Search Results for: wright

The original Cincinnati Frisch’s Big Boy restaurant, which opened in the 1930s, even today sports a somewhat modified but still charming version of the original retro airplane on its large outdoor sign. This popular hamburger joint (and much more) is on a busy street, about 2 miles north and slightly right of Lunken Airport’s southwest […]

It fascinates me that many GA pilots of single-engine airplanes cruise at such low altitudes. Theyre apparently oblivious to the fact that they are flying behind a single engine and if it fails you are on short final to somewhere! Extra altitude not only increases your radius of action, it also adds extra time for trouble shooting (which might eliminate the initial problem altogether) and increases the probability that a Mayday call might be heard. The side benefits include greater aircraft efficiency, cooler temperatures in the summer and possibly a smoother ride, in addition to less-congested airspace. Those long, low, flat, power-on final approaches can put you in the trees if your engine even coughs on short final. Keep a little energy in the bank and make it SOP to shoot for a reasonable aiming point on the runway.

Yep, its time to make fun of those who in 2015 ignored sound judgment and lived to garner pilot lounge derision. And, since pilots tend to repeat the same mistakes in hopes of different results, we heed George Orwell who said, We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. Since no intelligent man or woman stepped forward, its up to me.

Ive owned Cessna T210s since 1977; first a 1969 J model and then a 1979 N model with a TSIO-520-R engine. In the 1980s, there were a number of fuel exhaustion accidents in 210s, all of them attributable to not getting a full fill and resulting in being shorted an hours supply when fueling stops after fuel backs up out of the filler port. The outboard sections of the fuel tanks are slightly higher than the bottom of the filler port. To get the last one-plus gallons in the tanks requires the slowest of fueling until reaching the real full point.

Before taking steps to minimize the risk of engine failures, we probably should try to quantify it. Thanks to the way U.S. aviation mishaps are cataloged, its safe to say that engine failures happen more often than the data reflect. The sidebar at the bottom of the opposite page goes into greater detail, but its safe to say engine failures that dont result in substantial damage, serious injury or death arent part of the data. In fact, the NTSBs definitions specifically exclude [e]ngine failure or damage limited to an engine if only one engine fails or is damaged…. The punchline is that official data underestimate the actual and unknown engine-failure rate. Personal experience bears this out.

Stop by your favorite general aviation airport and you are likely to find pilots in a spirited discussion, defending the merits of low-wing versus high-wing airplanes, or north-up versus track-up on a moving-map display. It didn’t take long after the Wright brothers’ first flight for pilots to form strong opinions in aviation, and today you […]

Examining the aftermath of a mysterious, fatal crash of a 1950s Air Force trainer.

Theres an opinion among some pilots and mechanics that inspections and scheduled maintenance can do more harm than good. By constantly disassembling and reassembling an aircraft to inspect it, they argue, were prematurely wearing out the aircraft and actually making it less safe. Those same pilots and mechanics note that this is largely true, in their opinion, for aircraft that arent flown very much. For more active aircraft, however, they acknowledge that regular inspections and maintenance are less intrusive and, in fact, beneficial.

Recent, similar efforts involving the FAA and the GA community are picking up in tempo. Youve already seen some of the institutional changes: relaxed certification standards for installing advisory angle-of-attack indicators and the new rash of all-electronic attitude indicators, among others, which are designed to help minimize the classic loss-of-control inflight accident. These and other outcomes may be producing tangible results, but its too early to be sure. Regardless, by using a data-driven approach and producing specific safety enhancements, these efforts are creating some useful outcomes for GA pilots. The way this came to be is an example of why you never want to see sausage made.

Late in 1932, the newborn Beech Aircraft Co. flew its first product, a five-seat biplane with a 420 hp radial engine and fixed landing gear enclosed in huge fairings. Walter Beech gave it model number 17, since the last model built by the Travel Air company, which he had founded in 1925 with an all-star […]