Lee Devlin's Weblog

Because I'm a pilot, I often get asked to speculate on the causes of plane crashes where there's not enough evidence to know for sure what really happened. Such is the case with Steve Fossett where I get periodic requests to give my opinion about what happened in his mysterious disappearance in a borrowed airplane. Just for those who haven't been paying attention, Steve Fossett was a wealthy adventurer who set numerous aviation records including traveling around the world solo in a balloon as well as flying an airplane solo without refueling around the world. He took off on a sightseeing flight from Barron Hilton's Ranch in Nevada last September and was never seen again. Just a few weeks ago, more than a year after he disappeared, some of his personal effects were found by a hiker about 80 miles from the ranch where he had departed. Shortly after that, the crash site was discovered in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

A recent Avweb newsletter linked a set of pictures on Flickr posted by one of the SAR team members who helped clean up Steve Fossett's crash site. There are about 10 pictures in the middle that show parts of the plane that start right around the one with the newspaper clipping image.

What I found interesting was the caption on the photo 43 that mentioned that the plane impacted the ground climbing at about a 10 degree angle on a slope that was at a 20 degree angle leading me to think that Fossett may have had a problem with the airplane and so he tried to land by attempting to climb uphill and get the aircraft to stall right around the time it contacted the ground. A 'roll out', if you want to call it that, on a 20 degree slope uphill would be pretty short. However, there were a lot of rocks and trees and so it appears that the plane broke apart on landing and then was consumed by fire. To make that maneuver work, you would have to do it 'just right'.

At an EAA chapter meeting last night, someone mentioned that Bob Hoover performed this maneuver where he knew he was going to crash and so he did it going up hill and he and his passengers walked away from it. Here's that story, excerpted from my (autographed :-) copy of Bob Hoover's autobiographical book "Forever Flying".

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One of the more frightening experiences I've had occurred after an air show in 1989 at San Diego. It was held at Brown Field, which is located just a few miles from the Mexican border.

I had completed my performances in the P-51 and the Shrike Commander. I told the line boy who drove the fuel truck to service the Shrike quickly so I could leave right after the show was completed.

The young man asked how much fuel I needed. I told him I wanted precisely sixty gallons. I added, "That's hundred octane."

After my performance, I went to the manager's office, where he received a phone call from the same young man. The manager told me the boy wanted to know if 100 LL (low lead) was all right for my airplane. I told him it was. He relayed the message.

Normally I like to be present when the airplane is being serviced, but I was held up when I came out of the airport manager's office. By the time I got to the airplane, the truck was pulling away. I said, "Fueling done?" The boy replied, "Yes, sir. It was sixty gallons precisely."

When I taxied out, probably at least a hundred airplanes were waiting for takeoff. But as soon as I called in, the tower said, "Mr. Hoover, we want you to taxi to the head of the line."

I did not like to leapfrog ahead of other pilots. However, since time was scarce that day for me and my two passengers, I accepted the tower's kind offer.

The takeoff was smooth. Everything was normal and checked out perfectly. All of a sudden, at about three hundred feet, I realized I didn't have any power in the Shrike. I started losing airspeed.

I dumped the nose, but I couldn't understand what was happening. Everything checked out. The manifold pressure was right where it was supposed to be. The rpm were at the right setting. The fuel pressure and oil pressure were in good shape. Even though the gauges indicated that nothing was wrong, I knew something was. I started looking for a place to land. That would not be easy.

Brown Field is located on a plateau. To the north where I was headed, there were deep ravines. I could try to recover and head back to the airport, but I knew I wouldn't make it.

My two passengers tried to remain calm, but they were obviously frightened. Both thought we were going to crash and die. "Mr. Hoover," they asked more than once, "are we going to make it?" I assured them we would.

As I have mentioned before, each time potential disaster strikes, I rely on my experience of anticipating trouble to help me out. I had flown the P-51 cross-country for many years. I'd often considered what might happen if I had to put it down over the Rockies.

Recalling those thoughts, I dumped the nose of the Shrike. I kept my best glide speed until I reached the very end of the ravine. Landing in the bottom of the canyon meant no survival. Our only chance was to pull up and land on the side of the ravine.

As my airspeed bled off, I dropped the landing gear and flaps. I wanted to be at a minimum forward speed on impact. The landing gear would cushion the impact along with the tires and struts before the impact hit us square on.

I was down in a V-shaped ravine. A thousand feet wide at the top, it narrowed down to nothing at the bottom. I went right to the bottom to maintain the best glide speed. I then pulled the plane up and landed into the side of the ravine. I didn't travel very far at all before I hit a rock pile that caved in the nose. The instrument panel was torn out of its mounts and dropped down on my shins.

Neither of my passengers was hurt, but there was one fatality. We ran over a rattlesnake with the belly of the airplane when the gear tore out from under it.

We sat there awaiting rescue. I considered what had caused the lack of power. Only one thing was possible: the plane had been serviced with jet fuel instead of gasoline.

To confirm my suspicions, I went around to the side of the airplane and opened the drain valve. I leaned down and took a whiff. Sure enough, it was jet fuel.
My mind flashed at once to the young man I had asked to service the airplane. He must have known by then what had happened as I had informed the tower of the emergency.

Within minutes, rescue helicopters were on the scene. My passengers and I climbed up the ravine and were transported back to Brown Field.

After making sure the Shrike would be protected from theft, I asked, "Where is the line boy who serviced the plane?"

Everyone seemed reluctant to tell me, apparently afraid that I wanted to chew him out or be unkind to him. Finally, someone said, "He's outside."

An article in the Fullerton (Calif.) News-Tribune the next day quoted me regarding what happened next:

When I got back to the field, I saw the boy standing by the fence with tears in his eyes.

I went over and put my arm around him and said, "There isn't a man alive who hasn't made a mistake. But I'm positive you'll never make this mistake again. That's why I want to make sure that you're the only one to refuel my plane tomorrow. I won't let anyone else on the field touch it."

Just as I said, I had the boy refuel my P-51 for the final two days of the air show. Needless to say, there were no further incidents.
Shortly after that, I received a wonderful letter from a doctor in Palos Verdes named William Snow.

He wrote:
I wanted you to know that I was quite touched by the apparent casual way in which you treated your unfortunate incident. Thank goodness it was just that and nothing more! However, what really impressed me was your genuine concern for the young man who had serviced your plane.

It is rare to find a person who has just experienced such a close brush with death and yet feels such compassion for his fellow man. God surely must be your copilot!

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I could have just cut off that excerpt at the part where Hoover crashed, but I was so impressed by how he treated the line boy, that I'm sure you all wanted to hear how it ended.

Another interesting photo is of the Google Earth map below that shows where the shirt and ID were found. They appear to be about .7 miles from the wreckage. I can only assume that those items may have gotten carried away by animals.




The NTSB report has very few details so far, but I'm sure that it will accumulate more details about the crash as they start to examine the wreckage.

We may never know what happened, but it's obvious a fire ensued after the crash. Had the fire started while he was flying? If so, was he attempting to get the airplane on the ground as quickly as possible using the famed Hoover maneuver? We may never know, but I am eager to see what the NTSB has to say about it after they spend some time examining the wreckage.

Labels: aviation

A few weeks ago, my friend and helper on the HP Media Vault Yahoo Group, Chris, was asking me some questions about taking his first trip to the EAA convention in Oshkosh this summer. Chris found me through my Media Vault website and it turns out that we share a lot of interests. He was the first Media Vault owner to compile the Linux kernel which impressed me because he had no prior Linux experience and was only 14 years old at the time. He's been a highly valued source of help in providing product support and also runs his own Yahoo Group called Hacking the HP Media Vault. He even runs his own computer repair business. Look him up if you're in the St. Louis area and need some computer help.

One of the interests we share is aviation. The annual EAA convention at Oshkosh, called Airventure, is coming up next week and Chris is planning to attend it with his dad. He was asking some questions a few weeks ago about the byzantine pricing schemes the EAA uses for admission and was having some trouble trying to figure out if his junior membership qualified him for a guest admission pricing for his dad. He wasn't getting anywhere with the folks at the EAA since it was an unusual request. Most junior or student members have at least one parent who is a member of the EAA and so the people who staffed the help desk hadn't encountered a situation like this before. I figured that I would call upon someone who I knew who helped write the Airventure admission software for the EAA, Geoff Peck, to help sort things out.

Geoff Peck and I go way back. Geoff was the originator of Usenet's rec.aviation subgroups back around 1992. Prior to that, there was a single rec.aviation group of which I was an avid reader and occasional contributor. I always admired the way Geoff answered aviation-related questions. His responses were always so well-reasoned and professional. Always calm and authoritative, his writing style was what I aspired to sound like when I wrote.

It had been a few years since I had communicated with Geoff. At one time, he used to organize daily meetings for lunch at Oshkosh, with everyone meeting at the base of the control tower around noon. He'd also help organize a dinner at the Granary, and he'd pass around his laptop for people to use to make a rec.aviation posting entitled "Live from Oshkosh". This was back in the early 90's, which was long before the Internet and Web became mainstream. It was even before Deja News (now Google Groups) began archiving the Usenet postings, so much of this history is lost to time. I would look forward to seeing Geoff each year, manning the booth for his flight planning company, Enflight, patiently talking with customers and eager to help other pilots.

