So You Want to Fly Balloons?Here's What You Need to Know First

This is part two of my e-interview with commercial balloon pilot Kathy Lee, the operator of SpiritWind Hot Air Balloons. Part one of this story is found here.

World of Flying: Describe the ongoing training you do throughout the year to stay proficient, and what types of FAA regulations you must adhere to in order to stay legal to fly passengers.

Kathy Lee: As with any pilot, FAA requires that in order to act as pilot in command, the pilot needs to have 3 take offs and 3 landings in the aircraft in which he/she holds a certificate, also must do a flight review and ground school with a CFI (commercial flight instructor) every 2 years.

WoF: Is it hard or relatively easy to fly a balloon? Describe a takeoff and landing.

KL: Of course take off and landings are the most crucial aspect of any aircraft. The pilot must first find equilibrium, the point at which the basket is hovering just above the ground, and then heat the envelope to the point at which it will rise at a controlled rate.

Landing is best with passengers when you can perform a glide slope landing, bringing the balloon to parallel with the ground and gently setting down, however, there are many safe approaches and it is not uncommon for a balloon landing to involve some tilting and dragging of the gondola as well and still be safe.

WoF: What is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a balloon pilot if they are not tuned in to the weather.

KL: Oh my, I can not even imaging a pilot not being in tune with weather. As a balloon pilot, I am not only in tune with the area in which I am flying, I want to know what is coming my way within 50-100 miles. The worst peril will be the wind, wind shears and lightening.

WoF: What does a balloon cost to buy and maintain. Also tell us if they require an annual or 100-hour inspection, and also what it costs you to fly a balloon one nautical mile (in general terms).

KL: Plan to start at $25,000 for new sport balloon, this will include the envelope, burner system and gondola, up to $50,000 and beyond for special shape commercial balloons. Used balloons are available at much lower prices depending on what you might be in the market for. One might plan on spending at least $350 on the annual if there are no repairs, if repairs are needed then that can become rather expensive as well. The insurance will depend on the percentage of commercial time you have.

More than the price of the propane is figured in with the cost of a flight. The balloon is powered by propane which might take, depending on the temperature and payload, 30-45 gallons for a regular sports balloon, which in that case, can cost about $70-100. This depends on the price of propane at the time. All hot air balloons are registered aircraft and therefore fall under FAA required 100 hour or yearly inspections at which every inch of the envelope is inspected, checked for porosity and must pass a pull test for fabric durability, the burner is inspected and serviced, the basket (gondola) is inspected for integrity, and all the proper paperwork required to be carried in the aircraft including the airworthiness certificate.

WoF: Have you ever scared yourself while flying a balloon?

KL: Early on as a private pilot, I had done my flight planning, it was a very warm summer afternoon, flight services told me there was nothing on the radar as far as cells indicating lightening. I was flying alone getting some time logged, my son and a friend were on the ground chasing, I looked ahead a very short distance and suddenly saw a small cell with lightening in it, I immediately searched for a landing site, set down safely and packed up. Since then I am very cautious when the humidity is high.

WoF: What was the craziest thing a passenger has ever done while on a balloon flight with you.

KL: I had a couple celebrating an anniversary, she sat on the floor of the gondola for more than 1/2 the flight! I have also had proposals, flights after weddings and the list goes on, Each flight is amazing!

WoF: Balloons are considered romantic...why is that?

KL: I think that songs and movies have a big part in bringing romance to being suspended in the air in a basket floating above the earth with the one you love and it has been my experience, that is true in every sense with all my passengers.

WoF: Describe your favorite balloon flight of all time, where, when, and why it was your favorite.

KL: My favorite flight was in Gallup, New Mexico in the Red Rocks. I launched from the valley, rose gently as I floated against the smooth red rocks and could actually reach out and touch the rocks as my basket hugged the contour of the surface then continued on to fly over the peak of the mountainous rocks, down into the next valley and on to the beauty of the rocks ahead awaiting my balloon's arrival. It was totally exhilarating.

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You Have More in Common WithHot Air Balloon Pilots Than You Think

We've all seen them – brightly-colored hot air balloons – floating aimlessly across a scenic countryside, free as the breeze.

As fixed or rotary wing drivers, we have stared at these vintage beauties, a sort of bizarro flying contraption that without much effort transports us back to 1783. That's when Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes decided to fill a large balloon with heated air, jump in a gondola strapped at the base and drift skyward in search of their fate, or their triumph. The idea of humans flying balloons was so out there at the time, King Louis XVI had a tough time buying into the fun, and actually tried to send up condemned criminals as the first pilots.

As a powered aircraft pilot, I have tremendous respect for balloon pilots. To fly a ship with zero mechanical controls other than vertical lift and descent must take superhuman pilotage. You do not slide out to the field on a lazy Saturday afternoon, whip out the balloon and fly fat, dumb and happy over to the next 'Berg for a $100 burger. Unless the wind wants to go get a burger too.

Recently, a commercial-rated professional balloon pilot took the time to answer some questions for my endless series on interesting aviation people. Kathy Lee has been flying hot air balloons since 1994, and now operates SpiritWind Hot Air Balloons. Here are Kathy's answers, presented below in part one of this very intriguing two-part interview:

World of Flying: First, give me a quick background on you, your piloting/aviation/ballooning career, the kinds of planes and balloons you have flown, and licenses, ratings and type ratings you hold.

Kathy Lee: I am 57 years of age, a Christian, a mother of now a 40-year-old son, and a registered nurse. I began as ground crew volunteer about 1991, however, I did not take my free flight for crewing due to fear of flying! In 1994 my desire to fly became stronger than my fears.

I have never had a desire to fly a fixed wing, so I chose to be limited to LTA at this time. I trained in Nashville, TN, and in Louisville, KY in an Aerostar balloon. It was a 90, which means it holds 90 thousand cu. ft of air and 2-4 passengers plus the pilot. After obtaining my student certificate, I bought my first balloon, a new Aerostar 90 named SpiritWind. I have since earned my commercial rating, which means that I can take passengers for hire as well as do flight training. I have owned three hot air balloons, the second and the one I now own is a Cameron Balloon 80 (thousand cubic feet), but due to the weight of the aircraft, can still carry 3 passengers. I have attended festivals in New Mexico, Florida, Kentucky and St Jean sur Richie Leu, Canada.

WoF: Describe how you navigate and "steer" a balloon, and describe the pre-flight planning process for a flight.

KL: Balloon flight planning begins as much as two days prior to a flight. I look at several weather sites on the web the day before the flight, call my ground crew and passengers, place them on stand-by, look again at my weather sources several hours prior to the flight, then call flight services to ask for an official weather report and file a flight plan 4 to 5 hours prior to my flight. Right up to flight time, I will put up a pi-ball, (helium filled 12-inch balloon) to get a visual of winds.

Part of the pre-flight planning also includes obtaining permission, if necessary, to use a desired property from which to launch depending on where you wish to end up down wind. Balloons go with the wind. There is no motor and no control over the direction, only altitude, however, due to the varying wind directions at different altitudes, a good pilot can guide his or her balloon close to a planned landing site.

WoF: How does one learn to fly balloons, at a flight school or is it a skill that is "handed down" from one balloon pilot to another.

KL: There are flight schools, however, due to the expense and time, most pilots elect to hire a local pilot to provide his FAA required instruction as I did. As stated above, a commercial pilot is also certified to train students. My instructors made sure that I knew the navigational charts, weight and balance, all the FAA rules and regulations of air spaces as well as being able to perform emergency procedures. So with that said, if you have a desire to fly a hot air balloon, be sure that your instructor is serious about teaching you all the aspects of ballooning and safety that goes with flight and ground school.

To pilot a balloon, you must have a pilot's license, or airman's certificate, just as you would for an airplane or any other aircraft. The only differences are the category of aircraft and the specific training requirements. The FAA issues balloon pilot licenses, Federal Air Regulations, Part 61 - Certification: Pilots, Flight Instructors and Ground Instructors.

WoF: Bust one myth about hot air balloons.

KL: Most people believe that ballooning is more dangerous than most aircraft, in fact it is the safest form of aviation known to man today.

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A Quick Flight Through Sim Land

Lately, the WX in the Great State of Oregon has lived up to its rep as a place where the words "gray" and "winter" are synonymous.

This week, when the WX Gods were winning, I sat down at an old Mac and an equally old 21” monitor in our guest room, a spot that had been claiming that space for many months as ground zero for the late-night IFR practive sessions as I worked towards the rating I now enjoy.

Those who read World of Flying religiously know I fly X-Plane, and love it. So tonight I again got the new system working, and can now slip into my training chamber any time I want, wake the G4 from sleep, and quickly begin flying. And while some folks think X-plane may be a fun toy, I am here to tell you it is far from it:

Even though I own a Piper Cherokee 235, I choose to modify the ultra-stable and quite realistic Cessna 172SP that comes with the program, changing it into a true IFR platform. It comes from the “factory” with a very nice panel, which I've tweaked to include two VOR heads with glide slope, two King flip-flop Nav-Coms, a DME, a GPS that will track fixes, and an S-tec 55 approach-capable autopilot. I boosted the engine to 235 horsepower, and adjusted all settings to achieve true realism in flight characteristics.

So how does this rig work?

On my first flight, I set the cloud deck at about 800' AGL, with tops at about 3,000 AGL. I flew the ILS down the pipe to Eugene Airport's 16R, but at about 1,000 AGL, things didn't feel quite right, so I decided to try a missed approach, going outbound on the EUG 205 radial towards VAUGN intersection. After a few minutes headed SSW and level at five grand, I spun the heading bug back to about a 340 to set back up for another try at the ILS, and the S-tec gently turned me back north-northwest. All was fine, up on top the WX was clear and a million:

About 7 NM northwest of the field, I set the vertical speed on the S-tec to 1,000 FPM descent, and then dialed in 130 on the heading bug. A quick switch on the a/p from GPS to HDG began a slow turn into the clouds back towards EUG so I could intercept the rwy 16R localizer. When the #1 VOR started twitching back to center, I switch the a/p again to NAV 1 and BINGO, it turned me right onto the approach. I stabbed in the “APCH” button on the S-tec, set power at about 1,700 RPM, and without touching the controls, watch as the plane slid down towards where I assumed the numbers would be if it were clear, right on the money.

But I was still squarely in the soup. When I popped out of the muck, sure enough, I was two lights red, two lights white on the VASI. I kicked off the S-tec and greased a fine simulator landing. Best of all, this little excursion up into the clouds cost me nothing, how cool is that?

I believe X-plane is a very powerful tool for IFR pilots like me to practice basic maneuvers and procedures before ever getting in the real plane. As I enjoy the privileges that comes with my IFR rating, I will continue to work these exercises on the sim, so that when the time comes for me to slip into the left seat of Katy to go bust holes in the clouds, I can get up to speed quickly when the Hobbs is turning and the AvGas is flowing.

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Wingwalking: Don't Try This at HomeUnless Your Airplane is Parked!

This is part two of my interview with wingwalker Jenny Forsythe, part one is here.

World of Flying: Has there ever been a time when things went wrong in your act and you scared yourself.

Jenny Forsythe: I really haven’t had any truly scary moments with American Barnstormer. Rather, there has been a time or two when I find myself disappointed that I’m unable to do a particular stunt to my full capabilities. For instance, last year, at our first show of the season, we were dealing with a 30-knot on-crowd crosswind, which meant that Walt had to carry more speed and power to maintain more controlled flight. Our first full pass requires us to stand on one foot between the wings while holding onto the front wires with just one arm and the other arm waving above the top wing. With the extra speed and wind force, I got pushed back against the rear wires and fought to get back out from under the top wing for most of the crowd line length. Using that much more energy, early on in the flight, made the rest of the performance a little bit tougher than usual. In those kinds of cases, you tend to be all that much more aware of your body and you really think twice about your upcoming move and if you have the strength to safely make that move. So far, I haven’t had to bail on any performances or specific maneuvers, but that possibility is always there when things don’t go as usual due to weather or other uncontrollable circumstances. And that’s where the signaling mentioned above would come into play.

WoF: Is wingwalking a full-time gig or do you have a day job? If yes, how does that day job fit into your occupation as wingwalker.

JF: I have a BA in Chemistry and a MS in Geology. When I first started wingwalking, I was working full time at the University of Notre Dame as a research/lab technician. Eventually, the program’s funding ran out, so I concentrated on my airshow efforts for a couple years. With the downturn in the economy, I decided to go back to school and get degree #3 (Diagnostic Medical Sonography), so that’s what I’m working on now. I’m also pursuing part-time work, like substitute teaching, in the meantime. With our airshow duties generally running from Thursday through Monday on show weekends, it still leaves room for another job or volunteer work, which I’m also involved with. We do enough shows to keep recurrent with everything, but not so many as to keep us from being able to pursue other interests.

WoF: How many wingwalkers are there in the business, and what is the breakdown of men to women?

JF: Currently, in North America, there are seven teams that I would call “active” on the airshow circuit, plus a couple groups of “stationary” wingwalkers (one at the Flying Circus in Virginia, and one in southern Ohio). Six of those have only female wingwalkers, one has only a male, and our team and the flying circus have both. Around the world, there are another handful of teams with primarily females on the wing.

WoF: How much effort do you put into developing new routines and tricks to incorporate into your act? And how many rehearsals are involved to keep the act sharp?

JF: Our team is among the few that I’ve seen really evolve over the years, consistently adding in new “stunts” or maneuvers to keep things fresh and make our choreography anything but routine. I think part of that is because I’ve had the great opportunity to work with a variety of teams and I’ve learned different things from each, incorporating the moves that I think work best into our team’s performances. I’ve also spent some time studying old photographs and video to see what works best from the audience’s perspective – what poses/maneuvers are the most interesting and most visible from the ground. We also love when we’re able to get a good variety of photos and videos of our performances so we can do a self-assessment and evaluate what is or isn’t working so well.

My favorite “stunt” is the Daring Javelin Hang, borrowed from the Daring Damsels team of the 1980s (the team that developed, and only other team I’m aware of that ever attempted, this particular stunt). Even that one has evolved over the past two years that we’ve been doing it, moving from holding on with one hand as we had seen in the photos of the Daring Damsels, to completely letting go with both hands.

We always make sure we get a practice in before the start of the season, to “shake the rust off.” And if we go for long periods between shows, or if we plan to add something new into the routine, then we schedule additional practices. We also always take advantage, wherever possible, of the practice days at each show venue.

WoF: With the ever-present need to push the envelope, has there ever been a trick you considered performing that was too "over the top" and had to come out of the act for safety reasons?

JF: We haven’t tried anything yet that was immediately deemed inappropriate for safety reasons. There have been a couple things that have come out for other reasons, or at other times. One of them was the last pass we did in which Tyson stood at the right wingtip and I posed over the cockpit (behind the upper wing rack) – after doing that one during practice and at a few shows, Walt eventually came to the conclusion that, under certain meteorological conditions, it left very little room for error because it greatly hindered his right aileron AND his rudder controls. So, instead of performing that combination, we now keep Tyson at the right wingtip, but I do a different pose that keeps me in front of the top rack with my feet clear from hindering any rudder control.

An example of a maneuver that we practiced but threw out right away includes a Cuban Eight we tried with both wingwalkers on the plane. In this case, the issue wasn’t with safety, as the plane did the aerobatic maneuver just fine, but it required a great deal of climb time due to the extra drag of two bodies, and the extra altitude that was needed for the same reason. Thus, not wanting to bore our audience with needing two minutes to get to altitude, we chose to do a barrel roll instead (which requires much less initial altitude).

WoF: What is the most exhilarating part of being a wingwalker?

JF: The spectacular view from the wing is certainly one perk of being a wingwalker. There is absolutely nothing hindering your view and you get the real feel of the wind in your hair. The complete experience is actually quite difficult to describe and put into simple terms, because it is so vastly different from anything else I’ve experienced. One common misconception, I’d say, is that it’s an adrenaline rush. On the contrary, I find the experience of being on the wing much closer to meditation than a rush.

