After we had finished registering voters in El Paso, we headed east along Interstate 10. Here we are parked on the “pad of shame” at Fort Stockton:
(As with self-checkout, self-service aircraft fueling is where I learn that there are no jobs with required skill levels lower than my own.) Nobody was around mid-day Saturday so we proceeded to Sonora, Texas (KSOA) where there was also nobody around, but we were able to take the crew car to some superb barbecue:
At T82 (Fredericksburg, Texas), which has an on-field restaurant and an on-field hotel, we discovered that Bidenflation has pinched the economy so badly that almost everyone was forced to drive a small two-seat imported car, some that were decades-old:
I was unwise enough to contact Austin Approach and the controller vectored us halfway to Mexico despite our low altitude. We did enjoy seeing the Radha Madhav Dham, however:
Radha Madhav Dham is one of the largest Hindu Temple and Ashram in the U.S. and is widely known for welcoming hundreds of visitors every day, regardless of their backgrounds, to its religious services, family festivals, and devotional retreats. Located in the rolling hills southwest of Austin, Radha Madhav Dham is an integral member of the local interfaith community, working with other faith-based institutions to provide charitable works and strengthen the common bonds between all religions.
In addition to the spiritual development of human souls, Radha Madhav Dham actively supports the charitable activities of its parent organization JKP Worldwide which is deeply involved in improving the material welfare of the underprivileged in society.
It would have been great to land the helicopter in the grass and see if they could explain the “common bonds” between Hinduism and Islam as interpreted by Jaish-e-Mohammed and also to ask for donations to help the material welfare of underprivileged followers of Lashkar-e-Taiba. However, we wanted to be on time for dinner at Casa Medina (“city of the Prophet”) near the Conroe, Texas airport (KCXO) and The Woodlands (see Atlas Shrugged in Houston (The Woodlands)). Conroe is also near where Mexican national Francisco Oropeza shot his Honduran neighbors. We’d previously flown over what looks like it might eventually be Mr. Oropeza’s taxpayer-funded home in the U.S.:
Despite our humble piston background, we were received like royalty at Galaxy FBO:
We returned for breakfast at the FBO’s upstairs restaurant and discovered a shocking scene of inequality:
Our emergency phone call to Elizabeth Warren was not returned.
Today is the day that Donald Trump’s cruel Title 42 policy was supposed to end, enabling more than 7 billion humans to enter the U.S. and then live here for 10+ years as they await their first asylum court hearing. (CNN) (Trump’s immigration policy was intolerably racist, which is why the Biden administration has continued it for more than 2 years?) This post chronicles our May 2023 trip from Los Angeles to the border at El Paso, Texas.
A west-to-east trip along Interstate 10 began with a flight over the National Historic Landmark of Mar-a-Lago:
I could almost hear the questions of the children in Palm Beach who were pointing up:
“What’s JetBlue?”
“What’s a commercial airline?”
“You have to share your plane with other people?”
Our PBI-LAX route took us over the Florida Mountains, right next to Deming, New Mexico, where we would later stop:
(If no human is illegal, why does the Biden administration keep a balloon tethered near the border?)
Torrance, California is home to the Robinson Helicopter Company, which has zero Michelin stars, and Din Tai Fung, the proud bearer of one star (for the Hong Kong branch). We managed to catch a curbside Uber Black from LAX and thus avoid the dreaded one-hour wait for a regular Uber and arrived at Din Tai Fung just before closing. Angelenos on the airplane, in the restaurant, and working at the hotel were, by Florida standards, often masked. #COVIDisNotOver
The view from the DoubleTree reminds us that Californians are geniuses when it comes to sustainability and adapting to a dark climate future. When building apartments in an area famous for fires, make sure to use wood rather than concrete:
Los Angeles architect Tim Smith was sitting on a Hawaiian beach, reading through the latest building code, as one does, when he noticed that it classified wood treated with fire retardant as noncombustible. That made wood eligible, he realized, for a building category—originally known as “ordinary masonry construction” but long since amended to require only that outer walls be made entirely of noncombustible material—that allowed for five stories with sprinklers.
