Airspeed

Airspeed Rolls Out New Website! This Site Now Archive-Only.

2012-01-08T16:41:00.004-05:00

After a successful run of six years on the Blogger platform, we've outgrown it. Please head over to www.airspeedonline.com to see the new blog and catch up on all of the news and content from Airspeed and its related projects!

We've migrated all of the content from this Blogger site (more than 400 posts, including the show notes from more than 200 episodes) over the new site, so you won't miss a thing.

This site will remain online so that the huge number of links that have accumulated over the years will stay active. But we'll no longer be updating this site. We're sorry for any inconvenience, but we're sure that the additional functionality and capability of the new site will be more than worth the effort to update your bookmark.

Airspeed Upgrading its Website (Pardon Our Dust!)

2012-01-03T11:33:00.003-05:00

If you've been redirected here by www.airspeedonline.com, it's because there's good news here at Airspeed. We're revamping the Airspeed web experience!

After using this Blogger site for most of the last six years as a place to keep show notes and provide updates about the show, it's time to update things to provide a more complete user experience.

For whatever reason, organizations evaluating Airspeed's reach have looked solely to the Blogger site and have regarded it as Airspeed's sole online presence. I guess it's hard to blame some of them. For many, online media means the web and nothing else. That's how many media reps are trained. Most don't understand RSS-based media like podcasting or understand that the real reach is in the podcast feed numbers and other metrics that aren't captured in a website or blog. But it becomes a problem when the misunderstanding results in underestimation and difficulty in getting the coverage opportunities that benefit both Airspeed and the host organization.

So I'll take responsibility for as much of that as I can. The first step is what you see here. I'm moving the Airspeed website over to a WordPress site with better SEO and more ability to format and present information about - and from - the show in a way that's more accessible to both the audience and those in a position to grant coverage opportunities.

So - what does this mean?

First, THIS BLOGGER BLOG WILL SOON CEASE TO BE UPDATED. I’ll leave it in place so that the hundreds or thousands of links that have piled up over the years will still be live. But I’ll update the masthead to identify the new site at www.airspeedonline.com.

Second, for the next week or two, it's going to mean a pretty goofy-looking site over at www.airspeedonline.com as I learn the ropes of WordPress. But, after that, the site will be a much better resource for Airspeed fans, opportunity grantors, and others.

So please pardon our dust for the next couple of weeks. It's going to be goofy and ugly for a a little while, but it'll be amazing before you know it!

Airshows 101 at ICAS 2011

2011-12-06T12:35:00.003-05:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedICASAS101.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

I’m once again at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas for the annual convention of the International Council of Air Shows (“ICAS”).

It’s the annual event at which the airshow community in North America gets together to talk about the recently completed season, catalog the collective experience, and plan for the next year’s operations. Just about everyone who matters in the airshow industry is here in person or represented in one way or another.

I attend ICAS each year on media credentials. It’s a great opportunity to meet the performers whom I cover and make connections that help me to produce the show. The T-38 episode from January of this year was a direct result of a contact made at ICAS. Additionally, many of the performer cameos that you’re going to see in Acro Camp resulted from conversations over coffee or beer at ICAS.

In addition to meeting old friends and making new ones, ICAS is an opportunity dig into the details of the programs and processes that have made airshows some of the most exciting, yet safest, forms of entertainment available in North America. ICAS programming covers every level of airshow savvy, including a lot of material for those who are new to airshows or are just beginning to become involved in organizing and administering airshows. For those people, ICAS presents a seminar on Sunday of each year of the convention called Aishows 101: Air/Ground Operations Training Seminar.

Last year, I took the next step. Even though I essentially get in free, I paid to attend Airshows 101 as a full-up student. I wanted to understand more about what goes into actually staging an airshow. And, while nobody walks out of Airshows 101 with everything they need to go put on an airshow, if you listen closely and ask a lot of questions, the program leaves you with a canoe-paddle-to-the-face appreciation for the depth and breadth of what goes into the process.

I entertained fantasies last year of being able to put out an episode from ICAS that gave a genuine idea of what the class is like. I gave up around 0200 local the morning after the class.

The approach this time is a little different. I took the audio home last year and edited it to create a few good examples of what the presentation is like. And I attended again this year, but spent more of the time putting together the text for this episode. Thus, the presentation audio that you’ll hear in this episode is from ICAS 2010. But, having attended on Sunday, it’s virtually the same as the presentation that happened today in 2011.