The other notable experience is that of being able to share a flight with another wingwalker. My pilot, Walt Pierce, is one of only 2 or 3 pilots in the world daring (and experienced) enough to regularly fly with more than one wingwalker. Looking over the nose of the plane and seeing your teammate (and good friend) over there, knowing you’re sharing that amazing experience, is certainly nothing short of special.

WoF: Explain the reaction you get from the audience after the show when they get to meet you in person. Has anyone ever treated you as if you're nuts for being a wingwalker? Are you?

JF: I get reactions of all types. I normally hop off the plane at show center (whether doing a solo wing walk or the dual act) and after a few swigs of water, immediately start signing autographs and interacting with the guests. Some people do think that wingwalkers are nuts, others attribute it to having a particularly large set of certain body parts (even if just metaphorically speaking for us females). Others express envy and ask about how and where they can learn to wingwalk (unfortunately for them, the only opportunities I know of for people to pursue wingwalking as a thrill-ride, is overseas). Most people are simply fascinated and will ask about safety equipment or what we felt during our very first flight on the wing, or how/why we got into it.

Being ‘nuts’ is definitely a relative term. Within the airshow industry, certain groups of performers find others to be ‘nuts’ – for example, several of the skydivers I’ve spoken with consider wingwalkers nuts for walking around on the wings, but we tend to think of them as being nuts since we see no reason to leave a perfectly good airplane. And I’ve found that goes for several of the various types of pilots, whether the extreme part of their flying is due to the type of aircraft, the low-level aerobatics, or the speeds they fly at. The thing to remember is that we’re each trained in a specific way to perform specific types of routines – when you’re familiar with something, it doesn’t seem so crazy – it’s the types of performances you’re not familiar with that seem mind-boggling because you generally have little (or no) experience with the specific talents and safety precautions in use.

Likewise, outside the airshow industry, it’s just a matter of personality and what you have come to know through your experiences. I don’t understand the desire of some people to sit in a cubicle for 60 hours a week pecking away at a computer problem any more than I do the desire of others to freeze their butts off and risk their lives climbing Mt. Everest. But there are people who find each of those activities rewarding and fulfilling, just as I find wingwalking to be.

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In the Barnstorming World of Yesterday,This 'Jenny" Would Have Been a Bright Star

We've all been to air shows and seen wingwalkers. This rarest breed of air show performer is a throwback to the golden days of barnstorming, when in an attempt to get more paying townspeople out to Farmer John's pasture to watch a "Flying Circus", someone thought to tie his girlfriend onto the top of his Curtis JN-4 "Jenny" and fly upside down for a while at show center. It was indeed a gas, and everyone wanted more.

As the history of aerobatic performances matured, there were always wingwalking acts out there thrilling young and old alike. These daring flyers were usually female, almost always dressed sort of circus-ish in something made of spandex and were always doing things that looked as dangerous as they probably were.

Today, while we don't see too many 'Jennys' in a farmer's field at the edge of town, another 'Jenny" – wingwalking artist/athlete Jenny Forsythe – is doing her part to keep the fine art of wingwalking alive and thriving. She performs as part of the American Barnstormer act with also features Pilot Walt Pierce and wingwalker Tyson V. Rininger as part of the "Double Trouble" wingwalking act.

Recently, Forsythe stepped off the wings of Pierce's 450 horsepower Stearman "Ol' Smokey" to answer a few questions from World of Flying about what it is like to be a professional wingwalker. In part one below, Forsythe talks about how she got into wingwalking, the risks involved, and what it takes to handle the physical demands of such an act. She also explains what happens to the aerodynamics of an aircraft when a couple of humans are walking around the wings.

World of Flying: Describe your aviation experience, if you hold any licenses, ratings, tell us the planes you have flown, and talk about any aspirations to earn a license or additional ratings.

Jenny Forsythe: I have had the opportunity to take the controls of a variety of aircraft, including a B-25 bomber, and even had an “unofficial” aerobatic lesson in a Swift. However, I just recently started official (logged) flight lessons in a J3 Cub this past fall at Red Stewart Airfield in Waynesville, OH (it’s an amazing little airport dedicated to grass roots aviation – I highly recommend it).

WoF: How did you get involved in wingwalking?

JF: I knew some people involved with airshows and had started tagging along to shows with them in 2002, just acting as a grunt for two seasons. At the end of the second season, their wingwalker decided to retire, so I volunteered to become the wingwalker. As I worked with that team, and got to know other performers at the various shows and through the annual conventions, more opportunities presented themselves for me to wingwalk with other teams. For a couple of seasons, I worked double-duty with my original team and with American Barnstormer Walt Pierce. In 2007, I decided to devote all my time to American Barnstormer and parted ways with the other team altogether.

WoF: Tell us about your family and what they think of your occupation as wingwalker.

JF: When I first broke the news to my parents, my mom thought I was nuts and was actually quite upset with me. But, over time, as she saw how much I loved the airshows and she learned more about the safety measures we take – and saw how wingwalking was really bringing me out of my shell in many ways – she came to accept it. My more extended family is somewhat mixed – most think it’s the coolest thing in the world, but a few won’t even look at photos of me on the plane.

With being on Facebook the past year, I’ve gotten back in touch with a huge variety of people who knew me as an exceptionally quiet and reserved young girl in high school and college – I think those are the people who get the biggest kick out me doing what I do now.

WoF: Describe the risks involved in wingwalking and the safety equipment you use to minimize those risks.

JF: I use a system of tethers that won’t ever allow me to completely leave the aircraft in a worst-case scenario. They’re long enough such that I can freely move to wherever I need to move, but short enough that if I ever do need them in a fall situation, I won’t be too far from a surface to grab hold of or kick my feet up on in case a quick landing is needed. For the more advanced stunts I do – where I hang upside-down – an additional shorter tether is used for redundancy measures. That secondary tether is also used when I advance out to the N-strut at the wingtip since the primary tether doesn’t go that far (the second tether is always attached before the first one is detached).

I choose to use tethers for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it allows me to do the more advanced stunts that you don’t usually see others doing, as well as for the peace of mind of the audience. Most of the spectators have no idea during the performance whether or not I’m using such safety measures, but the fact is that if a wingwalker falls from a plane, without a tether, they’re not going to have to worry about anything ever again – but the audience will be traumatized by what they’ve just witnessed for years to come, in many cases. So, it’s not just for my sake that I choose to work with safety equipment.

In general, the biggest potential hazard to wingwalkers is probably birds – I’ve not heard of any actual bird strikes to wingwalkers, but I’ve heard of many close calls. With the speeds we travel at, a bird could potentially render a wingwalker incapable of moving or even unconscious – so again, the tethers would ensure that the pilot can do what he needs to do to land the aircraft without having to worry about the wingwalker slipping off the plane in such a case.

WoF: Wingwalkers always appear to be in great shape. Describe how strenuous wingwalking is, how much it stresses the human body, and how you work out to keep in wingwalking shape.

JF: We reach speeds in excess of 150 mph (and around 4 Gs - meaning my 140 lb. body feels like it weighs 560 lbs.) as we’re diving for aerobatics, but at the times that we’re doing the most moving about the aircraft, we’re probably traveling at 80-90 mph, depending on specific air conditions and whether there is just one of us or two of us on the aircraft at the time. Of course, at those speeds, your body is engaged in a type of resistance training as you move about or hold your body in a specific “pose”. In all honesty, because the type of movements we do in the air are so different from anything else on the ground, wingwalking is the best workout for wingwalking. Obviously, though, keeping in good general shape and keeping your flexibility up, along with eating right, certainly helps in the overall scheme of things. That said, I know wingwalkers of many shapes and sizes, as well as varying strengths. In my experience, generally speaking, the stronger and more flexible the wingwalker (regardless of shape), the more you’ll see them doing on the plane with respect to stunts and moving around (as opposed to just riding through aerobatics).

WoF: Tell us how you and the pilot communicate during the act. Who says what, who is in charge, and explain how tuned in to your movements the pilot has to be.

JF: From the pilot’s perspective, every time our feet contact the leading edge of the lower wing (or the surface of the top wing), it changes the flight characteristics of the plane. So, Walt REALLY has his hands full when Tyson and I both move at the same time since he’s then dealing with the potential of four feet stepping along the wings. The act is choreographed, of course, so we each know when we can move freely and when to expect signals – for instance, when I am about to transfer from the lower wing up to the top wing, I make sure I turn to look at Walt and wait for his signal (pointing to the top wing) before I begin my move. We also have additional signals in place for emergencies or for cases where it’s necessary to change something before the end of the routine; for example, if Walt needs us to look at him to get another signal to either stay put or move into the cockpit, he simply shakes the wings. If we need to get his attention, then simply by moving our foot on and off the lower wing a couple times, the abruptly changing flight characteristics do the trick and he turns his attention to us. Each team member has the authority to end the routine for any reason at any time. Though we have never had to use these signals to end a routine prematurely at an airshow, we discuss the signals and potential for their use regularly and have put them into practice during training (often due to another aircraft approaching the airspace).

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A Triumphant Return Into a Glorious Sunset

I am writing this having just returned from one of the more memorable flights I have made in a long, long time. We aviators make lots of flights for all kinds of reasons, and each one is different than the next. They are all grand in their own way, and on this day, everything came together to re-define again why I aviate:

It has been 67 days since Katy and I enjoyed the rush of achieving lift under her big Hershey Bar wings and escaping the crust of this deteriorating planet. She went down for annual on 11.14.09, and it took until yesterday to get the logs back signed off as airworthy. It will not serve the goal of this post to dissect the reasons why a simple annual inspection on a fixed gear, fixed prop GA plane took over two months with no major squawks...no, this post is not about the past, it is about the present.

If you have ever been around an airplane owner who has a sick bird, the emotions surrounding that pilot can be like riding one of those old wooden roller coasters down at the Boardwalk. One minute you are pissed that things are not going well, the next you think it'll all be over and you'll be back in the air. That's been me for two months, trying to stay sane as false start after unexplained delay kept Katy grounded. But today, that all changed:

The Lycoming engine under Katy's cowl had been started only once in the past 67 days as far as I knew, because I had an oil change and the IA had to run it up and check pressures. But that might have been many weeks ago, so after a very VERY thorough pre-flight inspection, I carefully worked my checklist and introduced spark to gasoline inside the jugs. Katy fired up as if I had flown her yesterday, ran purrfect, and all systems were green. Since I also had a brake job and some avionics work done, I got permission to taxi around the non-movement area and stabbed the handle (Katy has no toe brakes) to seat the liners. I also tested all three comm radios with Eugene ground (two Kings and a hard-wired Vertex Standard emergency radio). I went over everything down to the security of the seats...everything.

Satisfied that the IA and Avionics Tech put everything back together correctly without causing further damage, I keyed the mic and hoped I could still remember how to use the radio. After jotting down taxi instructions, I was off to see if Katy and I still remembered how to fly:

The sky around Western Oregon today was dramatic, with a setting sun lighting up brilliant hues of pink and orange across low stratus set against the backdrop of distant towering build-ups over the Cascades. After receiving clearance to launch, I gingerly rolled onto runway 16L and gave Katy permission to become a rocket ship with one person aboard and half a load of fuel. Before I could even screw in all the power, she leaped off the runway, as eager as I was to get back to flying. I kept a quick scan going from engine gauges to radios and audio panel to flight instruments, checking to see if anything looked amiss. I was feeling giddy about having everything working perfectly when I noticed Katy was on her way quickly to 2,000 MSL. And with my promise to stay in left closed traffic in the 1,174 MSL pattern, I had to quickly get head back in game and try to keep the slop to a minimum.

When your plane comes out of a long maintenance bout, as a pilot, you want to know that everything is squawk-free. You want to believe all is as it was before the cowl came off:

My mission was twofold. First, I wanted to make sure the plane was fine, and then I wanted to get VFR current again with my required three takeoffs and landings. So the first lap around closed traffic was a shake down lap, was everything in the green...how's the oil pressure look...that sort of thing. With light winds of 210/3, I was amazed at how good this first lap felt. After a touch-and-go that seemed textbook, I went around again. But on this lap, my focus drifted from shakedown mode to awestruck tourist mode. I noticed that dramatic sky, the way the last rays of the winter sun slid effortlessly through the layers of clouds resting atop the Coast Range separating me from the mighty Pacific Ocean. The second approach felt perfect, so stable it was as if someone had painted the airspeed needle over the 80 mph tick.

With two laps down and Katy running as if she came out of Vero Beach yesterday, I slowed things down on the third and final lap to just enjoy the ride...one that was 67 days in the making:

Everything about this final closed traffic trip around the pattern was golden. So I just powered back, dropped all the flaps, and cruised. As I turned base to final pointing west coming to south, the sun was just slipping into the mountains for the night. The tiny sliver of fireball left showing was just enough to shower the underside of the 5,500 MSL cloud deck with an artist's palette of blues, pinks, oranges, reds, yellows and even a touch of a lusty sort of green. I wanted this final approach to last forever so I could cherish the scene before me. Eugene Airport in my windscreen, the almost psychedelic colors of the sky reflecting off the still water of Fern Ridge Reservoir just west of the field. It was magical, it was the reason I fly.

It was as if the aviation Gods were smiling down on Katy and I, rewarding us with one of those precious, priceless moments we flyers get to enjoy now and then.

Yes, Katy and I were back.

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EAA Media Relations: 'Oshkosh'is Never Predictable and AlwaysKeeps the Organizers Running

In part one of this interview with Dick Knapinski of EAA Media Relations, we looked at how Team EAA de-briefs each year's Airventure, and how despite setting the bar high for last summer's show, and despite a rough economy, Airventure enjoyed higher-than-expected attendance. In part two below, Knapinski – aka @EAAUpdate in Twitter – discusses some of the things you didn't know about from last year's show, and what might be coming this summer to KOSH:

World of Flying: What projects are you working on for 2010 AirVenture that is going to whip AirVenture fans into a frenzy?

Dick Knapinski: Some of it we’re seeing already. The reaction to the Cherokee 50th anniversary, the 75th anniversary of the DC-3 and the B-17 and other events is already building in many areas, such as aviation discussion boards and so forth. Along with all that, suffice it to say that there will be things you’ve never seen before and things that you never thought you’d see again.

WoF: Tell us one thing great that happens in your office each year at AirVenture that makes you especially glad you have the job you do.

DK: Perhaps the most gratifying things that occur on a yearly basis are those comments and notes we receive from people that find their expectations are exceeded. Comments like, “I knew Oshkosh was big, but it was more than I ever imagined”; “My dad and I came, and Dad had the time of his life seeing the warbirds he repaired back in the war”; or “My kids are now total aviation junkies after two days at KidVenture.” Those type of comments make you realize that what you’re doing is bigger than an individual or an air show, because you’ve created a deeply personal memory for someone. And then there are the volunteers, both in our media area and throughout the grounds. I can’t say enough about what they do to make the event special. A successful event is very personal to them and it shows.

WoF: Tell us one horror story that always happens at every AirVenture, some bad situation you know is coming but you are not sure when...and what plans you have in place to solve this situation in 2010.

DK: There are always plenty. On an annual level, you always want the event to be safe. An accident is not only a disruption, but it’s a tragedy that must be addressed on several levels. Bad weather in Wisconsin in late July is always a threat, so plenty of time is spent planning for emergencies and making sure people and aircraft are protected as best as humanly possible. Then there are logistics issues – with something this large, they will occur, but you just don’t know where. For instance, the growing use of wireless internet and smartphones (who would’ve thought of THAT 20 years ago?) means creating infrastructure for people who may travel with only their airplane, a tent and their laptop. The effort in 2009 was not totally up to our expectations and we’re working on that for 2010.

WoF: Describe the level of excitement in Air venture’s Media operation leading up to the show, right up to opening day. Also, what is your work schedule like during the show, do you get to sleep much?

DK: In high school and college, I was involved in both sports and music. Anyone involved in either of those pursuits knows the nervous energy building up before the big game or the big performance. You hope you’re well prepared, you’ve been getting ready, but you can’t wait for things to get started because this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. When I drive over the Highway 41/44 interchange in the morning and see the North 40 filled with airplanes, I’ve told myself on more than one occasion, “OK, it’s game time. Let’s go.”