By putting five wood stories over a one-story concrete podium and covering more of the one-acre lot than a high-rise could fill, Smith figured out how to get the 100 apartments at 60 percent to 70 percent of the cost.
the buildings have proved highly flammable before the sprinklers and walls go in. Dozens of major fires have broken out at mid-rise construction sites over the past five years. Of the 13 U.S. blazes that resulted in damages of $20 million or more in 2017, according to the National Fire Protection Association, six were at wood-frame apartment buildings under construction.
Our machine is ready on Robinson’s ramp at 0800:
The inspectors had found a slightly messed up decal above a static port and that was being addressed while we did our preflight inspection. Helicopters come out of the factory with exactly 4 flight test hours and then a fresh oil change.
Mid-morning traffic on the east side of Los Angeles wasn’t too bad:
The state that was the most thoroughly locked down for coronapanic celebrates “200 years of freedom, 1776-1976”:
(Would Native Americans and Black Americans agree that “freedom” arrived in 1776?)
The sprawl of Los Angeles continues almost to the Banning Pass, which we were able to get through easily at 3,500′:
If you’re accustomed to high-end FBOs, Blythe, California is best avoided. There is no 100LL truck. The “courtesy” car comes with a stern warning to return with a gasoline receipt or pay $20 (admittedly gasoline in California is over $5 per gallon, but nobody would use the crew car for more than a 12-mile round-trip into town). Some photos of Blythe and the Colorado River, which separates it from the comparatively free state of Arizona:
I-10 then climbs into Phoenix, a true master class on sprawl:
If you want to start an airline, a midnight visit to Pinal, Arizona (KMZJ) with a start cart would save a lot of money (note the Dreamlifter, resting after lifting its last dream):
We refueled in Tucson then headed across southern New Mexico as the sun waned. We landed at Million Air in El Paso where if you’ve got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell, $200,000 for a custom (street legal) motorcycle from B.A.D. Visions will fill that prescription. My favorite is the one devoted to Elvis Presley:
The gal behind the counter said that her favorite was the one with the “suicide stick” for shifting (note bullet casings):
For more protection from the elements:
“I drive a Honda minivan,” I explained to the young front desk worker. She responded, “I give you a lot of credit for having the courage to put that on the road.”
In the morning, we fired up to check out the border.
Our El Paso stop lasted 12 hours, so we were able to register only 732 new voters.
More about this trip in a follow-up post…
Readers: What are you doing to celebrate the end of Title 42? Who is changing the sheets in the guest bedroom so that the next 20 or 30 million migrants can be welcomed properly?
Related:
Pew Research 2015 demographic forecast: “… future immigrants and their descendants will be an even bigger source of population growth. Between 2015 and 2065, they are projected to account for 88% of the U.S. population increase, or 103 million people, as the nation grows to 441 million.”
Piston-powered airplanes subject pilot and passengers to unpleasant vibration. Battery-electric airplanes have minimal range.
There have been some successful applications of Wankel rotary engines in aircraft. The homebuilt folks have had some success with Mazda RX-7/RX-8 engines. Here’s an article from EAA’s Sport Aviation in 2002:
While incredibly reliable in automotive use, car engines haven’t done well running at high power settings all day every day in airplanes. The aviation-specific rotary engines thus far, such as Diamond’s AE50R, are low power engines designed for self-launching gliders and UAVs.
What if the smooth rotary engine were used to generate electricity buffered through a battery pack? Then it wouldn’t matter if the engine failed more often than 1930s-style Continental and Lycoming piston engines. An engine failure would mean using a 20-minute battery reserve to land. Is there a mass-market low-cost battery+Wankel combination available? Yes! From “The Hybrid Wankel Rotary-Powered Mazda MX-30 R-EV Is Finally Here. Here’s How It Works” (Autopian, January 2023):
For starters, the engine doesn’t drive the wheels. It only serves as a generator connected to a motor/generator unit to send power to the battery pack. The battery pack then provides juice to an electric motor which powers the wheels. This means that despite burning gasoline, the MX-30 R-EV should theoretically have the seamless power delivery of an EV, and it should be able to keep the Wankel engine at its “sweet spot” for efficiency for a significant portion of its on-time.
