecasted severe icing conditions that were characterized by high ice accretion rates and the pilot’s failure to use his command authority to depart the icing condition in an expeditious manner, which resulted in a loss of aircraft control.”

I was talking with Mac McClellan about this. Between us we have flown well over 30,000 hours, most of it IFR, and we have seen a lot of ice while flying some of the frostiest routes in the eastern United States. But between us, we came up with only a few truly memorable ice encounters. That would be one where you could hear the angels singing. That we both survived is selfevident and what we learned was you need to go as fast as possible while getting out of ice even if it means sacrificing altitude. We also learned over the years that there is a lot of ice that can be flown but you do have to pick and choose and always have an “out.”

Which brings us to the TBM 700 pilot: He had reported 1,400 hours on his last medical application. That doesn’t qualify as inexperienced, but there’s no question that there was much out there he hadn’t seen yet. There were stern warnings about ice in the pilot’s operating handbook including word that ice could degrade the performance and controllability of the airplane. Mention was also made of ice forming aft of the protected surfaces. He had likely seen some ice before and dealt with it handily but on the fateful day he found the worst possible ice scenario. Such is rare but it does happen.

There was plenty of ice-free air down below so there was an out but his mind was on climbing and this was pushed too far. Following a low-speed loss of control, the airplane apparently entered a spiral dive, which is characterized by an out-of-theenvelope, high airspeed, high-g, steep bank with the airplane corkscrewing toward the ground at a rate of descent well in excess of 15,000 feet per minute. A pilot would have to understand the nature of a spiral dive as well as the only possible path to a successful recovery to make it through that.

I’ll tell you the theoretical recovery procedure in a bit. Rest assured, it is not taught.

The last two-thirds of the final spiral was likely clear of clouds with that recovery theoretically possible. For a relatively inexperienced pilot, though, it would be akin to trying to put the proverbial egg back together.

I wrote about a King Air accident that occurred many years ago where the overloaded airplane in climb picked up such a load of ice aft of the deice boots that the airplane simply wouldn’t go on any more. This pilot remained more or less in control of the airplane but the impact was too much for the occupants.

I think it was after this accident that manufacturers started publishing a minimum speed in icing in the POH of airplanes with approved equipment.

Over the years there have been other en route icing accidents, almost always characterized by a loss of control. In reading the reports many of the control losses seem to stem from the pilot being distracted by the icing, to the neglect of flying the airplane.

The more common icing accident comes after the pilot gets out of the ice and is maneuvering for landing. It is a given on most airplanes that flaps are not to be used with ice on the airplane and that you need a lot of extra speed on the approach. Apparently some pilots don’t take this seriously enough.

How much extra speed is enough? I flew a severe-ice simulation in a Cessna 208 (Caravan) simulator a while back and it illustrated the challenge found here. With the boots firing away almost continuously and with a determination to maintain a safe airspeed (I think I picked 140 knots) I got the airplane squared away on the ILS with the glideslope intercept coming at about the time the airplane was going to start down of its own accord.

In a condition like that, it was pretty plain that if the airplane went below the glideslope, school would be out. To that end, I remember the simulator instructor telling me that I was overtemping the engine on final. My apologies to Pratt & Whitney because I was going to do whatever was necessary to keep the airplane on the glideslope and if the engine would produce the power, I was going to use it.

It worked. I broke out of the simulated icy clouds and made a hot landing on a long runway. I didn’t start reducing power until I was close to the runway.

I think that icing simulation came from a Caravan accident where so much ice accumulated that the airplane could no longer maintain altitude. That Caravan had boots. The airplanes can now be fitted with TKS (weeping wing) systems and if a Caravan pilot reads this I would be interested in any comparison of the ice ability of the airplane with TKS v. boots.

I flew my P210 for 28 years and close to 9,000 hours. It had a boot system that was approved for flight in icing condition (the word “known” was not in the icing approval) and I never cancelled a trip because of forecast icing. Mainly I would go look and think of the boots as something to use while I was getting the airplane out of any icing condition that was encountered.

A high-wing airplane does have a definite advantage in ice. The accumulation aft of the protected surfaces that is always mentioned is on the bottom of the wings. I could see the bottoms of my wings.

When you are flying in cold clouds it is important that you know a lot more about the meteorological moment than is covered in testing and training but I will leave that subject for another day.

Finally, I told you I would share with you the theoretical recovery from a spiral dive. A Cessna engineer once told me that the only airplane they ever did an intentional spiral dive in was a T-37. (Maybe our Cessna historian, Harry Clements, remembers something about this.)

My information on this came from a Beech engineer. Apparently they had given a lot of thought to the subject because of the high spiral dive involvement of V-tail Bonanzas in years past.

In theory at least, an airplane reaches an equilibrium in a spiral dive. The g-load might be in excess of the limit load factor but not the ultimate load factor. There is no history of airframes failing in the spiral itself, only during an attempted recovery.

With high airspeed, the first recovery step is to level the wings. That would be true in a spiral dive but what happens next is the problem. When the wings are leveled the airplane will then seek the speed for which it was trimmed before control was lost. In a theoretical spiral recovery the g-load would stay the same when the wings are leveled. It would not increase. Theoretically the airplane won’t break itself so once the wings are level the pilot has to not apply any elevator force because that would disturb the natural course of events.

It goes without saying that the zoom would be spectacular but if power were reduced to idle, as it should be, the speed would dissipate rather quickly and normalcy could be regained.

I never tried that because I learned early on that keeping the wings level is a key to everything in aircraft control. A loss of roll control can only lead to ever-worse things.

An icing article in AIR FACTS many years ago had a fine title: “Ice is not Nice.” Truer words were never spoken.

Ice: Gotcha...Where is the Ice?

Where? Simple. Ice is where you find it. As pilots we have to accept the fact that ice will be forecast when it is cold and there are clouds but if we are to get any utility out of our airplanes in the wintertime, we have to develop the weather wisdom to recognize the times when ice is likely and when it is not. Then we can decide whether or not to go and have a look, with an escape plan always ready.

In Part One I mentioned that between us, Mac McClellan and I had only a few significant ice encounters. Mine were both over 30 years ago with one over 50 years ago. Both were in airplanes without ice protection and I learned the same lesson from both encounters: I needed to know more about ice.

I’m not going to bore you with the science of what causes supercooled water droplets but I am going to remind you that they are caused by instability lifting warmer moist air up into colder temperatures. The more unstable the air, the larger the lifted droplets, which means more ice more quickly as we move through those cold clouds, splattering the droplets so that they can freeze.

A characteristic of stationary fronts is that they can actively promote ice. Waves can form on these fronts. Viewed from above, they look like ocean waves in the sense that they undulate. What they are is low pressure trying to form but not quite making it to a complete circulation because of not enough upper level support.

Air flows counter-clockwise around a low and inward. This is trying to happen with low pressure waves. The result is areas along the front with more lifting. You might fly along for a while with no ice and then get zapped. I’ll tell you about one of my encounters. I have written about it before and it always offers pertinent ice characteristics.

It was night. Russell Munson and I were headed from New Jersey to Oklahoma City to fly and photograph a Rockwell Commander 700, an airplane that met with no success.

We stopped at Springfield, Missouri, for fuel. This was before the days of computerized weather briefings so I was briefed by an FSS person.

There was a strengthening low pressure area to the west but no fronts were shown on the map. The available weather radar information showed little precipitation. It was cloudy and cold and ice was discussed. As I recalled, the specialist thought there would be some ice-free air out there between, I think, 4,000 feet and 8,000 feet. I was flying my Cardinal RG so not a lot of vertical options were available.

I don’t do night VFR so we headed out into the dark sky IFR. Russell had a flashlight and word to tell me the minute he saw any ice forming on the wing.

We had been cruising along for a bit when Russell said there was some ice forming but he added that it didn’t look like much. I think I remember trying a different altitude but ice was still forming and it still didn’t look too bad according to Russell. I looked at it when he shined the flashlight out there and I had to agree.

