The Smilin’Jack |
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| EAA Chapter 866 monthly newsletter June 2002 |
Chapter Meeting Weds. May 1st at 7:30 PM at Dunn Airpark Bldg. 10
N. Williams Ave, Titusville
Success! Even though there was only one Pietenpol to fly in, our first annual Pietenpol fly-in would have to be judged a success. Off to a slow start and a few minor shortfalls when the event started, we finally got our ducks in a row and things went very well! Many pancake customers stood in line patiently while we cooked threee pancakes at a tinme (1 serving) Many others just decided not ot wait and ate the biscuits and sausage gravy and the pastry stuff. Between 15 and 20 planes flew in to our event. The very first fly-in was ever faithful Jackie Johnson in his Subaru powered Zodiac. Shortly later, Clark Eckman from Vero Beach in his recently completed beautiful Fisher Celebrity showed. The youth were instructed to park the Piets. On one section of the field and all others in another section of the field. When Clark showed in his Fisher, I heard one of the CAP Cadets say "here comes a Pietenpol!" It looked enough like a Piet. So I didn't say anything when they Parked it in the Piet area. After the Fsher arrived we started getting a lot of other planes. Ever faithful and probably the most well known Pietenpol in Florida and maybe even the world showed with Allen Wise at the controls. As usual, it was the most admired plane on the field. Amazing, isn't it? The Grasso bros. arrived in a pair of biplanes, one a Skybolt with a round engine and the other a big Grumman Ag-Cat. A gaggle of RVs showed up in formation flew past to the North and then turned South over the field and mid field broke to the East to enter a downwind for 15. These were out of Melbourne. There were regular Cessnas, Pipers, a Champ, and what I believe was a Trinidad. Many arrived by ground from as far away as Lake City and Lakeland. These were mostly Pietenpol builders with their projects still in progress. The three Piets. Under construction by Chapter 866 members got a lot of attention. As did Jim Garrison's example of one of the 5 Nieuport projects under way at Dunn.
Special mention is in order for the people who worked so diligently at our event. Larry and Marilyn Reynolds took the responsibility of cooking lunch on the grills and moving the cooked food to the table set up to serve. Georgia Bullington, (Wayne wife) and their two daughters, Joy Bailey and Teresa Muzzone who are professional food workers got the serving table and food in order and made sure that part worked smoothly. Neale collected money and sold shirts and served as our front PR man. Wayne, Jim Webb, and Steve Miller for the most part were with the Pietenpol projects answering questions from other Piet. Builders. A couple of times I heard Steve fire up the Subaru ingine in his. This is weird seeing an aircraft engine run with no prop on it.
Recognition should go out to Jim Garrison too for the loan of his big tent and showing us how to set it up.
The gang worked hard ahuling our stuff from bldg. 10 down to the site and setting it all up and then tearing it all down and putting the stuff away when it was over. Not going to try to name chapter member names of those who did all of this work because all I'd have to do is leave one name out and somebody could feel bad. The big problem is really with my memory and I can't remember everyone I saw helping. Mickey McConnell, the airport authority grounds maintenance man did an outstanding job getting the grounds in perfect order. I believe he made a special effort to do this too!
Dave was kind enough to address our chapter a couple of months ago and has sent us the following response to questions asked of him at that time.
Sorry for the delay in this response, I got a little it behind the eight ball.
1. We have talked with Titusville Police Department and they indicated that they would increase police patrols around the airport.
2. We will continue to consider the on-site police option as a possible alternative.
3. The cost for a wash rack due to environmental restrictions is costly and not something the Authority is prepare to take on at this time.
4. ATC hand-offs occurring at 2,000 ft rather than 2,500 ft is the result of a letter agreement between Daytona and our tower as well as the Melbourne tower.
5. The apron work should be completed by your May 18th fly-in.
I hope this information is useful. If you have any questions, please contact me.
David N. Edwards, Jr., A.A.E.
