AOPA goes "undercover"
in the Bahamas

Leave it to our friends at AOPA to take on such awful assignments as checking out the changes in clearing Customs in the Bahamas. Yes, when the going gets tough, the tough go for Margaritas on Bimini:

Recently, two AOPA employees flew from Opa Locka, Florida, to South Bimini Airport, Bimini Islands, in a Cessna 206 to clear Customs as regular pilots. They then flew to nine other Bahamian airports, taking notes at each about runway condition, their experience clearing Customs, and airport and aircraft security.

Unless you've been under your rock, surely you now know that a passport will be required when you try to get back into the United States from your Bahamas vacation. So AOPA went undercover – so to speak – in the Bahamas to experience the Customs process that members encounter when they fly there. "With the spring break season coming up, we wanted to understand all the nuances about clearing Customs in the Bahamas to share with our members," said Woody Cahall, AOPA vice president of aviation services.

There is a boatload of very comprehensive 411 on this topic found at aopa.org:

• The down low on Bahamian airports can be found here;
• There is a great Bahamian photo gallery here;
• Everything you could every possibly want to know about a Bahamian flying vacation is here;
• And in order to keep the Federalis happy, the 411 on required docs is here.

I've not done much international traveling in my time, but with a planned trip to Tuscany and maybe Vienna, Austria looming as a 20th wedding anniversary trip this August, I guess the time has come for Av8rdan to get a passport. I wonder of they'll allow me to snap my own digital mugshot...

Finally, 65 really is the new 60.

Better late to the party then to never have come at all, that's the way I feel about the FAA's announcement Tuesday that they will propose to raise the mandatory retirement age for U.S. commercial pilots from 60 to 65:

FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey – speaking before pilots and aviation experts at the National Press Club – said that the agency plans to propose adopting the new International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standard that allows one pilot to be up to age 65 provided the other pilot is under age 60. “A pilot’s experience counts — it’s an added margin of safety,” said Blakey. “Foreign airlines have demonstrated that experienced pilots in good health can fly beyond age 60 without compromising safety.”

Late last year, Blakey established a group of airline, labor and medical experts to determine whether the United States should adopt the new ICAO standard and sort out what actions would be necessary if the FAA were to change its rule. Since 1959, the FAA has required that all U.S. pilots stop flying commercial airplanes at age 60.

I think this rule change is long overdue. I live in a city that has been named “Greenest City in the USA” by greenguide.com, and people in beautiful Eugene, OR are very much into promoting optimum health and wellness. We have nearly 70 miles of eight-foot-wide bike highways that travel under major roads via underpasses, and run along both sides of the scenic Willamette River through city parks and the University of Oregon. Calling them paths would be insulting, and each day, it is common to see people in the 65-80 demographic biking, running and walking. Here, 65 is more like the new 50, and all of the people I know who are 60-65 are still sharp enough to fly an airliner if they were qualified to do so.

Nice work, FAA, welcome to the party. (FYI, the “Age 60” ARC report, appendices, and public comments are available online here, search for docket number 26139).

A football
in the loo?

We spend a lot of time here at WoF thinking about many parts of airplanes, such as engines, avionics, performance envelopes, and unusually stale airline pretzels. But the one area we tend to avoid for obvious reasons is aircraft lavatories, or “the Loo” as they say on British Airways.

Straight up, I will say that I am no fan of airliner lavatories, especially those in the rear of an MD-80. Seems the -80 has a great deal of discernible yaw near the tail section, and locked in a tiny plastic room that smells rank is not the place I want to experience the autopilot working overtime to keep the tail generally lined up with the radome.

But last week, MSNBC ran a story on how the engineers at Airbus – at least those with very low seniority – are working night and day to fine-tune the “Loo” in the new A380. They want to make sure you can shove a football down any one of the A380's 18 toilets and still have a functioning sanitary system:

To handle the waste produced by up to 800 passengers, Airbus designed plumbing capable of pumping sewage along the 200-foot length of an A380 in about two seconds – That equates to more than 60 mph, which could be a sanitary speed record. To put the sanitary system through its paces, Airbus has built a 200-ton, three-story test rig that can be tilted upwards and downwards to simulate severe flying conditions.

If you think the airlines don't take the issue of functioning lavatories seriously, you'd be wrong:

"The toilets are very important to airlines. Some people put anything down there: towels, spoons, glasses, diapers. They behave as if they were at home," said Frank Dohrmann, head of design support and cabin testing at Airbus's main German plant. "If the temperature inside an aircraft varies 0.5 degrees it is no big deal. But if the toilets get jammed every passenger will remember it for years," he said. One airline insisted that Airbus test the toilet by shoving pairs of socks down the system to verify it wouldn't block, because blockages on a $300 million airliner could spell a public relations disaster.