There might not have been a front on the map, but I strongly suspected we were flying in the area of a stationary front with waves along the way.

The airplane had a different interpretation of the icing condition. It was getting sluggish and sloppy and the indicated airspeed was decreasing at a rate that got my undivided attention. I had little ice experience in this airplane so I was in the dark, literally and figuratively.

It was time, if not past time, for action. I told the controller that I wanted to divert to Joplin, Missouri, which was off the right, and that I wanted the lowest possible altitude because of ice. I did know at the time that in many cases, ice would be less pronounced lower in the clouds.

The ceiling was such that we were beneath the clouds with reasonable visibility to enter on a downwind leg. I also knew at the time about not using flaps and adding a lot of airspeed to the normal amount for an approach.

The small tires on the Cardinal RG protested the higher than normal touchdown speed but everything was fine and we were soon parking the airplane.

How much ice was there? I will let the lineboy tell you, in his own words, “Holy @#$%, you guys must be crazy.” A perceptive lad.

Ice tends to build on this airfoil more atop the wing, just aft of the leading edge and after we got out and looked at the ice, it was hard to see why the airplane was still flying at all.

We had apparently run afoul of a wave moving along a stationary front. Actually, that wave did make the grade and become a full and rather vigorous low later that night. When we looked out the next morning there was a lot of snow out there. At the airport, we got the airplane into a heated hangar to rid it if the snow and the big load of ice from the night before.

When we were ready to launch for Oklahoma City, the FSS briefer was waving the ice flag mightily and Russell was wondering if I was crazy enough to challenge the clouds that had caused trouble the night before. I didn’t see a problem because the winds where we would be flying were now out of the north, there was no lifting, and it was cold enough that the age of the clouds and the temperature meant that the clouds were comprised of ice crystals and not supercooled water droplets.

We encountered no ice on the way to OKC. There was some snow but that doesn’t cause airframe icing. It’ll put a white line down the leading edge and, in extreme cases of wet snow, it can clog things up and impede the flow of air in important places. I saw that once in my P210 when heavy wet snow caused the engine to revert to the alternate air source. The item in the POH saying that can cause a drop in manifold pressure is an understatement.

On the trip from Joplin to Oklahoma City the next morning I think it was a matter of the forecasters making up for the lack of an icing forecast the night before by waving red (white?) flags. I would hasten to add that they have much more information available to them now and that forecasts, while never perfect, have improved. As pilots, we can access some really good ice products on the National Weather Service’s Aviation Digital Data Service. These are not perfect but they are sure a lot better than what we had back in the good old days.

Because of the way lifting mixes up temperature and moisture, I learned that any ice is worse east of a low or a developing low, it isn’t as bad north of the low, and west of the low it is likely to be ice crystals, or snow. There are, of course, always exceptions but I flew on for over 30 years after that encounter and used that experience, and a similar one about 20 years earlier, to form better opinions about where ice might be found.

In flying my ice-protected P210 for 28 years and almost 9,000 hours I didn’t often use the deice boots in anger. I think the most ice I got on that airplane was intentional, to develop icing video for Air Facts programs.

It is often said that minus 15 or 18 degrees C is when it starts getting too cold for ice. This has to be taken with a grain of salt because the temperature can and does change rather quickly when you are flying in unstable air. It could be too cold for ice right before you fly into an area where warmer and wetter cold air is being lifted. We have long heard war stories about sudden accumulation of ice when flying over mountainous terrain. It is likely found in the updrafts and can really splatter on an airplane.

Another clue to ice is cold and turbulent clouds. You can find ice in perfectly smooth clouds but it would accumulate rather gradually. If ice is forming in bumpy air the condition could become serious more quickly.

It is generally true that ice increases as you go higher in certain types of clouds and reaches a peak right before you get to the cloud tops. This has foiled many an attempt to climb on top of ice, which was what the pilot of the ill-fated TBM 700 in Part One was trying to do. This is also true in the widespread stratocu decks that develop behind cold fronts that are becoming stationary. A normally-aspirated airplane can run out of vim and vigor before reaching the tops of these clouds, which are often between 5,000 and 10,000 feet.

The lake effect clouds that form downwind of the Great Lakes offer interesting cloud top challenges, too. The height of these tops depends on the temperature of the lake water and the air and the strength of the wind flow. However, as a generalization, it has been my experience that the tops of these clouds are usually around 18,000 feet. Move toward the upwind side of the lake and the tops go down dramatically.

Any time you are flying through a front, only one thing is certain: the temperature will change. It could change for the better, as when flying from cold air through a warm front and toward warmer air. The reverse would be true when flying toward the cold air behind a cold front. The important thing about ice and any front is to visualize how the temperature will likely change with the passage of distance and recognize that conditions, and the potential for ice, won’t stay the same.

Freezing rain can create real problems and the conventional wisdom is that if you climb, you will fly into the air from which the warm rain is falling into the below freezing temperature beneath. That means there is a temperature inversion with the air becoming warmer instead of colder with height. What causes this is warm air overrunning cold air at the surface. The most likely weather synopsis is a cold front that stops or cold air damming where a surface circulation traps cold air at the surface, as when it is moved up against mountains and held there.

I didn’t consider my most notable freezing rain encounter as “significant” because it didn’t have a substantial effect on my Twin Comanche’s performance.

It was night and I had made one basic mistake. I was running out of options on where to land for fuel because all the places within reach while maintaining a one hour fuel reserve were reporting freezing rain. In other words, I knew full well I was going to get some ice before I landed.

I decided I would land at Indianapolis because it was a big airport with excellent approach and runway lighting systems and an ILS. As I was maneuvering to get on the ILS and down, I could hear the pitty-pat of rain on the windshield and I could see the view of outside becoming far less clear quite rapidly as ice accumulated on the windshield.

I never made good landings in that Twin Comanche but the one that night wasn’t bad, considering that the only view was through ice except to the side where I had the little storm window open to hopefully enhance my sense of height. The landing was with no flaps, which made it a little easier.

The challenge came after I landed. I managed to find my way off the runway but then didn’t think I could see to safely taxi. I asked ground control if they could send a follow-me truck out for safe passage to the ramp and they did. The air activity at that airport had just about stopped for the duration of the ice and they didn’t have much else to do.

I offer this next paragraph as an aside to show how in freezing rain, it isn’t over until your head hits the pillow.

I got a motel reservation a few miles from the airport and arranged for a rental car. All that was available was a Chevy Corvair. It had a rear air-cooled engine and rear wheel drive. I had never driven one but had a VW bug, with the same engine/drive configuration, and knew it did well in inclement weather. Not the Corvair. It was like driving an eel and, to boot, the defrost system didn’t make much heat and I had no follow-me truck to help me get to the motel. It was a long few miles.

In the airplane, I had a plan and followed it. In the car I had no plan. A bad result in the car might have been a ditch. In the airplane it could have been much more serious.

Pilot reports on icing are viewed by some as almost holy but, to me, they weren’t too useful most of the time. They are an insight into what is experienced in one place at one time. For every pirep made there are hundreds, if not thousands, of pilots in the air who don’t make pireps. Almost nobody makes a “no icing” pirep.

Where pireps are useful is in extreme conditions like those encountered by the TBM pilot in Part One. It is wise to pay close attention to pireps like the ones from that area at that time because they described conditions that are truly dangerous.

I have said it about other areas of the relationship between flying and weather and I’ll say it again about ice. The pilot who flies with the FAA-mandated minimum knowledge of weather is many times more likely to be surprised by a weather development than is the pilot who studies the subject. Weather wisdom is simply one of the better safety devices available and it doesn’t cost much other than a little effort.

Part Six:

Flightstyles

A Solo or a New Beginning

I am writing this on October 25, 2011.

On October 25, 1951 I, a rebellious 17-year old juvenile delinquent, walked into the flight school office at Harrell Field in Camden, Arkansas, to take a flying lesson. My instructor, Rudy Peace, a wonderful person and pilot and later a fine friend, awaited.

