The latest batch of news from AVweb has some interesting items:
A 747 that has been parked at Quonset State Airport in Rhode Island for a couple of years now is being transformed into a replica of Air Force One … Franklin Exhibits, based in New York, owns the airplane. They told Channel 10 they plan to replicate every detail of the presidential aircraft, inside and out, to create a tourist attraction. The finished airplane may first be based at Quonset for a few months, but then will be removed via barge, from the airport’s shipping port on Narragansett Bay, according to Channel 10. It then will either be transported to a new site, perhaps in Washington, D.C., or it may become a traveling exhibit.
A “boned-out” 747 is cheap and if you don’t care about the interior parts being legal for flight, it might be reasonably inexpensive to redo the interior.
A man who tried to steal a helicopter at gunpoint outside a flight school in Oregon was fatally shot by police on Monday. … the man went up to a helicopter with a flight instructor and student inside as it was parked with its rotor spinning at Hillsboro Aero Academy, Lt. Henry Reimann, a Hillsboro police spokesman, told the Oregonian. The man opened the door, pointed a gun at the student and ordered the student out. When the student hesitated, the man fired the gun away from the helicopter and the student got out and ran away, Reimann said. The gunman then went to the other side of the helicopter and pointed a gun at the instructor. He ordered the instructor out and then jumped in. “According to the sergeant that approached, it appeared he knew what he was doing in the cockpit,” Reimann said. Employees from Hillsboro Aero, armed with personal firearms, and a police officer approached the helicopter and held the man at gunpoint. The suspect fled, going back over the fence, across the road and into a field. A Hillsboro police officer encountered the man there and shot him, Reimann said. The man died at the scene.
This is a sad one. It turns out to have been a flight school Robinson R22, likely worth less than a new Mercedes or Lexus SUV. I guess we should be grateful that the East Coast Aero Club Robinson R44 helicopters are kept inside an Air Force hangar.
GA Pilots Fly Alaska-to-Russia Route
About 15 years ago, the Alaska Airmen’s Association and local pilots pioneered a VFR route in the remote regions between their state and Russia, just across the Bering Sea. … Marshall Severson and Dan Billman, who both live in Alaska, completed the trip. Severson, 62, retired last year as an FAA flight services manager, and Billman, 66, works for the FAA as a safety program manager, according to the Alaska Dispatch News. Both pilots had worked on the original project to create the route. They prepared for three months before making the flight, according to the newspaper, and said their expenses equaled roughly the cost of “a month on the sunny Mediterranean.” … The route mainly skirts the rugged shoreline, requiring only one over-water leg of about 39 miles. … The whole route, from Nome to Provideniya, takes about three hours.
(See also Sarah Palin and Tina Fey.)