This is not an episode for the casual aviation enthusiast. This is about details, regulations, team requirements, and crowd experience. If you’re looking for lighter fare, I recommend one of the 200 or so back episodes until I get another one out. But, if you’re looking for a genuine scratch into the surface of what it takes to put on an airshow, this episode is a good starting place.

I’m going to cover four basic topics. The request for military support, the general timeline, the Big Kahuna (namely FAA Order 8900.1), and the FAA Form 7711-2 waiver. There’s a whole lot more to it than this, but it’ll give you a small taste of what goes on in the background.

Airshows 101 is presented by four experienced air bosses. Bill Snellgrove, George Cline, Ralph Royce, and Larry Strain. The air boss is in charge of most of the air operations at any given airshow. And most air bosses are also valuable consultants to airshow organizers, assisting with planning, waivers, interaction with other stakeholders, and lots more. The job that they do from the roof of that trailer out in front of the crowd line is just the tip of the air boss iceberg.

Military Support: DD Form 2535

The key to military support is DD Form 2535 (http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/infomgt/forms/eforms/dd2535.pdf).

[Audio: Form 2535.]

In 2010, the Blue Angels went to a two-year system. If you want the Blues, you have to apply before August 1 of the second year prior to when you want them. In other words, as I sit here in 2011, we’re past the deadline for applying for the 2013 season. Even in the case of the Thunderbirds and others, August 1, 2011 was the deadline to apply for the 2012 season.

Timeline Generally

Notwithstanding the military team deadlines, most essential planning starts at least eight months before the show. That’s the time to survey the event environment, look at the regs, and do the basic legwork to be sure that you can have the show at the intended airport.

Assuming that the local planning for the event site is moving along reasonably, the biggest event in the early planning is the ICAS convention. The Thunderbirds, Blue Angels, and Snowbirds announce their schedules for the upcoming year (or, in the case of the Blues, the year after that). That’s a key programming point and it allows show organizers to figure out what kind of show they’re going to have. You select other performers based, to some extent, on whether you have a jet team performing.

One wild card: The Black Diamond Jet Team (formerly known as Heavy Metal) is a fully-sponsored L-39 and MiG team. It’s not the Thunderbirds or the Blues or the Snowbirds. But it’s a genuine jet formation team that flies profiles that are very similar to, if not better than, the military jet teams in many respects. It’s too early to tell after just one season, but it’s going to be interesting to see if Black Diamond can anchor an airshow as well as the military teams. I’ve been lucky to get to know many of the guys from Black Diamond and interviewed two to appear in the first Acro Camp film. I’m pretty excited about the possibility that a purely civilian bootstrap organization can go anchor big shows just as well as the military teams.

In any case organizers spend a lot of time on the exhibit hall floor and in the halls talking to performers and trying to nail down a slate of performers to fill out their show programs. There’s a little of everything. Airplanes and helicopters, to be sure. But also jet trucks, pyro, and other attractions.

And, in any case, many of the vendors are also here. Providers of things like radios, PA equipment, golf carts, ticketing, food, midway attractions, aerial video, insurance, announcing, airboss services, and everything else that it takes to put together an airshow.

Back at the show site (and the show site’s FSDO), the plans keep going for the next few months. Work on things like the operations plan, FAA/TC coordination, waiver applications, emergency plans, locating arresting barriers if you need them, locating other support equipment, and so on.

Things get more immediate when you hit the four-month point. At that time, you submit your FAA Form 7711-2, the request for the airshow waiver. You also request military statics, arrange hotels and rental cars, and get serous about your local police, fire, EMT, and other planning.

At three months out, you finalize your air-ground procedures, get working on your static arrival and parking plan, start holding monthly organization and staff meeting plans, and nail down your static display, security, communications, and vehicle control plans.

At two months out, things get really busy. Organization and staff meetings go to bi-weekly. You’re thinking transportation, ingress, and egress plans for performers and staff. If you’re really smart, you run at least a couple of tabletop exercises with your section chiefs, especially your emergency responders.

From there on in, it gets really frantic and really granular. Failure to plan and have a solid organization by this point is potentially fatal to the event. You’ve heard that “no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy?” This is where the battle plan makes first contact. It isn’t so much about execution of the plan as it is having an organization that’s strong and capable enough to deal with exceptions to the plan and deals with them in a way that preserves safety while still resulting in a superior experience for the crowd.