To answer your question; no, I don’t sleep much. But neither do a lot of other people, from our maintenance staff and security to many of the volunteer chairpeople. Personally, I’m typically on the grounds by about 4:30 am because the TV trucks arrive for the morning shows. The airport closes to traffic at 8 pm each day, and I usually don’t get off the grounds until 10 pm at the earliest for either work reasons or because I have aviation friends I want to see, too.

WoF: Tell us a really juicy behind-the-scenes story about AirVenture that the general public will be blown away to discover.

DK: Boy that’s tough, since there are so many stories that take place each year when you’re in the middle of the maelstrom. There are the fun things, where you might run into Harrison Ford or NASCAR owner Jack Roush among the exhibits, shopping for airplane gadgets, and people just let them be as a fellow aviator. Just a couple of examples from 2009: We had a movie company arrive on the grounds to shoot for two days. They were doing background shots for a major aviation-themed movie that’s due for release in 2012. They arrived on the Thursday during the event with 33 people, seven vehicles, a helicopter with a camera pod, a catering tent, and a 28-foot boom arm for aerial filming. The challenge was allowing them to get their shots with minimum disruption for everyone else who was here to enjoy the show, as it is a live event and not a movie set. The film crew planned for three days of shooting but got everything done in two because it went so well.

The other was the “race” between an aerobatic airplane and Paul Teutul of the American Choppers TV show. Longtime EAA member Ron Fagen had invited Paul to visit Oshkosh and participate. When the TV show production staff started doing research on AirVenture a day or two into the show, they suddenly realized that “Hey, this is a pretty big event!” and decided to do some show taping here. That meant clearing additional media people, approving camera positions with FAA, securing transportation and everything else for less than four hours of shooting – AND not disrupting the air show for everyone watching.

Those are the short stories. A couple of others are two-beer tales…

WoF: I believe the DC-3/C-47 mass arrival event will be a major draw in attendance this year. What do you predict will happen to attendance on Opening Day, Monday, July 26th, 2010 when this formation is due overhead at KOSH?

DK: Opening day could be spectacular in 2010. With all the early mass arrivals, the expected arrival of the Oshkosh Express 747 from Australia and New Zealand that day, an opening-day concert once again, PLUS an aerial arrival of DC-3s never before seen at any aviation show, and well…let’s just say it could be very big. There are tens of thousands of people on the grounds on opening day regardless, and if the weather’s good, who knows what kind of once-in-a-lifetime day could occur. All I know as an airplane person, I sure wouldn’t want to miss it.

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Disecting and Promoting Airventure:'Oshkosh' is Really a 365-day-a-yearEvent for EAA Media Relations

When you really look deep into the soul of EAA's annual Airventure general aviation celebration, it is as much about people as it is about airplanes.

We already know going in that pilots and others in the aviation community are some of the nicest, good-hearted, friendliest people on this planet, the kind of people who will give you the shirt off their back if you find yourself in Wisconsin in late July and really need a shirt.

But Airventure is also about the people who make this mammoth event a reality. One of those "behind-the-scenes" EAA staffers that goes many extra miles to put this show together each year is Dick Knapinski of EAA Media Relations, who can be found on Twitter as @EAAUpdate. Recently, World of Flying tracked Knapinski down and asked him questions aimed at pulling back the curtain a bit on how EAA manages to organize Oshkosh each year, and how they strive to make this year's show better than last year's show.

In part one, Knapinski talks about how they debrief each year's Airventure, and how the 2009 show exceeded many of his office's expectations and goals.

World of Flying: Tell us about Dick Knapinski the pilot, how long you've been flying, hours, ratings and type ratings, airplanes flown and owned, and what got you into flying in the first place.

Dick Knapinski: I’ve always been one of those people who looked up when an airplane passed overhead, even as a kid. That habit didn’t make me a real effective shortstop, but it certainly hatched a love for aviation. I also spent many hours as a boy accidentally gluing plastic airplane model parts to my parents’ kitchen table. After some years away because of early career and family obligations, I came back to flying in 1996. I currently hold a Private Pilot SEL certificate and fly a 1967 Piper Cherokee 140, which should be great with the Cherokee 50th anniversary celebrated at Oshkosh in 2010. I also have some hours in an RV-6A and various other aircraft.

WoF: Who makes up the team that you work with in the AirVenture Media operation?

DK: We have three full-time people on the EAA communications staff, and all are involved with what happens at Oshkosh, naturally. We also add a college-age summer intern each year and overwhelm that person with aviation and public-event experience. In addition, one of EAA’s full-time staff from the publications office, Livy Trabbold, heads the group inside Press Headquarters on-site with an additional five volunteers between the front registration gate and Press HQ. They do a terrific job with more than 900 media representatives from all over the world.

WoF: I want to begin with having you describe the de-briefing process after each AirVenture. What do you look for, how you determine what can be improved, how you categorize what went right, and what went wrong.

DK: The de-briefing process begins even as each year’s fly-in ends. We get feedback from volunteers and area chairmen, then suggestions from staff members, and of course the thousands of comments, e-mails, letters and phone calls received from AirVenture visitors, campers, exhibitors, sponsors, support organizations and more. We also send out thousands of online surveys to visitors – both EAA members and non-members – to gauge overall reactions. Each comment/suggestion sent to us outside the surveys is important and we try to answer every one that is reasonable. We realize that each person has different expectations and goals of a trip to Oshkosh. All of this input gives us some trends of the good and bad and what will be the most important issues to address in the coming year.

WoF: Describe how you set the 2009 show goals, how they were surpassed, and what you think contributed to the success of the show in spite of the recession.

DK: We had entered 2009 with an idea that AirVenture would be at about the same level as 2008, which was a very good show. We also had a major site change and upgrade that needed to be communicated extensively, because we understood that if people were unpleasantly surprised by site changes or discovering things may not have been where they were in previous years. And we hold ourselves to some pretty high standards, a mindset that goes all the way to Paul Poberezny and the earliest days of the organization. The good news is almost every goal was met or exceeded. Attendance was up 12 percent over 2008, there were more exhibitors on the grounds, we were parking cars in areas we had never parked cars in previous years, and many more measurable results. Why? First, it was a great lineup of people and airplanes. Second, Oshkosh is more than just the lineup. There’s a reason I often call it “aviation’s family reunion,” because seeing aviation friends and sharing that experience with others is as much in the fabric of the event than any individual highlight. Third, even with the recession, there may have been a pent-up feeling of “What the heck, I’m going to do this for myself.” Or if a person was going to visit only one show, let’s make it the big one. It was also part of the trend in 2009 that showed air shows across the country had increased attendance.

WoF: Tell us one thing great that happens in your office each year at AirVenture that makes you especially glad you have the job you do.

DK: Perhaps the most gratifying things that occur on a yearly basis are those comments and notes we receive from people that find their expectations are exceeded. Comments like, “I knew Oshkosh was big, but it was more than I ever imagined”; “My dad and I came, and Dad had the time of his life seeing the warbirds he repaired back in the war”; or “My kids are now total aviation junkies after two days at KidVenture.” Those type of comments make you realize that what you’re doing is bigger than an individual or an air show, because you’ve created a deeply personal memory for someone. And then there are the volunteers, both in our media area and throughout the grounds. I can’t say enough about what they do to make the event special. A successful event is very personal to them and it shows.

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I Love the 11:25

It usually happens about the time that the sports segment of the local news is wrapping up on our NBC affiliate. Blah blah blah Seahawks, blah blah blah Trailblazers, and then WOOOOSH, right over my house it comes.

The 11:25 (PM) is on time tonight.

For a born planespotter like me, living under the approach end of EUG runway 34L is a blessing. Watching planes fly over has been a lifelong passion, from the early teens when I’d watch 707s and Delta Darts depart FAT's 29R, to my twenties, when I’d pull off highway 99 near Atwater, California and wait for a B-52 inbound for Castle AFB to blast me right out of my shoes. Too cool.

I remember a time at a little airshow at Fresno’s Chandler Airport when a DC-3 (my favorite airplane) was firing up to depart. A small group of onlookers, including myself, had gathered aft of the tail feathers, and as the two large radials were coaxed to life, out belched the usual blue smoke, delivered quickly towards us by the wash of two large props.

As the propwash increased, people started bailing, fast. Soon, small pebbles and other miniature flying objects were caught up in the wash, and as the -3 throttled up to begin taxi, the blast into my face was incredible. I stood frozen in my delight, one hand on my hat and one hand on my sunglasses, which were getting sandblasted into a nice even blur on both lenses. The smell, the noise...it was heaven.

These days, I always keep one eye aimed up between the giant Douglas Firs that encircle my house, waiting for something tasty to come sliding down inbound to EUG, or be rocketing southbound towards Cali, or Cabo. Most days it’s a Regional jet, but when the Oregon Ducks have finished playing a home football game against another PAC-10 opponent, I can expect a chartered 767 to grace my sky as the other team launches for home after suffering their brutalization at Autzen Stadium.

There are also a few vintage birds that tease me some days, and the occasional Bell Jetranger is always a gas, even for a non-Rotorhead like me. But it really does not matter, as long as they keep flying over. And then there's one A-10 Warthog, so damned loud the dog runs for cover when it blasts the acorns off my trees. But in reality, living off the end of a commercial airport is a blast, as I look forward to my daily dosage of airplanes overhead.

Especially the 11:25. Without it, I would have no way of knowing that Jay Leno is about to come on. Or wait, make that Conan? No, wait, it's Jay. Um, no, Jay is at 10P, right? WTF, he's on at 11:35P? Huh? Jeez, who can keep up with the trainwreck that is NBC late night?

And while I have no idea who will be on after the news, one thing is etched in stone: When Skywest's 11:25 is late, I seem to always miss the funny part of the Tonight Show…and I hate it when that happens.

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Guest Blog: First Date, First Flight

(note: This is another in my series featuring Guest Bloggers. Discover more of "cockeyed optimist" @Shelley Delayne on Twitter.

For more than a year, I had refused to let my friend set me up on a blind date with a life-long friend of her husband’s. “He’s got a great personality,” she said. “Really terrific guy! And he’s a pilot.” But nothing she said could get me to reconsider my “no blind dates” policy.

In mid-summer, while at her birthday party, I found myself chatting with a handsome and charming guy. Twenty minutes into a lovely conversation, we remembered our manners and introduced ourselves — and immediately, we both laughed and said, “Oh, you’re the one they’ve been trying to set me up with.”

A few days later, Dean called me and asked if I’d like to have dinner with him. Then he asked if the Burbank or Van Nuys airport was nearest to my apartment, so he could perhaps pick me up there and we could fly in his plane up to Santa Barbara for dinner.

(Note: If he hadn’t come with references from trusted friends, I’d have refused for fear of being charmed by a Lothario or ending up abducted to Tijuana. As it was, I agreed.)

Having never been in a small plane, I didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified. I went with excited, aided by Dean’s assurances that if I got at all nervous or scared, we didn’t have to fly; we could just eat dinner somewhere near the airport and it would be no big deal. Now I realize it was a litmus test, but it was nice of him to say otherwise.

When the day arrived, I met him at the airport and found myself standing on the tarmac next to a pretty little blue and white plane, my heart pounding, completely unsure what to think of this whole endeavor. Dean introduced me to his airplane, a Meyers 200D, showing me around the outside and pointing out the basic features of an airplane and explaining that inside the aluminum skin of this plane was a steel cage which made her very strong and very stable. He talked me through his pre-flight checks and asked how I felt about going for a flight.

By now, I was beginning to feel some genuine excitement and curiosity, so he told me how to climb into the plane after he got in and settled: to stand on the black area of the wing, grab onto the door frame but not the door itself.

Once we were in and seat-belted, he reached across and closed the door. He gave me a quick overview of the instrument panel, and gave me a headset to wear. I don’t remember what he said, since none of it meant anything to me yet, but I was very reassured by his willingness to answer questions and explain things. He asked if I was ready to go and I nodded.

Then he was yelling “Clear!” and starting the engine and speaking in gibberish on the radio and I was reminding myself to breathe as we began to taxi toward the runway. He was balancing a clipboard with mysterious scribbles on it and turning dials and flipping switches and a million other little things which are now part of a familiar routine, but at the time seemed incomprehensible.

Soon enough, we were rolling down the runway and were suddenly climbing upward into the afternoon sky. Dean explained the bumps of landing gear retracting and told me not to worry about little bits of turbulence as we passed over the hills. As I looked out the window and watched the traffic-clogged streets and the crowded houses shrink away from us and the blue sky stretch out before us, I was too thrilled to be afraid.

I’d flown on commercial flights, but nothing prepared me for the unique beauty of flying at this altitude: high enough to be lifted out of the everyday world, but low enough to really see everything on the ground.

When Dean said we were close to our destination, my face must have registered a little disappointment. He suggested we could continue to fly and land at another airport a little further away. He changed course and headed for Santa Maria. Landing made me a bit nervous, but Dean touched down light as a feather and I was soon grinning again. After dinner, we headed back and he flew a lovely scenic loop around downtown Los Angeles before returning me safely to the airport and my car.

My head was spinning with all this new knowledge: It had never crossed my mind that you could have a little plane and whenever you wanted to, you could get in it and fly somewhere just like that. That flying a plane can be as easy as a road trip only you can go lots further, much faster, without roads to follow or speed limits or traffic signs. That private airplanes did not necessarily cost a bazillion dollars. That there were little airports with restaurants right on the field and you could pop in and have a meal, just for fun. That flight is attainable, even for an ordinary girl like me. The freedom and adventure and beauty and unbridled possibility of it all seemed absolutely magical. It still does, every single time we fly.

For the record, my friend was right: Dean is a terrific guy with a great personality, and a fine pilot. The first time I climbed into his airplane, I was a stranger to him and to the whole world of aviation. Now, we're engaged to be married and I'm saving my pennies for my pilot's license and the radial-engine, tail-dragger biplane that I long to fly.

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CONTINUING COVERAGE OF THE2010 DC-3/C-47 MASS ARRIVALAT EAA AIRVENTURE OSHKOSH

FOLLOW THE EVENT ON THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE HERE

02.08.10: I have something developing regarding this historic flight that is a gigantic personal achievement. Watch this space for a big announcement soon.

01.29.10: Everyone reading this page loves great stories of the people who flew and crewed DC-3s and C-47s. These stories are now being told on the event organizer's web site in the Diaries page. Go there now and re-live some fantastic flying tales.

01.26.10: Organizers of the mass arrival are now saying as many as 16 DC-3/C-47 aircraft above the currently registered 35 aircraft have contacted them to be included in the formation flight to Oshkosh on 7.26.10! Due to logistics issues, they most likely won't be able to accommodate all of these, but World of Flying has learned that we can expect not 35 but 40 aircraft in the northbound formation flight KSQI to KOSH.

01.25.10: One of the mass arrival's "stars": C-GDAK - The Burma Star - is a 1939 C-47. In 1981 the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at the Hamilton International Airport in Mount Hope Ontario Canada acquired the aircraft where it underwent a 14 month major restoration before it flew again in June 1982 and won the “People’s Choice Award” at the 1982 Oshkosh “Air Venture” show. The aircraft is powered by two Wright Cyclone 1820-202A engines and has accumulated 81,499 flight hours.

01.19.10: "Opening day [of EAA Airventure Oshkosh] could be spectacular in 2010. With the expected arrival of the Oshkosh Express 747 from Australia and New Zealand that day, and an opening-day concert again, the aerial arrival of so many DC-3s will make this a very big opening day." - Dick Knapinski, EAA Media Relations Dept.

01.17.10: While there are many DC-3s coming to the mass arrival, one that will certainly be the subject of endless photos will be NC17334, aka Flagship Detroit. This glorious example of a DC-3 is owned and operated by the Flagship Detroit Foundation, and is the oldest DC-3 still flying. It is also one of the best looking too. Learn more about Flagship Detroit here.

01.16.10: Seen on thelasttime.org: "The sights and sounds from these legendary airplanes is something not to be missed. It's going to truly be a once in a lifetime event. Please come join us at Oshkosh this July for this historic celebration." - Patty Wagstaff

01.15.10: As this event is generating a HUGE bill for many people including the organizers and DC-3/C-47 owners and crew, there are PLENTY of opportunities to help financially with a sponsorship. Info on how you can help is here.

