Search Results for: Lear 45

High-altitude operations are known to require extra care and attention. The thinner air reduces takeoff and climb performance when compared to sea level. While a turbocharger helps overcome reduced engine power, even it must be managed correctly to obtain maximum performance. Problems can arise if the crew doesn’t have much experience with high-altitude takeoffs and might not be exercising every precaution.

Recent general aviation and air carrier accidents

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We regularly see non-turbocharged piston singles cruising in the 4500-6500-foot range, even when wind and weather aren’t operational considerations. Meanwhile, a few thousand feet higher, the ride’s better—as is visibility—there’s better comm and navaid reception, and likely a lot less traffic. So, why do some pilots of personal airplanes prefer to cruise at lower-than-optimum altitudes? Why do others go as high as they reasonably can for the trip length? Is the extra time and fuel worth climbing a few more thousand feet?

“Cessna 48X, traffic 12 o’clock, 2 miles, 6,500, UAV maneuvering.” The ATC call was both surprising and ironic, since I was on my way from Los Angeles to Arizona to research an article about drones. I never saw the UAV, and the sound of the drone pilot’s response was not audible because communications from UAVs […]

Oh, brother, it is cold. I just can’t get this wall unit heater to warm up the place. It is dark and forbidding outside. I see the flat rooftop of the garage and not much else. It is white with snow. Is this the Holiday Inn in Secaucus, New Jersey, or the Embassy Suites in […]

Work crews finished hauling away the largest of the rocks and muddy stumps only a few days ago, turning what had been a leafy hill behind the Just Aircraft factory in tiny Walhalla, South Carolina, into a rutted, scarred clearing barely the size of a football field. Even my host, company co-founder Troy Woodland, doesn’t […]

Turn on your faucet—any faucet. Start with just a slow stream of water. See how smooth, transparent it is? That’s an example of laminar flow. Now, accelerate it by opening the taps fully. Notice how it roils, as a brook after a rainstorm. What you see is the essence of turbulence.

The tower controller reached for the crash phone several times before I finally set my feeble J-3 Cub down on the 9000-foot runway for a full-stop landing. Apparently, my desire to practice low-level engine outs was accompanied by the controller’s incipient heart failure. On my side of the mic, I was cleared for takeoff, so I did what I had planned: I pushed the throttle forward to the firewall, climbed as expected (perhaps a bit steeply given the wind and my goal of practicing the worst case, an engine out in VX climb), then yanked the power at 200 feet over the runway to simulate an engine out.

At about 2055 Eastern time, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power while in cruise flight. The pilot subsequently made an off-airport forced landing to a pasture and the airplane sustained substantial damage to the forward portion of the fuselage, both wings and the rudder. The private pilot and passenger were not injured. Visual conditions prevailed.