June 2006 Archives

There are few assignments these days that give you a chance to circumnavigate the globe, let alone do it by a true classic airliner – and all the while inspecting some of the most advanced composite manufacturing sites in the world.

This highly unusual odyssey was set-up by Boeing which wanted to show the progress being made on the 787 by its global partners in the US, Italy and Japan. Our ‘vessel’ was a distinctly venerable 727-100 (pictured above) which had originally plied the Berlin corridor routes for Pan American. It was first delivered to the now vanished carrier in June 1967 and in later years had been converted into an executive jet. Lavishly appointed inside, the trijet had formerly been the corporate barge for a jeans manufacturer and the personal transport of tennis star André Agassi.

Our journey began on a sunny Sunday morning at Paine Field, home of Boeing’s enormous Everett production facility. Taxing for take-off it was not the gleaming lines of new 777s that attracted attention, however, but the incongruous sight of a brand new Messerschmitt Me-262 being refuelled with an over-wing fuel bowser for its next test flight. Combined with the everyday Boeing testing and the presence of preserved aircraft such as the B-52 and de Havilland Comet 4, the sight the Me-262 doing circuits (as captured by Flight TV at the ILA Berlin air show) surely makes Everett one of the most eclectic airports in the USA, even from my vantage point of an unusual rear-facing seat (pictured below).

The first leg of the journey took us to Charleston and the steamy summer evening in South Carolina. A warm, deeply humid wind funnelled through the city, driven by the distant tropical storm Alberto which – although we did not know it at the time - was to affect our journey the next day. Fort Sumter, starting point for the US Civil War, was a distant group of lights across the wide bay that night.

Global Aeronautica and Vought were the hosts the following day, proudly showing off brand new facilities still under construction (pcitured above) and telling us how acres of swampy land and its resident population of alligators and large spiders had been cleared to create the site.

With Alberto coming closer the sky had by now turned steel grey to the south, and as we boarded the 727 a tell-tale ‘dog star’ appeared in the west (a sure sign to sailors of bad weather on the way). By now the crew had abandoned their original flight plan to head to Italy via a fuel stop at the Azores, and instead announced we would be heading to Gander, Newfoundland.

Chased north by stiff tailwinds we made good time, tracking off shore before crossing Nova Scotia and landing in twilight at Gander. Canadian immigration officials approached us across a rain slicked apron and entered the 727 via the aft stairs beneath the tail. They informed us the gift shop had been re-opened specially for us, but that we’d better hurry if we didn’t want to get wet as “there’s another shower due in a-boat now.”

The Gander terminal (pictured above), totally empty on this quiet Monday night, was essentially unchanged from the day it was opened by HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1958. Still echoing to the days of its lost grandeur when it was a pivotal refuelling stop on the North Atlantic run, the terminal displayed pictures of its historic past – including memories of 11 September, 2001 when it temporarily became a refugee camp for thousands of passengers who were forced to divert there that day.

Returning to our mission, we took off and joined the North Atlantic traffic heading east. A lottery was taken among the onbaord hacks (pictured above) to see who would sleep in the only bed on the aircraft, a double queen-sized, en-suite affair in the state room close to the flight deck. I was amongst the losers, so made do with an air mattress on the floor of the aft most cabin by the galley. From my lowly couch I could see the intakes of both side-mounted Pratt & Whitney JT8D-7As (right), though the noise was not as obtrusive as I would have expected.

Sleep was difficult; despite the gentle and perpetual ‘Dutch roll’ which tried to rock you into a slumber as it went through a full cycle roughly every seven seconds. As a very short night ended the sun came up over dense cloud covering the UK as we tracked towards Europe. Crossing the Belgian coast near Ostend, our 727 flew through clear skies over Brussels, Luxembourg and the Franco-German border country all the way south to the Alps, before heading out over the Adriatic. Leaving Venice beneath our port wing, the offshore islands of Croatia's Dalmatian coast lay well to the west the 727 hugged the Italian coast.

Our approach to Brindisi (pictured above), on the heel of Italy, was delayed while air traffic control cleared the local airspace to shepherd a lost Cessna 172. On landing we discovered the errant aircraft was German registered, prompting comments that it was probably a group of World Cup escapees who were determined to get a good place for their towels on the beach before the rest of Europe went on holiday!