Also waiting was Aeronca Champ (7AC) N1154E. It was to be my third flight in this airplane. I had flown ten dual flights in a Cessna 140, N1808V, but someone had hurt that airplane so it was unavailable.

We went out and did circuits in the Champ for about 40 minutes. Then Rudy had me stop by the runway. He said the time had come, he made a slight adjustment to the trim to compensate for his leaving, and told me to fly a pattern and come back in and land.

When I opened the throttle I felt like I was in a different world. The 65 horse Continental made its usual threshing machine sounds, though, and after a little roll I raised the tail. I knew it would pull to the left when the tailwheel lifted off but was slow reacting so there was some swerve in the takeoff. I was relieved when it came time to fly.

Straight ahead to 400 feet, turn 90 to the left, continue climb to 600 feet, level off, turn downwind leg.

The runway looked far away and even strange. Rudy, my protector, was but a speck by the runway. I had an “aw shucks what have I done moment” and then collected my thoughts and continued.

There was a stationary front to the southeast with a high overcast covering the area. The wind was light northeasterly so I knew I would have a slight crosswind on the north-south runway.

I turned base leg and reduced the power to idle at what I thought was the correct time and then set up in a 60 mph glide.

On final, I thought I was a little higher than usual but still okay.

As I crossed the runway threshold I had a “do or die” sensation. I was thankful for the good view of the runway ahead, better than it had been in the 140, and faced the next challenge of beginning the flare at the right time.

The main gear contacted the runway (I would have liked to say it kissed but it was a sloppy kiss) before I was ready and the airplane bounced a bit. I just sat there until the ground was close again and resumed adding back stick.

The final touchdown wasn’t graceful. It was more a plopdown than a touchdown. There was a little swerve because of plopping with a bit of drift. The airplane was down, though, and I taxied back to where Rudy waited. He asked if I wanted to do another. I told him that I had had my excitement for the day and we taxied in.

That night as I lay in bed with a racing mind, I went through the experience forward and backward. The main thing I did, though, was to know that I had finally found a purpose. I could begin to move forward, out of the juvenile delinquent stage. I was determined to learn all there was to know about flying and to experience all there was to experience about flying.

And you know what? I pretty well did.

Flying Clubs,

Then and Now - Different?

My military career started with greetings from my friends and neighbors. That is another way of saying I got drafted. At that time, in 1955, it was common for guys to get drafted simply because there weren’t many of us born in the depths of the Great Depression and it took most of us to man the post-Korea Army.

Like most draftees, I set out to make my six-year obligation (two active, four reserve) go as smoothly as possible. That meant minimizing the walking, potato peeling and sleeping under the stars. Firing the weapons was fun.

I got a security clearance while in basic training and had orders to go to spy school at Fort Holabird in Maryland when, lo and behold, a Guardian Angel came on the scene in the person of General Carl I. Hutton. I have forgotten his exact title but he ran Fort Rucker (Alabama), home of the Army Aviation School. He was also a friend of my father. My orders were changed from Holabird to Rucker. I was back in the aviation business.

I had a civilian Link Instructor rating (in addition to most of the pilot ratings) and my first job at Rucker was as a Link instructor. I had also worked in a USAF contract flight school in that same role so I knew about military Link work.

Next I worked at the Army Aviation Digest for a spell but all that was foreplay. At one point I had taken an instrument check ride in an Army L-23 (Twin Bonanza derivative) in support of General Hutton’s desire to have enlisted pilots fly in Army Aviation. When that wasn’t approved by the powers, plan B went into effect. The Air Force had Aero Clubs for low-cost flying for the troops, and General Hutton wanted the Army to have flying clubs.

Thus was born the Fort Rucker Flying Club, to which I was assigned, on special duty, which relieved me of all unit duties like guard and KP. The flying club was treated the same as the officer and NCO clubs and we had access to some discretionary funds.

Some things didn’t involve any money changing hands. For example, we needed a building on Ozark Army Air Field, where we would be based. No building was available so, presto, one was moved from the main base to the airport. It was a WW-II era building, like those used for mess halls and unit offices.

Next came airplanes. The money was found to purchase two, a Cub and a Champ.

There had to be an organization and that consisted of a president, Lieutenant Colonel Tom Sabiston, and things like a treasurer and a recording secretary. I got the title of vice president and general manager. My membership number was two. Tom out-ranked me mightily and was numero uno.

I got and studied all the prepared material on Air Force Aero Clubs and created an Army version of those documents. Only the name changed. Like so many things in Army Aviation at that time, our printed material was basically a copy of Air Force stuff.

I also talked to folks who were running aero clubs and got some good tips. The main one was that a club’s greatest asset was the member who paid his dues and did not use the club for anything but a place to hang out or an item of conversation in bars (really they were beer joints in southeast Alabama at that time). The advice was to keep the dues low to attract as many members as possible. They would, in effect, subsidize the members who flew.

Ground school would also be a draw and it should be free to all members. At that time, there were no prepared ground schools or even outlines for ground schools. I got to make all that up. Unfortunately, I also had to teach most of the ground school sessions.

The charge for flying our airplanes was less than half the hourly rate charged by civilian flight schools. The instructing was free five days a week, from me. On weekends we had approved instructors and students made their own deals with those instructors

To start, there was reluctant acceptance of our activity at Ozark AAF. When the real pilots saw that the club pilots would fit in, things got better. There were no problems using light gun signals for the control of our traffic and the Air Force meteorologists gave really good briefings for the time.

Scrounging is a virtue in the Army and I got pretty good at it. For example, our little airplanes were tied down in the same area as the L-19s, and when the gas trucks would make the rounds, everyone would look the other way as they topped off the big 12-gallon tanks in our airplanes. Maintenance was handled by my friend Hugh Wheelless at nearby Dothan Aviation but if we had a safety of flight item on an airplane at Ozark AAF, an Army mechanic would cheerfully take care of it.

Later in my tenure, the Army started bestowing surplus airplanes on our club. We got two L-21s (semi-Super Cubs) and two L-17s (Navions) to start with. We had to license them as civilian airplanes and while the red tape was considerable, Dothan Aviation managed that, did the work, and painted the airplanes complete with a flying club roundel.

Cessna was just introducing the 172 at this time and I wanted mightily to get one of those. To me, it would have been the best possible flying club airplane (still is, 56 years later) but the economics of free airplanes beat out even Cessna’s generous lease offer on a new 172.

There was a slight ripple when we got the Army airplanes. The first two, the L-21s, came from Fort Benning. I had a sheath of paperwork and for some reason was told to be in uniform to fetch the airplanes. The person pushing the paper at first refused to hand over an Army airplane to an enlisted man, but after a time of patiently going over the paperwork, I convinced him it was okay. To avoid such confusion, I took a couple of Army pilots to get the L-17s from a different base.

There was no question about our having detractors. A certain bird colonel referred to us as “Private Collins’ @%&* private air force” and his pique reached a peak after an event one summer morning.

The Air Force had started getting T-37 jet trainers at about that time and the Army wanted some jets so political pressure was applied. The result was the T-37 Test Unit that lasted for a year. I knew the flying club had achieved full citizenship on the base when Captain Kauffman of T-37 fame stopped by my office one afternoon and said that I could go for a T-37 flight if I would come to their area at eight the next morning.

Needless to say, I was there early. It was my second ever flight in a jet, the first having been in a T-33 the previous year. We flew for about an hour, in which time I had a ball and learned that doing a loop in a T-37 is a little different than doing a loop in a Cub.

I did have to keep a low profile for a while after that because I heard that our colonel detractor was truly livid when he found out I got a T-37 flight before he did.

When I was released from active duty I left “my” flying club in the good hands of friends Fred Stewart and John Ellington. John’s father was governor of Tennessee so the Fort Rucker Flying Club still had some influence.

