.JPG)
Check Your Avgas
The greatest time of the year for flying is here, although there were some hurricane remnants that swept through at midweek. As is typical, we alternate between running the cabin heat early in the day and opening the ventilators in the afternoon. Smooth air awaits above 3000 feet MSL, unlike during the summer months.
Big Iron of the Week title was awarded to a Cessna Citation 560 Encore that came in on Monday, a 10-seat 20,000-lb. class jet that’s also known as the Citation V and Excel. By the book, the Encore requires 3400 feet of runway for a full-load takeoff, but this visitor broke ground at about the 2300-foot point. Also in were a Beech Baron twin, a Piper Cherokee or two, a Piper Archer and a Cessna Skyhawk.
Local movements included trips by the BCS AirTractor sprayplane, Steve Koehn in the company Skyhawk, Gerald Bauer in the club’s Cessna 172 and the resident Piper Super Cub. Lamar had good weather for its annual Fly-in get-together on Saturday, always a nice party.
In national news, there are rumors that NASA is considering returning its Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird to flight status, not for espionage work but for high-speed flight research. It would be very expensive, since the special JP-7 boron-laced fuel, and the necessary aerial refueling tankers, are no longer available. If they need a back-seater, I’m ready..
The FAA is proposing hosting an on-line comment board where pilots can post errors they find in ASOS automated weather reports. As we’ve always suspected, nobody monitors the accuracy of the machines that keep track of ceilings and visibilities, so the Agency is asking us to do it. I’ve seen “fog” reported on clear days, when the airport’s soybean crop was being harvested next to the ASOS sensor. Somebody had to go out and wipe dust off the lens.
It happened again. Last August a Cessna 421 piston twin crashed shortly after takeoff at Blytheville, Arkansas after being refueled with jet fuel, rather than aviation gasoline. The predictable happened; the diesel fuel doesn’t work in spark-ignition engines, detonation rapidly set in and both engines quit. The airport ramp worker took the blame, but it’s ultimately the pilot’s fault, for not noticing the receipt that said he was given 145-gallons of Jet-A, and for not sampling the fuel, which would smell like kerosene. Fortunately, all aboard survived.
Got some money to invest? Samson Sky, which has been developing the Switchblade two-seat flying car for the last decade, is needing another $20 million to get the car-plane into production. They supposedly have $80 million coming from a Dubai group and just need another 25%. The latest iteration of the Switchblade uses a hybrid propulsion system with electric motors. Line up on the left with your checkbook...
Last week, our question was about the reason the FAA spends $2.5 million per year keeping up the Midway Island airport out in the mid-Pacific ocean, even though it’s seldom used. It’s because the old WW-II field is needed as a legal alternate airport in case a twin-engine airliner would lose an engine on its way across the Big Pond. Four-engine planes are exempt from the rule. For next time, what famous Bates County pilot made the first flight of the Cessna Citation jet? You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
#MidAmericaLive