There you have it...much more information than you really need about the funny little plastic room in the A380. With 18 of them on each plane, and at max load of 800 pax, that's 44 souls per crapper, which shouldn't be a problem unless they're serving those famous Exploding Habanero Burritos on the Madrid - Tokyo run tonight.

Knowing when
to say you're wrong.

A couple of posts ago, I lamented about a rather botched commercial airline flight I experienced trying to get home to EUG from SFO. United said they were bringing in our “regional jet” all the way from Calgary, Alberta (1,019NM), which I thought was hooey since I thought RJs didn't have the legs for that kind of route.

Well, friends, I have to now admit I was speaking out of an orifice of unspeakable locale. Here is why:

When the Canadair Regional Jet appeared on the commercial airline scene, I was blown away. It took off like it was strapped to an Saturn V rocket – it was fast, smooth and comfortable. It was also very efficient, which I assumed would translate into profits for its operators. But back in those days, riding an RJ for an LAX to SEA run seemed like a stretch...the CRJ-100 was just not thought of as the airframe of choice for seriously long routes.

But the brainchildren at Bombardier have been eating their Wheaties it seems, because the original -100 line has evolved into the very capable -700 line with range as high as 2,002NM for the 701LR (long range) model. And since you asked, a little history on the RJ, courtesy of wikipedia:

The Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) is a regional airliner based on the Canadair Challenger business jet. Design studies began in 1987, with the first prototype flying on May 10, 1991. Canadair officials decided that the wide fuselage of the Challenger suggested it would be straightforward to stretch the aircraft to provide more seats, and there was a plan for a 24 pax Challenger 610E, a project that was cancelled in 1981. The formal launch of the Canadair Regional Jet program came in the spring of 1989, with the first of three development machines for the initial CRJ-100 performing its first flight on 10 May 1991. The type obtained certification in late 1992, with initial delivery to customers late in that year.

I have a good friend who is married to a Skywest FO, and she confirmed last week that what used to be truly “regional” use for the RJ is no more. The line keeps their CRJ-700's in the air cranking out revenue, no matter where the nose of the airplane is aimed, instead of being parked at a gate. It is not uncommon for the same RJ to traverse the country several times in a week, she said, and with hubby strapped to the right seat of one of them, she ought to know.

So my official apologies to United, they did get us home that night, a few hours late but with all our body parts still attached and our luggage in the hold. And when you get right down to it, isn't that all we can really ask of them?

What REALLY happened
the night the music died?

That's the question Jay Richardson – son of J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson – wants answered. He has hired Forensic anthropologist William Bass of the University of Tennessee to open an investigation into the 1959 crash that killed Richardson, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens in Mason City, Iowa.

I've always been a Buddy Holly fan, ever since watching the movie “The Buddy Holly Story” way back when. Holly was a pioneer of rock and roll, but Richardson and Valens deserve many kudos for pushing the envelope back in the days before the British invaded with guitars instead of long rifles.

The Big Bopper's son has lingering questions about the crash, and a review of the Civil Aeronautics Board's report seems to generate much to ponder. Despite the damage to the cockpit the following readings were obtained:

– Magneto switches were both in the "off" position.
– Battery and generator switches were in the "on" position.
– The tachometer r.p.m. needle was stuck at 2200.
– Fuel pressure, oil temperature and pressure gauges were stuck in the normal or green range.
– The attitude gyro indicator was stuck in a manner indicative of a 90-degree angle.
– The rate of climb indicator was stuck at 3,000-feet-per-minute descent.
– The airspeed indicator needle was stuck between 165-170 mph.
– The directional gyro was caged.
– The omni selector was positioned at 114.9, the frequency of the Mason City omni range.
– The course selector indicated a 360-degree course.
– The transmitter was tuned to 122.1, the frequency for Mason City.
– The Lear autopilot was not operable.

The CAB concluded this after completion of their investigation:

A Beech Bonanza, N 3794N, crashed at night approximately 5 miles northwest of the Mason City Municipal Airport, Mason City, Iowa, at approximately 0100, February 3, 1959. The pilot and three passengers were killed and the aircraft was demolished. At night, with an overcast sky, snow falling, no definite horizon, and a proposed flight over a sparsely settled area with an absence of ground lights, a requirement for control of the aircraft solely by reference to flight instruments can be predicated with virtual certainty. The Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the pilot's unwise decision to embark on a flight which would necessitate flying solely by instruments when he was not properly certificated or qualified to do so. Contributing factors were serious deficiencies in the weather briefing, and the pilot's unfamiliarity with the instrument which determines the attitude of the aircraft.