I was proud that a lot of people had learned to fly on my watch, nobody got hurt, and nothing got bent. The only frustrating aspect was the weekend instructors. Most were great but the occasional cowboy would slip into the mix and I had to deal with that. (You are fired.)

Fast forward to today and we find a lot of interest in flying clubs as a way to help grow the pilot population. I think the elements that made the Fort Rucker Flying Club work are still valid and I honestly doubt that a club can succeed today without the essential elements.

I was assigned full time to the club and at various times had helpers. One was Doug Cairns, home from the Air Force Academy because of an injury. Doug’s father, General Cairns, took General Hutton’s place and maintained that top level of interest in our club. General Cairns was lost in a helicopter accident and Ozark AAF became Cairns AAF. I still stay in touch with Doug.

The point is you have to have one or more people who are dedicated to making the club work and the more influence you can add to make operating go more smoothly, the better. The only general in our business now is in the name “general aviation” but the interest of someone like an airport manager or FBO principal could be invaluable as could any sponsorships.

A club has to have guidelines that don’t bend because it does have to be geared to the most marginal pilot in the club. I made some unpopular rules but they kept trouble at bay. One was that no solo cross-country could be planned that did not contemplate conclusion at least two hours before sunset. Another precluded solo cross-countries flights if the USAF met guys predicted anything other than widely scattered thunderstorms.

I do hope that flying clubs can help folks learn to fly. The one at Fort Rucker sure did. But if a flying club is to offer what people want–lower cost flying–then divine intervention in the form of subsidies will be required. Where might they come from?

The Ultimate Responsibility:

Thoughts on Family Flying

After the tragic crash of the PC-12 in Florida, Pete Bedell wrote on Facebook that he was flying over the top of this accident on the way back from Costa Rica at FL390. (Pete flies for United.) He heard the pilot and controller discussing weather but Pete said that, from his lofty perch, he didn’t see any weather down at Flight Level 250, where the PC-12 was flying, that appeared hazardous.

That crash took the lives of a couple and their four kids, as they were returning from the Bahamas and heading toward their Junction City, Kansas, home. Pete’s mention of it was especially pertinent to me because of a long history of Collins and Bedell family flying. In fact, we first met Pete 42 years ago when he was only weeks old. His parents, Rowland and Julie, loaded their four kids up and flew to visit us in Little Rock.

When I looked at the heartbreaking pictures of the Bramlage family on the web, I reflected on how wonderful it was to be able to load our three kids in the airplane while the Bedells did likewise with their four and we took air trips to watering holes around the country.

One particular time stands out in my memory. We were in Hilton Head with the Bedells and the restaurant had an orchestra and dance floor. After dinner we, adults and kids alike, danced the night away. It is a wonderful memory, made possible by family flying.

It will be a while before the NTSB determines why the Bramlage family trip ended tragically. From what is known now, it almost has to have involved a high speed loss of control. The right wing of the PC-12 failed in flight. That is a robust airplane and it is hard to see how the wing might have failed were the pilot in control of the airplane.

The FlightAware log of the fight supports the loss of control theory. At 12:33 the track reversed course, from west to east as it climbed through FL250 for FL260. At 12:34 it was headed northeast at FL260 and the groundspeed had dropped from 147 to 68 knots. At 12:35 the groundspeed had dropped to 60 knots. At 12:36 the groundspeed had increased to 255 knots and the last hit, at 12:38, showed it headed west again and descending with a groundspeed of 255 knots. Clearly, something really fast and bad had happened.

Airlines are held to a higher degree of care as they take people’s money to fly them around. Be that as it may, I always tried to a hold myself to the highest standard when flying my family around. Folks who hire air transportation, whether by the seat or the airplane, do so voluntarily. It doesn’t work that way with our kids. We take them flying. In most cases, they don’t have a choice. Given that, we owe them big time.

One of the reasons I became such a weather geek over the years was if I was going to fly my family in clouds, I was going to understand everything there was to know about those clouds. If they were bumpy, I always knew why and knew exactly how bumpy it was going to be. Likewise, I knew how to recognize busted forecasts and inaccurate weather observations and how to deal with them.

The weather wisdom I developed served me well when my family wasn’t in the airplane. I’d be the first to confess that I did things solo that I wouldn’t do with my family but when I did, I had an almost total understanding of the risk that I was taking. That was quite useful.

We were headed west one day, toward the central Colorado area. We were in a turbocharged 210. The surface wind was quite strong. We were flying pretty high, all five of us sucking on oxygen, when the air in the Flight Levels got all nervous and I realized that I didn’t have a clue about what might come next. My Rocky Mountain flying experience was limited. Everyone enjoyed the evening in Colorado Springs. Had I been alone, I would have kept going, exploring the condition as I flew into the heart of the Rockies.

Accidents do happen even when you are being careful. There will always be an underlying element of risk in flying. But for my money there is no such thing as being too careful when there is family on board. Do you approach flying differently based on passengers?

The Great Debate: Too Old to Fly?

The last year in which a lot of airplanes were built was 1979. There was big production in the few years before that and if memory serves me, the last time production numbers were as low as they have been recently was 1952.

The result of this is that the great majority of the fleet is 33 years old or older. So when considering used airplanes, most are old. The good thing about this is that the asking prices are quite low when compared with new airplanes. The bad news is that the maintenance costs will be in relation to the value of the new airplane, not the old one. A friend put over $30,000 into routine maintenance over 12 months. His airplane is an old light twin, probably worth only about five times as much as that shop bill.

Other factors to consider include the age of the airplane. Some contend that airplanes never wear out but that is true only if you have an unlimited amount of money to spend on them. The USAF B-52 and KC-135 fleets come to mind. The DC-3 too. They are seriously old. I doubt if you can find many, or even any, pilots flying these airplanes that are not a lot younger than the airplanes themselves.

The USAF has spent lavishly on keeping B-52s and KC-135s airworthy and up to date because it could. The airplane boneyards are full of old airline and business jets that were retired because they were no longer viable. This is often because the engines fitted were real gas guzzlers and the scrap heap made more sense than an expensive engine retrofit.

That is not true of piston airplanes. If anything, the older airplanes are as or more fuel efficient than the new ones because of the use of turbochargers and high cruise power settings on the more sophisticated new piston airplanes. When I was flying a Cessna 400 I was amazed at the high fuel flow when operating in the go-fast mode.

I think that most of the airframe (wings, fuselage and tail) will last a long time if corrosion is properly managed. The airframe accounts for only about a quarter of the total airplane when it comes to manufacturing cost and it probably accounts for even less of the maintenance cost.

The big money for maintenance goes into the engine and the systems. Over the years this goes up a lot in terms of dollars and by even more in relation to the value of the airplane.

The cost and complexity of keeping an old airplane going are made more difficult because of parts. Most of the older airplanes built by companies still in business are reasonably well supported but you do hear some horror stories about parts for them. Parts are also quite expensive.

Most accessories are available only as rebuilt units and this is fraught with peril.

To rebuild things shops must be FAA approved. That, though, guarantees very little. Some do a really sloppy job of rebuilding systems and accessories. The result is that you have to be really careful when using these items. If an owner or shop doesn’t have personal knowledge of the ability and integrity of a rebuilder, all manner of strange things can happen to those parts with the magical FAA approval.

Before getting to some questions for debate, the question of risk v. airplane age has to be addressed. In general is there more exposure to risk when flying around in older airplanes?

I have done research on this a number of times and there are no clear-cut answers. There is just no way to know the relationship of hours flown between new and older airplanes so nothing can be quantified about accident rates.

Accidents are a matter of record, though, and the incidence of mechanically-related accidents in older airplanes has always been higher than in newer ones. Poor or inadequate maintenance is often cited as a cause, especially in older airplanes.

My feeling on this subject is clearly illustrated by the fact that after flying my P210 for 8,963.44 hours in 28 years, five months and 13 days, I retired the airplane and sold it for scrap. I felt like the airplane was worn out and the risk of flying it was increasing.

