FLYING by Dustin Green

August 2008

Aviationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Most Read Magazine

New Evolution In IFR Flying

New Ways To Improve Safety You Can Be A Mustang Pilot

Columns 12

Flying Lesson

Flying in different territories

Jumpseat

Flying like a bird.

Gear Up

Tricked up flight gear.

Risk Management

Learning to be safe.

Departments 5

Hot Off The Wire

Industry news and notes

Mail Call

The opinion polls.

Flashback

Celebrating 50 years of publishing

Features 14

The FRS

A method of quality assurance.

Garmin G1000

Navigation Made Easy.

Weather Lessons Learned

Weather knowledge improves our flying.

Learn To Fly The Mustang

A path to the left seat.

Hot Off The Wire

Industry news and notes By the flying Staff

Piper Matrix A brand-new six-seater from Piper. When Piper announced back in early November that it was going to produce an unpressurized, roughly $750,000 version of its Mirage six-place pressurized piston single, the reaction from the media was, well, downright tepid. At face value it seemed as though Piper was merely trying to lower the price point of its million-dollar-plus, cabin-class, pressurized offering while still keeping the Mirage a viable product. And worst of all, it was doing it simply by subtracting some value from it, in the form of pressurization. After all, the critics asked, how much can it cost to put the pressurization system in an airframe already built to be pressurized? The whole Matrix exercise seemed like a cyni-

cal marketing ploy designed to drum up a few more PA-46 sales, nothing more. One aviation publication even referred to it as a “deflated Mirage” and asked, “Does the world really need an unpressurized Mirage?” Since that time, I’ve had a chance to get to know the airplane and to fly it, and as it turns out, the critics, and I was one of them, were dead wrong. In fact, the Matrix is the best “new” airplane I’ve flown in ages, and when looked at rightly, it’s one of the most innovative ideas to come down the pike in a good long time. After all, how you get to a design shouldn’t matter, just what you’ve got when you get there. When you look at the Matrix from the end-product per-

spective, the airplane has a lot to offer. Think of it this way: Had a Matrix-type product come from a clean sheet of paper and from a different company, it surely would have been hailed as a revolutionary product. With the Matrix, there’s a lot you get that comes along with the airframe the company started with, features that others would be hard-pressed to match. In fact, Piper hasn’t made much of a secret of the fact that it hopes to woo Cirrus and Cessna composite single customers to the Matrix. “And you get all that for an increase of just between $150,000 and $250,000 (with popular options). Piper hopes a lot of pilots like the sound of that proposition.” Flying February 2008 5

By Robert Goyer

HOT OFF THE WIRE

Synthetic Vision Primary Flight Display

One panel That surpasses the rest!

Using the the GPS positioning system and the Ground Proximity Warning System database, everything is presented ahead of the airplane.

The flight path symbol can be changed between a single cue v-bar, cross pointer, or HUD-style.

When coming out of the clouds into a crosswind, the flight path symbol shows the runway to the left or right of the nose. Since the crosswind will cause you to drift, the pilot must counter act it by angling the nose of the plane into the drift. This makes the purplish flight path symbol to be on the left or right side of the runway, depending on the crabbing angle..

The SV-PFD guides you to the runway using the blue dots and uses a white horizon line to indicate variations in the terrain. A white triangle is used to indicate direction when crabbing. The flight path will move along the dots when approaching the runway. Mountain elevations have their peaks rounded off to a certain degree, but are very close by visual comparison.

6 Flying February 2008

ÂŠ Photographs by flying Staff

Synthetic Vision Primary Flight Display (SV-PFD) is a flight instrument that combines other various instruments into one integrated display. It allows the pilot to land the plane using Instrument Flight Rules with enhanced awareness of whats occurring around them without looking outside. The panel shows everything as realistic as possible and does not require extensive training.

Wind travels from high air pressure to low air pressure. This produces a clockwise anti-cyclonic effect. While high pressure is good, low air pressure is less stable, causing precipitation. Stay on the northern side of a high pressure system and south side of a low.

These changes in windspeed and/or direction can cause abrupt changes in altitude or bearing. Low level wind shears are the most dangerous because they occur near the ground. Stay in contact with control tours to avoid these conditions.

Turbulence occurs when wind flows over obstacles and rough terrain. Fly higher to avoid up drafts over barren land and down drafts over vegetation areas and the lee sides mountains.

Fog

Icing

Thunderstorms

Fog occurs when cool air meets warm air. More cooler air than warmer air or cloud cover slows lift. If visibility is below minimums, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fly.

Rain that is constantly circulated in the lower cloud layer increases in size due to temperature inversion causing icing. The best solution is to go back to the airport.

Thunderstorms are manageable as long as you maintain a low altitude and keep them at arms length. Wispy clouds indicate wind shear that causes turbulence.

Flying February 2008 7

ÂŠ 2008 Photographs by Andrew Oliver (flickr) / The Weather Underground, Inc / bopuc (flickr) / fry

SAFETY MEANS A THOROUGH UNDERSTANDING OF THE WEATHER Wind Shears Turbulence Pressure Systems

Haywire In Congo By Lane Wallace

Flying relief missions isn’t without it’s risks. “You’ll want to keep on that course line,” Cindy says, pointing to the GPS as we approach the mountainous border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The peak is Volcan Karisimbi, a 14,787-foot tall volcano that’s the tallest of eight volcanic peaks along the Uganda-Rwanda-Congo border, where some of the world’s most spectacular gorillas—and violent rebel soldiers— take refuge in the dense jungle foliage. And after years of civil and regional conflict sparked by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, two volcano eruptions, staggering levels of atrocities against women by undisciplined militias, and two cholera epidemics, eastern Congo definitely qualifies as a disaster and conflict zone. “So, are tanks normal around here?” I ask sharply. Cindy frowns and shakes her head. Even she now looks concerned. “No. We’ve known they had them, but I’ve never seen them before,” she say

Book Review By Russell Munson In his various jobs with the Air Force, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Martin, Judson Brohmer photographed many of the highest testosterone aircraft the military had, such as the X-35A Joint Strike Force Fighter, the F-22A Raptor and the F/A-18 Hornet, and the results are often spectacular. The text is written by test pilots and others with whom Brohmer worked. The words are illuminating in describing exactly how such intricate photographs are made. Brohmer didn’t have the luxury of photographing from relatively roomy aircraft with the doors or windows removed. He was usually stuffed in the back seat of an F-15 or F-16 following an exquisitely planned mission he had 8 Flying February 2008

choreographed with the pilots beforehand. When the F-16 chase plane from which Brohmer was photographing crashed in July, 2001, he had already begun work on this book. Alessandra, his wife, finished the project with the help of publishing professionals. It is a magnificent volume, and a fitting tribute to one of our top talents. Book is available at www.ThinAirPublishing.com; $85; ISBN 0-9729609-0-2.

its comprehensive avionics capabilities available to existing Beech King Air 90s. The finished conversion is amazing because the system looks as though it has been in the King Air from the factory. All of the old gauges and dials are gone, replaced by three big flat-glass displays. In front of each pilot is a 10.4-inch primary flight display (PFD) while a giant 15-inch multifunction display (MFD) dominates the center of the panel.