Richardson's son believes there are many unanswered questions about his father's death, like if he survived the crash only to die as he struggled to get help. His body was found in a field nearly 40 feet from the wreckage of the Beechcraft Bonanza. Also, there are questions about Holly's pistol and whether it had been fired.

It seems there are enough weird things about this CAB report to warrant further investigation. For instance, if the plane impacted an Iowa cornfield while in a 3,000-feet-per-minute descent with the airspeed indicator needle stuck at about 170 mph, why would have both mag switches be found in the off position? Those numbers indicate an immediate and surprising impact – probably in blinding snow – with virtually no time to switch the mags to off. Maybe someone can explain that one to all of us.

A little help here, please.

The other night, one of the women in my Toastmasters Club gave me a really cool piece of aviation history, shown in the photo included with this post. It appears to be a “Warplane Identification Wheel” used by plane spotters in World War II, because one side has spotting info for U.S. Planes, while the reverse side shows planes you might find in the European theatre:

There is a small window that you can line up with various airframes which shows basic ID data such as wing location and shape, number of engines, landing gear configuration, and the make and model of the plane. That's all good stuff to call in to the War Department to let them know exactly what the bad guys are flying when they're headed your way.

My mother was an official warplane spotter in Seattle as a young woman, as part of her activities in the USO. She often told me of drills they would have that taught spotters how to recognize enemy planes inbound to ruin your day. She was very, very proud of her planespotter status, and if she were alive today, I'll bet Jumpin' Joanie would relish a few minutes spinning my new Warplane ID Wheel.

I'm posting this because I need help from any WWII historians out there who could tell me if this thing is valuable. I can find no info on the wheel to help me ID this artifact, except that is says “A.G. 452.9 (4-21-42) on one side, and “U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942-0-457035” on the other. I'm guessing from these numbers it was printed in 1942, but beyond that, I got nuttin'.

If anyone has any info on this, please shoot me an email here.

Baddest 737 on the planet.

A 737 is minding it's own business, inbound on very short final to Mojave Airport, when some nutcase in a Baron 58 decides he is God and cuts the -37 off...no radio call, no intentions, nada. It is a classic case of assbite with too much airplane in the pattern, and the Captain in the 737 has about had enough. He flips open a little switch cover on the panel, throws the switch to ARM, and gently touches a bright red yoke-mounted button with his left index finger. Immediately after pushing the button, flaming missiles erupt from under each wing, tracking the Baron's exhaust as they rocket towards the 58. Seconds later, the aforementioned assbite is TOAST as his Beechcraft explodes in a ball of fire. The 737 Captain then leans towards his First Officer and calmly says, “I guess we taught that clown to mess with CAT-Bird.”

O.K., that incident never happened, and it will not happen. It is strictly fun with words, a bit of editorial comment after I read this on the Bakersfield Californian website:

The Joint Strike Fighter Cooperative Avionics Test Bed aircraft, codenamed “CAT-Bird” is being converted by BAE Systems at its facility at Mojave Airport. It is part of a $6 billion testing and development program for Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II, the next generation military stealth fighter expected to become operational in about 2015. "All the mission systems for the F-35 will actually be installed on this aircraft," said Doug Pearson, vice president of Lockheed Martin's testing effort. "It has the same nose as the F-35 and the little wings added to the CAT-Bird are similar to the wings on the F-35."

This, my friends, is a brilliant concept. By testing the F-35's many complex systems in actual flight long before the first fighter prototype actually flies, Lockheed Martin will save major dollars and get far better R & D data to further the Lightning II project.

Not that they NEED to save money when there is this much money to be had:

Over the next two decades, the Pentagon plans to spend hundreds of billions of tax dollars to buy 2,443 of the jet fighters at a cost of up to $60 million each. In an unprecedented partnership, eight U.S. allies are paying part of the $276 billion cost to develop the F-35, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter.

Whoa. Sixty million a pop for a fighter? It just begs me to ask this rather obvious question: If we are still the big superpower that we've always boasted to be, it makes sense that there are not too many countries that would take us on. Maybe China, maybe Russia, but nobody else would stand a chance against our current fleet of military jet fighters. So do we really need to spend $146,580,000,000 of our grandchildren's tax dollars on the JSF?

Just something to ponder.

Try a PLJ on for size.

It's pretty hard these days to keep up on the LJ and VLJ horse race, but as I see it, the Citation Mustang is running in front of all others. There are few of us who can keep up on the almost daily developments in business jet aviation these days, and just when you think it could not get any more confusing, along comes the PLJ.

The what?

