General Aviation News

A treasure awaits in the White Mountains

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Let’s get right to the point. Ron Carlson would like to give you $30,000. Really. If not you, then someone very much like you. And he’s dead serious. All you have to do is find the location of his TBM Avenger, N337VT. That’s it. 

Admittedly, collecting on the reward will be a little tougher than heading down to the airport, flinging open a hangar door, and shouting, “Ta da.”

7VT is truly lost. She’s deep in the mountain forests and valleys of northeast Arizona. But there are clues to its likely whereabouts. Tantalizing clues that narrow the search field considerably.

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GA for the win

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This past week has been the most incredible period in my aviation career. Filling the role of a peripherally small cog in a big, very important general aviation wheel, I was able to see first-hand the importance of GA to the public at large and, just as critically, the unassailable value of exceptional organizational skills and dedication being brought to bear in a time of great need.

Early last week my days were split between doing my normal work routine and prepping the house for a hurricane that was headed our way. I’ve experienced quite a few hurricanes in my lifetime. The one thing that’s evident after your first couple is the realization that the projected track is probably wrong. Meteorologists update them frequently, bringing the errors down to smaller and smaller degrees, which in hindsight makes them look eerily accurate. In advance of the storm, they’re anything but.

My neighborhood is well inland, but with a Category 5 storm on the way, storefronts and homes are boarded up. Everything that can be secured is secured. Then the waiting begins.

Tom Petty was right. The waiting is the hardest part.

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Hurricanes and the Five Hazardous Attitudes

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The sky outside my office window is unremarkable this morning. A scattered layer at 1,700′ is overlaid by a broken layer at 2,800′. The winds are 11 gusting to 17. Not ideal, but not all that bad, either.

To the east the weather is far less benign. Hurricane Dorian churns over Grand Bahama Island, fewer than 200 miles away from where I sit. The storm has lost its steering currents and is just sitting there, beating the island and its inhabitants to a pulp with winds gusting to 200 mph and greater. 

This is bad. The storm is predicted to turn to the north and accelerate out of the area. I hope it does. I hope it misses Florida, and Georgia, and the Carolinas. But a prediction is not a guarantee, it’s just a well-educated guess. As I write this, the actual track of the storm and its ultimate outcome is unknown. 

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Connection + conversation = conversion

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Two weeks ago a high school teacher asked if I could come speak to the students taking his aerospace class. Always being up for a good time, I agreed. Wow. Just wow, am I glad I did.

The students turned out to be a group of more than 100 teenagers spread over five class periods. Their level of interest ranged from open disinterest, to absolute fascination, with a lot of casual curiosity in between.

At least a quarter of the students filling the seats in front of me were motivated enough to give the impression they might really become pilots, or mechanics, and possibly even an engineer or two. In a couple cases, I could see them pursuing all three options.

It was a good day, let me tell you. 

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A passenger with history

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Some stories come together quickly. They form as whole entities and find their way into print almost overnight. Others take more time.

This particular story is in that latter group. It started in 1915. It came together just today. If you don’t have a calculator handy, that’s 104 years. Quite a gestation period. 

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The wisdom of the ages

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“Aviate. Navigate. Communicate.”

Every pilot hears those words in that order during their initial training. They hear them again and again throughout their flying career. This is, after all, the order of operations for any situation you might find yourself in while airborne.

Then one day, out of the blue, we find ourselves sharing this exact lesson with newer, less experienced pilots. Somehow, each of us becomes the old hand. A respected elder. The experienced flyer who has wisdom to share. So we do our best to fulfill that role. 

Fortunately for the easily tongue tied, the less than verbose, or the not particularly witty speaker, the industry has collected an enormous number of aviation-centric expressions to pass along at the drop of a hat. With that in mind, let’s review a few to see if they might come in handy around the ramp or coffee pot.

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Aviation goes to school

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I have three children. One boy and two girls. They range in age from 20 to 35 years old. All of them have flown. None of them are pilots. None of them work in the aviation industry. They’re all aviation enthusiasts, however. I count that as a big win. 

My youngest is a hairdresser, if that’s still the proper term. She cuts and colors and generally tweaks the tresses of women in our region. She enjoys it. She’s good at it. Yet she will occasionally engage me in conversation about aviation or aerospace, especially in the historic sense. She’s particularly intrigued by Sputnik 2, which sent Laika the space dog where no living thing had been before. That fascinates my daughter.

My girl is unusual in her friend group in that she knows a fair amount about aviation and space flight. That is almost certainly because she is the granddaughter of an airline pilot, the daughter of a general aviation pilot, and a native of Florida. She’s been watching spacecraft blast into orbit since before she can remember.

She’s not a pilot, but she knows how to fly, and she’s an avid enthusiast. She’s pro-aviation. In that respect she’s very similar to her older sister and brother.

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Things break

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Sunday morning came with bright sunshine, calm winds, and clear skies. I was being lazy, lying in bed, taking my time before getting up to feed the chickens, tend to the dogs, and make a large pot of coffee. Then my phone went off.

Time to get rolling. 

One of my flying club buddies sent a message reporting that one mag on our C-182 was running rough, with a big drop in RPM, and the occasional backfire. As the club’s maintenance officer, those calls come to me. Not constantly, but it’s not a rarity, either. 

Things break. 

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With my toes in the sand and aviation in my heart

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My social media feed is filled with references to AirVenture this week. The annual pilgrimage to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is well underway, with untold numbers of aviation enthusiasts converging on that mythic town to celebrate the wonders of aeronautics in a thousand different ways. 

Of course, not all aviation enthusiasts make that trip every year. Some never make it at all. No matter. The love of aviation and all things aeronautical still resonates in the soul of millions, whether they get to the big show or not.

I would be remiss in my duties as a decent human being if I didn’t acknowledge I’ve been to AirVenture. More than once.

I’ve been as part of a company team, and I’ve attended as an individual. I’ve stayed in a rented house with co-workers and I’ve camped on the grounds, spending the night in a lightweight, bright orange capsule made of Nylon. I’ve slept in my car on more than one occasion. I’ve been rained on, sunburnt, wind-whipped, and chilly. But I’ve never been disappointed. Not once.

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Not because they are easy, but because they are hard

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As I recline on my front porch this week, cigar in hand, tumbler of whiskey at my side, I will take note of the nearly full moon rising in the East. That image, the one I’ve seen innumerable times, often takes me back to a very specific night 50 years ago. A night when the whole of humanity changed for the better.

I sat on the living room floor of our family home. White carpet. White walls. Chairs of dark brown wood and black leather, survivors of a bar fire years before in Tempe, Arizona. On television, the legendary CBS newsman Walter Cronkite narrated the greatest achievement of humanity as it happened. Live. And out our living room window the 10-year old version of myself saw that same gray/white satellite roaming through the atmosphere above.

That’s the moon I see today. The same one George Washington gazed up at. The same celestial body Julius Caesar found in the night sky. Our moon has changed little over the years. We, on the other hand, have lost and found our way time and time again. 

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