Table of contents for March 2022 in Plane & Pilot

The FAA and NTSB are investigating a midair collision outside of Houston, Texas, that claimed the lives of the pilot of a Cessna Caravan 208 and the pilot of a powered parachute. They were the only two aboard the two craft. According to Eric Farewell, a 2,000-plus hour paramotor pilot, instructor and the owner of one of the largest paramotoring schools in the world, the second aircraft was, based on the photos he reviewed, a backpack-style powered paraglider. Farewell told Plane & Pilot, “The paramotor pilot appears to have been struck from behind,” and added, “the cage is lodged in the leading edge of the 208 and either due to the impact, or by his own recognizance, has deployed his reserve parachute.” If the Caravan was cruising at a typical…

Across 1 Study of the weather 7 Merger 8 Pilots often “round off” this one; 2 words 10 AgustaWestland AW609, for example 13 Everyone 15 Poems of praise to airplanes and pilots, perhaps 16 Position of an active switch 17 Maker of Kodiaks and TBMs 19 Popular state for leaf peeper visits, abbr. 21 Number one priority as a pilot 24 Insurance-promoting lizard 25 Infrared, for short 27 It provides predictive weather information worldwide, 2 words 29 401(k) alternative 30 Brazilian city 31 Option following blown check ride 32 Blowing hard Down 1 High terrain areas often crossed in long trips 2 South Carolina’s ____ Tree aerodrome 3 Titleholder 4 What you sometimes do in a holding pattern 5 Word followed by “Bee” 6 Blue _____: U.S. Navy’s demo squadron…

IT STARTED OUT INNOCENTLY ENOUGH. I was asked if I would be interested in ferrying a recently sold 1961 172B Skyhawk halfway across the country, where the new owner would take delivery on his home field. “Oh, sure, we can get it there,” was my ill-considered response. Crawling into unknown airplanes and taking them to waiting hands can be interesting work. The trick is in keeping it from being more than interesting. This one seemed simple enough, probably involving an overnight stay to make the return connections. One could always wish for more speed than the plodding Cessna could muster, but, hey, a job is a job. The route from the Midwest into the high desert was the familiar southern passage around the Rockies, offering a relatively low-level ascent over the…

MyGoFlight CEO Killed In Cirrus Crash MyGoFlight Charlie Schneider was killed in the crash of a Cirrus SR22 he was piloting, when it crashed while on arrival to Knoxville, Tennessee’s McGhee Tyson Airport, in December. The plane was on approach to land at Knoxville when something went terribly wrong. The whole airplane parachute on the SR22 was activated, but the plane was apparently too low for it to save the flight, and the SR22 subsequently crashed and burst into flames. Schneider survived the crash and was taken to the hospital but later died from his injuries. Another person, whose name had not been released, was also on board the plane and was taken to the hospital. Their condition was unknown at press time. As CEO of MyGoFlight, Schneider, a former…

Bike In A Bag The sporty pakiT folding bike is a small and light bike that will fit into most baggage compartments easily. It’s so small that it fits neatly into a large backpack when folded up, a process that the maker says takes as little as 20 seconds. How light is it? Very. It tips the scales starting at just 22.5 pounds, and its small footprint (38x24x10 inches when folded, with a 16-inch wheel) is just the ticket to fitting it through that Bonanza baggage door, not to mention for taking in the trunk of a car or on a train for cruising around a destination city. Price: Starts at $1,695. Available at www.bikefriday.com. Sentry ADS-B Receiver For ForeFlight Sentry is a compact, affordable ADS-B receiver made specifically for…

THE MYSTERY In the mid-1950s, a World War II-era bomber, now dubbed the “Ghost Bomber,” sank into a small, sleepy Pittsburgh river and vanished without a trace. It was never seen again…or was it? BACKGROUND On Jan. 30, 1956, a North American B-25 Mitchell bomber departed Nellis Air Force Base (AFB) in Nevada on a mission to pick up aircraft parts at Olmsted AFB in Pennsylvania and deliver a couple of passengers to Andrews AFB in Maryland. The crew onboard included Major William Dotson, Captain John Jamieson, Captain Steve Tabak, Staff Sergeant Walter Soocey and Airman Second Class Charles Smith, as well as their passengers, Captain J.P. Ingraham and Master Sergeant Alfred Allement. They made a couple of stopovers, one for an overnight at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma and another…