So, I did a quick Google search on his name to get to his personal website and make sure I had a good email address for him. You can imagine my concern when the first hit Google returned was entitled: "Remember Geoff Peck" at his personal website. I read with dismay that he had died in a plane crash in Colorado on his way back from Oshkosh in August, 2006. There has been a wiki set up for people to contribute their memories of Geoff. I read the NTSB report with astonishment that Geoff, a highly skilled 4400-hour ATP-rated flight instructor, would perish in a classic box canyon trap.

Today I was reminded about the incident again when I got an email from the AOPA describing his accident. Here is the text of it:

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"On Aug. 7, 2006, the pilot of a Piper PA-28R-201 Arrow was returning to California after attending EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wis. While attempting to navigate through mountainous terrain northwest of Salida, Colo., the pilot made a wrong turn and flew into a box canyon. Unable to outclimb the terrain, the aircraft struck a stand of pine trees and came to rest inverted. The crash killed the 4,400-hour airline transport pilot and seriously injured his passenger.

Making their way west from Oshkosh, the San Jose-based pilot and his passenger had arrived at Harriet Alexander Field (elevation 7,523 feet msl) in Salida around 8 p.m. on the day before the accident. The following morning, the pilot used his laptop computer to obtain a DUATS weather briefing and file a VFR flight plan to Milford, Utah. The density altitude in Salida that morning was about 9,400 msl, meaning aircraft flying in the area would perform as though they were about 2,000 feet higher than their actual altitude.

According to the airport manager, the pilot asked which route he should take to Utah. The pilot wanted to fly west across Monarch Pass (elevation 11,312 feet msl). The manager suggested that he instead fly south through the lower-elevation Poncha Pass before turning west. The pilot ignored the advice. The airplane took off around 10 a.m. and turned toward Monarch Pass.

The Arrow flew west along U.S. Highway 50, which eventually runs through Monarch Pass toward Utah. Over the town of Maysville, however, the pilot began following County Road 240, which runs northwest through a box canyon for about 10 miles before dead-ending near the canyon’s terminus.

Several witnesses saw a low-wing, single-engine airplane flying northwest up the canyon. One witness, located about two miles from the accident site, went to investigate when the aircraft failed to fly back out. He discovered the wreckage and the lone survivor sitting on a rock nearby. The injured passenger had no memory of the events leading to the accident.

The Arrow crashed at 10:20 a.m. at an elevation of about 12,000 feet msl. Terrain surrounding the accident site quickly rises to between 13,000 and 14,000 feet msl. The aircraft’s throttle was found in the full-forward position. The vertical speed indicator showed a climb rate of 130 fpm. NTSB investigators estimated the Arrow’s groundspeed at the time of the crash was 59 knots.

The board concluded that inadequate preflight planning and preparation caused the accident. Contributing factors were the pilot’s lack of familiarity with the geographical area, his becoming lost and disoriented, his decision to disregard the advice of local pilots, and the high density altitude, which reduced the airplane’s climb performance.

This accident illustrates the unique hazards of mountain flying. Summer temperatures can push the density altitude to heights that approach or exceed a light aircraft’s service ceiling, despite what the altimeter might be reading. Moreover, to a pilot unfamiliar with the terrain, the mouth of one canyon can look very much like another. Is it a mountain pass leading to the relative safety of lowlands beyond—or a dead end? Like the proverbial blind choice between the lady and the tiger, picking the wrong door can end very, very badly."

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I tried to imagine the decision-making that had led up to the accident and I have begun to wonder if Geoff had a weather issue like mountain obscuration and chose to fly northward to see if he could get around it. In doing so, he inadvertently followed a box canyon that he was unable to climb out of. I'm surprised that despite the mention of the AWOS weather conditions at Monarch Pass, weather was never mentioned in the cause of why, instead of flying over Monarch pass, Geoff would fly north and end up in a box canyon. The Monarch Pass AWOS reported at 9:50 a.m.:

Wind, 210 degrees at 14 knots; visibility, less than 1/4 statute mile, light snow; ceiling, 100 feet overcast; temperature, 7 degrees C.; dew point, 6 degrees C.; altimeter, 30.82 in. Hg

The accident investigation seems to indicate that he was lost, believing he was over Monarch Pass when in fact he was 8 miles north. After looking at the AWOS report, I can't help think that Monarch Pass was not safe to fly through with a 100' ceiling and so Geoff headed north looking for a more favorable weather conditions. It surprises me that there was no mention of the mountain obscuration as being a factor in this accident. Also, not taking the advice to use Poncha Pass is understandable too. Poncha Pass doesn't cross the continental divide. So even after crossing Poncha Pass, it would be necessary to immediately turn west and cross the continental divide at an elevation similar to that of Monarch Pass (11,312 feet MSL).

I can attest to the fact that the Rockies can be difficult to climb over, especially in the summer when density altitude becomes a bigger factor, and with any amount of westerly wind, there will likely be down drafts making the climbing more difficult as you fly from east to west. Also, trying to squeeze under some low ceilings to clear a mountain pass can be a particularly bad idea.

We will miss Geoff, but not the final flying lesson he taught us and that is to be careful flying around the Rocky Mountains, especially when attempting to cross over them.

Labels: aviation, oshkosh

A few days after I returned from the Rutan Brothers Birthday Bash in Mojave, Terri and I were scheduled to go out to San Diego for a vacation. I had investigated various methods of travel and decided that the LongEZ was still the most economical and by far the most adventurous mode of travel for us. Terri has accompanied me on several trips in the LongEZ. She has the dubious task of squeezing into its compact back seat beset with our baggage. It's a good thing she's svelte.

We've taken several LongEZ trips together to Illinois, Seattle, and Lake Tahoe. She also accompanied me on many trips in our Piper Colt including a 1500 mile trip from Pennsylvania to Colorado, but that plane had side-by-side seating so it was more comfortable for the passenger. It takes Terri time to get over the discomfort of long distance traveling with the LongEZ and so we don't do it all that often, about once every 2 years. The primary motivation for finishing the Cozy, which has side-by-side seating and much more baggage space, is to make our traveling more comfortable. The seating position and visibility in a canard airplane is much better for the front seaters than for the rear seaters because they have better visibility and can stretch their legs out a lot more. It's also a lot easier to communicate with someone who is seated along side you than it is with someone sitting behind you.

I try to break our trips up into 2 to 3 hour legs so that it doesn't get too uncomfortable. When I fly with a passenger, I need to keep the fuel load light, no more than half full, so as not to put the plane over its gross weight and to help maintain a reasonable climb performance.

The night before we were scheduled to leave, we had a Rush concert at Red Rocks amphitheater in Denver. That meant we wouldn't be getting home until nearly 1:00 a.m. and so we didn't expect to leave until around 9:00 a.m.. The concert had been rescheduled from earlier in the month because of a weather cancellation so there wasn't much we could have done short of missing it, and that wasn't going to happen.

When flying a small airplane, if you can start your traveling at the crack of dawn, you can reduce the amount of time flying in the bumpy air that generally starts around 11:00 a.m. Unfortunately for us, it would have meant getting little or no sleep, so it wasn't an option. We managed to get in the air about 10:00 a.m.

The climb performance of the LongEZ at gross weight with the 108 HP engine is not great and the continental divide is the first and highest part of the Rockies we needed to clear. It's just about 15 minutes travel to the west. I have a policy that I won't fly toward a mountain pass until I can see over and clear it by at least 500 feet well before I arrive at it. Too many pilots get in trouble as they try to out climb a mountain and that's a formula for disaster, especially when you figure that the service ceiling for many small planes is around 14,000' and there are mountain peaks taller than that in the Rockies. It's possible to fly a northern route up around Laramie, WY or down around Albuquerque, NM if the plane can't safely climb over the mountains and that would be my advice for anyone who hasn't done much mountain flying and wants to cross the Rockies. The density altitudes tend to be very high around here because the ground warms the air at these high elevations, so a 12,000' mountain pass may have a density altitude much higher than its elevation, possibly beyond the service ceiling of an aircraft, so you have to be aware of that when crossing the Rocky Mountains in a small airplane. Even taking off from high altitude airports can be a very strange sensation if all of your experience has been close to sea level. Planes tend to accelerate and climb much more slowly when the density altitude reaches 8000' or more which is a very common occurrence in Colorado and other western states with high altitude airports.

We climbed over the Rockies just to the north of Long's Peak and got a nice view of Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. Our first fuel stop was in Grand Junction, near the western border of Colorado and as we approached it, the afternoon thermals were already starting to make the ride bumpy. I knew we were in for a rough ride across Utah and Arizona. We were planning to spend the night in Sedona, AZ because we had heard so much about it and had never been there. We were eager to see if it lived up to its utopian reputation. After fueling up at Grand Junction, we headed off toward Moab, Utah and then turned southward. I was hoping to cross into Arizona near Monument Valley to get a good look at the famous formations that have appeared in many western films. The terrain below us for much of our journey across Utah was a series of canyons and rugged formations made by the Colorado River drainage. It eventually turned into Lake Powell, which was visible off of our right wing. Monument Valley was just to the left as we crossed into Arizona. We were too far above and to the west of the formations to get any good pictures of them, but they all looked very familiar.