As for deeper details on that rotary engine, there’s the presence of direct injection, something never attempted before on a production rotary engine. The side housings are aluminum and coated with plasma for low weight and friction management respectively, all while being just 80 mm wide. For the sake of longevity, the apex seals are 25 percent wider than the ones on an RX-8’s RENESIS engine, clocking in at 2.5 mm. The result is 73.7 horsepower from just 830 cc of displacement. Curiously, although rotary engines love to rev, Mazda claims that peak power hits at just 4,700 RPM. That might sound weird for a high-revving Wankel, but it should translate to very low noise.
At 214 pounds, it looks like this engine is fairly heavy for its horsepower (a little heavier than an 80 hp aluminum piston engine), but given the high efficiency of electric drive maybe this would still work out well for a 2-seater.
Readers: Where’s the flaw in this path toward aircraft powered by a mass-market powertrain?
Light airplanes are still at near-historic values, at least in nominal dollars, which seems paradoxical given that their utility for transportation has been greatly reduced by Americans refraining from work. Airplanes, with their 1950s technology and low production numbers, require a lot more labor than our typical mechanical gizmo.
March 31: I have a client in my shop, G6 SR22T, with a cracked cylinder. We’ve been waiting over a month for a cylinder to become available. Does anyone have one?
March 13: Asking for help. Have an aircraft on ground needing a new cylinder. IO-550 2014 SR22T. Does anyone in the metaverse have a cylinder in the real world we can buy? Service center not promising lead time. Thanks
March 17: Grounded 2 months waiting for Line Cutters from Cirrus for my 2010 G3 SR22. Anyone know other sources to get them from? Part #25347-002 [see also “First Engine, Then Parachute Failed In Cirrus Incident” (AVweb, March 30, 2023)
March 28: I’ve owned a Cirrus SR20 (2007 G2) for about a year now and got my ppl and about 200 hours so far. .. In Feb my shop found a crack on the NLG [nose landing gear] strut and ordered a new part for it from cirrus (2-3 month wait), fixing/welding it isn’t an option because Cirrus wont release the engineering drawings. Now, during annual they found NLG puck issues, which are on a 6-8 month back order.
May 1: My Cirrus is based in southwest Florida and was damaged in hurricane Ian inside a hangar. I waited 6 months for Cirrus to come up with an engineering report to tell the service center how to repair the aircraft. Now they are telling me it’s going to take five months to get a new elevator. I could have told them I was going to need a new elevator the day after the hurricane. My Cirrus is going to be out of service for a year. Just wondering how many other pilots are out there who spent a lot of money on a Cirrus and can’t get the company to support the planes already in the field. Seems like all their efforts are in selling new planes and not supporting customers. Right now all I have is a very expensive paperweight.
Separately, here’s something that you don’t want to see during your preflight inspection…. (Pompano Beach, Florida (KPMP), May 3, 2023)
When do people say, “If the airplane is at risk of being grounded for 6-12 months by what used to be a minor problem, I’m not willing to pay $900,000 for a used one, plus $50,000 per year in hangar, insurance, inspections, etc.”?
(Of course, turbine-powered planes always cost a lot to buy and maintain, but the manufacturers were typically fanatical about trying to ensure parts and service availability so as to minimize downtime.)
I made it up to Titusville, Florida to watch the 6th Falcon Heavy launch. It was scheduled for a one-hour window starting at 7:29 pm so the Kennedy Space Center folks couldn’t be bothered to stay open and sell $250/person tickets for an up-close view. The wind was gusting to 30 knots all day, but forecast to quiet down around 8 pm and, therefore, SpaceX decided to launch at the very end of the window. A temporary flight restriction went live at 6:54 pm and cuts off a portion of the KTIX airspace, but the airport stays open and all runways are available to VFR pilots (I did not have to demonstrate my ability to land in a 30-knot crosswind, in other words).
