Table of contents for March 2023 in Plane & Pilot

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a safety recommendation as part of its investigation of the July 31, 2020, midair collision over Soldotna, Alaska, that killed all seven people aboard the two planes, a Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser and a De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver. The cause of the crash, according to the NTSB, was the failure of the two pilots to see the other plane and take appropriate evasive action, along with the lack of a requirement for traffic awareness gear that has audible warnings. As part of its investigation, the NTSB conducted a simulation of the views each pilot had of the other plane before the collision. The study found, “…that for the 53-second period before the collision, the PA-12 would have been unobscured and visible to the…

The FAA has published a special rule to give Joby Aviation a pathway to certify its vertical lift urban aerial mobility aircraft, which we have learned has a name, the Joby JAS4-1, though it hardly rolls off the tongue. Neither will the certification standard. The smorgasbord of regulations the FAA drew from in creating what it refers to as “Special Class Airworthiness Criteria” is all over the map of Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs), including those for helicopters and fixed-wing and powered lift aircraft, because the JAS4-1 (pronounced, perhaps, “Jazz For One”) is all of those things and more. The proposal, published in December in the Federal Register, gives commenters 30 days to point out issues with the cert standard, which is not a lot of time when you’re trying to…

For as long as there have been aircraft used in war, it was clear that the biggest threat to them was being seen. In World War I, there was little that could be done about that, other than to fly high enough to avoid easy detection and to cut down on the risk of being hit by small arms fire. Due to the invention of RADAR in the 1930s and other surveillance technologies over time, innovative new means of hiding from adversaries were a critical part of new aircraft development. Today, these efforts have resulted in a handful of aircraft worldwide that are virtually invisible to RADAR, making enemy air defenses ineffective at best. • Contemporary concept of stealth: Low RADAR signature • Other measures: Low heat signature, low radio…

I’ve always been fascinated by products caught between the technology of the past and the technology that’s not quite available yet. I’m not sure if the people who decided to put a rocket assist motor on an Ercoupe expected it to usher in a new day of JATO bottles on small planes—probably not, but it was fun anyways, and weird. In fact, that’s often the case when designers try to get a step ahead of the competition by doing something clever with existing tech instead of waiting a few years until the tech they really want arrives. It’s almost always a mistake and invariably an expensive one. The list of planes that straddled the line between yesterday and tomorrow is not a short one, but here’s a rundown of some…

Frank Robinson, the legendary founder of Torrance, California-based light helicopter manufacturer Robinson Helicopters, died at his Rolling Hills home in Southern California in November. He was 92. The company that Robinson founded in the early 1970s wasn’t just another aircraft manufacturer, and Robinson knew it. A lifetime aviation enthusiast, Robinson was a talented engineer and beginner pilot when he departed a fledgling career working for aviation giants like Cessna, Bell and Hughes to stake a claim out west. What he wanted to do sounded easy enough—to build a small light and affordable personal helicopter that would democratize the world of rotary flight, a segment of aviation that was and remains dominated by large manufacturers of multi-million-dollar craft targeted at military and commercial users. And he did just that, though it…

The United States Air Force unveiled the Northrop-Grumman B-21 Raider in a ceremony in Palmdale, California. The B-21 is said to be the first sixth-generation stealth bomber, leapfrogging a few fifth-generation aircraft, including the Lockheed-Martin F-22 and F-35 fighters. It’s reportedly more capable in numerous respects than any bomber in the world, though what exactly those capabilities are remains a mystery. Launched in 2011, the B-21 was so designated because it’s the first new bomber of the 21st century. It’s been dubbed the Raider in honor of the Doolittle Raiders of World War II fame. What we know about the plane is…well, very little. In jest, a well-known air defense expert and writer commented on his Facebook page that he would give his kingdom for a spec sheet. His kingdom…

“Probable cause: The pilot’s failure to maintain sufficient airspeed while maneuvering on final approach.” Sentences like this drive me nuts because they’re not an explanation of why or how an accident happened; rather, they’re merely descriptive of the accident. I regularly read NTSB accident reports involving GA aircraft with the hope of learning something that I can take away to make myself a better pilot. I want to know why a pilot with thousands of hours and lots of ratings made a student pilot error on a clear day with calm winds. What did he see? What did he forget? What distracted him? This is important because I realize that I am the most dangerous type of pilot that there is: the busy professional who flies occasionally. I’m the pilot…

If ever there was a model with an identity crisis, it’s Piper’s legendary, big-selling lineup of PA-28 singles. Over the years, the planes rolling out the factory doors in Vero Beach, Florida, have changed shape, mission, branding and colors more times than any but the most diehard Cherokee fans can keep track of. In the end, through all the morphing, these great entry-level, fixed-gear planes are clearly closely related and, somewhat counterintuitively, fly in a very similar way. In this article, I’ll make the admittedly somewhat arbitrary distinction between models and only discuss those with lower-power engines and fixed landing gear. This type also happens to be the first wave of PA-28s, those powered by 150-, 160- and 180-hp four-cylinder opposed aircraft engines. They remain today widely available on the…

After the 2016 balloon tragedy in Texas, in which all 16 aboard the craft perished after it hit powerlines and caught fire, many people, even many in aviation, were shocked to learn that commercial balloon pilots didn’t need to have a Class 2 medical. In fact, they didn’t need a medical at all, at least not until November 2022. The FAA has adopted a rule requiring commercial balloon pilots to have a Class 2 FAA medical certificate. The disaster that precipitated the rule change was horrifying. On July 30, 2016, a balloon took off from a small airpark outside of Austin. There were the commercial pilot and 15 passengers aboard. Shortly after taking off on what was to be a one-hour flight, the balloon hit powerlines and became engulfed in…

Method Seven Aviatrix Sunglasses These were designed with female pilots in mind. The lightweight frame is crafted from hand-tooled Japanese titanium, and the shatterproof lenses are constructed with a durable polymer that offers contrast and clarity even in mixed conditions. Other notable features include tangle-free nose pads that won’t catch on longer hair, notch filtering that’s unique to these lenses and a thin, comfortable profile. The eye width measures 57 mm, the bridge width 15 mm and the temple length 121 mm. It comes with a base curve of 6. Price: $235. Available at: www.aircraftspruce.com. Yeti Hopper The Hopper M30 has been re-engineered with MagShield Access, which is the extra-wide mouth on top to make loading and unloading food and supplies into the cooler bag easier. The top closes with…

As is often the case when new technologies upend the old way of doing things, the end users, in this case, pilots, are often resistant to the emerging ways. We see it all around us these days. Take Tesla’s Autopilot, which is, just like sounds, an automatic driving utility that is remarkably good, despite some high-profile failures that many experts blame on the brains of the machine. Those brains are, in fact, the artificial intelligence that “looks” at the world around it and decides where to steer, when to accelerate and brake, and what might constitute a threat and what is benign. With wildly different lighting environments, taking into account time of day, angle of the sun, the road surface—is it wet or snowy, for instance—the cloud cover and more,…

It’s a nearly constant source of dismay for pilots when the mainstream media reports on aviation stories, especially crashes, from a place of ignorance about them. I’m not trying to be mean, but this is a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which describes how someone who doesn’t know something is unaware that they don’t know it because they don’t know enough to know that they don’t know it. It’s not just complexity because much of aviation is, thank goodness, stupidly simple, but because so many things in aviation are counterintuitive or named in such a way as to make them so. So, in the spirit of fighting hard against both Dunning and Kruger, I’d like to explain a few things that many nonpilots (and all too many pilots, too!)…