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It’s still winter. Flights to the northern states last weekend battled blizzards, and ice accumulation while flying in cloud was a danger at 3000 feet hereabouts. I had a bout with carburetor icing on Saturday, under a left-over cloud layer at 2500 feet; engine backfire from an excessively-rich mixture was the clue, quickly remedied with a shot of carb heat.
Traffic for the week included a fast Aerostar twin, executing a circle-to-land maneuver out of the VOR-A approach, along with a Cessna Skyhawk and a Piper Archer. Tim Hill brought his Cessna Skylane over from Drexel and I ferried Josh Poe’s 1960 Cessna 172A. Locally, Danny Ferguson had the family Cessna 182 up, Carter Coffman flew a Cessna 150, a Piper TriPacer was rolled out and Jon Laughlin’s Piper Cherokee departed.
Meanwhile, Flight Instructor Delaney Rindal continued teaching at Butler in her Cessna 150, despite weather delays. Her company, SKY4 Aviation, LLC, now has a web presence, accessed at www.flysky4.com. Check it out.
Newswise, at press time a Cessna Caravan turboprop was involved in a fatal crash on the sea ice 34 miles out of Nome, Alaska, going down last Friday with 10 aboard. That is the maximum load allowed by FAA regulations for a single-engine aircraft, limited to 9 passenger seats plus crew. In other countries, as many as 14 are crowded into a Caravan.
Two occupants of a burning Cirrus SR22 escaped after it came down under its CAPS whole-plane parachute last week, aided by a California highway-patrol trooper who happened to be working a traffic stop nearby. Other details were sketchy until the NTSB completes its investigation.
The back-and-forth about the use of GAMI’s G100UL unleaded 100-octane aviation fuel continues, particularly in California, which is always on the self-appointed cutting edge of environmental concern. Now a Cirrus airplane owner out there has convinced the Chinese-owned Cirrus factory that G100UL has weakened his plane’s composite structure. So, despite demands by the State that only no-lead avgas is to be sold, Cirrus says not to use it. Fuel developer GAMI insists that 15 years of testing has shown no damage to fiberglass or carbon fiber, and company president George Braly flies a Cirrus SR22 himself.
It was a good week of announcements for airplanes powered by Wright R3350 radial engines. Both of the two flying Boeing B-29 WW-II bombers will be at the Oshkosh airshow next July, a rare conjunction of Wichita-based “Doc” and “Fifi” from Texas. And the only giant Martin Mars flying boat is the process of being ferried from Canada to its final resting place at the Pima Air Museum in Arizona, powered by four R3350s.
Last week’s question was about the oldest airport in the U.S. That would be the field at College Park, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., where the Wright Brothers demonstrated their craft to the Army in 1909. For next week, what was the biggest piston aircraft engine ever used in production planes? You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
