.JPG)
It is the “dog days” of August, when it’s too hot for canines to stir off the porch and difficult to muster fun flying ambition. Still, we’ve had a good run of stable weather for aviating, albeit hazy from wildfire smoke aloft. The weekend’s thunderstorms weren’t entirely unwelcome; crops needed a drink and we need cooling off.
Those flyers taking advantage of late-summer opportunities included some early morning training flights coming through, a Mooney M20 that stopped in for a visit and a Cessna 182 of indeterminate origin. Locally, Sky4’s Cessna 150s were busy providing flight instruction, BCS’s AirTractor sprayplane kept up aerial application and the Cessna Caravan jump plane lifted some parachutists on the weekend. Jeremie Platt flew the family out west in their Grumman Tiger and Roy Conley made a run down to Springfield in his Grumman Tr2.
In national news, U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth has requested the FAA report on recent high-profile airliner emergency evacuation incidents, to see if the required 90-minute time limit is being met and passengers are capable of following the procedures. On July 26, an American Airlines 737 Max 8 at Denver had to shed its passengers via the inflatable slides after a brake caught on fire, with a great many of the deplanees ignoring cabin crew orders to leave their carry-on items and jump out with empty arms. Duckworth herself is a disabled Army aviator veteran and wants to make sure accommodations are adequate for such persons. Getting 200 average citizens to climb into bounce-house slides in a minute-and-a-half may not be realistic, she fears.
The extent to which the fragile commercial aviation network relies on technology to function was pointed out last Wednesday, when United Airlines’ loading calculations computer software failed, grounding hundreds of flights. There was evidently no back-up system to dispatch flights, so connections were snarled and planes stopped. Having passengers step on scales would be so embarrassing.
And, like I’ve always said, we need to maintain an alternative navigation and position-finding system to the Global Positioning System now used by everyone for every purpose. In aviation, we have good old VORTAC stations like the one out west of Butler, or even (gasp!) paper maps. I saw a clip the other day of a scheme to mount GPS-style transmitter boxes on tall television towers, of which there are 1500 sticking up around the U.S. Those would take over if our enemies shoot down GPS satellites. Sounds like a good idea.
The question from last week’s column wanted to know why Edwards AFB in California was given its name. Reader Cary Bolton came up with the answer: Captain Glenn Edwards lost his life testing the Northrop Flying Wing jet bomber at the research field in 1948 (forerunner of the B-2) and was honored for his sacrifice. In a related question, where did the base’s previous name of Muroc Army Air Field come from? You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