01.12.10: Organizers of the mass arrival event have set up the "DC-3 Diaries" on their website thelasttime.org. This forum has endless stories of the people and planes at the center of this fantastic formation flight to Oshkosh.

01.11.10: According to the organizers of the mass arrival, the closest commercial airport to KSQI (the staging airport) is KMLI - Quad Cities International in Moline, Illinois.

01.11.10: This just came in from EAA's Communications Dept: Fewer than 100 of the aircraft (DC-3/C-47) remain airworthy in the United States, meaning that nearly half of the current fleet could be present at AirVenture 2010. The weeklong festivities at Oshkosh will also include historical and technical forums/presentations, fly-bys and a special evening DC-3 commemorative program at Theater in the Woods.

01.10.10: The DC-3/C-47 world in late July, 2010 will be centered around KSQI, aka Whiteside County Airport - Jos H Bittorf Field in Sterling/Rock Falls, Illinois. Find out everything you need to know about KSQI here. And at the center of that action will be M & M Aviation Services.

01.09.10: The DC-3/C-47 mass arrival organizers have posted "N" numbers of the aircraft registered for the formation flight from KSQI to KOSH on Monday, 07.26.10. Most entries on the site have photos, and as more information becomes available, detailed bios on planes and crew will also be linked to this page.

01.08.10: EAA has posted their story about the DC-3/C-47 mass arrival event on the Airventure website and it is a good one.

• • • • • •

At the annual summer spectacle of airplanes, brats and friendly aviators we know as EAA Airventure, aka "Oshkosh", you see things that can only be described as magical. You see the absolute best of the best of any airframe ever made, you see airshow acts that redefine what "bringing your A game" can mean. You see four

gigantic halls crammed with the hottest in aviator gear. And you see beautiful flying examples of your favorite airplane, whatever that may be:

To build up this post, I must tell the tale of my first Oshkosh. I wandered the four halls before walking through Aeroshell Square to the flight line. There, I headed south towards the vintage areas. I had just bought my first serious DSLR camera, Canon's 40D, and used up hundreds of frames worth of imaginary film as I strolled through line after line of glorious flying museum pieces. I let the day slip away and soon was mesmerized by the afternoon airshow. That was day one. On day two, I again went through Aeroshell Square but this time headed north and found the warbird section. But before I could drool on the estimated two dozen P-51 Mustangs, I saw one line of aircraft that made me literally stop in my tracks (not kidding about that). There, before me was maybe six DC-3/C-47s, standing proud, they were nothing short of majestic. I walked slowly around each one, taking in every rivet, appreciating each ship's graceful but strong lines. To this aviator, the DC-3/C-47 is king, there is no finer flying machine. Yes, some makes are faster, some way bigger. But nothing that has ever achieved lift can touch the storied, almost unbelievable flying history of this fabulous airplane.

Remember that I said SIX of these great planes at once, six. It was the highlight of any Oshkosh I have attended to date. Now let your mind go crazy, and imagine the following:

It's late July, 2010 at Oshkosh, and you and your family find a place on the flight line just after lunch, noticing the crowds have exploded this year for some reason. People are flocking to runway 18/36 en masse, everyone is excited. Soon, the crowd begins to crane their necks to the south, everyone is up on their toes. Then you see it, low and slow heading directly to show center, a large, dark flying cloud of metal, gasoline and history. As this mass of machines creeps slowly towards you, the shapes of the planes come into view. The crowd gasps, claps and goes freakin' CRAZY as they see not six, not a dozen, but 35 of the finest DC-3/C-47s on this planet flying formation overhead. The sound of 70 radial engines creates a never-before and never-again heard symphony, the wonderful sonata we call airplane noise. As this massive formation cruises by, you thank God and EAA for the chance to see this great show, as you are sure this is the last time so many examples of this storied craft will be together, in formation, in one place.

This is not a dream, it is real. A group of DC-3/C-47 owners and enthusiasts have organized the "mass arrival and reunion" for July 26 - Aug 1, 2010
 in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the DC-3/C-47. The event has been in the works for years, and I am honored to be on the short list of bloggers who have been contacted by the organizers to keep you informed of developments. And man, are there developments:

Originally, the group had set the number of planes at 25, and knew getting that many flying DC-3/C-47s to Oshkosh would be a challenge. But this week they have confirmed that number has swelled to 35 aircraft! And, according to organizers, EAA is making the 75th anniversary celebration and mass arrival their lead attraction for 2010. Tom Poberezny, EAA President, said "While the 
DC-3 helped make air travel popular and profitable in the 1930s and 1940s, the fact that it is still used around the world today is a testament to the aircraft’s design. We’re thrilled to welcome these iconic aviation legends to Oshkosh for AirVenture 2010. It's likely the last time DC-3 fans will ever see a reunion this large."

You can visit the organizer's website www.thelasttime.org and see exactly what the airplanes scheduled to appear will be. When I scanned this list, I spotted a few highlights:

One ship that is always a crowd favorite is "Flagship Detroit", a 1936 DC-3, and "The Burma Star", a '39 -3 will also be very popular. The beautifully-restored Bluebonnet Bell, a 1944 C-47B, will be the subject of numerous photographs. Then there will be Dan Gryder's N143D, a 1938 DC-3 that with more than 57,000 hours on the airframe, demonstrates the durability and longevity of this make/model. But my personal favorite will always be N1XP, aka "Duggy, the Smile in the Sky". Duggy is a 1942 DC-3 painted in brilliant yellow, sporting the largest smile flying since Pacific Southwest Airlines went away. If you can look at Duggy and not break out in a gleeful grin, you, my friend, do not have the soul of an aviator.

If you wish to get into the whole groove of this mass arrival and celebration, the entire fleet will be on display at Whiteside County Airport in Rock Falls, Illinois Friday - Sunday, July 23-25, 2010. The last formation flight is scheduled for Monday, July 26, 2010 with an engine start at 2:30 pm. All 35 aircraft will get airborne and join up for the one hour flight to Oshkosh. This is the main event and the signature feature of AirVenture 2010. A course to the show of 360° is anticipated.

And once the planes leave KSQI on Monday afternoon, the formation will all land and remain at Airventure throughout the week, with departures planned by each ship's owners. Other media only and public events are being planned at this time, and I can personally assure you after several conversations with the organizers that there will be plenty of great opportunities throughout Airventure to join in the celebration.

And, of course this effort is requiring massive amounts of money to pull off. If you are in a position to help with financial or "in-kind" donations, I urge you to click here and help these hard working people offset the endless costs that are piling up as this event matures.

Will I be there? Really, you have to ask? I already have a game plan cooking in my head to make this the most amazing Oshkosh ever. Yes, I did say "most amazing Oshkosh ever" in 2009 when they had the A380 slam the numbers into submission literally YARDS from my eyes. But this time, in 2010, it WILL seriously be the most amazing Airventure. After witnessing the mass arrival of the coolest plane ever, in person, there will be no way anything could top that.

I applaud EAA for standing behind this effort, because once the sky darkens with the sight of 35 DC-3/C-47s in formation, the bar will be raised so high, they will need to book in Amelia Earhart to do barrel rolls in the Wright Flyer, with Lindbergh at the mike calling the action to upstage a sky literally full of Gooneys.

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Fairfax, VA - 11.16.05:A Photo Shoot I Shall Never Forget

There are some days in this life that we simply will never forget.

November 16, 2005 was one of those days for me as I spent several hours at the Smithsonian's Steven Udvar-Hazy Center crawling around every square inch of FAA N1538C, snapping endless digital images of the Spirit of Columbus for use later by the movie producers who buy the Three-Eight Charlie screenplay project.

To the untrained eye, “Charlie” looks much like my Skyhawk, your Skylane, or any number of plain Jane Skywagons. The only exterior clues to this plane’s rich heritage are a few colorful sponsor decals on the fuselage, and large white script lettering on the cowling. But when I opened the door, the two huge aluminum gas tanks crammed inside where the seats used to be were visible, and a truly amazing thing happened.

With NASM Curator of General Aviation Dorothy Cochran (and several Security Guards) keeping VERY close eye on me, I was able to poke my head and my camera inside the most famous Cessna on the planet. What I found transported me back in time to April 17, 1964 at Port Columbus Airport at the precise moment when Jerrie Mock yanked out the mixture, shut down her trusty Continental and crawled out of Charlie…for the last time.

Through the years that Charlie was on display at Cessna’s Wichita factory, the NASM National Mall Museum, and the 21+ years in storage at the Garber Restoration Facility, nothing was touched in Charlie’s cabin. Jerrie left notes [shown below] taped to the tanks with some very, very complex instructions on how to transfer gas between the two interior ferry tanks and the two wing tanks. There is even a yellowed note wedged into a space on the panel showing the 10 must important frequencies she would use.

Everything remains perfectly intact. The wear marks on the left door panel, the cracks in the original 1953 factory plastic, everything. I almost expected to see the remains of a Ham sandwich or an old ink pen on the floor, if not for the fact that I know Jerrie kept perfect house in Charlie during her flight. While the Smithsonian has kept Charlie in great condition, like many of it’s artifacts, they have chosen to preserve history by leaving the original plane alone rather than complete a full restoration. Because of this, I was able to get an unprecedented look at this historic flying machine before the NASM suspended Charlie from the ceiling of the Hazy Center.

This meeting with Charlie was a chance to learn even more about the mechanical operation of the aircraft. By reviewing notes Jerrie has taped all over – along with the photos I have taken – we can now get a realistic glimpse into what it must have been like for a young mother of three to fly across the Atlantic on a dark and stormy night, trying to keep the right amount of gasoline flowing from one tank to the next, to the next, to the next, and eventually to the engine.

Aside from the Smithsonian’s own photographers, this trip to the Hazy produced a very valuable set of archival research images. Not valuable in a fiscal sense, but in a cinematic one. When a Prop department begins re-creating “Charlie” for filming, it will all be there. Every nut, bolt, radio, gauge, switch, fuse, hose, pump, valve, wire, crack and blemish has now been recorded. This is so very important because this is the first time the story is being told on film, so it has to be historically accurate.

The interior of Charlie is functional, nothing more. Even one tiny chrome part would look ridiculously out of place. The simulated leather on the original seafoam green pilot’s seat is quite worn, and there are gaps around some of the radios that would make a Garmin engineer queasy. Everything in 1538C is there for a reason, that being to get Jerrie Mock safely around the world.

And while the Spirit of Columbus may never have won “Best of Show” at Oshkosh, there is no question that this bird has some SERIOUS legs. And when your wings are icing up on a cold, windy night and the nearest airport is across 1,500 miles of snarling, Cessna-eating waves, it doesn’t matter if your plane may not win beauty contests. All that matters is whether that round metal thingy out front continues to go round and round.

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One Reason We Own Airplanes:The Quest for the Perfect $100 Hamburger

From the very first days after we are awarded your Private Pilot's license, many pilots devote their flying "careers" to one thing, the search for food that you can fly to.

You've heard those famous airport burgers referred to as $100 hamburgers because after factoring in fuel, direct operating costs and maybe even airplane rental, the cost of a slab o'beef fighting for real estate with vegetables between two buns – accompanied by the prerequisite side of fries – can skyrocket way past the listed menu price. But that's fine by me:

We all own airplanes, or fly rentals, for various reasons. In my case, it is a little business mixed with a fair amount of personal fun. I adore the performance of Katy, the family Cherokee 235, which allows me to carry four adults, 84 gallons of fuel and 200 pounds of cargo and blast off in search of good times. That can be a trip to the Oregon coast, or a hop over the gorgeous Cascade Range to Sunriver for bike and horseback riding. It can be a jaunt up to the San Juan Islands for Halibut, or California for opera. We can also take Katy for impromptu business meetings throughout the West. But the one constant is that at the other end of that flight plan is always a meal, and somehow, that meal often ends up a burger, a very expensive burger worth every penny that it took to get it in front of my pie hole.

The one thing that we pilots have always had to deal with in our quest for these burgers is the inability to locate the aforementioned gastronomical prize. But recently I have discovered a couple of very good sources that allows any of us to seek out $100 burgers just about anywhere:

The first one I discovered is Fly2Lunch.com, from developer Bryan Duke, aka @GrouchoDuke on Twitter. This is a simple concept that works flawlessly. Duke built the site to do one thing, and to it well...search an unbelievably large database and deliver to the user a list of eateries on or very near almost any airport. I tested the roughly two-year-old site and discovered a number of airport restaurants in Oregon that I didn't know existed. The data is delivered fast and accurately, and as a programmer, Duke has made sure mobile users get a great experience as the site downsizes itself to deliver the same great info to your phone. With reviews, hours and contact info for most restaurants, you will easily find any $100 hamburgers lurking near an patch near you.

The second site I discovered is Funplacestofly.com, a seemingly endless site that delivers the goods on not only great food near airports, but many hotels and attractions that will keep you gassing up the bird every weekend. In a test-run of this fun site, I discovered these destinations about my home state:

I can go to the Cowboy Dinner Tree in Silver Lake, OR that still serves-up the beans and bread like the Old West, along with a slab of beef that most cowboys would only dream of. I didn't know that the Gold Beach Municipal Airport in Gold Beach, OR is located at the beach at the mouth of the beautiful Rogue River, one of the most scenic airports to fly into in Oregon. I found out that The Pinehurst Inn in Ashland, OR has a $99 Fly-in special along with a "snuggly bed and yummy breakfast." Transportation from the Ashland Airport can be arranged. The Ocean Inn in Manzanita, OR offers pick-up at the scenic Nehalem Bay State Airport right on the coast, and is a gateway to five miles of sand stretching from the Nehalem River Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain. And for a HUGE chicken fried steak, walk a couple of blocks off the north end of the Pacific City Airport runway to Village Restaurant Bakery in Pacific City, OR. Uh, and check the runway before going wheels down as during the winter, the site warns that storm surges and high tides can close the runway.

World of Flying's Fact Checking team is off for holiday break, so I didn't verify that any of these listings or specials on either site are still current – that's your job as a flight planner. As airport restaurants and hotel specials come and go, it is always advisable to make some phone calls before you launch to lunch.

And when you do point your bird towards the next $100 hamburger, I suggest you try and find someone who has never been in a GA airplane. After introducing them to the panel and giving them a ride to poke holes in the sky, I can almost guarantee that fancy, schmancy airport burger will be on them.

Because a PIC should never have to buy his own burger. That, my flying friends, is the passenger's sole purpose of coming with you on this quest.

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Evening Flight

[Ed. note: This is a post by aviation photographer Jo Hunter, aka @futureshox...info on her can be found here - dan

I'm meeting my friend Jim at the airport on a baking hot Texas afternoon, one of a seemingly-unending series of 100F+ days; hot enough to fry eggs on the hangar roof. The air is made of bumps and the wind is high, so we take refuge in the shade of the open hangar, drinking cold sodas, chatting about the airfield and admiring the resident Beech 18 parked over yonder.

We watch as the sun gradually creeps downwards, while the wind settles to a more manageable level. As the sun reaches a handspan or two's width from the horizon, Jim rises from his chair and begins the preflight. Fuel is squirted into testing cylinders, control surfaces are tweaked, oil is checked. I give Jim a hand to push his Vans RV-7A out of the hangar, and turn her round on the ramp.

Jim has me close the hangar door over while he taxis around to the pumps for fuel. I watch him start the plane, then lean on the button as the door slides down. A short stroll across the grass and I'm joining him by the aeroplane. He finishes the fueling, stows the hoses and we climb into the aircraft. There's a technique to this; left foot on the step, right foot on the wing root, stand on the wing. Right foot onto the seat cushion, grab the handle overhead, slide the left foot down towards the rudder pedals and lower yourself onto the seat. Once we're both installed, close the canopy most of the way and start her up.

