Fine fall flying prevailed most of the week, with low ceilings for a couple of days that grounded most flights. Now that we’ve shifted over to flying in the early morning rather than late afternoon, it’s time to watch out for ground fog around sunrise. Those starry predawn skies can turn to misty overcast in minutes.
It was a mostly a quiet week for visitors around the Butler aerodrome; I saw a Piper Cherokee 180 come in, and a Cessna 172 visited briefly. Locally, only Jerald Koehn was out exercising his Cessna Skyhawk. Much good weather went unused.
In national aviation news, I regret to add to the frenetic reportage surrounding the tragic crash of a Learjet 60 at Palm Beach, Florida on the previous Sunday. All the arm-chair experts are rushing to solve the mystery of a chartered private jet nosing straight in from 35,000 feet, shedding tail parts on the way down, during a routine flight from Texas to the Bahamas. It’ll challenge the National Transportation Safety Board investigators to come up with answers after a year’s work. It does appear that the bad weather pounding Florida at the time was a factor, along with high-altitude aerodynamics. No, the qualifications of the 20-year-old copilot were impeccable, so you can cease picking on that factor.
Out at Edwards AFB in the California desert, the mystery of NASA’s missing Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, which had been parked on display at the Dryden research facility, appears to be put to rest by NASA Administrator Issacman, who said last week that it was “just being cleaned.” Speculation has been rampant that the Mach 3 bird was being prepared for flight, but that would involve a lot more than cleaning. Son Will recalls walking past it daily when he was working on a Boeing project there years ago.
A sign of the times: The last Jeppesen paper instrument flying charts were published last month. Once a staple in cockpits, the brown ring binders of approach plates have been largely retired in favor of iPads loaded with digital charts. The few of us yet referring to a printed page are now using U.S. government supplied charts, printed by contractors. Jeppesen is still in the data business, but just not on paper. One of my first jobs for the U.S. Army was updating the flight detachment’s neglected Jeppesen binders, 63 years ago.
A 15-year effort to build a shared new airport in southern Iowa ended last week. The idea was to build a bigger and better airport between Pella and Oskaloosa, to replace their smaller fields, but land acquisition has stalled and the project is no longer viable. With the price of farm ground in that area, it probably got too expensive. It’s cheaper to fix up what they have.
The Navy is having a hard time coming up with a replacement for its aging fleet of well-abused T-45 trainer jets, now over 30 years old. Northrop pulled out of the competition last week, after Boeing had already given up. Textron Aviation is the only prospect left, but they won’t be selling military-ized Citations. Their option is a shared venture with Italian planemaker Leonardo. The new Navy trainer won’t even be carrier capable.
In last week’s column, we wanted to know about fuel storage in airplanes; fuel tanks, cells and bays. Tanks are aluminum containers, cells are rubber bladders and bays are sealed portions of the wing itself. For next week, what’s the “One”-style radio call sign used for an aircraft carrying the Pope? You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
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