Piston Parade

Home Study

By the Flying Staff

By Jay Hopkins

A buying and selling experience.

New resources to keep those skills sharp.

Flying magazine is the title sponsor of a series of events to be held around the United States this year that showcase piston-powered airplanes. The first Parade of Pistons show will be held at the Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Southern California on March 27 – 29. The Parade of Pistons concept is to gather as many new piston airplanes and experts on finance, tax benefits and insurance as possible at the same spot, so pilots can have a chance for one-stop shopping. All major piston airplane manufacturers plan to exhibit at Hawthorne along with several light-sport aircraft makers. Demo flights will be available, and used airplane brokers will be on hand to advise on selling an airplane you may already own.

If you are like me you have the best of intentions. As a conscientious pilot who wants to fly in a professional manner, you desire to stay up to date on the latest aviation information. You are planning to go to the next safety seminar that the FAA or AOPA puts on in your area. You meant to go to the last one, but something important came up and you just couldn’t make it. Even with the best of intentions, most pilots find it very difficult to spend even a fraction of the time they would like to spend refreshing their aviation knowledge and staying abreast of new developments. As I mentioned in my article last month on What Is Safety?, any skill or knowledge gradually diminishes if not refreshed regularly. The problem is that with everything else going on in our lives, it can be easy to feel comfortable with our current knowledge level when in fact it has decreased quite a bit. One way to enhance our safety level and reduce the risks involved in our flying is to look for regular opportunities to refresh and enhance our knowledge of aviation information and regulations. As it turns out this is actually very easy to do. The AOPA Air Safety Foundation (ASF) is working hard to make the information we need to be safe, efficient and effective in the cockpit available literally at our fingertips. They are dedicated to making general aviation flying easier and safer, so they offer a wide

Autpilot by G1000 By J. Mac McClellan For a few years the most sophisticated navigation systems have been able to automatically fly an airplane through procedure turns, DME arcs, holds and approaches, but now Garmin’s G1000 has transformed a missed approach—one of the most demanding, high workload and risky parts of an IFR flight—into a fully automatic procedure. Garmin’s flat glass, fully integrated avionics system that can do all of this had been reserved for only new production airplanes, but now an STC conversion makes

HOT OFF THE WIRE

Piston Twin Gone? By Richard L. Collins

The good old days aren't coming back. Given the low rate of twin production and the age of the fleet, there will likely be ever less piston twins flying around. It was always satisfying to settle into a new twin, crank up a pair of Continentals or Lycomings, feel the surge of power on takeoff, watch the rocket-like climb, and experience the buzz of passing through the air at 200 knots. For a start, multiengine training is far from being as available today as it was 40 or 50 years ago. It is certainly done in the college and flight academy programs and that is where a lot of the twins that are being built today go to work. But not many FBOs have a twin for training. Even into the 1980s we were able to rent twins to use for transportation or for photo missions. We didn’t have to go to recurrent training to fly those airplanes. If walking into an FBO or flight school cold and renting a twin is possible today, I sure don’t know about it. Maybe, just maybe, the Diamond Twin Star diesel twin will enable more FBOs to offer multiengine training and have a program to rent the airplanes. But that’ll only happen if the insurance underwriters think it is a good idea.

Airspace Cautions By Jay Hopkins

Crashes are avoided by staying alert. Probably the most feared situation in aviation, besides perhaps an inflight fire, is a midair collision. One moment a pilot

is enjoying the flight. He may be checking his chart or tuning a radio. Or maybe he is talking with a passenger or taking a drink of water. Suddenly there is a loud crash. The plane splinters, the wings crumple. The pilot, if he is still alive, has only a few moments to consider what happened as the airplane plummets to the ground. Most pilots know the standard collision avoidance advice to progressively scan across the windshield. If they are honest, they will tell you that cockpit chores, the labor intensive modern glass cockpits, fatigue and just plain laziness keep them from accomplishing a consistent regular scan. So in reality, to a great extent we are relying on the”big sky theory.” The big sky theory starts to fall apart in a terminal environment. Suddenly all those airplanes scattered over many miles and tens of thousands of feet of altitude are crammed into a relatively small area at about the same altitude. In a situation like that the odds of having a collision are obviously much higher. There is a new tool available that helps pilots understand the true extent of the threat of a midair collision and provides information that can help to avoid a collision or a near miss. Its called seeandavoid.org.

Aviation Charities Growing from its World War II experience, the Civil Air Patrol has continued to strive to save lives and alleviated human suffering through a myriad of emergency service and operational missions. Perhaps best known for its search and rescue efforts, CAP now flies more than 85% of all federal inland SAR missions directed by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at Langley AFB, Virginia. More than 100 people are saved every year by CAP! Often overlooked by vitally important is the role CAP plays in disaster relief operations. CAP provides air and ground transportation, and an extensive communications network. They fly disaster relief officials to remote locations, and support local, state and national disaster relief organizations with manpower, leadership and other valuable and needed resources. Also important is the transportation of time-sensitive medical materials including blood and human tissue in situations where other means of transportation

are not possible. CAP also conducts damage assessment, radiological monitoring, light transport, communications support, and low-altitude route surveys in support of the U.S. Air Force. For more informa, see us at www.cap.gov or opscenter@capnhq.gov

Win a Headset! You can get a chance to win a David Clark X11 aviation headset by entering our giveaway. No purchase is necessary, and the official rules can be found on the next page. The contest runs from February 22 to March 24. Introduced just a couple of years ago, the X11 has quickly become a customer favorite for David Clark, the legendary maker of aviation headsets. The X11 is the lightest full-coverage David Clark headset, and its excellent active noise reduction makes it extremely quiet, too. Its innovative construction and materials also make it easy to wear for even those long crosscountry trips, and with its advanced electronic noise reduction, it does a great job of cutting down on engine and prop noise. The headset features an aux input for a cell phone or music player, and like many David Clark headsets, it has dual volume controls right on the earcups. To learn more about the David Clark X11, visit davidclark.com. The David Clark X11 headset normally retails for $799, but the good news is: You can get a chance to win one for free by entering our giveaway below. See our website www.flyingmag.com for context rules. And don’t forget: You can enter as often as once a day. Good luck!

All New Learjet By the Flying Edit Staff

I’m all composite baby! Bombardier confirmed, as first reported in Flying, that the company’s next generation Learjet will be built entirely from composite plastics. The new Learjet 85 would be the first transport category airplane with an all-composite airframe, and is the first in Flying February 2008 9

range of educational resources free of charge to all pilots on their website aopa.org/asf.

HOT OFF THE WIRE

What Is Safety? By Jay Hopkins It should be a simple question. After all, it seems like almost every classroom, hangar, shop or production area has posters reminding people that “Safety Comes First” and to “Be Safe,” “Fly Safe” and “Work Safe.” Yet when I ask the people attending my Preventing Human Error seminar to define safety, to explain how to “be safe,” my question is typically met with silence. Even a room full of safety officers is usual10 Flying February 2008

ly at a loss for words. No wonder all those posters don’t seem to be very effective! After a while someone may say that safety is not having any injuries or accidents. I point out that avoiding injuries and accidents is the result of safety, not the definition. After a few more minutes someone may finally link safety with risk mitigation, which is what safety is really all about. My definition of safety is very simple. Safety is reducing risk in general and eliminating unnecessary risk.