Launches can be seen nicely from anywhere along the Intracoastal Waterway (regarding the channel markers: “red right returning doesn’t exactly work until you remember that the waterway goes from New Jersey to Texas and nobody wants to return to New Jersey”–local boat captain). My favorite spots are Shiloh’s, a local steakhouse with a lawn and some balconies, and the Space Bar, on a Marriott rooftop. Shiloh’s will have sports playing on its TVs and sometimes live music while the Space Bar plays the SpaceX YouTube feed (turns out that it is delayed by roughly 30 seconds).
The FBOs at KTIX close by 6 pm and most of the launches seem to be later in the evening. After hours, I prefer to park on the east side of the airport because it is a little closer for Uber so call U.S. Aviation for the gate code to get back in. The terminal will be closed, but there is a bathroom inside the fence for people who arrive after hours. The control tower closes at 9 pm, but there is pilot-controlled lighting, of course.
Shiloh’s from September 24, 2022:
Here’s the Space Bar setup:
The lobby and some other areas are fun too:
How did the launch look? I did not attempt to make an official record, since there were so many closer cameras pointed at the event. Here’s an interesting long exposure by Robert Wyman:
What about the sound? We were so far away that it did not hit us until about one minute after launch and was only a low rumble. A rocket launch in a movie theater is a lot more exciting, especially in the sound department. Still, it was fun to be in a crowd of people who appreciate space technology. After the launch, I caught a ride back to the airport with an interesting guy with whom I’d shared a table. He is involved with the training of firefighters to do water rescue. When I got back to Stuart, I found that a guy at APP Jet Center had been able to see the launch without taking more than a few steps outside:
Friends all the way down in Jupiter had also seen it.
Separately, I wonder why this ViaSat 3 system that was the payload makes economic sense. Each satellite supposedly has 1 terabit/second capacity. But how does that compare to the capacity of the entire Starlink system?
Going to Titusville and watching a rocket launch is the Florida $100 hamburger (closer to 1,000 Bidies, of course, when adjusted for inflation).
A few weeks ago, there were news reports of Biblical rain in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area. I checked the FAA’s web site for NOTAMs (no longer an abbreviation for the sexist “notices to airmen”) for FLL.
At first glance, using the default sort order, things looked pretty good on the morning of April 13:
There are some amendments to instrument procedures that you’ll probably not need (it’s sunny Florida!) and some signs and markings aren’t standard. If we scroll down a couple of screens, however, we find that there are some plans to maintain the runway status lighting system on April 18 and…. the entire airport is closed. That was the very last NOTAM presented.
Is GPT-4 as good at aviation as it is at law and medicine? Here are some interactions:
I rate this answer C- due to the failure to cite FAR 91.175, but a follow-up brings the grade up to a B:
A+ in flight planning:
How about oxygen regulations?
Now check the intelligence level:
GPT-4 knew that the published spin recovery procedure in an SR20 is to pull the ‘chute. It did a reasonable job of estimating fuel load for a flight. It seems to have assumed a 10-knot headwind and/or slightly worse than book performance (both reasonable, especially given that the book speed numbers are at a fraudulently absurd 400 lbs. below max gross weight).
How about the toughest checkride in the FAA’s arsenal? Could GPT-4 pass a CFI oral exam?
But where to find an airport that still has one of these?
I’m not sure why ChatGPT doesn’t offer links. It would certainly be a lot more convenient if the above answer had a link to the plate on airnav.com or SkyVector (why not at least the SkyVector airport page since ChatGPT specifically recommends the site?)
print out the 23-page NOTAM, which has detailed instructions for arrival and departure
print out “GAP” and “VFR” signs for display during arrival/departure taxi (the VFR sign is likely not critical since it is the default)
load airplane with tie-down kit and hammer if needed (screw-in tiedowns are sold for $30; the volunteers may not have hammers); tiedowns are required even if you’re there for one day and no weather is expected
note the frequency crib sheet toward the back (restatement of frequencies that are buried within the 23 pages of text)
I arrived at 10 am on Friday and the traffic was continuous, with 1-mile spacing, but not so intense that anyone was required to hold. Controllers are great at coaching pilots, e.g., “Cherokee on downwind, turn base now”.
