Category: Flying

Stories about flying planes and helicopters, discussions of technique and teaching.

Electric Aircraft at Oshkosh

by philg

Given the $billions pouring into electric aircraft via SPACs, etc., I expected to see huge progress compared to 2019. Instead, the airshow featured a functional Volocopter quietly doing maneuvers that fellow German Hanna Reitsch did indoors in the 1930s and a California Opener Blackfly (never let an engineer name the product!) that failed after 1 out of 3 planned flights (ignominiously towed away).

The kids’ favorite vertical lift innovation? A DART bike rack for the AStar (note how the black helicopter fooled the normally brilliant iPhone camera software):

If certified electric aircraft are going to be available Real Soon Now, it is tough to understand why there aren’t a lot of practical experimental electric aircraft.

Related;

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Some hope for the old Avidyne Cirruses

by philg

After nearly 15 years of ignoring 4000 Cirrus customers with the Avidyne Entegra glass panel (primary flight display (PFD)/multi-function display (MFD)), Avidyne announced a retrofit at Oshkosh this year. For consumers with 8K TVs from Costco (7,680 x 4,320 pixels), what does two decades of progress and $25,000 (plus installation) buy? The screens go from 10-inch 800×600 (best tech of 2003ish?) to 12-inch 1024×768 (compare to Garmin G500 TXi, a 10-inch 1280×768). This is, unfortunately, not enough resolution for clearly displaying an approach plate. The new screens have a touch panel so the number of hardware soft keys around the bezel has been reduced, as has the size of the bezel.

The menu structure of the Avidynes is not nearly as deep as what Garmin inflicts on pilots and therefore the system should be more efficient to use in flight.

Unfortunately, the $25,000 price is closer to $60,000 if you have a stock -G2 Cirrus. The Garmin 430s must be replaced with Avidyne plug-compatible IFD nav/coms. The rate-based STEC autopilot must be replaced with an Avidyne autopilot (a much better unit and, with these new retrofit screens, it will have redundant AHRS feeding it, unlike when hooked up to the legacy Avidyne Entegra). Add installation and this could easily be a $75,000 project on airframes that, pre-Biden, were worth $100-150,000. An owner who can afford to throw $75,000 at a beloved older airframe can perhaps scratch up $90,000 to implement a full Garmin solution, including the Garmin GFC 500 autopilot, which offers envelope protection even when nominally turned off (the autopilot servos will fight against a pilot who is trying to stall the airplane, overspeed it, or overbank it). Garmin is clunkier, but the investment in learning the Garmin interface can be transferred to the vast number of Garmin-equipped general aviation aircraft flying.

Here’s how the new Avidyne system looked in Hangar C:

The hoped-for certification and on-sale date is “first half 2022”.

Is there any possibility of a cheaper solution? The Dynon displays, originally developed for the experimental market, are the same resolution, work with the legacy Garmin 430W nav/coms, and cost less than $5,000 each. They’re not currently certified for composite aircraft, however. Here’s one at Oshkosh:

Note that it has been configured to display a round airspeed dial, which gives the pilot a lot more information/context than the speed tape uncritically lifted from airliners.

Finally, remember that the military has abandoned the idea that the task of piloting is fundamentally a head-down stare-at-tv-screens activity. A poster inside a Luftwaffe Airbus military cargo plane:

Note that the “Primary Flight Displays” are the heads-up displays and everything else is deprecated as a “head-down display.” (See also The latest glass cockpits are obsolete? regarding what’s in a T-6 Texan II trainer.)

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Best vehicle at Oshkosh: DC-3 turned motorhome

by philg

Last day of Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture)…

Even more amazing than all of the U.S. military technology, a two-year father-son project to take a DC-3 fuselage from a field in Missouri into a highway-legal motorhome (not a trailer, but a Class A motorhome with a engine!). From Round Engine Aero:

The TWA Hotel did a great job turning a Lockheed Constellation into a bar, but it isn’t legal to drive down the road.

Two aerial vehicles that are slower than a homemade motorhome…

I asked the owner of this vehicle to kneel with me for the National Anthem, but he/she/ze/they (don’t want to assume gender ID) refused.

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Grumman Goose converted to turboprop

by philg

My favorite airplane at Oshkosh so far… a Grumman Goose converted to PT6 power. The owner was gracious and let our 7-year-old get into the cockpit and cabin, but I didn’t dare ask him how much it had cost to re-engineer the beast.

In one small area of the event we saw four different sizes of Grumman seaplanes: Widgeon, Mallard, Goose, and Albatross!