That was a complicated pressurized airplane. A simpler regular 210 would have been a different matter. If I had had one of those, and the old dude flying it had been ten years younger, I’d have probably flown it for at least ten more years.

So what do you think? Will our fleet of older airplanes fly on for five more years? Ten? Forever? Will airplanes be euthanized because of calendar age, flying time or burgeoning expensive maintenance requirements? Do you feel as comfortable about mechanical reliability in an older airplane as in a newer one? Your turn.

The Great Debate: Boy v. Girl Pilots

There is no question who is winning. Male pilots outnumber females by a commanding 94 to six margin, plus or minus a little. This is true of pilots in general as well as airline pilots.

When my friend Bonnie Tiburzi became the first female to be hired by a major U. S. airline (American) I thought maybe that would mark the beginning of a big change. It was a start but females only got up to that six percent of the total in airline flying.

Everyone acknowledges that we are facing a dwindling and aging pilot population with more falling out than are coming in. It is sort of like a minister who does more funerals than christenings. Draw the line out and it eventually gets to zero. Could it be that getting more females involved could reverse this trend?

Why hasn’t aviation attracted more females? Certainly in my years in the magazine business we went out of our way to encourage females. One way this was done was by glorifying their exploits. A long flight flown by a female would be a record; the same by a male would be a ferry flight.

I often wondered if some of those “record” flights were worthy of note. In most cases, all they proved was that the pilot stayed awake and the engine ran the whole time. Maybe all they were really good for was the personal celebrity of the pilot flying. We’ll never know whether or not this activity encouraged any females to learn to fly.

Is there some stigma to being a female pilot? Some male chauvinist pigs referred to World War Two WASPS (Women Airforce Service Pilots) as “leather ladies.” They were a tough bunch, though, and couldn’t have cared less about male attitudes as they flew every airplane in the inventory all over the world.

Where all the flight training of World War Two flooded the pilot ranks with males, almost a half a million of them, there were just over 1,000 Wasps. No big percentage there.

I used to judge in an instrument flying contest sponsored by Sporty’s and FLYING at the National Intercollegiate Flying Association air meet. The contest involved a for-real instrument flight and, hands down, the best pilot I ever flew with there was a female, Lauri Laushkin, a student at Mount San Antonio College. The weather was low IFR and she flew a virtually perfect flight.

I have always thought that females can be better pilots than males. I think they take fewer chances and treat airplanes more gently. The personality traits that lead to accidents are mostly male but maybe that is because males are so predominant that there is little female influence on accident statistics.

Could it be that females are not attracted in number because they take one look at male pilots and think, “Yuk, I don’t want to be like that.”

It is my opinion that we males have created a fraternal bond in flying that largely excludes females. If so, how do we change that so more females will feel welcome as general aviation, airline or military pilots? None of the past efforts have helped. What do you think would help? Or do you think we should work to keep this wonderful activity a boy’s club?

Nose or Tail? Wheel That Is

It might not be polite to start with a pet peeve but here goes: “taildragger” is a terrible thing call an airplane. If a person is dragging his tail (ass), that means he is worn out, hardly capable of continuing on. On the other hand, tailwheel airplanes have sparkling and fresh personalities and they stand ready to teach lessons and quickly reward you for good piloting or to stomp on your foot for bad. They are hardly dragging anything except maybe your butt through the weeds if you are a lousy pilot.

As drag pertains to airplanes, the word should be used only in connection with its aerodynamic meaning.

With that out of the way, I want to discuss the general aviation evolution from tailwheels to nosewheels.

In the 1930s, the government sponsored some design competitions for airplanes that would be simple to fly. Most entrants had tricycle landing gear as it came to be called. They also had the rudder and ailerons linked so they could be flown with a control wheel only. No rudder pedals. The goal was to make them spinproof and stall resistant.

As has been true of most government sponsored design competitions, nothing came of this. Instead, someone, Fred Weick, came out of it to design the Ercoupe, the first practical light airplane with a nosewheel instead of a tailwheel. It was a two-control airplane (no rudder controls) and was spin-proof and stall resistant. The Ercoupe first flew in 1937 and went into production a couple of years later. Before World War II caused the curtailment of civil aircraft production, 112 Ercoupes had been built. They built a bunch after the war, the CAA had a special private certificate for it with lower requirements, and they tried to sell them at Macy’s.

After the war most of the other airplanes built were based on pre-war designs, leaving the Ercoupe alone with a nosewheel, but not for long. Two new designs, the highly successful Bonanza and the less-successful Navion had tricycle landing gear. Of the thousands of airplanes built for the war, a substantial percentage had tricycle gear and all airliners on the drawing board were tricycles so it was logical that general aviation would follow suit.

At this point, tailwheel airplanes were referred to as having a conventional landing gear as if that were the norm and a tricycle was not. There was no great demand for tricycles from existing pilots but marketing departments thought the configuration would appeal to more new pilots.

Piper was the first to convert a tailwheel to a nosewheel. They had been building Pacers and in 1952 they came out with the Tri-Pacer. The main gear of the Pacer was turned around and a nosewheel added for what was a simple if not ideal solution.

Where the Pacer had been jaunty in appearance, the Tri-Pacer immediately got an uncomplimentary nickname, the “flying milk stool.” That pretty well describes it and it flew like that, too. Today, all these years later, a lot of owners have made Tri-Pacers back into Pacers. Just scrap the nosewheel, turn the main gear back around, and add a tailwheel.

One advantage to the tricycle was supposed to be ground handling in strong surface winds. I used to own a regular Pacer and flew it in plenty of wind but it could be demanding if the gusts were in excess of 25.

In the beginning, the Tri-Pacer had more upsets in wind than the Pacer ever had. The geometry of the gear wasn’t exactly ideal and if, during a turn away from a strong downwind, the brakes were applied with any force, when the wind was 45-degrees off the tail, the airplane would go over on its back. Once the word got out on what not to do, the trouble subsided.

Cessna was not as eager to go tricycle. It built the 195 with a tailwheel to compete with the Bonanza and Navion and stuck with a tailwheel on the 170 in competition with the Tri-Pacer for three years, until the introduction of the 172 in 1955. Where similar airplanes were built with a choice of landing gear configuration, the tricycle quickly outsold the tailwheel and that version was soon out of production.

As the 172 and later the 182 evolved, Cessna did a lot of tinkering with the landing gear. The first version of both airplanes had longer main gear and stood rather tall on the ramp. This was not ideal in strong winds and the gear was soon lowered and widened and these airplanes became nicer to handle in strong winds.

It wasn’t long before tailwheel airplanes became rare except for special uses. The Cessna 180 and 185 lasted for a while and Maules and Decathlon-types still hang in there. Today, Most of the LSA designs are tricycles though the Cub clones are strong sellers.

I was one of many pilots who flew through the transition from tailwheel to nosewheel and at the time most of us saw it as much ado about nothing. We were doing just fine with tailwheels and actually preferred them. I instructed at two places that had Ercoupes and two-seat trainers with conventional gear and, in most places, the Ercoupes didn’t fly until everything else was gone.

I don’t know whether there was a “real men don’t fly Ercoupes” mentality or not. I just didn’t really like instructing in them for several reasons. The lack of rudder control meant there were a lot of things you couldn’t teach. The tricycle meant the students could get away with less precise approaches and sloppy landings. And because the two locations in question were in Arkansas and Alabama, the Ercoupe was bloody hot in the summertime.

I was flying charter trips in both Bonanzas and Cessna 195s and didn’t really have a preference there. You had to work a little harder to fly a 195 well, but I was sitting there without much to do other than work a little harder so that didn’t matter.

My father had given me a couple of lessons in an Ercoupe when I was 13 and the next tricycle I flew after that was a Bonanza, when I was 19. My checkout in the airplane was different.

The FAA (then CAA) was also different at that time. They were actually there to help.

We were all gathered for a pre-air tour celebration for the 1953 Arkansas Air Tour, that would hopscotch around the state for a few days. We would fly during the day and party at night.