The Personal Light Jet, little brother to the VLJ, and about the most awesome way to remove a cool million from your life rather quickly. Vern Raburn, founder, chairman and CEO of Eclipse Aviation is qualified to explain the PLJ:

"The concept of the personal light jet makes sense. I believe there could be a very large market for the right single-engine jet, but not if it's dumbed down. It would have to cruise at least 300 KTAS and fly as high as 35,000 feet occasionally to escape the weather. And it will have to be priced close to a $1 million or lower to be viable."

One aviation writer out there who has the inside line on the full PLJ scoop is Business & Commercial Aviation's Fred George. His recent B&CA article on the coming PLJs is worth a look. He reports that Diamond, Eclipse, Piper and Cirrus are set to duke it out in the single-engine PLJ race, and the competition may turn out to be even more fast and furious than the VLJ wars. George makes an interesting point in his conclusion:

With prices starting at about $1 million and operating costs highly competitive with, if not less expensive than, those of piston twins, the emergence of the PLJ hastens the day when production of "high-performance" piston-powered general aviation airplanes ends, especially those used for personal business transportation. As even smaller, less-expensive turbofan engines are developed, future owner/operators may fly their entire careers without ever logging time in a piston-powered aircraft.

I've often found myself in the same camp as George, wondering out loud why someone hasn't developed a small, efficient turboprop for us GA guys and gals. I'm sure that the makers of Lycomings and Continentals may not agree, but really, who wouldn't want to spin a new technology composite prop with a hundred pounds of explosive turbine power and just a handful of moving parts in their Cirrus, Mooney, A36 or 206?

VLJ, PLJ, LJ...and now a new category, the RLJPCLGAA (Really Light Jet-Powered Cessna-like General Aviation Airplane). O.K., maybe that acronym needs work...

One airplane, that's all I ask.

I sit in the terminal at SFO, waiting patiently at gate 79 for United to find an airplane to deliver me back to Eugene after a grueling five days of business. It seems the plane they scheduled for the route hasn't left Calgary yet, so we are delayed three hours...that's three hours that they'll cop to.

And everyone knows that in airline time, three hours is usually more like five or six.

Now I realize there can be bad WX in North America this time of year, but I all I want is one airplane. Just one. You'd think that because United is such a large carrier, they'd have a couple of spares locked and loaded, ready to slip into the system when things go sideways. Yeah, right.

I know what you are thinking...delayed departures are so common, they are not really worth bitching about in a blog. And call me jaded from six+ years of Washington lies, but I really have a hard time believing big corporations any more..and the big airlines fall into that category. But as I sit here, I feel like screaming, because there are just so many holes in the story of why my plane is delayed.

First, I fly the EUG-SFO route frequently, and each day, the same group of Canadair Regional Jets go back and forth, north and south, usually like clockwork. So why, oh why, does the airline ask me to believe the plane tonight is coming in from Calgary, half way to the North Pole? And while admittedly not an expert on the range of an CRJ, to go from the middle of Alberta to the coast of California seems like a job for a B737, not a regional jet.

So since I am convinced I won't get the straight story from the gate agent, I guess I'll just make up an explanation:

The southbound CRJ coming down from EUG had to divert to Fresno due to, um, low ceilings at SFO (even though the METAR was clear and a million). That means the plane wasn't available to go back to EUG earlier this evening, so it had to go to Calgary instead, for no damn reason...just because. So now, the plane that was supposed to be at gate 79 waiting to load me up was in Canuck land, waiting for real WX to break so it can fly to SFO. But because it is a CRJ instead f a 737, it may have to stop for fuel in Missoula, that is, if it ever departs Canada after waiting three hours for Homeland Security to make sure all pax have their newly-required passports on their persons. It finally arrives at SFO 7.85 hours late, and sometime early tomorrow – through the miracle of airline flight – it actually reaches EUG, my guess is about eight hours late.

This, my friends, is today's best excuse for buying a Cirrus and making the trip myself. Here's why:

I left my son's house in San Jose tonight at 7P to head for SFO, and would have reached nearby Reid-Hillview Airport at 7:20P ready to pre-flight my SR22 had I been flying the friendly skies of general aviation. After returning the rental car and a WX briefing, wheels up would have been in the neighborhood of 7:50P. With a nice, peaceful four-hour flight, I'd have been wheels down at EUG at 11:50P...five minutes before the alleged (and delayed) CRJ promised by United was supposed to arrive here and get me as I wait...not so patiently...at SFO.

Limping along...the two words I use tonight to describe today's major full-fare airlines. Tomorrow, maybe everything will click like a Swiss watch...but tonight, I am less than impressed.

A few days off...