Soon we were on a compact bus trundling through the olive groves en-route across the actual heel of the Italian boot to Grottalgie, home to Alenia Aeronautica’s new 787 facility, where we were shown a 787 section-holding robot vehicle (below). Greeted by Alenia’s senior management, we all sat down to a buffet lunch with mozzarella cheese, olives, bread and wine. Discussion was dominated by gossip about the Airbus A380 delay, news of which greeted us on arrival, and of course, the recovery plan for the failed Boeing 787 barrel test.

Later, asking a question about the supposed nearby location of the house of Virgil – the ancient Roman poet and author of the Aeneid - I was surprised by the reaction of my host. Turning to me, clearly shocked and confused he replied: “well obviously our composite manufacturing site requires many new people who may be inexperienced, but we would certainly not call them as you do – ‘virgins’.” Note to self: must try harder on the old language skills.

Italy was also a reminder that the World Cup was indeed being played, a fact easy to miss in the USA where the event goes largely un-noticed. There was a chance to catch up on the group stage action during our overnight stay which was otherwise unremarkable given the wave of jetlag which washed over one and all after our return from the almost classically designed Alenia site.

The following morning saw us head to Japan via a refuelling stop in Almaty, capital of Kazakhstan. After take-off from Brindisi we quickly crossed the Adriatic before overflying southern Albania and Greece. Skirting the northern shore of the Aegean, we crossed the Gallipoli Peninsula and flew over Istanbul before travelling along the southern shores of the Black Sea and northern Turkey. We entered Russian airspace near Sochi and glimpsed our first views of the snow-clad Caucasus Mountains as the 727 tracked across the several small semi-autonomous Russian states, the last but one of which was Chechnya. The embattled city of Groznyy could not be seen in the gathering haze as we headed out across the Caspian Sea towards Kazakhstan.

Although our flight plan called for a routing through Uzbekistan, Kazak air traffic control needed our money and re-routed the 727 north around the rapidly vanishing Aral Sea – now evidently more a series of lakes and dried up salt flats rather than a sea-like entity (pictured below). The diversion did produce one welcome surprise, however, in the shape of a perfect view of Baikonur and the Cosmodrome space complex, the launch towers casting long shadows in the low sun.

With darkness falling swiftly we descended into Almaty, the looming 7,300m (24,000ft) peaks of the Tian Shan mountains foreboding shadows to the south. Taxing in behind a Follow Me truck, we passed rows of parked Antonovs, Ilyushins, Tupolevs and Yaks only to discover 737s, Fokker 50s and a Boeing Business Jet on the ramp! Although eager to feel the fresh breeze on faces, the Kazaks did not allow anyone to leave the aircraft, and we were forced to view the comings and goings from the confines of our 727.

Fuelled to the brim we backtracked down the immense runway at Almaty for take-off close to midnight local time. After lift off, we entered a climbing right hand turn and noticed that the city appeared to have few lights, and none of them neon. “This is the only place in the world where they actually encourage you to stay on the deck and use as much power on take-off as you like,” joked someone who believed the airport (where there was a neon sign, below) and its aircraft movements was the liveliest part of the whole country.

I lucked out and won the lottery for the bed that night, sleeping surprisingly well for a couple of hours as the aircraft was tossed around in turbulence over northern China and the blacked out wasteland of the Gobi desert. As dawn broke I ambled out to the corridor which, like an old British Railways carriage, ran down one side of the fuselage by the cabin door, and stretched. To my amazement, far below, was the clearly etched line of the Great Wall running apparently endlessly across the landscape below. I ran for my camera to grab a shot – but failed. But on a positive note, I found out from the moving map that we were over a place called Fengzhen.

Soon after passing Beijing, which was almost totally obscured by smog, the Yellow Sea and the vast man-made island airport of Inchon (above) on the southern Korean peninsula came into view. Thick cloud greeted us over the Sea of Japan and by the time we approached Nagoya (below) it was blowing at more than 40kt (75km/h) as we came in for landing.

Japanese efficiency soon saw us installed in the Marriott hotel downtown, a towering edifice whose head was lost in the clouds of the tropical depression sweeping in from the south. With less than an hour to rest we were back on the bus bound for Fuji Heavy Industries and our first visit to any of the Japanese 787 partners.

