Cue the
Romantic Music

There is a sensation only airplane owners know, one that non-owners or renter pilots will never get to experience. That sensation is the elation a owner/pilot feels when he/she throws open the hangar door and catches those gorgeous first views of their flying machine.

While renter pilots certainly can get the full frontal feeling of flight – with all the sensational wonder that comes with it – the feeling that comes from airplane ownership almost defies description in words. Ask any owner/pilot and they will tell you tales of developing a sort of love affair with their plane, the kind of passion that makes their heart race at the very sight of their bird. It's like this:

I first saw this way back in the very early 90s, when a good family friend named Bob introduced me to his 1966 Cessna 172, FAA N6054R. We were at the Madera Airport very early in the morning, getting ready to depart on a long XC to Mulege, Baja, Mexico to slay the Mighty Dorado. As Bob slowly pushed back the hangar doors, he very respectfully asked "Good morning five-four Romeo...ready to go to Mexico?" The plane responded in the affirmative when Bob touched the starter button and his beautiful Skyhawk came alive before the second blade passed the windscreen. All the way to the Hotel Serenidad and back, five-four Romeo served us perfectly...and you could tell each time Bob took off that he and the plane had – as they used to say on Soul Train – a "thing" going on.

The next time I noticed this phenomenon was one summer day up at Pine Mountain Lake Airport near Yosemite National Park. I had flown in there to lunch with a few pilot buddies, and after the $100 hamburger, we strolled over to Kent and Sandy Blankenberg's airplane museum a.k.a their hangar. The centerpiece of this immaculate shrine to flying hardware was a perfect Lockheed 12A:

As Sandy gave us a tour of their museum/hangar, she was gracious and also very knowledgeable of every piece of history in the place. But when we got to the Lockheed, she pulled out a polishing rag from somewhere and proceeded to tell us about the 12A. As she walked around the plane, she was a never-ending polishing machine, and the gleam in her eye for that beautiful vintage flying machine told the real story - it had to be love. I stumbled across Sandy and the 12A again the next summer at Oshkosh, and like before, there seemed to be no end to her fancy for polishing the family Electra.

And tonight, I had a personal moment of my own. We had family in for the holiday, and I was chomping at the bit to take them up in Katy for a scenic flight over our beautiful neck 'o the woods. But EUG cleared to no better then OVC 300, and stayed LIFR all day. Since I have yet to quite finish up my IFR rating (getting dangerously close however), Katy remained parked in the hangar.

Since everyone else in the crew was doing something else, I decided to drive the 10 minutes over to EUG and just visit the family Cherokee. I didn't have a reason to go over there, and didn't need one either. As the mist and overcast blocked out the remaining sun, I slid open my hangar doors and there she was, ready to fly if Mother Nature would just cooperate. I spent a few minutes of quality time with the Old Girl, adding another layer of Supercoat to the leading edges, even if the last coat looked just fine. This trip to the hanger wasn't about waxing the plane, it was about adoration for a wonderous collection of aluminum, cables, electronics and gasoline that when operated in proper unison...FLIES.

Yes, some guys and gals love to play golf, others get their ya-ya's on the ski slope. But for me, being with two-seven Whiskey is one of the best things on Earth I care to do. When that involves family too, it is just icing on the cake.

Budd.

This is not so much an aviation story as it is a story about an aviation writer (me), and one person in his life that gave him the break he needed.

That person was Budd Brockett, the long-time Editor of the Reedley Exponent Newspaper, a small town weekly in Reedley, CA, just southeast of Fresno. Budd died this past week, and the news caused me to reflect on a series of events back in 1986 that changed the course of my life.

Between 1977 and early 1986, I had been completely addicted to photographing auto racing, primarily sprint cars on dirt. To pay for this habit, I worked at a produce dock in Fresno...long, chilly nights spent hand-unloading endless semi-trucks jammed with fruits and vegies. In spring of '86, one of my arms gave out, and my "lumper" days were over. At 29 years old, I enrolled in a community college journalism class – I was grandpa to the kids smoking dope in the darkroom – and my goal was to get a "real" reporting job.

The first week of college went fine, even though the kids looked at me like I was from Mars, some kind of loser who was on his second wind. But when I arrived home from classes on the Monday of the second week, the phone was ringing. A guy named Budd was on the other end of the line, asking me if I wanted to interview to be his new full-time Sports Editor. When asked how he knew I was even alive, he just said he had "heard I was available" and left it at that. He was blunt, did I want the interview or not, he had no time for small talk.

So staring four years of college in the face – each year producing a new crop of young kids wanting the same premium newspaper jobs I dreamed about – I met with Budd at the Exponent office...right there on Main Street in downtown Reedley. At the time, you only had to dial five digits to make a call, and I swear it was only slightly removed from Mayberry, RFD. I told Budd straight up that I had never written a sports story other then car racing. But apparently a couple of the supermodified drivers in the area heard I was unemployed and showed Budd my writing style from the National Speed Sport News, which he loved.

With an offer on the table of $325 a week, I signed up to cover two high schools, a junior college and numerous youth sports leagues, and also City Council, Planning Commission, and a few ag stories. I would have even caught the coveted story of Timmy the Turtle had it not been assigned to the Panorama Editor in the next cubicle. All I knew about writing stick and ball sports was what I had learned from being a fan. Earned run average...what the hell is THAT? But I knew I could string words together in a readable fashion, I just had to baffle 'em with brilliance and hope nobody saw through it all.

It was like this: I would go to cover women's collegiate volleyball, and have no idea what I was doing. Remember this was pre-internet, so I couldn't just make stuff up after Googling it. I'd go to the event, shoot a few rolls of something we used to call "film", try and get the players' names to match jersey numbers, and promised to call the coach on Monday for the facts. Then I'd race across town, blast into the high school gym for boy's basketball, load up my Minolta X-700 cameras with more free Kodak Tri-X, and try and get that one sweet shot for the article.

Monday would come and I would fire up my Tandy 102 laptop – the exact model AP and the L.A. Times writers we using back in that day – and pound out a sports section full of crap that smelled a little like real sports stories. But that little laptop was a load of trouble from the day I brought it through the door:

This was 1986, when computers were still pretty "out there" in an office environment. The Exponent was so backwards that they even refused to move into ELECTRIC TYPEWRITERS! So when I arrived with this mysterious writing gizmo the size of an encyclopedia, you could almost see them putting up the sign of the cross as if to ward off a vampire. Budd especially was leery of the Tandy 102, because as a born and bred Reedleyite, his civic duty told him to be resistant to any sort of change. But he did marvel in how fast I could pound out story after story, even when it seemed like witchcraft that I could do it without the thing being plugged into the wall.