As we got further into Arizona, the thunderstorms had begun to appear on the horizon. I called up Flight Watch on 122.0 and asked about weather developing along our route and the weather briefer suggested that we fly directly west to the Grand Canyon Airport and then head south to get around some cells that had formed just east of Flagstaff and Sedona. I decided that it would be good to land at Grand Canyon Airport and take a break while we looked at a weather radar screen, just to make sure we'd be clear getting into Sedona. This allowed us to fly over the Grand Canyon, which was fun to see from the air. Terri and I had visited the Grand Canyon in 1985, just a few weeks after we got back from our honeymoon. I can still recall how hot it was driving across the Painted Desert in a car that had no air conditioning. The Grand Canyon airport had many commercial aircraft on the ramp taking tourists for scenic flights over the canyon. There were at least a dozen twin turbo prop aircraft parked there and they were leaving at a very regular rate. Most of the visitors appeared to be from other countries. After recovering from our bumpy ride, we got back into the plane for our short flight to Sedona. Flying into Sedona is visually stunning. It's surrounded by red rock cliffs and formations of all shapes and sizes and the airport is like the deck of an aircraft carrier sitting up on a butte with 400' dropoffs on all sides. There are many scenic overlooks around the airport and people drive up to it just to take in the 360-degree views of Sedona.

We had reservations at the Sky Ranch Lodge at the airport, and I'm glad I made them a few days in advance, because they were completely booked when we arrived. We also ran into John Lambert and his wife at the terminal. I recognized his name when he introduced himself because he had put together a slide presentation at the Rutan Birthday bash I had attended the previous week. He and his wife were on their way back to Arkansas from Mojave via automobile and had stopped in Sedona for the night. John built a Varieze but had since sold it.

There is a restaurant at the Sedona airport that serves dinner, but we wanted to see some of the town and to do that, we needed to get a ride into town. As we were walking to the hotel, we had been offered a ride into town by a kind stranger who was driving by but we only needed to walk a few hundred yards to the hotel. John Lambert had already offered us a ride to the hotel, but we opted to walk since it was so close. I figured getting a ride into town would be easy. However, the first 2 taxi services we called didn't have any drivers available to take us to a restaurant so we called up a car service operated by 'Gator' who gladly showed up in a unique vehicle with horns on the hood and gave us a ride into town. After an enjoyable meal on the outdoor patio of the El Rincon restaurant along Oak Creek in Tlaquepaque Village, we started walking back to the center of town, figuring our odds of getting a lift back up to the airport might be better there. As we were walking, I turned to ask a woman who was walking behind us if she could direct us to the center of town. She asked where we were going and we said we needed to get back to our hotel at the airport. Without hesitating she said she was going that way and offered us a lift. It was the third ride we had been offered since our arrival.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the airport restaurant and took off around 9:00 a.m. The airport elevation is 4800' and the temperature had gotten high enough that the density altitude was already 8000'. With an uphill departure, we used most of the runway to get airborne and I was grateful that by the time we flew off of this aircraft carrier of an airport, the town was already 400' below us. We had to turn west to avoid the 6000' tall cliffs just north of town.

From Sedona we flew over Prescott, then just south of Lake Havasu, Palm Springs, and on to San Diego. Upon arriving near the busy airspace around San Diego, I attempted to contact SoCal Approach to get clearance into the Class B airspace that covers most of the airports around San Diego. The controller was not responding to me and when he finally did, he told me he'd call me back in 5 minutes. My alternate airport was Ramona, which is just outside the Class-B airspace and so I started circling toward it waiting for my call. After 5 minutes with no response I called him again, and got a response that he'd call me back in another 5 minutes, all while sounding overworked and flustered. This appears to be a stall tactic used by controllers that means, "Don't bother me, I'm busy with more important traffic right now." The airspace over Montgomery Field, which is downtown in San Diego, was very hazy with only about 5 miles of visibility. By contrast, Ramona was clear and right below me, so I decided to land there and see if we could get the rental car delivered there instead. I called the Ramona tower, got a clearance to land and then taxied over to Chuck Hall aviation. After a few minutes on the phone with Enterprise, they agreed to pick us up and drive us to Poway to pick up a car. So that made the decision to park the plane there instead of at Montgomery Field. Even though it would have been more convenient, Montgomery Field often gets fogged in for several hours each morning in June. Ramona is far enough inland and higher in elevation that it's not as susceptible to those conditions so I was fine with parking the airplane there while we visited San Diego.

Our Starwood Four Points hotel was next to Montgomery field and with the GPS, we were able to find our way there without difficulty. I should mention that during this trip I used my HP Travel Companion running Anywhere Map software for aerial navigation and then switched to its built in Tom Tom Navigator in the car. We found this gadget to be invaluable both in the car and plane during the trip. We used it constantly. I was even able to send email with it from a free wireless connection at the hotel.

The hotel is undergoing an extensive remodeling project and so we got a new room with a nice soft bed. It reminded us of our the bed we had at a Sheraton in downtown Chicago this past March. Later we'd find out that this bed is called a 'Heavenly Bed' and we've since put it on our shopping list.

Terri is a beach person, and one of our major goals was to visit the beaches around the San Deigo area, so after a short rest, we headed off for Mission Beach. I've only been to San Deigo once before, in 1984, and had visited Mission Beach so I was a little familiar with it. We strolled along the beach and took in the sights. Later that evening, we ate at a restaurant in 'Old Town San Diego' and did some sightseeing there as well.

Prior to arriving in San Diego, I had emailed my college roommate, Dave Serhan, who has lived in San Diego since graduating from Penn State to tell him that we'd be visiting the area. Whenever we travel in the LongEZ, I generally try to avoid setting up any meetings that would make us feel like we have to be in a particular place at a particular time. When I visit fellow pilots, they tend to understand the unpredictability of private airplane travel and so I don't mind telling a pilot in general terms when I expect to be around, because if I show up late or not at all due to weather or some other reason, he'll understand. Dave was the first person I knew who had his pilot's license and he took me for an airplane ride at Forty Fort, PA airport when we were both teenagers. I still remember it vividly because he let me fly the airplane while he took some aerial pictures. It was my first experience at the controls. I guess in some ways, I have him to blame for my aviation addiction. Dave also spent much of his military career flying F14 fighter jets off of aircraft carriers, so he parlayed his investment in learning to fly small airplanes into flying multimillion dollar jets before retiring from the Navy a few years ago. I had visited Dave during my last trip to San Diego and he gave us a tour of Mirimar Naval Base and we got to see his F14 fighter jet. It was very impressive.

The following day we decided to visit Coronado Island and I gave Dave a call on my way to see if he was around or if he was off traveling for his job. Dave was home when I called and told me he only checks his home email address once a week and so he didn't get my message. He invited us over for dinner and to meet his family. I saw Dave last year at our high school reunion, but hadn't met his wife or daughters.

We spent the afternoon in Coronado Island and even rented a pedal-car called a surrey to travel around the island to get a better feel for the place. We really got a good workout as a result of our 6-mile pedaling adventure. Previously, I had thought that Coronado Island consisted of just a Naval base, but quickly realized that it had a beautiful beach and surrounded by many quaint neighborhoods. We ate lunch there and then went to walk on its beautiful beach that had sparkling golden flakes mixed in with the sand as it washed in on the beach. We also took a quick tour of the The Hotel del Coronado which was built in 1888, and it was quite spectacular. Terri has decided that on our next visit to the area, that's where she'd like to stay.

After a day touring around Coronado Island, we headed up to Dave's house north of the city. Our GPS led us right to his door. We really enjoyed getting to meet Dave's lovely wife, Anita, and his two beautiful daughters, Lindsey and Kristina who are ages 19 and 15 respectively. Dave and I spent some time catching up while Terri and Anita became engaged in lively discussions on topics involving pets, furniture, and clothing. Anita is an expert in furniture and when we described our Starwood hotel bed to her, she immediately knew that it was called a 'Heavenly Bed' and that you can order one for your home. Part of its incredible comfort is a result of the high thread count sheets and blankets.

I learned that Dave has become quite a skilled pool player and is top ranked in his league. He recently built a billiard room and so I played a few games of 8 ball, all while feeling quite outclassed as he demonstrated his considerable skills. In a few hours, it was time for us to leave, but we hope to get back in the area and pay them another visit. I am confident it won't take us another 24 years to get back to San Diego again.

