November 2011 Archives

"Why gamble with your money when you gamble with your life???"

That, complete with extra question marks, is the marketing pitch of Skydive Las Vegas, which gives clients the chance to be thrown out of a Pacific Aerospace P-750 XSTOL turboprop.

Our intrepid Flightblogger Jon Ostrower took up the challenge. "The anticipation of the jump is harder than the jump itself," he said.

"The cold cabin, the rushing wind and lack of conversation provide the soundtrack for a swirling mind.

At some point, I just accepted the next events of my life were in the control of others."

And his post-jump reaction? "When can we go again?"

Elsewhere in blogs, Asian Skies recorded the "dismal fate shared by 23 former Royal Australian Air Force F-111s".

"The fuselages of the iconic aircraft were last week buried in an Australian landfill, outraging the sensibilities of the nation's aviation geeks," wrote Greg Waldron.

Mary Kirby signs off as Runway Girl with an uncensored blog post. She writes: "I am extraordinarily grateful for all the opportunities provided to me by Flightglobal - the ability to write for its esteemed magazine and online titles, to jump behind the shaky camera and in front of the (unforgiving) high-def camera, and to bounce around the aircraft static displays at some of the world's greatest air shows.

"More than anything, however, I am grateful for having been afforded the autonomy to write this blog uncensored."

Why not take advantage of a seasonal discount of 20% at the Flightglobal Image Store, which houses a whole host of modern and vintage images.

Check out the different categories to make it easier to find what you're looking for:

Iconic Front Covers / Women In Aviation / World War II - 1939-45 / Cutaways Pre 1914 / 1930s Civil / 1930s Military / Post WWII / Experimental Prototypes /Air Races and Modern Aircraft Flight Collection

And don't forget to enter the Flight International Front Cover Competition where your winning image could grace the final issue of the magazine in 2011. Closing date 5 December.  

The DEW Line carried footage of Sukhoi's third PAK-FA prototype, the T-50-3, in flight: "Note the absence of a pitot tube on the nose."

Safety expert David Learmount posted to his eponymous blog a clip of a rotorcraft crash in New Zealand, commenting that it "demonstrates why helicopters have a high accident rate relative to fixed wing.

Making a sound decision about whether or not to operate [in a given space] entails understanding the principles of risk management, but most pilots are not trained in it."

On Asian Skies, Greg Waldron shared a finding from the Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules media flight in Dubai.

"When the C-130J is unloading cargo in a hot landing zone, the pilot can feather the aircraft's propellers while keeping the engines at a high power rating. This means the guys rushing to unload are not blanketed by dust while they work, yet the aircraft can still take off quickly if necessary."

Emirates Airline's president Tim Clark, BEA AF447 investigation team, Sikorsky's X2 pilot Kevin Bredenbeck and airline pioneer Burt Rutan have been named Leader, Innovator, Aviator and lifetime award winner in the third annual Flightglobal Achievement Awards.

Honoured in front of VIPs at an awards ceremony held at Dubai's prestigious Al Badia Golf Club, the awards were presented to the great and good in the aviation industry.

The winners of Leader, Innovator and Aviator were selected and voted for by the users of flightglobal.com and generated more than 4,000 votes.

The fourth - for Lifetime Achievement - was a special award from the publisher of Flight International and the Flightglobal family of products,  was awarded to aviation pioneer Burt Rutan, who also spoke at the event about his long and distinguished career.

Also announced at the star-studded event was the winner of the sixth Boeing Engineering Student of the Year Award, which was chosen by a distinguished panel of current and former senior engineers at Boeing.

The winner was Noël Bakhtian, who is closing in on a PhD focused on supersonic retro propulsion - which may be the key to resolving entry problems posed by the Red Planet

The event was sponsored by Boeing, Bombardier, AJW Aviation and Ascend, and hosted by Flight International editor Murdo Morrison.

More details on each of the winners and information on all the runners up can be found at flightglobal.com/awards11.

For all the latest news and views from the Dubai air show, visit our dedicated show page.

On his blog The DEW Line, Stephen Trimble addressed a question: what happens to Scaled Composites after Burt Rutan?

As the Cro(ft) Flies carried a piece that followed up on John Croft's YouTube post about the landing crash of a militarised Air Tractor AT-802U variant in October 2010, and on a just-published NTSB preliminary report about the Uvalde, Texas crash of a turbine AT-402 - from which, miraculously, the pilot walked away with no injuries.

Croft's conclusion? "I would not like to be a participant in an aircraft crash, but if I were forced to do so, I'd want to be riding in an Air Tractor."

Croft also posted video from the first flight of E-volo's manned 16-rotor electric multicopter in Germany last month.

And on Ariel View, Arie Egozi labelled the Taxibot being developed by Airbus and Israel Aerospace Industries "a revolution in aircraft ground movements".

We've just launched an iPhone and iPad app for visitors attending this year's Dubai Air Show.

It's designed to help visitors get around the show, keep up to date with announcements and provide helpful show and local information.

The app is free and available from the iTunes store.

There are some really nice features in the app:

• Hall maps: The maps of the different halls allow users to tap on individual stands and chalets to bring up exhibitor details
  
• Static map: The static map will be updated as soon as the final static plan is released (likely to be a couple of days before the show starts). Tapping on individual aircraft will bring up details specific to that aircraft.
  
• Exhibitors listings: Fully searchable and features tap thrus to the exhibitor's chalet or stand position on the maps
  
• Flying times: We'll update the daily flying display schedule each morning of the show as we receive the final details
  
• Show news: All the latest stories will be piped into the app in full text with photos (where present)
  
• Local and show information: There's a bunch of useful information relating to taxis, show opening times, restaurant suggestions and nightlife
  

The app works offline (once you've installed it for the first time), but obviously to receive the latest news and flying display times, you'll need to restart the app when connected to wifi or 3G (with data roaming switched on).

Ever diligent in his scrutiny of National Transportation Safety Board reports, As the Cro(ft) Flies blogger John Croft had the story of Dublin, Ohio's Kevin O'Grady, who in attempting to fly a 1964 Piper PA28-235 ran it into a hangar, damaging a Stearman B75N1 therein but injuring only pride.

O'Grady had left one magneto on, the mixture and throttle "full on", and the parking brake off.

FlightBlogger posted video from his trip aboard the Boeing 787's first revenue flight, operated by All Nippon Airways.

On Asian Skies, Greg Waldron labelled Martin Van Creveld's book The Age of Airpower a must-read.

"If reading something so obviously work related on holiday marks me as a workaholic, then so be it," wrote Waldron. "Perhaps worse, I couldn't put it down."

And on The DEW Line, Stephen Trimble noted the General Dynamics F-16's appearance in a head-spinning Turkish advert for dishwashers.