Let’s start with some inspiring stories and people. Here’s a pilot who flies with no arms (in an Ercoupe, which was designed without rudder pedals and therefore requires only two limbs to operate):
Maybe I will stop complaining about my physical infirmities for a few hours…
How about for those of us who think that we need a huge climate-controlled house for day-to-day living? Here’s someone camping out of a minimal-size vehicle:
What if you’ve closing in on Elon Musk with evil billionaire status? Executive configuration PBY Catalina from World War II, privately owned by a guy in Chicago:
(After the Indianapolis was torpedoed by the Japanese and a distress call was sent out and the ship did not arrive as schedule, the U.S. Navy did… nothing. A PBY crew on a routine patrol four days later found the survivors who had not been consumed by sharks and sacrificed their aircraft to rescue some of the men (first radioing for the rest of the Navy to assist). The story is retold, with the government incompetence left out, in the movie Jaws. One interesting aspect of the story is that, instead of blaming its own bureaucracy and procedures for the men left to be eaten by sharks, the Navy court-martialed Captain Charles B. McVay III for failure to zigzag. As part of this blame-assignment effort, the Navy brought Mochitsura Hashimoto to the U.S. to testify against Captain McVay. The Japanese sub captain said that he would have been able to sink the Indianapolis regardless of any zigzagging, but Captain McVay was nonetheless held responsible.)
What about new and exciting products? Despite an industry unable to meet customer demand, e.g., people ordering a Cirrus today might get one at the end of 2024, not too much new stuff was on offer. If you want to connect with great aviators of the past, such as Hanna Reitsch, the rebooted Junkers A50, made by WACO in Michigan, might be the ideal choice. Less than $200,000, supposedly, at least for the first handful that will be built. You just need to be a better pilot than Chuck Yeager and Mike Patey to avoid ground-looping the taildragger.
Most talked-about in the discussion forums that I frequent was an updated noise-canceling headset from Bose, the A30 (not to be confused with the prior “A20”).
Bose says that this is no quieter than the A20, but has less clamping pressure and better weight distribution. I tried it briefly and found no difference.
Aviation + Florida = high risk of Deplorability. Here’s a pilot whom we might infer was a supporter of the January 6 insurrection and, therefore, is a candidate for a few months (or years?) in a re-education camp:
Speaking of Florida, even Maverick and Iceman travel by golf cart:
Cirrus runs a great hospitality center for owners. Here’s a picture of the Blue Angels from the balcony:
Speaking of the Blue Angels, their announcer thanked a seemingly endless list of people and communities, but left out two groups: (1) the taxpayers who paid nearly $5 trillion to the federal government in FY 2022; (2) the children who are going to be stuck with the $31 trillion in debt (plus another $31 trillion soon enough?) for all of the federal spending that wasn’t covered by tax revenue. Here’s a nice break at the end of the show. If these F/A-18s were fully armed, even a bad dude such as Corn Pop wouldn’t stand a chance against six of them:
If you’re not an elite owner of a two-decade-old Cirrus and want a good seat for the airshow, you can bring your own:
Sun ‘n Fun is set up well for afternoon air shows because the spectators are on the south side of the runway (9-27; east-west) and the sun is mostly behind everyone’s back.
The Mississippi-based Hurricane Hunters brought one of their 10 C-130s to the event. There are two pilots and a navigator in the front and two data-gathering and analysis experts in the back. One releases dropsondes and the other looks at the information received. They do a lot of flying at 500′ to 1500′ above the ocean surface everywhere from Hawaii to the Caribbean. The back of the C-130 is generally empty.
And here’s a military flying job you won’t see in a Top Gun movie… Team Target in a humble Dash-8:
I didn’t have a chance to talk to these folks. It may be that part of this aircraft’s mission is to find people in the water who would be at risk from live-ammo practice. USAF page on the E-9A Widget:
Modified with AN/APS-143(V) -1 Airborne Sea Surveillance Radar to detect objects in the Gulf of Mexico, the aircraft can detect a person in a life raft up to 25 miles away in the water. It downlinks this telemetry data to the range safety officer who determines the shoot area for live-fire activity, according to the Air Force fact sheet.
