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Last Saturday morning, the morning low temperature at Oshkosh, Wisconsin was actually two degrees warmer than it was in Butler. That wasn’t going to hold, but we had it nice while it lasted. The rain that fell when the cold front passed was welcome, for the most part. Fog shrouded the airports from Harrisonville north on Wednesday, even though it was essentially clear in Bates County. There seems to be a weather-change line around Harrisonville, as observed over the years.
Oshkosh, of course, is the site of this week’s annual AirVenture celebration of aviation, attracting hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts and 10,000 airplanes flown in. Butler airport manager Chris Hall has been on the grounds for a couple of weeks, parked in a prime spot, while we languished in the heat. Les Gorden made an early departure for the show in his T-28C warbird, and a nice Wittman Tailwind homebuilt out of Abilene, Texas stopped in Friday enroute to event. Also visiting this week were a Cessna Skylane from Bolivar, a Beech Bonanza V35, a Piper Cherokee and a Robinson R44 helicopter.
The U.S. House of Representatives, constitutionally charged with allocating money to fund bureaucracies, passed an FAA Reauthorization Act this week, always an exercise in Pork Barrel politics and lobbying for pet causes. These funding bills typically cover five years or so, when they finally get duly signed. Nobody ever gets all they want from them. We users who send our gas tax and excise tax money to what used to be called an “Aviation Trust Fund” must wait for it to be allocated back to us, minus the usually handling charges, announced as “Senator so-and-so brings $10 million in Federal Funds to the state to build some runways” when it’s really our own money.
One provision in the House bill forbids airports to quit selling leaded aviation gasoline before the always-coming unleaded 100-octane fuel becomes available. This is causing anguish for UL100 developers, who need empty tanks to store their new juice. It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg situation. The purpose of the rule is to keep overeager environmentalists from grounding thirsty airplanes at their hometown airport during what everyone expects to eventually be a changeover to no-lead avgas, but the devil is the details. It’ll have to get fixed.
The usual flood of new-product announcements preceding the Oshkosh show has begun. Garmin has announced it’ll soon have emergency automatic-landing capability for the Beech King Air twin turboprops, much like Piper, Daher and Pilatus has for their Garmin-equipped singles, and a cheaper $2000 radar altimeter for little planes, which can call out the last 500 feet down to the pavement. Texas Aircraft (which actually sells airplanes from Brazil) says it’ll soon have a four-seater to go with its two-seat trainer, if the FAA approves it, and Cessna has a spiffy new set of interior improvements for its legacy piston singles.
Our weekly question asked why composite airplanes are usually finished in white color, while wood, aluminum or fabric planes can be any shade. As reader Rodney Rom knew, the plastic lamination structures don’t handle heat well and must be painted with a reflective coating to keep their cool. Our question for next week would be, “which of the primary flight controls is actually the one that turns the airplane?” Hint; it’s not the one you think of first. You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
