AOPA Pilot Blog: Reporting Points

This sounds like heresy, but I’ll say it: Ignore the everlasting crab/slip debate.

Unless your aircraft has a particular limitation that demands one method or the other, it’s a fruitless discussion.

The key to successful crosswind landings is getting your mind outside the cockpit and away from mechanical ‘push this lever’ or ‘pull that one’ thinking.

Concentrate on holding the centerline during final approach, and immediately correct the slightest deviations on landing. As long as you’re continuously tracking the centerline, your hands and feet will naturally do the right things.

Don’t worry about style.

Just follow the stripe.

A few closing thoughts on an exhausting and invigorating week:

* Aircraft parking areas at Sun ‘n Fun were beginning to resemble used car lots. I don’t think I’ve ever seen ”for sale” signs on so many airplanes in one place.

* Supersize that airplane! Bulbous, load-hauling airplanes abounded at SNF. The AirVan was my favorite of the Beaver derivatives. Too bad so many of them have nosewheels . . .

* My aviation roots are in aerobatics, and I’ll always be drawn to the precise, physically, and mentally demanding aviation niche. So it’s with surprise and reluctance that I point out the airshow’s aerobatic performances were painfully dull and monotonous. One unlimited monoplane performing gyroscopic maneuvers after another became mind-numbing, even for a guy like me who eats that stuff up. I can’t imagine how dull it must have been for people who aren’t necessarily drawn to akro.

The sound of screaming IO-540s made me think about the late Chris Smisson and the beauty, grace, and finesse that he showed flying his Zlin with Ray Charles singing “American the Beautiful” in the background. We miss you, old friend.

* Thanks to Brady and Trevor from Hawker-Beechcraft for letting me stow away in their King Air for the trip to SNF–but it was the hat that saved me. My neck and ears were getting lobsterized by the scorching sun, so I pickup up a floppy, wide-brimmed hat at the H-B tent about halfway through the show. It sure was goofy looking, but it was a lifesaver. I stopped by the H-B booth a couple days after the University of Kansas won the NCAA basketball championship, and the folks from Wichita were still celebrating . . .

* Aspen’s “Evolution” PFD and Garmin’s “Synthetic Vision Technology” were the biggest hits of the show, and major developments that I’m convinced will improve general aviation safety. So here’s the question: How long do you think it will take Garmin (or some other innovative firm) to put synthetic vision in a portable GPS? VistaNav is getting close, but I’m talking about SVT on something the size of a Garmin 496. This is a pure guess, but I’ll bet that we’re be able to buy synthetic vision hand-helds in 2010 for $5,000 each . . .

Every now and then, we all stumble across an invention that seems so simple, so obvious, that we wonder why no one (including us) did it before.

Such is the case with LoPresti Speed Merchants’ “Speedpants.”

They’re regular composite wheel fairings–with one key difference. They have a set of clamshell doors on the bottom designed to totally enclose the wheels when an airplane’s in flight. LoPresti estimates the fairings will add about eight knots to an RV-7′s top speed. (And for those of us who miss raising and lowering landing gear, Speedpants will provide us with another lever to move each time we take off and land.)

The clamshell doors are hydraulic. And if the hydraulic system fails, internal springs will open the gear.

If we forget to open them on landing (and you know we will), the fiberglass scrapes off and the airplane remains on the wheels.

Speedpants are meant to minimize the aerodynamic penalty for fixed gear. And with so many of today’s aircraft manufacturers electing for fixed gear on airplanes that are meant to go fast, LoPresti may be onto something . . .

Dave’s other faves:

* Nemesis NXT flybys. That airplane makes everything else with a propeller on it look slow.

* The Commemorative Air Force’s LT-6. The silver “Mosquito” from the CAF’s Dixie Wing is absolutely gorgeous. The pride and workmanship really show through on this historical labor of love.

* The XP-30 is a German aerobatic brute painted in a scheme that seems to pay tribute to the Great Pumpkin. But it’s got a 450-degree-per-second roll rate, a 220-knot top speed, and more than 1,000 miles range. It’s only doing flybys at the show–not full aerobatic performances. But it looks like the closest thing to a magic carpet since Aladin.