The Big Kahuna: FAA Order 8900.1

The Big Kahuna in airshow planning is FAA Order 8900.1, and particularly Volume 3, Chapter 6. There’s a copy at http://fsims.faa.gov/wdocs/8900.1/v03%20tech%20admin/chapter%2006/03_006_001.pdf if you’re interested. That, together with the FARs, FAA Advisory Circulars, performer support manuals, and ICAS manuals and guidelines, make up your core group of constraints.

The most concrete manifestation of the rules happens when you sit down to do or review your site survey.

The site survey includes the airshow area, locations of where you’ll place spectators, the locations of towers, highways, buildings, hospitals, and the airspace over and near the show site.

[Audio: Site Survey.]

Among the issues is getting an idea of what’s close to the show site.

[Audio: Five-Mile Ring.]

You’ve probably noticed that different performers do different things at different distances from the crowd. This is by design.

There are five lines in most airshow layouts. Category I, II, and III are for aerobatic maneuvering. The other two are for non-aerobatic maneuvering. And, by the way, for the purposes of airshows, “aerobatic” means pitch in excess of 60 degrees up or down or bank of 75 degrees.

The Category I line is for aircraft capable of operating at more than 245 knots at max gross and certain power settings. That’s your jet teams and similar performers. The Cat I line must be 1,500 feet away from the crowd. You can drop part of that line to 1,200 feet under certain circumstances.

The Cat II line is for aircraft that do more than 156 knots but less than 245 knots and for helicopters (here meaning essentially Chuck Aaron).

The Cat III line is for aircraft that do 156 knots or less or any single-engine aircraft with a normally-aspirated or fuel-injected reciprocating engine with a max gross of 2,250 lbs. or less.

For non-aerobatic flight, you can put powered parachutes, powered paragliders, paragliders, and ultralights as close as 100 feet from the crowd. Everybody else can come as close as 500 feet as long as they’re not aerobatic. That’s why, in the Hoppers promo video that you’re seen in the feed, the aircraft are out at the big white Cat I line when they’re doing rolls and other aerobatic maneuvers, but they can do high-speed level passes much closer at the 500-foot line.

The amount of room that you have and your ability to place various Cat lines has a lot to do with what performers you can book and what they can do during the show. Additionally, you have to deal with buildings and other areas in which you have people during the show.

[Audio: Boxes.]

The lines are critical for safety. Some of the teams, particularly the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels, are particular about how you mark show center and the Cat I line. And there are other boundaries that you need to identify, mark, and police.

[Audio: Box – Thunderbirds and Blues]

The relevant part of 8900.1 goes on for more than 100 pages. And it’s in its 86th change, so you know that it’s updated regularly, if not aggressively. It’s actually a really good read. It’ll answer questions that you didn’t even know you had about airshow operations.

FAA Form 7711-2: The Request for Waiver

The airshow waiver is another huge element of the process. If you think about it, in the absence of a waiver, most airshow flying would violate one reg or another without a waiver.

Think about it. Even a low pass is technically a reg violation if you don’t have a waiver. I see it violated all the time, even with ATC clearance. And I violated it myself in early training whenever an instructor got down low and illustrated the use of aileron and rudder in the process of teaching crosswind landings. You can’t fly lower than the minimum altitudes in the FARs unless you’re taking off or landing. Unless you’re out over Muroc Dry Lake Bed or similar terrain, that means 500 or 1,000 feet from persons and property. Intent counts. You can’t just fake a go-around.

There’s other stuff that you might not think about. One thing that surprised me was fuel. I realized it when I was looking over the waiver for the IAC contest in which I participated this year. In many aerobatic aircraft, you can’t carry VFR fuel reserves and still do what you want or need to do for the contest. So the waiver lets you carry less fuel. Essentially, as long as you can glide to the runway, you’ve got enough fuel.

Airshow waivers cover these and other situations. The following are just a few examples.

FAR 91.107(a) requiring seatbelts and their use. Think of wing-walkers here.

FAR 91.117(a)-(c) governing maximum airspeeds. You need a waiver to fly at airshow speeds below 10,000 feet in Class B, C, or D airspace.

FAR 91.119(b) and (c) governing minimum safe altitudes.

FAR 91.126, 91.127, 91.129, and 91.131 governing operations in the vicinity of airports in Class G, E, D, and C airspace, respectively.

