Indice dei contenuti per April 2023 in Flying

AN EARLY MORNING in the Alps. I’ve spent summers in Alaska—in fact, five summers flying a Piper Super Cub with big 35-inch tires landing in the bush, on rivers, and on glaciers. I fell in love with this mix of freedom, nature, and responsibility. When I went back home to France, I wrote an article about the experience, and an Airbus test pilot who read the piece decided to become the French dealer for the CubCrafters Carbon Cub. Three years later, he came to my airport: Gap Tallard (LFNA), a beautiful airfield in the Alps where we have 300 sunny flying days each year. With my good friends Nicolas Libis (an aerial firefighter pilot in the Canadair) flying the Carbon Cub and Tom Fitzgerald (a RedBull mechanic in the Extra)…

AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 311 departed New York on the evening of October 7, 1947, bound for Dallas and Los Angeles. Three pilots, all qualified captains, were aboard. The airplane was a Douglas DC-4 Skymaster, military designation C-54, the first of the series of fourradial-engine Douglas transports that ended with the DC-7. With a wingspan of 117 feet and room for as many as 80 passengers, it was a big airplane for its time. Unlike later models, however, it was not pressurized. After the stop in Dallas, the airplane took off a little before dawn and climbed to its cruising altitude of 8,000 feet msl, or about 4,000 feet above ground level. Captain Charles Sisto was in the left seat, but after leveling off he relinquished it to Captain John Beck,…

Sitting next to a posse of Cirrus SRs on the ramp at the Naples Airport (KAPF), the Bristell SLSA looked right at home—like a speedy little brother ready to run around and make trouble. But that’s not the airplane’s DNA at all. Instead, the combination of responsive yet solid flight controls, respectable climb performance, and advanced avionics on the flight deck mean it serves as a great two-person cross-country flying machine—or a fine way to build skill towards an instrument rating and competence to fly heavier, faster aircraft. A CROSS-COUNTRY MACHINE That’s exactly the market space Bristell’s U.S. importers and sales representatives seek to serve. BRM Aero—which builds the Classic and its special light sport aircraft (SLSA) version—is based in the Czech Republic (see “The Family Behind the Bristell”). Roughly…

During the 1960s and 1970s, general aviation was bustling. Fuel was inexpensive, disposable income was relatively plentiful, and airplanes were selling well. Bolstered by various wartime production surges, manufacturers were well-equipped to satisfy the market’s demand, and competition among general aviation aircraft manufacturers was intense. Customers in every segment were welcomed with an array of options. A shopper interested in a two-seat trainer would have a variety of choices ranging from fabric taildraggers to brand-spanking-new concepts like the Piper Tomahawk and Beechcraft Skipper. Similarly, a shopper looking for four seats and good cross-country capability had a fascinating variety of models from which to choose. This four-place cross-country category was particularly competitive. With offerings from Cessna, Beechcraft, Piper, Ryan, Aero Commander, Bellanca, Mooney, Grumman, and others, manufacturers found novel ways to…

TURBOCHARGERS ARE THE epitome of cool. Early in the 1960s, Oldsmobile had the first production turbocharged automobile, the F-85 Cutlass with a Garrett AiResearch turbo dubbed the Turbo-Rocket engine and marketed as the Jetfire. The 1979 Porsche 930 Turbo, one of the first production street cars to experiment with turbocharging, was an icon for the era. Many of my friends had posters of them, in fact. 1986 found me cruising the streets in my 20-year-old Ford Fairlane (normally aspirated), blaring Judas Priest "Turbo Lover" on a cassette tape deck in the dash. In all honesty, I should close out this article right here, as whatever I write next cannot compare to rolling through the Big Star parking lot and turning up Judas Priest. COMPONENTS The components of an aircraft turbocharging…

THE JANUARY SUN is low in the sky as we bank over Puget Sound, casting long shadows and bathing the icebound Cascades in warm, golden light. As I roll out on a southerly heading, downtown Seattle appears ahead, framed by bustling Lake Union and the distant floating colossus of Mount Rainier. “My goodness, that’s beautiful,” murmurs my father from the right seat. My mother silently snaps photos of the dramatically-lit cityscape from the Stinson’s spacious backseat. I turn to skirt downtown, eyeing the sun’s inexorable progress toward the southwestern horizon. “Sorry guys, time to get back,” I announce as I bank towards the Kitsap Peninsula. Hooky is over—time to get back to work. Our scenic tour was a pleasant and well-earned break. Dad and Mom (Dave and Sue Weigel) are…

THE YEAR STARTED with hope. As 2022 arrived, the U.S. and most countries were emerging from two years of difficult lockdowns. The good news? A flood of subsidy money buoyed markets—and I’ve long observed that when equities are rising, light sport and sport pilot-eligible kit aircraft sell well. Economists call this a “wealth effect,” where rising asset values give stockholders confidence that good times are here. Aviation translation: Pilots can afford an airplane to have fun. Then…Russia invaded Ukraine and the global markets trembled. The General Aviation Manufacturers Association released information recently showing positive results for 2022 in every category they report. The closest corollary to light sport aircraft and sport pilot-eligible kitbuilt aircraft is GAMA’s “piston airplanes” category, which showed an 8.2 percent gain over 2021. When we examine…