Those readers who follow this blog daily (and BTW, thank you for that) know that this is strictly a hobby, just a way to write a few lines straight out of the old cranium, unfiltered by any editors. And you all know that if I win Powerball soon, this would be my full-time passion. But until that happens, I must go forth into the world occasionally and see my advertising clients.

For about the next week, I'll be on that kind of business trip, shooting photos, making pitches, being uber-creative, and generally packing 28 hours into each day:

My business, Celeste/Daniels, is a virtual ad agency, which means we serve people all over the country, utilizing freelancers who are networked together by the thin strands of the Internets. By not having a hip, shiny office full of expensive full-timers, we are able to service many smaller aviation accounts that larger agencies cannot serve due to the high cost of staff. But our virtual nature also means that from time to time, we have to get in some face-2-face with clients, or visit their facility for a photo shoot, something that as of yet still can't be done on the web.

These trips out into the world are jammed packed, which obviously leaves no time for blogging about airplanes. And my housesitter doesn't do Windows, or Macs either for that matter, which means WoF will be off frequency for a few days.

So to my regular readers, see you next week. To any newcomers who have stumbled into Danoland for the first time, bookmark this blog and check back in about seven days, I will try and make it worth your time. And to everyone, chill and go listen to the radio, NPR is always a nice choice.

Are we a Dying Breed?

FAA just released some preliminary numbers on the year-end 2006 pilot population, and the news is discouraging, to say the least. Figures to be released in a few weeks indicate the total has finally dipped below 600,000. There are now 597,109 pilots with an average age of 45.6 years old. Of that group, there were only 939 sport pilots, and that group had an average age of 52.9 years, about seven years older than the total pilot population. There were an average of 30 sport pilots certified per month during the first eight months of 2006, but the monthly average jumped to 134 for the last four months.

Here is how our population breaks down:

Private, 236,147
ATP, 144,681
Commercial, 130,234
Flight Instructors, 91,343
Student, 84,866
Rotorcraft rating, 41,306
Glider rating, 37,837
Balloon rating, 10,511
Sport, 939
Recreational, 242

As our numbers continue to fall, it begs this question: What the hell can anyone really do about this? Well, one of the only real solutions out there that anyone has put on the table is AOPA's Project Pilot program:

AOPA's Project Pilot is a mentoring program that provides a student pilot with the wisdom and support of an experienced pilot. A student with a Project Pilot Mentor is three times more likely to successfully complete their training. This exciting program is available free to all AOPA members. All it takes is someone who wants to share the joy of general aviation and a few minutes a week to help them along.

The youngest group in our population is the student pilot category, where the average age is now 34.4 years old. So students obviously are getting college out of the way and maybe starting a family before dropping a major dime on a pilot's license. One thing this tells me is that the public perceives flight training as very expensive, and to some extent, they are correct. But with the new Sport Pilot license, those costs have been cut drastically, and one new Sport Pilot equals one more glorious win as we battle upwards to build our population and further secure GA's future.

Mentoring...good.
Not going to AOPA's Project Pilot website and signing up to be a Mentor...bad.

Boeing's future
rides on the back
of Dreamlifter

Certainly in this writer's opinion, the most exciting commercial airliner coming at us soon is Boeing's beautiful, efficient and elegant 787 Dreamliner. Sure, they will still be making their other highly desirable models when the -87s enter service, but nothing else in their sales book defines the company's future quite like Dreamliner.

With the 787, Boeing is re-writing the playbook on commercial airliner design and production. A major part of the production of the Dreamliner is happening overseas as part of a worldwide virtual factory system that will build major sections of the plane in Japan. Once completed, these sections will be assembled in the U.S., and transporting them between the two countries will be three Dreamlifters, highly-modified 747s being build by Evergreen Aviation Technologies at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport:

The Dreamlifter represents Boeing's commitment to new production system methods on the 787. It is the first time that Boeing jetliner production will rely primarily on airplanes for delivery of components. Certification of the airplane is expected in 2006. The airplane's unique design will enable the entire aft fuselage to swing open, allowing 787 major assemblies to be loaded and unloaded.

The first Dreamlifter picked up its load of precious cargo recently, to begin a maiden voyage from the Far East to the American Southeast:

The load consists of section 43, a forward fuselage section made by Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and section 11/45, the center wheel well and center wing tank, made by KHI and Fuji Heavy Industries and joined at FHI. These were loaded onto the 747-400 Large Cargo Freighter -- now known as the Dreamlifter -- earlier today at Centrair Airport in Nagoya. The large composite parts are destined for Charleston, S.C.

These three Dreamlifters represent possibly the three most important Boeing airplanes flying today, because if the freight forwarding component of Boeing's worldwide 787 production system were to falter, it could spell disaster for the program. The fact that the second Dreamlifter rolled out of the Evergreen facility in Taiwan on January 7 and is being readied for test flights indicates all is on schedule.