FAR 91.155 governing VFR minima and cloud clearances.

FAR 91.303(c), (d), and (e) governing where aerobatic maneuvers may be performed.

FAR 91.515(a) governing large and turbine-powered aircraft.

The waiver covers all of these elements and more. You can see typical provisions of an FAA airshow waiver at www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/airshow/.

Among the topics addressed is the direction of aerobatic energy. Performers can’t direct energy toward the crowd. In order words, in the parlance of the FAA waiver from Wings Over Atlanta in 2010, aerobatic maneuvers are prohibited if “in the event of a catastrophic failure, a part of the aircraft would contact the surface at or inside the primary spectator area between the corner markers . . .”

That, among other reasons, is why most airshow flying is back and forth in front of the crowd at one of the Cat lines. I’ve observed before that airshows tend to be rather two-dimensional for that reason. Notable exceptions are Gene Soucy, Kent Pietch, Greg Koontz, and several others who fly slower or less powerful aircraft and are able to make more use of the Y axis of the box. This is because the aircraft are slow enough that they can fly toward – or away from – the crowd for longer while still staying beyond the Cat III line. And because the aerobatic energy carried by the airframe in each case would dissipate more quickly than for other aircraft and fall short of the crowd line.

But it’s also an opportunity for performers with those kinds of profiles to differentiate themselves. I think that the audience really responds to more three-dimensional performances. You can’t compromise safety, so the distance and the aerobatic energy requirements are non-negotiable. Thus, those who are able to incorporate that beautiful third dimension into their performances have a real advantage.

Anyway, those are the highlights of Airshows 101. The course runs a full day and it’s more than you can really put into a single episode. And, even if you could, Airshows 101 itself just scratches the surface of what it takes to put on an airshow.

It’s the wee hours of Tuesday morning as I’m recording this. I’ll be pulling up stakes here at Firebase Airspeed at Paris Las Vegas tomorrow and catching a redeye flight out tonight for Detroit. It’s Flight Suit Day here at ICAS. All pilots and performers are encouraged to wear their flight suits. Although I own a zoom bag (and I’m very fond of it!) I haven’t really had the opportunity to wear a flight suit here at ICAS in years past. Yeah, I fly and I even fly acro, but just slapping an Airspeed squadron patch on the flight suit would seem kind of disingenuous in this crowd.

But I am a genuine search and rescue pilot in the Civil Air Patrol. And national and the Nevada Wing have authorized me to wear my CAP flight suit and carry the CAP flag for the day. So I’ll be on the exhibit floor at ICAS in a zoom bag. Sierra Hotel!

ICAS 2011 - Day 1

2011-12-05T11:24:00.001-05:00

Flying through the Totality

2011-11-15T18:00:00.000-05:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedTotality.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to see something 70 miles wide moving over the landscape at almost 1,700 miles per hour?

I think it was a Carl Sagan essay where I first heard the experience described. He had that very experience standing on a hilltop with hundreds of other people. All expected the experience and understood what was happening. But when a shadow stretching from horizon to horizon appeared and swept over the valleys and grasslands and swallowed the assembled people, some involuntarily screamed.

I am, of course, talking about a total solar eclipse.

Solar eclipses come in four flavors. In each case, the moon interposes itself between the sun and Earth and part of the moon’s shadow falls on Earth.

The moon’s shadow has three primary portions: The umbra, the penumbra, and the antumbra. You’ve probably seen this phenomenon in shadows before with everyday objects and familiar illumination sources, but you probably haven’t thought much about them. You’ve probably noticed that shadows have a dark central part and a less-dark outer part. And, if the observation point is far enough from the obscuring object, there’s not much of a shadow at all.

The umbra is the darkest part of the shadow and it is located directly on the other side of the moon from the sun. It's cone-shaped with the base of the cone on the diameter of the moon and the point at some location in space that varies between 228,000 to 236,000 miles from the moon. It varies because the Earth-moon system’s orbit around the sun is slightly eccentric and the distance of the moon from the sun affects the length of the moon’s umbra.

Additionally, the moon’s orbit around Earth is slightly eccentric and the moon’s distance from Earth varies from about 226,000 miles at perigee to about 252,000 miles at apogee.

If you’ve been paying attention so far, you’re figured out that the moon’s umbra doesn’t always touch Earth during a solar eclipse because the umbra is shorter than the distance between the moon and Earth much of the time. And sometimes the umbra is long enough to reach Earth, but it misses and goes north of the north pole or south of the south pole.

