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Confessions of a New Corporate Pilot
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In the Citation III Confessions of a New Corporate Pilot
Life would be sweet, I thought, now that I’d successfully passed my Cessna Citation III (CE-650) type rating check ride (this was a few years back). It meant I’d be flying my first swept-wing jet. Surprisingly, my first day at the new job at Chicago Executive Airport (PWK) would also be the first time I’d been up close to a real Citation III since all the training and even my check ride happened in FlightSafety’s full-motion simulator.
From my research, though, I knew the 650’s cabin was roomy enough for eight, and its rocket-like performance was nothing short of spectacular with a VMO (maximum operating Mach) of Mach 0.85 and 39,000 feet on a standard day. In its day, M.83 was pretty fast. That meant we could make the West Coast out of PWK with four people in the back. I learned quickly, too, that the 650’s awesome performance meant I needed to stay much farther ahead of the airplane than I’d had to in the much slower Citation II (CE-550) I’d been flying in a 12-pilot charter department.
A privately held corporation owned this Citation III and I was the junior of three pilots. The chief pilot, my new boss, brought experience from several other flight departments, while the other pilot, I’ll call him Tom well, I was never really too sure where Tom had come from because the guy kept to himself as much as possible and wasn’t the chatty type. That made three-hour flights long when the entire conversation at FL390 ended with an occasional shrug of the shoulders.
But who cared what one guy acted like, I thought. I was there to learn how to fit into a flight department that needed another pilot on their team. Just like in charter flying, my job was to keep the people in the back happy. I came to know these passengers much better than we ever did in the charter world. These folks sometimes invited the flight crew to their home on Nantucket when we overnighted there.
The Interview
Looking back on this job now though, I guess the 10-minute interview the chief pilot and I engaged in before he offered me the job should have been a tip-off that maybe something was a little odd. But with a four-year-old daughter growing up at home, the chance to dump my charter department pager that always seemed to ring at 2 a.m. beckoned hypnotically.
Cessna Citation CE-650 Corporate line training began right away with me flying in all kinds of weather, where I regularly rotated flying left seat with the chief pilot and Tom. Having flown left seat on the Citation II, I wasn’t brand new to jets, just speedy ones.
After a few months, however, I began to notice a few operational oddities that started making me a little uncomfortable. Some sketchy flight planning and questions I asked were sometimes answered with annoyed expressions. If I appeared not to agree, someone might ask if I’d finished all the Jepp revisions (In those days there were no electronic subscriptions. Updates were handled by hand). I found the best solution for getting along seemed to be to just shut up and fly the airplane. Ignoring those distractions did help me pay closer attention to the little things that made my flying the jet smoother.
Then again … On one flight back from Cincinnati (CVG), I was flying left-seat with the chief pilot in the right. I wanted to add fuel before we left since the Chicago weather was questionable, but the boss overruled me explaining, “We’re fat on fuel.”I didn’t say anything. As we approached PWK, the ATIS reported the weather had worsened, considerably. The Swiss cheese holes began to align when Chicago Approach dumped us early. We ended up burning more fuel than planned. I flew the ILS right down to minimums, but my scan uncomfortably included the fuel gauges every few seconds. After a safe landing, we taxied in with 700 pounds of Jet-A, not much for an airplane that burns 1,800 pounds an hour down low. What if we’d missed at Chicago Executive Airport and needed to run for Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport I wondered? We’d have arrived on fumes. The boss looked at me after we shut down. “Don’t tell me that whole thing bothered you. It all turned out fine, didn’t it?” (more…)
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Remembering Gordon Baxter: Bax Seat was a Flying Magazine Reader Favorite
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(Reposted by request)
Each time I stand near my desk, my eyes naturally focus on the framed cover of the August 1983 Flying magazine. Below it is page 100, the “I Learned About Flying from That” (ILAFFT), where my first column appeared. On it, the author of Bax Seat, scrawled in brown ink, “To my friend Rob Mark. His story, my push. Gordon Baxter, August 5, 1983.”
Many months before, Gordon Baxter had given me the Flying editor’s phone number. When I rang with my brief pitch, all I heard was “yes.” I suddenly had an assignment for my first column. That 1983 issue was the first, but not the last, time my name and stories appeared in the aviation industry’s iconic magazine. That same issue also ran a pilot report about the then-new Cessna Citation III, an aircraft I later added to my list of type ratings. Looking back, there were so many aspects of my aviation career that came to life around Bax and that August 1983 issue, not the least of which was that we became friends.
Gordon Baxter, Bax as he preferred folks call him, helped shape my career as an aviation journalist like no one before him and only a few people since. The author of 13 books, Bax’s own magazine writing career at Flying spanned 25 years. His monthly column, Bax Seat, focused on vivid descriptions of his adventures. It was known simply as “Bax Seat.” Did I mention he was also a long-time radio personality in Beaumont, Texas, another interest we shared.