Learning to Fly the Mustang By J. Mac McClellan

Weather De mystified

All new airplane wth a whole different feel.

By Richard L. Collins

Cessna and FlightSafety have developed a training path that can lead any pilot to the left seat. When Cessna was developing the Citation Mustang, the first entry-level jet to achieve full certification and enter service without restrictions, it became clear that this lowest-priced Citation would attract a new type of pilot. Many, if not most, Mustangs will be ownerflown; those owners will step into the Mustang with an unpredictable résumé of flying experience. The old “pound every pilot through the same type rating course” just wasn’t going to work in the Mustang. A new path to the left seat had to be created. Cessna was so adamant about offering a new type of training for the Mustang that it didn’t automatically offer the program to FlightSafety International, its longtime training provider. Instead, Cessna opened up the Mustang training contract to competition and asked any qualified training outfit for its best ideas. As it turned out, FlightSafety competed hard, and won, with a new course that has the flexibility to train just about any pilot to captain proficiency in the Mustang.

More we undersand, the wiser we become! Weather to a ground person and weather to an air person are two completely different things. The ground person feels temperature and wind and precipitation and looks out the window or up at the sky at clouds. The ground person has to wait patiently for the weather in his location to change. Those of us who fly are literally part of it. The fact that we are x-feet high and moving relatively rapidly within a weather system means that we are in effect completely embedded in whatever is going on. Most of the pilots who get into weather trouble are those who do not go beyond the required knowledge of the subject. A weather-wise pilot is completely curious about what is going on and why it is going on. Every bit of wind and turbulence and cloud begs to be understood. Moving the wheel, wiggling the pedals and manipulating the power are one thing. Using the autopilot and managing the avionics are another thing. You have to be able to do those things to be checked out in an airplane. But a pilot is not complete until he faces the realization that, when flying, we are part of the weather and the more we understand it, the better we can manage the weather-related risk found in flying. When it comes to flying experience, only the next hour counts. But weather wisdom is cumulative.

Pilot Phone Home By Mark Phelps Jeppesen has teamed with Hilton Software to offer up to 15 applications for pilots that will interface with an increasing number of smart mobile phones. Jeppesen Mobile expects to be available soon on Blackberrys and iPhones, offering full Airport Facility Directory information, including touch activation for hotlinks to ASOS, ATIS and FBO phone numbers. The system also includes weather, TAFs, radar, satellite information, and more. Cost of the service is expected to be $169 per year with renewals pegged at $129.

©Photographs by Robert Goyer / Flying staff / Shivayanamahohm (flickr) / albspotter *NO*VIDEO*

the Learjet, Challenger or Global Express line from Bombardier to use composites for primary structure of wings and fuselage. A surprising aspect of the announcement, which was made in January, is that the Learjet 85 will be developed by Grob Aerospace of Germany. Grob has built more than 3,500 composite airplanes, mostly gliders, over the past 30 years. Grob will work with Learjet engineers to design and build the first three prototype Model 85s, but no announcement on which company or where, actual production of the airplane will take place. Grob has been developing and test flying its own composite twin engine jet, the G 180 spn, over the past several years, and expects certification sometime later this year. The spn is smaller than the midsize Learjet 85, more modest in performance, and Grob expects certification in the less demanding commuter category instead of the transport standards required for larger jets. The only other all-composite turbine business airplane so far certified is the Beech Starship twin turboprop, which was also certified to commuter category standards. Bombardier announced the new Learjet program in October of 2007, but offered few details and did not indicate in any way that the airplane would be built from composites. Flying’s sources at that time reported that it would be a composite airplane, but the Grob involvement was new to us. Bombardier has yet to reveal specifics of the Learjet 85 other than to say that design targets include a high-speed cruise of Mach .82 (470 knots true airspeed), maximum range of up to 3,000 nm, and that it will have a larger and more comfortable cabin than other midsize jets. Yet to be revealed are expected dates for entry into service and a price.

Flying Lessons

Refugees and Legionnaires By Lane Wallace

12 Flying February 2008

All parties to the conflict are Muslim, so it’s not about religion. In both countries, the violence is part Arab versus African, part tribe versus tribe, and part government versus rebel forces—not to mention government versus government. But the end result is that there’s hardly a village left standing in eastern Chad now, and each of the official United Nations international refugee camps here is surrounded by several lessorganized camps of Chadian refugees fleeing the violence within their own borders. With very little infrastructure in the country, and (as far as I could tell) not a single paved road in the entire eastern province, airplanes offer a critical link to get people and supplies to the refugee areas—especially during the rainy season, when ground travel by anything but camel becomes virtually impossible. That’s where an organization like Air Ser v International comes in. Air Serv is a secular, nonprofit organization that was founded in 1984 to provide planes and crews for international relief organizations—especially those that needed flexible and immediate air support for disaster or conflict zones in remote areas of the world. Within days of the December 26, 2004, tsunami in Indonesia, Air Serv was onsite with a half-dozen helicopters and crews, shuttling supplies and medical personnel from MSF (Doctors Without Borders) to remote areas. Even as Tutsis were still fleeing the genocide in Rwanda, Air Serv began flying relief personnel into the area aboard two Caravans it brought in from nearby areas. And when the violence broke out in Darfur, in early 2004, Air Serv was the first aviation group to set up a base in eastern Chad to help the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) get

personnel and supplies to the camps springing up on both sides of the border.

The pilots who fly for Air Serv in Chad are based in the eastern town of Abeche—a place so remote that there’s still a fortified outpost of the French Foreign Legion there. As I step out of the plane in Abeche, I see dozens of AK-47-toting Chadian men—some in camouflage, others in flowing desert djellabahs—with turbans wrapped not only around the top of their heads, but coiled around their lower faces as well, so that all that shows are dark, hard eyes peering out of the fabric. Substitute sabers for the AK-47 rifles, and they could be characters straight out of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Wind, Sand and Stars. But with the safety of my living room couch a million miles away, and surrounded by armed men whose eyes hold no warmth or goodwill, I suddenly begin rethinking all my romantic notions about St. Ex’s tales of adventure in the African desert. “From the outside, it might look safe here,” acknowledges Myriam Huser, one of the Air Serv pilots in Abeche.