To go completely overboard on the details: Because of the action of tides on Earth, Earth is transferring its rotational momentum to the moon as orbital momentum, which lengthens Earth’s day by about 23 microseconds each year and causes the moon to recede about 38 millimeters each year. Absent a major change, the moon’s umbra will, at some point about 425 million years from now, be unable to reach Earth and no further solar eclipses will occur on Earth.

Where the umbra touches Earth’s surface, observers see the sun entirely obscured by the moon. That’s a total solar eclipse and it’s the most common image you’ll see of a solar eclipse.

The part of the shadow beyond the end of the umbra is called the antumbra. In the antumbra, the angular size of the moon is less than that of the sun, the eclipse is said to be of a magnitude of less than one, and the moon obscures only some part of the central disc of the sun. The disc of the moon moves entirely within the disc of the sun and some of the sun’s disc is visible around the entire disc of the moon. This is called an annular solar eclipse.

At every location that is in the broader shadow called the penumbra, viewers see the moon’s disc partially obscure the sun’s disc but don’t see the moon’s disk entirely obscure, or pass entirely within, the sun’s disc. This is called a partial solar eclipse.

There’s also such a thing as a hybrid eclipse where the umbra touches down in mid-eclipse, so observers on parts of Earth see an annular eclipse and observers on other parts see a total eclipse. As you might imagine, hybrid solar eclipses are very rare.

It’s not hard to see a partial solar eclipse. They happen frequently and are visible from broad areas. It’s not uncommon to be able to see the partial eclipse almost from pole to pole. The penumbra is huge. The umbra, on the other hand, is tiny and can’t be more than about 167 miles wide. Thus it’s rare for a particular place on Earth’s surface to see a total solar eclipse.

There hasn’t been a total solar eclipse visible from the continental United States since 1979. It was visible only in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota.

But on August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will be visible from places all the way across the continental US. It’s the first total eclipse to cross American soil since 1991, the first on the mainland since 1979, and the first to sweep across the entire continental US since 1918. And the next one to be visible from the continental US won’t be until April 8, 2024.

The 2017 total eclipse will have a magnitude of about 1.03, which means that the angular size of the moon will be about 3% larger than that of the sun.

The eclipse will make landfall on the Pacific Coast at Lincoln Beach, Oregon due west of Salem and just south of Siletz Bay Airport (S45) at 17:15:58Z and totality will last a little less than two minutes.

The point of greatest eclipse will be N 36.9664° W 87.6639°. That’s near Cerulean, Kentucky, about 60 miles due west of Bowling Green and about and 14 miles northwest of Hopkinson-Christian County Airport (KHVC). At the point of greatest eclipse, the leading edge of the totality will arrive at 18:24:09Z and the trailing edge will arrive at 18:26:50Z for a duration in totality of 2:41.

The leading edge of the totality hits the east coast near the Francis Marion State Forest near McClellanville, South Carolina about 40 miles northeast of Charleston and 18 miles south of the Georgetown County Airport (KGGE) at 18:46:25Z and the trailing edge goes feet-wet 2:34 later at 18:48:59Z.

By the time the totality has passed over the continental United States, it will have passed over parts of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina.

The leading edge of the totality will travel just over 2,500 great-circle statute miles across the continental US in a about 90 minutes for an average ground speed of something 1,667 statute miles per hour.

There’s plenty of information available about how to best view an eclipse and I leave it as an exercise for the listener to go out and find that information. Carl Sagan found a hilltop with a valley sprawling out below so that he could see not only the eclipse but the onrushing umbral shadow. And he also looked up at the event in the sky using proper viewing filters or other appropriate means.

The only thing that I’ll say about it that is of general interest is that you should never look directly at the sun without safety glasses or other appropriate equipment. I shouldn’t have to say that. You guys know better. Just like you know not to ram the yoke abruptly forward and scream when you’re flying passengers. Unless you’re flying prisoners and you pull out before getting to Vne.

So all of this eclipse stuff is cool. And there’s an extent to which it’s justified simply because it’s cool science and that’s well within the usual coverage of Airspeed. But I have more than that in mind for this one.