Taxi the length of the airfield, watching our shadow on the adjacent rows of corn, until we near the threshold. Swing the nose around and perform the power checks. Take a look around for anyone else in the circuit - all is quiet; we're good to go. Close the hatch. Jim calls on the radio that we're taking runway 17, taxies out, lines up and pushes the throttle fully in. The engine responds with an obliging roar and we begin to hurtle along the runway. We soon come unstuck from the tarmac, as the Vans climbs easily away from the airfield.

By this time, the sun is a few fingers' width off the horizon and the lights in the town nearby are coming on. They twinkle amongst the long shadows below as we ascend. There's a few thin clouds off to the west and a layer of haze below, as we pass through 2,000 feet. The temperature drops, too; as though someone had turned on an air conditioner; welcome relief. We climb another couple of thousand feet over towards the lake, which gleams with the reflected warmth of the late evening, only matched by the polished aluminium of our wings.

We level out to watch the sun set. It is bloated and red and almost ready; a slight elongation as it sinks close to the darkness; lengthening now, with a sliver of cloud across the sun's disc. I am reminded just how fast the world is spinning as the whole sun becomes a part, then tapers into nothing and it's gone.

Shadows have covered the ground, but we're still lit by the ambient light. The town becomes brighter. Moving white and red lights are traffic on the roads below, but a solitary white and green movement in the distance is another aircraft enjoying the evening's magic. The air has become smooth and cool and it feels like our own little world.

It's beginning to get darker now, so Jim points us back towards the field and we descend. Feel the heavy warmth of the lower air hit us at that 2000 foot boundary again. As we approach, Jim takes delight in turning on the runway lights with a few clicks of his microphone switch. He brings us round through downwind and base until we're looking into a pathway of green lights. Gently down; fly her onto the tarmac. Squeaks from the stall warning horn and the tyres announce our arrival. We roll out and turn onto the taxiway, heading back to the hangar.

Jim shuts the engine down, and we climb out into the dusky Texas evening. He opens the hangar and I help him push the plane back in. Tuck her in with fans to keep her cool, then bid her goodnight. It's been a beautiful evening.

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Undercover Report: Santa's Flying Sleigh:How Miracles Really Happen

Along about this time every year, the "Elves" in Santa, Inc.'s secret underground hanger at Bradley Sky-Ranch Airport (95Z) in North Pole, Alaska, are very busy. These are not the regular toymaking Elves, or even Keebler Elves, but highly-skilled Sleigh Technicians certified in Airframe and Powerplant repairs and inspections for once very special flying machine:

When you break down the mission that Santa's Sleigh has to accomplish in one night, it makes sense that it takes 5,698 FAA-licensed Elves to keep it free of squawks. We've had a mole inside the secret hangar and determined – based on various unverified sources from inside Santa's operation – these unsubstantiated but nonetheless interesting facts about his annual mission:

Miles traveled to every chimney in the world: 2,123,907 nm

No. of takeoffs & landings: 141,784,554

Percentage of VFR vs. IFR weather: 66% VFR / 34% IFR

No. of instrument approaches: 61,867,408

Breakdown of approaches: ILS 60.1%, GPS 34.1%, other 3.8)

Average speed: 1,207 KIAS

Average altitude: 17' AGL

Packages delivered: 1,458,569,208

Average presents per household: 10.2

Cookies consumed: 850,707,324

So how, you might ask, can one craft complete such a remarkable mission? To find out the secrets to Santa's sleigh, World of Flying went inside Santa's Flight Department and has been undercover since early November. In several interviews with Elves at the highest levels of Santa, Inc., we obtained the following quotes, presented here verbatim:

One area of continuous concern among pilots is the sleigh's powerplant. In order to make the high number of operations all in one night, we caught up with third shift Engine Technician Elf Arlyn T. Treeroot, who said this: "I don't want to insult the readers of your little blog, but they will not possess the intellect to comprehend the sleigh's powerplant. It is a Trangressional Orbital Molecular Mobilization Articulation System, or TOMMAS. What happens is that every 1,300th of a second, the entire molecular structure of the sleigh, the toys and even the damn reindeer are regenerated exactly one sleigh length ahead, or roughly 39 feet. So in one second, Santa and his sleigh can cover about 9.6 nautical miles. That means, say those ATC wannabes at NORAD give him vectors around unsafe weather and he has to deviate from San Francisco to Miami, POW, he can make that leg happen in 3.89 seconds! At this rate, the little hop from one chimney to the next happens in mere fractions of nanoseconds. Yeah, let your little readers chew on THAT!"

Jeez, what Elf attitude.

OK, fine, we get it...the damn sleigh gets it on, it's FAST! But as pilots, we also know that steering a machine traveling at a velocity of roughly 30,032 KIAS can be a little touchy, and nailing an instrument approach at those speeds can be a bitch, especially when the active "runway" is about as long as a house's roof is wide. Again, to pull back the curtain and get the inside scoopola, we liqueured up Mr. Treeroot on Sambuca and Red Bull, and he sang like a canary into my MP3 recorder posing as a ball point pen:

"See, it's not all Santa, you got that," Treeroot exclaims, huffy little troll that he is. "In fact, the fat guy isn't all that good at stick and rudder any more, his gut gets in the way of the flight controls. So we've set the whole sleigh up with a Garmin G3000 panel with autoland, so he just sits back and rides the thing down to steal more cookies, like he really needs them. Here's how it comes down: Figure he's up there at cruise indicating well to the north of maybe 30,000 knots, fat and happy. Outside of town, our Chimney Proximity System picks up the Mode C emitted from your freakin' chimney which communicates trajectory, distance and required velocity to the TOMMAS. Then, our patented Reindeer Tail Augmented Flap Deployment System, or RTAFDS begins to slow the forward speed by activating the Projectile Object Outside Propulsion Integration Equipment, or POOPIE. This really sounds high freakin' tech but really all the POOPIE does is shoot Raindeer crap into the path of all those advancing molecules, the ones going all over hell courtesy of the TOMMAS. Deer crap and sleigh molecules hate one another, so those molecules slow their forward progression cause, I mean, who the hell wants deer crap all over their stupid molecules? This slows the sleigh right down to approach speed on about a 2,000 FPM descent so autoland can initiate and drop the Big Guy onto the numbers each and every time. Freakin' Ingenious system. I'm personally responsible for the deer crap emitter nozzles on the POOPIE. You ought to see what a 100-hour looks like on those puppies."

Whoa. I never had any idea. So there it is, more in-depth investigative reporting from the World of Flying team. Hope you enjoyed this diversion from reality, and have a safe and Merry Christmas.

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Future of Flight Aviation Center - A Day in the Life: First Flight of the Boeing 787

By Sandy Ward, Marketing Director

Future of Flight Aviation Center & Boeing Tour

We started thinking about the first flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner on July 8, 2007 (7/8/7) when the first plane rolled out of the paint hangar and into the factory during the splashy event at the Boeing Everett plant. It was then that we knew it was time to begin planning a celebration for the first flight.

Much to our surprise, we set about organizing a party that would morph several times and come two years late. No, wait – back up. We actually started dreaming about the first flight when we opened the doors of the Future of Flight on December 17, 2005 almost exactly four years to the day before the actual event.

After a couple of false starts, we had big plans for a summer gathering as Boeing announced first flight would take place before the end of June, 2009. We envisioned a celebration that would include an exclusive donor party on the Future of Flight’s Strato Deck on a sunny day with mimosas and yummy breakfast food. We were certain the plane would take off early since the sun would be shining behind the photographers providing great pictures just in time for the noon news. The parking lot would be overflowing with regular people and we would all enjoy a flight against a gorgeous blue sky.

But six months later, under a heavy blanket of clouds and rainy, windy, winter weather, we began to prepare, once again for the Dreamliner’s first flight. Being outside in winter weather is never really pleasant unless you are skiing or snowshoeing or sledding and dressed for it so preparing for an event that required people to be outside this time of year was a challenge. There was a huge buzz about the flight and we knew that nothing was going to stop people from watching the first flight on Tuesday, December 15, 2009. So our staff set about planning for the crowds.

How to plan for what Boeing executive Scott Fancher has called an aviation game changer:

To do list:

· Find the pom-poms – version 1.0, 1.1, final version 1.2

· Organize staff and volunteers

· Order riot fence

· Get live feed in Boeing Theater and gallery

· Traffic control – yikes, 300 parking spots, busy intersection! Wonder if there’ll be a traffic jam?

· Order coffee, cocoa, snacks and EXTRA TOILET PAPER, (no kidding, this is very important)

· Get the word out. OK, we answered calls from print and broadcast TV/radio offering spaces on the Strato Deck (private fundraising event for the Foundation) or in the parking lot. Twitter proved to be the best way, by far, to reach the bulk of people because we were able to provide minute by minute information.

First Flight Day:

I arrived at 1:45am on the morning of December 15th to accommodate CNBC who would be broadcasting live to their east coast audience. At just after 2am I noticed a guy who had his cool camera equipment covered in expensive plastic (was that a garbage bag?) stationed on the berm. He was dressed for the weather, having parked down the hill, he walked in and staked out his spot. I told him it would probably be at least an 8 hour wait with no chair. He jumped up and down in one spot to keep warm and said he was aware and prepared, showing me his ski pants and big boots and said he did not mind sitting on the wet grass. I hope like crazy that he got the pictures he wanted.

At 4:15am other media began to arrive – CBS, ABC, FOX, and even some radio stations. Directing media trucks in the dark can be dangerous. Note to self: Order reflective vest. By 5:30am cars were backed up waiting for the parking lot to open at 6:30am. Most people chose to park in familiar neighborhoods and walk in. Lobby opened at 8am to the “thank goodness” sighs of those who’d been waiting (crossed legs) in the parking lot since 6:30am and those Jones-ing for a hot cup of something. The parking lot was completely full by 9am.

At 9:40am it appeared the weather was going to be acceptable for flying so the crowds pressed closer the fence line. Moms, dads, kids, regular people and professionals all shoulder to shoulder just to get a glimpse of the Dreamliner’s special day. Photographer check list: cameras, BIG lenses, tri-pod, hat, fingerless gloves – oh, AND step ladder.

As ZA001 fired up her engines, we could see the crowds of Boeing employees and media on the other side of the runway. Since we’d been waiting two years (well actually four) for this very moment, I half expected the process to be long and drawn out but to my surprise, she turned onto the runway (taxiway was full of people) headed south for the nearly 9,000 foot trek, made a dainty pirouette on the south end of the runway, took a deep breath (we held ours) as Boeing test pilots Mike Carriker and Randy Neville then began what would become history as she headed north on runway 34L.

To say she is beautiful is an understatement. A lovely bird-like creature, she lifted off with elegance and confidence to the cheers, tears and goosebumps of a crowd of thousands who all said, “it was worth the wait.” And it was!

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Boeing's Future Finally Takes Flight as the Lucky Few Report the News Live from KPAE

As I watched Tuesday's webcast of the long-awaited first flight of Boeing's groovy 787 Dreamliner, I also had the #787FF Twitter feed up on my second display. It was an exhilarating news event when Paine Tower made the call "Boeing zero-zero-one heavy experimental, runway 34L cleared for takeoff." As the 787's gear lifted from the runway, Boeing's video team had a camera at the opposite end of the runway, down low, to further add drama to the liftoff of ZA001. It was breathtaking!

With the webcast, the whole world was watching. And these days, if you want to take the pulse on just about anything happening in that world, add the # hashtag to it on the Twit and watch the news/views roll in. It is the modern-day equivalent of the old Teletype machine, only instead of scruffy hard knocks reporters in smoky newsrooms sending out "wires", this is Average Joe and Jane – mixed with many legit news agencies – pounding out real-time reporting in 140 characters or less.

So what happens when you mix a really dramatic aviation event with Twitter? Here's your answer:

As the minutes clicked off towards Dreamliner's planned launch, it seemed everyone on Twitter was a WX forecaster. I saw numerous tweets insisting the ceiling had lowered sufficiently to scrub the first flight attempt. Wrong they were, but it did ramp up the intensity of the moment. Then, when ZA001 actually started moving, scores of Tweeps chronicled every inch of that movement. "Confirmed: wheels moving, taxi has commenced!", or "OMG OMG OMG It's rounding the turn of the apron headed for the taxiway!!!!!!" But the real fun began when the flight took off. More than one Tweepster compared this event to the Wright's first flight, a stretch, but still worth a grin. Another insisted (with all caps) that the first flight was "more significant than Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon." Uh. Huh.

While I am very excited about the first flight of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, I am sorry to report it does not carry the same importance in my world as Orville and Wilbur's first flight or the first steps on the Moon. How will I view this first flight? This might help:

I have written before about a lecture I attended a few years ago at the University of Oregon when Burt Rutan was speaker. His topic was commercial space travel, and how it was the next achievable milestone in aviation. The first obviously was the Wrights, which got things started. Next was the DC-3, which made coast-to-coast flights a reality. Next, it was the 747, which opened up the world to international flights. But he stopped there, saying that nothing since the 747 has been that "next big thing" that aviation needs. His theory is that his SpaceShipTwo will be that next milestone, making flights through space to the other side of the planet quick and smooth. I agree with his thinking, which is why I must say the 787 Dreamliner – while easily the most sophisticated and sexy airliner flying today – is not a game changer, it's instead more of a industry changer. Years from now when flights on a -87 are as common as trips on a CRJ are now, we'll look back on all the fuel saved by the Dreamliner and thank Boeing's engineers for making such an efficient ship that raised the bar so much higher in terms of providing comfortable air travel with substantially less damage to the environment.

Will the Dreamliner save commercial aviation? No, not by itself. But with 840 orders being reported from various sources in Boeing's order books, there can be no disputing the fact that it is a wildly popular design that has been embraced by airlines all over the world. These carriers can read performance numbers, and the Dreamliner delivers stellar ROI for those who are willing to wait in line.

This is to take nothing away from the first flight. I am envious of the lucky few who were there at Paine Field to see this historic event. And it WAS historic, much like the first 747 flight back on February 9, 1969. While maybe not a "milestone" by Rutan's definition, the 787 Dreamliner is indeed redefining what an airliner should be. If the carriers keep to Boeing's promise of wider seats, more legroom, cleaner air and a plush ride in the entire cabin, passengers will soon seek out the carriers flying the -87. This means better profits for the 'lines...and when that happens, Boeing's order book will swell even more, allowing more workers to keep their jobs in Everett and around the world.

And in this economy, keeping jobs is reason enough to celebrate ZA001's first flight!

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The Official Keepers of All Hangar Flying Tales

We've all heard 'em...whopper flying stories usually told in the vicinity of a hangar or airport coffee shop. Generally, they go something like this:

I was flying my J3 Cub back in '53, in a little 'berg called Oregonia, just spittin' distance south of Dayton, Ohi-ee. I was a-coming over the fence when one of them damned Gooney Birds came outta nowhere, cut right in front of me! Before I knew it, my windscreen was filled with Douglas, and there was nothin' I could do but hang on for the ride. And true as the sun shines, I throttled back, slowed her to stall, and dropped my gear right onto the Gooney's back...and rode that sucker right down to the numbers.

Or something like that. O.K., you might have already figured out that the hanger flying tale above was just fun with fiction, but you know those stories are out there by the thousands, waiting to be told. And a year or so ago, I stumbled across the people who I believe should be considered the Gatekeepers to All Aviation Stories of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

EAA's Timeless Voices of Aviation (TVA) oral history program coordinated is a valuable archive of video interviews with a long and very important list of interviewees such as Dr. Peggy Chabrian, Founder and President of Women in Aviation International, Aircraft Designer Burt Rutan, Astronaut Robert “Hoot” Gibson and General Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay. According to a very good article about the program on Aero News Network, over 756 people in the aviation world have given their story, many of them just regular hamburger chasers like you and me.

According to the TVA site, their goals are lofty but extremely important to aviation history:

(1) To collect thousands of first person video oral history recordings from individuals who have impacted aviation’s development. (2) To document and preserve these recordings for future generations of family members, teachers, students, historians and others. (3) To make the recordings accessible through an on-line video history archive, and initiatives such as Museum displays and TV productions. (4) To engage thousands of volunteers in the rewarding process of gathering video oral history recordings.