“But it’s not safe. People here are very unpredictable. And everyone has guns. Children have guns.” Myriam should know. She’s been in Chad longer than any other Air Serv pilot has

Photograph by Lane

The first sign that I’ve left modern civilization—and whatever thin veneer of order might accompany it—appears as I try to exit baggage claim and customs at the international airport in N’Djamena, Chad. I walk through the customs doorway into the terminal lobby and suddenly find myself in a real-life variation of the jail scene in Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Except that the pressing, noisy crowd of people whose arms are draped around and reaching through the bars are wearing flowing white djellabahs and turbans instead of pirate garb. And I’m the one inside the cage. As I make my way toward the armed soldier who guards the jail-cell door to the barred enclosure, I wonder whether the structure is meant to keep arriving passengers from bolting out, or the crowds of locals from bolting in. Either way, it doesn’t seem like a good sign. The soldier opens the door a crack for me, yelling and pushing the crowd back while I slip through the gap and, using my best New Yorker-atrush-hour skills, put my head down and maneuver my way firmly through the phalanx of bodies to get to the open air beyond. “You’re going to CHAD? WHY?” my college roommate—who lives in Zambia, mind you—said in astonishment when I told her it was a possible stop on my Africa trip. Standing in the crowded, chaotic airport terminal, I’m beginning to ask myself the same question. But I didn’t come here for an easy or comfortable experience. I came, quite simply, because there’s important flying being done here. The Sudanese disaster zone known as Darfur didn’t stay contained in Sudan for long. By early 2004, refugees had spilled across the border into Chad, and the violence followed soon after. The reasons are complex.

FLYING LESSONS

lasted there—since March of 2006. In that time, she’s been hijacked, done medevacs of gunshot-injury patients from remote camps, been detained for five days after landing in Darfur and—along with the other Air Serv and humanitarian workers in Abeche—had to take refuge at the Foreign Legion base for four days last November when Abeche was overrun by rebel forces. “Chad historically is a violent nation,” says Pauline Ballaman, Oxfam-Great Britain’s program manager at Goz Beida, one of the refugee areas in eastern Chad. “It works on reprisals. Normally, the Sultan [of the region] could solve things, but now outside interests have reduced his power.”

And the pilots who fly here are in the thick of it. The result is a disturbingly high and palpable sense of tension and violence bordering on chaos. The Air Serv crew house is surrounded by high cement walls, topped with coils of razor wire, and few westerners in Abeche venture out after nightfall. Not that there’s much nightlife in this strict Muslim community, of course. Or other comforts, like paved or drivable roads, reliable electricity or running water. There is, however, an abundance of heat, dust, mud and malaria-carrying mosquitoes. In short, for anyone who’s ever fantasized about quitting their job and running away to be an adventure pilot in Africa, Abeche is a serious reality check. And yet, the two women I stayed and flew with there seemed to take it all in stride. In Myriam’s case, that might be because her last assignment with Air Serv before Chad was Iraq. Everything is relative, after all. But Air Serv’s chief pilot in Abeche, Lauren Stroschin, came to Chad direct from nine years of flying Dash 8s and Twin Otters in Alaska. Which means she’s no stranger to physical discomfort, of course. But Alaska still doesn’t prepare you for an armed and lawless place like Chad. On the other hand, flying in Alaska does tend to give a pilot a good eye and feel for rapidly changing weather and airstrip conditions, practice in making decisions with little outside help, and really good airplane handling skills—all of which are important.

And while Myriam and Lauren are different in many ways, they both have those last requirements wrapped up in spades. I ask Myriam what she did when the rebels attacked Abeche, last November. Did she crawl under a bed, like I imagine I would? A grin spreads across her face and her eyes light up with excitement. “No!” she says with a laugh. “I went up to the roof to see what was going on!” Even when the crew retreated to the French Army base for safety, she was restless. “I kept saying, ‘Come on, we’ve got airplanes. We should be doing something. Evacuating people, getting supplies … something!’ I wanted to keep flying!” The other critical traits for doing this kind of work are an easygoing, flexible and adaptable nature, and a love of adventure and challenge. And when I ask Lauren about coping with all the deprivations of life in Abeche, an equally broad grin lights her face. “But it’s great!” she protests. “I love this place. It’s like going back in time, before there were cars or any other part of modern life, where people use donkeys to get around or carry things!” All this, mind you, in addition to being unarmed, civilian, western women, with no military back-up, tasked with asserting command pilot authority in a land of armed strongmen and a very strict Muslim culture. The flying in Chad is like any other desert bush flying, with sandstorms and Harmattan winds that sweep across the northern deserts, and rough, dirt airstrips that blend into the surrounding sand during the dry season and turn into mud-slicked water slides when the rains come. The Twin Otter Lauren and Myriam fly is an impressive airplane for this kind of work—rugged and dependable, with a good payload and terrific short-field performance. But they still have tales of hydroplaning down watery airstrips and having to dig wheels out of unexpectedly soft ground. As Lauren checks our passengers for weapons before allowing them to board at one of our stops, I ask if I can take some photos. Taking photos around airports— even remote dirt strips—is a very touchy thing in Africa; forbidden in many places. And in Chad, taking photos of any kind—anywhere—can quickly get you in all sorts of unpleasant trouble. Lauren

looks around and says she doesn’t see any soldiers, so to go ahead. I hesitate and say maybe I should wait until I have a formal journalist’s photo credential, which is supposed to come through that afternoon. “After all, we’re coming back here tomorrow,” I say. Lauren smiles wryly and looks at the overcast sky. “Insh’allah”—if Allah wills it—she says with a resigned gesture. Insh’allah. Insh’allah, we will have water at the house when we get back to Abeche. Electricity tonight. Flyable weather tomorrow. No hijacking attempts. No local soldiers high on homegrown narcotics and making trouble. No rebel attacks. Why, again, do these pilots put up with all of this? “I wanted to be a better citizen of the world; get out of the U.S. and see what was happening in these places for myself instead of relying on Wolf Blitzer to tell me,” Lauren says that evening. “And I wanted to give something back.”

“We’re not in it for the money,” another Air Serv pilot named Darryl Wade tells me with a shrug. “We’re committed to the cause.” And here’s the thing. Yes, the flying and living conditions in Chad are tough, and the risk of banditry and violence is real. But I spend a morning at D’Jabal before I leave. And what I find there astounds me. I expect to find hollow shells of human beings, traumatized beyond recognition. But three years after these people fled their villages in terror, life is finding its way back into the stick shelters and fenced-in family enclosures here. New babies are being born. Children are playing and laughing. Men and women smile as I approach. Life in the camps is still extremely hard, and I have no illusions about any of these people being emotionally intact or unmarked. But it’s still stunning, what even a little bit of safety and food can do to restore the human heart and spirit. And Lauren, Myriam, Darryl and the other pilots are providing a lifeline to help make that food and safety possible. The future remains a mystry but for now, they have a window of peace, safety and relative quiet. Flying February 2008 13

ÂŠ Photograph by zachstern

Reconstructing The Flight A Method of Training and Accident Prevention By Jay Hopkins There are a number of reasons why around 700 people die each year in aircraft operating under Part 91 and Part 135, while Part 121 operations sometimes go an entire year without any fatalities. Airlines have stricter regulations, and operations manuals spell out every nuance of how a flight and the entire airline will be run. When they do have an accident, the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder usually allow the NTSB to get a pretty good idea of what led to that accident, allowing everyone to learn from that accident and avoid the same thing in the future.

RECONSTRUCTING THE FLIGHT

Monitoring Operational Trends Reduces Risks

Operational Parameters

The colored bands represent times in which certain flights exceeded normal operations, as follows: February 11, 2005 3:29 p.m. February 12, 2005 4:30 p.m. February 23, 2005 9:15 a.m. February 24, 2005 3:46 p.m.