Sometimes it’s cloudy at the site that you have picked out to view the eclipse. Sometimes it’s tough to find a good hilltop. Sometimes there are logistical problems with landowners in getting to your site. And if you really want, as I do, to see that umbral shadow sweeping ominously over the ground, you’re going to have to find some high ground. Probably a couple of different places so that you have a backup if the weather is bad at your primary location.

But these factors are not problems for you and me. We’re pilots, after all.

The total eclipse of 2017 is a long time from now. But, when it happens, I plan to be at about 10,000 feet MSL in an airplane somewhere along the center of the path of totality and have a front-row seat to see the umbral shadow coming at me at something like local Mach 2. I’m going to fly through the totality. And you can, too.

Here’s what I have in mind. You can look at this as a mere thought experiment or as an action plan. It’s fun any way you look at it.

First off, what are you going to see? Out in the penumbral shadow, things won’t get very dark at all. Maybe something like dusk. I’ve been in the penumbral shadows of several eclipses and that’s a pretty fair description.

Sagan said that there was a discernable wall of umbral shadow of the eclipse about which he wrote. But it’ll be fuzzy. It won’t be a brignt-line division. Remember that we’re out in the last 10,000 miles or so of the umbral shadow and it’s going to be fuzzy.

That’s where I think that being in an aircraft at altitude will be helpful. Being a mile or more above where the shadow makes contact with the ground or cloud tops ought to allow me to see the big picture and give me the best chance of seeing the motion of the shadow over the ground.

I plan to fly perpendicular to the path of the totality. There are those who give more than a little thought to flying away from the oncoming totality so as to extend their time within it. But at a maximum true airspeed of something like 110 or 130 knots, you’re only going to extend your time in the totality by a second or two. I’d rather fly perpendicular to the path and see it coming.

By the way, there was a plan afoot to fly the Concorde in the umbral shadow, but the accident involving Air France Flight 4590 put an end to it prematurely. A group did get up in 1992 and viewed the eclipse from at DC-10 at FL410 and there’s another account in Wired Magazine of a 2010 chase at FL 390 that extended the time in the totality to 9:23 (well beyond the theoretical maximum of 7:32 possible from a fixed spot on Earth’s surface.

What about the practical and legal aspects of flying around in the dark?

If the FARs are the same at the time of the eclipse as they are now, you won’t have to be night current in order to fly through the umbra. Generally speaking, FAR 61.57(b) presently provides that “no person may act as pilot in command of an aircraft carrying passengers during the period beginning 1 hour after sunset and ending 1 hour before sunrise, unless within the preceding 90 days that person has made at least three takeoffs and three landings to a full stop during the period beginning 1 hour after sunset and ending 1 hour before sunrise, and (i) That person acted as sole manipulator of the flight controls; and (ii) The required takeoffs and landings were performed in an aircraft of the same category, class, and type (if a type rating is required).”

There are other places in the FARs where “night” matters, such as in rules governing visibility, cloud clearances and other matters having to do with operation in various parts of the National Airspace System. FAR 1.1 presently defines “night” as “the time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the American Air Almanac, converted to local time.”

The closest that it’ll be to night local time during the eclipse will be when the totality goes feet wet on the east coast, where it’ll be a little before 3:00 p.m. local time. The sun won’t even set there until 7:58 pm local. If you think about it, it’s pretty obvious. You can’t fly through the totality of an eclipse after sunset. You need – er – the sun.

If you’re like me, you’ll plan to launch at least 30 minutes prior to the arrival of the umbral shadow and land shortly after the umbral shadow passes. You won’t be taking off or landing any time near “night” as defined by the FARs.

In almost any case, it’s going to be pretty dark in the penumbra around that time. And the partial eclipse, with its penumbral shadow, last a long time. The sun will be in at least partial eclipse for almost three hours. The penumbra is huge. During this eclipse, it’ll as far north as the north pole and as far south as the northern part of South America.

We pilots are (or ought to be) pretty good at knowing the difference between what’s legal and what’s smart. And the difference between current and proficient.

I plan to be both night current and night proficient before launching. If you’re the least bit uncomfortable flying in the dark, don’t launch. In fact, you ought to seriously consider getting some actual or simulated night instrument work in before the event. If you’re a confident VFR night pilot and you live near inhabited areas with lots of lights on the ground, think about how much your comfort derives from having those lights on the ground to use as references. It’s almost a sure bet that the street lights and other outdoor lighting will not be on during the passage of the umbral shadow. All of that stuff is on timers and there’s almost zero chance that anyone is going to think to flip the switch or change the timers for this event.