AT AIRVENTURE 2001, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 premiered. The company had a large presence at the show—they had a kiosk in an exhibit hangar and had rented a large trailer with an awning where they set up computers so that members of the media could test-fly the game. The audience for the virtual aviation experience—I hesitate to call it a ‘game,’ and more on that later—was both aviation enthusiasts and certified pilots, as MSFS 2002 had been developed to be “as realistic as possible.” I promptly tested this assertion by rolling a virtual Cessna 172 inverted and keeping it there. As the fuel tanks on the 172 are in the wings and the aircraft has a gravity-fed system, going upside down means the fuel doesn’t reach the engine. In real life,…

Eight years ago I bought my first airplane, a beautiful classic 1952 Cessna 170B. That airplane had to have these features: a tailwheel, four seats, four hours of endurance, easy to maintain—and needed to be classic and beautiful. My budget in 2014 was $50,000. The final list included the Cessna 170 and the Stinson 108, and another model that caught my eye—the far less common Fairchild 24. As I mentioned before, one of my requirements was that my future airplane needed to be beautiful, which for me left the 108 off of my list. I know, I know: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." But that left my final decision between the 170 and the Fairchild. The dictionary defines beauty as "a combination of qualities, such as shape,…

THIS PAST JANUARY, walking up to my fresh-out-of-annual Beechcraft Bonanza in a heated hangar in Moriarty, New Mexico, I immediately noticed something different about my bird. The wing-walk section leading to the door was brand new—black-as-night paint, with a perfect grit. When I dropped her off, the walk had been dirt gray at best and had as much grip as the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. “Hey, Fernie…what happened here? I didn’t ask you to do this.” “I know,” he replied. “So, why’d you do it?” “Because it was driving me f–king nuts.” This was when I learned that while obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) may be a pathology you do not wish in your life partner, consider yourself blessed to find it in your A&P. Fernie Nunez is the owner of…

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I GUESS I FIRST learned about formation flying when my flight instructor, Larry Whitesell, told a story involving—he thought—his buddy, Vince Wynn, who instructed for a school up the road, Cardinal Flight Training. When they’d spy each other in the practice area, they’d often join up for some formation flying. On this occasion, according to Larry, “I saw the Cardinal’s Champ below and in front of me and joined on his right wing. But I lost the big grin on my face when, looking over into the Champ’s rear seat, I saw—instead of Vince—an FAA inspector named Dan Wright giving a private pilot check ride. He was something less than happy, and back on the ground, I dutifully reported to the GADO. Dan raised holy hell, and I was abjectly…

THERE COMES A TIME in every aircraft owner’s life when they decide it is time to upgrade the instrument panel. This process is neither quick nor inexpensive, and there are pitfalls along the way—especially if you own a light sport aircraft. Among the common traps are finding enough panel space to create your dream screen—and getting the required approvals for the changes. Michael Schofield, director of marketing for Dynon Avionics, says that they often get telephone calls from owners of SLSAs (built to a conforming model by an OEM) who want to change the avionics and are surprised to learn that only the manufacturer of the LSA can approve the change, unlike the normal supplemental type certificate process. “They can't just dive into it and make a change,” says Schofield,…

After years of considering a springtime flight to Washington, D.C., I think I am finally ready to go. And let’s make it soon, because more so than usual, time is of the essence. One of many attractions the nation’s capital is famous for is its spring cherry blossoms and a range of other beautiful blooms. And this year, reports from the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers—and even the groundhog Potomac Phil—indicate spring has arrived early this year. I would like to catch the seasonal palette at its peak, but even if I miss the color splash, there is still so much to see in Washington that planning a GA flight and perhaps an overnight stay is easily worth the effort. The emphasis is on planning. The D.C. airspace has its…

AFTER HEARING THE thwack of the cockpit door, I turned in my seat to see the captain standing frozen in position. He scanned the flight deck with wide eyes and then settled his focus on me in the right seat. “Did you know that we were flying a 757 on this leg?” the captain asked with a sheepish expression. “Yessir, it was on the bid sheet.” I gestured at the door threshold. “You have to step down in this airplane as opposed to stepping up in the 767,” I said with a grin. The captain nodded an acknowledgment, gingerly walking toward the left seat. As he slid his flight bag into position, he said, “It’s been a while since I read that differences bulletin, so maybe it’s best that I…

THE CESSNA 120, introduced in 1946, bequeathed its strut-braced wings to nearly all of its successors, making struts and single-engine Cessnas almost synonymous. It wasn’t always so. In the 1930s, Cessna built airplanes like the C-34, a clean radial-engine four-seater with a cantilever wing. The demise in 1954 of the C-34’s all-metal descendant, the 190/195, left the Cessna universe to strut-braced singles. So things remained until 1967, when cantilever wings appeared more or less simultaneously on the 177 Cardinal and the 210. Struts and other external bracing were going out of use in fast monoplanes during the 1930s. Round wires generated as much drag as airfoils ten times thicker. So-called “streamline tubing,” like that used for under-wing struts, produced more than ten pounds of drag per square foot of frontal…

THE EARLY COVERS of Popular Aviation, FLYING’s predecessor, often featured whimsical illustrations depicting the artist’s aeronautical dreams—as in the case of this hang glider on the September 1930 issue. In fact, it resembles the Leonard dual-place glider advertised in its pages for flight instruction. But when we flash forward nearly 100 years, we find similar lines in the RLU-1 Breezy kitbuilt airplane famous for its open architecture. Pilots of this readily recognizable bird report feeling like “flying a motorcycle” in the original version, first built in 1964. FLYING shared a photo of Paul Poberezny, founder of the Experimental Aircraft Association, taking a passenger for a ride in the October 1974 edition. The Breezy flying on this page is powered by a 90 hp Continental engine and has a range of…