Of course, it takes lots of leg power to amass this important video archive, which is where you come in. If you have an off-the-shelf digital video camera and want to help, read the following:

Timeless Voices has made it easy for volunteers with a free project kit that can be requested. The kit contains release forms, checklists, the biographical data needed from the subject, tips and sample questions on conducting the interview. Potential volunteers can contact them via email. A volunteer can perform one interview, perhaps someone in the local area they know with a story to tell or the volunteer can be a "have camera, will travel" type.

To sample some of these great video interviews, go here and select a category such as Commercial, Military, WW II, Performers, Pioneers, Recreational or Space. And while you're on this awesome site, be sure to give special thanks to the Robert A. "Bob" and Susan C. Wilson Foundation for generous support of the Timeless Voices of Aviation program.

EAA...one of the most important acronym organizations in all of aviation. And each summer, they are the Kings of All Who Fly, the Guardians of Airplane Mecca, the hosts to the World's Largest Fly-in and Flying Machine Orgy. EAA'ers are a jovial and tireless group of aviators who always know the best ways to boil Brats in Beer and Onions before throwing them on the grill, truly some of America's finest who will give you the shirt off their backs, if you're in need of a shirt.

Damn, those people at EAA just keep bringin' it, don'tcha know.

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Airplane Ownership Can be a Roller Coaster Ride

(Ed. note: This is the first of a Guest Blogger series I will be running. Learn more about Jonathan Katz here.)

I looked at the calendar and noted it had been two and a half years since I began training for my private pilot certificate. I passed my written exam four months earlier in a flourish to finish my ticket before our second child was born, but due to other financial constraints, that was as far as I got in the spring of 2007. It was hard to believe I even started as far back as early 2006 and now 2007 was coming to an end.

When trying to analyze why I wasn't flying I realized hourly rental and instructor fees were costing as much if not more than a monthly car payment! I felt as though I was throwing away money on my FBO's sexy glass panel aircraft, which due to their higher hourly fees I never even flew. Alternately, two of their other aircraft were complex beasts that student pilots weren't allowed to cast a shadow on.

After examining my family's finances and a lot of lobbying of my spouse I went ahead and bought a Grumman Yankee, a 1969 AA1. An airplane designed to be simple to maintain and something that could work as trainer and time-builder. I found the plane on e-Bay. The pictures of it sitting alone on a ramp, like an abandoned puppy needing a home, spoke to me. Although I had heard from many people to go with a pre-buy inspection I figured for the deal I was getting that if there was anything major that needed to be fixed the cost would be negligible. Additionally, the aircraft was a few hundred miles away. Even if I wanted a pre-buy inspection who would I call? My friends who flew were all local to the Indianapolis area, as were the AP/IAs.

The owner's son flew the airplane to me. A CFI, he took me around the pattern a few times and I felt comfortable with it. Funds were exchanged and papers were signed and I owned an aircraft. A few moments later I put a phone call through to an insurance agency and the aircraft was insured, too.

Everything seemed good. The logbooks were good, the instruments worked. The paint was faded, but flying is more important than faded paint. And then the airplane sat.

First the FBO at the airport where I kept the airplane couldn't instruct me in it. It's not that they weren't CFIs or weren't Grumman savvy. Far from it. Simply put, the baby weight I put on during my wife's pregnancies, a full load of fuel, plus a CFI would put the aircraft well over its 1500lbs MTOW. I had to hunt around for a svelte CFI. The Grumman Type Club, the AYA put me in touch with a great CFI.

Then a voluntary change in jobs meant I was working longer hours. And then that change in jobs turned into a job that wasn't there which was followed by three months of unemployment. Sure, I could have used my weekly unemployment check for flight lessons but that idea landed me on the couch for a few nights.

Finally, things started coming together in March of 2008. I finally received a job offer and was able to set aside time with a Grumman-club CFI. I was flying again. The new job had me traveling and the next thing I knew it was May, time for my airplane's first annual under my care. I took the airplane to an IA across the field from my hangar; an IA that came highly recommended to me by several aircraft owners locally.

After a few days, I found out about the corrosion buried in the airframe. Corrosion that could be fixed, but something that my local AP was not comfortable working on due to the Grumman's composite and honeycomb construction. In fact, my local IA was not comfortable providing a the paperwork for a ferry permit to take my aircraft a measly 103nm away.

I consulted with my CFI and several knowledgeable people from the AYA. After much deliberation, and heartbreak I decided the best way to recoup my investment in the aircraft would be to part it out. Sure, I could have had it repaired, but by the time the repairs were complete, which would require the aircraft to be repainted, I would have far more invested in the aircraft than what it was worth.

I started taking offers and even found a few people interested in the aircraft whole, although for much less than what I paid for it. I looked at my time constraints and found that I didn't have the time or facilities to start to unbolt and unscrew every last piece of my airplane. It simply made more sense to eat a financial loss and part with the bird as a whole.

She's gone now. The ferry pilot picked up the airplane and took off into gorgeous midwestern sky. I have a check in my pocket, part of which will go into some items required for our house, and the rest may go as a down payment for another aircraft. But for right now I'm back renting aircraft again.

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And Now For Something Completely New:Join Me, Fellow Airplanistas!

It is a rare day when you can stump the search engines, and it's almost unheard of these days to come up with something that is not yet out there. But I've succeeded in doing just that, and you get to join in the fun:

There are pilots, and wannabe pilots, and people who go to airshows. There are people who work in the aviation industry, and even those who occasionally notice a Cessna on short final as they drive to the office. All of these groups may have varied levels of interest in aviation, but their life might not revolve around aviation and airplanes. You might call this group "aviation enthusiasts". But for those humans who wake up in the morning thinking about airplanes, read nearly every aviation magazine printed each month, spend the majority of their Internet time looking at aviation-related web sites, I am hereby coining a new name for these people, a new phrase we all should begin using: These people are "Airplanistas". If you go to the airport to hang on a fence, hang around hoping to wash an airplane or maybe get in their own plane just to go out and poke holes in clouds or enjoy the exhilaration that comes as PIC when your gear and the runway part company, you, my flying friend, are an Airplanista.

I spent time over the weekend looking up the term "Airplanista" to use in another post, and came up empty on all search engines. I used NowGoogle (a search engine aggregator site) and could not find even one time anyone on this planet besides me has used that term online...zero, zilch. [Full disclosure: I did find an abandoned domain name from several years ago, but I used Wayback Machine to determine it was never used]. I also went to Google Blogsearch and again, zero results. Think about how hard it is to do that.

And, of course, there was a Google blogsearch page (pdf) online immediately after posting showing just this post – which I believe should validate my claim to the word "Airplanista" as this term's originator.

So I immediately jumped on the domain name airplanista.com, without really knowing yet what I'll do with it. Maybe I'll craft a new aviation community aimed at all of us who eat, sleep, breathe and live airplanes. But what to do with this, right now:

Maybe we can form a secret society of Airplanistas, come up with a secret handshake and even an encrypted code to communicate with. We could develop the Airplanista Movement into a powerhouse lobbying group full of the best, brightest and most enthusiastic aviators in the country. Get together at Oshkosh and compare our "addicted to aviation" stories. Or not. Maybe this can just me a casual term we aviators call ourselves, sort of like the "Fashionistas" who roam the streets of Midtown Manhattan looking for the very latest Prada handbag.

Are you an Airplanista? You'll know it if you are. So join me in the fun, and somehow we can gather together every Airplanista in the land and make something happen...or at least have some fun. One thing is for sure...from here on out, anyone who uses this term to describe themselves or others should also note it came from Av8rdan, right here, right now.

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When Life Gets in the Way of Blogging,You Call in the Reinforcements

Everyone reading this post knows the drill well. After you're born, you waddle through a few early years teething and crying, then blast through puberty. A few years go by when you crack a few books in between keggers before being thrust into the world to battle it out on the real-time reality show we call "life".

As an adult these days, more and more of us are finding ourselves on a treadmill. Up early, work your ass off, balance career with family while trying to squeeze in a few minutes of your favorite hobby. And if everything slides along without a hiccup, we are golden, as one day leads to the next and we move forward and upward. However, that is not always the case:

At my day job, I wear lots of hats; web designer, photographer, graphic designer, campaign developer, IT support, copy writer and corporate pilot. As part of the crew here at my ad agency, we all get a tremendous amount done every day. And as a good employee working for...myself, my work always comes before anything that resembles fun. It has to be this way if I/we are to survive as a viable business. We're going on 11 years now, and all is well in ad agency land, but as we get busier, my blogging time and energy to write at 11P at night dwindles to nothing.

As I pound this out, I am feeling 1000% guilty for not providing my many readers with fresh, relavant content during the last 60 days or so. Today, as the Pacific Northwest is under a deep freeze, I have been under my house, up on top of my water storage tank, and wrapped around my pressure tank and pump in the garage trying without success to get water flowing again to my home through pipes frozen solid by temperatures as low as 8F. I am physically exhausted, but I could not go to sleep without writing something as the last post on this blog is almost a week old. In Av8rdan time, that is an eternity. Something has to give:

In an effort to keep my material fresh, I am putting out a request to my readers asking if anyone might want to submit an occasional post as a guest blogger. If you have a bit of a reputation for stringing words together in a fashion that entertains others, and you want to spread the word about an aviation topic of interest to my readers, send your writing sample to me. I'll look your it over, and post the ones that rock my world. I cannot promise to post them all, and will pick and choose the ones that exhibit the perfect mix of aviation enthusiasm and a professional writing style. I am looking for finished, quality writing, not rambling and rants.

There are a few conditions:

(1) Best thing to do if you wish to submit is email me a writing sample which includes a paragraph on what your story idea is and what story you want to tell. If it looks like something my readers will love, I'll place it on the blog, with links back to your site/blog or in some cases, your business. Of course, when used, your work will have all the proper bylines and attribution you deserve. Email me your writing sample here.

(2) This is a volunteer blog, there is NO money involved for me or anyone else. So your published post/article/story will generate a little buzz for your writing, but no paycheck.

(3) Please limit your writing sample to 500-1,200 words. Also, try to send a couple of pieces of art along as well and I'll edit the best one.

(4) With your submission, you grant me the right to re-publish the article on World of Flying, but nowhere else. I assume no ownership of anything you submit, you are just loaning it to my blog for publication.

(5) This is not the blog if you want to flame someone. Yes, your opinion is welcome and feel free to query me on any aviation topic. If you send in a finished piece, make sure it is written with taste and displays respect for anyone you mention. I am looking for people with good creative writing chops.

Should be a fun and pretty straightforward experiment. You have stuff in your head, and you got a b+ in collegiate creative writing. You really want to tell the aviation world a story, but maybe don't have a blog of your own. So please email me your writing samples and queries, and let me expand the horizon at World of Flying. Who knows, this might spark a new growth period with my blog, and I may end up hooking up with some new writers who want a outlet for their stuff.

I am looking forward to hearing from you. Let's build a community, shall we? Email me your writing sample here.

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Dig Out Your Foil Hat, the EAA SchedulersAre Reading Our Minds Again

At last year's EAA Airventure Oshkosh, the organizers managed two of the biggest "gets" in all of aviation. A "get" is television trade jargon for landing that one big interview nobody else could...get. By landing scheduled visits by an Airbus A380 and WhiteKnightTwo, they helped push the show to an attendance of 578,000, a 12 percent increase over 2008.

And now, as the cheese hardens in Winnebago County, EAA's staff are at work trying to come up with that one big thing that will draw record numbers of pilots and aviation enthusiasts to the 2010 edition of their annual Late July Bratfest, airplane orgy and 'Smores cook-off.

So EAA apparently has cranked up their super secret mind reading machine, and after performing the equivalent of a wiretap on the GA community, have discovered that one big thing we will not be able to avoid Oshkosh 2010. This is from a very recent EAA release, courtesy of Dick Knapinski, EAA Media and Public Relations, who Tweets as @EAAUpdate:

75TH ANNIVERSARY OF DOUGLAS DC-3 CELEBRATED WITH AIRCRAFT REUNION AT EAA AIRVENTURE OSHKOSH 2010

What could be the largest Douglas DC-3/C-47 gathering in more than 60 years will be a centerpiece of the aviation activities at EAA AirVenture 2010, "The World's Greatest Aviation Celebration," which will be held July 26-August 1 at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh. EAA is working with a large group of owners and operators of the venerable aircraft, which commemorates its 75th anniversary in 2010, to bring their airplanes and join the reunion at Oshkosh. The event is being organized under the theme "The Last Time..." as it likely will be the final time that more than 25 of these airplanes will be seen together, including formation flights. This is likely "The Last Time..." DC-3 fans will ever see this large a reunion.

So what is the one airplane that EAA knows will get us to come to Oshkosh? Yes, of course, the DC-3. Who doesn't like these great planes...they are my all-time favorites, and EAA's Grand Poobah tells us why:

"The DC-3, in both civilian and military configurations, has been a true workhorse aircraft since it was unveiled in 1935," said Tom Poberezny, EAA president and AirVenture chairman. "While the aircraft helped make air travel popular and profitable in the 1930s and 1940s, the fact that it is still used around the world today is a testament to the aircraft's design. We're looking forward to welcoming these iconic aviation legends to Oshkosh for AirVenture 2010." Douglas Aircraft made the first flight of its new DC-3 on Dec. 17, 1935 - the 32nd anniversary of the Wright brothers' first successful flight. It was first designed as an all-metal passenger airliner, later evolving to a coast-to-coast luxury transport complete with sleeping berths. By the late 1930s, it was estimated that 90 percent of America's airline passengers were flying in the DC-3. More than 14,000 of the type were built, with some 10,000 of them used extensively in all World War II operations theaters carrying the C-47 designation.

According to the EAA release, fewer than 100 of the aircraft remain airworthy in the United States. Oshkosh and Wittman Regional Airport also happens to be the home of Basler Turbo Conversions, one of the world's leading DC-3 conversion shops. Whether it's a powerful and versatile Basler BT-67 – the first-ever variant of the DC-3 certified as FIKI (flight into known icing conditions) – or Duggy, the Smile in the Sky, every DC-3 ever made seems to tug at our aviator hearts.

EAA says this is a work in progress:

"While exact details of "The Last Time..." weeklong festivities are still being finalized, planned activities will include a mass formation arrival, a designated aircraft display area, historical and technical forums/presentations, fly-bys and a special evening DC-3 commemorative program at Theater in the Woods."

One thing is for sure..this will be a huge deal...and required attendance for those of us who love the -3. If you care to learn more about this family of great airplanes, this site has it all. And one of the finest DC-3 restorations was Delta Air Lines DC-3 "Ship 41", a masterpiece that is worth learning about.

I had not planned on attending Airventure again this year, I usually go every other year, and reserve those off years as family vacation time. But with this DC-3 reunion on the schedule, who in their right mind would miss that massive formation arrival?

I have to be there...I have to.

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My Personal Collection of WX Links:Not Lockheed Martin, but Not Bad Either

Tonight at a great party of the Lane County chapter of the Oregon Pilot's Association, a good friend of mine who is a student pilot asked what weather sites I use to make intelligent go, no-go decisions.

I explained that while Internet weather is great, in many cases it is not a substitute of a real, live telephone briefing. Sure, when it is "clear and a million" and the mission is a VFR flight to chase hamburgers, the web can be fine for your weather briefing. But if your planning an IFR flight in IMC, the web gives you a great look at the "big picture" but you really need to call Lockheed Martin at 1-800-WX-BRIEF before you go wheels up to do battle with towering cumulus and lowering freezing levels.

So here is my current collection of weather sites and links. The first grouping is the Jet Stream panels, because any interpretation of aviation weather cannot be made until you understand what the jet stream is doing. The second grouping marked "Flight Briefing" is the daily use sites, the really important ones I use every day even when I am not flying.

Enjoy*...and please note I ripped these straight out of Safari and did not test each link, so if you come across any dead ones, just move along.