With an immediate introduction to the company’s newly installed autoclave we had the growing awareness that each partner in this global enterprise appears to believe that THEY have the largest, most voluminous, widest, longest or heaviest autoclave in the world. Shell-shocked with statistics by now, no-one was ready to argue the point – at some point it seems when you have seen one autoclave you can’t help but feel you’ve seen them all!

FHI did, however, have the first real part of the 787 on show – a massive, black piece of composite wingbox skin with co-cured stringers (pictured above being loaded into the autoclave at FHI).

Even the hard bitten hacks had to stand back in some wonder at the moment. It was, after all, what we were flying around the world to see, and the first real proof that the Dreamliner will actually be a solid product. An example is the first inboard wing ribs we saw at FHI (pictured below).

Back to the hotel and, for the diehards, a 2am wake-up call to catch the England match on Japanese TV. A few more hours sleep and back on the road to see Mitsubishi and Kawasaki Heavy Industries for another autoclave (below).

More massive new factories, autoclaves, automated tape lay-up machines, drilling machines and clean rooms. The automation was, in itself, impressive particularly when it involved a host of clever robots that moved majestically around the factory floor announcing their presence with jolly,  jingly songs we were told are karaoke favourites.

Although we did also stop by the original Mitsubishi design offices, where the Zero type fighter, commonly known as "Zeke" (pictured below).

Finally back to Nagoya and the airport, and time for departure. Some of our band was already due to leave us at this point and we began to feel like the characters from an Agatha Christie novel as our numbers gradually dwindled. After some time to plan, replan and plan our route again, and after strenuous attempts to fool the fuel tanks into absorbing more Jet A than they appeared ready to hold, the crew announced we were ready for the off.

Everyone settled in for the long haul as we climbed over Nagoya and headed towards the towering head of Mt Fuji which appeared imperiously above the thick stratus (pictured above). Then something unexpected happened…..the spoilers came up, our nose went down (pictured below) and we headed straight back to Nagoya. It seems a ‘strange smell’ had permeated the front of the aircraft, and with a night crossing of the North Pacific coming up, the crew wisely decided to check out the cause rather than press on.

Back on the ground it quickly became obvious nobody would be flying that night, so we made the best of it while the hard-pressed Boeing staff frantically re-arranged flights and booked everyone on commercial airlines. In the early dawn the next day, as the band finally broke up to go its separate ways, we could all see our sad little 727 parked forlornly on a remote stand. Despite its eccentricities, or maybe because of them, I had enjoyed my time on the trijet. I for one was not looking forward to exchanging my brief brush with bizjet travel for the crowded airports, security and immigration lines of my normal life. But at least I got home……

One of the great pleasures of being a journalist on Flight International is that companies occasionally do things like offer to fly you on a Agusta 109 Power from RAF Northolt to AgustaWestland in Yeovil, skimming over the perfect patchwork Wiltshire and Somerset countryside at 2,000ft and playing spot the landmark. Okay, one of these is Swindon - but there's the Thames, the chalk horses carved into the hillside, villages nestling around country churches and the odd empty air base.

We were at Yeovil today to hear the UK defence procurement minister Lord Drayson formally announce the signing of a deal to acquire 70 Future Lynx utility helicopters as part of a new Strategic Partnering Agreement with the helicopter manufacturer in front of an audience of army and navy customers, AgustaWestland staff and other dignitaries.

Normally at these sort of events, us hacks tend to go through the motions. We get the press releases and speeches in advance and the politicians and company executives tend to read their prepared texts, punctuated by the odd bit of polite applause. This time though, Guiseppe Orsi, chief executive of AgustaWestland, threw in a curve ball, announcing something the company had planned to leave talking about until next month's Farnborough show. That was the fact that AgustaWestland in the UK was going to become the new headquarters of the Italian company's military helicopter business and lead the work on a new helicopter - the AW149. Ten minutes later - thanks to the wonders of my BlackBerry - the story was on flightglobal.com and you can read it here.

The developments really mark a rebirth of Westland, for years a burden on the British government and an industrial cripple. For all the time it was owned by both Finmeccanica and GKN, it was in a limbo, neither corporation having the confidence to fully get behind the enterprise. Now that the Italians have identified the UK as their prime defence market, the Westland operation has become absolutely crucial to their ambitions. That is why they have shifted their entire military business from Italy to Yeovil. That - along with the Future Lynx deal and the acknowledgement of its Strategic Partner status - have given Westland a new lease of life. No wonder they're toasting their success with Chianti in Yeovil.

