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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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When You’re Alone in the Cockpit
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A freshly minted CFI friend of mine called me recently almost completely out of breath with the exciting news that he’d managed to grab a few hours of loggable time in the right seat of an old Citation II, a bird that certainly turned out to be a great training ground for me too. It was also my first type rating. This guy was rather surprised that even though he’s been flying a glass-cockpit Cirrus SR-22 for the past 1,000 hours, everything in a jet seemed to happen so much faster than anything he’d flown before. How right he is. I thought the steam-gauge Citation II was a grand training environment from the Navajo Chieftain I’d been flying alone, once I figured out who was supposed to do what of course. Most of the rest of my flying time – except as an instructor – was as part of a crew and honestly, I think I became a little spoiled with an extra brain and another set of eyes, ears, and hands closeby.
A little jet time gives pilots something else that’s pretty important too, the proximity of another qualified pilot to help share the navigation radio and the endless work of dealing with ever-changing weather, and the passengers, all while learning the ropes of operating in the flight levels where speeds are measured in Mach numbers.Time and Training Go Marching On
Of course in the past couple of decades, aircraft like the Cirrus and single-engine turboprops; the TBM, the PC-12 as well as a number of light jets, all glass-cockpit equipped, are now certified to be flown by a single pilot. With some previous jet time, flying one of these complex machines alone shouldn’t be too tough you’d think, except it often is. In fact, there are quite a few single-pilot certified jets and turboprops that operators have come to realize can become quite a handful when the chips are down. They’ve responded to these safety concerns by adding an extra pilot in bad weather. That doesn’t mean any of these aircraft unsafe of course … far from it. But having just one human in the chain of command can under stressful conditions can overwhelm most any pilot if they allow the airplane to move faster than their brain.
The video you’ll find at the end of this story was produced a couple of years ago by the NBAA’s Safety Committee Single-Pilot Working Group to highlight just how easy it can be for a highly automated airplane to get way out in front of the pilot at the controls. Why not grab a cup of coffee and spend 10 minutes watching the mess our pilot John manages to get himself into.
On a side note, you may recognize the PIC in this story making his on-screen debut. I confess it’s me. While I wrote the first draft of the script, I didn’t create this training video alone. The people at CAE in Dallas were kind enough to donate some Phenom 100 simulator time to the Safety Committee to allow us to shoot the video. I also had plenty of help from other committee members including Tom Turner from the American Bonanza Society, Dan Ramirez, who at the time was working for Embraer, Jim Lara from Gray Stone Advisors, Mike Graham, now with the NTSB, BJ Ransbury from Aviation Performance Solutions, Tom Huff, Gulfstream Aerospace’s Aviation Safety Officer, Bob Wright from Wright Aviation Solutions, Phil Powell our ace cameraman and of course Scott Copeland who I spent hours with in Savannah turning our raw footage into the video you’re about to see. We all hope you learn something from the time spent.
Rob Mark, Publisher
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P-82 Reveals One Pilot’s Remarkable Story
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As it would any dedicated aviation geek, the photo of the P-82 Twin Mustang with Betty Jo emblazoned on its nose at the start of a New York Time’s obituary caught my attention. So did the headline, “Robert Thacker, 102, Dies; Survived Pearl Harbor to Fly in 3 Wars.” The subhead only added to my confusion. “This unarmed bomber was caught in the thick of Japan’s attack. He went on to fly some 80 missions in World War II and to become a record-setting test pilot.”Okay, so what does that have to do with the P-82 Betty Jo, which I’ve admired during my visits to the Museum of the United States Air Force? As a reward for my continued reading, the obit answered my question about a half-dozen paragraphs later. With the war over less than two years, in February 1947, Thacker and his copilot, Lt. John Ard, flew Betty Jo from Hickam Field in Hawaii to New York City—nonstop—in 14.5 hours. The 5,051-mile flight is the sanding nonstop record for a prop-driven fighter.
Just to make that flight interesting, a mechanical glitch prevented Thacker from dropping some of the P-82’s four auxiliary under-wing tanks, so he had to adjust for asymmetric drag for a good portion of the flight. Betty Jo, the name of Thacker’s wife, had 30 minutes of fuel in its tanks when it landed in New York. Geez, my backside and leg hurt just thinking about it.