Executive Director
Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority
355 Golden Knights Blvd.
Titusville, Florida 32780
Phone: 321-267-8780
E-mail: dedwards@flairport.com
Chapter member Ray Thomas is one of our most accomplished pilots and he strives to remain very current as an instructor and pilot so when he read an article about spins from the publication "Aviation Safety" this month, he found it interesting enough to bring it out and share with the rest of us. Ray told me that the article made no mention of the infamous base to final spin that has trapped many pilots and gave me the article to read. I'd like to print the whole article in this newsletter but I'd have to type it in and it is several pages long and it'd take me two weeks to get that copied in. So, I perused the thing and have come to some conclusions. Pat Veillette, the author of this worked with statistics to reach (his/her?) conclusions.
Between the years of 1992 and 2000, there were 11,302 accidents and of these 394 were spin related and 82% of these were fatal. There were more than 100 these pilots involved in these spin accidents who had extensive spin training! In fact 110 had spin training 49 had aerobatic ratings. Of the 394 spin accidents by pilot ratings here's how it went… 183 Private pilots, 140 Commercial pilots, 46 ATPs, 15 students, 61 CFI's, 23 Military, 9 Airline pilots, and 4 designated examiners. Spin training and the ability to recover from spins is often an academic argument this author states and the reason for this is that most spins occur at an altitude too low to recover from. So what phase of flight are these fatal spins starting from? 36% were from maneuvering flight and 84 of the accidents occurred when the pilot was performing what investigators sometimes called "ostentatious displays at low altitude…… Hey, we all know this as "Buzzing! You know, dive on the unsuspecting earthlings and pull up hard and then throw in a turn! Maybe the FAA should look into a logbook endorsement for Buzzing! You know, your instructor shows you how to do it by explaining and demonstrating the safest way to Buzz. He says, "get down to buzzing altitude far enough away from the subject of the buzz that you can level off, (you know they won't hear you coming) and then fly over at this buzz altitude and maintain this altitude while you fly away so they can't get your number." The logbook endorsement might go like this: Low level buzz job demonstration of local nudist colony, demonstrated proper buzz technique as a spin avoidance training.
The next most hazardous flight regime is the take off. 32.7% of the stall spin accidents occurred during the takeoff. Again, nearly half of these accidents occurred when the pilot was showing off and using pitch and bank in excess of any safety margin.
Since these two accidents type account for 1/3 of all the spin crashes, showing off really demonstrates bad judgment while close to the ground. Almost all of these accidents occurred within 300 feet of the ground. The best spin pilots in the world couldn't recover at these low altitudes!
Takeoff spins involving engine failures happened in about 1/3 of the takeoff spin crashes. Surprisingly a very few of these was from the impossible turn back to the runway! More takeoff spins involved high density altitudes, heavy weight, and adverse winds, all of which led to the pilots failure to maintain sufficient flying airspeed.
Approximately 18% of spin accidents happened during the landing phase. One or two were the classic base to final scenarios. About half the landing spins were during emergency landings.
Go arounds are next and account for about 7.1% of these and almost all resulted in a delayed decision to go around followed by poor pitch and power control and sometimes forgetting to re set the flaps.
The rest occurred at cruise and these were due primarily icing and the aircraft was coming out of the sky regardless of any pilot input to recover from a spin.
OK here's the deal…… Don't buzz or show off by making high pitch and bank maneuvers. Don't exceed acceptable parameters in glide path, runway alignment, sink rate, or airspeed during a landing approach. If you do, make a decision sooner rather than later to go around. Don't ignore density al;titude, heavy weights, and wind conditions. Do manage pitch, power, and flaps in a smooth methodical manner. Do remember maintaining aircraft control is always the most important task. Enough said!
A pilot was flying in his C-205 with his two sons, ages 4 and 6, over
the mountains of Tennessee, bucking a strong headwind. He looked in the
back and noticed the boys looking down in the valley below, where a
train was also heading northwest, and they were barely gaining on it.
Nothing was said.