Just back from talking to some senior industry movers and shakers in Paris, and it seems everybody rates EADS co-CEO Noel Forgeard's chances of survival as somewhat below a fat turkey's on Christmas Eve. In a country where big business and politics go hand in hand, the EADS affair started as a very "industry" story concerning some wiring problems on an aircraft, quickly developed into a business and financial issue and within 48 hours erupted into a political dirt-storm that looks like bringing down a board of directors if not a prime minister. The senior guns in French industry seem in part amused, in part horrified by the goings-on. But the person who must be fuming the most is Forgeard's externally ice-cool co-CEO, German Tom Enders. He could be one of the few senior EADS executives to emerge from this scandal with his reputation and dignity intact, and is my odds-on bet for becoming a post-Forgeard single CEO, with perhaps Frenchman Fabrice Bregier as his number two. The affair has helped highlight the nonsense of EADS's trans-Rhine dual-CEO set-up (everyone else manages fine with one). It can only be a matter of time before EADS shareholders (with or without the French government) decide to appoint the best person for the job.

The UK Government has spent the last few months studying the delicate issue of how its ministers should get around the world - and today both the BBC and Sky News are claiming that the recommendation is that taxpayers should cough up for a couple of leased aircraft.

This is delicate because, of course, whatever he does Tony Blair is going to get beaten up by the newspapers. As a story the affair has numerous ingredients much-loved by tabloid editors: it involves unquantifiable but meaty chunks of taxpayers' money; ministers' personal physical comfort and convenience is at stake; and it can be accompanied by sexy pictures of aircraft (hard to disapprove of that.) Oh, and the opportunity to once again trot out the tired old joke about Blair Force One is just too good to miss (and the BBC didn't pass up the opportunity. Neither did Sky, but at least they admitted their embarrassment.).

But it's ludicrous really. The reality is that Britain's constitutional elite fly around in less style than just about any of their equivalents in comparable nations.

Queen Elizabeth is privileged to use nothing less than an elderly British Aerospace 146 operated by 32 (The Royal) Squadron, RAF, which the Prime Minister also gets to use and is duly flayed for. Blair and his colleagues more generally use a combination of those aircraft, the Hawker Siddeley 125s that the same squadron also operates, and an assortment of other RAF and commercial airline - normally British Airways - flights.

Putting aside the question of whether and how often government ministers should fly anywhere at all, it's pretty obvious that this is not a cost-effective way of managing the programe. How likely is it that a combination of the RAF, the Cabinet Office and British Airways will come up with the optimum plan?

Leasing an appropriate number of optimally sized aircraft for this size of operation is eminently sensible. And I say that as a UK taxpayer as well as a Flight journalist.

The really thorny question is which aircraft to use. 32 (The Royal) Sqn still flies thoroughly British types, but unfortunately for Mr Blair it's been a while since the UK actually produced any appropriate aircraft. (Islander your majesty?)

I suppose the new deal could include an A318, or even A319 at a push. But I suspect a Brazilian or Canadian option may also be on the cards.

Opinions are of course divided on Boeing marketing chief Randy Baseler's blog, but they're mostly divided between dedicated bloggers and everyone else. The bloggers are irritated that Randy won't play by their rules and still has quite a successful blog; everyone else is just interested in what he has to say, to some extent anyway.

But there's a third, much smaller group. Airbus marketing is even more irritated by it - and now I understand they're trying to work out what to do about it.

This week Airbus has held its annual conference in Toulouse for the technical press (expect a copy deluge over the next few weeks). For the first time in a while I wasn't at it personally, but by aerospace media standards it's a huge event and journalists fly in from literally all over the world for it.

I've just been going through the numerous presentations and noticed that Airbus devotes four complex slides to explicitly rebutting Randy's 27 April post entitled Wait a Minute. That's the sort of thing that sends the hard-core bloggers apoplectic - companies issuing their response to a blog only to the evil mainstream media!

But you can see Airbus' problem. What are they supposed to do? Getting into a public slanging match with Randy is not a great idea for either company. But how can it be avoided? I think you can assume Airbus would like your suggestions (although they wouldn't say they would - which is part of their problem.)

