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Good flying weather prevailed this week, but most aviators got started early and concluded their flights before the hot part of the day. Hazy skies, typical of summertime, could be topped out into the clear above about 4000 feet.
Visitors coming through were a Piper Arrow, a Cessna 172 and a St. Louis-bound Cirrus SR22. Some of the local-based fleet out this week were Jim Ferguson’s Cessna Skylane and Roy Conley’s experimental gyrocopter. Jeremiah McElroy took a Cessna 150 to Jefferson City on business last Thursday.
According to information learned at the Butler Airport Commission meeting last week, final parts are to be shipped to restore the fuel system on September 4th. Hopefully, this will conclude what has been a 10-month drought at the local pump. Plans continue on construction of a new terminal/waiting room.
The Warrensburg Skyhaven airport, owned by Central Missouri State University, has had its FAA grant funds withheld pending resolution of accusations of an exclusive commercial user policy. This is prohibited at federally-funded airports. CMSU acquired the old grass runway airport 60 years ago as a gift from Swisher Industries and developed it into a first-class training facility, with Federal trust-fund grants. However, one of the grant assurances is that no exclusive-use prohibitions on competing operators can be made.
Switzerland-based Pilatus Aircraft has halted deliveries of new PC-12 turboprop and PC-24 business jets to the U.S., because of the 39% tariff on Swiss goods that took effect last week. Some 40% of Pilatus airplanes are sold in the U.S., but none are coming now due to the price hike. Pilatus is a private family-owned company, so its actions don’t have to be put through a corporate board or shareholders meeting.
An embarrassing accidental ejection from an F-15D Eagle fighter jet at Barnes Air National Guard base in Massachusetts occurred last Wednesday. Evidently the back-seat passenger yanked the wrong handle after the jet landed from a familiarization flight, blowing off the canopy and shooting the hapless rider into the sky for a parachute deployment. Fortunately, no major injuries resulted.
A big Boeing 747 operated by package-carrier UPS suffered a scraped #4 engine pod last week while landing at Taipei, Taiwan from Hong Kong during a typhoon. It took three tries to get the big jet on the ground, due to the extreme wind conditions, and the last time caused damage. Must have been quite blow to rock a half-million pound airplane around.
Our question from the last column continued the Edwards AFB history, asking where the original name of “Muroc” came from. As with many military bases, it was labeled for the nearest town, Muroc, California. But Muroc itself was established by the Corum family, and when they applied for a post office, they were told there was already a similar name in the state, so they reversed the spelling to Muroc. For next week’s question, define the meaning of “angle of attack” in aerodynamics. You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
