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Making up for lost time, general aviation airports quickly filled up with airplanes after the warm-up last week. It is the smoke season, however, as burning off of winter residue filled the lower atmosphere with brown haze; Friday morning was particularly soupy, with visibility restricted to five miles or less.
Visitors noted on the Butler runway were a 1963 Mooney M20C, a Piper Warrior, a Cessna 172 and a Piper Archer from Springfield’s Ozark Tech school fleet. A nice Cirrus SR22 was over St. Louis and a Beech Bonanza A36 out of Nebraska visited.
Local trip-takers were Randy Miller and Gerald Bauer, each flying the Cessna Skyhawk, Jim Ferguson giving rides in his Cessna Skylane, Layne Anderson in his Darter Commander, Jerold and Steve Koehn in their Cessna 172 and yore faithful scribe in the 1946 Aeronca. Jeremie Platt made a family trip in his Grumman Tiger and Christian Tucker did a couple of sorties in the Mooney M20C.
On the regional and national scene, Sen. Cornyn of Texas has introduced a bill in Washington to forbid politicians from dodging the TSA checkout lanes when riding the airlines. Under his proposal, they would have to wait in queue with the rest of the rabble, rather than getting favored treatment as they do now. Sounds reasonable, and it might encourage budgetary action. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is offering to pay the TSA screeners who are having to work without compensation while Homeland Security funding is shut off. Better than putting out tip jars for the baggage checkers.
Everybody is asking how the Iran War is affecting the price of aviation fuel, which is rising like other petroleum products as the price of crude oil surges. As of last weekend, 100-octane low lead gas is averaging $6.50 per gallon nationally, up from around $5, with Jet-A at $6.85. If you want to fill your jet with “sustainable” biofuel, it’ll cost you $9.31 a gallon to fly green.
Atlanta, GA’s DeKalb-Peachtree airport is going to impose landing fees on transient airplanes as of April 1, collected by contract toll-taker Vector Services. Aimed initially at airplanes weighing over 9,000 pounds, the county will collect $4 per thousand pounds, $6 for those over 20,000 pounds. KPDK is the second busiest airport in Georgia, after Hartsfield International, with 230,000 movements annually. Historically, these fee schemes are only money makers for the slick-talking sales people, and will discourage visitors to the area.
One of the USAF’s not-so-stealthy F-35 multi-role fighter jets took anti-aircraft fire last Thursday and had to divert to an undisclosed location, where the plane and pilot are undergoing repairs. So much for the announced air superiority over Iran. We are grateful that the pilot didn’t have to eject over hostile territory, or worse.
Reader Rodney Rom cracked the code for last week’s brain-teaser question, wherein we wanted to know if Piper Aircraft had ever built a jet airplane. Yes, back in the early 2000’s during the light-jet craze, Piper built a one-off prototype with a single fanjet stuck midway up in the tailfin, like a miniature DC-10. The canted thrustline was tricky to engineer and it was abandoned in 2011. For next week, our question is “what brand of engine is used to power the Sonex series of kit airplanes, made in Oshkosh, Wisconsin?” You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
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