You also need to be sure that all of the lights inside the aircraft are working and that you know how to operate them. Many of us don’t fly much at night and many of us don’t even know where the light switches or dimmers are.

I ran into this when doing my initial training in a G1000-equipped aircraft. I had just become comfortable with the PFD presentation of airspeed, altitude, and other indications and was feeling pretty good about things. On the flight in question, the sun had already set by the time I was 20 miles out from Pontiac. The PFD and MFD each have an automatic dimming function that dims the display down as the ambient light fades. The displays dimmed much faster than the ambient light demanded and I found myself in the pattern with both displays nearly dark. The light control knobs on the panel only controlled the pedestal and other lights in the cockpit. The G1000 displays can be set manually, but that requires going through the menus to the manual settings – not something you want to try to figure out while you’re in the pattern. I landed using the backup round airspeed indicator. No problem. But I’ve since gone back and figured out where the display brightness lives in the G1000 menu system and I even put the procedure in the little cheat sheet that I use whenever I fly that aircraft.

I’d like to see the event VFR in clear air so that I can see the umbral shadow moving along the ground. But I’ll bet that VFR on top of a cloud deck would be pretty cool, too. In any case, it would be a good idea to be instrument rated, current, and proficient. That will help both in terms of getting on top of a local overcast and in terms of going somewhere else if there’s a high overcast or other adverse weather at the initially-planned interface location.

There’s some chance that your aircraft will not be the only aircraft up there doing exactly what you’re doing. Some nutjob with an aviation podcast got the word out more than five years before the big day and now the skies are darkening with airplanes, to say nothing of the moon.

And, sad, to say, it’s possible and even likely that you’ll be sharing the skies with a lot of people who aren’t anywhere near as prepared as you are.

Assume that August 21, 2017 will be just like that first nice weekend day in the spring in the northern US when every Tom, Dick, and Harry at the local GA airport drags out his airplane and decides that today’s the day to knock off the rust and make you number four to land on a busy CTAF.

Spread out and give everybody some room. The path of totality over the continental US is going to be more than 2,500 miles long. There’s really no reason to do it near Cerulean, Kentucky. The duration of the totality will be only 50 seconds longer at Cerulean than it will be on the west coast. You’re going to get about two minutes of totality at minimum no matter where along the path you fly. Go someplace away from the crowds and get some elbow room.

It would be entirely reasonable to get flight following so that you can obtain traffic advisories. It would also be a good idea to use an aircraft that’s TIS-enabled and fly in an area that supports automated traffic reporting. It might even be a good idea to tell the controller what you’re doing and have a couple of navaids in mind to use in telling the controller where you’ll be. If the controller is handling a dozen eclipse-viewing flights and one has a solid and easily-describable flight profile, who do you think is going to get favors from the controller if they need them?

If you’re going to make use of your instrument ticket to get on top to see the shadow, it might be best to pick a nice holding spot on an airway and then ask for a hold with nice long legs. Alternatively, it might be a good idea to file two IFR flight plans: One to get on top (which you’ll then cancel and pick up a convenient 500-foot-increment cruising altitude) and one to open when you’re ready to go back through to land. Again, if there’s a lot of traffic on top and everybody wants to air-file for return, who do you think is going to get the best handling? The guy or gal with the IFR flight plan already on file? Yep. I thought so.

Without adding yet another factor into the age-old high-wing/low-wing debate, the kind of aircraft that you fly is going to be important. And it’ll depend on what you want to see.

If, like me, you want to see the umbral shadow, a high-wing aircraft is going to be your best bet. Unless your high-wing aircraft has a good overhead window, you’re probably going to miss the eclipse itself altogether. At local solar noon at the point of greatest eclipse in Kentucky (about 1:49 pm local), the sun will be about 64 degrees above the horizon. And it won’t really be a lot lower than that during the eclipse. You can pretty much forget about banking steeply enough to see the eclipse itself. Night acro is not my idea of fun and it’s probably not yours either.

If you want to see the eclipse itself and you care less about what’s going on on the ground, I suppose a low-wing aircraft would better. If you fly at an angle to the oncoming umbral shadow wall and stay wings-level, you’re probably get a good view of the ground and could still look up and see the eclipse itself. But, when you add all of the fussy stuff involving safety glasses and other concerns about safely viewing the eclipse itself, you begin to get overly preoccupied with something that’s going on a quarter million miles away and aren’t paying sufficient attention to the conduct of the flight. Especially if the pilot flying wants a look.

