Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Two pilots in a Robinson R66 (plus ferry tank!) made it around the world in 97 days:

• article from the start of the trip
• article from the end
• the duo’s web site

Their motto is “Empowering People” (not to be confused with Shaesta Waiz‘s “Empowering Women” and “Inspiring Women”!). But how many people will feel “empowered” if they learn that doing this requires years of training and suitcases full of cash?

Related:

• “Two Robinson R66s Fly Around the World” (2017 Russian expedition)
• some calculations from the Ukrainians
• R-44 in the Smithsonian that has made the journey twice (solo female pilot with no autopilot)

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It is great to see the Blue Angels, but how many of us have the money and connections necessary to purchase an F/A-18?

At Oshkosh 2018 there were a couple of realistic aerobatic options to which ordinary humans can aspire.

The first is the GB1 GameBird, a solid block of carbon fiber whose design and certification was funded by the Walmart family fortune. Designer Philipp Steinbach awed the crowd with a demo of this magnificent machine, which can handle unlimited aerobatics (too bad the human body can’t handle the 19Gs to which the airframe was tested) more typical of a 1-seater but has two seats and a significant cross-country fuel capacity (84 gallons).

I asked the designer how this is different than the steel-tube-and-fabric Extra 330LT, purportedly a touring aerobatic two-seater:

Main difference to a 330LT is that the GB1 is fully aerobatic up to unlimited level, and has an empty weight of a 330SC. This, other than more performance, also makes for more legal payload, which is interesting for a flight school. The acrotank holds 25 gal, so there’s no need to switch tanks or ferry to the practice area on wingtanks etc.

Front cockpit has full engine instruments, throttle, mixture and prop, and access to radio and transponder. The airplane is not more difficult to fly or land than a Super Decathlon, but it is obviously a lot more responsive.

One of our local experts looked at the GB1:

The 25 gal acro tank is a huge plus. The Extra 300 has 10.6 gal (330 has 18.2) so you are pretty much a fuel emergency when you take off in the 300. This isn’t an issue at contests, but it is when you’re training students with the ferry time to the practice area. The training flights I did in the Extra — we took off with gas in the wings and ran them as low as we could, but we were never really sure they were empty before doing acro. Apparently some Extra owners have had to do some invasive maintenance to replace fuel cells from doing acro with gas in the wings.

He is right about most advanced and unlimited aircraft not being true 2-pilot airplanes. The pitts/eagle family absolutely cannot do legal acro with two 180lb men in the aircraft. I’ve had to teach myself snap rolls and inverted spins because I can’t fly with an instructor in my Eagle. I think the extra isn’t as limited as the pitts, but still limited.

The company is certifying this VFR-only aircraft with the Garmin G3X PFD, designed for experimentals. The cost? $400,000. When you consider that the Super Decathlon, designed mostly in the 1940s, is $260,000+, you’re getting all of the design and certification for free. Another way to look at this airplane is that it cruises as fast and nearly as far as a Cirrus SR22. It holds two people rather than four, but it costs only half as much. (On the third hand, with no autopilot or IFR certification, the GB1 might arrive a week after the SR22 if the weather is not cooperative!) I’m going to try to visit the factory in Bentonville, Arkansas. (It was already on “A 48-state tour of the U.S. by light aircraft“)

The other realistic way to be the envy of everyone at the airport… the L-39 experts at Code 1 Aviation have managed to stuff a conventional bizjet engine into the Czech trainer: press release. They’ve done four of these so far and it can cost as little as $250,000 to get an as-removed Garrett/Honeywell engine from a parked bizjet, with at least 1,000 hours to go, and install it in the L-39. Considering that a decent L-39 can be purchased for as little as $200,000, the total package need not cost much more than a GameBird. The bizjet engine results in longer range, faster cruise speed, lighter weight, much faster throttle response (less spool-up time), and certainly far easier maintenance. (The L-39 Wikipedia page says that the OEM is trying to do this as well, putting a 1980s Williams FJ44 engine into the plane and calling it an “L-39NG”. Pricing will probably not be civilian-friendly!)

