Fly early to escape the heat and afternoon thunderstorms; there’s no avoiding the summer flight program that happens every year. Thankfully, airplanes get cooler as they get higher, so a trip to Hutchinson, KS Friday was pleasant enough at 4,500 feet MSL, but we did have some pop-up rain showers to dodge on the way back.
The week’s traffic count around the Butler airport included a Piper Warrior, a Cirrus SR-20 and a Cessna Skyhawk. Pat Svoboda came in from Kansas with his Piper J-3 Cub and Mike McCanles was down from Harrisonville in his 1956 Cessna 172. We hit the trifecta with the U.S. Army helicopter fleet; not only did a CH-47 Chinook come by, a UH-60 Black Hawk touched down and a UH-72B Lakota arrived as well.
The local aviators were up in force; Jon Laughlin flew his Piper Cherokee 180C, Jeremie Platt made numerous trips in his Grumman Tiger, Les Gorden brought his North American T-28C Trojan warbird home, Christian Tucker rescued his Cessna 140 from the maintenance shop and I had the 7AC Champ aloft. Instructor Eric Eastland and Paul French took the Skyhawk to Hot Springs and the turbine AirTractor sprayplanes were up, spreading fertilizer on crops. Due to a lack of planning on my part, only a couple of Fliars made it over to Paola for the breakfast flyout Saturday morning.
Aircraft insurance continues to be an elusive commodity for Missouri plane owners. For the past several years, coverage has been hard to get because of difficult-to-meet standards laid down by the state’s insurance commission. Underwriters opted to leave the Missouri market, claiming they could not operate profitably here. With the urging of the Missouri Pilot’s Association, there are bills pending in Jeff City to rectify the situation. Airplanes are not automobiles, and they represent a small, thin market few companies want to write, even in states without restrictions.
If you’re a fan of the Discovery Channel TV series “Flying Wild Alaska”, which more or less realistically portrays the Tweto family of bush flyers taking cargo and passengers in and out of back country places, you’ll be saddened by the news last week that patriarch Jim Tweto died in his Cessna 180. He was taking off with a guide when the aircraft failed to climb and subsequently crashed, killing both. He was 68, still doing what he loved.
France’s Daher corporation is flying an EcoPulse demonstrator hybrid electric airplane at the Paris Air Show this last week, a modified TBM 900 with six electric motors on the wings, driving propellers with juice generated by an on-board turbo-generator. This is more efficient than batteries, as shown by the 27 hours the test-bed has flown so far. Whether it will work has yet to be proven.
The week’s question was about a famous aviator who survived a crash-landing at sea during World War II and drifted for 24 days in a life raft. That would be Eddie Rickenbacker, World I ace who was aiding the war effort in 1942. Next week’s question focuses on interpreting Morse Code. What’s the significance of these three letters; dah-dit-dit-dit, dit-dit-dah, dah-dah? You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
