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Thus far, July has delivered much-needed rain, spotty to be sure, and we had a few cool days before settling back into typical summer heat. I was asked “is it hot up there?” by a non-pilot, and the answer I gave was “depends on how the wind blows.” If the wind at 3000 feet is out of the southwest, it’ll bring in warm air aloft, which is the opposite of normal cooling with altitude.
Traffic last week was largely unaffected by the seasonal weather. A chap in a Piper Saratoga RG sat in Wednesday, taking a break to reset his GPS and flight displays that were acting up; good thing it was a nice clear day. A Piper Archer, a Cessna Skyhawk, a Mooney M-20 and a Cirrus also stopped in. Local aircraft observed flying were Les Gorden’s Piper Twin Comanche and North American T-28, the resident AirTractor sprayplane, and Christian Tucker’s Cessna 150. Bob Plunket made a trip to Columbia and Jeff City in a 150, and Gerald Bauer took a 150 up as well.
The sad state of American general aviation manufacturing was pointed out by announcements last week of Kansas City flight school Kilo Charlie Aviation (KC-get it?) purchase of up to 30 Italian-built Technam airplanes, which are cheaper to operate than Pipers and Cessnas with their little Rotax engines. Time was, U.S. planemakers set the standard world-wide; now, our domestic companies only concentrate on business-class jets and turboprops to make money. Loss-leader light trainers, the starter airplanes that bring new pilots into aviation, aren’t considered important—which is a big mistake.
Are battery-powered electric flying machines the answer for training? Slovenia-based Pipistrel (a division of Textron Aviation) is promoting its $223,000 Velis Electro trainer as a good value but its limited endurance and time-consuming recharge doesn’t make it attractive. The FAA has yet to certify any of these electric airplanes for general use.
This week’s brain-teaser asked about a maker of fish-finder equipment that also built aviation GPS receivers. That was Lowrance, who made a portable GPS back in the 1990 time frame. Carl Lowrance visited here often in his Cessna Turbo 210 to haul Virgil Ward to fishing tournaments. Our quiz for next week asks, “how can you tell at a glance when an airplane has a turbocharger on the engine, versus a non-turboed model?” You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