The L-39 was certified to only +8/-4G so it can’t do the crazy RC-style maneuvers of the GameBird. The Code 1 folks don’t recommend going beyond 7G with the civilian engine installed. However, an L-39 certainly looks cool! The full L-39X will cost $850,000 to $1 million and includes a lot of additional upgrades.

An L-39X was parked at Oshkosh and you could see a lot of folks adding it to their wishlist.

If hangar rents come down and mechanics become more available… we should buy one of each!

Related:

• it would be nice if the Auto-GCAS system from the F-16 could be put into both of these; there have been a lot of accidents in the aerobatics world that could have been prevented by software and sensors

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Shaesta Waiz gave some talks in the Honeywell/BendixKing  booth at Oshkosh. While the company has been forcing most of its customers to convert to Garmin, e.g., by making transponders that do ADS-B OUT but not IN and by failing to come up with a replacement for the CRT-based EFIS systems that it sold through about 2008, Honeywell/BendixKing has done some work with Internet connectivity for aircraft and Ms. Waiz used their AeroWave system for her 145-day 22-country 182-hour round-the-world trip in a 2001 Bonanza. She began the flight with 750 hours of flying experience, which included 200 hours of Bonanza time and a lot of instruction by Fred Furgang, a Bonanza expert.

One of Waiz’s themes is that women need to be “empowered” and “inspired” to become pilots (so that they can join men in doing a worse job than the software in a DJI drone?). Her talk, though, suggested that women actually have an easier time accomplishing aviation projects than do men (certainly they can be hired by a U.S. major airline with much less experience; see “The purported airline pilot shortage“). She called up ICAO to tell them about her plan and the international bureaucrats there got national bureaucrats worldwide fired up to help out. Male round-the-world pilots had told Ms. Waiz to expect nightmares in Egypt regarding airspace access, airport access, and 100LL fuel access. When Ms. Waiz showed up, however, the Egyptians had assigned female air traffic controllers to every sector through which she traveled (i.e., without being inspired by Americans, Egyptian women have somehow gotten sufficiently into aviation to be able to work Center, Approach, Tower, and Ground!). When she landed, instead of being greeted by soldiers holding automatic rifles she was greeted by 11 officials from the Egyptian equivalent of the FAA.

How oppressed are women in Afghanistan, from which Waiz’s parents migrated as refugees (then reared six daughters in California, including Ms. Waiz herself)? No insurance company wanted to deal with the risk of a Bonanza in Kabul so Ms. Waiz flew there commercially from Dubai for a 2.5-day break. Cut to next slide: Waiz in a meeting with the President of Afghanistan. Would he have met with a male round-the-world pilot?

Waiz shows up to Christmas Island and finds that there are two residents with pilot certificates… both women. If more men than women are pilots in the U.S. and Europe, is this simply an example of “The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM” (Atlantic)?

Readers: Is airline promotion of more women going into aviation (example from United) a sign of righteous altruism or simply that they would like to pay lower wages as a result of larger labor supply? (like a Silicon Valley employer promoting immigration and #Resisting Trump!)

Some practical tips: Controllers outside of the U.S. and Europe aren’t accustomed to light aircraft having to deviate around weather. “Deviating right” will upset them. “Flying to Fix XYZ” is a better way to explain a decision to abandon a flight plan route. Those crazy long over-water legs are less plagued with bad weather and over-land routes. An exception is the inter-tropical convergence, a reliably horrible place to be flying due to convection (claimed the lives of those aboard Air France 447, for example, though mostly due to primitive flight control software plus pilot error).

Regardless of pilot gender ID, is flying around the world in a single-engine piston airplane a good way to inspire people regarding STEM? The engineers who created the Bonanza (first flight 1945) and its engine likely died at least 25 years ago. It is mechanics who enable continued flights in Bonanzas, not engineers or scientists. Also, isn’t flying long distances over water in a Bonanza actually ignoring what we’ve learned from engineering? Engineers have given us multi-engine and turbine-engine aircraft that render the journey much safer and more comfortable.

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