Not only was expressed support for Joe Biden non-existent at Sun ‘n Fun, but QAnon brought their own Siai Marchetti S-211 jet (characteristically, the group was unable to spell its own name correctly):
What about the hundreds of additional aircraft? Here’s a homemade one that has flown 30 years and 3,000 hours:
For lovers of cameras and film, a 1955 Fuji LM-1!
A window into the challenges faced by mechanics in the final days of the monster piston engines (airshow superstar Mike Goulian in the background):
A nice Beaver:
The Blue Angels celebrate Dr. Bill Cosby, American icon and University of Maskachusetts Ed.D., by naming their C-130 “Fat Albert”:
An RV-12 built by high school students in Wisconsin:
(If it had been built by students in a suburban Boston high school, would they have to keep repainting the fuselage as builders changed gender IDs and first names?)
No date for the 2024 gathering yet, but first week of April seeks likely.
On March 14 at 1856 GMT (around noon local time), the wind was from the south (190) at 43 knots gusting 64 knots. What if you decide to take off into that wind on 19L or 19R? Just a few clouds at 500′, a broken layer at 2500′, and overcast at 3300′ (all elevations above the airport, but the airport is only 13′ above sea level).
I find it almost comical that the METAR for a normal day at SFO is visually almost the same as the METAR on a day when a two-seater wouldn’t even need to start the engine in order to become airborne:
Maybe the next generation of METARs should allow emojis and there should be some of people being blown off the ramp. The current wind emoji is quite weak on Windows: 🌬️
Readers: Anyone been in the Bay Area through these recent storms? What’s the on-the-ground experience?
while the wind was blowing, politicians were meeting (CNN): A one-time payment of $5 million to each eligible Black resident is among recommendations unanimously accepted by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors as part of a draft plan by a panel proposing reparations.
The balloon was flying at an altitude of about 66,000 feet, according to a U.S. official. It can be maneuvered but it is also subject to the jet stream, which could eventually push it out of U.S. airspace, the official said.
The balloon is not going to run out of fuel, since it has solar panels. The official also said that the balloon steers by rudder and is corkscrewing around to slow its progress over land, but the jet stream continues to move it on a trajectory across the U.S. The Pentagon is still considering ways to “dispose” of it but has “grave concerns” about the damage it would cause if it fell to Earth.
It’s laterally above the U.S. so it is in our airspace so we can shoot it down if we want to? Let’s check “The Vertical Limit of State Sovereignty” (Journal of Air Law and Commerce, 2007):
Because there is no agreed delineation between a state’s territory and free outer space, the vertical limit of state sovereignty is unsettled and each state is left to define the limits of its vertical sovereignty. However, no state has explicitly done this.
U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said “the question of the ownership of upper air is a disputable question…. What the legal position is, I wouldn’t feel in a position to answer because I do not believe that the legal position has even been codified ….”, Later in the same news conference, Secretary Dulles answered a question by saying, “Yes, I think that we feel [that the United States has the right to send balloons at a certain height anywhere around the globe], although .. .there is no clear international law on the subject.””
Conclusion
There is no international agreement on the vertical limit of state sovereignty.
State sovereignty should be limited to a low altitude–I recommend 12 nm [73,000′]
In other words, at 66,000′ it is an open question whether this balloon is in U.S. airspace. The limit of controlled airspace, in which it is possible to get a clearance from U.S. Air Traffic Control, is 60,000′ (the Davos crowd may be found at 51,000′ in their various late-model Gulfstreams).
From Twitter:
Just give us two weeks to stop the balloon and flatten the curve.
FOR SALE: 2023 China Aviation Industry Corporation II non rigid ballistic helium ballon, like new and low time with only 380 hours TTAF, no damage history. Equipment includes GPS, NAV/COM, extra large gas storage, and weather equipment similar to XM. Military designed but only for civilian use, honestly. Has complete logs. The aircraft is still in use so flight times will change. No special type rating or endorsement needed. Fly wherever you want, whenever you want. Be advised that interest in this unique ballon is at an all time high, so act fast as this one won’t last!