On Sunday we decided to visit the aircraft carrier, the USS Midway, which is docked at a downtown pier. First launched in 1945, the ship has undergone several retrofits and saw action right up until Operation Desert Storm in 1992. It's been a museum/tourist attraction since 2004. An aircraft carrier is an engineering marvel and neither Terri nor I had ever seen one up close. I've seen plenty of TV programs that describe them on the Military Channel, but getting to walk through one is quite an experience. It took us about 3 hours to take the full self-guided tour which included an audio recording of many of the ship's features. I won't go into all the details of what we saw, but there are some pictures linked below and about half of them are of this tour. If you're ever in San Diego, I suggest you spend a few hours to tour this ship.

There were still a few beaches we wanted to check out, and so we spent the rest of the afternoon comparing the beaches in Del Mar and La Jolla with the ones we saw closer to downtown San Diego. I had ventured into La Jolla during my first visit to the San Diego area, up in the hills and was astonished at how beautiful all the homes looked. So Terri and I took a short ride up Hillside Drive to see if my recollection fit what I had remembered. We found a dream home there offered for $12.1M which looked quite nice, but a bit out of our price range.

We liked all of the San Diego beaches, and Coronado was our favorite because it seemed the most accessible and the least crowded.

On Monday morning we headed home, taking off around 8:00 a.m. and heading to Falcon Field in Phoenix as our first stop. I knew that it would be hot in Phoenix, but it also has a low elevation at only 1400' MSL and so the density altitude would be more manageable in the heat of the midday than most other Arizona airports. It was close to 100F when we arrived, and we had enjoyed a pretty smooth and comfortable ride at 9500' prior to our descent. After leaving there, we headed to Albuquerque, so that we could cross the Rockies at a lower altitude and to better avoid the isolated thunderstorms that form just about every summer afternoon in the Rockies. When we landed at Double Eagle airport, there was a jet getting ready to take off. It looked like an Czech L39 Albatros military jet trainer and had a very loud jet engine to match. I was surprised to see the name 'Eclipse' on its tail. Last year Eclipse surprised everyone at Oshkosh with a small single engine 'Concept Jet' now called the model 400 and so I was wondering if they had some new aircraft they'd be showing this year. I searched the Internet for any mention of this new single engine jet and could find nothing. Eventually, I found out that Eclipse uses an L39 for training and as a chase plane, so that was what we saw.

We borrowed the courtesy car from the FBO and drove a few miles north to get something to eat since the restaurant on the field had closed at 2:00 p.m.. I checked weather upon returning and it appeared that if we flew toward Las Vegas, NM and then east of Pueblo, we'd miss some monster thunderstorms forming over the mountains. In a little over 3 hours after our departure from Albuquerque, we were descending through Denver's Class B airspace showing a ground speed of nearly 180 mph. We were getting our first significant tailwinds of the entire trip.

It was a great relief to land back in Greeley after a long day of flying. Terri is a great sport for spending all that time in the back seat with hardly a complaint, although I think it may be another year or two before I can convince her to take a trip like that again in the LongEZ. But.... maybe if I can just get that Cozy finished ...

You can find some photos of this trip here.

Labels: aviation

I flew to California in the LongEZ twice last month. I'll write up the experiences in two separate blog entries.


The first trip was to attend a birthday bash in Mojave, CA for the Rutan brothers. This was a huge event with more than 500 attendees. I had seen pictures of the last birthday celebration event that took place in 2003 and thought that if they were ever to do that again, I must try to get out there. A few weeks ago I received an announcement through one of my canard mailing lists that a big birthday bash was planned for Saturday, June 21st, 2008 and mentioned it to Terri. "You should go!", she told me, so that I could participate in this historic event. That's all the encouragement it took. Soon I was planning the trip and looking forward to flying there.

I had some other things that I wanted to do and see in California, including a business meeting with a potential client at Van Nuys airport just north of LA. I also wanted to visit my friends Marc and Deanie Zeitlin, who live in Tehachapi a few miles from Mojave. Marc and I met in 1996 after he had started the Cozy mailing list which has been going on every since. He and Deanie have been out to visit us a few times and we usually see each other at Oshkosh each year. Marc moved from Massachusetts to California when he went to work for Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites about 3 years ago and has been busy working on the SpaceShip 2 design. He and Deanie just completed building their dream home in Tehachapi and so I was eager to visit and see it firsthand, after reading his report on his website about the design and construction of the house. Seeing it up close and staying with them for the weekend gave me a whole new appreciation for this beautiful home with its fabulous view and many unique features.


I launched on the morning of June 20th about 7:45 a.m.. My friends Curt and Gail were also flying their Varieze to the gathering and planning on stopping in Grand Junction, CO for their first fuel stop after climbing over the Rocky Mountains. I figured I'd be able to raise them on the air-to-air frequency and hopefully catch up to them in St. George, Utah for lunch. Shortly after takeoff, I heard a familiar voice on the frequency of Rob Martinson who flies a Varieze out of Denver. He was also planning to stop in St. Geroge for lunch so it was comforting to have some company that I could chat with on the radio enroute. Rob just won the prize for the most efficient airplane at a new contest called FuelVenture where he managed to get 66 mpg from his Varieze while flying along at 137 mph.

I cleared the Continental Divide just to the south of Long's Peak at an altitude of 12,500' and stayed at that altitude for the majority of the trip across Colorado and Utah. Rob took a more circuitous route so he could fly over Lake Powell in southern Utah. By the time we got near Moab, Utah I found Curt on the frequency as he and Gail had just taken off from Grand Junction after their first fuel stop. I should mention here that the LongEZ carries twice the fuel load of a Varieze and could easily make it to California with no fuel stops, but I generally only fill the tanks half way to give me better climb performance and because I like to land and take a break every 3 to 4 hours. I've only rarely taken advantage of the full 52 gallon fuel capacity which gives the LongEZ a 1150 mile range.

The scenery across Colorado and Utah was beautiful and I've linked a few photos below. We touched down in St. George, Utah around lunch time and Rob, Curt, Gail and I all walked over to a restaurant at the north end of the field for lunch. There were already 4 other canard planes on the ramp that had arrived about an hour before we did and they were fueling up and getting ready to leave. Everyone at the airport was curious how so many canards had landed at the same time. I generally run into at least one person at each fuel stop who has never seen a canard aircraft, despite the fact that more than 2000 of them are flying today. So having 7 come in at once to a remote location like St. George is a very rare sight.

After eating lunch and refueling, we headed out again. Rob and Curt were going to go directly to Mojave, but I was heading to Van Nuys. However, we needed to take the same route to get around the restricted airspace near Edwards Air Force base in Mojave. We flew directly over the top of the Las Vegas airspace at 10,500' which gave us spectacular views of the entire city. Nevada is exceptionally dry with hardly any vegetation from one end of it to the other, as is western California where it borders on Nevada. It's a very stark landscape to see from the air. At 10,500', the air was cool and a little bumpy. The flight went quickly and in a few hours I bid my goodbyes to Rob and Curt and headed into the busy airspace over southern California. There was a heat wave in progress and when I landed at Van Nuys and the temperature was 43C on the ramp (109F) and it felt unbelievably hot. Even a stiff breeze didn't seem to help, except to make me feel very parched and in need of some lemonade. I met with my client at the Airtel Plaza Hotel restaurant and discussed a project over dinner. After we finished up, I picked up a little more fuel and headed up north to Tehachapi. In just over 30 minutes from the time I took off, I was threading my way through the mountain passes that had hundreds of wind turbines of all sizes. The wind through Tehachapi pass is some the most consistent and steady wind you'll find in the U.S.. Marc tells me that it's rare to see the wind turbines standing still.

I had a very enjoyable evening with my friends Marc and Deanie and caught up with what had been happening with them since the last time we met. The new house exceeded all of my high expectations of it. It has numerous features that would fit right in at Architectural Digest. It has gorgeous views in every direction and I stitched together a view from the deck that seemed to go on forever which you can see below. Perched up on a slope, it has a consistent breeze that cools down at night so that the air conditioning was hardly needed despite the heat wave going on all around us in southern California.




The next day we headed down to Mojave by car since it was faster and more convenient to cover the 20 miles than it would be to use our airplanes. The ramp at Mojave was hot and so I was happy to be in an air conditioned car upon our arrival, despite not having my LongEZ parked among the dozens of other canard aircraft lined up on the ramp. The celebration went on for 4 hours with lots of stories being told by the guests of honor, Burt and Dick Rutan, who turned 65 and 70, respectively, this summer. There was a lot of good food and camaraderie amongst the loyal following of canard builders and fliers and I got to see a lot of folks who I run into each summer at Oshkosh. One lucky guy and 4 of his friends won a 30-minute ride in a Rutan-designed Beech Starship, which was parked on the ramp. I also got to go in it and take a look around its interior which was very spacious.

At the party, we were joined by Bill and Marilyn Seibold, who had flown their Cozy from Bisbee, AZ that morning. They also stayed with the Zeitlin's that evening.

It's always fun to be immersed in a group of fellow aviation enthusiasts. I never grow tired of talking about airplanes and the adventures we have in them. After a nice dinner, I went to sleep, knowing that I would to wake up early the next day without rousing the other guests or my hosts so that I could have the maximum amount of smooth morning air for flying across the desert. Marc let me borrow his car for the drive to the airport and so I left the house around 6:20 a.m.. By 6:50 a.m., I was in the air and on my way to my first fuel stop in St. George, Utah. I had hoped to get fuel at the self-serve pump at Tehachapi, but it was out of service. After doing some calculations, I figured I'd still be able to get to St. George with a reasonable reserve.

