Innehållsförteckning för November 2019 från Flying

If you’ve never attended the National Business Aviation Association’s annual convention, you’re in for a treat. Each year, the event alternates between the Orlando Convention Center in Florida and the Las Vegas Convention Center, where there seems to be just enough room for the 23,000-plus show visitors. This year, it’s Las Vegas’ turn. The size and nature of this show—the largest of the business-aviation shows in the U.S.—brings dozens and dozens of manufacturing exhibitors and visitor aircraft to the region. The NBAA says this past year’s convention drew more than 1,000 exhibitors who brought along more than 100 airplanes for static display. More than 1,000 students also attended. Tens of thousands of people visited the show to see exhibits from companies that support business aviation—such as pilot- and technician-training and-recruitment…

Traditionally, the purpose of an instrument approach is to stabilize the pilot and the aircraft, lined up with the runway and in just the right position from which to land. Well, not in this case. The localizer directional aid approach, also commonly called the “localizer darn angle” approach, lines the aircraft up to the airport itself—using localizer lateral accuracy no less—but not necessarily with a particular runway. Many pilots have never flown an LDA approach, but they are more common than many may realize. They still exist in places where terrain and potential traffic may conflict, and in urban areas where the community may not enjoy listening to large numbers of airplanes as they overfly residential areas. The VNY LDA-C we’re digging into this month offers many interesting and illustrative…

Ilearned to fly about 25 years ago, and it’s no exaggeration to say it changed my life. I started flight training as a fairly immature teenager and ended it as a confident and independent young adult. I learned a lot about engines and weather, but much more important were the lessons on self-reliance, problem-solving and hard work. If you’re a pilot, I’m sure you can relate. In spite of that rosy assessment—and it’s true, I can’t imagine life outside aviation—my flight training was hardly easy or painless. While I eventually earned my private pilot certificate, it took two frustrating years before I passed the check ride. Sure, the weather often stunk and some of the flight-school airplanes were a little rough, but my flight instructors were enthusiastic and supportive. Most…

Somewhere among all your stuff, there’s undoubtedly a stash of old logbooks. Mine are on a bookcase in the den—except the most recent of six, which is sitting open on the dining-room table, patiently waiting to be updated. It’s been several years since that’s happened, but I keep stickers for flight reviews and jot down details for currency (times, day, night, VFR, IFR, approaches, etc.) after each flight in a little daily planner for eventual transfer into the logbook…supposedly. Check with a knowledgeable CFI or go online for the intricacies and legalities of recording flight time; the FAA requires only that you log training and aeronautical experience to meet certificate and rating requirements plus flight reviews and proof of recent experience. Entries can be in conventional logbooks, on old McDonald’s…

Santa Paula Airport is a 20-minute flight from my home base, Whiteman Airport. The fuel there is $1.25 per gallon cheaper, however, so when I’m flying around the local area, I often stop at Santa Paula to refuel. The precise economics of fuel tourism are an SAT-level problem, but if I’m over Santa Paula anyway, I figure the extra landing and takeoff can’t cost me more than 10 bucks. Turns out, I’m not the only cheapskate. The other day, as I was finishing fueling, a Cessna 180 rolled up to the other pump. The pilot—I’ll call him Jim—came over to chat, and it turned out he was based at Whiteman too, a couple of hangar rows over from me, and was here for the same reason I was. When I…

ALWAYS LOOKING As always, I enjoyed reading this episode of I.L.A.F.F.T. in which a fuel cap came off, and the author almost unknowingly ran that tank dry [“Slow Down,” September]. Some good lessons came from the saga, but a few more occurred to me. Do better flight planning. In any light single, making a three-leg, one-day trip departing at 7:30 a.m. from Denver to Orlando in February guarantees you’ll run out of daylight before the third leg. Not a big deal in and of itself, but that fuel stop should be at a major airport, or after assuring that fuel will be available. Most small airports close up at dark. Don’t assume self-service is available—or lights, for that matter. Know when to quit. The fueler had to come from home:…