February 24, 2005 5:25 p.m. June 25, 2005 10:15 p.m. December 13, 2005 1:32 p.m.

Data Recorders are used to analyze all aspects of flying. However, the program isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t used to spy on the crew. It only is used as a resource. The system collects data based on certain parameters. These parameters include: altitude, pitch, climb, rotation, airspeed, heading, yaw, roll, and bank angle. These parameters are analyzed in comparison to the mechanical aspects of the

airplane while in flight. Then a 3D animated - wire framed image is shown. Both the airplane and crew benefit from the data that is collected. Military and commercial aviation industries uses it to enhance flying of both their airplanes and their pilots. Airplane manufactures and insurance companies uses it as a source of protection. Flight schools use the system to train new and professional pilots. ÂŠ Photography by SimAuthor

The Flight Reconstruction System uses the Flight Quality Assurance Programs to reduce trends that could lead to accidents. It is developed as an inexpensive way for individual flight schools and pilots to reek the benefits of the FOQA program used in the commercial and aviation industry. These programs are also used as a maintenance resource to understand how the airplane is handling in flight.

16 Flying February 2008

Controlling The Risk Trends Reduces Accidents

Even though this was not a major incident, FOQA does help to reduce errors that could lead to major accidents. formation that can be recorded if desired. The UHL-FRS has a one-pound flight recorder that is a refinement of a system developed by David Ellis to eliminate the need for a barograph on competitive glider flights. It utilizes an internal GPS, a solid-state gyroscope and a highly accurate 10 G threeaxis accelerometer to take a digital snapshot of what the aircraft is doing every 10th of a second. It also includes a less accurate 50 G three-axis accelerometer that can record the forces experienced during a crash. The data is stored in a hardened memory unit that can hold up to 8,000 hours of flight data and is typically placed in the tail to enhance survivability in case of an accident. The memory unit is connected by a data cable to the flight recorder, which also has inputs for dynamic and static pressure, gear and flap position, and other aircraft system status information that can be recorded if desired. The flight recorder also has a flash card interface that allows the data from the memory to be extracted for analysis. The reason the hardware is so simple and inexpensive is that most of the work is done after the data is removed from the aircraft by software developed by Urban Lynch, the founder of UHL Research Associates. The software takes about 20 seconds to analyze a one-hour flight and produce a threedimensional wire frame reconstruction of that flight with both an external view and an out of the cockpit view. Over 18 other

parameters are also available for each data point, including heading, airspeed, altitude, bank angle, and pitch, yaw and roll attitude.

The reconstructed flight can be viewed real time, or any specific point of the flight can be analyzed in detail. A blue line shows the path of the aircraft through the air, while a green line shows the path across the ground. Yellow lines are used to indicate desired flight tracks and stabilized approach windows, while white lines show runways. Lynch has been testing and refining the Flight Reconstruction System over the past decade. For example, the U.S. Air Force is very interested and spent 21 hours testing the system on the F-15, F-16 and T-38. They found that the output was 95 percent accurate when compared with the actual aircraft parameters, and said this was “good enough” for their application. Even better, the software can combine the output from 32 separate aircraft to help analyze air combat maneuvering or aerobatic team performance. Flying February 2008 17

Part 121 operations have one other advantage that a lot of general aviation pilots may not be aware of. All major carriers now have a Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) program that analyzes the data from the flight data recorders to look for operational trends that might lead to an accident in the future if not corrected. FOQA programs got started in Europe in the mid1970s when airlines realized there was a wealth of information on flight data recorders that could be utilized to enhance the safety and effectiveness of their flight operations. The FOQA programs are not used to “spy” on flight crews. Instead, de-identified data from all flights is analyzed by computers to search for trends that could ultimately result in an accident. In one example cited by Christopher Jesse of the Institute of Industrial Research at the University of Portsmouth, England, an airline’s FOQA program discovered that its aircraft were often slowing to V2 after takeoff. The airline could use this information to adjust its training program to address the problem. The FOQA programs rely on heavy, expensive flight data recorders, putting this type of data analysis beyond the financial means of charter or corporate operators, flight schools or individual pilots. The memory unit is connected by a data cable to the flight recorder, which also has inputs for dynamic and static pressure, gear and flap position, and other aircraft system status in-

RECONSTRUCTING THE FLIGHT

The applications for this system are almost unlimited. While every operator could benefit from the analysis of operating parameters and variances, there are specific benefits for some applications:

Aircraft Manufacturers

Flight Schools I am very familiar with the advantage of being able to reconstruct an instructional flight. At SimuFlite we would generate printouts of various maneuvers and approaches to show the pilots exactly how they did. We could also tape the cockpit view during various maneuvers. It is often hard to describe exactly how the pilot was over-controlling on an approach. With the FRS, the student can see exactly what he was doing in real time. I could see how this could even become a marketing factor for schools that equip their aircraft with the FRS, as it would greatly enhance the effectiveness of the debriefing session after an instructional flight, allowing students to progress more rapidly. The FRS can also help flight schools monitor student solo flights and keep track of how rental pilots are operating their airplanes. One flight school in Malaysia that equipped an airplane with the FRS system was surprised to learn that a student pilot on a solo cross-country flight did not follow the intended flight plan, but instead wandered off to different areas where he was not supposed to go. This kind of blatant disregard for the rules could easily lead to an accident in the future.

Aerobatic and Military Operations Since the UHL software can combine the recordings from up to 32 aircraft into one presentation, it would be very useful 18 Flying February 2008

SimuFlite is one of the many schools that uses the FOQA to help students improve their flying skills. for an aerobatic team to analyze their performance. The military can use it for training in aerial combat maneuvering, allowing each pilot to see exactly how they flew and the effectiveness of various maneuvers.

Post-Accident Analysis This is where the FRS would really pay for itself. One of the most frustrating issues in general aviation is that many times we have no idea why an airplane crashed. This often leads to complicated litigation with the pilot’s estate blaming the manufacturer and the manufacturer blaming the pilot. An FRS would show investigators exactly what happened, which could reduce expensive litigation and hopefully result in reduced insurance rates for everyone. Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) has already experienced the power of this system. They tested eight demonstration recorders in some of the most difficult flying in the world to verify the accuracy of the units. During the demonstration period, an FRS-equipped airplane landed short of the runway in Indonesia at a remote landing strip that requires strict adherence to the specified approach procedure. Ordinarily it would have been assumed that the pilot had somehow lost his focus and caused the accident. By analyzing the FRS recording for this and other landings at this location, MAF determined that the pilot had done everything right, and that there were dangerous wind gusts

at certain times of the day that necessitated going to more conservative wind restrictions at that strip. Dave Rask, the manager of Aviation Safety for MAF, said they are going to install the FRS in additional aircraft and eventually hope to equip their entire fleet worldwide with this system.

Summary With any new system that monitors aircraft operation, there is bound to be resistance from pilots and instructors who don’t like the idea of anyone looking over their shoulders at everything they do. Once pilots understand that the data is typically used for de-identified trend and variance analysis to improve flight operations, and that it can exonerate a pilot after an incident or accident that was not their fault, I believe the inherent value in this system will become evident.