A Bit of Bax’s Background
I first met Bax in the mid-1970s. He brought his show, his act, or whatever the heck he called his evening of storytelling, to the Stick and Rudder Flying Club at Waukegan Airport. I was a tower controller not far away at Palwaukee Airport. Having been an avid Flying reader since high school, I switched shifts with another controller so I wouldn’t miss the event. Bax captured the audience for over an hour with stories from his flying career and his columns that often alternately “em rollin’ in the aisles” with gut-wrenching laughter and an emotional Texas-guy style that also brought tears to many an eye. Another way to think of Bax’s storytelling night was like an evening of improv but all about flying and airplanes.
Born in Port Arthur, Texas, he learned to fly after World War II following his stint as a B-17 turret gunner. Bax was no professional pilot—just a guy with a private certificate, an instrument rating, and eventually his beloved Mooney. On the back cover of one of his books, appropriately titled Bax Seat, Flying’s Stephan Wilkinson said “Bax tries to pass himself off as a pilot, but don’t believe him. He never could fly worth a damn. But Gordon feels airplanes, loves and honors them in ways that the rest of us are ashamed to admit. And he’s certainly one of the few romantics who can express what he feels so perfectly.” I couldn’t have written that myself, but I, too, felt it.
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Making the Brazilian ATR-72 Spin
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Note: This story was corrected on August 10th at 10:23 am, thanks to the help of a sharp-eyed reader.
Making an ATR-72 Spin
I wasn’t in Brazil on Friday afternoon, but I saw the post on Twitter or X (or whatever you call it) showing a Brazil ATR-72, Voepass Airlines flight 2283, rotating in a spin as it plunged to the ground near Sao Paulo from its 17,000-foot cruising altitude. All 61 people aboard perished in the ensuing crash and fire. A timeline from FlightRadar 24 indicates that the fall only lasted about a minute, so the aircraft was clearly out of control. Industry research shows Loss of Control in Flight (LOCI) continues to be responsible for more fatalities worldwide than any other kind of aircraft accident.
The big question is why the crew lost control of this airplane. The ADS-B data from FlightRadar 24 does offer a couple of possible clues. The ATR’s speed declined during the descent rather than increased, which means the aircraft’s wing was probably stalled. The ATR’s airfoil had exceeded its critical angle of attack and lacked sufficient lift to remain airborne. Add to this the rotation observed, and the only answer is a spin.
Can a Large Airplane Spin?
The simple answer is yes. If you induce rotation to almost any aircraft while the wing is stalled, it can spin, even an aircraft as large as the ATR-72. By the way, the largest of the ATR models, the 600, weighs nearly 51,000 pounds.
Of course, investigators will ask why the ATR’s wing was stalled. It could have been related to a failed engine or ice on the wings or tailplane. (more…)
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How the FAA Let Remote Tower Technology Slip Right Through Its Fingers
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In June 2023, the FAA published a 167-page document outlining the agency’s desire to replace dozens of 40-year-old airport control towers with new environmentally friendly brick-and-mortar structures. These towers are, of course, where hundreds of air traffic controllers ply their trade … ensuring the aircraft within their local airspace are safely separated from each other during landing and takeoff.
The FAA’s report was part of President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act enacted on November 15, 2021. That bill set aside a whopping $25 billion spread across five years to cover the cost of replacing those aging towers. The agency said it considered a number of alternatives about how to spend that $5 billion each year, rather than on brick and mortar buildings.
One alternative addressed only briefly before rejecting it was a relatively new concept called a Remote Tower, originally created by Saab in Europe in partnership with the Virginia-based VSATSLab Inc. The European technology giant has been successfully running Remote Towers in place of the traditional buildings in Europe for almost 10 years. One of Saab’s more well-known Remote Tower sites is at London City Airport. London also plans to create a virtual backup ATC facility at London Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe.
A remote tower and its associated technology replace the traditional 60-70 foot glass domed control tower building you might see at your local airport, but it doesn’t eliminate any human air traffic controllers or their roles in keeping aircraft separated.
Max Trescott photo Inside a Remote Tower Operation
In place of a normal control tower building, the airport erects a small steel tower or even an 8-inch diameter pole perhaps 20-40 feet high, similar to a radio or cell phone tower. Dozens of high-definition cameras are attached to the new Remote Tower’s structure, each aimed at an arrival or departure path, as well as various ramps around the airport.
Using HD cameras, controllers can zoom in on any given point within the camera’s range, say an aircraft on final approach. The only way to accomplish that in a control tower today is if the controller picks up a pair of binoculars. The HD cameras also offer infrared capabilities to allow for better-than-human visuals, especially during bad weather or at night.
