38 hours nonstop from Guam to Florida…

by philg

… and that was just a test flight for a trip over both the South and North Poles in a four-seat piston-engine airplane.

One of the most interesting talks at Oshkosh this year was by Bill Harrelson, who flew around the world in Dec 2014/Jan 2015. The 28.3-day trip was in a Lancair IV, loaded to 1.5X its design gross weight. An AOPA story about the trip notes that he was 64 years old at the time. (Best story about the trip seems to be in Harrelson’s hometown paper.)

Harrelson noted that any airplane can carry more fuel. The problem is typically that the center of gravity (CG) will go too far aft and too high, both of which are bad for stability. Regulators such as the FAA typically limit transoceanic flights to 30 percent over the max gross weight. “The manufacturer sets max gross and max aft CG,” noted Harrelson. “Since I was the manufacturer, I could never be illegal, only stupid.”

The best that could be hoped for was five hours of hand flying at the start of each full fuel leg. After that, the autopilot was generally powerful enough to take over the still-somewhat-unstable airplane. However, during the flight to the South Pole, an autopilot servo suffered a mechanical failure right at the Pole, necessitating 12 hours of hand flying back to South America.

After learning about these epic trips in a four-seat plane that had been turned into a one-seater with 8 extra bladder tanks occupying three seats, can we reasonably complain about a 7-hour trip back from Europe in economy? Where we can get up, walk around, and use the restroom at any time?

At the other end of the pilot age spectrum here at Oshkosh is Riley Speidel, a 14-year-old from Maine trained to fly gliders and motor gliders by her airline pilot/CFI father. She made it across the U.S. as pilot in command of a Pipistrel Sinus (story in Oshkosh Northwestern). It is something of a loophole that 14-year-olds can get certificates to solo gliders at 14 whereas 16 is the age minimum for soloing a single-engine land airplane (e.g., Piper, Cessna, or Cirrus) that has a similar configuration to a motor glider. Ms. Speidel will have to wait until her 16th birthday to get a Private certificate and carry passengers, 17th birthday for adding a single-engine land or helicopter rating.

The Speidels did not violate what might be described as the spirit of the regulation. Gliders are ordinarily flown locally so the FAA presumably did not expect soloing 14-year-olds to make weather-related decisions as a plane progressed across multiple states. Riley’s father Jake flew behind her and was thus able to monitor his soloing student/daughter continuously. It was a 9-day trip for Riley Speidel, with no weather delays (compare to a typical 4.5-day journey coast-to-coast in a Robinson R44 helicopter).

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Garmin rescuing owners of older aircraft

by philg

Since there has been so little progress in piston and turboprop engines, the latest aircraft off the assembly lines are often not very different from those of 15 or 30 years ago. However, the manufacturers of aircraft aren’t passionate about helping owners upgrade older airplanes to the latest avionics. Why sell someone a $50,000 avionics replacement when you can sell them a $1 million airplane replacement?

Garmin to the rescue!

The company recently announced the availability of Pratt & Whitney PT6A (first run: 1960) engine data on their modern retrofit glass cockpit equipment.

How about the 4,000 Cirrus SR20 and SR22 aircraft out there with now-long-in-the-tooth Avidyne Entegra PFD/MFDs? Garmin is not-so-secretly working on a retrofit G500 TXi panel for these planes (current stumbling block: certifying a 10.6″ display as an MFD). The software for the TXi panels is from the old UPS/Apollo group in Oregon that Garmin acquired, i.e., not from the deep-menu-loving folks in Kansas who built the 430/530 and then G1000 systems that no ordinary humans ever become proficient with.

Between the above systems, the Garmin G5, and the new autopilots (that could make unforgiving airplanes safe), I think it is fair to say that Garmin is doing more to keep personal flying safe and affordable than any other company.