Upon landing at St. George, I ran into Curt and Gail again, who had just finished fueling their Varieze. We took off at about the same time and flew together for a while. They only had about 2.5 hours of fuel, so they'd need to stop before getting home to Longmont, CO, but we weren't sure of our route because we knew that there would be thunderstorms over the Rockies by the time we reached them, which may have required us to divert north or south of a direct route. They decided to stop in Grand Junction and I pressed on figuring I'd land at an alternate airport if the thunderstorms grew too dense to fly around. Fortunately, the thunderstorm coverage was only about 50%, leaving a lot of room to fly around them, although it was a bit bumpy as a result of the convective activity and virga nearby. I have some pictures linked below and the last 4 photos show the various thunderstorms in the area as I was crossing the Rocky Mountains. After looking at the radar picture on the ground at Grand Junction, Curt and Gail decided to spend the night there. I couldn't blame them since the storms are not predictable and what looks passable one hour may grow in intensity the next hour. Had I seen the radar picture, it might have been enough to convince me to wait for the clear and smooth morning air to pass over the Rockies.

It was a great trip. I've never had the LongEZ over that part of the country and found the experience to be a wonderful way to take in lots of beautiful scenery in a very short time. The entire flight time to and from California was just over 6 hours each way. If I had driven the route instead, it would have been more than 1100 miles and would have taken 16 hours of driving each way and used twice as much fuel. It was a good warm up for the follow-up trip that I took a few days later to San Diego, CA with Terri. I'll write up that trip later.

If you'd like to see some photos I took on the trip, you can find them here. I removed a lot of my pictures from Birthday Bash because Mike Massee published a much nicer set of photos which you can check out here.

Update 2008-07-09: Chris, who was flying as part of the 4-canard flight out of Colorado Springs, posted some more great pictures including air-to-air shots on the way to and from the Birthday Bash.

Labels: aviation

There's probably no topic more important to those of us who fly General Aviation aircraft than the continued availability of aviation fuel. For those of you who may not be familiar with aviation, the fuel used in aircraft is made the old fashioned way because it uses tetraethyl lead to increase the octane rating. High octane fuel is necessary because about 30% of the aviation fleet use high compression engines, and those aircraft use 70% of the aviation fuel. The engine I'll be putting in my Cozy MKIV will require this fuel. Leaded fuel has been outlawed by the EPA for all other uses, but aviation fuel got an exemption for a period of 30 years. That period ends in 2010, which is coming up soon.

I agonized over the decision over whether to use a high or low compression engine in the Cozy but I figured that with all the aircraft fleet that need 100LL, there would be some fuel developed that would come to the rescue, possibly an ethanol based biofuel. Of course, with an experimental aircraft, I could always put lower compression pistons in the engine and use autogas, if I had to, but that's not ideal. So I was very excited to hear about this new fuel that is being developed that has so many advantages that it's hard to believe it's true.

I emailed the owner of the company and he responded. That's always a good sign. Not only that, he graciously referred me to his associates on the project if I had any more questions about it. I'm really hoping that these guys are successful. Here's the report I got from Avweb:

New GA Fuel Promises Better Range, Lower Cost

"Not only can our fuel seamlessly replace the aviation industry's standard petroleum fuel [100LL], it can outperform it," says John Rusek, a professor at Purdue University and co-founder of Swift Enterprises. The company recently unveiled a new general aviation fuel that it says will be less expensive, more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendlier than any on the market. Unlike other alternative fuels, Rusek said, SwiftFuel is made of synthetic hydrocarbons that are derived from biomass, and it can provide an effective range greater than 100LL, while costing about half as much to produce. "Our fuel should not be confused with first-generation biofuels like E-85 [85 percent ethanol], which don't compete well right now with petroleum," Rusek said. Patented technology can produce the 1.8 million gallons per day of fuel used by GA in the U.S. by using just 5 percent of the existing biofuel plant infrastructure, the company said.

The synthetic fuel is 15 to 20 percent more fuel-efficient, has no sulfur emissions, requires no stabilizers, has a 30-degree lower freezing point than 100LL, introduces no new carbon emissions, and is lead-free, Rusek said. In addition, he said, the components of the fuel can be formulated into a replacement for jet/turbine fuels. The company now is working with the FAA to evaluate the fuel.

Labels: aviation, energy, ethanol

For the first time in history, Boeing demonstrated a manned, hydrogen fuel cell powered aircraft. I had written about a Sonex electric aircraft I saw at Oshkosh last year, albeit as a static display model that used 250 lbs of batteries. It would only operate for about 18 minutes at full power, or just a small fraction of the time you'd expect from a gasoline powered aircraft.

In this case, the flight was at a speed of 55 kts, at an altitude of 3300 feet for 20 minutes in a converted motor glider, so the range/capacity is likely to be on par with the Sonex. Boeing does not anticipate that hydrogen fuel cells will be able to provide primary power for a commercial aircraft.

I think that the outcome of these recent demonstrations show that the future of air travel will continue to depend on liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Short of a miraculous discovery, when fossil fuels are exhausted hydrocarbon fuels will need to come from biomass feedstocks. After a rash of articles inspired by a recent Science article critical of biofuels, even Time Magazine has jumped on the dogpile, parroting the statements that biofuels are a scam and an environmentally damaging approach to generating energy.

In the future, the sun and wind will likely provide enough energy to heat our homes and provide us with electricity. Those energy sources may even power a commuters vehicle a few dozen miles a day. But to move something like a ship, a truck, a train, or a plane, it appears we'll be dependent on liquid hydrocarbon fuels for some time. This might not be the case if the energy density of battery technology would approach that of hydrocarbon fuels per kg., but thus far it's still several orders of magnitude away. Even with the thermal to mechanical energy inefficiency of the internal combustion engine which averages around 30%, energy density is still the primary advantage of conventional fuels over batteries.

Perhaps the best chance to please everyone would be to use wind and solar power to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, combine it with hydrogen, and synthesize clean burning hydrocarbon fuels. I suspect that no sooner than a method became practical, there'd be another dogpile forming, no doubt protecting existing interests by decrying the evils of robbing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Renewable energy certainly has a lot of controversy and drama associated with it. You wouldn't expect that from a field that should be primarily technical and scientific, but when anything has the potential to affect economics, politics, and the environment, technical arguments seem to hold little sway.

Labels: aviation, biomass, energy

I was out last week flying in the LongEZ and I decided to check the progress of the large wind farms that are under construction in Northern Colorado. One of these wind farms called Cedar Creek is right at the Wyoming-Nebraska-Colorado border and the other is farther east in Colorado, just south of Sidney, Nebraska. It is called the Peetz Table Wind farm. Between them, they have 500 wind turbines with a peak generating capacity of 700MW.

One of the things that impresses me most about wind farms is how fast they get built. These two facilities were just in the discussion stages 2 years ago. Early this spring they were just setting up the towers and now all towers are nearly complete and generating power. When I was growing up in Pennsylvania, nuclear power projects like the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station took a very long time to build, with an average build time of 12 years. By contrast these wind projects are going up in a year or less, and the amount of land available on which to build them is substantial so I would expect to see many more going up over the next few decades. Out west we also don't have nearly the number of people objecting to them with NIBMY excuses. I suppose when your closest neighbors include 220 Minuteman silos, you have a different perspective on what constitutes a "good neighbor." Some people can be very picky about what they allow in their backyards, as evidenced by Cape Wind.

My previous blog posting on Colorado wind power included an aerial shot of Colorado's Ponnequin wind farm near Cheyenne, and I now have some new photos of the new wind farms I mentioned, each which has more than 200 wind turbines.

There are also some photos of the new Vestas Blades factory which is under construction in Windsor. It will produce about 1200 40-meter wind turbine blades per year when it is completed next spring. They are even talking about expanding it to increase the rate of production by 50% within a year of commencing operation.

Labels: aviation, energy, wind

I generally take pictures at Oshkosh to remind me of what I've seen. As a result, they may not be of interest to everyone and so I don't go through the exercise of posting them on my website, save for a few images I may use in my blog postings. Last year I was the subject of a photo archive by Anthony Garcia and his photography has given me an appreciation of how a true artist wields a camera at an airshow vs. someone just snapping pictures. He does a great job at capturing action scenes and colors so I invite you to take a look at his wonderful Oshkosh 2007 photo archive.

Anothony's other photo archives:
Sun N Fun 2007
Oshkosh 2006

Labels: aviation, oshkosh

Here's a short posting to show some of the progress on the Cozy. The Cozy was derived from the LongEZ and uses identical construction techniques. The main difference is that it is a 4-place airplane whereas the LongEZ is a 2-place.



This is the jig in which the main spar is built. The main spar is a box beam that is very strong. The wings attach to the spar and it is a major structural component of the airframe.