One of the fascinating things about the history of aviation is that it is so very compact. Okay, there were people trying to fly things, including themselves, a thousand years ago, but when it comes to real flying by real people in real aircraft, that has all happened within the last 150 years, which is merely a ripple on the surface of the ocean of history. While we normally talk about things in very aviation-specific terms, like building better large engines, in this case, the hurdles we’ll discuss are broad barriers to invention, most of which human innovators face every time they invent something and then try to implement the technology into everyday life, as we saw with the invention of everything from electricity to modern agriculture. So, here’s a…

IT WAS 20 YEARS AGO, or more, and I was studying for my master’s degree at the London School of Economics. Flight Officer Michael “Dicky” Reid (we called him Mick) was the father of a good friend of mine at the LSE. His white hair was unkempt, and he was blind in his latter years. In his prime, he was a pilot. He flew the Spitfire in combat over Europe in the waning days of World War II. In the immediate postwar years, he flew evacuation top cover in various places as the British Empire retreated, like the tide, from the far reaches of the world toward home. He lived at Maplesden, a sprawling and ancient farm home an hour’s train ride south of London. He and his wife, Nima,…

Textron Aviation made the first flight of its Beechcraft Denali turboprop late last year after several years of challenges to the program, many of them related to delays in the development of the GE Catalyst turboprop engine that powers the new pressurized single-engine model. The model, which has been in development for years, was originally branded as the Cessna Denali. Unlike flights of aircraft in decades past, the November first sortie for the Denali was ambitious, and test pilots checked off a number of things from the test card. The conforming prototype, flown by test pilots Peter Gracey and Dustin Smisor, took off from Textron’s West Campus airport, Eisenhower International Airport (Midcontinent), and stayed aloft for two hours and 50 minutes. The test pilots checked on the Denali’s “performance, stability…

Climbing into the pilot seat of an aircraft and powering it into the sky is an incredible experience, and, thanks to modern technology, it’s now one that can be simulated almost as realistically from the ground as from within an actual aircraft. Made out of real aircraft parts, today’s simulators contain exact cockpit replicas as well as vivid, three-dimensional visual displays of terrain, buildings and other structures. Adding to the realness factor is the simulation of live, real-time weather and traffic conditions and the ability for users to communicate with air traffic control. Even non-pilots can join in the fun these days using at-home computer programs, such as Microsoft Flight Simulator. But their popularity isn’t just due to the coolness factor. Since their early days, nearly 100 years ago, flight…

If you’re in the market for a used Cirrus piston single, it can be daunting to decide which Generation (or Segment) fits your mission and budget: SR20 (200 or 215 HP), SR22 (310 HP), SR22TN (310 HP Turbo Normalized) or the top-of-the-line SR22T (315 HP Turbocharged). Cirrus Aircraft has only been delivering aircraft since 1999, and every single Cirrus ever produced is installed with a whole air-craft parachute, which the company calls the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS). The innovation doesn’t stop there. Over the 20 years it has been building its SR20 and SR22 singles, Cirrus made hundreds of major and minor improvements. CAPS has been standard on all models, and it remains the most innovative and unique feature of a Cirrus Aircraft. Cirrus Aircraft periodically introduced a new…

AS PILOTS, WE COMPLETE all kinds of training. Depending on what we fly, where we fly, why we fly, or who we may fly for, we all complete a certain amount of training. Most of this training is related to operating the aircraft, aircraft systems and all the other technical areas required for safe flight. Additionally, we receive at least some level of training in the human element of flight, human factors, as they are often called. This human element of our training has evolved throughout the years and is most commonly known as Cockpit/Crew Resource Management (CRM) and/or Threat and Error Management (TEM). These are names for management systems that train us to make the best use of all available resources, to make the best choices, manage/mitigate risk and…