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Airplanes don’t like to left sitting. Even when not flying, there seems to be deterioration taking place. We’ve had tires go flat, batteries refuse to take a charge, and fuel levels mysterious drop, all without movement. A planned flight last Tuesday had to be scrubbed because the plane’s right brake wouldn’t work. And the 50-mph winds Wednesday blocked that morning’s flying. Thursday, while flyable, was spent fixing mechanical glitches.
There was some transient traffic coming through last week; a Cessna Skyhawk trainer made approaches and a 172 from Central MO University at Warrensburg landed. An Army Reserve Chinook twin-rotor helicopter came by and there was the usual B-2 Stealth bomber activity. Locally, Roy Conley had his Grumman Tr2 up and Les Gordon’s Cessna 310R departed.
In out-of-this-world news, the International Space Station is being threatened by a lack of Russian launch capability, following a Soyuz rocket’s departure on Thursday, when damage to the launch pad occurred, rendering it unusable. Although SpaceX and maybe Boeing can fly to the ISS, NASA depends on the Russian supply ships and Soyuz capsules to keep the bulk of cargo and personnel transfers moving. The old space platform, built by U.S. Space Shuttle flights in the 1990s, is scheduled to be deomissioned in 2030.
Back on Planet Earth, it was recently learned that the Federal Aviation Administration is considering eliminating Designated Engineering Representatives, or DARs, the self-employed individuals that historically work as go-betweens for inventors and small companies to get FAA approval to make products (not just aircraft.) The FAA doesn’t actually oversee development of new aviation gadgets, like improved replacement parts, it depends on DARs to look them over and submit them as okay to approve. The FAA now wants to work only with Organizational Designated Representatives in big companies like Boeing. If that route is taken, there will be no more innovation by little firms.
Last January’s horrible mid-air collision at Washington, DC between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a landing PSA regional airliner from Wichita may not have been preventable even if the Army copter had been using ADS-B equipment required for civilian planes. Lack of ADS-B by the military was often cited as causing the crash. As the NTSB pointed out last week, traffic alerting is normally inhibited when jets are close to the ground, because nuisance alerts are distracting. Sometimes technology isn’t enough.
It was announced last week that ICE has bought some old Boeing 737’s to create its own fleet of deportation airplanes, rather than charter the flights sending captured illegal aliens back home. In an unrelated news release, we see that NASA has begun testing unmanned Cessna Caravans for the Air Force, to haul cargo and do other missions without pilots on board. Perhaps the two projects will meet up someday...
Our weekly brain-teaser wanted to know why the Boeing B-17 bomber initiated the use of operating checklists, back in the 1930’s. It was because a government test pilot mistakenly took off with the controls lock engaged, with bad results. For next week: Does a compass in an airplane sitting in St. Louis point to True North, yes or no? You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