JET STREAM

weather.com - Thursday US Jet Stream

weather.com - Monday US Jet Stream Forecast

weather.com - Tuesday US Jet Stream

weather.com - Wednesday US Jet Stream

weather.com - Friday US Jet Stream

weather.com - Saturday US Jet Stream

weather.com - Sunday US Jet Stream

JETS

Unisys Streamlines Plot

Unisys 4 Panel NGM

Near real-time Jetstream

FLIGHT BRIEFING

Latest OR METARs

Latest CA METARs

Latest WA METARs

KEUG

FD

KHIO WX

AWC Graphical AIRMETs

ADDS - CIP Icing

FRZG LVLS - WXU

Interactive GOES West

ADDS - Icing

NCEP Winds Aloft

West Coast FA

Intellicast - Visible Satellite in United States

WESTERN US GOES IR

NOTAMs

FAA TFRs

NWS RADAR USA

ADDS - TAFs

PAC NW NEXRAD

ADDS - LOWEST FRZ LEVLS

NCEP Winds Aloft

CCFP Convection Probs

Jet Stream Position

Wunderground Convective Outlook NW

ADDS - PIREPs Java Tool

OTHER FUN STUFF

NOAA GOES WESTERN US IR

IWIN Animations

ODOT roadcams

US RIDGE Radar

Oregon Text Weather Page

Interactive Weather Information Network

IFR/MVFR.url

Interactive Weather Informa.url

Wx.com Natls.url

SFONEX

G10WV/IR

G10

NWS All Doppler Radars

weather.com - US Airport Overview

GOES-8 EAST WV Sat

NOWCASTS

California - All Warnings

DUATS West Coast NEXRAD

DuPage Raw METARs

Convert Celsius

US Airports IFR/MVFR

ADF

National Hurricane Center

NWS

Q-Brief

FAA - Graphic TFR

IWIN-OR

WXTAP - Home

Time Zone Converter

AOPA Online: Weather

AOPA KEUG Text Weather

AOPA METAR-TAF-PIREP-WINDS

NavMonster US TFRs

DTC

DUATS

Lifted and K-indices

aviation weather abbreviations

DUATS NEXRAD graphics

UTC time

ADDS - METARs

National Airspace System

REALLY OLD SITES

DUATS WX MAPS

VFR/IFR

AV-WX

IFR/MVFR

Jet Stream

NOAA Graphical Forecast for Pacific Northwest

GOES 10IR

ORE-FD

ADDS WX - ICING

ADDS - TAF/METAR

Airline Dispatchers WX

CA MET

EUG WX

IWIN-OR

ADDS - TAFs

National Airport Status

nice west Sat

EUG NEXRAD

FREEZING LEVLS

If you have any "must-see" sites you use before a flight that are not on this list, please email me the names/links and I will try to pass them along.

* The World of Flying legal team wanted me to tell you that this list is meant for ENTERTAINMENT ONLY. Any use of these links for actual flight planning is done so at your own risk. I assume zero responsibility for anything that happens as a result of you clicking any of these links.

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Jetliner Dreams in a Mechanical Wonderland

(editor's note: This is part two of two. Part one is here.)

In part one of my post on my recent factory tour of Boeing's Everett Assembly Building, I gushed over the completely awesome scene of looking down on actual 747s being fabricated right before my eyes. I tried to put into words the sheer size of this facility, certified by the good people at Guiness (the book, not the beer) as the largest building in the world by volume.

Now, in part two of this post, I want to try and explain what the rest of this fantastic tour is like. As I write this, the words will not do justice to what any pilot feels and sees when he/she takes this tour. We've all grown up around Boeing's stellar line of jet aircraft, and I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say how magical it still is to see something as big as a 747 actually achieve the lift required to fly hundreds of souls to Grandma's house. So to see these legendary craft be built is an experience sort of like EAA Airventure Oshkosh...it has to be seen to be believed.

The tour of the assembly building starts in the two 747 assembly bays, and after a short bus ride next to fresh new aircraft right out of the paint shop, we descend into another of those infinite underground tunnels towards the 777 assembly bay:

As we viewed the 747 lines, each aircraft that was nearing the end of production was literally surrounded by gigantic structures made of a combination of scaffolding, tools, ladders, carts and people. We tourists wondered aloud how much of a production it must be just to remove all that stuff and move one 747 from this station to the next. But as we looked down upon the one giant bay that is the 777 line, it looked like a sleek, streamlined version of the -47 line. It had to be that way...because like modern automotive assembly lines, the 777 line MOVES! O.K., it moves at 1.5" per hour, but that is still a foot per eight-hour shift.

The 777 line was shut down this Thanksgiving weekend, so I didn't get to see it "move". But just try and comprehend this for a moment...so many parts, so little time:

When the 777 line is up and running, Boeing's team of workers can crank out one of these mammoth liners in 7-9 weeks, a big improvement over the 16 weeks it takes them to build a 747. But imagine the pressure these workers must be under to build such a complex machine as it is "moving" through the factory. There is no time for slacking, there can be no weak links in this chain. This truly is a job best suited for superheroes.

Once we pulled our jaws back up from the floor at the 777 bay, we walked around a wall and saw the most anticipated part of this tour, the maternity ward where the most exciting airliner ever conceived is given birth:

Because the large components of the 787 Dreamliner are constructed elsewhere and flown via Dreamlifter to Everett, the 787 assembly bay looks quite different than the others. At our right was Dreamliner #10, resting on the landing gear, in the very last stages of construction. Behind it was a 787 marked with a large #11, which still was being assembled. To our left was another -87 marked #12, still waiting for wings and nose section to join some mated fuselage sections. If you are, like me, completely in lust with the 787, you cannot help but to almost well up a little looking at these Dreamliners coming together. Sure the first flight is still possibly a couple of weeks away (according to this report on Flightblogger), and yes, the delays have been frustrating for anyone watching the program. But when you actually SEE the Dreamliner, all of that goes away and you simply stand amazed at the sight.

There was one big thing I noticed about the 787 line that was missing from the 747 and 777 lines. Slide rules:

Since both the 747 and 777 are mature, fully-vetted models, their assembly bays had a bare minimum of desks and other office areas in which to work out any manufacturing glitches that arise. That's because they've got everything in those designs clicking right along, so the engineers have moved on to, you guessed it, the 787 line. As I looked down on that new line from the Observation Deck, I could not help but to notice that one entire side of the bay was covered in cubicles, desks, workstations, walled-in meeting rooms, computers, white boards, file cabinets and everything else Engineers need to think - and design - on the fly. I got the distinct impression that they are still sort of "figuring out" the 787, even as the Dreamliners slowly make their way out the hangar door. This tells me that the 787 is a work in progress, an evolving ship that will only get better as each heads over to the paint hangar.

If you've stayed with me this far through parts one and two of this post, I'm sure you have made future plans to visit Everett, Washington and take this tour. For any person who loves to see how things are built, this will be the best $15 you will ever spend in your life. For any licensed pilot – especially those EAA'ers who have their own little version of Boeing in their garage or basement – this will be an unbelievable, almost indescribable adventure to airplane land.

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Boeing Everett Factory Tour:Required Viewing for All Licensed Pilots

(Editor's note: This is part one of two parts.)

I'm not going to mince words here...I've been in love (lust?) with Boeing jet airliners since the first time I watched a 707 depart Fresno Air Terminal (FAT) westbound over my house. It was the 707 that sent me into fence-hanging ecstasy after riding my Schwinn Sting Ray to FAT for an afternoon of planespotting. My first airliner ride was in a 707, SFO to SEA, non-stop, and it was a thrill ride for this 10-year-old.

These days, I follow Boeing about as much as most pilots. I dream about my first ride in the 787 Dreamliner, and still hope to snag a ride in a 747 someday. Like my readers, I watch from afar as Boeing and Airbus continue their years-long cage match, slugging it out with tanker contracts and wide-body sales contests. We begin each week wondering if this will be the week that the 787 makes its first flight. Yes, Boeing is on our minds, and in the case of this pilot, it feels like it's in my soul.

This past week, I escaped for a few days on Washington State's Whidbey Island, which is at the far south end of the San Juan Islands just west of Everett. Yes...that Everett:

After nine hours of fighting holiday traffic from Eugene to the Seattle metro area dodging wrecks in the torrential rain, the last task ahead to get to our beachside cabin was a short ferry ride from Mukilteo across Possession Sound to Clinton. To get to the ferry dock, you have to head west on SR 526, aka the "Boeing Freeway". It's called that because it actually cuts right through the heart of Boeing's gigantic assembly plant. As you pass the plant, the six mammoth doors – decorated by the world's largest digitized graphic image – comes into view on the right. The building is so big, cars parked next to it look like Matchbox cars parked next to a Wal•Mart. To the left are three massive paint hangars, all big enough to house a 747. As I passed the plant, I was blown away that I did not know I would be vacationing just minutes down the road.

As we made our plans for each day of our restful, scenic time on Whidbey, I immediately made reservations to take the Boeing Factory Tour, which runs daily. I jumped on the Internets and read very mixed reviews about the tour, from one star pans to five star gushers. I did notice one thing, all the great reviews I found seemed to have one constant, they were all written by pilots. Like, duh:

I showed up early for my 9A tour, and the very first thing I spot as a drive in the gate was one of Boeing's Dreamlifter cargo planes. The sighting alone was super cool, but was nothing compared to what was yet to come. After a short film in the Boeing Theater, we were bussed across the flight line to the 747/767/777/787 assembly building. On the way, I saw several 787s – most in All Nippon Airways livery – in the ground testing area. Just laying eyes on the 787 for the first time was worth the $15 to get on the tour. The bus parked near a sparkling brand new 747-800 fresh out of the paint hangar. So before I got in the building, I had already met two of Boeing's star attractions.

The walk from the bus to the assembly building is mind-blowing. This facility has been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest building in the world by volume. It is so large, you could put the entire Disneyland Theme Park in Anaheim inside, and still have 12 acres left over. Once in the door, the fun begins again:

We go down inside pedestrian tunnel C and the first thing you see is that this tunnel is so long, it visually goes off into infinity...the other end is a dot if seen at all. We are all amazed at this when the tour guide points out this tunnel runs the WIDTH of the building. After a short cargo elevator ride to the observation deck, we emerge to overlook the first two assembly bays where the mighty 747 is born. In the first bay, as far as the eye can see left and right are huge yellow jigs, some sized to build wings, others in the shape of the -47's nose section. Below us, a skeleton crew (it was Thanksgiving weekend) is milling around a nearly complete nose section, covered in green vinyl to absorb the impact of a carelessly dropped wrench. In various stages of manufacture are also fuselage sections and horizontal and vertical stabilizers. The scene is a sea of tool boxes, scaffolding, ladders, cranes and parts. It seems like organized madness that somehow produces really large airliners.

We continue the tour by walking across the Observation Deck to Bay #2, where the aforementioned 747 parts and pieces are assembled into actual airplanes. Directly below the Deck you can see a parts room that seems larger than several football fields, stacked with what looks like tens of thousands of parts bins, each marked with it's own part number and that all-important bar code (more on that later). Once at Bay #2, it's again time to be blown away:

Where Bay #1 was a collection of large welding apparatus spitting out gigantic pieces of -47, Bay #2 is where the 747 actually gets its soul, where it is given life. Nose to tail are five -47s, all 747-800s we are told by the guide. After being built in Bay #1, the parts are craned over to this Bay. Here, the wings are mated to the center section, and a large portable curing "oven" is attached around that section for three days at 140 degrees to seal the main center fuel tank and wing tanks. Next, that rig moves to the next station where fuselage sections are attached fore and aft. The nose – which has now been fitted with avionics – as well as the tail section is attached at the next station. At this point, the landing gear is installed, and the -47 becomes a rolling airframe. Before the planes go out the door, they will be fitted with cargo equipment (or passenger interior), environmental systems and 170 miles of wiring.

To look down upon this sea of manufacturing wonderland almost defies description. To the untrained eye, it almost appears cluttered, there is so much STUFF everywhere. But as you will find out in part two of this post, this is one very large, very efficient machine, a incredible system that takes six million parts and puts them together one by one in 16 weeks to produce the world's most storied wide-body aircraft, the incredible Boeing 747.

In part two, I will get into the next two stops of the tour, the moving – yes, I said moving – line where the 777 is built, and the new 787 Dreamliner assembly line, which is nothing like anything else in Boeing's Everett plant. If at this point in the post you are not online buying tickets for this factory tour, I promise part two will seal the deal and have you headed direct Everett as soon as possible.

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A Look at the Bright Side of Dark Clouds

Ask just about anyone that doesn't live in my home state of Oregon, and they'll tell you it rains all the time up here. But we locals know that generally is just a myth cooked up years ago to keep the California northbound migration to a minimum. I believe the old timers secretly started the whole "it always rains in Oregon" plotline to scare off those in the "Golden State" who must have their sun and free vitamin D every day.

The truth is, on most years, the weather here in the Southern Willamette Valley is fairly predictable. I am based at KEUG, which is separated from the Pacific ocean by the rolling coast range and about 50 miles by car. So we "normally" get the same weather that the coast gets, only without the daily fog that hugs that coast from Anacortes, WA. south to Tijuana, MX.

But when it comes to flying the Northwest, this instrument pilot is finding out some things this year:

From October, 2007 when I brought 8527W north to Eugene from Whiteman Airport in Pacoima (L.A.), I have been working hard on my instrument rating. I earned that rating in March of 2009, and last spring, only got into one weather-related situation that was not a walk in the park. But as fall turns to winter right now, Mother Nature has been in a crappy mood up here. We've had one front after the other, non-stop, with usually only hours between most systems. You can look on the GOES West satellite and usually see a freight train of fronts stretching up to Sarah Palin's house in Alaska, all riding a powerful Oregon-bound jet stream directly to my hangar.

As a new instrument pilot, I am still a noob when it comes to making go/no-go IFR decisions. To get that advanced rating, you need to know a ton of theory and regulations, but putting this knowledge into practice can be challenging. It's like this:

I know for certain that there are two things that will knock Katy and I out of the sky...icing and thunderstorms. On some days when the Northwest is covered in stable air and showers are widespread and consistent, an IFR pilot can punch up through the deck and get on top, cruise above the soup, and descend on an ILS into the wet but basically still air below. But on almost every front that has passed this way in the past 60 days, the air was moist, unstable and dangerous. Big, nasty towering cumulus clouds have been part of nearly every system, along with extremely heavy rain and gusting winds that have approached hurricane strength along the coast. To say the Northwest has not been friendly skies to fly smaller personal aircraft would be an understatement.

These relentless thunderstorms and nasty fronts are screwing with this pilot's mind:

On a couple of occasions, I have gone out to fly IFR practice approaches, only to watch a 500-foot ceiling with two miles VIS become one-half mile and a 100-foot ceiling with dropping RVR. One evening, I departed rwy 16L on the east side of the KEUG when the field was reporting VFR, and hoped to be vectored north for a couple of practice ILSs into 16R in VFR. But from the time I took off to the time I reached the southbound turn back towards the airport to start my practice approach, 16R RVR had dropped to "one hundred overcast and about 1,000 RVR" according to ATC...below IFR minimums. So I sidestepped back to still VFR 16L and landed just as the the most ominous fogbank ever unleashed on humanity began creeping east to engulf the runway I had just touched down upon.

In the last couple of weeks, Katy has been down for some annoying little mechanical squawks, and my work schedule has been busy. There have not been many times when I looked at the "pre-flight intelligence" on Foreflight 2.4.1 and wished I could get up in the weather. And even if Katy had been up and running during this time, planning any cross country flights with 3,500-foot freezing levels and TCU in all quadrants nearly every day when you live in a valley surrounded by large, hard mountains would be suicide.

So as winter descends upon Western Oregon, I haven't much choice but to sit beside the fire and wait it out. On the bright side, I've had almost no credit card charges in some time for aviation fuel. On the down side, I can almost SEE the rust forming on my new IFR skill set.

Would I trade the serenity, scenery, unpopulated peace and heavy weather of my beautiful home state for the sunny, endless VFR days and clogged roadways of California's Central Valley? Not in a million years...because they get winter weather too in the form of Tule fog that reduces KFAT to zero/zero on some nights each year. But when we have 72 degree spring and summer days with a light breeze, they have 110 degrees in the shade that will bake you in your airplane waiting at the hold short line.