The part that makes up the shape of the spar is just foam, but it's covered with many layers of fiberglass and epoxy which give it tremendous strength.



The wings are made of foam, fiberglass and epoxy. The shape of the wing is cut using airfoil templates with a 'hot wire' saw to give it an airfoil shape. This is probably the most fun part of building a composite airplane. In just a few minutes you go from a block of foam to something that looks like it belongs on an airplane.



The wing needs to be assembled in a jig to maintain proper dimensions. The jig also helps to set the sweep and twist of the airfoil.



The spar and wings attached to the rest of the fuselage.

Labels: aviation

A few months ago I bought an engine for the Cozy that is a 200 HP version of the Lycoming IO-360. This engine produces about 20 HP more the standard 180 HP O-360 engine. In order to get to 200 HP, it has higher compression ratio and that requires the use of 100 octane fuel. Today, 100 octane fuel is available at most U.S. airports, but I worried about its continued availability in the future. Aviation fuel, or 100LL as it's called, uses tetraethyl lead to increase the octane rating of fuel. Adding lead to auto fuel to enhance its octane used to be quite common but fell out of favor when it was found to distribute the lead, now recognized as a poison, into the atmosphere. Just about all countries in the world have discontinued the use of lead as an octane enhancer for auto fuel.

I began to wonder what I might use for fuel in the future should leaded aviation fuel be outlawed, and my attention turned toward alcohol, ethyl alcohol, to be specific. It's also called ethanol or grain alcohol and is used as an octane enhancer. It also makes gasoline burn more cleanly. Ethanol is the form of alcohol that you find in alcoholic drinks. Because of this, it is subject to liquor taxes. The only way to avoid paying liquor taxes is to add poison to it. If fuel was drinkable and available for a few dollars per gallon, it's assumed that no one would bother buying beer, wine, or spirits. With that logic, it's hard to understand why anyone would buy an 18-year-old bottle of scotch for $75 when Everclear can be had for $10. :-) This poisoning is called 'denaturing' and as long as it makes the alcohol undrinkable, just about anything can be used.

It's not unusual for auto fuel in the U.S. to contain 10% alcohol since most cars can run on fuel with this concentration of alcohol. It's beginning to become available at 85% concentrations, called E85, but that requires that the fuel system is compatible with that level of alcohol concentration. Only a small number of vehicles manufactured over the past 10 years or so claim compatibilty with E85 and you can look up whether yours is compatible by searching for "E85 compatibility" on the Internet. Each year, more vehicles are introduced that will run on E85 or regular gasoline and these are referred to as 'flexible-fuel' vehicles. There's even an effort underway to make an aviation grade ethanol called AGE-85.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s when aviation fuel cost about twice as much per gallon as auto fuel, several efforts to qualify auto fuel in aircraft were conducted. They were targeted at older aircraft with low compression engines which were able to run on an aviation fuel called 80LL whose octane rating was close to regular unleaded auto gas. Quite a few aircraft were eligible to burn auto fuel, provided they purchased a placard called an 'STC' for about $200. Some airports actually began carrying it as a less expensive alternative to 100LL after 80LL went out of production. However, the tests to get approval for the STC were conducted before alcohol became a common additive to auto fuel. After it became commonplace to use alcohol as an additive, it was found that some aircraft had problems with it attacking the rubber seal materials in the fuel system. The entities that granted the STC, namely Peterson Aviation and the EAA, do not allow the use of auto fuel that contains alcohol. The octane enhancer of choice back in the 1980's was MTBE, methyl teriary butyl ether, and it had no issues with fuel system compatibility. But it has subsequently fallen out of favor because it has environmental and health concerns. It has largely been replaced by ethanol. Adding ethanol has now become so common with auto fuel, and the difference in price between auto fuel and avgas is not as significant as it was in the 1980s so the popularity of using auto fuel in aircraft is beginning to wane.

The IO-360 engine I mentioned earlier would not be a candidate for an auto fuel STC anyway because the octane rating of auto fuel available in the U.S. runs about 85-91 octane which is much too low and would damage an aircraft engine designed to run on 100 octane fuel. To get a fuel that had an octane rating around 100 would require using some additive. Otherwise, engine knock, also known as auto-ignition, would create multiple flame fronts that collide in the engine's cylinders, increasing pressures and temperatures that over stress and damage the engine.

It would appear that a solution to my concern would be to make the plane compatible with ethanol because it has an octane rating of 105. I recall seeing a group of experimental aircraft showing up at Oshkosh for many years now that all run on ethanol. They are known as the Vanguard Squadron and are shown in the image above. I tracked down one of their members, Dick Pearson, and he generously allowed me to pick his brain regarding his experience of using ethanol in an airplane. Dick has nearly 14 years of experience of using ethanol in 2 separate experimental aircraft that he flies as well as that of the other 4 aircraft in the Vanguard Squadron. He is quite a proponent of the fuel. He told me that there is a lot of controversy and misinformation floating around regarding ethanol. For example, there is a persistent belief that the energy that it takes to grow corn and convert it into ethanol exceeds the energy content of the resulting ethanol, giving it a negative energy balance. This is not true. The reason that this misconception persists is because natural gas is often used in the conversion process to provide heat for making alcohol from corn. But there's a good reason for using natural gas for heat. The value of natural gas per BTU is much lower than it is for ethanol per BTU. It's about a third the cost per BTU as ethanol. So even though one could use a portion of the ethanol to provide heat in the process that makes it, it's not as economical as using natural gas for heat. It's this business of using a fuel other than ethanol to help make ethanol that leads people to believe that it has a negative energy balance. It actually has a positive energy balance widely accepted to be around 1.34, or getting a third more energy out of the process than is put into it. That takes into consideration the energy required to fertilize, plant, irrigate, spray, harvest, transport, and convert the corn into alcohol.

Energy balance is only part of the equation, since when you talk about energy you must consider more factors that the energy balance or cost/BTU. It's also important to consider factors such as energy density, convenience, and fuel compatibility. This is particularly true when it comes to transportation fuels since there is high value to having a fuel that is compatible the existing engines. If energy balance and cost/BTU were the only measures of concern, we might see coal-fueled vehicles since its cost per BTU is about 10% of what we pay for gasoline.

In Brazil where they make alcohol from sugar cane, they are able to burn the waste parts of the sugar cane called bagasse to generate the heat needed for the process. As a result, they get 10 times more energy from the sugar cane than is required to grow and convert the sugar cane to ethanol. This is similar to the energy balance expected with cellulosic alcohol.

A number of companies are working on deriving ethanol from cellulosic plants instead of corn kernels. These materials include waste products such as wood chips, corn and wheat stalks, and other organic waste materials that have limited use today. In most cases, you have to pay someone to dispose of them. The processes that convert cellulose to alcohol are currently not mature enough to be cost competitive with making ethanol from higher-value materials like corn. However, there are a number of companies working to improve the processes and if they become competitive, it could reduce the cost of ethanol to be lower than gasoline in a direct fuel mileage comparison, and when that occurs, it has the potential to change everything.

Some cellulose-to-alcohol processes are based on enzymes that can unlock the sugars in cellulose and convert it into alcohol using conventional fermentation. There is an ethanol plant in Canada already doing this as well as a few more under construction. There is a also a non-fermentation process developed by Range Fuels of Broomfield, Colorado that can convert cellulosic materials to alcohol. Range Fuels is building a cellulose-to-ethanol plant in Georgia that will be capable of producing 100 million gallons of ethanol a year from wood chips. I think this will substantially change the perception that ethanol is nothing but a farm subsidy, which is the view a lot of people have about it today. Can you imagine a lawn service where they reduce the fee if you let them take away the lawn clippings, leaves, and other yard waste? I think that would be a huge step in the direction of energy independence because recovering energy from local waste materials would reduce an energy supply chain that currently extends around the globe to a short loop within your own neighborhood. It would also reduce CO2 emissions because plants generally release their carbon back into the atmosphere in a relatively short time, and so instead of digging up carbon that has been buried for millions of years, we'd be able to use carbon that was essentially on its way back into the atmosphere anyway.

There are a lot of competing and complementary renewable energy technologies under development including wind, solar, and biomass. I don't think that there will be a single winner in the race to replace our convenient yet exhaustible fossil fuels. I feel a lot more optimistic about it after doing my own investigation of alternatives like ethanol instead of listening to pundits arguing for or against it, because it doesn't take long for people to get emotional about their point of view when it comes to renewable energy. I guess that's because mixing politics with science can be such a volatile combination. Now if only that volatility could be converted into usable energy our future would be secure!

Labels: aviation, energy, ethanol

A few guys made a 15 minute DVD for Aircraft Spruce, the company that now owns the plans for the Cozy MKIV. I saw the DVD at Oshkosh and it's amazingly well made with lots of great aerial footage of the Cozy in flight. There is a short (~2.5 minute) downloadable trailer on the Cozy MKIV website of the DVD. You can also see it on YouTube:

Labels: aviation

My friend Chris, who is 14 years old, asked me how to get started in aviation. When I was a kid, it was possible to go to any small airport and hang out there and chat with pilots and instructors who often spend their spare time at the FBO. I didn't know that when I was young or I would have spent time there learning about airplanes and flying. FBO stands for 'fixed base operator', and it's a business that takes care of things at the airport like selling fuel, managing a flight school, and may also have an aircraft repair operation. On larger airports, there may be several FBOs. On really small grass airstrips, you may not find any.