Budd came to accept my skewered version of "sports stories" and even would defend me when an enraged parent would storm the front counter demanding that little Jimmy's home run be included in the line score of his T-ball game. The guy I replaced was a stats addict, and produced a full PAGE of stats each week, just like the big city papers, on everything from kid's ball sports to collegiate tiddlywinks. I thought stats were a waste of my precious time and didn't even know how to produce them, let alone try and chase down the girl's JV softball coach and get the 411 needed to tally everything up.

When the paper arrived off the press was the first time Budd usually read anything I had written, he had that much faith in my abilities. I wrote a column called "Sports Insight" which was not unlike this aviation blog, and if I strayed too far out in left field, Budd would come into my cubicle and just shake his head.

I stayed with that job for two hard years, and burned out on sportswriting forever. Today I rarely even pick up that section of our daily paper. But I have parlayed that Exponent job into a long career, and I owe it all to Budd Brockett for taking a chance on a guy with zero experience but one hell of a gift of gab. Budd never stopped performing his civic duties in Reedley, and while that little 'berg will never, EVER move out of the dark ages in many ways, with Budd's passing, it will also never quite be the same either.

Budd was a good man who would have jumped under a bus for a fellow newspaperman. He could swing a camera with the best of 'em. loved digging into a corruption story, and it was impossible to bullshit him. He know that I showed up each day, wrote reams of articles, and shot killer sports photos. He also knew that my large, dramatic, shots of the favorite star on the boy's basketball team would sell papers, and to Budd, empty newsstands was what this newspaperin' game was all about.

Godspeed Budd...say hey to Papa Louie and the rest of my passed family members when you get up there.

As The [Eclipse]
World Turns

Twenty years from now, historians will look back on the rise and fall of Eclipse Aviation and try to write the story. If somehow the company stays together and we're all flying EA500s in 2028, they will write about the comeback of the century that will have taken place.

But if those historians pull up digital copies of today's headlines, they will have seen an obituary on a company that flamed out. Either way, they had better be wearing their seat belts, because the saga of this flamboyant company is a helluva wild ride.

We all know the story – upstart VLJ maker promises to sell their cutting edge small jet for under a million. There was no shortage of pessimists who said Vern Raburn was walking the plank. As the drama unfolded, that price tag rose, and continued rising as the turbulent company fought through endless litigation, setbacks, FAA certification woes and manufacturing glitches.

Of late, the company has struggled to even pay their employees, and has been hanging by the corporate equivalent of their fingernails. That was, until today, when the story broke that everyone in general aviation expected. This is from Aviation International News, but it is being reported worldwide by just about everyone with a keyboard:

"Just days after Eclipse Aviation achieved two key milestones–EASA and Avio NG 1.5 certification–the pioneering VLJ manufacturer this morning filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. At the same time, Eclipse Aviation entered into an agreement to sell “substantially all of its assets” to an affiliate of Etirc Aviation of Luxembourg. Eclipse also filed a debtor-in-possession motion with the court, to allow a group of existing share- and noteholders to fund “normal business operations” with up to $20 million until the company is sold in a public auction in January."

Without going into the legalese, the declaration today does nothing but stave off wolves that sit hungry outside the factory door, and only puts off what seems to be the inevitable. Again, from AIN:

"The sale to Etirc Aviation, while agreed upon, is not guaranteed and depends on the outcome of the public auction. The debtor-in-possession financing is an asset-preserving move that helps keep the company operating and the current 954 workers employed during the bankruptcy. If Etirc Aviation isn’t the successful bidder for the assets, the debtor-in-possession funds would have to be repaid by the winning bidder."

As Wall Street implodes, we hear more and more about major companies going out in a flame of chapter 11 glory. It would take a team of tax attorneys to explain it all, but AIN's reporting does a great job of breaking down Eclipse's bankruptcy filing to the brass tacks:

"The bankruptcy filing includes a list of creditors holding the largest unsecured claims, totaling $702.6 million and includes a long list of debtors. A primary reason for the bankruptcy, according to an Eclipse filing, is that the company “continued to lose larger than expected sums of money on each aircraft manufactured and has not reached cash flow positive in its operations.” In its bankruptcy filing, Eclipse estimated total liabilities at more than $1 billion."

So after the public auction, someone will own what is left of a very good idea...Eclipse Aviation. As one who has always hoped they would succeed, this news hits hard at a time when we get daily barrages of this kind of ugly financial news that rips our aviator's hearts out. What went wrong at Eclipse will be a topic to ponder for years, but we must not forget what good this company did too...my two cents:

Eclipse Aviation shall forever be known as the company that started the VLJ and PJ "revolution" if and when it finally comes. Frankly, most of us thought we'd see ramps full of small turbine ships by 2009, but as our suck economy crawls along the floor, it appears that entries from Cirrus, Honda, Piper and Embraer are moving very slowly and cautiously to market. Seems nobody is all that excited about rushing their bird to the showroom floor at a time when nobody is buying.

This coming year will be like a cage fight among the makers. Those with fists of steel and the ability to stagger through a continuous pummeling will survive, and those who are riding a wing and a prayer may see their turbine projects vaporize.

And as I write this, I have to think about the huge number of delivery position holders for EA500s who tonight must be dividing their time between tearing their hair out and beating their heads against a wall.

Face it, You KNOW
You Want to...

There is one fantasy scenario that all GA pilots have ran through their minds at one time or another, one dream assignment we all are waiting for. It goes something like this:

There you are, Average Joe private pilot, maybe 300 hours, a decent stick at the controls of a Skyhawk. You're cruising back in coach on a Boeing 767-400 owned by XYZ Airlines at FL380 over one of the square states between the Rockies and the Appalachian Trail. Somewhere about Omaha, the flight attendant comes running down the aisle screaming "My GOD, both pilots have had simultaneous heart attacks...we're ALL GOING TO DIE!" You look around, and notice the other pax are freaking out, so you proudly raise up your hand and tell her you're a pilot, and you THINK you can safely land the plane. The passengers cheer as you rush forward to the cockpit door.