The next step in constructing a remote tower is locating the control room where the video feeds will terminate. Instead of the round glass room perched atop a standard control tower, imagine a semi-circular room located at ground level. Inside that room, the walls are lined with 14, 55-inch high-definition video screens hung next to each other with the wider portion of the screen running top to bottom.
After connecting the video feeds, the compression technology manages to consolidate 360 degrees of viewing area into a 220-degree spread across the video screens. That creates essentially the same view of the entire airport that a controller would normally see out the windows of the tower cab without the need to move their head more than 220 degrees. Another Remote Tower benefit is that each aircraft within visual range can be tagged with that aircraft’s tail number, just as it might if the controller were looking at a radar screen. (more…)
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FAA Offers Homebuilders a Flight Test Carrot
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When amateur builders complete their homebuilt projects, if their work passes muster the FAA awards them an airworthiness certificate and an operational leash, a Phase I test period of usually 25 to 40 flight hours. The certification of the powerplant and prop combination plays a role in the Phase I duration.Ideally, homebuilders have already read Advisory Circular 90-89, Amateur-Built Aircraft and Ultralight Flight Testing Handbook, and developed a series of flight tests cards that will, once flown, lead to all the necessary performance data and numbers that will allow builders to safely and efficiently operate their flying machines.
In talking to homebuilders and writing about the construction of their airplanes, I can count on one hand those who actually created—and completed—a flight-test plan. The majority of the others bored aimless holes in the sky for the prescribed Phase I test time.
When it comes to operational data, they often get by with the performance numbers provided by the kit manufacturer. Their airplanes are often heavier than the kit prototype, and they often include modifications and different engine and prop combinations. When asked if they adjusted the prototype’s numbers for these differences, they often say, “They are close enough.”
Close may work for hand grenades and nuclear weapons, and too often “close enough” aircraft performance numbers can be just as lethal. To motivate homebuilders to actually create and fly flight-test programs that reveal aircraft-specific performance data, in the draft update of AC 98-89B, the FAA temps them with a “operationally centric or task-based experimental aircraft flight-test plan.”
Instead of boring holes in the sky for a prescribed number of hours, the Phase I test period is completed when builders finish flying a flight-test plan as discussed in the AC, crunched the numbers, and compiled them in the airplane’s flight manual. The flight test plans do not need FAA approval, but they must include the flight test points discussed in the AC.If builders do not want to create their own flight-test plan, they can use one provided by the kit manufacturer or other qualified sources. For those seeking the path of greater economy and efficiency, there is the EAA Flight Test Manual & Test Cards ($22.95). Introduced in 2018, it is part of EAA’s How-To Series, it steps through the required tasks, explains how to fly them, and how to crunch the resulting data.
The FAA is accepting comments on the draft AC 90-89B Change 1 through April 29. Maybe by AirVenture 2022 I’ll meet some homebuilders who snagged this Phase I carrot and are willing to share their opinions of its nourishment of aviation safety and efficient use of time.
If you enjoyed this story, why not SUBSCRIBE to JetWhine, if you haven’t already, and please share it with anyone who might find it interesting. — Scott Spangler, Editor
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Space Launch System: An Expensive Effort to Relive Apollo Glory?
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The news has been full of stories about the successful test of the Space Launch System’s core of four RS-25 engines at Mississippi’s Stennis Space Center on March 18. But the more I read, the more the tacit central theme of the project seems to be a multibillion-dollar effort of a middle-aged agency to relive its Apollo high school glory days.
Reinforcing this impression is the person nominated as the next NASA administrator. Bill Nelson, a former senator from Florida, was a key player in the in the political effort that directed NASA to undertake the SLS program in the first place. As a low draft number who took photos durng the evacuation that wrote Vietnam’s final chapter, I’m naturally skeptical, not to mention cynical, about any politician’s program because more often than not, they serve some unspoken ulterior motives, especially when such politicians found deferments from more direct participation.
If you doubt that, consider this. SLS will be the most powerful booster NASA has built since Apollo’s Saturn V. Engineers designed and built that heavy-lift rocket to meet the needs of the focused and well-defined goal that preceded it, President Kennedy’s challenge to send humans to the moon and return them safely to earth before the 1960s burned the last page of its calendar.
In 2010, senators wrote the legislation that directed NASA to design and build a rocket that would lift heavy things. They did not include in that legislation any specifics what those heavy things might be. I’m sure the engineers who designed the SLS would have liked to have had that information. Maybe that’s one reason why the program, like most government projects, blow well past their rosy projections of schedule and budget.
It might have been worth it had the SLS debuted some new technology or capabilities. But it is nothing more than the spaceflight equivalent of a midlife crisis muscle car. Like the Saturn V, the SLS will loft heavy things into space and beyond Earth orbit, and like the Saturn, NASA gets one launch per booster, and each liftoff will run $2 billion, give or take.