Over time, the information derived from many flights and accidents could allow us all to learn how to avoid those kinds of accidents in the future, ultimately saving lives by reducing the number of people who die each year in general aviation accidents.

Quartz Mountain Aerospace (qmaero. com), formerly Luscombe Aircraft, will be equipping every airplane they sell with the Flight Reconstruction System. They found that both the insurance companies and the leasing company they will be selling to are very interested in the system, as it could protect them by showing whether an accident was caused by an aircraft malfunction or pilot error. Quest Aircraft Company (questaircraft. com) will be putting the FRS into all the Kodiak single-engine turboprops they deliver.

WEATHER LESSONS LEARNED The third dimension really matters. By Richard L. Collins Weather to a ground person and weather to an air person are two completely different things. The ground person feels temperature and wind and precipitation and looks out the window or up at the sky at clouds. The ground person has to wait patiently for the weather in his location to change. Those of us who fly are literally part of it. The fact that we are x-feet high and moving relatively rapidly within a weather system means that we are in effect completely embedded in whatever is going on. Most of the pilots who get into weather trouble are those who do not go beyond the required knowledge of the sub20 Flying February 2008

ject. A weather-wise pilot is completely curious about what is going on and why it is going on. Every bit of wind and turbulence and cloud begs to be understood. As I have said many times before, when I got my private certificate the written test was 25 questions, true or false. There was no ground school. There was thus little or no training on weather. Our lessons were learned in flight and we were self-taught. There is no better place to learn about weather than in the cockpit of a light airplane. There you learn a whole lot more than the theory. The first lesson that I learned was that it is quite important to know where the fronts

and low pressure areas are located, the nature of the phenomenon and the flying weather it is creating. Why? Simple. If you are flying toward a front or low, the weather will get worse as you go along. If flying away, it might get better. How much worse or better depends on the strength of the system. When we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have anything other than the basics we used surface wind to gauge the nature of weather. Strong wind, strong weather. A barometer was also useful to measure the atmospheric pressure and the rate at which it was changing. We could get terminal forecasts by calling the Weather Bureau, or that dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s equiv

alent of an FSS, but most weather information was gleaned from listening to scheduled broadcasts of sequence reports at 15 and 45 after the hour. From the reports we could put together an idea of where the weather systems were located and how they were affecting the flying weather. We would usually write down the sequences so we could have an idea of trends. Before flying away we used a look out the window plus that rudimentary knowledge of the basics to decide whether or not to start out. The VFR/IFR deal was different in the ’50s, too. It was perfectly legal to cloud fly in uncontrolled airspace. It still is but there

was a lot of uncontrolled airspace then and not much now. As is true today, we had a burning desire to get as much utility as possible out of our airplanes. We knew, though, that we were pretty much on our own to figure out the weather and not fly the airplane into something we couldn’t handle, or into the ground. There would never be a way to tell, but I have often wondered if we did any worse on weather-related accidents per 100,000 hours than pilots are doing today. One thing that took a while to grasp was the slope of fronts. I remember when I first read about frontal slopes. I was amazed that they are so shallow and this explained ar-

eas of turbulence behind cold fronts that had come as a surprise. In retrospect, it is pretty simple. There is wind shear along the slope of a front, thus turbulence. I recall one day getting really pounded in my Piper Pacer when flying parallel to the surface position of a front, behind the front, looking for a place to sneak through. At the time, I did not know that I was flying on the slope of the front, and the turbulence was caused by wind shear associated with that slope. Wind shear was always there but understanding was a long time coming. One airline pilot said he was glad they didn’t invent wind shear until after he retired. Flying February 2008 21

WEATHER LESSONS LEARNED

Weather Front Transitions

A front are zones of transitions between air masses. They are located around boundaries surrounding two air masses. Certain data sets are attributed to fronts. They are: temperature, wind direction and intensity, cloud cover, precipitation, pressure, and dew point. Densities of temperature and moisture characterise individual fronts. When they collide, the less dense front overtakes the high density front, resulting in an occlu-

22 Flying February 2008

sion. These frontal conditions can be analyzed by looking at the surface conditions. If you know what the wind is like at the point of decent, you’ll have some idea of what is ahead. As you’re flying, the temperature changes because you’re crossing from one front to the other. The area where a cold air mass replaces a warmer one is known as a cold front. Areas where warm air masses replace cold air mass-

es are known as warm fronts. They move northwest to southeast. Sudden shifts in wind direction is a key characteristic of cold fronts. Cyclones are the beginnings of precipitation. Cold fronts extend from the south to the center of a low pressure. A warm front extends from the center of the low pressure and outward of the growing storm. Precipitation develops as colder and drier air mixes with warmer moist air to enclose the cold front.

Fronts are often the culprit of turbulence.

Weather Is A Concern In And Below Clouds thunderstorm imitation though it might be without the strong vertical currents. So, wind has been a big lesson learned and, like all else about weather, I never quit learning and discovering new things.

With an understanding of wind shear comes an ability to anticipate things that will affect the airplane, be it related to turbulence or performance. When flying an approach,

if you know the wind at the altitude where the final descent starts and the wind at the surface, you can anticipate how the airplane will be affected as it descends. It is true that a steady wind does not affect an airplane in flight, and for a long time a lot of pilots held tenaciously to the belief that wind doesn’t affect an airplane in flight, period. But when we learned how changing wind, with height or over distance, affects an airplane in flight we had a lot of answers to a lot of questions. Pilots were a long time learning about this, and once after I had written about how a decreasing tailwind affects an airplane as it descends on an ILS approach, I had an allegedly experienced aviator say

that this was a preposterous thing to say. He apparently flew along without wondering why his airplane was behaving as it was. Another wind lesson relates to mechanical turbulence. If wind flow over obstacles and rough terrain is visualized, we can do a better job of minimizing the bone-jarring turbulence that is found in those post-cold frontal conditions when the wind roars out of the northwest. The most basic observation is that it is rougher on the lee side of mountains than it is upwind of the mountains. The period of maximum turbulence behind a cold front in rough terrain can come soon after the front passes. The wind shear in the lower levels is maximized, and if the air behind the front is a lot colder than the air ahead of the front, the turbulence can be especially enthusiastic as the cold air scours the warmer air out of the valleys. I learned the lesson that it might be a good idea to wait awhile before flying after the passage of a strong front. The clouds and weather might be okay but the air might be in a period of maximum disturbance. When fronts occlude, usually a cold front overtakes a warm front because a low strengthens and starts moving more slowly as the cold front moves more rapidly; surface wind can be the first clue that this is happening. If there’s a strong southeast wind here and a strong southwest wind a bit farther west, that’s a sign of an occlusion between the two points. An occlusion is a big event for pilots, too, because the wind shear turbulence in an occlusion can do a pretty good

Clouds and percipitation determines whether pilots fly visually or by instrument. Clouds and precipitation and ceiling and visibility decide whether or not we can go VFR or successfully complete IFR approaches. Anytime the reported ceiling is 500 feet or less and the visibility two miles or less, and/or the temperature and dew point spread is 2 degrees or less, completing either a precision or a nonprecision approach is open to question. The main thing to learn here is that what you see is what you get. Especially with automated weather reporting equipment, the reported condition is a snapshot at the airport. An observer making a report might see a fog bank over the end of the runway, or see scud that the machine doesn’t detect, but you can’t count on that.