After dragging the Captain and FO out to the galley, you slip into the left seat, and the pressure mounts. But wait, this is just an airplane, they all fly pretty much the same - at least that's what you are TELLING yourself. You find a radio, dial up 121.5 and inform the nice ATC voice in the sweet airline headset that you have an emergency. You ask them for two speeds, the approach speed of a 767 and the dirty stall speed. You burn that stall speed into your brain, knowing that like the 172 back home, as long as you are moving through air faster than that critical number, this beast of a flying machine will still...FLY. Once you know these speeds, it's all like driving the Cessna, you tell yourself. Throttle back, trim nose up, the thing slows down and the houses get bigger. Three in the green – you know that from riding with your buddies who own Bonanzas – now just where IS that gear lever anyway?

ATC gives you vectors to the largest airport around, and after a smooth descent, you trim for approach speed, steer to the runway and drive it onto the numbers like you've done it a million times. The cattle in back roars even though the "arrival" is torturous on the landing gear, and as you exit the jetway, the waiting paparazzi is a mob and soon your mug is plastered on the cover of every magazine in the land as this week's flying hero. After appearances on Leno, GMA and Ellen, you sign a lucrative book and movie deal and retire as a gazillionaire to a small island near Fiji.

Far-fetched? Yeah, maybe. But something kinda close actually happened last week, according to this from AP:

An Air Canada co-pilot having a mental breakdown had to be forcibly removed from the cockpit, restrained and sedated, and a stewardess with flying skills helped the pilot safely make an emergency landing, an Irish investigation concluded Wednesday. None of the 146 passengers or other nine crew members on board the Boeing 767 bound from Toronto to London was injured after the 58-year-old co-pilot had to be removed by attendants and sedated by two doctors on board. The pilot then asked flight attendants to find out if any passenger was a qualified pilot. When none was found, one stewardess admitted she held a current commercial pilot's license but said her license for reading cockpit instruments had expired.

So the flight attendant – current with her commercial but not current on her IFR ticket – slipped into the right seat and helped the Captain bring the -67 home safely. This just goes to show how cool having your pilot's license really is...you never know when you are going to be called upon to save the day.

And if nothing else, it will certainly come in handy to poke holes in the sky while chasing hamburgers across the countryside.

A Sensible Solution
for Big Auto CEOs

Anyone with a TV or internet connection couldn't possible have missed the major headlines shouting that the CEOs of the "Big Three" automakers flew to Washington, DC recently in "private jets" to beg on their hands and knees for Federal bailout coin. This, from ABC news, really says it all:

"Even as their companies fail, Ford and GM CEOs continue lavish lifestyles: The CEOs of the big three automakers flew to the nation's capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy. The CEOs may have told Congress that they will likely go out of business without a bailout yet that has not stopped them from traveling in style, not even First Class is good enough."

As these CEOs are begging us taxpayers for money to keep their companies off the bankruptcy court floor, it seems the brass at the very top are being rewarded handsomely for the poor performance that took their gigantic corporations to the brink. This is from Forbes Magazine:

"Ford Motor Co. President and CEO Alan Mulally received compensation valued at $22.8 million in 2007, down nearly 42 percent from the prior year, when he joined the company and collected a hefty signing bonus."

In today's competitive business environment – and to provide Big Auto CEOs with a higher level of security – it does make sense for them to fly by private aircraft. Notice I did NOT say "private jets"...because I believe they could make a smart move and save a bundle while repairing their tarnished reputation. My two cents:

When you think of CEOs as all being greedy, overpaid country club types, you cannot place Costco CEO Jim Sinegal into that group. Sinegal is well known for running a tight ship, including his own $350,000 annual salary. Yes, he does fly in a corporate jet, but with the money saved by Sinegal not demanding an eight-figure salary, the company could buy and fly his jet and still make out far ahead of the car makers. If you compare Sinegal's salary to that of Ford's Mulally, Costco saves $22,450,000 a year, enough to buy 5.6 brand new Pilatus PC-12NG luxury turboprops.

Pilots and aviation watchers have always known that the PC-12 is a very efficient and capable executive aircraft with direct operating costs far less than any business jets that carry an equal amount of souls. Yes, it flies a touch slower, and might not have all the ramp appeal of a G550, but for the mission of hauling Big Auto's CEOs to Washington to beg for money, the Pilatus can handle that trip perfectly.

I fail to understand why more big corporations don't use the PC-12 as their chosen mode of executive transportation. Not only can the Pilatus haul a load of suits to the Annual Meeting, but after that meeting, it can drop that same group into a tiny grass strip two miles from seriously awesome trout fishing, or depart from a tiny municipal field minutes from a ski resort high up in the Rockies.

Will fatcat honchos give up their golden toilets and near mach speeds for a...turboprop? Most likely they will not, unless forced to by the masses, the bankruptcy court, or Nancy Pelosi. Yes, they might lose some street cred down at the country club with their cronies, but in the real world where the rest of us live, making that decision to fly -NGs would be viewed by stockholders and the public as a major cost savings. And since image is everything to these people, maybe having the image that you want to run a lean, mean company right now would be a very, very good thing.

But that would only matter if the CEOs cared what we – their customers – really thought. For years now, the "Big Three" have sold obsolete gas-guzzling giant SUVs and trucks to anyone with shaky credit that could sign their name, without thinking at all about the environment or their company's financial future. They did it because there was more profit in Durangos, Expeditions or Escalades then there would be in the smaller, more fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles that people actually want to buy today.

Until they can be smart about what they build, I say let them declare bankruptcy and wallow around at the bottom of the corporate food chain for a while. Maybe then they'll think of something other then fat CEO pay and profits.

The Good Ol' Boys Club is Going Down in Flames

My readers know I've been trying hard since the election to keep World of Flying a PFZ (politics free zone), but damn, these lame ducks do push my buttons now and again. This post is not so much about Bush's cronies posing as an administration as it is about Bush's cronies posing as an administration trying to blow this kind of GOP garbage by us with a straight face:

From ANN: "DOT will issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to implement the recommendations of its "Tarmac Task Force." Heavily weighted with representatives of airports and the airline industry, the panel's final report recommends no substantive measures be required of the airlines to minimize or mitigate lengthy strandings of passengers."

Is ANYONE surprised to find out that this Task Force ANN says was "heavily weighted" is stocked with people who all come from W's Fratboy School of Governance:

"Kate Hanni, founder and executive director of CAPBOR, the Coalition for an Airline Passengers Bill of Rights, was stranded with her husband and two sons inside an American Airlines jet, on the tarmac at Austin, TX for over eight hours on December 29, 2006. Hanni tells ANN she was the only member of DOT's 35-member task force without ties to either government or the airline industry. Not surprisingly, she was the lone dissenting vote in a 34-1 decision last week to release a final report which requires only token attention from the airlines to the needs of passengers in cases of tarmac strandings."