Over the years, security at airports has become a concern, especially if it handles any commercial traffic so they've been fenced in. However, it's still possible to get through the fence, usually by walking through the FBO's office. Then you can walk out on the ramp looking at the airplanes if it doesn't look like you're up to something. You might get chased off, but if you tell them you love airplanes and just want to look around, they usually won't bother you. Sometimes you can wander over to the hangars and chat with the pilots who like to tinker with airplanes in their spare time. This is especially true with pilots who build and fly experimental airplanes.

I've heard stories about kids who paid for flying lessons by exchanging labor washing airplanes for aircraft rental and instructor time, although I've never personally met anyone who has done that. The cost of an hour's plane rental can be as much as $100/hour or more and along with an instructor at another $40/hour, it would take a lot of minimum wage labor to work one's way through pilot training. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it would take a lot of hours. When I was training nearly 20 years ago, the costs were about half of what they are today. Something that doubles in 20 years is increasing at an annual rate of around 3.5%, which the average rate of inflation. So the real cost of learning to fly hasn't changed in all that time. I think you'll find that to be the case for as far back as you look when it comes to flying expenses.

If I were to give advice to someone today to minimize the cost of learning to fly, the first thing I'd recommend is to be born into a family that owns an airplane and have a dad who is an enthusiastic flight instructor. Failing that, I'd say to look for a local EAA chapter and find out when they have their meetings and attend one of them to meet some pilots. EAA people are the friendliest in aviation because they typically fly for the love of it and most of them are not rich. If they were rich, they'd probably just buy regular airplanes and not spend so much of their lives working on building them to save money. You can find EAA chapters in every major city in the U.S.

EAA also sponsors a program called Young Eagles where members take kids ages 8-17 up for an introductory ride in an airplane for free. So far, more than 1.2 million Young Eagles have been flown. Each EAA chapter generally sponsors several Young Eagles rallies a year. You can also request a flight on the Young Eagles website.

The minimum number of hours of training required to get a private pilot's license in the U.S. is 40 hours, half of which must be flown with an instructor. There is no age limit on how early you may start your flight training and logging hours. However, you must be 16 to solo and 17 to receive your pilot certificate.

If you do the calculations using the numbers I mentioned previously, namely $100/hour for aircraft rental and $40/hour for an instructor, you will come up with a minimum cost of around ($100*40) + ($40*20) = $4800 if you were able to finish in the minimum time. There will be other incidental costs too, like the study materials and the check ride fee. However, most people take more than 40 hours to be ready for a check ride. The last time I checked, the average was around 72 hours, so if you multiply $4800 by 72/40, you get about $8600. That's a lot of money any way you look at it.

A way to reduce this would be to get a Sport Pilot certificate, which was a topic of a previous blog post. That training requires only half the hours that a private pilot certificate requires. The only issue with the Sport Pilot is that it's so new that Light Sport Aircraft and instructors who understand the rules may be hard to find. Still, it would be worth looking into it.

To get a pilot certificate, you need to pass a written test and a practical (i.e., a flying) test. The preparation for the written test is often called 'ground school', because you can learn the material and pass it without every stepping into an airplane. I learned this material at the same time I was learning to fly. In retrospect, I think it would have been more efficient to have done the ground school first and passed the written test before I started flight training. You can do this for next to nothing because all the questions are available on the Internet and there are good study guides available from Jeppesen and Gleim to help you understand the material and test questions. You might also consider a ground school class at a local community college or flight school, especially if you think you'd benefit by having the material presented to you by an instructor.

You can also stop at a flight school and ask for some old sectional maps. The ability to read and understand aviation maps is an important part of learning to fly. So studying aviation maps is time well spent. These maps expire every 6 months. The expired maps are usually available for free from an FBO or a pilot friend.

I'd also spend as much time as possible using a flight simulator such as Microsoft's Flight Simulator. You don't need the latest and greatest version. The older versions are available for next to nothing and are very good for training yourself to be familiar with handling an airplane. A flight simulator will familiarize you with the instruments such as the Tachometer, Airspeed Indicator, Altimeter, Directional Gyro, and Artificial Horizon. Being able to hold an altitude and heading are critical piloting skills and with a simulator, it will teach you to scan the instruments to make sure you're not climbing or descending or veering off course. It will also teach you how to properly trim an airplane which is absolutely vital for holding a heading and altitude.

Having the written test under your belt and a lot of time in a flight simulator could help to prepare you for the practical test in the minimum time, potentially saving thousands of dollars.

That's probably enough for one posting. I will follow up with some other advice and tips on flight training in another posting...

Labels: aviation

In looking over my posting of 14 years ago mentioned in my previous blog entry, I don't find my predictions too embarrassing because most of the things that I cited turned out to have had an important effect on general aviation. The arrival of GPS and moving maps has ushered in the biggest change to the way people fly airplanes, greatly enhancing their convenience and safety. The glass panels I alluded to have also had a major impact on the design of aircraft instrument panels, although with the advent of color LCD displays, we don't call them CRTs anymore. The DUAT (direct user access terminal) has been enhanced with web-based weather, complete with graphical weather maps. Flight planning is something you do by keying in a few waypoints to your GPS/moving map.

On the other hand, the primary category never took off, with only 2 aircraft ever being approved in that category. However, one can argue its successor, the Light Sport Aircraft initiative, is gaining a lot of traction. The primary category sought to reduce the complexity of getting an aircraft certified by the FAA and would have allowed the owner to perform more of the routine maintenance. Aircraft maintenance is very expensive because shop rates are in typically in excess of $75/hour and you need to have an annual inspection done once per year. The annual inspection typically requires a minimum of 8 hours of labor and could easily escalate into thousands of dollars if something is wrong with the plane or if a new Airworthiness Directive has been issued against the plane or engine.

The Light Sport Aircraft category carries the concept of the primary category further and shares some features with the experimental category when it comes to maintenance. If you take an approved maintenance class, you can get a 'repairman certificate' for the airplane which means you can maintain it yourself, similar to an experimental airplane. But, unlike the experimental category, you don't have to build it yourself, unless you want to, of course. You can purchase it fully assembled and still qualify for the repairman certificate.

Light Sport Aircraft have the following features/restrictions:

Maximum gross takeoff weight of 1320 lbs. (or 1430 pounds for seaplanes)

Maximum stall speed of 51 mph

Maximum speed in level flight at max power of 138 mph.

2-seat maximum

fixed landing gear

single engine

fixed propeller

unpressurized cabin

The last 3 restrictions aren't really necessary because the alternatives wouldn't be practical on an aircraft that met the first 3 restrictions.

There are a number of 'old school' tube and fabric aircraft that meet these conditions such as the venerable Piper Cub and Aeronca Champ. Those are very simple, low and slow flying aircraft, made with 70 year-old technology. There is also a newer category of modern planes designed explicitly for the LSA category with sophisticated technology and modern construction materials. That class of LSA aircraft is the most interesting to me. A few examples include the Evektor SportStar and the Flight Design CTSW. In addition, over the past year, well established, reputable aircraft companies like Cessna, Cirrus, and Van's Aircraft have all introduced new aircraft targeted specifically at the LSA category.

In addition to the LSA aircraft, a new type of pilot certificate has become available called the 'Sport Pilot' that is a match for these new aircraft. It should be much less expensive to get a Sport Pilot certificate because there is less training required. Only 20 hours of training is required vs. 40 hours for a Private Pilot Certificate. I should mention that the minimum hour requirements are not realistic for everyone so you may need to double them before you're ready for a check ride with an examiner.

Here are the privileges/restrictions for the Sport Pilot certificate:

Visual Flight Rules (VFR) only (this means no flying inside or on top of clouds)

Daytime flying only

No flying above 10,000 feet

Can carry one passenger

Solo flight is restricted to the LSA category of aircraft

No flying into controlled airspace unless trained to do so (with a logbook endorsement)

No business/commercial flying

No periodic medical exam required

The last issue is the big one. I'm sure that many pilots would consider restricting their flying to LSA aircraft if they had a medical condition that didn't hamper their piloting abilities, yet jeopardized their ability to get an FAA medical certificate.

There are plenty of ways a pilot can lose his medical certificate. For example, my friend takes a sleep medication that is on a list of 'cannot fly if taking this medication' because it's also used to treat people who have seizures. He's actually safer taking the medication because it makes him feel more rested. Although he has never had any seizures, if he tried to get a medical and reported that he was taking that medication, he would be denied his medical and might never be able to fly again. The Sport Pilot certificate has a kind of catch-22 in that regard. If you've ever been denied an FAA medical certificate, you cannot get a Sport Pilot certificate. However, if you simply let your medical certificate lapse when you have a medical condition that could get you denied, then you can automatically become a Sport Pilot.

