Here's the second installation of the training that Flight International test pilot Mike Gerzanics took with Mesa, Arizona-based APS.
In this 9-minutes installment, Gerzanics samples the "zoom maneuver", "all-attitude" handling and roll-damping demonstration.
Click here for Part 1 of our coverage of the Upset Recovery program.
A 5 January request by the FAA for comments on a proposal to modify an existing Advisory Circular became significantly more serious on 10 January.
On that day in Oakley, California, an ag pilot lost his life after hitting an unmarked gray-coloured meteorological tower meant to collect wind data.
Here's a picture of Rockwell International S-2R N4977X in better days...
According to the NTSB report, witness said the pilot made no maneurvers before hitting the 197ft-tall galvanized metal structure with guy wire supports, indicating that he probably didn't see it. By regulation, towers less than 200ft tall do not have to be lit.
The issue has been on the minds of a lot of people of late. As Flight International discussed in a recent environment report, "Aviation officials in Idaho say the slim towers are difficult to spot if not marked, are installed in a matter of days, and can be gone in 12-18 months," the report states. "Many pilots have 'close call' stories to relate," say officials
The FAA in its Jan 5 notice, asked for comments from the public on improvements that could include lighting and making guy wires stand out.
The document also tells of a meeting in November where the Ag pilots advocacy organization laid out its concerns:
The FAA has received complaints and inquiries from agricultural operations in remote or rural areas regarding the safety impacts of these towers on low-level agricultural operations. In addition, representatives from the National Agricultural Aviation Association (NAAA) met with the FAA on November 16, 2010 to discuss safety specific concerns of the aerial application industry. The NAAA suggested safety guidelines and marking and lighting criteria in order to reduce the risks for aerial applications. A copy of the material provided by NAAA has been placed in the docket.
STP#2 - You mess with the bull, you get the horn
Warning: This SPT, involving a Robinson R44 helicopter (and yes, a bull...) does not have a happy ending for anyone involved.
The Robinson R44, like its smaller brother, the R22, is a very versatile and hardy helicopter.
Problem is, some operators become so comfortable with the four-seaters that they "use them like trucks", says Robinson Helicopters chief test pilot, Doug Tompkins.
Here's a case from last year's National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) files where the false sense of four-wheel, grounded security went tragically wrong.
Ranch work on Saturday, June 19, 2010 in Unalaska, Alaska was going well. Lonnie was flying the R44 with two ranch hands on board.
According to witness accounts from the two helpers, the group had finished hauling food and supplies to the ranch using the Robinson, then decided to have a bit of fun - flying low along streams looking for salmon.
Along one stream however, they saw a bull "tangled in a lot of plastic wrap from his horns to his back right leg", according to the statement.
Lonnie decided to help the bull out, landing and letting his helpers out and taking back off to try and herd the animal toward the men so that they could cut it free from the plastic.
"The bull took off once he saw us hop out, so Lonnie tried to push him toward us but it kept fighting him," said one of the men, adding, "The bull ran about a half a mile before getting tired out. Lonnie kept trying to knock him down, or landing on the plastic so we could tackle him."
Things went downhill from there.
Lonnie then began using the helicopter's right skid as a lever to hook the plastic and lift the bull up, presumably to knock it off it's feet so the guys could work on it.
He succeeding in hooking the plastic, but it broke when he lifted the bull.
"By that time, my friend and I were tired out to wrestle the bull and we kept telling [Lonnie] to quit but he picked it up once more...", the helper remembered.
This time, the plastic didn't break, but the helicopter did.
"Once he picked it up it looked fine but after that he went forward and started going right and crashed at the bottom of the hill we were on," said the man.
Post Mortem: 2 dead - Lonnie and the bull (picture courtesy of NTSB).
Upset Recovery, or lack thereof, would appear to be the culprit in a growing number of aviation crashes, not least important of which is the Colgan Air Q400 nightmare scenario in Buffalo, New York back in 2009.
With that recognition, KLM Airlines is the first carrier to institute mandatory Upset Recovery Training (URET) to its pilot traineers at the KLM Academy in Phoenix, Arizona through nearby Aviation Performance Solutions (APS). Here's the link to a story I wrote about it last week.
We have a good bit of insight into what that training will look like, thanks to a trip to APS by our test pilot Mike Gerzanics back in September. Included here is the first in what will be a series of four or five YouTube clips detailing Mike's flight experience at APS.
Video 1 includes APS's five-stage stall recovery (PUSH-POWER-RUDDER-ROLL-CLIMB) process as well as the "falling leaf" maneuver.