I know, I KNOW, America has spoken, and these people have been shown the door. As of this writing it was 60 days, 22 hours, 21 minutes, 44 seconds (see the actual countdown clock here) before it all becomes official on Redemption Day, 01.20.09. Numerous reports say President Obama and Vice-president Biden are friends of the pax bill of rights movement, and I have every reason to believe courageous citizens like Kate Hanni will get the justice they seek. Fair is all CAPBOR is asking for, not empty promises from Brownie wannabes made under a cloud of smoke on a stage full of mirrors.

Hanni discusses this story in detail on a Aero News Special Feature audio Aero-Cast, found here.

My flying friends, we all just need to keep our heads in the game and hang in there. There will be losses and pain during this transition, jobs will be lost, doors will close. But we really have only one option now: Hope.

And I damn sure hope it's all going to get way better next year.

It's Official:
Oshkosh in 2009!

I remember the night well earlier this year when United Airlines placed me as #11 on the overbooked list at SFO on a return flight to Eugene from Fresno.

What blew me away at the time was that this was the second leg of a trip...and you'd think they would have a seat for me on leg #2 if their 'puters saw that I was inbound to SFO on leg #1. But noooooo...:

As the Gate Agent announced the last flight of the night to Eugene was overbooked, I knew I had a seat since I had just arrived on one of their planes moments earlier. But just to be safe, I asked and that's when I found out me and 10 other idiots had been duped...sold a raw deal by the "friendly" skies. After my initial anger, I retreated a moment and tried to make lemonade from the bushels of lemons.

Did I have to get home that night? No. Could I get home just as well in the morning? Sure. So when the Gate Agent asked for volunteers to stay overnight and be wined and dined on United's dime and receive a free round-trip coach ticket, I jumped at the chance, but with one major stipulation:

O.K., no big deal, hang out in a free airport hotel (actually a quite nice one too), eat a honkin' big free meal at the airport food court and get a free ticket to...OSHKOSH! I reasoned that IF the free ticket could only be used by me to return to the biggest, baddest, most important airshow, fly-in and trade show in the country, then it would all be worth an RON (remain overnight) at SFO.

So this week, I have begun nailing down that trip back to the land of Cheese, endless airplanes and Brats cooked on the World's Largest Grill®. I snagged a dorm room at the University of Wisconsin, and at $50 a night, who cares if it doesn't have A/C? Besides, living in the dorm, I can get to all those keggers and enjoy a whole mess of other fratboy nonsense. Or not.

I consider the acquisition of accommodations to be a huge development in my quest to get back to Oshkosh again, because real hotel rooms are impossible to find any closer then Green Bay during the show, even this far out. Sure, who wouldn't want to stay at a big, swanky hotel on the field and run into Phil Boyer or Alan Klapmeier in the lounge? But (a) those hotels jack their prices into orbit during the EAA show, and (b) mere mortals like me have zero chance of ever nailing down one of those prized rooms.

More [much more] on this trip as the event gets closer. I am just glowing today with this news. If you are not an aviator, or are one but has never been to Oshkosh, you have no idea what you are missing, or how important any trip back there is to a guy like me. It is sort of a cross between a religious pilgrimage to Mecca and a romantic getaway to sneak off with 10,000 of your sexiest mechanical girlfriends, the kind that FLY.

Again, if you're not ME, I guess that last sentence might just sound a little weird. But if you have been lucky enough to make the EAA show before, then I can almost hear you shouting "AMEN, BROTHER!" right about now.

UPDATE@613P on 11.19.08: O.K., I have just returned from the Eugene Airport where I redeemed my United voucher for my FREE ticket to Oshkosh. After a simple process, I was handed a R/T reservation into Appleton worth $611.49. Add to that the estimated $100 for the free hotel + $25 (dinner and breakfast) in free airport food and you get $736.49 in goodies...all because UAL can't figure out how to cram 81 souls into a regional airliner that has 70 seats. They also had to find rooms, meals and free tickets for 10 other pax that night...go ahead, add that up. If anyone at any of America's best business schools can tell me how the hell this overbooking garbage pencils out for the airline, I am willing to listen.

These Flyers
Are Heroes

Again, Southern California burns this weekend as walls of flames blown by erratic high winds devour mobile homes and mansions without stopping to consider their worth. These annual wildfires care little if you live behind gilded gates or have a house jacked up on blocks...when they are headed down your canyon, you had better be running the other way.

When these fires erupt - pushed by offshore Santa Ana winds – there is usually only one way to stop them, and that is by air. The brave men and women that crew and pilot our air tankers and aerial firefighting helicopters never get enough credit for the job they do. A quick look around the Internet today shows they are busy as hell in Los Angeles right now...from various TV station web sites:

"Fire officials began an aggressive attack from the air at daybreak Thursday on the Tea Fire with the help of nine water-dropping helicopters and 10 air tankers, said Terri Nisich, a spokeswoman with the Santa Barbara County Executive Office. A high wind warning was in effect in Los Angeles and Ventura counties through Saturday, with possible gusts of up to 70 mph in some passes and canyons.

"On the Sayre Fire, more than 600 firefighters struggled to protect homes threatened by flying embers. Because of the rough terrain in the forest, they were relying on water-dropping helicopters to tackle flames. Authorities said some aircraft were grounded during the night by the savage wind, but they expected six airplanes and a dozen helicopters to attack the fire during the day."

There is always plenty of mystique surrounding aerial firefighters, so let's look at some facts from the American Helicopter Services and Aerial Firefighting Association (AHSAFA):

There are three primary kinds of aerial firefighting aircraft available within the U. S. Multi-engine airtankers are comprised of ex-military and retired commercial transport aircraft carry from 1800-3,600 gallons of retardant. These airtankers typically make retardant drops from a height of 150 to 200 feet above vegetation and terrain, at airspeeds from 125 to 150 knots.

Small, medium and large helicopters carry from 100 to 3,000 gallons of water, foam, or retardant in either buckets slung beneath the aircraft, or in fixed-tanks. Large helitankers can be very cost effective, making rapid multiple drops of 2,000 gallons or more on escaping wildfires by refilling at nearby water sources or at portable retardant bases.