The boss inspector from the CAA office in Little Rock took me aside during the party and asked me if I had ever flown a Bonanza. A rather eccentric gentleman with a Bonanza had made quite a scene arriving in Little Rock and when the inspector investigated he found that the pilot had ordained himself. No certificate.

Jack, the inspector, proposed that I fly the man in his Bonanza on the air tour. In return, he would help me on the instructor’s rating (as it was then called) that I was seeking.

When I reported that I hadn’t flown a Bonanza, he assured me there was nothing to it. Just get it slowed down and at pattern altitude well before entering the pattern and have the approach speed nailed because it would float if too fast and fall if too slow. He added that I shouldn’t reduce prop rpm (with a toggle switch) after takeoff too quickly because sometimes the toggle would stick and run the rpm all the way back. That was not good for the old rate of climb.

It all worked out and by the time we finished I had over six hours of Bonanza time and felt I knew the airplane pretty well.

The instructor’s rating help didn’t work out because Jack died of a heart attack soon after the tour.

All of us eventually made the transition from tailwheels to nosewheels and while a lot of people never wanted to revisit the good old days, I was always up for flying a tailwheel airplane whenever I had the opportunity. The last one I ever flew was a Helio Courier and anybody who has flown one of those beasts will attest to the fact that it will make you work hard enough to sweat, even on a cold day.

One thing about tailwheels that is not true is that you aren’t a “real” pilot until you have mastered a tailwheel. It’s not what you fly but the care and precision with which you fly that makes you a “real” pilot. It can even be done in an Ercoupe or a Tri-Pacer.

Something we will never know is if tailwheels or tricycles are more prone to landing accidents. The groundloop was predominant with tailwheels and sloppy approaches and too-fast landings resulting in busted nosewheels and firewalls cause landing trouble with nosewheels. There are even losses of directional control in tricycles. Many or even most landing events don’t qualify as accidents, though, so they fail to appear in the statistics.

What about you? Would you like to revisit the good old days of tailwheels? Do you think tailwheels are more likely to be involved in landing mishaps?

Personal Air Transportation in the

Good Old Days: 1929-1933

As seen by Leighton Collins, written by Richard Collins for Leighton Collins

(Note to the reader: This is the first chapter of a book that I started but will probably never finish. It was to be about the history of general aviation as seen through the eyes of two Collins boys, Richard and Leighton. Richard wasn’t born in the time covered by this first chapter but I have my father’s logs and papers to use in covering this slice of the good old days. –Richard Collins)

I saw my first airplane at what was to become Love Field near Dallas, Texas. It was before the U. S. entry into World War I, in which I was too young to take part. The airplane was probably a Curtiss Jenny though at the time I didn’t know one airplane from another. My real passion was fast motorcycles and that lasted me until May, 1927, at which time I became infatuated with the travel potential that might be found in relatively light airplanes. Charles Lindbergh’s non-stop trip from New York to Paris not only fascinated people around the world, it forever changed the public perception of aviation. It was clearly time to go places in airplanes and I was ready.

There were airlines at the time. They had gotten their start flying the mail and when relatively practical passenger-carrying airplanes, like the Ford Trimotor (also written as Tri-Motor), became available they started carrying passengers in real cabins. There were single-engine airliners, too. General aviation, as it was to be called after World War Two, existed mainly in the form of barnstormers, air show acts, air racing and a tiny number of people using airplanes for transportation. I was to become one of that tiny number.

I was living in Little Rock, working in the insurance business. We had a lot of activity around the state of Arkansas as well as in neighboring states. I spent many hours on the relatively primitive roads in the area, in the relatively primitive automobiles of the time, servicing accounts.

The local airport was active for the time. Most of the pilots had flown in World War One and most of the airplanes were the typical biplanes of the day, many powered by new-design radial engines though there were still a lot of liquid-cooled OX-5 powered airplanes flying around. That engine had made its mark in World War One, primarily as the powerplant for the Jenny.

One of my first business uses of an airplane involved an OX-5 powered Waco 10. It had two cockpits, one with a double seat for passengers and the other with a single seat for the pilot, in tandem. I wasn’t yet a pilot so I hired someone to fly me, in the Waco, to Jackson, Mississippi. I needed a face-to-face with an accident investigator there and it appeared that the trip down and back, and the conference, could be fit into one day. That was a great advantage over doing it in a car.

There were more trips like that. There were no airport guides and few aeronautical charts and basically I told the pilot where I wanted to go, we’d fly to that town or city, and then we’d find a place to land. If the pilot needed a map, Esso (now Exxon) road maps were adequate. The larger cities had airports, as did some of the smaller ones, but random fields were also often used. When a destination was identified, the pilot would query all his buddies around the airport about fields they had used at various towns.

The lack of service in the average hayfield was not a problem. If fuel were needed, automobile gas worked just fine in the engines of the day. Random fields were not a problem because the biplanes had large diameter wheels on the main landing gear and the landing (and takeoff) speeds were low.

The engines were not overly reliable and there were a lot of precautionary or forced landings. There was no good understanding of carburetor ice when the Department of Commerce’s Aeronautics Branch started dictating modifications to address what was a real problem. Some changes were good, some bad, but eventually all airplanes had effective carburetor heat.

All told, I flew 57 hours and ten minutes on trips in the Waco 10. The flying had become instructional, too. The main training requirement at the time revolved around the spot landing. If you couldn’t hit the spot, power off, stick all the way back at touchdown, you had not yet learned to fly. The instructors of the day were along mainly to protect the airplane while you taught yourself how to fly.

I actually had a transport pilot certificate, number 7709, when I started flying my brother-in-law’s Fleet biplane in the summer of 1929 and started logging time in my logbook number one. I had not logged the Waco 10 time that led to my pilot certificate.

The Fleet was a handsome airplane. The one that I flew was made in Canada while others were built across the river in Buffalo, New York. Because the airplane that I flew was made in Canada, a lot of people mistakenly identified it as a deHavilland but it really was a Fleet.

The airplane was built as a trainer, with hopes of a big military order. The company had to settle for small military orders though Fleet morphed into Consolidated. That company did big military business, later became Convair, and eventually wound up as General Dynamics.

The Fleet had excellent flying qualities but cross-country flying was pretty well defined by its 85 mph cruising speed. That is slow and it is even slower with a headwind. It could still beat a fast car.

Like other airplanes of that day, the Fleet came in variations, mainly with different engines. Some airplanes even had different types of wings. The Warner “Scarab” and the Kinner engines were the most common for airplanes like this and developed 110 to 120 horsepower. The structure of the wings was wood, covered with fabric, with metal used in the leading edges. The fuselage structure was welded steel tubing with wooden stringers for shape, and fabric covering. A new Fleet was $5,500 in 1929.

Building airplanes was a true cottage industry with a lot of different companies each turning out a low volume of airplanes. My first logbook was from the Nicholas-Bentley Airplane Company, Inc. Apparently the company wasn’t too successful much beyond logbooks as it produced only a limited number of airplanes.

I flew the Fleet locally a lot and made a few trips in the airplane. The longest trip was from Little Rock to Springfield, Missouri, and return, with an overnight at Springfield. I logged two hours and 30 minutes each way to cover the 190 or so miles so there was no blistering speed involved. This was in July and the wind aloft was virtually calm.

My biggest Fleet adventure was taking part in the second annual Arkansas State Air Tour, 15 hours and 30 minutes flying time, in the air every day with a party every night, all while hopping around the state. Those were fun events.

The biplanes I was flying were relatively small. Even with twice as many wings, a Fleet had marginally more wing area than a Cessna 172. The wingspan was 28 feet.

The rudder was an important flight control in these airplanes and in many the rudder appeared large in relation to the vertical fin. On a Fleet, for example, the vertical fin had an area of 2.9 square feet compared with 8.2 square feet for the rudder. There were no flaps so slips were often used to increase the rate of descent on approach. The effective rudder combined with equally effective ailerons to help with crosswind handling as well as with effective slips.