I am counting the days until I get to ride in the back of a 787 Dreamliner. Here's the plan: We fly Funkadelic Airlines down to SFO, meet up with my son Michael and his lovely wife JJ, and hijack their future child, who will then be about five years old. We board a sleek, sophisticated 787 bound for anywhere, and it is on this trip – I am hoping – that the wide-eyed grandkid gets his/her fires lit for aviation. And years from now, when he/she gets their private pilot's certificate, they will speak fondly about that flight they took years ago as a young child with Marmie and Dado in a brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

It will have been the flight that made them fall madly in love with the sky.

Still in-TOXO-cating!

About 3.5 years ago, Mooney really got my attention as well as the entire GA community gathered in Cheese Country USA when they released this in a press release:

OSHKOSH, WISC. Aug. 1, 2003 - Mooney Aerospace Group, Ltd. announced today that it has entered into a strategic relationship with Constucciones Aeronauticas De Galicia, manufacturer of the Toxo light sport aircraft in Spain, to manufacture, design, assemble and market the two-seater plane. The aircraft will be renamed the Mooney Toxo, and Mooney will undertake all Toxo related activities from its plant in Kerrville, Texas. The Toxo is a miracle of engineering and design, and every pilot who has flown it has immediately fallen in love with it. With a 120 HP engine, the Toxo has a maximum speed of 230 mph, a 10-hour range, and a service ceiling of 14,000 feet.

Well north of two hundred miles per hour on 120 horses? Jeez Louise, sign me up, baby! When you add those kind of specs to the fact that the Toxo is drop-dead sexy, it seemed like the perfect two-place funship and could even be a damned fun cross-country flyer for a couple with minimum baggage. But the Mooney deal never developed, and the name Toxo disappeared from the GA scene about as fast as it had arrived.

Until now, that is.

Composite Aeronautic Group (CAG), based in Zaragoza, Spain has announced a certified LSA version of the Toxo that is coming to the U.S. Market. It looks very much like the original 230 mph version, but with a Rotax 912 ULS producing 100 horsepower, buyers will see the usual LSA kind of specs:

MTOW (lb): 1,320.
Usable fuel: 21 gallons.
Rate of Climb: 1,000 fpm.
Service ceiling: 13,500 ft.
Max Range: 330nm.
Max Cruise speed: 120 knots.

I am not nearly as thrilled about this new version – I'm calling it “Toxo Lite” – as I was about the old version, the one with gobs of speed and ten full hours of range. That meant you could blitz across the country in a day, covering a 2,167 NM EUG to JFK jaunt in 9.42 hours on the tach, flying flat out. Add a stop for fuel, bathroom and vending machine cuisine and by flying with a touch less power, it would still have been possible to do a coast2coast with an early dawn patrol departure on the left coast and a sunset arrival in the East.

If I were in the market for a very sleek, very cool LSA, I'd download the Toxo brochure and retire to a quiet reading place to soak it in. The LSA Toxo may take longer to get anywhere, but will not look any less gorgeous on the ramp. And at USD $128,612 with very nice standard avionics and interior, the Toxo appears to be a very good value as well.

First, make it fly.

We all know the age of space tourism is coming, but beyond that, what do we really know?

Well, we know there are the recognizable names like Sir Richard Branson, Burt Rutan and Jeff Bezos in the game, throwing major money at designing the first generation of commercial space ships. We know that in theory the Virgin Galactic entry will look like SpaceShipOne on steroids. What we didn't know until today is what Bezo's creation will look like. His company – Blue Origin – has been very secretive, choosing to work in obscurity at their 165,000-acre West Texas spaceplex.

That has now all changed.

As the New York Times is reporting, Blue Origin performed a November 13th test launch of Goddard, their first ship in the New Shepard family, and today on Blue origin's web site, we finally get the story and video:

The gumdrop-shaped test craft, dubbed Goddard, is seen rising from the West Texas launch site to 285 feet and then, eerily, returning gently to the pad. Videos show the craft taking off and landing again with a loud whooshing sound. In one view, one of the nine rocket nozzles jitters as it maintains the ship’s attitude. Goddard resembles the DC-X, another vertical-takeoff-and-landing craft under development in the 1990s by McDonnell Douglas for the Defense Department and NASA until the government pulled the plug.

When you view the videos of the test launch, one thing is perfectly clear: Bezos' engineers have not spent a great deal of time making this a sleek, futuristic ship that will blow away the Art Director over at Popular Mechanics. The design is functional simplicity, a no-frills, static capsule that will not win style points with anyone.

