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A classic midwestern cold front showed up Friday evening, generating a convective weather polygon on the weather chart that stretched from Butler to Amarillo, Texas, and that didn’t even include an additional one containing a tornado that hit Belton. Frontal weather involves multiple movements; the cold front shoves itself southeastward, with the uplifted warm air generating storms that move northeast, along the axis of the front. Complicating things, individual storms cells can expand outward from their center, blowing off weather in all directions.
Visitors observed last week included a Piper Saragota taking on fuel, a Piper Cherokee 180C in for skydiving, a vintage Taylorcraft BC-12D shooting landings and a Cirrus SR20 on an instrument approach. Dennis Walrath was over from Clinton in his Piper J-3 Cub and Mike Golden visited from New Century in his Cessna Turbo Centurion. On the military side, an Army Guard UH-60 helicopter dropped in and a B-2 Spirit bomber made a viewing pass.
Local pilots committing acts of aviation were Jerold and Steve Koehn in their Cessna Skyhawk, Dennis Walrath and I in my Aeronca Champ, Beth McCune brushing up in a Cessna 172 and Chris Hill in the SkyDive KC Cessna Caravan jump plane.
In national news, Nervous Nellies loudly reported a “narrow escape” on Friday morning when a medical-transport jet failed to hold short of the runway at Louisville, KY’s airport, causing an approaching UPS freighter to initiate a go-around. It was a case of human error, offset by action taken by a vigilant human, which is how the system is supposed to work.
Hard times in the airline business, caused by a big jump in jet fuel cost on the spot market, has caused some nervous quivering. Southwest raised the fee for a checked bag to $45, Spirit Airlines, operating under its second bankruptcy, is on the verge of shutting down due to lack of operating funds, and United Airlines was proposing a merger with American Airlines, except that American has said it’s not interested. Meanwhile, Delta Airlines is smilingly drawing fuel produced by its company-owned oil refinery; that still doesn’t do it any good on those turn-around trips to Europe.
Textron Aviation, builders of the remaining Cessna single-engine line, announced improvements to the Skyhawk, Skylane and Stationair last week. The full-glass instrument panel receives Garmin’s latest Version 7 upgrade tweaks and the engines’ outdated (but reliable) magneto ignition system is being abandoned in favor of dual electronic-ignition modules. For my part, I’d like to retain one mag, just in case there’s ever an electrical failure.
Internationally, an Icelandair Airlines Captain was making his last flight before mandatory retirement, after 40 years on the job, and he decided “what the heck” to buzz his home town with the loaded Boeing 757 before setting the brakes for the last time at Keflavik. The predicable phone video captured the deed as he went by at 300 feet, so he’s under investigation; we hope he doesn’t lose his pension over this.
The question from last week asked if it was possible to burn aviation gasoline in an aircraft with a turbine engine. The answer is, yes, the jet-fuel engine will burn avgas, but with certain precautions, and it doesn’t make sense economically, so it’s only useful in emergencies. Just don’t go the other way and try to put Jet-A in a spark-ignition piston engine, which is certain disaster. For next week, tell us if there was ever a SIX-engine jet airplane produced You can send your answer to kochhaus1@gmail.com.
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