Airplane building came to Little Rock in the form of the Arkansas Aircraft Company. The company was founded in 1926 and initially manufactured a version of the German Heinkel HD-40 biplane. In 1928 the company refined the design and called it the Command-Aire. The company name was changed to the same thing.

The Command-Aire was similar to the Fleet in almost every way. Because it was a local airplane I was itching to fly one and, with no checkout in type, they let me fly a Command-Aire from Little Rock to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and back, on a business trip. That was on October 10, 1929. A couple of weeks later the stock market started unraveling and I flew only locally, seven times, until December 27th.

At this time I had flown for a total of 111 hours and five minutes. That made me a relatively experienced pilot. I had traveled in airplanes and had been bitten by the airplane bug. I couldn’t foresee the firestorm that was to consume business activity and the stock market crash wasn’t a factor for me because I wasn’t much of an investor.

I wanted an airplane that I could travel in on business, comfortably. The airplanes that I considered were the Monocoupe, Curtiss Robin, and a new airplane I had just heard about, the St. Louis Cardinal. All were high-wing, strut braced, cabin airplanes. The Monocoupe and Cardinal were two-seaters, the Robin would carry two passengers side-by-side behind the pilot. All the airplanes would cruise at or above 100 miles per hour which was a substantial improvement over the biplanes I had been flying.

The Cardinal appeared the best bet for me. The Robin was more airplane than I needed and the Cardinal had individual wheel brakes where the Monocoupe did not. That cinched the deal so I got in touch with the St. Louis Car Company, builder of railroad cars as well as airplanes, and on December 21, 1929 I gave them a check for $3,000 for a new 90-horse LeBlondpowered Cardinal.

Because buying the Cardinal was a turning point in my aviation activities, let’s take stock of what was going on in aviation as the 1920s drew to a close.

Aviation had been relatively unregulated until the 1920s. The safety record was bad, especially in air mail flying. The Department of Commerce was the government agency in charge and in 1926 it formed the Aeronautics Branch to oversee civil aviation. I mentioned earlier that my pilot certificate number was 7709. That certainly didn’t mean that I was the 7,709th person to become a pilot, it just meant that I was the 7,709th person to get a certificate from the relatively new Aeronautics Branch. My brother-in-law had number 96 because he was an even earlier applicant. His flying had actually started in France, during World War One.

As has always been the case, the needs of the airlines dictated most developments in civil aviation. They needed to fly the mail at night so a lighted airways system had been developed using extremely bright rotating beacon lights to define those airways. This was along major routes and to make things a little less dicey they built lighted emergency landing fields along the way. Flying was still mostly limited to VFR conditions though as early as 1920 the need to be able to fly in clouds and navigate without reference to the ground had been clearly identified. Elmer Sperry’s company developed gyroscopic instruments for airplanes, starting with the turn and bank and then adding the directional gyro and artificial horizon.

For navigation without ground reference, the Aeronautics Branch was developing a four course low frequency radio range that would be widely used in the 1930s and onward. The climax of all this interest in cloud flying came on September 24, 1929, when Jimmy Doolittle landed a Consolidated NY-2 biplane “blind” using a basic radio aid to navigate and gyro instruments to use in controlling the airplane. That was the real beginning of instrument flying.

Most of us, though, were a long way from practical instrument flying. My Cardinal had engine instruments, a compass, an airspeed indicator and a rudimentary altimeter. There was no radio because there was no electricity. It didn’t have much of a heater, either, so the winter flying was done while wearing a heavy coat. It was a definite improvement over the open cockpits, though.

After a brief Cardinal checkout that consisted of a spin out of a steep turn and a recovery from the spin, and a spot landing, I was on my cold way from St. Louis to Little Rock on December 31, 1929.

I was going to use the Cardinal in my business travel, charging the company the rate of eight cents a mile, which was what it paid for automobiles. That would be a little over eight dollars an hour. How much over eight dollars depended on the difference between the road and the flight mileage. Because most of us followed roads a lot of the time the difference might not be too great. Still, the Cardinal would fly on little over a dollar’s worth of gas per hour so, by any measure, eight dollars an hour was a pretty good deal for me.

You can’t imagine the pleasure I found in flying that Cardinal home, all the while envisioning a bright future of airplane travel. The airplane felt solid, the wooden instrument panel was neat and efficient in appearance, and the visibility over the nose was a big improvement over the biplanes.

The LeBlond was a five cylinder engine, with the cylinders out in the breeze for good cooling. One cylinder stuck up out of the top of the cowling, obstructing the visibility a little, but those were not very big cylinders.

One item of required equipment with this engine was a grease gun. That is how the rocker arms were lubricated. If they were lubricated too often it could be a little messy but not nearly as messy as things could be if you forgot to lubricate them for a number of flying hours.

The Cardinal was not a long range airplane. It had 22 total gallons of fuel in two wing tanks so hops were limited to three to three and a half hours. The empty weight was 1,006 pounds and the useful load 557 pounds so it could be operated with full fuel, two people, and some baggage. For the record, the St. Louis Car Company listed the cruising speed as 107 m.p.h. which was pretty good for that time. The Ford Trimotor, the premier airliner of the day, was no faster.

The weather in Arkansas in January can be fickle and it was January 15, 1930, before I made my first business trip in the Cardinal. It was to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and return, a trip that I had made in a Command-Aire. On that first trip, the speed advantage of the Cardinal didn’t shine through as the flying times for the two airplanes were the same. On later trips to Clarksdale, the Cardinal showed about a 15 minute advantage for the round trip.

There were trips to Jackson, Mississippi, and Memphis, and more visits to Clarksdale. Then, In March, I flew to my home town of Greenville, Texas, landed in a hayfield, and took some of my kin flying in three local flights.

Despite the fact that March isn’t the best month to fly in that part of the country, I had the Cardinal out flying for fully half the days in the month. Most of the flights were within Arkansas but in early April I ventured to Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Then one day, in a total of 15 flights, I took the “office crowd” flying in Little Rock. The flying activity continued fast and furious through May and June and then in July, 1930, my wife and I struck out for the West Coast to visit her aunt and uncle. It only took 22 hours and five minutes flying time from Little Rock to Los Angeles, spread over three days.

This was a true voyage of discovery for me. I had never seen the American desert because I had never been west of Texas. I don’t think I realized how big the country is and I certainly didn’t realize how sparsely it was populated at that time.

We flew only three hours and 20 minutes on the first day of the trip and spent that night with my family in Greenville, Texas, which is about 50 miles east of Dallas. There was no airport at Greenville but I had been there before and knew of a suitable hayfield.

One thing that you had to be sure of is that no cows had access to the airplane. Cows had been known to savor the fabric covering of airplanes though the dope used to stretch and then paint the fabric couldn’t have been too tasty.

On the second day of the trip out west, we flew for seven hours and 20 minutes, stopping in El Paso for the evening. The desert starts before El Paso and the craggy but beautiful mountains that are east of El Paso, were quite a sight for us to see.

The next day was the marathon of the trip. We flew 11 hours and 15 minutes getting from El Paso to Rogers Field in Los Angeles. One of the stops along the way was at Davis Monthan airfield near Tucson. As many airports did, they kept a register of pilots and passengers passing through. I signed in as having come from Lordsburg, New Mexico, landing at 12:05 p.m. The airplane number, NC991K was recorded, as was the serial number, 115. I think the serial numbers started with 100 so my Cardinal was probably the 15th built. That turned out to be about half way through the production run.

Navigation was a true challenge in the desert. The topographical maps were okay but the towns were widely scattered, and the best way to keep from getting lost was to follow roads or railroads. It was pretty warm over the desert in the cabin of the Cardinal, even with the windows opened.

This trip to L.A. was not exactly a business trip. The economic calamity that was gripping the country, and that was getting worse by the day, was said to be less severe in California. My wife’s uncle was an executive in a big insurance company there. Like so many others my age (late twenties) I hopefully went to see if there were any job opportunities. Sadly there were not and after eleven days we were headed back toward the east.