But at this point in the New Shepard/Goddard project, looks mean nothing. What matters is that the thing flies, period. Because if it does not fly, why bother trimming the interior in BMW leather and gold cup holders? Later on, after Blue Origin is sure Goddard or its successors can blast into space and come back again with the monkeys inside still smiling, they can then work on a marketable appearance that will rock everyone's world.

I am warming up fast to commercial space travel. While I may never be able to afford a ride up, it is just so very cool that people like Branson and Bezos are dropping big league money to bring this next phase of aviation into reality.

Google Uranus is
just a little too creepy

We're all simply nuts over Google Earth, that wonderful free application that allows users of the Internets to traverse the planet and snoop into people's back yards using often dated satellite imagery. There is an almost endless number of things we can do with Google Earth, which comes to you from the biggest, baddest operation in cyberspace, AKA the Monster of Mountain View.

Now you'd think that the minds at Google would be satisfied with data mining this planet for searchable goods...but you'd be wrong. A story found recently on space.com seems to indicate that they have their laser-guided, infrared sights aimed a bit farther out in the universe:

Google has joined the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Project, which intends to complete the world's largest survey telescope by 2013. The proposed telescope – built atop Cerro Pachón in Chile – will be a ground-based 8.4 meter, 10-square-degree field instrument capable of providing digital imaging across the entire sky. In an endless series of ten-second exposures, the LSST will cover the available sky every three nights over a period of ten years.

Google wants to “organize massive quantities of data and then share it in the most useful possible form.” And they may be the only corporation with the digital muscle to do it, because every night that the LSST operates, it will store over thirty terabytes (30,000 gigabytes) of data. The format for the LSST images will be a circular mosaic providing more than 3 gigapixels per image, approximately 1,000 times the resolution of a typical digital camera photo.

Google is undeniably the planet leader in search technology, and their Google Labs are constantly working on a long list of innovations designed to pummel what's left of their competition into a milky white paste. Now, with the capability to scan the entire freakin' universe for information, is it that far of a leap to grasp the notion that maybe they are trying to get a jump on nailing down market share ahead of the commercial space travel boom that is now only a few years away?

Because we all know that those high rolling space tourists will require infinite amounts of streaming data to power their Crackberries, or whatever hand-held electronic gizmo we'll all be using in 2020.

It is inevitable that our grandchildren will live in a far different world than we do, and have access to space in a way we can now only imagine. When those days come and my grandchildren are sitting there on my knee waiting for a story from “back in the day”, I will gladly offer up some line of crap about how people once used “cell” phones that did not have interplanetary capabilities, or explain how before there was the universe wide web, users could only search for information on one planet.

How boring would THAT be, the kids would snark, laughing wildly at this horseshit, knowing that Dado (my assumed grandpa name) is really just a grizzly but loveable old fuzzball who never learned to download ringtones.

The fish will taste better.

There you are, sitting at the edge of a pristine Idaho mountain lake so clear you can count the Rainbow Trout as they fight for your bait.

Nearby at your camp, a cauldron of steaming hot coffee percolates on a campfire and overhead, a pair of Bald Eagles soar easily in the cool breezes that dance among the treetops.

This is living, baby – the outdoors, world-class peace and quiet, and no road in or out. There's only one way to get here, and it sits just past your tent over in the meadow. Looking strong and able, waiting like man's best friend to again carry you skyward when it is unfortunately time to leave this blissful place and re-enter the real world is one of Aviat's new Husky A1-B-200s.

The last issue of AOPA Pilot ran a very good article on the recently upgraded Husky, and it again sparked my fires to think about how wonderful backcountry flying must be. I have never had the chance to drop out of the clouds into a small, bumpy grass strip wedged into a tight mountain valley far away from civilization, but with the new Husky, the excursion seems like heaven.

I have always been a Husky fan. Something about them that just grabs an aviator's heart and refuses to let go. Maybe it's the tundra tires, or that big friendly dog's face staring back at you from the vertical stabilizer. Or maybe it's the reputation this particular family of airplanes has for dependable operations into some of the worst places you'd ever want to try and fly into.

Aviat has powered up the latest Husky to 200 horsepower, and the result is performance even more unbelievable than before:

Takeoff distance (ground roll) – 265 ft
Rate of climb (sea level) – 1,700 fpm
Max level speed (sea level) – 126 kt
Service ceiling – 20,000 ft
Landing distance (ground roll) – 398 ft
VSO (stall, in landing configuration) – 46 KIAS

So let's put these numbers in perspective, shall we? You place the Husky on the goal line at any major football stadium that does not have a roof. You apply a notch of flaps, stand on the brakes and firewall the throttle. When all 200 ponies are powered up, you release the brakes, add just a touch forward stick, and when the cheerleaders standing at the 50 yard line go blasting by your wingtip, you grab that stick and yank it into your lap. At about the 12 yard line, those big tundra tires leap off the grass, and you kick just a hair right rudder to avoid the goal posts. With your 1,700 fpm climb rate, you blast off up over the end zone seats and depart the stadium, smiling, no doubt.

