Search Results for: aero 2012 one more thing

If you’re fortunate enough to live a long life, you may reach a point when you start to wonder whether it’s time to retire as pilot in command. You may feel that your vision or mental status isn’t up to par, or you may begin to have trouble entering or exiting the airplane. The point […]

In attempting to understand the Piaggio P.180 Avanti II, you need to begin by forgetting everything you thought you knew about turboprop-powered airplanes. The idea behind the Avanti has always been remarkably simple and completely outside the turboprop box. Think of the Avanti II as a jet with props and you’ll be close to the […]

Take an engine from a 1970s Ford, Toyota or Chevy and put it next to one built today, and the differences are easy to spot. Dig down into the performance and economy figures, and there’s no comparison between the 30-plus-year-old technology and today’s — the newer engines are better in almost every way imaginable, with […]

The ** Aircraft Electronics Assocation**‘s 55th annual convention opened its doors yesterday to avionics dealers and manufacturers who said they are finally seeing concrete signs of a turnaround after a rough few years punctuated by the global economic crisis. There were fewer new product introductions at this year’s show compared with past years, but the […]

(March 2012) It is understood among pilots that laminar flow is something good. But exactly what laminar flow looks and feels like eludes us, because air is invisible and so we never see the difference or the transition between laminar and turbulent. One common example of laminar flow in everyday experience is smoke rising from […]

(March 2012) Slipping gradually toward an accident is very common, but it is not the only way accidents happen. At the opposite end of the spectrum lie accidents in which a pilot who has always flown in a safe and professional manner makes one critical mistake. One area in which this type of accident is […]

(February 2012) Books about airplane design often mention wing incidence as if it were a parameter of some importance. It isn’t. In fact, “wing incidence” is a misnomer. I propose — and fully expect my proposal to have no effect — that the term be abandoned, and that we speak of “fuselage incidence” instead. The […]

It wasn’t many years ago that the idea of using biofuels for flight was dismissed out of hand as a utopian fantasy. The conventional wisdom said we’d never be able to produce enough aviation biofuel to make a difference, and even if we could it wouldn’t matter — biomass-sourced fuel would wreak havoc on the […]

(January 2012) The news cycle is like a carousel whose riders are ever changing. For a brief moment in September, the Green Flight Challenge swept past: NASA handed a prize of $1.35 million to an airplane that had achieved an efficiency of 400 passenger-miles per gallon. Huh? said the world — and then along came […]

(January 2012) Some time back, Congress decided that the FAA’s goals were just downright incompatible. How could a federally mandated regulatory agency “encourage and develop civil aeronautics” while enforcing the regulations and exercising its authority to levy fines and suspend or revoke certificates? So guess which functions were eliminated? Washington also reminded the agency that […]