Of all the people who start to learn to fly nearly 70% quit, primarily because of the amount of time and money required to get a pilot's certificate. Of those who do finish, many stop flying for cost reasons since owning or renting aircraft can be quite expensive.

So perhaps the GA renaissance has merely been delayed, or at least that is my hope. I will revisit this posting in the future and see if the LSA category for aircraft and the sport pilot certificate has reversed the downward trend in the number of people holding pilot certificates. In the 1980s, we had over 800,000 pilots in the U.S. and now it's just slightly under 600,000. Judging by the age of the average pilot, reversing that trend is going to be quite a challenge but reducing the cost and time to obtain an entry level pilot certificate is a step in the right direction.

Labels: aviation

A few years ago, actually, almost 14 years ago, I wrote a posting in one of the rec.aviation groups on the Internet that talked about a possible renaissance that could occur in general aviation (GA). I've often thought about the posting over the years, wondering if it would be prescient or just an embarrassing prediction that never came to fruition. Thanks to Google's ambitious indexing efforts, I have had the chance to review what I wrote, which can be a humbling experience, especially after time has passed. Rather than summarize it, I thought I'd just lay the posting out in front of God and everyone, because for me it is a combination of deja vu and a form of 'lost time'. You can find it yourself if you search on Google groups, but here it is, word for word:

-------------------------------------------------------------
Lee Devlin
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.misc
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1993 03:19:26 GMT
Local: Tues, Sep 28 1993 9:19 pm
Subject: A Renaissance for General Aviation?

Do you think that GA is on the verge of a popularity explosion? It
seems that the industry has been in a tailspin for the past several
decades but I can't help thinking that certain forces are at work which
will allow it to undergo a sort of renaissance.

This could be good or bad, depending on your point of view. Currently,
aviation has many barriers to entry and attracts primarily only the true
enthusiasts. Consequently, I feel like I have a lot in common with
those who like to fly. Perhaps you have also noticed this rapport among
aviators. It seems when I meet other aviators we immediately become
good friends. Opening up aviation to the masses is bound to attract
throngs of uncleansed infidels who have no true appreciation of the
miracle of flight :-). However, I think it would be the lesser of evils
since the current trend indicates that we are on the path to extinction.

There are several reasons I think that general aviation can make a
comeback. The primary reason is that general aviation has been
wallowing in a sort of technological 'dark age' for too long. It has
missed out on nearly every technological advance for the past 20 years.
Now, the world is bursting with new technology that would greatly
improve the convenience, cost, and safety of personal flying.

Some of the advances will make a few of our skills redundant. I wonder
how many of us old timers will still want to see the newly initiated
demonstrate proficiency at hopelessly arcane skills like NDB navigation
or manipulating an E6B in the cockpit. Certainly not I.

Consider that in just the last 4 years here are a few of the significant
changes that have occurred:

GPS

My biggest hope is for the virtual replacement of all navigation
equipment by GPS. A piece of equipment that gives position,
groundspeed, groundtrack, distance, and ETE makes an ADF or even VOR
seem silly by comparison. GPS navigation should knock off a few hours
of training when NDBs and VOR go the way of the AN airways.

DUAT

DUAT cuts your briefing time in half and can give a much more complete
description of the weather that you can carry with you. You won't have
to listen to 'All briefers are busy ....'. I'm not saying briefers can
be done away with, just that DUAT is definitely more convenient. And
don't forget to use GTE's plain language weather translator. It's free.

Computerized Flight Planning Software.

Planning cross countries using paper and pencil ranks right up there
with getting a root canal. Then, if your flight gets canceled for any
reason, you must start from scratch because everything you did is now
worthless. Computerized flight planning software takes the hassle out
of preparing for flights. If you haven't tried the one on GTE's DUAT,
you're missing out on a great product. It automatically interpolates
the winds aloft at your altitude. It knows the correct magnetic
variation and computes all your headings for you in seconds. Don't
worry about database updates, it's already handled for you. It's also
free. Maybe it should be allowed on the FAA exams in place of the E6B
calculator :-).

Moving Maps

These should eventually be integrated into one of the several CRTs that
belong on the instrument panel to replace the instruments, avionics,
gauges, etc. If things continue to proceed the way they have been,
a GA glass cockpit is an inevitability.

The Primary Category

This EAA-inspired program is most promising. It's ironic that the first
'airplane', a Quicksilver 500, to be certified under these rules looks
more like an ultralight. There will be 3 planes certified before the
end of this year and probably a dozen more over the next 2 years.

There are many other advances waiting to be integrated into light aircraft
such as inexpensive autopilots, composite construction, low-cost computers,
digital communications, and collision avoidance to name a few.

Yes, I think the industry is perfectly poised for a major re-birth and
hopefully we'll all be able to experience it firsthand.

--
Lee Devlin | HP Little Falls Site | phone: (302) 633-8697
Piper Colt N4986Z | 2850 Centerville Rd. | email:
"Spirit of rec.aviation"| Wilmington, DE 19808 | dev...@lf.hp.com

-----------------------------------------------------------

As you can see, this was a kinder, gentler Internet where you not only provided your contact details, but your employer's name, mailing address, phone number, etc.. How times have changed! I still am as forthright as I've ever been about my identity on the Internet, and I'm probably in the minority in that regard. At the time I was still flying the Colt with probably 250 hours of flying under my belt. Now that I've had 14 years to contemplate my predictions, I have to wonder if I was wrong, or simply ahead of my time. Maybe a new posting to further explain and elaborate on my predictions would be in order...

Labels: aviation

At Oshkosh this year, one of the things on my 'to do' list was to replace my aviation handheld radio. I had loaned my Vertex Standard (AKA Yaesu) Pilot VXA-210 handheld radio to a friend who subsequently passed away and couldn't imagine a way to broach the subject about getting the radio back.

I have long been a fan of Yaesu ham radios and own quite a few of them. I'm the keeper of the FAQ for the Yaesu FT100 which is one of my most frequently visited web sites. I had my heart set on getting the VXA-700 aviation/ham handheld radio, something I've wanted for a long time because it could serve double duty in the cockpit. It's a lot of fun to talk with fellow hams on the ground when one is flying around overhead. However, I was shocked to find that the ham radio (2-meter) functionality had been removed from the VXA-710, which is the follow-on radio to the VXA-700. Details about why it was removed were sketchy, but a few competitors said that the FCC had intervened and fined Yaesu for some reason. That left the choice up to the VXA300 since I wasn't about to step down to a COMM-only radio when the radio I previously owned had also had a NAV feature.

I don't know why Yaesu has decided to dilute its well-known brand name by using the name 'Vertex Standard' for its aviation and marine radios. They'd have been much better off sticking with something that can leverage their strength in the ham radio market.

Vertex Standard has 4 aviation hand held radios in the line-up that have no consistent naming convention. For example, they have the following aviation products:

Pro V aka VXA-150 (simple COMM-only radio)

Pro VI aka VXA-220 (a COMM-only radio with a bigger display)

Pilot III aka VXA-300 (NAV/COMM)

Spirit aka VXA-710 (NAV/COMM with business radio receive (?!) + FM receive)

The 4 radios look dissimilar enough that they might have been designed by 4 different companies. I don't know what they are thinking at Yaesu, but giving products two different numbering schemes and using another brand name without the name recognition of Yaesu isn't really helping them in any way.

When it comes to aviation handhelds, it would be better to have a high end model and a low end model with similar user interfaces and accessories that are common. In addition, it would help if the people who staffed the Yaesu trade show booth actually knew something about the products. This has been an issue for the past several years. The guys are neither hams nor pilots and they don't provide any staff to the larger vendor booths. I began feeling so dismayed by this inept marketing approach that I started looking more seriously at the competition, namely ICOM.

ICOM made a big splash this year with a new panel mount radio called the A210 which, unfortunately, appears to cost about twice what their current A200 radio and doesn't really do much more. ICOM had been the price/performance leader in aviation panel mount radios for many years with the A200. It costs approximately half of what the competition charges for a similar radio.

The venerable A200

I don't know why the components that can be sold in a handheld radio need to cost 8 times as much when they are wrapped in a few more dollars of aluminum and have fewer features, but that is the case with nearly all panel-mount aviation radios.

ICOM currently produces only 2 aviation handhelds, the A6 and A24, which look identical. The only difference is that the A24 has the NAV feature, and the A6 does not. In talking with their reps, they claimed that they designed the radios using focus groups with real pilots and found that the 3 most requested features from pilots were:

ease of use

easy-to-read display and keys

long battery life

Ease of use for this kind of radio is important since it's a backup radio used infrequently and you don't want to have to refer to its manual during an emergency like a complete electrical system failure. The backlit LCD display is easy to read as are its backlit keys.

The battery takes up more than half the mass of the radio giving its battery life an advantage over attempting to make the radio as small as possible and compromising battery life in the process.

After mulling this over for a while and considering the discounted show price and a $40 rebate, I decided to switch camps. I bought the A24 and so now I'm an ICOM owner again, something that I haven't been for more than 25 years.

Labels: aviation, oshkosh, technology