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It was 17 years ago that we were on a family vacation in Washington, D.C. before son Will was to go off to college, and after flying in across the Alleghenies in the old Skyhawk, we found ourselves surrounded by the periodic Cicada hatch. They were the egg-laying ancestors of these venturesome pests we’re seeing this year, returning on schedule, noisy, harmless red-eyed critters flying around everywhere.
At Nashville’s John Tune airport last week, the FBO was attempting to perform an auxiliary-power start on a Challenger 350 business jet, and the APU cart wouldn’t spin up enough power to get the old Fat Albert’s engines running. After several tries, they looked inside the APU’s air intake and found it clogged with buzzing Cicadas, evidently looking to mate with the rumbling power cart. So far, Butler has escaped the hatch, but the infestation is only one county away to the east.
The local airport news has settled back to normal after a week of nationwide exposure from the sad loss of a skydive airplane on May 25th. At press time, the small pile of wreckage was still in the hayfield by the airport’s east fence, awaiting official investigation. The facts of the incident are pretty well known, from the owner/pilot and skydivers statements; a premature parachute deployment caused damage to the horizontal tail, leaving the plane uncontrollable, so all occupants had to bail out. End of story.
Visitors this week included a B-2 Spirit bomber on a low-level run over town at about 3000 feet last Friday, and a couple of A-10 Warthog attack planes cutting the traffic pattern at 500 feet on Monday. Less impressive flyers-in were a Piper Archer or two, a Beech Debonair and a Cessna 182. Locally, Les Gorden refueled his Beech Twin Bonanza, Roy Conley had his Grumman Tr-2 out and Lance Dirks flew the club Cessna Skyhawk.
In the who-cares department, it was reported last week that a 1997 Cessna Citation X bizjet owned by one of Donald Trump’s companies has been sold, after having been on the market for a while. The Citation “Ten” was the top of the line jet 25 years ago, able to nudge the sound barrier in speed and cruise at 51,000 feet, but fuel efficiency is the goal today, so they don’t sell well used. Our local boy Milton Sills developed the airplane for Cessna, as head of engineering. Price of DJT’s former ride wasn’t disclosed, but $10 million would be a ballpark guess. His present Boeing 757 airliner suits the current purpose better, with more room for an entourage.
Our weekly question was, what were “colored airways?” Back in the 1930s and 40s, those were the low-frequency range routes between major cities, guiding planes with a “beam” of audible tone in the pilot’s headset. For some reason, they were named “Red One” or “Green Three” or other designation. They were replaced by the now-passe VOR airways like the ones crossing Butler VORTAC. For next week’s brain-teaser, tell us the expected range in nautical miles of Bye Aerospace’s still-forthcoming e-Flyer 4. You can send your answer to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