Video 2 will cover the "zoom" maneuver, all-attitude maneuvering and positive and negative roll damping.
Hope you enjoy. Sorry about the crappy audio quality - my fault, not APS's.
As a corollary to my recently launched Stupid Pilot Tricks (SPT) blog series, I'm also starting a Lucky To Be Alive (LTBA) Series as I'm quite amazed at how people survive what otherwise look to be unsurvivable accidents. Based on words and pix from the US National Transportation Safety Board.
Here's #1
LTBA#1: Hitting the broad side of a barn
Thomas Solomon of Plano, Texas is either a damned good pilot or one of the luckiest pilots alive. Or perhaps he's both.
At 8:45pm central time on a jet-black night during a solo cross-country from Destin, Florida to Addison, Texas, he runs out of fuel near Carthage, Texas (about 170 miles short of his destination) in his Piper Cherokee 140 single-engine piston-powered aircraft (N333NA).
I'll let Mr. Solomon tell the story from here. We pick up the incident just after he calls Shreveport air traffic controllers and tells them of his predicament (he was concerned about remaining fuel and the behaviour of the gauges).
"8:45 Approach gives nearest airport and I determine that I wouldn't make it. Approach gives nearby road, and heading, and I try that direction, but realize I need to pick something closer and more visible."
"Trying to switch tanks, Fuel pump on/off to restart"
"See a car on a road, but other than the car, the road is invisible. No other roads visible either."
"Spot a lit parking lot near a facility with tanks or silos at one end. Decide to appoach and try to land there...."
Soon after, he gets what appears to be a repreive from the dying engine, albeit one that is short lived.
"Power comes back on Full power. At least 10, maybe 15 seconds. Begin a climb. Power completely goes off. Nose drops sharply."
Just then he spots a barn with its "roof lit from above". He surmises the barn is unoccupied and decides to land.... on its roof.
"Flare upon arrival at front of barn, just above the roof. I remember wondering why it took so long to impact, then feeling impact and a small sense of relief that I didn't miss the barn."
More importantly than Solomon not missing the barn, was him NOT hitting things like rafters. The NTSB notes that the Cherokee hit in an attitude that was "near vertically".
Solomon was just as nonchalant about his escape from the hanging aircraft.
"I exited through the windshield of the aircraft since it was broken in the collision and it was relatively easy to depart this way."
Gulfstream will be trolling the Canadian waters of Toronto and Montreal during the first week of February for aerospace engineers "with at least 5 years experience".
According to a Linked in blast earlier this week, the Savannah, Georgia-based manufacturer of ultra-elite business jets, including the new G650, wants to "meet with individuals that have interest in exploring opportunities with our company". In particular, Gulfer is looking for engineers with "electrical and mechanical systems engineering talent".
Them are likely to be fightin' words up North.
Toronto and Montreal are home turf for Gulfstream's greatest rival, Bombardier, which itself just launched two ultra long-range competitors to the G650, the Global 7000 and Global 8000. Gulfstream has been rumoured to be designing all-new jets to replace the upper echelon of its twin-jet family, a move that would seem to necessitate hiring more engineers.
A contact at Bombardier told me it certainly sounded like a case of poaching.
A contact at Gulfstream didn't know the specifics of the recruiting drive, but thought a meeting in Canada in February might net engineers looking to live the luxuriously warm Savannah. Who could blame them!
You can't make this stuff up, really. This is a the first in a new series I'm calling "Stupid Pilot Tricks" that will be based on recent NTSB accident and incident reports.
SPT#1: With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Nevada-based pilot and flight instructor Earl Griffin, 70, thought he'd say "hellow" to his buddy Dave, who was driving a white 2008 Ford Explorer on a dirt road in Crystal, Nevada in January of 2010.
Problem was, Earl was flying a Piper Cherokee 235 (N9083W) at the time.
You can guess by the name of this new feature that the results weren't good. Luckily no one was killed.
In Earl's own words in the accident report. My comments in [...]:
"I departed BTY [Beatty Airport in Nevada] about 12:50am [he meant pm] to Crystal. I was decending [he's the bad speller, not me] to land and saw Daves car on the dirt road."
"I decided to say hellow."
Earl cranked the 235 around in a 180-deg "decinding" turn and rolled out "going toward him", he writes.
"It looked like I as going to be to low. I started recovery from the descent, the closure rate was fast."
