AOPA Pilot Blog: Reporting Points

Kyle Franklin has added a twist to a routine done by many performers over the years as a “flying farmer” or a drunken spectator act. The idea is that someone untrained steals a Piper Cub during an airshow, in full view of the audience, and flies a wobbly routine. Franklin’s twist is to scrape both wingtips. Maybe some other act is scraping wingtips, too, but it has escaped notice until now. Take a look at the video titled “Comedy Act Video.” It is at the bottom of the Franklin Web page.

Last year I gave a presentation at an aviation weather workshop in Columbia, South Carolina. Among the attendees were representatives from the National Weather Service, the major airlines, educators, local governments, and weather-media types like me.

Sitting behind me was Christy Henderson, chief meteorologist at WSPA-TV in Spartanburg, South Carolina. We struck up a conversation. She said she had always wanted to learn to fly, but never followed up. I assured her that becoming a pilot requires neither superhuman intellect nor strength–just a committed desire.

The conversation went on to topics like weather web sites, plus of course AOPA’s web site. We swapped business cards, and I thought, well, that’s that.

A week ago I got an e-mail and a phone call from Christy. My few words of encouragement had apparently had an immense effect. Christy soloed!

So never, ever underestimate the power of even the slightest encouragement. As one of my meteorology professors once said of the dangers to the brain of acquiring bad weather analysis practices, “be very, very careful what you put in there, because it may never come out.”

The same can be said of the power of positive suggestion. “Your life will change in ways you can’t now anticipate,” I told her. Here’s a shot of Christy shortly after her solo. Those of you in the Spartanburg-Greenville-Anderson SC–and Asheville NC–areas can see her live on Channel 7.

Here’s an item from the unusual aviation jobs folder. Cinematographer Michael Kelem has just returned from Antarctica where he flew in helicopters and Twin Otters to film a new documentary, Frozen Planet, that you’ll see in fall 2011 at the earliest. It is produced by the BBC and the Discovery Channel. He previously worked on the series Planet Earth.

Kelem has filmed mostly from helicopters for 25 years, but now he is considering getting his pilot certificate for trips from Los Angeles to San Francisco to visit family. His most recent work was capturing the aerial scenes for The Hangover in 2009 and Twilight in 2008.

Kelem lived with a scientific community of 1,200 people at McMurdo Sound for two months, flying in helicopters for 100 hours and fixed-wing aircraft for 70 to 80 hours. The helicopters are operated by PHI, better known for servicing oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Fixed-wing aircraft were operated by Kenn Borek Air based in Canada, the largest operator of Twin Otters in the world. The series covers the animals and climate of the polar areas.

The Twin Otter was necessary to cover great distances and capture the scope of the continent. It was a five-hour trip by Twin Otter with one fuel stop to reach the South Pole, and a seven-hour trip to penguin colonies. The colonies have retreated off melting ice sheets. To film, a high-definition camera built for a helicopter was mounted on the nose of the Twin Otter. That allows Kelem to remain inside both the Twin Otter or the helicopter when filming.

During his stay the runway for the Twin Otter had to be relocated 45 minutes from the camp due to the melting of the ice sheet. It was summer when he was there in December and January with temperatures from minus 30 degrees F to 30 degrees F. Ice fog was always a threat, sometimes preventing takeoff, or preventing a flight because it was forecast for the return time. (”You don’t want to get stuck out there in a fixed-wing airplane,” he said.)

While there he filmed an active volcano, Mt. Erebus, at 12,000 feet and filmed mountain ranges made of rectangular columns of rock that are breaking away from a mountain range he saw enroute to the volcano.

After 11,700 hours, “Ace” Beall deserves the nickname. As chief pilot for NASA he flew the Boeing KC–135 “vomit comet” to give astronauts experience in weightlessness (and for the weightless scenes in the movie Apollo 13), taught astronauts to fly the Northrop T–38, and flew the Space Shuttle from California to Florida atop a Boeing 747. While in the U.S. Air Force he flew Lockheed C–141s.