Single Engine Airtankers (SEATS) carry from 400-800 gallons of foam or fire retardant. SEATS can operate from remote airstrips and open fields or closed roads, reloading at portable retardant bases. SEATS are predominantly modified agricultural aircraft; however, the 800-gallon Air Tractor 802 is designed specifically for wildland firefighting.

The people who fly this equipment are some of the most seasoned in the sky:

Airtanker pilots, co-pilots, mechanics and other support personnel are highly experienced and well qualified for the aerial firefighting task. Pilots and co-pilots must meet rigid federal wildfire agency and FAA requirements. Captains of large airtankers and helitankers typically have 5,200-18,000 hours of flying experience, much of it in hazardous, low-level aerial firefighting. Pilots engaged in this profession must have a thorough comprehension of fuel models, fire behavior, weather, low level and mountain flying techniques, common fire terminology and tactics, risk and crew resource management, and coordinated retardant dispensing operations that integrate multiple types of aircraft.

At the point of these battles with Mother Nature in California is the California Division of Forestry, aided by countless contract operators. Without these crew and equipment, the entire state south of Bakersfield would have been reduced to smoldering piles of ash years ago.

So the next time you see an aerial tanker driver, or run across the crews that fill 'em up on the ground, make sure to say thank you, because the home they save tomorrow may be your own.

Deck Chairs. Titanic.

Yes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average did jump 553 points today, lifting that important index all the way back up to a whopping 8,835...a far cry from the 14,164.53 it saw on October 9, 2007. And while I did promise to keep the blog a PFZ (politics free zone), the deplorable mishandling of the financial meltdown by Bush's hand-picked team leaves much to be desired. I said I reserved the right to delve back into the quagmire that is our Federal government on an emergency basis ONLY, and Center, I am DECLARING AN EMERGENCY!

One day, they are throwing truckloads of cash at pathetic and greedy mortgage bankers and insurance companies – who spends it on lavish spa vacations cloaked as business seminars – and the next day there's Poulson doing a presser saying they blew it on the $700 billion number, which they have determined to be way too low. Oh, and that comes after billions of it has conveniently already been, um, "distributed" to banks who are wallowing in the mountains of cash and "enlarging their footprint" whatever the hell that means.

It's Katrina all over again, only this time, it's not people dying, it's our economy.

Recently, someone I know made a great point about the shady nature of this bailout: With the haste by which Bush, Bernanke and Poulson shoved this "emergency" package down our throats, my friend said this whole fiasco smells a lot like the WMD lies that this bunch used to fib their way into a war with Iraq. With this administration's track record on, well, just about everything, this theory is one that is hard to dismiss, sorry to say.

I get up every morning hoping for some good news. which is non-existent right now. In the aviation sector, it just keeps getting worse, according to this from KOB-TV in New Mexico:

"The employees of Eclipse Aviation learned this morning that they won’t be receiving their paychecks for the last two weeks of labor. Employees at the Albuquerque manufacturing facility say that they were called into a meeting early this morning and told they would not be receiving paychecks. Some employees leaving the early morning meeting expressed anger, frustration and uncertainty before speeding out of the facility's parking lot."

Great. One of our biggest VLJ makers is now on a death watch by the traditional media. The trials and tribulations at Eclipse would take hours to write, and this latest development does not bode well for the relatively new maker. But if you think the legacy makers are fairing any better, you'd be wrong:

"Cessna Aircraft Company had some unwelcome news for employees Wednesday, two weeks before the start of the holiday season. Approximately 665 workers will soon be handed their walking papers at the planemaker's facilities in Wichita, KS and Bend, OR. The layoffs will go into effect in early 2009. The Wichita Eagle reports about 500 workers in Wichita will receive their 60-day notices in the next few weeks, along with another 165 workers in Bend... about 1/3 of that facility's workforce."

If you've been wondering just what the hell they're smokin' back there in D.C., seems Sarah Palin – yes, her 15 minutes are not quite up yet – may have the answer, according to several sites including this one:

"In response to the proposed changes, announced yesterday by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Palin expressed frustration on behalf of a weary electorate and offered a stern warning. In her speech this morning, Palin alluded to the bailout and voiced her growing concerns about Washington's addiction to, as she put it, "opium" -- O.P.M. - other people's money."

I guess they'll get this bailout garbage fixed when pigs with lipstick fly. You betcha'.

The 'User Fee' Savior...
in My Backyard?

As President-elect Barack Obama moves quickly to solidify his transition team as well as his Cabinet, many names are starting to be floated here and there by just about all media outlets.

Of course, to us in the GA community, one appointment stands above the others, that being Obama's Transportation Secretary. That important administration position would be responsible for the FAA, which we all agree needs to be taken in a new direction under new leadership at the highest levels.

Associated Press is one source reporting that when the axe falls January 20th on Inauguration Day, most if not all of Bush's cronies will be shown the door. According to widely-circulated reports, DOT Secretary Mary Peters will be out, and one of the following will be in:

Jane Garvey,
former head of Federal Aviation Administration

Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn.,
chairman of House Transportation Committee

Mortimer Downey,
former deputy transportation secretary

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.,
member of the House Transportation Committee

Not knowing much about Mortimer Downey and James Oberstar, I will withhold comment on their chances. But I swear the thought of Jane Garvey again being in charge of FAA makes me cringe...that is NOT change we can believe in.

My money is on Rep. DeFazio, who hails from Springfield...just across the Willamette River from Eugene. I know he is a friend of GA, and back when I was reporting on the user fee fight, his office told me this:

"If the administration's goal is to reduce congestion by forcing GA from the air, its proposal to increase the fuel tax on general aviation by 366% just might do the trick,” said Congressman DeFazio. “I believe the House Aviation subcommittee will reject the administration's proposal."

In that post I thanked DeFazio and the House Aviation subcommittee for rejecting Bush's user fee scheme. Rep. DeFazio and I have a common friend in aviation, and without naming names, that source confirmed that DeFazio is dead set against user fees, and knows the damage they would do to the fragile financial balance of our GA world.

Will President Obama pick Rep. DeFazio to sit on his Cabinet? Nobody but the White House incoming inner circle can answer that question. But know this: If he does pick Rep. DeFazio, it will be super groovy to have an important Cabinet member strolling around at Saturday Market in downtown Eugene shopping for organic romaine while also having the President's brother-in-law coaching the Oregon State Beavers just 30 minutes from my pad in Corvallis.

In honor of Veteran's Day...

Just thought I'd salute those Army, Navy, Marine and Coast Guard flyers who have served our country with an image I shot at Oshkosh in 2003, showing off my three favorite colors:

Will This Be a
Terrafugia Christmas?