The trip back took 22 hours and 30 minutes, a little more than the trip out, and to change the scenery a little I flew a more northerly route and stopped at Phoenix instead of Tucson. The trip was a grand adventure and while it didn’t accomplish much other than broadening our horizons, I thought the fifty bucks spent on gas a good investment. The flying was enjoyable, too.

Business and my flying were slowing down though not yet falling off a cliff as were so many other things. The manufacture of airplanes like Command-Aires and Fleets and Cardinals had all but ground to a halt and 1931 was to see a lot of bankruptcies in the aviation business.

Waves of panic would sweep across the financial landscape and each one would claim as victim more airplane builders. Banks were not strong. Most companies building airplanes were not properly capitalized to begin with and when sales and available capital disappeared at about the same time it was not possible for most to stay in business.

The camaraderie of aviation still lived on and in October, 1930, I again flew in the Arkansas Air Tour. The event didn’t visit as many places in 1930 but it did still involve 10 hours and 30 minutes of flying and went to both the eastern and western parts of the state. In the evenings there was much talk about how the flying business might survive what was going on with the economy. There were not a lot of hopeful signs out there.

I could tell that my work in Arkansas was winding down, thanks to the economic collapse. By this time I was so smitten by flying that I hated to think of not flying my Cardinal around the country. So, I got an insurance job in Kansas City that involved a lot of travel and I continued using my Cardinal while getting car mileage from the company.

When logging one trip I made the notation “new prop” in my logbook. The hub of the old one cracked and a mechanic told me I had best not fly any farther with that cracked Hartzell prop. It was changed and as this is written by my son in 2011 the Cardinal prop with the cracked hub adorns the wall of his den.

There was one difference in the travel deal with the new company. Management did not know that I was traveling on company business in an airplane. I did myself in on this by mentioning a forced landing that I had in Kansas to the company PR person. He, in turn, put it in the company newsletter, properly embellished. The discussion with management about this ended with, “This has to stop immediately.” I had been flying several times a week, covering the Midwestern United States, when my flying was effectively shut down by the company.

I could still scrape up enough money to fly and used the Cardinal to go about the country looking for a job, preferably an aviation job. I flew only about 50 hours in 1932.

The few companies that were building airplanes were hanging on by the skin of their teeth but most were liquidated. That didn’t mean that the passion for aviation was gone from the principals of those companies. Later in the thirties a lot of names rose from the ashes and again became major players in general aviation.

Travel Air in Wichita had been a prominent airplane manufacturer, but it closed. The company had built a lot of airplanes, nearly 2,000 by some estimates, and those airplanes were a diverse lot. The staple was the open cockpit biplane but Travel Air also built cabin airplanes that were sold to the fledgling airline industry. Air racing airplanes were another staple of the company and they actually won some races that also involved military pursuit ships. Called the Travel Air Mystery Ship, because it was developed more or less in secrecy, their low-wing strut-braced monoplane made a big mark in the air racing business and established Travel Air as a leader in the aviation industry. But the company was gone even though the racers continued to race, often with oil company sponsorship.

While most pilots were interested in air racing, they didn’t see it as something that they would want to do. But the thought of airplanes flying at over 200 miles per hour was exciting to all of us who were puttering around in airplanes that cruised at half that speed or less.

I was in Wichita, Kansas, where aviation was a major industry, and there was a lot of talk about troubles. Travel Air was already in trouble but a lot of the racing glamour remained. They had sold a Mystery Ship to Texaco and that airplane was in Wichita for some modifications. With its fully-cowled engine and big wheel fenders, it was a sight to behold.

There was also talk about Cessna. Clyde Cessna had left Travel Air in 1927 and struck out mostly on his own. Walter Beech, Travel Air president, and Cessna had great respect for each other but also had different ideas about what kind of airplanes should be developed. Beech was satisfied with what Travel Air was building; Cessna wanted to build a full cantilever (no struts) three-place high wing monoplane. He was successful in certifying that design but it wasn’t easy. The Aeronautics Branch wanted to be absolutely certain that the cantilever wing would stand the loads and made Cessna test it more thoroughly that it would have tested a strutted wing.

Cessna was soon offering larger versions of the airplane with greater seating capacity. As with Travel Air, though, Cessna’s business dropped off so much that the company went completely out of business where Travel Air was folded into Curtiss-Wright.

In the short period since I had started learning to fly a lot happened in and to aviation. It appeared that great strides in small passenger airplanes were being made at just the time the economy went bust. All of us dreamed of comfortable and fast airplanes to use for business and personal travel. Alas, there was little business and no money for personal travel.

We put a lot of thought into what might come next when and if the country started to recover from its economic problems. If the airplanes that were developed right before the crash were any indication, the future of the small airplane looked good but the economic recovery was a huge question mark.

My business flying had all but stopped in February, 1932. No business, no flying. I had built a little hangar beside the 1,400 foot long strip at Fordyce, Arkansas, and used it for my Cardinal when we moved to Fordyce. There was a little money to be earned hopping passengers but the pickings were slim. I flew six times in July and continued at about that pace for the rest of the year and into 1933.

I had good experience working in the insurance and banking business. I had a bachelor’s degree from the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, I had earned a law degree at the Arkansas Law School, and I had a year at Harvard Business School. But I didn’t have a job.

We had made that trip to California to see if things were any better there and in June, 1933, I scraped up the cash to fly the Cardinal from Fordyce to Philadelphia to see if there was any opportunity there. No luck. But I had flown the Cardinal to both coasts from Arkansas. To me, that was proof that the small airplane was a true transportation system.

On the trip from Philadelphia back to Fordyce I gave a lot of thought to my plight and made a decision. I never liked the insurance business, I had no intention of trying to practice law, and I loved to fly. I was also convinced that the small airplane would someday take its place as a major factor in the transportation picture. Basically, I decided to try a career in the aviation business. All I had to do is find my place. To that end, on July 6, 1933, I flew my Cardinal to Cincinnati, Ohio, to pitch my services to the Aeronautical Corporation of America, Aeronca, one the few airplane builders with its nose above the water. They engaged my services, to sell the Aeronca C-3. I was finally in the airplane business.

Table of Contents

Preface

The Perfect Copilot of Many Years

Part One: Adventures

Ten-Hut: Military Flying Adventures

Those Photo Missions – Smile!

Those Pilot Reports – Of the Magazine Variety

A Long and Wonderful Flight, With Beginning Turbulence...

Concorde Adventures

Check Rides I Have Known and Loved

A DC-3 Dream: Fleeting as it Was

Part Two: Airplanes

Are Slow Airplanes Practical Transportation?

The Dream v. The Reality: It’s a Tough World

What’s In a Name?

A Dream of the 1970s: The Bede 5

Retractable Singles: The Good, the Fad and the Ugly

Part Three: Safety

Personal or Business: Is One Riskier Than the Other?

The IFR Conundrum: Is it as it Appears?

Safety Crisis: What’s Going On?

Crashes: Then and Now

Part Four: Technique

11 Keys to Safer Instrument Flights

The Weight – and the Balance

Technique Geek: Tailwind Landings

5 Key Flying Lessons – Some Things That Had to be Learned the Hard Way

Is Hard IFR a Myth? 5 Things to Keep it From Being that Way

Part Five: Weather

Wind Shear: A Danger Vanquished, or, One Waiting in the Wings?

Weather Geek: Rules to Fly By

Ice: Gotcha...In a Heartbeat

Ice: Gotcha...Where is the Ice?

Part Six: Flightstyles

A Solo or a New Beginning

Flying Clubs, Then and Now - Different?

The Ultimate Responsibility: Thoughts on Family Flying

The Great Debate: Too Old to Fly?

The Great Debate: Boy v. Girl Pilots

Nose or Tail? Wheel That Is

Personal Air Transportation in the Good Old Days