Since NASA had to build the SLS, it had to find something heavy for it to lift. They started with an asteroid research mission. Eventually, the agency settled on Artemis’s return to the moon and then the fantasy flight to Mars. NASA schedules Artemis’s first flight carrying humans for 2023. We’ll see. Given our political and economic unpredictability, guaranteeing the future realization of any promise made today is pure fantasy.
If there is any hope for our aerospace future it is that the technical and scientific pragmatists displace the politicians striving to relive their high school glory days and hope to bask in the reflected glory of humans who undertake dangerous and expensive journeys into space that would be more effectively, efficiently, and economically made by machines.
Perhaps the Artemis I mission is the culmination of the SLS midlife oxymoron. I’m all for investing in developing new technology that expands our exploration capabilities, but spending more than $2 billion on a test flight to make sure the Orion crew capsule is safe for humans to relive the flight of Apollo 8, which looped around the moon on Christmas Eve in 1968?
If you enjoyed this story, why not SUBSCRIBE to JetWhine, if you haven’t already, and please share it with anyone who might find it interesting. — Scott Spangler, Editor -
Hasta la Vista Mike
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Click above to Listen – Run time 4:27
(Podcast Text)
I think it was Mark Twain who cynically spoke about “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics” to explain how easily lists of numbers can be manipulated to tell some pretty extraordinary stories. And let’s face it … lists of numbers can be pretty dry, unless you can add some context.
Take the COVID-19 pandemic. If you’re someone who trusts numbers, they show the virus has claimed 2 and a half million lives around the world … more than half a million in the US.
How do you even get our hands around that? Do you know 2 and a half million people, or even a half million? I sure as hell don’t.
Sometimes it takes just a single person for those numbers to make sense. At least that worked for me when I learned recently my friend Mike Collins had passed away.
At 59 he was AOPA Pilot’s Technical Editor and Director of Business Operations. COVID snatched him away after a couple of really awful weeks in the hospital.
Mike was a guy I was proud to call a friend. Not a close buddy, buddy kind of friend, but one of the regular dozen journalists I run into at aviation events.
Mike was the kind of guy, who’d pick me out of the crowd with a simple “Hey Rob,” before a quick catch-up session.
He was an extraordinary photographer and adventurer, like when he sat right seat in Mike Laver’s MU-2 for a trip around the world. In over 30 or 40 hours of flying, he never missed feeding photos and videos back to the AOPA mothership, for the rest of us to enjoy.
AOPA Pilot’s Editor-in-chief Tom Haines said, “If you’ve ever held a copy of AOPA Pilot or Flight Training magazine in your hands, over the past 29 years, you’ve benefited from the work of Mike.”
In a look back at Mike’s career, Haines said he learned the biz as a newspaper guy in North Carolina before becoming editor of the Southern Aviator. Tom said, “I knew I could toss any assignment Mike’s way and he’d figure out how to bring back a terrific story—almost always with a human angle to it.” I also loved Mike’s incredible knack for translating techno babble into great stories.
Early on he learned how to match his impressive video skills with the newest drone platforms. He was also an early podcaster and even a beermaker. Now why doesn’t that surprise me? Mike once said, “Photojournalism is all about storytelling. And aviation is full of great stories just waiting to be told.”
Here’s one Mike moment I remember. I was writing a story for AOPA Pilot some years ago about checking out in the L-39 jet. The magazine sent Mike to Chicago to handle the photos while I flew the jet. We arranged to use a restored SNJ with a back seat aimed rearward as Mike’s photo platform.
There was just one problem. The flight came together in the middle of January, so Mike was dressed like he was headed for the north pole. Think about the wind chill with an OAT of 10 F and a 135 mph.
In tight formation for the air-to-airs, I could see the fur on his big parka flapping wildly in the breeze, so I squeezed the mic button, “Hey Mike. You keeping warm over there?” He responded with “I’m freezing my butt off,” then silence.
After we landed the L-39 I was feeling really guilty having spent a couple of hours in a nice warm cockpit while Mike was freezing in the SNJ. “Are you starting to defrost Mike?” I said as I approached the big yellow bird. He didn’t even flinch. “Oh sure,” … “that was a blast. Let’s go do it again.” That was Mike. Check out “Flying a Real Jet to Make Like Maverick” at AOPA.org and you’ll see some of the awesome photos Mike shot.
Mike Collins left behind his wife Janette Prince, as well as two daughters and a son.
For the full scoop on Mike’s career, click on “Saying Goodbye” at AOPA.org. You’ll also find a list of organizations where you can make a donation in Mike’s honor.
We’re all going to miss you Mike.
From Chicago, I’m Rob Mark for Jetwhine and the Airplane Geeks.