Actually I think their bigger problem is working out who would write it. Airbus seems to have a strategy of a) being extremely closely engaged with the aviation and general media, and b) wowing the general public with gee whiz material on their new aircraft (as Boeing has been doing with 787.) But the bit in the middle - ie engaging with the general public - doesn't fit very well with their culture, and diverging from the culture is not encouraged at Airbus anymore than it is anywhere else.

I mentioned Randy's blog in passing to a senior Airbus marketeer recently and he half-jokingly said something to the effect "oh, has Randy got a blog", but he also made it clear he knew it was causing trouble. From chatting to people who were in Toulouse this week I gather Airbus is now properly setting about addressing the issue.

I don't know how this is going to end. It constantly shocks me that Airbus and Boeing have come to be national champions in quite the way they have and any argument on the web about them - and there are thousands - is apt to sink in bizarre quantities of quasi-nationalistic poison.  The garbage spouted by some airline pilots on the subject is particularly alarming (though the thoughtful stuff from them is often superb.)

What Randy hasn't really managed to do - and few blogs do - is to generate a really useful debate about much of this. Most commenters on the site are USA/Boeing flag-waving - nothing wrong with that, but nothing very productive about it either. I wonder if Airbus has an opportunity to find its way into the blogosphere via some greater engagement with the world.

And I'd be very interested indeed in your comments.

It's hard to think of a more horrendous day for EADS and Airbus than the one they have just gone through. And I wonder if the current management line-up can come back from it.

They've had to tell two of their most important customers that they've badly let them down; they've had to apologise to investors for losing their cash; a big widebody order is on its way to Boeing; and the CEOs of EADS and Airbus sound as though they're barely talking. If you're one of the few people left on the planet who needs telling, the gory details are here and here.

The basic problem is that Airbus can't build the A380 on time. (Not, as EADS CEO Noel Forgeard was falling over himself today to stress, that there is anything wrong with the design. Fair enough.) The other problem is that the EADS management only realised this in the last week!

With a further six-month delay on the aircraft, which pushed EADS stock down more than 30% at one point (although it recovered a lot of that), even the hitherto unembarassable Forgeard felt obliged to apologise when he explained matters to European analysts. Or did he...

Here's a few quotes from the conference call from the man who, remember, used to be CEO of Airbus itself and wanted to run both companies.

• 
  

  "You know 18 months ago I used to be in the plant at Airbus, now I am no longer in the plant I have to rely on the information I receive. And my colleagues and I rely on the information we receive. And from the situation I knew when I left Airbus I had no particular reason to believe that the delivery plan that had been built at that time could be challenged. So the future proved the contrary."

  
  
• 
  

  Translation: Everything was fine when I left, I can't know what nobody tells me.

  
  
• 
  

  "So the fact that to have management teams close to the business, close to the product, I believe is a good thing. Now it is true that there is a new situation because we had no reason to believe Airbus had a problem and obviously we were wrong."

  
  
• 
  

  Translation: It's always good to delegate. Unfortunately of course sometimes people let you down.

  
  
• 
  

  "So either we change the rules of transparency or together with [Airbus CEO] Mr Humbert we take some measures inside the Airbus team, or we change the overall scheme...to be more centralised. This is a decision we have not yet made."

  
  
• 
  

  Translation: Airbus is going to be on a damn short leash from now on.

However, it's not quite as simple as all that. Fact is that Gustav Humbert, who was Forgeard's COO while he was at Airbus and was forced onto him as the new CEO by the German faction in EADS, has been at odds with his boss all year, publicly on occasion. The suspicion has to be that Forgeard has let a situation develop in which he did not know, or chose not to listen, to what was happening.

I've met Humbert - he's as unlike Forgeard as can be imagined and is as quintessentially German as his boss is French. Humbert is unglamorous and process-driven but, to me anyway, oozes old-fashioned integrity. I simply can't believe he hasn't been warning EADS of the problems on the A380 line.

For now, the overwhelming, desperate need to get the A380 back on track will drive the EADS board to keep both men in place. But whether they fail or succeed, it's hard to see how they can both be there once that job is done.

Yesterday Ken Higgins formally hung up his flying helmet as boss of Boeing's extensive flight test operations after more than 40 years with the company.



Staring out from his office window overlooking Boeing Field (pictured above) he admits it is tough to be leaving, particularly with the 787, 747LCF, 777F and 747-8 coming up, but then he will be able to devote more time to flying the homebuilt Glasair III co-owned with Brian Wygle, flight test engineer on the maiden flight of the 747.

