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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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AirVenture Surprises & Snowbird Respect
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As it seemed last year, the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels low-level fly-by at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh this year seemed to catch many people by surprise. I don’t mean to shatter your illusions, but nothing at AirVenture happens as a surprise, especially when it involves airplanes. Every flight is carefully planned and coordinated with the AirVenture Air Boss and ATC. And every morning at Press Headquarters, the legendary EAA communication director, Dick Knapinski, spoils the day’s surprises in detail.
On Thursday morning, he told the handful of us in attendance (given the goodies he shares, I’m surprised more members of the media don’t attend) that the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds would, at the start of the air show, make four low-passes during their fly-by appearance as they, like the Blue Angels, traveled from one scheduled performance to the next. But the next item is what caught my attention. Around 2 p.m., a Canadian Forces Snowbird would be arriving in his CT-114 Tutor. And rather than performing, “he’ll be camping in the Vintage area,” Dick said, qualifying his camping spot by noting that his jet was made in 1964.
Certainly, the military forces of different nations can’t be that different. Flying a squadron bird from the Snowbird home base in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada, on a camping trip to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh would be akin to me using one of the ship’s small boats to go fishing when I was aboard the USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19) in the mid-1970s. My curiosity put a ring through my nose and led me to Vintage to wait.
Right about 2 p.m., the red and white Tutor made a couple of low passes, landed, and taxied to vintage camping. A tug arrived to position it on a finger of pavement next to the grass that would be the pilot’s campsite. The aviator in the red flight suit, with Blake McNaughton embroidered on it, was obviously in command. A captain in the Canadian Forces, he’s the Snowbirds’ flight safety officer. (I didn’t get the name of his squadron mate, who was attired in standard-issue green Nomex.)Before I could ask the obvious question, the Thunderbirds made their appearance, and McNaughton was clearly more interested in filling out the necessary aircraft paperwork and putting his Tutor safely to bed after the tug driver jockeyed it into position. “Oh, yeah, we camp just like everyone else at Oshkosh.” And when the entire Snowbirds team performed at AirVenture in 2016, a couple of us tent camped.”
But a solo camping trip? “Our chain of command understands that Oshkosh is a cultural icon. [Camping] is what you do when you come here. We don’t take ourselves too seriously; we have a good time. We set up tents and camp. It’s great! We want the full, rich Oshkosh experience.” (With no room in the jet, they made separate travel arrangement for their tents and camping gear.)
Perhaps there are differences in the military attitudes among the national forces. On reflection, a solo camping trip to AirVenture is some genius guerilla PR, a subtle statement that supports the demonstration squadron’s ambassadorial mission. But McNaughton demonstrated an even more forceful example of the character and quality of the Canadian Armed Forces. Kneeling on the wing, digging the wheel chocks out of little compartment behind the cockpit, when he heard the first few notes of America’s national anthem, he sprang to attention. (His squadron mate, clearly sat at attention.) He stood there, in rigid contrast, as the flight line mass of U.S. flagpole patriots fluttered about in self-absorbed oblivion. — Scott Spangler, Editor
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August 3, 1981 – PATCO Strike Remembered 38 Years Later
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Ed note: It was 38 years ago today that the U.S. aviation system was turned upside down out. What have we learned in those decades since? Many controllers today are again working 10-hour days six days a week.
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JDA Solutions photo I remember the morning of August 3, 1981, vividly as I turned on the TV to find news stories of air traffic controller members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization-PATCO-marching with picket signs at the base of the tower at Chicago O’Hare and other airports all over the nation. They’d simply run out of patience with their employer the FAA and took matters into their own hands.
Many of the people I saw on TV were friends. Most lost their jobs later that week when they refused President Reagan’s ultimatum, “Return to work or you will be fired.” Few ever returned to air traffic control again, in fact.
There’s little point today in talking about how the strike could have or should have been handled. PATCO stuck its neck out and lost. It’s done, it’s over.
What is interesting about our nation’s air traffic control system today nearly three decades later is how little the agency that runs the system – the FAA – seems to have learned from their own mistakes of that era.
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Living on the Edge of AirVenture Oshkosh
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This year EAA AirVenture celebrated a half-century at Wittman Regional Airport. Many contributed to it with their first trip to Oshkosh, and to accommodate them EAA expanded the South 40 to the airport’s southern fence line. Having made my first visit in 1978, I wanted to celebrate with a new perspective, a new view of the event. Curious about the southland, I decided to walk the public perimeter and meet those living on the edge of EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.
To qualify as edge livers, they had to be camping with their airplane next to the airport fence. This chain link border exists in almost every community except Vintage; here, the fence separates Vintage camping from Camp Scholler. On different days, I wandered to a different cardinal compass point, except east. Runway 18/36 precludes a public area inside the fence in that direction. In the order I met them, let serendipity introduce you to…
West—Jim Piavis, Redmond, Washington
With the tail of his RV-7 backed up against the fence in homebuilt camping, Jim Piavis of Redmond, Washington, was working the wing with a spray bottle of cleaner and a large square of cloth. “It is the ninth year for this airplane,” starting in 2008. “I brought another one previously,” he said, and first came to Oshkosh in 1976 (maybe) with his dad. Overall, he’s made the pilgrimage to Oshkosh 27 times, but not consecutively.
