Table of contents for September 2020 in Plane & Pilot

1. ELECTRIC PLANES Read our feature story on the Pipistrel Velis Electro, which is the first EASA-certificated electric plane. The story is as much about how electrics change flying for us as it is about that new plane. And electric propulsion changes everything, in ways that very few people think about. It's clearly time to start thinking about it. 2. FOLLIES OF YOUTH I came across the story of a kid who’s hoping to be the youngest ever to circumnavigate the globe. And that’s as much information as you’ll get from me on the subject. The purpose of learning to fly is, in large part, learning how not to get killed while flying. Publicizing record attempts for youngest anything that puts young people at risk is wrong, and I have…

EPIC CELEBRATES FIRST E1000 DELIVERIES Bend, Oregon-based Epic Aircraft has handed over the keys to the first two E1000 airplanes after receiving the green light for the model from the FAA last year. The milestone comes eight years after Epic announced its plans to build a certified outgrowth of the company’s Epic LT single-engine turboprop kitplane. AV GROUPS SPEAK OUT AGAINST 5G MOVE A number of aviation groups are rallying against the Federal Communication Commission’s recent approval of Ligado’s planned use of a sensitive area of radio frequency spectrum for its 5G network, a move that would endanger GPS. Several key advocacy groups, including NBAA, AOPA and several others, have joined the Department of Defense in voicing opposition to the decision. NASA ASTRONAUTS LAUNCH FROM AMERICAN SOIL After a nearly…

ACROSS 1 Substance used as a drying agent when storing planes 6 Sudden severe turbulence occurring in cloudless regions causing violent buffeting of the aircraft, abbr. 8 Prop sound 9 Gauge datum 10 Dornier letters 11 Religious denomination, for short 13 Venturi _____ (plural) 16 _____ yaw: yaw generated when the ailerons are used 18 Flightpath between airports 19 One of four forces of flight 21 Unit of energy 23 Where a climb gets you 26 Flexible wing plan used on paragliders and now on some powered aircraft 30 A wing planform used by Dyke, for instance 32 Generic acronym for runway instrument illumination 33 Used for wings and sometimes for tails, too DOWN 1 A danger of storm fronts 2 Maneuver to lose altitude in a hurry 3 What…

I had just finished my second multi-engine training flight of the day, and I was getting ready for the third. Boy, the weather could not have been more desirable. It was a few days after a cold front had passed, and the winds were finally dying down, the temperature was ideal, and it was clear and a million. My student—Brian, who had become a close friend during his training—was in a rush to add a multi-engine rating to his commercial pilot certificate, and I was fully prepared to get him there as fast as he could keep up. My streak of recommending students who were successful in passing their checkrides was at 28—and I wanted to keep counting. At this point, we were in the checkride prep stage. The final…

Here’s the part where I describe the way the future will look. How the Pipistrel Velis, the world’s first certified electric aircraft, will change everything. But there’s no way for me to do that. The story is this: Pipistrel, a small company in Slovenia that, despite its lack of a downtown Wichita address and even much name recognition, has managed to make itself into arguably the most innovative small-airplane company in the world, one that’s the opposite of the big-VC-bucks Silicon Valley start-up urban aerial vehicular fantasies that have tens or hundreds of millions in capital and no really good ideas to spend it on. Pipistrel is in the actual airplane business, the real airplane business, building and selling actual airplanes to be flown by actual pilots…today! Not that there’s…

In 1948, the U.S. Navy created a contest for engineering companies to develop a supersonic interceptor seaplane, and it did this for a good reason, too. Aircraft carriers at that time could not accommodate the long takeoff and landing distances required by land-based supersonic jets, so the Navy figured it’d try using the ocean as the runway. The most prolific entry evaluated by the Navy, the F2Y Seat Dart, came from the Convair division of General Dynamics based at Lindbergh Field in San Diego, California. Convair’s proposal resulted in an order from the Navy of two prototypes in late 1951. The long-term plan was to arm the production aircraft with four 20mm Colt Mk12 cannons and a battery of folding-fin unguided rockets, but none of these were installed on the…

Aircraft Retired Annually: 500-600 Organization Founded To Facilitate Repurposing: Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association (AFRA), 2006 Mission: “Increase commercial value for end-of-service aircraft” Average Cost To Convert Airplane Into Home: $35,000-$55,000 AFRA Member Who Converted A Boeing 727: Bruce Campbell Conversion Cost: $220,000 Square Feet Of Living: 1,066 Cockpit Transformed Into: Office space Campbell’s Second House: Boeing 747 Passenger Jet Converted Into Kindergarten Classroom: Yakovlev Yak-42 Location: Rustavi, Georgia Typically Seats: 120 Kindergartener Seats: 20 Seats Kicked: All of them Adults Complaining: 0 Status Of Flying Cars: Pending Status Of Driving Airplanes: Active Example: “Spirit of LeMons” Creator: Jeff Bloch Aircraft Used: 1956 Cessna 310 Last Flown: 1973 Vehicle Materials: 1980s Toyota MasterAce Van Project Budget: $500 Purpose: 24-hour Endurance Road Race Length Of “Car:” 27 ft Cruising Altitude: 0 AGL…