* Sport Cub S2. I want to give it a hug whenever I see it. Cub Crafters is talking about offering a clipped-wing version. If they do, it will fit my notion of The Perfect Sport Plane and Back-To-The-Future Trainer . . .

“It’s a squirrel,” said Pat Halloran, the pilot of the Shoenfeldt “Firecracker,” a wood-winged bullet of an air racer from the 1930s–and the coolest airplane at Sun ‘n Fun.

It’s got an 18-foot wingspan, an impossibly tiny amount of wing area, and a 440-cubic-inch Ranger engine. The gear retracts with a hand crank, and Halloran, a retired Air Force general who flew fighters in Korea and the U-2 and SR-71 after that, said the airplane is a handfull to fly.

“Visibility on the ground is non-existent,” he said. “In the air, you’ve got to hold onto it every second.”

Halloran has flown the airplane about 70 hours and expects to add significantly to that total in the coming days. After Sun ‘n Fun, he’ll fly the Firecracker back to its home at Flabob Airport in Southern California. The airplane holds about four hours of fuel–but Halloran says the urge to escape from the cramped cockpit is too strong to ignore after about 2.5 hours.

Oh. The airplane’s top speed? It went about 300 miles an hour in the late 1930s when famed Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier was racing it. But Halloran said he won’t push it that hard . . .

Totally unscientific, anecdotal, and preliminary (but probably right).

* Aspen Avionics glass panel is a winner. The crowd outside the company’s booth has been big throughout the first few days at Sun ‘n Fun, and interest is building. Every vendor selling the displays has been pleased at the response to the vacuum-gauge replacement, and I think the company will sell tens of thousands of units for piston-aircraft retrofits. The jury’s still out on Aspen’s future MFD and whether the company will replace the other four gauges in traditional instrument six-packs. But it’s putting vacuum-driven, mechanical attitude indicators and directional gyros on the endangered list.

* Synthetic Vision is unstoppable. I’ll bet 95 percent of the owners of Garmin G1000 aircraft eventually add the software upgrade. Diamond is offering Garmin “Synthetic Vision Technology” (SVT) as a $10,000 option on new DA-40s, and that’s going to put pressure on other aircraft manufacturers to match. At that price, few will be able to resist. Grand Rapids Technology and Chelton pioneered GPS-based synthetic vision–but Garmin is going to make it an industry standard.

*The Sport Cub is my favorite LSA. If it doesn’t rekindle a resurgence in tailwheel aircraft, nothing will . . .

*Hand-held GPSs are getting bigger. Way bigger. The displays on some of the new models are giant. So are the boxes themselves. Maybe it’s driven by the aging pilot population (and our inability to read small print). But portable GPSs are beginning to resemble the ancient stone tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai, and they probably weigh about as much. The main differences are the portables require cigarette-lighter adapters–and we’re a lot more likely to follow GPS commandments . . .

What can a mud bog in the shape of an airplane tell you about a particular design?

So far, the amount of grass-stomping foot traffic around the Vans RV-12 has been so impressive that I’m convinced it’s going to be the best seller among Experimental LSAs–by far.

Visitors have surrounded the company’s two RV-12s since Sun ‘n Fun opened, and the green grass around them has been trampled to mud.

Richard Van Grunsven, the airplane’s gruff designer, said the company is doing a brisk business and expects to sell “a couple hundred” RV-12 kits this year. The RV-12 is the first Vans model to use a Rotax engine, and Van Grunsven said he’s convinced it offers the best value, reliability, and performance in its class. But builders–and potential builders–have been expressing interest in other engine options, such as the Continental 0-200 that Cessna is putting in its C162 SkyCatcher.

“People are always asking for something different,” Van Grunsven said. “Usually, it’s just an excuse not to do something they weren’t going to do anyway.”

SNF Arrival Timeline

How a 270-Knot General Aviation Turboprop Beats A 550-Knot Airliner

by Dave Hirschman and Paul Richfield