And if you thought landing a seaplane was challenging…

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Oshkosh: the diabetes organization sells soda

by philg

#OnlyInAmerica: the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation sells Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and other delicious drinks in 20 oz. bottles.

What you’ll look like after a week of event food…

The EAA bookstore has a section for the mentally deficient:

Always a good question to ask…

A T-shirt that probably won’t sell out…

Airbus A400 from Germany:

So far a great EAA AirVenture! Yesterday the stream of text messages probably did not bring too much cheer to those in tents:

The radar at 10:35 pm:

(KOSH is in the bottom right, surrounded by a dashed red line for the airshow temporary flight restriction.)

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Garmin autopilot protects Bell 505 helicopter pilots and passengers

by philg

Readers of this blog will have noticed that I’ve always got my panties in a twist regarding how dumb human-scale helicopters are compared to $500 DJI drones. A bit of untwisting from Garmin:

Garmin today announced that the GFC™ 600H flight control system has received Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) approval for installation on the Bell 505 helicopter, … The GFC 600H provides a number of helicopter-tailored safety features, including attitude hold with speed stability, the innovative hover assist mode, Garmin Helicopter Electronic Stability and Protection (H-ESP™), dedicated return-to-level (LVL) mode, as well as overspeed and low-speed protection, and more.

… automatic altitude leveling airspeed and low G protection.

Thanks to the innovative hover assist mode, the system can also automatically detect a hover condition and allows for flight control inputs to help maintain position over the ground. In addition, when equipped with the optional yaw axis control, the GFC 600H can hold heading in hover.

In other words, with this system installed an airplane pilot can hover a helicopter without any training!

Related:

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GE: Proud to be years late

by philg

EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) starts today. Given how slowly everything in aviation moves, Oshkosh is more of a social gathering than a trade show, but manufacturers do like to announce their progress here.

Earlier this month, I checked in on the General Electric “Catalyst” Advanced Turboprop engine. This competitor to Pratt’s PT6 (first flight: 1961) had been scheduled to fly in 2018 (November 2017 press release). It still hadn’t flown. I went to GE’s aviation blog to see if they offered any explanation for being years behind schedule. The top of the blog was “A Conversation With Carmen Campbell, GE’s Transgender Advocate for Europe”:

They say it’s easy to stand with the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone. This Pride Month, the GE Aviation blog celebrates Carmen Campbell, the first person to ever transition at GE’s Grand Rapids, Michigan, site and now GE’s Transgender Advocate for Europe.

Campbell, originally from the US, is an advanced lead systems engineer based in the Cheltenham, UK Power Distribution & Controls business. She is passionate about using her experiences to help cultivate a safe and supportive workplace for her transgender colleagues.

This role sits within the transgender advocacy group, which is part of GE’s Pride Alliance. We run education sessions, work with GE to develop policies around transitioning, and provide support for transgender people within the business. The role is relatively fluid and it’s important to note that we are a resource for everyone at GE, transgender or not.

One of the areas I’m most proud of is the work we have done on the GE transition toolkit, which summarizes GE policies, provides helpful suggestions (like how to develop a communications plan), goes in to site specifics like bathroom usage, and lists who to contact for further support.

There has been some progress in the last 20 years, most notably the step change in legal representation. Gender reassignment became a protected characteristic under the UK’s Equality Act 2005, for example, and it was stipulated that people should be treated in accordance with their acquired gender.

However, I do think we’ve casually been sliding backwards since then. Certain groups, individuals and media outlets have been chipping away at the trans community, trying to roll back the trans rights that we’ve fought so hard for. Indifference can also be an issue.

“Casually sliding backwards”? Maybe the LGBTQIA+ engineers at GE can slide backwards far enough to catch up to where Pratt was in 1961. Then they could put their turboprop on an airplane and fly!

Related:

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Let’s meet at Oshkosh!

by philg

I hope that everyone is going to EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”), a safe space for pilots of light aircraft where nobody will say “That is a stupid hobby.”

I’m giving two talks:

  • introduction to helicopter aerodynamics and operations (targeted at those with some airplane flying experience), at 8:30 am on Wednesday, July 28, at 8:30 am, Forum Stage 6
  • Instrument Flying Ground School, Lesson 1 (using the materials previously offered here) where lessons 2 and 3 will follow as free Zoom classes. Wednesday, July 28, at 10:00 am, Forum Stage 6.

I’ll also be at the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association dinner, Monday, July 26 at 5 pm at the Hilton Garden Inn. You might still be able to register. Warning: in previous years this was a typically dull non-profit org event in which the featured speakers talked about the organization’s administration rather than the activity that the organization supposedly fosters. One of my pilot friends refused to return even though I offered to pay for his ticket.