More importantly, learning Thacker’s story reminded me that people make aviation history every day. And if they survive a signature event nearly every aviator knows, like piloting a B-17 that arrived in Hawaii in the midst of the attack on Pearl Harbor, they continue to make history, although it may not be as well known. It should be a reminder to all of us to wonder what happened to history’s participants in the weeks, months, and years that followed.Thacker went on to fly 80 missions in the Pacific and European theaters, an accomplishment of remarkable survival in itself. After the war, he joined the cohort of test pilots at what is now Edwards Air Force Base. In Korea he flew B-29 missions, and in Vietnam, “high altitude missions” with (as yet) no telling tidbits of their details.
What is most telling about Thacker’s character and passion for flight is summarized by what ignited it, a model airplane the 8-year-old received from his father. As shown by his biography by the Academy of Model Aeronautics, his passion for flying models never waned. Before the war, he flew a hand-launched rubber-band-powered pusher model in the Junior Birdman of America, sponsored by Hearst Newspapers. After the war, he competed in the 1975 and 1976 National Scale Glider Championships. He designed the model of the Bowlus Baby Albatross glider, featured in the September 1975 issue of Model Builder, and he designed the Giant Ducted Fan BD-10 featured in the February 1994 Flying Models.
Each of us leaves a legacy compiled by our everyday acts of personal history. Some are better known that others, but few are as lasting and rewarding to succeeding generations as Thacker’s. After retiring and returning to California, he was looking for a place to fly his models. After meeting with the general, he helped establish the Joint Military RC Flyers, which welcome civilians and has been running at Marine Corps enclave of Camp Pendleton since 1970. — Scott Spangler, Editor -
A Barely Successful Go Around
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If you’ve already earned a Private Pilot certificate — a PPL they call it in some other parts of the world — you’ll probably remember those final words of encouragement from the government official who oversaw the checkride … “Remember, you now have a license to learn.”That’s instructor lingo for, “No one has enough time to teach you absolutely everything you’d need to know in order to become a safe pilot.” All any instructor can really offer is solid training in line with the airman certification standards and as much extra personal wisdom as possible before they kick you out of the nest. The check pilot’s job is to within an hour or two get a glimpse of your knowledge about what makes an airplane fly — or prevents it — and that you seem to exercise relatively decent judgment. But sometimes, the barest minimum of training is called that for a really good reason.
When I was a newly minted private pilot with maybe 80 hours under my belt, I proved to myself one warm, sticky July afternoon that my practical flying education definitely had a few major gaps. The final few months of my private pilot training took place in an old, burgundy-painted Cessna 150 at Sky Harbor Airport. No, not the one in Phoenix, but a now bulldozed little field of the same name (OBK) just north of Chicago with a single 2,430-foot north-south runway. The field elevation was 680
feet and a graveyard stood ominously just off the south end of the airport, as a warning I often thought, not to swoop too low on final when landing north.If you haven’t tried one yet, some 22,000 150’s were produced by Cessna in cookie-cutter fashion until they introduced the updated 152 in the late 1970s. The original 150 was powered by a 100 hp Continental O-200 motor that was just enough to lift two people airborne with a couple of hours of gas. Luckily for me, as a solo bird, it climbed OK, even in the summer.
One quirk that would become important that July day was the 150’s barn door-like flap system. When commanded, they’d drop to 40 degrees which made the airplane fall like a brick if the pilot pulled the throttle to idle about the same time. For retraction, the spring-loaded switch would bring all the flaps up in a few seconds if the pilot didn’t pay attention. I vowed never to let that get me.
After an hour or so of counting sailboats in Lake Michigan near the Loop that day and surveying areas north toward Waukegan (UGN) I realized it was time to head back and give my pal Tim a crack at the airplane for a few hours. The tollway extension to I-94 ran just north of the airport and was pretty easy to pick out from the lakeshore, as was the big yellow office building then used by Walgreens as a corporate HQ. Sky Harbor sat just south of Walgreens so making my way to a left downwind was a snap for a newly licensed guy such as myself.
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