Try that in just about anything else and you'll plant your prop on the face of that crazy clown down there in the cheap seats holding the John 3:16 sign. What's with that dude anyway, can't he just get a life?

Yes, someday, I must get checked out in backcountry flying. I must add that to my growing list of aviation milestones this pilot must pass before the day comes when my flying will be only done at the airport coffee shop. Fresh trout, clean water, a crystal clear blue sky, hot coffee and your Husky waiting nearby. Could it possible get any better than that?

Not a chance.

You KNOW
you want one.

That’s right, we’re all friends here at World of Flying, so go ahead and ADMIT the truth. What you really want more than anything in the whole wide world is to strap yourself onto an itsy, bitsy jet-powered flying wing and launch yourself into the stratosphere.

A what?

A flying wing, that’s what. It is roughly the size of your basic yard hammock, and it’s powered by four little jet engines, two on each side of your butt. After that butt is strapped into the middle of the wing, you and the contraption are dumped out the side of a perfectly good airplane. If you think that all sounds like a hangar story gone terribly wrong, Yves Rossy of Switzerland wants to show you something in a video that can be viewed here.

Here’s what Yves has done to prove his wild Jet-Man “personal-sized” flying wing concept works:

At 7:30 pm on June 24th, 2004, Yves dropped out of a Pilatus Porter at an altitude of 4000 meters over the Yverdon airfield. Before pulling on the little lever that controls the opening of his wings, Yves lets himself glide for a couple seconds and at the altitude of 2500 meters, he starts the ignition of the engines and waits 30 seconds for them to stabilize. Once they are steady, he can finally speed up the engines and suddenly the dream comes true… He manages a horizontal flight at 1600 meters from the ground for more than 4 minutes, at a speed of 100 knots in formation with the Pilatus!

During the flight, Yves flies the flying wing by using various light body movements instead of control surfaces. To perfect the performance, the foldable carbon wings were improved and their span was increased to 3 meters.

The Jet-Man project received the authorization of the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation and is insured in liability. I’ll bet it is. Would have loved to see his insurance agent’s face when he sprung this idea on him.

A UFO at O'Hare?

Anyone who has ever flown in or out of Chicago’s O'Hare Airport knows the sky can be thick with traffic. The maze of runways has inbounds and departures mixed together in a confusing jumble of airplanes all identified as tiny little green blips on a series of radar screens up in the control tower.

But last fall, a group of United Airlines employees swear they saw a mysterious, saucer-shaped craft hovering over O'Hare Airport, and this target had no little green blip attached to it, making it technically an “unidentified” flying object, or UFO.

A report in Monday's Chicago Tribune states this:

Some of the workers who reported the UFO were pilots. They said the object didn't have lights, and hovered over an airport terminal before shooting up through the clouds.

Now normally I would write this kind of thing quickly off as another Internet hoax. But when the Associated Press picks it up and distributes it widely across their wires, I have to assume someone in their food chain has at least fact checked this enough to make sure there really was a group of workers who really reported a UFO.

The FAA is taking the usual government stance any time the subject is UFOs. Nada, zilch, negatory, didn’t happen. They admit that a United supervisor called the O’Hare tower asking if anyone had spotted a spinning disc-shaped object. But according to FAA’s spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory, a preliminary check of radar found nothing out of the ordinary:

"Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon," Cory said. "That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things. The FAA is not investigating.”

As is always the case surrounding this type of report, someone always has to be the wise guy. One O'Hare controller reportedly said “to fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable." Sounds like a little TRACON humor there, boys and girls.

Years ago, when I had a job driving late at night, I swear I saw a couple of unexplainable lights in the sky that did not look like airplanes. I believe they could very well have been UFOs, simply because I cannot wrap my brain around the theory that of all the planets out there in the universe, we cannot possibly be the only ones with the technology to build space ships. It just makes sense that somewhere out there, in a galaxy far, far away, there really are little green men getting a real laugh out of watching us Earthlings – still in our relative infancy regarding space travel – shoot our odd-looking little shuttles into space, only to have them drop back to the planet a few days later.

A UFO over O’Hare? We’ll never know. But this I do know: When you see one, you know it. Now why these particular spacemen choose the busiest airspace in North America for their touch and goes remains a really great question.

UPDATE on 05.21.09: Chicago O'Hare Airport has a new website, found here.