"I hit his car with my left main landing gear". [Ouch]
The damage had been done to poor Dave [he was listed as a serious injury in the NTSB report], but Earl wasn't done.
"I climbed about 200ft and was turning right to check on Dave. The airplane started to stall, the engine was running but no power [karma?]... I turned back left and landed on the dirt road."
Left main landing gear no longer aboard....
Jamaica tomorrow (Wednesday) will open its second "new" airport in as many months, at the same time paying homage to a novelist who boosted the tourist nation's cachet.
Ian Fleming international airport, formerly known as Boscobel Aerodrome, lies several kilometres from Goldeneye, where Fleming wrote all 14 of his James Bond books, according to Fleming's web site.
The photo below shows the airport and Bond beach area to the east, near Fleming's retreat.
The airport, with single 1,500m (5,000ft) runway, had been in operation for 30 years before a renovations began in 2009. The facility has been open unofficially since May, hosting singer Jimmy Buffet as its first international arrival.
In December, a new private turf runway general aviation airport, exclusively for the use of guests at the Jakes hotel, opened for business as well.
Jamaica's minister for information, telecommunications and special projects, Daryl Vaz, says the new name "will significantly enhance the marketing of the airport and the area to the international aviation community and, therefore should prove to be a 'value-added' asset."
Flight International helicopter test pilot Peter Gray (left in picture) got the goods on the new Rolls-Royce turboshaft-powered Robinson R66 on 5 January at Robinson's home airport in Torrance, California.
After an air-to-air photography mission (with yours truly in shooting pix from the back seat of an R44), chief test pilot Doug Tompkins (right in picture) gave Peter a thorough checkout in the five-seat single, including a variety of autorotation, vortex ring state and maximum performance maneuover demonstrations.
I've split out the day-long introduction to the R66 into three vidoes, below. Stay tuned for Flight International's full test flight by Peter Gray in the 1 March issue of the magazine.
Frank Robinson says he studied a compound version of the piston-powered four-seat R44 Raven helicopter, but ultimately dropped the idea.
"It'll work, but it didn't give me the improvement in efficiency or performance in the speed range I wanted," he says.
I was fortunate to spend 15 minutes with Robinson yesterday afternoon. The helicopter industry icon, now retired and turning 81 next week, was at the office on Torrance boulevard in Los Angeles, the location where he's built Robinson helicopters since the 1970s.
Earlier in the day, we (Flight International) experienced Mr. Robinson's latest and greatest, the Rolls-Royce powered R66 turbine, a helicopter that represents the culmination of his more than four decades of engineering in the industry - his swan song. (I'll talk about all of that in later blog posts, and in Flight International's 1March magazine, where we'll have an R66 pilot report by Peter Gray and many other civil helicopter features.)
Here's a picture I took of the R66 on 5 January from an R44 photo ship.
When I asked Frank what he thought about the success of the Sikorsky X2 compound helicopter, he brought up the R44 project.
He never actually built one, but did a series of dive tests on the R44 to determine the extra power that would be needed. The configuration was to be the standard R44 with anti-torque rotor on the tail, but with a pusher propeller on the longitudinal axis as well to push speeds up to the 140-150kt range.
Too bad it didn't play out.
Robinson continues to ponder electric power to this day. When asked about Sikorsky's all-electric Firefly helicopter, which was supposed to have had first-flight by now, Robinson said that's an area in which he is also very interested in, but not for the usual environmental reasons of saving gas and cutting emissions.
Robinson would like to use electric propulsion as a backup power mode to give single-engine helicopters an added safety margin compared to a twin. It's brilliant - all the safety features without the added cost, weight and fuel burn...
UPDATE AT BOTTOM
In today's Federal Register, there's a notice of proposed special conditions for single occupant side-facing seats in a new twin-engine 99,600lb business jet that I've never heard of - the GVI.
It very well could be that the FAA was mistaken, and meant to say G650, which is Gulfstream's latest and largest aircraft, set for certification later this year.
Or
...is Gulfsteam perhaps "feelin so fly like a G6", hanging its star on the popular Far East Movement song...
Adding to the Roman number mystery, the company last summer put in a trademark application for yet another Roman numeral aircraft...
UPDATE: Some info provided by Gulfstream on 4 January 2011:
The certification nomenclature for the G650 is the "GVI". They are the same. Just like the GV-SP is the G550 and the GIV-X is the G450. The special condition you mentioned is for a single-person, side-facing seat. Since a customer may choose that as an option on the G650, we wanted to have the approval ahead of time. The seat can be located just about anywhere in the aircraft cabin.
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