When it introduced its NX Cub prototype last year, CubCrafters created a backcountry airplane unlike any in the world, one that’s convertible between nosegear and tailwheel configuration. Recently, the Yakima, Washington-based company announced that it would seek certification for the NX Cub, a nosegear/tailwheel convertible version of its XCub. The company didn’t make the decision lightly. It was only after it had run the idea past thousands of customers, 300 of whom actually flew the plane over the past year, that the company made the call to certify and produce the NX version of its award-winning XCub (the official designation of which is the CC19). CubCrafters president Patrick Horgan described the market survey process, which resulted, he said, in a clear mandate: “We went into this process not entirely sure…

Along the Gulf Coast of Texas, we are occasionally, after a cold front moves through, blessed with almost perfect flying weather. The humidity drops, the temperature cools, and all plans for being in the office drop away. And you’re not alone, as almost every pilot within 200 square miles decides to head to their airport of choice to alight and burn holes in the bright blue sky. Not that long ago, I was looking out my window at such a morning, and I said, “Darn it, I’m going flying!” I called up the training center where I rent my favorite steed—a well-worn Piper Warrior—and found that said steed was “down for maintenance” (an indication of things to come; call it Sign #1), but they kindly offered me an equally well-worn…

THE QUESTION OF OBTAINING A THIRD-CLASS MEDICAL Certificate versus qualifying under the FAA BasicMed Program has caused anxiety for many general aviation pilots. To test and compare the process, I qualified under both processes this year within two months of each other. I report the results below. Before delving into the Third-Class Medical versus BasicMed, we need to compare three pilot certificates used by most general aviation (GA) pilots: the Private Pilot, the Recreational Pilot and the Sport Pilot certificates. Yes, the FAA issues “certificates,” though the term “licenses” often is still used informally and interchangeably. We will start with a comparison of the two more common certificates, Private Pilot and Sport Pilot. As pertains to aircraft size, a Private Pilot is unlimited though certain aircraft will require specific type…

As I turned the key and dropped the airstair door of the Cessna 421, it was like shaking hands with an old friend. I was in Subic Bay, Philippines, on the west side of the island of Luzon, staring across the bay at the low mountains of the coast, remembering the trip I had made in 2003 from Kansas City to Subic. I’ve never been a big fan of 421s, but this one was a jewel—or so I thought at the time. It was equipped with everything you could ask for in Cessna’s top-of-the-line piston twin. The Golden Eagle was owned by a company that administers VA hospitals, primarily in Indonesia but all over the Far East, including Japan, Korea and other places where American G.I.s are hospitalized. The company…

THE MYSTERY Who was behind the massive drone swarms in Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska during late 2019-early 2020, and what was the purpose of their operations? And before you say that they were a hoax or mass hysteria, the evidence of this happening is pretty overwhelming. THE BACKSTORY It all began mid-December of 2019, when residents in a 200-mile area between western Nebraska and eastern Colorado began reporting seeing and photographing (so there was actual evidence) a large number of drones in the night sky. These weren’t any dollar-store retail specials, either. With 6-foot wingspans and 50 mph speeds, or so witnesses reported, they were far larger and faster than your typical recreational drone. The swarms, often including as many as 30 drones at once, were observed between 7 p.m.…

Long ago, in a time before cockpit automation, VNAV, TOD and all those abbreviations, early jet pilots—think Top Gun—had to figure out how to start down from the flight levels in order to arrive at the runway in an organized manner. Descend too rapidly and risk extensive low-altitude flying with very thirsty jet engines and angry passengers. Descend too slowly and encounter the dreaded high and hot final approach. The goal was to arrive at the final approach fix, or pattern entry altitude, in time to deploy the gear and flaps and get the aircraft ready for a stabilized final approach. But how to do it? Now, don’t think for a minute that “Maverick” was in the mood to do “math in public” every time he started a descent back…

The company Clyde Cessna founded in 1927, Cessna Aircraft, has been selling planes for 93 years now, but almost all of its single-engine magic was conjured up during a period that started in the early 1950s and effectively ended around 1968. During those 20-some-odd years, the world’s biggest little airplane company created a lineup of classic planes that fit the needs of just about every imaginable personal airplane flyer and a lot of commercial operators, as well. And along the way, there were very few missteps, and even some of those were failures of great ideas. With that, let’s take a look at how a great company redefined the world of personal air transportation AIRMASTER Sometimes the original ancestor airplane gives few clues that it could someday inspire the kind…

No matter how many bells and whistles you may be fortunate enough to have at your disposal when flying, they won’t do you a bit of good if you don’t know how and when to use them to save you from danger or don’t have the presence of mind to realize that it’s time to reach out for a technological helping hand. In its report on the Sept. 5, 2017, crash of a Cirrus SR20 at Jacksonburg, West Virginia, in which the private pilot and his passenger were killed, the NTSB concluded that the probable cause of the accident was the pilot’s loss of airplane control due to spatial disorientation while flying in instrument meteorological conditions in the vicinity of adverse weather conditions. What the Safety Board didn’t mention is…

“How old are these oil cooler hoses?” It was a simple enough question, posed by my inspector as we worked our way through the Mooney’s annual inspection. He sat on the tailgate of his truck, flipping pages of the aircraft’s logbooks, trying to find an entry. “It says you fire-sleeved them…17 years ago,” he said. Well, yeah, I did. I fire-sleeved the old hoses, though. They’ve been replaced since then. Sure enough, we found an entry slightly later on, but still far enough back that we started looking for options for getting new hoses made. I helped with maintenance on this bird when I was a kid. With the ink still wet on my airframe and powerplant technician certificate, my signature became a frequent addition to the pages of her…