Now if they would only build a drop-in replacement panel for the Robinson R44, complete with GFC 600H autopilot…

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Notable women in aviation featured tonight at AirVenture

by philg

If you’re here in Oshkosh, a press release from June, “Theater in the Woods to Celebrate Female Pilots”:

Notable women in aviation will be featured in a special program at Theater in the Woods on Wednesday, July 24, during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2019. The theme is Celebrating Powerful Pilots, and it will cap off a day centered around EAA WomenVenture activities. … Wednesday’s Theater in the Woods programming will celebrate powerful female pilots from all walks of life, including military, airline, and civilian backgrounds, and continues a long EAA tradition of highlighting women in aviation.

The event will be moderated by retired Lt. Col. Olga Custodio, a former T-38 instructor who was the first female Hispanic military pilot in the U.S. Air Force and is now retired from American Airlines. Custodio is back for her second year as the moderator of the event.

Gen. Maryanne Miller, commander of Air Mobility Command and the first four-star general in the Air Force Reserve, will be a speaker during the evening’s programming. Miller, who also spoke at Theater in the Woods last summer, is the first reservist to lead Air Mobility Command.

Also speaking during Wednesday evening’s programming will be:

  • Dr. Eileen Bjorkman, the U.S. Air Force deputy director of Test and Evaluation and author of Propeller Under the Bed.
  • Col. Kim Campbell, a professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy and former A-10 pilot who survived an incident over Iraq in 2003 and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
  • Capt. Bebe O’Neil, a USAF Academy grad and United Airlines system chief pilot.
  • Capt. Lorraine Morris, a United Airlines check airman, captain on EAA’s B-17 Aluminum Overcast, and avid aircraft restorer.

[In other words, two of the folks on stage at the event “to celebrate female pilots” are actually working as pilots!]

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Helicopter talk at Oshkosh (AirVenture) tomorrow morning

by philg

Slides for my talk on helicopters tomorrow at Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture, officially): https://tinyurl.com/AirVenture2019Helicopters

If you want to come, set your alarm! The talk is at 0830 in Forum Stage 6. Given that the venue seats hundreds, it will be a Spinal Tap-style situation of audience-to-seat ratio.

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How to get a free tie and wristwatch

by philg

Day 2 of EAA AirVenture and the air is filled with fast jets.

Martin-Baker, the family-run English company that makes ejection seats, won the Aero Club of New England’s Cabot Award this year. The British executive accepting the award failed to adhere to American Facebook standards. He said “it is an honor and a pleasure,” not “we’re honored and humbled.”

Thinking of taking politicians’ advice to go into STEM? One engineer in the early days ejected 18 times. Those first devices required the pilot to pull a parachute rip chord after being rocketed out of a plane (the company still operates two Gloster Meteor World War II jet fighters plus a Wile E. Coyote-style rocket test track near Belfast (for which expired air-to-air missile rockets are used)).

Roughly 80,000 seats have been made and 7,600 used (latest). The company refrained from offering a “Mk 13” version of the seat. Martin-Baker is managed by engineers and the product is far more complex than one would expect. Numerous airbags deploy in precise sequence to try to prevent a pilot from being injured during the ejection. (John McCain is the most famous pilot to have been injured by the process; the injuries that some people imagine he sustained as a POW were actually inflicted by not being positioned properly during ejection. The latest and greatest Martin-Baker seats require less of the pilot.)

The highlight of the award lunch was meeting Col. Joe Kittinger, who has used a Martin-Baker seat twice. He wore the tie that the company gives to everyone who ejects and the watch that Martin-Baker gives to pilots who shoot down an enemy plane and then are forced to eject. (Apologies for the iPhone photos taken in dim light; where’s the Google Pixel when you need it?)

As with the B-17 bomber crews who went out to Germany in 1943, I am not surprised that someone would go out on that first mission, but it is tough to imagine going out for the second.

Here’s to the guys like Joe Kittinger II whose bravery took most of the risk out of the flying that we do today and thereby enabled a mass aviation celebration like AirVenture (“Oshkosh”).

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New history of GPS; when $1 device works better than $100,000 receiver

by philg

Opening day for EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”). I hope to see readers during and/or after my Wednesday talk on helicopter aerodynamics (0830 on Forum Stage 6).