Word out of the just-concluded AOPA Expo in San Jose is that Terrafugia's super groovy roadable airplane, the Transition, may fly before Santa does next month.

AOPA Pilot Editor Thomas B. Haines – while still reserving the right to question whether it's a car or an airplane – said this:

"Terrafugia CEO/CTO Carl Dietrich reported at AOPA Expo that the first Transition roadable airplane might fly in early December. If it doesn’t fly by mid-December, the first flight will likely be postponed until early 2009. The vehicle (Is it a car or an airplane?) has been driving around on its own power for several weeks and more recently is undergoing taxi tests and tests to validate the flight control effectiveness. Static load testing is complete."

One point that Haines brought out in his AOPA piece was the subject of crash testing, always a costly endeavor and one that has had many people watching this project wondering just what Team Terrafugia would do to satisfy the brass at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Again, from AOPA:

"As for road safety, Dietrich reported that the Transition will meet automotive standards in most ways, but because of the cost of crash testing, the company won’t be able to prove all of the safety features for some time. The Department of Transportation allows for low-volume automotive manufacturers to amortize the cost of such testing over a number of years if the manufacturer can show that the vehicle is built in a safe way and that a plan to prove its design through crash testing is in place. Terrafugia is applying for such an exemption."

There have always been major hurdles this project has had to face on the road to production, and as promised, the design team has brilliantly hit every important milepost. They said they would design a folding wing...they did. They said they would get the Transition onto the road for tests...it is there now. So who among us can doubt these now-seasoned MIT engineers when they say their vehicle will fly very soon?

As one person who has sat down and spoken with the Terrafugia crew face-to-face, I have absolutely no doubts this vehicle will make it to production - that is not the true test of this project.

No, the true test of the Transition will be whether it – along with the entire GA community – can withstand the daily floggings we've been receiving from the financial meltdown. It would be simply great to have Bernanke and Poulson lavish a few hundred BILLION on our industry much as they have with the many pathetically-managed loser companies that are bleeding red ink from their greedy open wounds.

A Federal bailout for GA, of course, will never happen. So we as aviators must fix our mess ourselves by doing one thing: Buy stuff. The new airplane you buy today might be the one ship that keeps an assembly line open and a factory floor filled with bodies. If enough of us buy new avionics or LSAs, upstarts get to stay in business. We need to come together as one body and make sure we don't turn off the spigot to the flow of money that keeps aviation companies alive.

Go ahead, do your part...buy something today. A great place to start is here.

Anyone Else Besides
Me See A Pattern Here?

People who know me personally are aware that I gave up drinking in 1996 to clear my head in pursuit of my private pilot's license. Not that I really had a problem with booze, but I just didn't think I could drink AND fly with the same brain. In September of that year, I earned that ticket, one of my life's greatest accomplishments.

But in today's society, not drinking can almost be as taboo as drinking too much. I can't tell you how nervous some drinkers act around me when they see I choose not to join them. It's as if I am passing judgement, which I am not. It is simply a health choice, nothing more.

I have zero problem with others consuming alcohol, within limits. If you drink so much say at a University of Oregon home football game that you scream obscenity-filled tirades at a family wearing the opposing team's colors, chances are you have a drinking problem, dude. And if you drive a car while drunk, you should have your license taken away for life and be forced to take the bus for all eternity.

That all said, a cocktail or two in a social environment, or a glass of Pinot in front of a roaring fire or with a wonderful meal is certainly acceptable in my world. But if you're Joe Six Pack and need six tall boy Budweisers to mow the damned lawn, face reality, you are an alcoholic. Best to just admit it and start attending the meetings.

I bring all this up because of the rash of air rage news found across the Internets this week. Seems they all have one thing in common:

"An airline crew used duct tape to keep a passenger in her seat because they say she became unruly, fighting flight attendants and grabbing other passengers, forcing the flight to land in North Carolina. The woman allegedly struck a flight attendant on the buttocks with the back of her hand during Saturday's flight and also stood and fell onto the head of a blind passenger and later started pulling the person's hair. Ankle cuffs kept slipping off the woman, so the flight crew and two passengers were forced to use duct tape to keep her in her seat.It was reported that other passengers saw the woman having drinks in an airport bar before boarding, and she bought another drink on the plane."

Weird, but certainly not an anomaly:

"A passenger on an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Charlotte recently started drinking rum and cokes and quickly became disruptive. After flight attendants refused to top him up for a fourth time, the drunk passenger allegedly took his cup of ice and started throwing cubes around the cabin. He then got up, started swearing and tussled with a flight attendant until someone describes as "very large in size" subdued him."

But this isn't just a problem on this side of the pond either, says this site:

"Data from the United Kingdom's Civil Aviation Authority showed that air rage incidents among British passengers have tripled over the past five years. Pilots blamed the rise on plane delays which led bored and angry passengers to take up drinking as a way to pass the time, leading to inflight fights. From January to March, the CAA recorded 601 air rage incidents, up by 32 percent from 458 cases logged for the first quarter of 2007. For the same period in 2003, only 214 such incidents were on record."

The toxic mix of alcohol and poor airline service is dangerous ground, and as any reader of this blog knows, some trips via the scheduled carriers these days would drive Mother Teresa to down straight shots of tequila. And now as the A380 and other mammoth airliners feature lavish first-class lounges, it seems the airlines are just ASKING for unruly, drunk passengers.

The solution is quite simple, I believe. Until the lines can get back to providing the kind of stellar service that passengers on a Pan Am Clipper back in the late 30's enjoyed, maybe they ought to think about cutting off the pissed off passengers and stop serving booze altogether. Of course I'm not pushing that idea, but as long as we allow frustrated flyers to get jacked up before and after boarding, the industry will just have to live with drunken clowns in flight.

Guess that's why the airlines are now carrying duct tape.

Aviation Only Spoken
in This PFZ

I had the biggest traffic day ever on World of Flying today, with the bulk of that coming in from NATCA members around the country. They know about my full support for their quest to get a fair deal from the FAA, and as the post below this one says, I hope they get it under President Obama.

But frankly, I have had enough politics for quite a while. My regular readers know I tilt pretty far to the left, and that I have developed a serious disdain for George Bush and Dick Cheney. The many often volatile posts I have written railing on them and his administration had a purpose, to rid our country's government of their types for the foreseeable future.