Don’t depend on forcasts for when fog will left. If the level of cooler air that is supporting the formation of fog is more than a few hundred feet thick, and the air above is quite a bit warmer, lifting will be slow. The culprit is scud. We are looking at a slant for a view of the runway, and it doesn’t take a lot of scud to obliterate that view. I learned long ago to glance down when passing through 500 feet on an ILS. If the ground is visible Flying February 2008 23

Wind at the point of descent and at the point of landing can give clues to conditions.

WEATHER LESSONS LEARNED

Low Pressure Systems Moves NW to SW

Precipitation develops when cold air takes in warmer air, causing it to cool as it rises. The moisture forms into clouds. Cloud cover and rain develop due to the moisture that has been

24 Flying February 2008

asorbed from the mix of warm and cold air. A storm grows in intensity because moisture is absorbed with a lot of force. A cyclone is known as the center of a low pressure system.

Cyclones vary in type and rotation direction. Those located in the northern hemisphere rotate counter clockwise. Cyclones in the southern hemisphere rotate the opposite direction.

ÂŠ Photographs byprairiecode on flickr

Low pressure systems grow, causing sudden wind shifts, cyclones, and percipitation.

“Flee The Ice” at first sign. that New Year’s Eve in a bar in Nashville. Thunderstorms have always been a fascinating challenge for me. I flew into one many years ago and it taught several good lessons. No radar then and I was flying from west to east. I didn’t know the synopsis but it was a warm or stationary front, or an area with the properties of one of those fronts. No thunderstorms were in the terminal forecasts. The clouds got dark, the rain started, the turbulence was like a roller coaster and there was lightning. The passage didn’t take long but it felt like an eternity. One lesson was that with some luck you can make it through an embedded warm frontal thunderstorm at low altitude if you pay careful attention to the attitude of the airplane. Another lesson was that I never wanted to do that again. And I didn’t, helped by an ever increasing amount of weather information. Today, a pilot who gets into thunderstorm trouble is simply pushing too hard.

Its better to keep a good distance from thunderstorms. At one point I did a lot of thunderstorm photography. The flying was visual, always. I learned never to get inside a cloud when avoiding big storms. But I did go out looking for storms. They were both easy to find in Arkansas and easy to avoid. I learned one day about the visual clues a storm will give about turbulence. I was giving a storm a wide berth.

I noticed some wispy clouds ahead, well away from the storm. As I approached those clouds, the turbulence went crazy. It actually threw a suitcase from the aft baggage area of my Cherokee Six into the front seat. I remembered that years later when I was avoiding a tornado-producing storm in the middle-Atlantic area. Using the radar, I probably had a 30-mile separation from the precipitation of the storm. Peering out the windshield, though, I saw some of those wispy clouds ahead and turned so the nose was pointed well to the left of those clouds

The turbulence around a thunderstorm is caused by wind shear. Air rushes into the storm, turns and heads upward, and then comes back down with the rain. Just like with rough terrain, visualizing wind flows around a storm can help avoid wind shear problems, both while taking off and landing and while maneuvering around the storm. Moving the wheel, wiggling the pedals and manipulating the power are one thing. Using the autopilot and managing the avionics are another thing. You have to be able to do those things to be checked out in an airplane. But a pilot is not complete until he faces the realization that, when flying, we are part of the weather and the more we understand it, the better we can manage the weather-related risk found in flying. When it comes to flying experience, only the next hour counts. But weather wisdom is cumulative. Flying February 2008 25

and there is scud beneath, best be ready to miss the approach regardless of what the reported weather might be. The base of any scud is likely to be below 200 feet. And then there is fog, the lowest clouds of all. The fog lessons are pretty simple. Don’t depend on any forecast of the time for fog to lift. It’s a hard forecast to make. That’s especially true if there is snow on the ground. If there are higher clouds that will prevent the sun from shining on fog, that too makes a difference. Fog that forms in an upslope condition, where, for example, there is an easterly flow over the ever higher ground of the Midwest, can be thick and widespread and tenacious. That is a time to carefully guard your fuel reserves. There is really only one weather-related thing that we can do in Part 91 operations that will likely result in trouble with the government. If we fly into an icing condition that is getting the best of the airplane, the NTSB will scold if we crash and the FAA will prosecute if we cause a stir in the air traffic control system. The lesson is that you can fly a lot in the icing season without getting a lot of ice. The main requirement, deiced or not, is to flee the ice at the first sign of it. Change altitude or turn around and go back to the ice-free air from which you came. Pilots who get into ice trouble are the ones who keep going, hoping that it will get better. W hen dealing w ith conditions that might be conducive to icing, the business about knowing your position on a weather map is important. If you are flying toward a low or a front, the tops will become higher and the ice will get worse the closer you get to the inclemency. I made that mistake a few times, many years ago, and vowed not to repeat it. If there is something that tells you that any ice is likely to get worse in a hurry, it is turbulence. Turbulence in clouds means cumulus and cumulus means larger supercooled water droplets more of them, and the likelihood of airframe icing at colder temperatures. I learned that lesson in western Tennessee, flying toward a surface low that was located in northern Louisiana. If I had known then what I know now, I’d have spent

28 Flying February 2008

Flash Back

Celebrating more than 50 years of publication By Mac McCellan

January 1940

Parade of Pistons

Copyright ©1996-2004 Barewalls Interactive Art, Inc. All rights reserved. / Flying Staff / gbaku (flickr) / Quadrofonic Wingnut (flickr) / tomspixels (flickr) / Cheap Camera Tricks (flickr) / jkaiser (flickr) / marit79 (flickr) / b0jan (flickr)

By Mark Phleps

Rolling out the new pistons. Seven hundred attendees at an aviation event might not seem like many, unless they’re the right 700 people. The Parade of Pistons (POP) show held over three days last week is the first of a series and is sponsored, in part, by Flying and AMPT. Exhibitors are limited to new aircraft vendors and service providers such as tax consultants, finance specialists, insurance companies and hangar sales. The unhurried atmosphere afforded serious shoppers the chance to accomplish far more than simply craning their necks for a casual look. One visitor commented, “I was able to sit in all three aircraft I’m interested in … I sat in them all twice, went on a demo and filled out a credit application.” Future POP events are scheduled for Dallas, Denver and Asheville, North Carolina.