I earned my instrument rating to be able to pop out of or blast down through a little weather. One thing that I am learning is this: If I plan on living long enough to see my granddaughter solo, I will keep the Cherokee parked when these developing cells and Supercooled Liquid Droplets (SLD) is slapping Oregon around.

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SR22 Test FLight: Wow!

(note, this is one from the archives, enjoy...)

Today will forever be considered a “milestone day” in the life of this aviator, as myself and one of my best buds in Eugene got to go flying. No news there, but...Oh wait…did I mention we were at the controls of our very own Cirrus SR22 GTS?

Truth be told, it was only ours for about an hour, and a demo pilot from Duluth was in the right seat making sure Matt Moberg and myself didn’t bend (snap?) any really expensive composite airplane materials.

A little background: From the very day I first laid eyes on a Cirrus SR20 years ago at an AOPA Expo, I knew this was THE plane. Something about the Cirrus leaps out at a pilot, grabs hold and refuses to let go. I’ve always been impressed by the Cirrus operation – how they seem to know what pilots want AND need. Maybe that explains why they are cranking out 60 units a month these days.

Maybe it’s the curves of the fuselage, or the way the airframe, ergonomically-perfect interior and avionics suite come together in a symphony of delight that a flyer rarely feels unless they are in the left seat of a true aviation masterpiece.

And now that I’ve actually FLOWN a Cirrus, it seems words cannot possibly do this airplane right, but I will try…

Fit and Finish: Matt flew the northbound demo leg from Eugene’s Mahlon Sweet Field to Corvallis Muni, so I was able to lounge in the back seat and take a good look at the way this plane is built. I shared the back seat with Matt’s wife Carol, and we both had plenty of elbow and knee room. The seats could have been right at home in a high-end Lexus, they were that comfortable. The ANR Bose headsets (not sure if those were standard or just the sets that the demo team used) made the ride as quiet as I have ever experienced, and with the four knot wind and clear and a million weather, being a passenger in a Cirrus was far superior to anything I have ever experienced in GA air travel.

The SR22 GTS just FEELS like a well-built product. Things fit together tight, the doors close solid, and you just know that in 20 years, this will still be an airframe that serves it’s owner well. But the back seat is not where the fun is in a Cirrus, so at CVO we switched places and after years of dreaming, I was finally in the left seat of an SR, with my left hand on the key and my right hand searching for the blue prop lever (there isn't one, propeller pitch is automatically controlled).

Start-up and takeoff: I’ll admit, I was a little apprehensive about actually FLYING the Cirrus…I thought that this might be a demo “ride” only. But our Cirrus pilot, Steve Noldin, basically gave me the plane. He said some planes have problems with “hot starts” but not Cirrus. The engine had only been off about 60 seconds, and all it took for me to coax it back to life – on my very first try ever in this make/model – was one-quarter throttle, full mixture, three blades and POW, three hundred and ten ponies instantly idling at 1,000 RPMs, ready to launch.

Takeoff was sweet. I did not know that the Cirrus family does not have a steerable nose wheel, and after lining up on the centerline, believe me, it was a rush to begin pushing the throttle forward. Like a fine sports car, the SR22 plants you in your seat with gobs of acceleration. But as IAS increased, I noticed we were only about 75% power, so I applied more forward throttle and the GTS leapt forward some more. Now rolling faster, I was STILL only at 85% power. This was mind-blowing. So to hell with it, I shoved it to the forward stops and the Cirrus sped up like a Nissan 300ZX to yet another level.

When those sleek wings decide to grab hold of the air, hang on, because the SR22 loves to fly. It didn’t explode into the sky uncontrollably, but instead was smooth and predictable – this is how an airplane is supposed to feel when it is rigged perfectly and the weight/balance is dead on.

The side stick: Of all the Cirrus features I’ve thought about over the years, the side stick topped the list. Would it be hard to learn? Would it be too sensitive…or not sensitive enough? Well, turns out the side stick is a non-issue…and by the time I was over the numbers at the departure end of the runway, I had already forgotten about the stick. This new-fangled style of controlling an airplane would forever be “the way” it should be done. Case closed.

Avionics: The FlightMax Entegra Primary Flight Display/Flight Director defies description. This panel could probably do your taxes while dragging your butt through the clouds and around thunderstorms as you follow a complex GPS approach inbound. I’m not going to go into long detail about what it does, but I’ll say this…maybe it was because I’ve got a few hours flying this type of PFD in X-Plane, but inside of :30 seconds as PIC, I was able to easily find IAS, altitude, RPMs, everything. Only thing that took a bit of searching for was the old yaw ball, which is now integrated into the PFD. And yes, I still have sloppy feet.

Returning to EUG, Steve let me work the plane through whatever maneuvers I choose. It took me zero minutes to be up to speed on the S-TEC/Meggit integrated autopilot, which is of the quality of what you might expect in a 757...not kidding here. The crisp handling coupled with a quick roll rate made air work nothing more than (a) think it, (b) twitch your wrist on the stick and (c) the airplane turns.

Because I seemed to be easily grasping how to control the Cirrus without really thinking about it, I was able to begin searching for targets on the TCAS – my first time ever with in-cockpit traffic awareness. And when Steve switched the right MFD to monitor the engine, the TCAS data was also shown redundantly on the bottom of the two GNS 430 GPS units. Sweet.

The landing: Entering the pattern, I began to think of a tactful way to let Steve know I was close to wussing out on trying to land an airplane valued well to the north of a quarter million dollars. But then as I descended into right downwind for 34R, I snapped back to reality when I noticed that the Cirrus was beginning to feel like an old pair of favorite gloves – it wrapped around my hands in a way that made controlling it completely intuitive. Yes, this airplane slings itself through the air at 160+ KIAS in cruise, but in the pattern, the SR22 was perfection as I brought the speed to the 100 KIAS mark easily and dropped a notch of flaps. Ninety on base, more flaps, and eighty on final…followed by (bragging here) a landing that felt like I had a thousand hours in the Cirrus…not 18 minutes. This is not because I am some kind of ace, but because this airplane does everything right. Everything.

Conclusion: I knew that flying a Cirrus would be wonderful, but I had no idea to what level of “wonderfulness” this airplane can achieve. After one quick leg, I felt confident that I could go out there right now, jump in the SR22 and make a smooth VFR flight anywhere. This is because Alan Klapmeier and his team of 970 seriously dedicated people have built an airplane that is so well-engineered, it is no wonder this company – and this airplane – are considered by many to be the benchmark for GA airplane manufacturing.

I have never flown a Columbia 400, or an A36 Bonanza, or the new Mooney Acclaim. But after flying a Cirrus SR22 GTS, there is no reason to test fly anything else. Every pilot deserves to own a really fast, beautiful airplane at least once in their lives. And after my demo flight today, you can bet your farm that the “N” number on my “forever” plane just might end with Charlie Delta and be constructed in a state that, um, isn't Kansas.

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My Dream Hangar, 2009 Edition

In the past few posts, I've published some great "Dream Hangar" lists from fans of this blog. Every one of these submitted lists has some sort of twist, some surprise that you didn't see coming. That, I believe, is what makes this exercise so enjoyable.

To close out Dream Hangar 2009, I offer my own list, with a few old favorites and a couple of new surprises. I offer this list in ascending order, with my favorite as #1:

(10) Pilatus PC-21 - No, the model number is not a typo. While everyone with a brain including me would love to have Pilatus' groovy cabin-class hauler, I want one of their fast, furious and fun fighters. O.K., maybe technically a trainer, but you can't dispute the fact that flying this much airplane would be like flying a fighter jet.

(9) Piaggio P180 - This twin turboprop pusher replaces the PC-12 on my list this year. Nothing against the aforementioned PC-12, but I have grown to love the Piaggio. Sure, maybe it DOES look like a chubby catfish, but it's a fast, efficient and quiet catfish. I think owning one of these would be like owning some exotic Italian sports car...no matter where you park it, there is never another one around.

(8) Diamond DA42NG Twinstar - The DA42NG is the hottest piston twin out there right now, and with the economics and speed it delivers with its two Austro Engine AE 300 turbocharged injected 2.0 liter diesel engines, I'll be ready for the day when biodiesel aviation fuels are commonplace. I continue to admire the complete Diamond line, and their sleek twin is a star in the sky.

(7) Addiston Pemberton's Boeing 40C - Gotta have one biplane, and this one is the best one in the country today in my opinion. Pemberton's 40C goes so far beyond a "restoration" job, it is more like a flying piece of perfect aviation art. But if I get this one, I think it'll be best to stay away from Canyonville, Ore.

(6) Air Force One - Not one person reading this blog wouldn't mind owning the baddest 747 on the planet. It's got a swank office, serious inflight connectivity, and all that great, um, secret electronic equipment. Go ahead, cut me off in the pattern, cropduster, you'll be vapor with the flick of a switch. First thing I'd do is throw all the press people off and invite all my Tweeples to fly with me in style. And besides, who doesn't like toilet paper emblazoned with the Presidential Seal?

(5) P-51 Mustang - Even Tom Cruise will tell you that flying a P-51 is like snorting testosterone. Fast, powerful, deadly, and it makes the perfect airplane noise when it flies. If only we could have made a modern day version...oh wait, we almost did...

(4) Piper PA-48 Enforcer - The baddest "Piper" ever built is a turboprop powered light close air support/ground-attack aircraft built by Piper Aircraft in 1971. Piper manufactured two Enforcers by heavily modifying two existing Mustang airframes and fitting them with Lycoming YT55-L-9A turboprop engines along with numerous other significant modifications. It cruised at 405 MPH and could climb at 5,000 FPM, but was never mass produced.

(3) HondaJet - Like Pemberton's 40C, some airplanes are works of art, and the HondaJet qualifies in this niche. Forget it's sexy lines and very respectable performance numbers, the fact that it's a quality HONDA product cannot be understated. Just go buy a Honda lawnmower and you'll know what I mean.

(2) Douglas DC-3/C-47 - There are many reasons this wonderful plane continues to tug at my aviator's heart. I'm not really sure why it does, it's not the fastest plane in the sky, and it costs plenty to keep one flying today. But if you believe like I do that airplanes have souls and personalities, you cannot find a more personable flying example of a Douglas DC-3/C-47 then Duggy, the "Smile in the Sky". If you look at Duggy and don't break out in a Cheshire Cat grin, brother, you are not an aviator, you're just a person with a pilot's license.

(1) Piper Cherokee 235 N8527W - Yes, we can dream all we want, play fun games making up lists. But my dream airplane resides right now in my hangar out at KEUG. All through my flying years, I have wanted a nice, low time cross country machine with good avionics. I set my bar on a Cessna 172, never thinking I'd one day own a Cherokee 235. So while I ponder what could be out there in Fantasyland, what is a reality NOW is Katy, my all-time favorite plane and part-time mechanical girlfriend. We can dream all we want, but face it, just look around and see what you have today, it really is quite remarkable.

There it is, my Dream Hangar for 2009. A few surprises? Perhaps. I'll be not everyone who reads this blog knew about the Piper Enforcer.

And now back to our regularly-scheduled programming...

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Eclectic Extravagances or Practical Pondering?More Dream Hangers from World of Flying Readers

Oh, baby, the hits just keep on coming! Just when I think I've seen the best Dream hangar submissions, more come in that makes me smile a bit wider. This has been a fun exercise in testing the imagination of my readers, and they have passed that test with Dream Hangar lists like these:

From reader Paul Tomblin:

Spitfire, either a V or something in the XX to XXV range

de Havilland Beaver on amphibious floats

Super Cub on tundra tires

PC-12

XB-70

Space Ship One

White Knight (do those two count as one?)

Some sort of moto-glider, maybe a Diamond?

L-39

The flying sub from Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea

Or this jewel, which has a varied but super groovy assortment of toys and workhorses. It came in from Dean Siracusa who runs transtock.com, a very cool and elegant stock photo site focusing on transportation photos, offers a list that of course includes his current Meyers 200 (shown in photo at top):

Grumman Albatross

Helio Stallion (the larger, turbine version of the Helio Courier)

The Sea Fury known as Dreadnaught

Meyers OTW bi-plane

Gulfstream G-550

A-star helicopter

Boeing C-17

Icon A5

Marchetti SF-260

Aviat Husky A-1C

And the "Dream Hangar" according to Chris Simons:

Boeing Stearman

Extra 300s /W Thunderbolt engine

Turbine DC-3 in classic TWA colors

Cessna Mustang

Shorts Tucano MK1 in digital camo

Sukhoi SU-27 in Russian Knights colors

Piper J-3 Cub

Lockheed Fairchild C-123 /w JATO

New Cessna 182T turbo

One thing this "Dream Hangar" project has shown me is that each pilot has their own idea of what is cool in the sky. While some of these lists leaned heavily towards one area such as military or vintage planes, the constant has been that each list has at least one toy (like Simons' Sukhoi SU-27) or one bizjet grande (like Siracusa's G-550) or one really out there entry such as Tomblin's "flying sub from Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea".

I will be writing my list soon.

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One Reader's "Lottery Fleet"

World of Flying Reader Kent Shook sent in a Dream Hangar list so elaborate, I'm choosing to present it here verbatim. This list really exemplifies the kind of dreaming we all do. And he scored double points with me by having the HondaJet on the list! Enjoy:

10) HondaJet, assuming it actually comes to market. I love to travel, and I love to fly, but there are times where it really is the destination and not the journey that are important - That's why GA pilots, even those who own planes, still travel on the airlines sometimes. I hate the airlines, so I'd want my own jet - But I'm also a big fan of efficient planes. From where I live, the farthest point in the continental US is about 1800nm away; The HondaJet can go anywhere within with one fuel stop and 4.5 flight time, so call it 5.5 hours (or 5 with a quick turn) to go anywhere in the US. Compare the amount of time used vs. fuel burn to a Citation X, and for a ConUS trip I'd be taking 2.5 hours more but burning well under half the amount of fuel.

9) Piper Turbo Twin Comanche (or, if such a beast were ever to come out, a Diamond "DA52 Super TwinStar"). The "Twinkie" is also a "go-places" airplane, but less than half the HondaJet's speed. However, for trips that don't require the speed of a jet, the Twinkie is hard to beat for efficiency at a reasonably fast speed. It'll also allow me to fly to destinations with shorter and/or unpaved runways. In reality, this is one of the planes I would most like to own.

8) P-51 Mustang - There's just something about the P-51 that makes any living, breathing human take notice. It's fast, it's loud, and it helped win WWII and establish the US as a world superpower. Plus, these birds NEED the folks with unlimited funds to keep them flying!

7) Husky A1C - While there are a lot of folks who have a soft spot for the Piper Cub, the Husky (an improved derivative of the Super Cub) has the extra performance to fly in and out of backcountry mountain airstrips, pull floats out of the water, and have an improved fun factor. The controls on the 2005 and later Huskies have been modified so that they are extremely well-harmonized, making this a VERY fun airplane.

6) Extra 300L - Aerobatic hotshot machine with an extra seat so I can turn my friends upside down too.

5) Globe Swift - One of the neatest vintage airplanes IMHO. I'd go for the "Super Swift" modded variety with sticks and a 210hp Continental IO-360 engine for extra fun. This one is also on my real-life buy-someday list, as it can be used for traveling (and it's efficient), it can be used for light aerobatics, and you can fly it with the windows open. :-)

4) DC-3/C-47 - Another one that's probably on every pilot's list to at least fly on someday - It both helped win the war and it was also the first commercially viable airliner.

3) Seawind 300C, again assuming it gets certified. One of the fastest planes that can be landed on water, with a massive cabin and cargo compartment for taking your buddies on that remote fishing vacation, or hauling your family to the cabin on the lake for the weekend.

2) F/A 18F Super Hornet - For when you just feel the need to be a bad-ass and make a lot of money into a lot of noise and go REALLY fast. :-D

1) Cessna 185 - I have a lot of my time in a 182, and it is one of the best airplanes ever produced - While it's not the best at any one thing, it's pretty darn good at EVERYTHING. The 185's extra power and tailwheel configuration would allow for a little better performance at backcountry strips or off water on floats.

I'd have skis and floats for the Husky and the 185, and maybe even the DC-3/C-47. Just because. ;-)

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