Four months later, the younger son, Brian, was called to kindergarten
roundup, where the officious school psychologist was conducting
evaluations. When Brian's turn came, the shrink said: "Brian, what
color is an apple?" Brian replied: "Are you talking about the inside or
the outside of the apple?" Perplexed, the shrink went on: "Well, Brian,
which goes faster, a train or a plane?" Straight-faced, Brian replied:
"Well, Doctor, it kind of depends on the headwinds."
Made a couple of local hops just to remove the rust (from me), Then on the 11th Jerry Russell and I took 52L up to Melrose landing to their semi annual airport bash. I gave Jerry the task of spotting the airfield. Ask him about it. We had a good time eating and looking at the many airplanes there. Must have been 75 or so. Some neat stuff too! We headed back around noon, I guess and other than some thermals (bumps) it was a good ride both ways. That is until we landed at Dunn. We made a nice approach to runway 15 and of course the built in X winds there were kind of quartering from the right. At the last couple of seconds it took a little power to keep her tracking down the runway and when we asked for the power she kindly responded as usual and we made a nice smooth landing short enough to exit at the first taxiway. As soon as the wheels cleared the runway, the prop stopped! We couldn't re-start no matter what we tried. An embarrassing end to a nice flight is to have to push your old faithful friendly airplane to the hangar. Jerry, Ray Thomas, and I huffed and puffed and pushed til we got her in the barn. We removed the top cowl and had a high level discussion amongst ourselves about what's wrong. Mark Barnett (good mechanic) said "lets pull the plugs and see if there's any spark." We did and after a while sure enough we turned the prop thru fast enough that we got sparks. It sparked better as the engine cooled down. We all know that all you need is some atomized gasoline in the cylinder and something to light it and she'll run. So we pulled her out onto the taxiway and hit the starter and she lit off right away. So what's your diagnosis, Dr.?? Oh yeah, forgot to say that it was always hard to start when it was hot. OK, OK that enough opinions. My ignition leads have looked rough for a long time but the mags always show drops within tolerances during run ups. So we think we've got an ignition problem. OK! In fact, the more people I talked to about this the more people told me about old magneto coils and hot Florida weather. One magneto specialist asked if it was hard to start when it is hot. Well yeah but vapor lock was always on my mind. Cause if you let it cool for ½ hr she'll fire right upagain. Enough is enough! I started getting prices on the new Slick ignition kits that include two new mags., ignition harness, and 12 count em, 12 new spark plugs. Max's magneto shop up in Daytona was close enough to the best price that I gave him the order and had em shipped in to his shop. When the came in, I pulled the old ones and swapped em in. Cores were worth $300.00. Gene Mannos, the shop owner swapped the gears from my old mags to the new ones. He told me that he could guarantee that the old coils were the ones that there was an AD out on that were never changed. We didn't look. At this point it didn't matter. I hauled the new stuff back to Dunn with my wallet a little lighter. Not being a mechanic I prepared the job by installing the plugs and running the harness. Now the job was ready for the magneto magicians, Mark Barnett and Bill Mitchell. I was impressed! Two inclinometers taped on the prop and mathematical calculations going on! Mark is a meticulous guy and Bill is the extra insurance to supervise the job. When the job was finished and we hit the starter, a couple of blades went by and away she went! Did the runup and got about 75 rpm drop on both and just a few differential. Yahoo, lets try er out. Paperwork out of the way and away we went. Mark flew us down to Merritt Island where we looked at an airplane that he's interested in. We looked at the plane, a C172 and Mark flew us back. Of course 52L is now 25 kts faster than it was ( at least it feels that way) and she starts good even when she's hot! I got to fly Larry Reynold's Warrior a few minutes around the patch one day. Nice Warrior!
Overheard at El Paso (Texas) International Airport over the weekend:
Tower: Cessna 1234, you are cleared to land, number two behind a Piper on final for 26 Right.
Cessna 1234: Any chance for a long landing on 26 Left?
Tower: Not until May. It is closed for construction.
Cessna 1234: Hmm ... We didn't want to wait that long