The sad saga of the Boeing 737 Max has been a slow-burning corporate, engineering, regulatory, human-interest and public-relations nightmare for going on six months now—with no end in sight. The magnitude of Boeing’s deadly foul-up is a frequent topic of conversation in airliner cockpits, and considerable ink has been spilled over the subject in both aviation and general media. Now, I’m not an aeronautical engineer, and I have yet to fly the 737, but quite a few of my friends are current or former 737NG pilots at various U.S. and European airlines. The general consensus is that the Max was simply one stretch too many of an airplane that had already been shoehorned into an ever-expanding number of sizes and roles until it barely resembled the well-considered original design. The…

Ilearned to surf in 1996. A friend taught me the basics at Pacific Beach in San Diego. Enthralled by the sport, I would go out every moment I got the opportunity. I did not care what the conditions were like. I’d paddle out in 2-foot chop just as eagerly as 5-foot glass. Snow on the beach in February? No problem. Booties and a hood with a side of mild hypothermia. Paddling out was thrill enough. In fact, when you ask a die-hard surfer how his or her session was on an obviously terrible day, they often will reply dryly, “I got wet.” The subtext is: We are doing the thing we love, nothing else matters. In the surfing world, this is known as stoke. Somewhere along the way, I lost…

On a hot August day 50 years ago, I was deposited in front of the Trans World Airlines terminal at Kennedy Airport in a rented Cadillac. The Caddy needed some timing work done on the engine, and the ambient temperature had outpaced the vehicle’s air conditioning, but I didn’t care. I was flying to London on TWA—it was a big day. The world and its possibilities seemed as soaring as the Eero Saarinen-designed terminal building. The structure had been commissioned by TWA in 1956 and opened in 1962. It was an iconic symbol of postwar optimism, exotic travel and financial exuberance. The airline lasted 39 tumultuous years after that wonderful day, but the building—though vacant from 2001 until 2019—was never razed. It has now been repurposed as the lobby of…

At 3:40 a.m. on a freezing January morning, a Beech D-95A Travel Air crashed 8 miles short of a northern Michigan runway. The National Transportation Safety Board’s finding of probable cause explained that “the pilot failed to maintain a proper glidepath and obstacle clearance”—which was inarguable—and cited as contributing factors “dark night, icing conditions, flight into known adverse weather and conditions conducive to pilot fatigue.” The pilot, 45 years old, was a 10,000-hour ATP and CFI-I, qualified as pilot in command on a number of single- and multiengine types operated by his Part 135 employer. The afternoon before the accident, he had been notified at 4:30 p.m. that some cargo needed to be delivered to Huntsville, Alabama. He departed at 5:30 and arrived at Huntsville four hours later. At the…

In California, my current home state, one is surrounded by quite a few within the populace whose level of inanity seems as homogeneous and predictable as that of the Three Stooges. Perhaps the state motto should be changed to: “Too many lemmings, not enough cliffs.” But I say, in the midst of this mélange, one finds, profession by profession, the greatest practitioners in the world. Deny it who can, explain it who may—there it is. My wife, Rebecca, and I had somehow made the acquaintance of Kip Thorne and his wife, Carolee, and invited them over for dinner. Kip was an astrophysicist and recipient of every award in his field, including the Nobel Prize in 2017. He was the world’s authority on Einstein and best friends with Stephen Hawking. Rebecca…

Even nonpilots can look at an F-104 Lockheed Starfighter and see it as the quintessential definition of a fighter jet. The shockingly short, almost straight wing is a contrast to the delta and swept designs of its day. The leading edge is literally razor-sharp, a characteristic that compelled Air Force mechanics to utilize a cover to protect them from injury. And the fuselage, with its aerodynamic wasp waist, is merely a vessel to house a monster jet engine—or, as the airplane was touted by Lockheed, “missile with a man in it.” The F-104 was used by the U.S. Air Force from 1958 to 1969. Other countries bought versions of the fighter throughout its production, where it was built by foreign manufacturers through a Lockheed license agreement. The Italian air force…