February 1950

Piper Matrix

By Robert Goyer When Piper announced back in early November that it was going to produce an unpressurized, roughly $750,000 version of its Mirage six-place pressurized piston single, the reaction from

the media was, well, downright tepid. At face value it seemed as though Piper was merely trying to lower the price point of its million-dollar-plus, cabin-class, pressurized offering while still keeping the Mirage a viable product. And worst of all, it was doing it simply by subtracting some value from it, in the form of pressurization. After all, the critics asked, how much can it cost to put the pressurization system in an airframe already built to be pressurized? The whole Matrix exercise seemed like a cynical marketing ploy designed to drum up a few more PA-46 sales, nothing more. One aviation publication even referred to it as a “deflated Mirage” and asked, “Does the world really need an unpressurized Mirage?” Since that time, I’ve had a chance to get to know the airplane and to fly it, and as it turns out, the critics, and I was one of them, were dead wrong. In fact, the Matrix is the best “new” airplane I’ve flown in ages, and when looked at rightly, it’s one of the most innovative ideas to come down the pike in a good long time. After all, how you get to a design shouldn’t matter, just what you’ve got when you get there. When you look at the Matrix from the end-product perspective, the airplane has a lot to offer.

September 1970

New Flight Indicators By Mark Phelps

New overhaul on flight controls. Rick Garcia, owner of Gulf Coast Avionics in Lakeland, Florida, pulled rank, reserving his company’s first Aspen Avionics Evolution system for his own personal Piper Seneca. “I believe this product is going to revolutionize avionics upgrades,” Garcia told Flying. The Aspen Evolution EFD1000 replaces steam gauge horizon and direction-

al gyros with computerized “glass” versions. The IFR Evolution “Pro” version sells for less than $10,000, while the VFR “Pilot” version is less than $6,000. Garcia estimates about $5,000 to install the Pro version, depending on how much interfacing is needed with other aircraft avionics such as GPS navigators and autopilots. Last Friday, Aspen Avionics, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, received its FAA Approved Model List Supplemental Type Certificate authorizing installation on close to 400 aircraft models.

January 1981

3D Synthetic Vision By Mark Phelps

The system guides you all the way. The FAA has granted supplemental type certification for Garmin’s three-dimensional Synthetic Vision Technology (SVT). The system displays high-resolution, 3D graphic depictions of terrain, runways, obstacles and even traffic on the primary flight display (PFD). The graphics replace Garmin’s previous blue-over-brown PFD depiction. The user-customizable system also incorporates highway-in-the-sky guidance with rectangular boxes depicted on the PFD, and a flight path marker-which clearly indicates where the aircraft’s flight path is taking it. Garmin said SVT should be available in July for aircraft equipped with its G1000 and G900X (experimental only) systems, and G1000retrofitted King Air C90s some time next year. No hardware changes are needed for the SVT upgrade, but the software changeover will have to be made at a Garmin dealer.

September 1994

100 Jets Purchased

By the Flying Edit Staff Fractional jet operator Flight Options recently placed an order for nearly Flying February 2008 29

Who ever thought Flying is where it is now. Over eighty years ago, Flying spread it’s wings and took off. First known as Popular Aviation, in May 1943, the brand name became Flying. Today, Flying and it’s staff work hard to educate, inform, and entertain pilots and enthusiasts alike in the general and business aviation industry. These excerpts from past issues show the range of content, from tips and techniques to small pistons and super business jets.

FLASH BACK

$1 billion worth of Phenom 300 light jets, with a firm order for 100 jets and an option for up to 50 more. Flight Options is slated to get its first Phenom 300 in late 2009. The purchase will greatly increase Flight Options’ already strong presence in the fractional/jet card marketplace, giving it a large number of identically equipped, capable airplanes (1,800 nm range and a max speed of Mach .78) that will compete with other fractional providers’ super-light jet offerings.

Mach .85 cruise speed, the Global 5000 is capable of maximum cruise speed of Mach .89, fastest in the large cabin business jet category. The Global cabin is the largest conventional business jet now available, and it will soon have the Global Vision avionics system based on the new Collins Pro Line Fusion family of avionics.

available with optional XM Weather and Pocket Plates approach charts for $1,895. (An introductory discount of $200 is in effect.) The ATC comes standard with Sanyo’s StreetNav navigator and needs no external antenna or wiring. A year’s worth of Intenetdownloadable database updates is included

July 2000

New Embraer Jets

March 1996

By Mark Phelps

More Autopilot

January 2002 By Mark Phelps

Free Weather Course

By the Flying Edit Staff The National Weather Association is offering a free “Weather Theory for Pilots” interactive course on its website. The course covers basic atmospheric theory, including moisture, vertical motion and stability, and is designed for new or low-time pilots. This course compliments other online courses already offered by the NWA that address flying when thunderstorms are present or forecast and winter weather flying. The NWA is a nonprofit professional organization made up of more than 3,000 meteorologists and students who work in broadcasting, research and operational forecasting. To access the course go to the NWA website at nwas.org.

April 1998

Larger Pay Load By the Flying Edit Staff

More options to allow less hands on. Avidyne has introduced a product that claims to reduce pilot IFR workload by 75 to 90 percent, compared with “existing units.” Replicating the function of a business jet’s flight management system (FMS), the Avidyne FMS900W works in conjunction with the Entegra integrated avionics suite. The goal is to make operating the system easier; one example is a logic that “autofills” based on the closest waypoint-so if you’re westbound from Solberg VOR, for example, and you type in ‘B’ it might autofill Boply intersection-the next waypoint on Victor 30. Flying Senior Editor Robert Goyer said, “This could be bigger news than even Avidyne thinks it is.”

A new business design style. Embraer has confirmed it will proceed with development of two new jet projects, a so-called Midlight Jet (MLJ) and a Midsize Jet (MSJ). Though not yet named, the new jets will fall between the Brazilian company’s Phenom 100 and 300 models and the Legacy 600, a business jet version of the ERJ135 regional jet liner. The two new jets will share the same wing design and fuselage cross section. But the MLJ is projected to have a “regional” range of 2,300 nautical miles while the MSJ will be a “coastto-coast” jet with 3,000-nautical mile range.

August 2003

Largest Business Jet By the Flying Edit Staff

August 2001

New Navigation GPS By Mark Phelps

30 Flying February 2008

A new design for luxury and comfort.

More navigation features than you can think. The Anywhere Travel Companion (ATC) from Control Vision is taking on Garmin’s 496/495 for bragging rights as the most capable portable GPS navigator on the market. Pittsburg, Kansas-based Control Vision claims its ATC has a significantly larger screen (4.3 inches vs 3.75 inches) and roughly double the resolution. Priced at $895, it is

In February Cessna announced details of its new Model 850 Citation Columbus, the first business jet in the line to have a flatfloor cabin with 6-feet 1-inch stand-up headroom. The Columbus promises 4,000 nm of IFR range flying at Mach .80. The airplane will be powered by P&W 810 engines. . Collins will be the principal avionics supplier featuring its new Pro Line Fusion system with four 15-inch flat panel displays, synthetic vision, autothrottle, dual flight management systems.

I’m light and fast! Bombardier has increased the max takeoff weight of its large cabin Global 5000 business jet to 92,500 pounds, allowing it to carry more fuel. The added fuel increases the IFR range 400 nm to 5,200 nm when cruising at a fast Mach .85 (488 kts), a range increase of 8 percent. The extra fuel is standard on Globals ordered after February 1st of this year and is an option on airplanes previously ordered but scheduled for delivery in 2009. Though the range increase comes at