Like so many others, he waited out the weather elsewhere. “We were at Portage, about 15 minutes from Ripon. It was a fun stop; we had a good time there. A bunch of us were on our way to get Mexican food when we got the text [that the airport was accepting arrivals], so we got here Sunday evening as soon as they opened it up.”
“Camping is pretty benign,” Jim said. His most memorable visit was 2010. “I was in Camp Scholler the last Slosh-kosh, and that was fun—a lot of mud. Homebuilt camping is pretty much a nonevent for the most part, but it is a lot of fun, though.” Sweeping his arm around this westernmost corner of the camping area, he said, “about half the airplanes around here were at Portage together.” And as they did there, they continued to hang out together in camp.
West—Chad Jennings, Tulsa Oklahoma
“I tried to fly up here Saturday morning,” said Todd Jennings of Tulsa, Oklahoma, “but the clouds looked bad, so I sat out the storm at Middleton, [Wisconsin]. I tried to come Saturday afternoon but, obviously, after the big storm, I had to wait until Sunday.”
Flying his 2016 Just Aircraft Super STOL, with its 19-inch bush tires and Rotax 912 with big-bore kit that turns the CATO climb prop with 115 horsepower, he could have safely made his way to this camping spot in the Ultralight area, but all the grass parking areas were closed until things dried out a bit.
Weather has also limited his backcountry riverbed landings at home. “Oklahoma, you’ve probably noticed [from the news], has had so much flooding this year that there’s nowhere to land.”
Without a doubt, his first trip to Oshkosh has been memorable. “I flew up solo and met some friends here,” he said, nodding at the tent on the other side of his airplane. Home is next to the fence that protects the ultralight runway, as far west as you can get in the area. To the other side of him was a trio of porta-potties. The camping area quiets down quickly after sunset, he said, and he’d not heard a lot of slamming plastic doors in the darkness.
A third-generation aviator, Chad soloed a glider at 14 and earned his private ticket four years ago. “My dad is a pilot; my grand-pop is a pilot, so I grew with it. I’ve been to a lot of air shows—my dad used to fly in them—but all the people, airplanes, and aviation products here, it’s overwhelming.”
When not flying, he pilots an 18-wheeler that delivers rebuilt propane tanks to all corners of the United States and Canada. Likewise, he’s not letting any area of Oshkosh go unexplored. “My friends and I are on our way to the seaplane base, and we’ll hit up the museum this afternoon.”
South—Jackie & Lee Clark, South Bend, Indiana
Arriving on a sunny Wednesday morning, Jackie and Lee Clark were setting up their tent in the South 40 on their second trip to Oshkosh. “We had an excellent spot in the North 40 last year,” but it was full, said Lee.
The couple usually spends the first half of the week in Milwaukee, and then come up to Oshkosh for the rest of the week, said Jackie, “and we’re here for the night air shows, and it’s wonderful.” It also “avoids all the craziness right at the beginning of the week,” added Lee.
Interested in aviation since he started flying computer simulators as a kid, Lee started his flying lessons when he graduated high school in 2005 and earned his private pilot certificate in July 2017. A member of the Wings Flying Club, he flew its Archer II north.
“We had a nice flight up,” said Lee. “We usually follow the Lake Michigan shoreline, but with a storm coming through, I got a bit worried, so I just shot right over the center of the lake.” Jackie is not a pilot but is an eager copilot and camper. “We enjoy it, but we don’t camp as often as we’d like,” she said.
AirVenture combines the activities in a unique way. “It’s something different,” said Jackie, “and if you love airplanes,” said Lee, “this is the place to come.”
North—Bradley Spatz, Gainesville, Florida
When I introduced myself to Bradley, he looked at me with a quizzical cast to his eyebrows and said, “Your name is familiar.” We quickly solved the riddle. At AirVenture 2017, his first trip to Oshkosh, he won an Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA) drawing that awarded him $1,000 toward the installation of ADS-B in his 1982 Cessna 182S, and I wrote the story about the installation for Avionics News.
Bradley made his second arrival on Sunday afternoon, when the airport opened for arrivals after a roiling cloudy black beast (with a bulging red heart that throbbed red on radar) dumped nearly a half-foot of water on Wittman starting just after lunch on Saturday. “I hung out in Madison until I got the [AirVenture arrival] text message,” he said Thursday morning as he was packing up for his trip home.
Sunday’s arrival window was not open long, he said. “About 20 minutes after I got here I got another text saying that it was closed. I was just lucky that I got in. It must have been some storm, and I heard there was standing water. My friends [camping in the North 40 neighborhood on the south side of Runway 9/27] got here on Friday, and they said their tent was floating.”
When he arrived, the orange batons directed him to the north side of Runway 9/27. “You don’t get to pick,” Bradley said, but camping was his choice. “I don’t mind camping, and my friends told me the North 40 is kind of a thing, and if you stay in a hotel, it is not the same experience,” he said. On the other side of the fence from where we stood talking was the Oshkosh Hilton Garden Inn.
Bradley comes to AirVenture for the people, not the air show. Meeting up with friends is good, and chance encounters is what makes it great. Before Dick Rutan began his presentation about his unrefueled earth-rounding flight in the Voyager, Bradley listened to a B-17 pilot “tell the gentleman between us about some mission over Bremen in World War II. The guy between us asked how old he was; 20 said the B-17 pilot. You were an aircraft commander at 20? He asked. Actually, the man said, I was aircraft commander at 19, but by then I was 20. It was amazing to hear about this.” — Scott Spangler, Editor