Rising through the ranks since joining the company in 1966 as a flight test engineer, Higgins is retiring as vice president of flight operations and validation for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, a role he has had for a full decade. He was on the flight deck for the first flights of the 737-400, -500 and 747-400, and made the first flight of the 737-700 with Mike Hewitt and 777-200 with John Cashman.

Looking back however, his favourite experience was the 757 test effort on which he flew the second aircraft with John Armstrong. "When you get involved in something from the start, and get into the guts of design - from that standpoint the 757 was the most exciting. My responsibility was to help design the two crew cockpit. I remember we had 64kb of memory in the caution and warning system - a little less than you have in the average calculator today I suppose."
The 757 was exciting for all sorts of reasons. On the fourth flight of the No.3 test aircraft the crew performed an in-flight engine shutdown and relight which sent an unexpected power spike through the aircraft's all-new digital equipment. "It knocked out the anti-skid brakes and the system that monitored that. So the anti-skid had not only failed, but we didn't know about it," says Higgins.

To add to the day's difficulties the trailing edge flap transmission froze up so the flaps would not come down. "So I added speed to compensate and made the approach at 170kt [315km/h], and as soon as I touched down I hit the brakes and all four main tyres on each leg just stopped. We went down the runway and the bottom of the tyres were ground down to the axles with sparks and fire everywhere." Higgins recalls the laconic "sir, you are on fire" call from the control tower at Boeing Field.

Unfortunately it was also 5pm and the height of the evening rush hour on the adjacent 5 freeway. The TV news helicopters all made a beeline for Boeing Field as the stranded 757 sat ignominiously and unmovable on its hemispherical wheels. "It was all very public," laughs Higgins.

Another not so public, but equally harrowing moment in the 757 came at a little over 1,000ft above the jagged peaks of the Cascade mountain range where Higgins was searching for the perfect icing test conditions in a winter storm. "We had flaps 30 with the gear down, but at the same time both engines suddenly began vibrating and went over the red line. The aircraft began to shake and engines made a funny noise like a vacuum. About then the test engineer came running up and said 'stay right here…this is perfect!'"

Inoring the test engineer Higgins tried to apply more power and climb away, "but the engines made an even worse noise." Nursing the aircraft gingerly away from the mountains and back to Seattle, the landing was made on only one engine. Afterwards the crew discovered bent and battered fan blades and "the rub strip pretty well gone from the ice." The anti-icing system was revised as a result and "we had to put a heated spinner on the engine - which went back to the test stand and worked just fine."

Another time, flying in the 757 with test pilot Buzz Nelson, Higgins discovered the controls were jammed. "We'd been on autopilot and got to 5,000ft and found we couldn't move the controls." It turned out the aircraft had been washed just before flight, and water had collected in a narrow slot where it froze into a lump during the climb. It was yet another unusual discovery made during a Higgins sortie. "Something always happened when I was on the aircraft. The engineers loved me, particularly as they'd designed everything against things happening with a probability of 10 (to the power of 9). They gave me a T-shirt which said 'Ken Higgins 10-9'."

Overall Higgins says much has changed in the world of flight test. "They mostly just went and did it then. Through to the mid-80s when we did a demo flight for the airline customer we'd put them in the left seat and demonstrate the aircraft's full capability. We'd show them all the corners of the envelope - stalls, turns, the lot. Now that doesn't happen like that."


Higgins has, he proudly remarks, "been beyond vertical in all the aircraft we currently have except the 747. Of course we do that to make sure if there's a problem we can fix it." Although not wishing to replicate the legendary Tex Johnson roll in the Dash 80 prototype - a manuoever which briefly became a deadly 'graduation exercise' for some airlines - Higgins says "I never pulled through, but I have been completely vertical and you'd be surprised at how quickly it can happen!"

Golden days for Higgins include flying the 747 in formation with a 727, 737 and 707 in a flypast over Boeing Field to salute the retirement of outgoing Boeing president Bill Allen in 1972 (piictured above), and of flying back VFR at low altitude from Moses Lake test site through the passes of the Cascade range to Seattle.

And now what? Apart from flying the Glasair, "I will do more boating, and work more on my other hobby which is old cars. I also make wine - though I don't intend to become a wino!" Happy landings Mr Higgins.