Well, after this election, I have no reason really to continue bashing George Bush and his cronies. Not that my readers have a problem with that – in fact of the 301 unique visitors that came in to WoF as of 817P left coast time, I received one...ONE...email that claimed I was diss'ing the Current Occupant of the White House. So I am elated tonight to never have to type anyone's name from BushCo ever again.

As of today, I declare Av8rdan's World of Flying a Politics Free Zone, or PFZ. I will be keeping all posts squarely centered on aviation topics, the stuff that we all live with every day. But as is the case of any PFZ, I reserve the right to post on politics, but only on an emergency basis. Such "emergencies" would be:

If any, ANY clown in Washington decides to start charging user fees to guys flying Piper Cherokee 235s, I will reserve the right to verbally throw them under a bus. If President Obama's administration does anything to screw with the GA 100LL fuel supply, I will wring their freakin' necks in this space. But if anyone in Obama's administration does something right, like give the NATCA crew a decent labor deal, or kill user fees forever, I reserve the right to thank them publicly.

Other then just those kinds of serious GA issues, you can read WoF with confidence knowing it is truly a PFZ. If you have a great aviation story or news tip, or have a cool web site or product to tell me about, please click the yellow "Send Me Feedback" button at right and email me...or just click here...I read each and every one.

Especially stories and news tips about kids and flying. Now that I am officially a DooDah (my assigned Grandpa name), and my favorite little girl pilot is a month old, I am really focused on anything related to children and flying machines. So please send me anything in that arena and unless I have a backlog, I will seriously consider posting on it.

[FAA] Change We
Can Believe In

From the way Barack Obama ran the table on Tuesday, I obviously am not the only one that is thrilled with the outcome of this presidential election. His team ran a flawless, strategically beautiful campaign, and if he surrounds himself with the same kind of tech-savvy forward thinkers in the White House, I have every reason to believe he will help this country out of the quagmire left by eight years of Bush's form of good ol' [white] boy, screw-the-middle-class governance.

The election was more then a rebuke of the GOP, it was the end of their hate-filled, do nothing brand of fear mongering politics. Only the remaining few of W's base that thought Palin was as qualified as she was "hot" will remain robots to Rush Limbaugh and Faux News. The rest of the country has moved on in a new direction, away from smears, away from bigotry and away from the tattered remains of the Republican party.

President Obama – man that feels good to type – said last night, he knows we all have work to do cleaning up Bushie's mess:

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there."

One organization that is over the moon about the new President-elect is the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA). Just a few hours after the networks started calling this thing for Obama, NATCA was busy writing this:

"The nation’s air traffic controllers and aviation safety professionals, represented by NATCA, are joining today in the exuberant celebration of the historic election of Barack Obama and extend their congratulations to him on this special day of restored hope for the United States of America."

NATCA President Patrick Forrey released the following statement as the organization now looks forward to the bright future of the National Airspace System:

“President-elect Obama supported NATCA from the beginning in our long struggle for fair collective bargaining rights with the Federal Aviation Administration. We were proud to support him and join with working men and women across the country to win this campaign. We’re in a new horizon. Our nation’s aviation system will be restored to provide the traveling public the highest level of safety and efficiency to give our economy a stimulus through renewed focus on our infrastructure."

When you start thinking about the future of aviation in this country, and the wrong path it was heading down under Bushie, it is refreshing to hear NATCA saying things like this:

“For more than two years now our workforce has been one in crisis, attacked and disrespected by an anti-union administration. But change is coming. It is imminent. And NATCA will be there to welcome, embrace and escort it as we work together for a safer, more efficient system. No longer will the employees at the FAA be treated like the enemy. There will be a culture change. We greatly look forward to working together with President-elect Obama’s administration to modernize our infrastructure while enhancing safety in a spirit of mutual respect and collaboration."

The reason NATCA has good reason to believe Obama will deliver on his promises is that he has been on their side for a while. This is from an Obama press release on his support of NATCA:

"I want to thank the highly skilled and dedicated men and women who ensure that Americans are safe when they're on board an aircraft and I am grateful for their support," said Senator Obama. "As President, NATCA will have a partner in the White House. Together, we can fix our nation's aviation system and tackle the challenges we face – from the damaging effect flight delays have on our lives and our economy to recent safety concerns. I applaud the work that NATCA does day in and day out to strengthen our aviation system and keep Americans safe, and I look forward to working with its members going forward."

So onward, forward we all go, into this big unknown. We all know the world is overjoyed with President Obama, they are literally dancing in the streets from London to Egypt to Kenya to Hel-freakin'-sinki. So if he does nothing else, he has at least shown the planet that maybe it was Bush the world really REALLY hated, and not all the rest of us other Americans.

Yes, the new President-elect has a very big and very full plate. Fixing the labor mess between NATCA and FAA is but one tiny issue that faces him. But one thing we know is this: At least now we have a chance at getting the ship righted at FAA. Under Bushie, it was as if the administration had been loaded onto the Titanic and Capt'n Brownie was trying to steer straight into another iceberg. With Obama, things will get better at FAA – they have to – because there really isn't anywhere else to go but up.

Cat, Out of Bag, Literally.

Many in my generation remember those old Esso ads telling us to "Put a Tiger in Your Tank" as a way to boost performance with their premium fuel. Not sure but I believe Esso morphed in Exxon, the oily pundits in the crowd can correct me on that if they wish.

And of course we all remember "Snakes on a Plane," a film I didn't waste money to see. Not a big fan of snakes here, thank you very much. So what do these two 'graphs have in common? This, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

"Careful, this luggage could bite. Zoo Atlanta officials said a cheetah that got loose in a Delta Air Lines cargo hold was resting comfortably Friday, a day after surprising a ground crew worker who went to unload bags at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The 1-year-old female cat, en route with another female cheetah from Wild Safari in Winston, Ore., to the Memphis Zoo, apparently got out of its crate during transport, said Delta spokesman Kent Landers."

See, they should have known those OREGON Cheetahs wouldn't want to be sent off to Memphis. Those cats probably had it made down in Winston – not that far south of my home base – where carloads of touristas drive by daily gawking at "wildlife" at Wild Safari. I guess the whole scene got pretty weird the minute a Delta baggage handler popped the cargo hold door of the -57 and got the surprise of her life, according to ANN:

"A Delta Air Lines baggage handler received an unwelcome surprise Thursday when she opened an airliner's cargo door and discovered a cheetah had escaped its cage and was loose in the cargo hold. The condition of the startled baggage handler is not known, but the AP reports good news for passengers of the flight: The cheetah did not damage any of their luggage."