Last August Beall teamed with movie photographer Dylan Goss to film aerial scenes for Up in the Air, the story of a single man who prefers the freedom of constant airline travel to marriage and family. Beall works for Wolfe Air Aviation and provides movie footage you have undoubtedly seen. He had flown the company’s Learjet 25B to gather scenes for Up in the Air, but after it was completed the producers felt they needed to try again. This time Beall used the red Wolfe Air Cessna 337 Skymaster.

It was a hurry-up trip. Goss, the film’s aerial director of photography, and Beall visited eight cities in a week, gathering footage of cities and scenery in between. The producers were waiting. Goss is used to that and has worked for movie companies and advertising agencies since he was 18. Watch this year’s Super Bowl commercials, and when an SUVflashes down a pier and does a 180-degree turn to disgorge a whale from the back door, tell your friends, “Say, that looks like Bodega Bay north of San Francisco. I believe my friend Dylan Goss shot that.” You’ll be right.

Goss rarely shoots from anything but a helicopter, sometimes while flying at top speed two feet off the deck in a crab while leaning out the door on a harness, or standing on a helicopter landing gear shooting down on a Lexus for a commercial. If you saw that one, they didn’t actually drop it, even though it looks like they did.

The Skymaster is more difficult for Goss to use. He crouched in the back, looking through tiny windows to operate an externally slung, gyrostabilized camera while wearing an oxygen mask for shots at 15,000 to 18,000 feet. Goss pumped argon gas into the glass sphere containing the camera to keep it from fogging, a trick learned from underwater camera operators. They were never lower than 7,000 feet and spent an average of 45 minutes above cities listed in the movie script, including Wichita, Dallas, Des Moines, St. Louis, Chicago, Omaha, and Kansas City. They shot scenes enroute when presented with an opportunity.

The movie had been edited and locked before their trip, meaning that if an existing aerial scene had been three seconds, then the new one from the Skymaster had to be the same length. When movie producers saw what Beall and Goss had captured, they unlocked the movie and re-edited, especially when it came to the scene at the end floating just above the clouds. “The aerial scenes became like a character in the movie,” Goss said.

Up in the Air is all but played out at your local cinema, but take a look if you still have a chance. You’ll see Ace’s real first name as the credits roll at the end.

The Red Baron is waiting to fly across cinema screens this spring. You can see the one-minute trailer here. Personally, this is one I have to see. It’ll be worth the $6 popcorn (small) or maybe even a large popcorn (financing available).

Have you ever flown into Leadville, Colorado’s Lake County Airport, which at 9,927 feet in elevation claims the title of highest public-use airport in North America?

Bragging rights are climbing in China, which plans to build the world’s highest airport–at an elevation of 14,554 feet–in Tibet, Britain’s The Guardian reported. Let’s see, under U.S. regs, at that lofty height pilots will need supplemental oxygen just to taxi; better make sure the bottle is full.  On second thought, never mind; the field elevation is higher than the service ceiling of anything I’ve flown recently.

Construction is planned to begin in 2011, take three years, and cost more than $263 million (in U.S. dollars). The newspaper said the project is part of an effort by China to make air travel accessible to more of its population, through the construction of 97 new airports by 2020.

This is similar to the photo of lentucular clouds near French Valley Airport northeast of San Diego that I referred to in this month’s AOPA Pilot SkyCatcher story. I thought pilots might like to see it. It was taken by Mike Fizer, our chief photographer, 30 minutes before he took the cover shot for the January Pilot. Here’s a link to the SkyCatcher story . The shot I referred to had the SkyCatcher in the air with this in the background, but the airplane was shaded by a cloud, so the shot wasn’t chosen for the article.

By Dave Hirschman

Cirrus owner and pilot Rick Beach has compiled a storehouse of knowledge about SR20/SR22 accidents during years of thoughtful inquiry – and his conclusions about what causes the accidents, and how to avoid them, are at times surprising and of great potential value to all general aviation pilots.