If you’re new to the magic of AirVenture/Oshkosh, see a lunchtime talk from our MIT ground school class:

This year the event is free for children under 18 and Delta variant COVID is free for both the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Visitors from California can double-mask (see “L.A. County again requiring masks indoors starting Saturday amid coronavirus spike”).

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Jet traffic jam on the way to hear Bill Gates talk about climate change

by philg

“FAA Throttles Bizjet Traffic To Idaho Billionaires’ Conference” (AVweb):

There were so many business jets headed to the 38th annual Allen and Company conference in Sun Valley that the agency had to throttle traffic to Friedman Memorial Airport, which is 13 miles south of the famed resort town.

Like many small mountain airports, Friedman has a single runway (13/31 7550 x 100) and while that seems ample, it’s also at 5318 feet. Idaho is also in the middle of a historic heat wave so density altitude has been a lot higher than that during the heat of the day. Despite the constraints, dozens of aircraft, from Citations to Global 7500s were funneled into the facility and crammed onto the ramp. Keynote speaker was Bill Gates, who delivered a speech on climate change.

Some good life advice from my own March 2016 trip to Sun Valley:

And we made it out of Idaho at a near-jet speed:

The approach plate for KSUN:

Note the 1600′ minimum ceiling required, i.e., better than VFR minimums to do an instrument approach. There is a somewhat lower procedure available, but only to those whose aircraft have heroic climb rates.

Related:

  • “Bill Gates joins Blackstone in bid to buy British private jet services firm” (Guardian): … an approach to buy Signature, which handles more than 1.6m private jet flights a year. … According to a study by academics at Lund University, Gates is one of the world’s biggest “super-emitters” due to his regular private jet travel. He took 59 flights in one year travelling more than 200,000 miles, according to the report, which estimated that Gates’ private jet travel emitted about 1,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide. That compares with a global average of less than five tonnes per person.
  • U.S. local and federal governments respond to an urgent safety situation (it is a mystery to me how we haven’t lost a billionaire or two if they’re actually using the airport closest to Sun Valley)
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Helicopter snaphots

by philg

We’re flying with the doors off the Robinson R44 in order to avoid being baked to death in the recent weather (over 90 degrees in God’s chosen system of units). That enables your humble instructor to snap a few iPhone 12 Pro Max photos from the left seat.

On the ramp at our local airport (KBED), the F-18s that Joe Biden recommends for personal ownership (try to get a friend to pay for fuel, though!):

See if you can spot the Black Lives Matter banner on the all-white church in the all-white town of Concord, Maskachusetts:

The Concord-Carlisle High School, a $93 million project (about $71,000 per student, half paid for by the state) that taxpayers wisely decided not to use for a year (#AbundanceOfCaution; it was closed entirely for 6 months and then students were able to start attending half time):

The Lincoln K-8 school, a $110 million project, including the solar panels that were borrowed against in an off-books accounting maneuver, ($250,000 per student, 100 percent paid for by the town):

(This is being done as an in-place renovation, with students displaced to trailers for three years, because the campus supposedly does not have enough room for the usual “build new building in parking lot or on soccer field, then demolish old one” process.)

One of the families whose next 30 years of property taxes will fund the bond for the above. #InThisTogether:

(Imagine the legal fees if the “dependent” spouse “pulls a Melinda” and sues the spouse who earned enough money to build the above house! The happy plaintiff can beat the heat with Tinder dates by the pool.)

Mitt Romney’s legacy, the Mormon Temple in Belmont, MA:

Put on a mask and let your cows and sheep graze for free on Cambridge Common:

MIT Lincoln Lab:

Scroll to 1970 on the timeline and you’ll see that the Mode S transponder that is the building block for ADS-B was developed here.

Why can’t you get a seat on the Red Line trains that run every 10 minutes starting at Alewife? Check out everything that has been built recently near the station (center right of frame):

(the three red brick towers in the foreground are public housing (777 units for the worthy poor: “the towers—like many high-rise housing projects of the era—quickly became associated with crime… the complex is still a focus for law enforcement activity, and in 2008 the Cambridge Police opened a substation at the towers”) and, until a few decades ago, were the only significant buildings)

The Gropius House in Lincoln (cost about 4X/square foot to build as a typical house of the time):

A helicopter CFI gets current. We went to downtown Boston to get away from some light rain showers at Bedford:

It is a little unnerving to be using one’s phone as a camera through the open door of a helicopter. Lean out too far into the 90 mph breeze and it will be time to visit the Apple Store (don’t forget to make a COVID appointment, buy a mask, and get temperature-screened!). Maybe a case with a strap?

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