So once the cat was out of the bag (could...not...resist...pun), it took some swift thinking by Delta crews to figure out what to do next. Again, from the AJC:

Delta brought the jet into an enclosed hangar and called Zoo Atlanta “to make sure all the precautions were in place to take care of the employees and the cheetahs,” Landers said. Dr. Sam Rivera, a Zoo Atlanta veterinarian, shot the 90-pound kitty in the shoulder with a tranquilizer gun.

At last report, say numerous sources, the cats were seen to be "very relaxed" and were "eating" something, hopefully not a gate agent.

SOFIA is the Latest
Creation from NASA

The Honeymoon might be over for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Project, launched in 1990 and now in its 18th year of operation. And while Hubble has allowed the engineers at NASA to peer into galaxies over 12 billion light years away, this being NASA, I guess good is never really good enough.

So what do you do when you need to raise the bar on something as profound and ingenious as Hubble? Well if you're NASA, you let the crew at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base start throwing ideas around and see what develops. Some engineers suggest cramming a really expensive and extremely heavy telescope into the guts of a 747SP so NASA can fly around up really high while pointing the sucker out into deep space.

The other engineers at first snort and chuckle, until they think about it for a minute and decide that the idea might not be all that far fetched. One thing leads to another, someone "raises it up the flagpole" at a Board meeting, and the top brass salutes it. Next thing you know, you have this, from NASA's SOFIA site:

NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, lifted off from Edwards Air Force Base at mid-day Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007 on the first in a series of flight tests intended to verify the flight performance of the highly modified Boeing 747SP to its design capability. NASA is developing SOFIA as a world-class airborne observatory that will complement the Hubble, Spitzer, Herschel and James Webb space telescopes and major Earth-based telescopes. SOFIA features a German-built 100-inch (2.5 meter) diameter far-infrared telescope weighing 20 tons mounted in the rear fuselage of a highly modified Boeing 747SP aircraft.

Why, you might ask, would it be better to look into deep space from way WAY up in the flight levels? Good question, and here is the answer:

As the world's largest airborne astronomical observatory, SOFIA will provide three times better image quality and vastly increased observational sensitivity than the Kuiper Airborne Observatory. From a base at NASA Dryden, SOFIA mission operations will be conducted over virtually the entire globe. Missions will be flown at altitudes of 39,000 to 45,000 feet, above 99 percent of the water vapor in the lower atmosphere that restrict the capabilities of ground-based observatories over most of the infrared and sub-millimeter spectral range.

But wait...you might think that engineers with the crazy telescope-in-an-airplane idea were geniuses. But in fact, they was only channeling those who came before them:

SOFIA will continue the legacy of prominent planetary scientist Dr. Gerard Kuiper, who began airborne astronomy in 1966 with a 12-inch telescope aimed out a window of a converted Convair 990 jetliner. His work led to the development of NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory, a modified C-141 aircraft incorporating a 36-inch reflecting telescope that flew from 1974 to 1995. During its 21-year lifetime, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory focused on solar system, galactic and extra-galactic astronomy, and discovered the rings of Uranus, a ring of dust around the center of the Milky Way, luminous infrared galaxies, complex organic molecules in space and water in comets.

Really cool stuff, this is. What can't a 747 do? They fight fires, right, so why not become a deep space telescope platform. And while I sometimes struggle to keep my telephoto lens pointed at a moving subject, I expect the engineers on this project have really been up late at night figuring out how to make such a sensitive instrument perform flawlessly...from inside the belly of a fast-moving airliner.

Neat trick if then can make it all work...and I have ever reason to believe they can, because, well, they're NASA. They just don't make many mistakes.

If You Want to Vote GOP, Consider This First

Here we are on the eve of the most important election in most of our lifetimes. Tuesday – in what is already a truly historic election – we will elect a new president and a new wave of Senators and Representatives to guide this country out of the quagmire that has been left by eight years of George Bush and his band of pathetic, ethically-bankrupt GOP henchmen.

Many of us have already voted early, with record numbers waiting for hours for the very first opportunity to cast their ballot. I believe the multitudes of early voters is a clear indication that We the People are completely tired of the screwing we have endured under BushCo.

As you head into the voting booth next week, go ahead, vote for McSame/Palin if you have the courage. Today, that ticket was endorsed by Dick Cheney, which ought to cement the notion that the last thing McCain will bring to Washington is change. Cheney and his cronies at Halliburton and Exxon love things just the way they are, so if they thought for a minute McCain was serious about being all "Mavericky" then Cheney would have remained in his undisclosed location for the remainder of this election.

Let's take a quick look at just what damage Bushie's version of compassionate conservatism has brought to the aviation sector in America and around the globe. As the supreme Lame Duck prepares to slither out the back door or The White House, we find:

From a "think tank" called Forecast International: In a new report to be issued in December, Forecast International has projected that production of the Eclipse 500 will soon end. The Connecticut-based market research firm believes that the aircraft’s manufacturer, Eclipse Aviation, will not attract new investment necessary to allow it to continue making the aircraft beyond the first quarter of 2009.

And this from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Cirrus Aircraft laid off 105 people Tuesday — 75 at its Duluth plant, 30 at its plant in Grand Forks, N.D. The latest cuts amount to about 9 percent of Cirrus' workforce. In early September, Cirrus laid off about 7 percent of its workforce — 71 employees in Duluth and 29 in Grand Forks.

And this from across the pond: Grob Aerospace GmbH was forced to enter the preliminary insolvency process on August 18th, 2008. To ensure the August to October salary payments for all employees in Mattsies, Grob Aerospace GmbH will now have to file for insolvency this week. From November 3rd, 2008, most employees will be released from work. A core team will remain in Mattsies to keep business activities running on a minimum scale.

Now go ahead and freak out if you are screaming that the financial mess this planet is in cannot possibly be the fault of Bush, but I retain the right to ignore you. See, had Bushie and his hand-picked Brownie clones not been more interested in generating record profits for their pals, they might have heard the many warnings that their "look the other way" policies that "regulated" our financial giants was nearing an implosion. But when you and your buddies need a Freightliner to haul the cash to your offshore bank account, why change things? Besides, in just a few HOURS it will be Barack Obama's problem to clean up.

So go ahead, be one of the fools that votes GOP this time around. That is if you think this country and the world economy can withstand at least four more years of this grab-ass, back door version of Good Ol' Boy governance.