In a comprehensive report published in current issue of Cirrus Pilot, the membership magazine for the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association (COPA), Beach debunks a few Cirrus myths and makes some compelling suggestions for improving overall flight safety in the future.

The most surprising fact that Beach’s intellectually rigorous study uncovers is that low-time pilots aren’t the problem. In fact, relatively high-time pilots with instrument, commercial, and/or instructor ratings are responsible for about 75 percent of the fatal Cirrus accidents in which pilot ratings were available.

“Only two pilots in a Cirrus fatal accident had less than 150 hours total time,” Beach said. “One of them was (the late New York Yankees pitcher) Cory Lidle, who had an instructor in the right seat during the accident.” (The other took place off the coast of France under unknown conditions.) Pilots with more than 400 hours total time accounted for 33 of 44 fatal Cirrus accidents where pilot experience was reported.

No one familiar with aviation accident history would be surprised to find that pilot error accounted for a majority of Cirrus accidents – but the percentage of fatal pilot mistakes is overwhelming in the Cirrus fleet. (Cirrus delivered the first production SR20 in 1999.)

“All but one of the 37 probable causes determined by NTSB accident investigations lists pilot causes,” Beach found. Adverse weather was a factor in most Cirrus accidents, and weather-related accidents are most common in the October-through-March time frame.

It stands to reason that pilots who seek to constantly upgrade their skills are safer – but the degree to which that’s true in the Cirrus community is astonishing. According to Beach, “Pilots who do not participate in COPA safety activities are four times more likely to have a fatal accident.”

Part of the reason active COPA members have a better record is that they are more likely to use the airframe parachutes that all Cirrus aircraft carry as standard equipment. There have been 20 parachute deployments in Cirrus aircraft in the last decade, and 17 of them were successful in saving the lives of 35 people aboard those airplanes.

During the same period, there were 55 fatal Cirrus accidents where the airframe parachute wasn’t deployed. In examining those scenarios, Beach estimates more than half (30) had “a high or good probability of success if the pilot would have pulled the (parachute) handle.”

Beach’s advice in a nutshell is to actively seek out more high-quality flight training, keep learning, and don’t hesitate to pull the parachute in an emergency (assuming the airplane you’re flying has one).

Beach’s report is available online at the following Web address: http://www.cirruspilots.org/content/FreeSafetyIssue.aspx

We’ve got a fun video featuring the great Sean D. Tucker at the Miramar Air Show in San Diego earlier this year. It was produced by Oceans Aloft, a company run by pilots Natasha Stenbock and Eddie Kisfaludy of San Diego. They are friends of AOPA, having helped us with an aerial photo platform for my January article on the Cessna SkyCatcher. (They are also getting married.) Natasha has experience as a television reporter while Eddie is an ocean researcher with considerable video editing skills. Enjoy.

Chances are you’ve noticed our GA Serves America campaign. At least, we hope you have. Clearly pilots know the value of aviation to communities around the country from an access standpoint, but how many of us trumpet the j word? You know, jobs.

General aviation contributes 1.3 million jobs in this country, which is astounding when you consider the relatively few number of pilots and aircraft. But I wonder how much that number extends out to secondary and tiertary levels.

As a product tester I get lost of unique and funky products in the office on a regular basis. A recent one called Glovelite got my attention for being particularly creative. And it’s creator and leader is a creative guy. Besides the value of the product itself, founder Paul Smith is also very aware of how his product is helping to give work to small businesses around his region.

Directly as a result of creating this one unique product, Smith has engaged publishers, a Web manager, a computer equipment company, an advertising/marketing consultant, a patent attorney, a lawyer, an accountant, the local printing shop, a label maker, a Neoprene supply company, a lining material supply company, a sewing resource, and the local UPS office. And this was all before the product even got much visibility. He also exhibited at AOPA Aviation Summit, helping to employ union workers in Tampa, people who service his airplane, the hotel, AOPA, etc.

It’s astounding when you think about it. Smith is just one example of thousands of aviation products and services out there creating jobs in a tough economy. So remember that GA serves America even when we’re parked on the ramp.