One big theme at Oshkosh is the innovation and excitement in the world of experimental aircraft world compared to the glacial pace of progress in the world of certified aircraft.

The month of June was not exactly a success story for regulation. A certified helicopter that lacked even 1% of the intelligence of a DJI drone was crashed into a building in New York City (NYT). Less dramatically, the FAA-certified GPS ($100,000?) in the Canadair Regional Jet that I used to fly failed due to a software problem (AOPA). Meanwhile, the GPS chips inside phones ($1?) continued to work nicely.

[On nearly the same day that these regional jets were back to using VORs, a Facebook friend linked to a post from The Female Lead:

Of course, I couldn’t resist commenting “She also invented the semiconductor transistor and the silicon integrated circuit.” This was greeted approvingly.]

The FAA became a lot more nimble starting a few years ago regarding the approval of avionics that could make small aircraft safer. So it will be interesting to see this week whether there is more innovation in the kit or certified world.

Related:

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Would it be more or less difficult to put a human on the moon today?

by philg

As part of a recent trip to D.C., I enjoyed seeing a projection of a Saturn V rocket on the Washington Monument:

What if we tried to do this again? Would it be easier or harder to accomplish? As part of the new Corvette announcement, a GM executive talked about the “women and men” whose designs and efforts got us to the moon. We still have women and men and now also have a rainbow of additional genders. If diversity is our strength, shouldn’t it be easier to get to the moon?

But what, specifically, would be easier to engineer?

It seems as though guidance would be much easier, but the MIT Draper Lab guidance systems in Apollo worked well, didn’t they?

Are we able to build life support environments much more easily and cheaply now that we’ve had all of this space station experience? Or does our reduced risk tolerance and love of bureaucracy actually make it harder and more expensive to build space vehicles for humans?

[Separately, here’s how one of the Facebook righteous thought about the glorious days of JFK and Apollo 11 compared to these dark times when our president cannot even get organized to get to the brink of nuclear war…

In awe about a President worthy about setting point and making Americans work towards that goal…what inspiration 50 years later…#apollo11…current drumph not worthy of even 1 year celebration. Seriously people…think…and change the trajectory…at least for our incredible chidren. In awe of their inspiring questions…give love and our children a chance…

JFK gave our children a chance to be incinerated in a nuclear war?]

Related:

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11-year-olds in college

by philg

Every now and then someone is impressed that I graduated college on the younger side. I would respond by pointing out that Sho Yano got his Ph.D. at age 18 and an M.D. at 21.

Cal State Los Angeles, it seems, has set up a factory for producing kids like Sho Yano: “A sixth-grader was sick of coloring. So she skipped six grades to attend Cal State L.A.” (LA Times):

With that, Mia left Crescent Elementary in Anaheim. She studied at home for the rest of the year — and then, at age 12, jumped six grade levels to enter Cal State Los Angeles as a freshman last fall.

While the admissions scandal has transfixed the nation’s attention on elite universities such as UCLA and USC, the school of choice for many whiz kids like Mia is Cal State L.A.

For nearly four decades, the campus has provided a haven where children who are academically gifted and socially mature can bypass years of boring classwork and surge ahead. Cal State L.A. is the only university in California — and one of only a handful across the country — with a program to admit students as young as 11.

The article notes that California has limited options for gifted and talented programs within its K-12 public schools. But Massachusetts doesn’t have anything at all!

Maybe you don’t want to be a father:

The family lives in Camarillo, but Shanti and Sathya stay with their father, Ramesh Raminani, at a hotel near campus during the week. He drops them off at school, drives two hours to his pharmacy business and two hours back to pick them up. … All told, Raminani drives 200 miles a day and spends $20,000 a year on hotels on top of the roughly $12,000 in annual tuition for both children.

Why is this guy being hit with tuition bills? His children would be eligible for a free education at the local state-funded public school. Until they turn 18, why can’t they take at least whatever the state would have spent on them in K-12 and use that to offset the tuition charges? Shouldn’t a family be entitled to 13 years of taxpayer-funded schooling per child? (Maybe Elizabeth Warren will fix this!)

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