Frankly, if it’s really important to get a look at the eclipse itself, you’re better off not being in an airplane in the first place. Stay on the ground and enjoy. There’s nothing wrong with that.

I’ve tried to identify accidents or incidents associated with prior total eclipses in the continental US. This is not by any means the first total eclipse to be visible from the continental US since general aviation has been widespread. There have been five since 1950. I’ve tried to identity accidents or incidents associated with flying through the totality, but I haven’t found any. That could have something to do with what you can imagine happens when you try to do a Google search for “eclipse” and “accident.” There’s just too much noise in the search data.

Viewing an eclipse itself from the ground is underwhelming. You can't really look directly at it. Indirect viewing is okay, but it's remarkably like the pictures that you'll see on the 'net the next day. Ho-um. I've never seen a total eclipse on the ground, but I've seen several partials. The cool part for the partials was the relative darkness. Thus, I'm about chasing the darkness.

There is one thing you'll miss that you might care about. At totality, if there are enough naked-eye planets within view, you can get a real sense of the ecliptic of the solar system because you can see the sun and planets at the same time in the same hemisphere of sky. For the 2017 eclipse, you should be able to see Venus and Jupiter fairly clearly. Mars will technically be visible, but it will be very close to being on the other side of the sun (conjunction occurs July 26, 2017 and Mars will be something like 2.4 AU away). Saturn will be below the eastern horizon. But, in any case, you can sweep your eyes across the sky and see the sun, Jupiter, and Venus. I've heard that, once you see the solar system's ecliptic during an eclipse, you realize that you're standing at an angle and leaning 45 to 55 degrees out from the planet's surface over the ecliptic. And I've heard that it'll induce vertigo and that it's a memorable experience. But it requires very clear skies and a broad field of view.

So that’s my plan. Even if I don’t end up doing it, it’s a great exercise that combines the sciences of aviation and astronomy. But I’m planning to do it. I wonder if the local FBO will take a reservation for the RG for 2017 . . .

Links:

The Wikipedia entry on the eclipse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_August_21,_2017

A NASA page that includes a Google map
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogle/SEgoogle2001/SE2017Aug21Tgoogle.html
An animated sequence of images taken by the Eumetsat satellite during the total eclipse of the sun on 29 March 2006. You can see the umbral shadow move across Earth’s surface.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR8eGWRT3BA

The lead image shows the moon's shadow on Earth, as seen from the International Space Station at an altitude of 230 miles on March 29, 2006. NASA photo used per NASA’s photo policy.

Many thanks to John Walker and those who built Your Sky, the interactive planetarium of the Web (http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/). The sky map showing the planetary locations at the time of the 2017 eclipse comes from that fine web resource.

Veterans' Day 2011: Passing It On

2011-11-11T10:29:00.003-05:00

A number of new/social media personalities are celebrating Veterans' Day by wearing our WindTees shirts featuring the aircraft and twitter handle of Daren Sorenson, a USAF Lt Col, F-15E Strike Eagle pilot, and Deputy Operations Group Commander at Nellis AFB. Lt Col Sorenson recently received news that he will be awarded (at least his second) Distinguished Flying Cross for actions during his most ...recent deployment to Afghanistan.

I'm fortunate to know Lt Col Sorenson and his brother, Mark Sorenson, a talented airline and airshow pilot. I'm also fortunate to be the nephew of Dennis Reed, a Viet Nam -era air cavalry pilot and later corporate pilot for Kellogg. And I'm fortunate to know dozens of others who are serving now, have served, will serve, and/or are members of families of the foregoing.

I serve as a search-and-rescue pilot and legal officer in the Civil Air Patrol (USAF Auxiliary). I perform a valuable service to my community and country but let's face it: I've never been shot at and it's unlikely that I'll ever face the risk of anything worse than an engine failure.

As a CAP officer, I am frequently in uniform in public and it is not uncommon for people to come up and thank me. I've even gone to pay the check after breakfast, only to find that someone else in the restaurant has already anonymously paid my bill, no doubt because of the uniform. I'm happy to accept thanks for what I do, but I know that the majority of the respect I'm shown is because I'm mistaken for active duty military. The average civilian (and many military personnel) can't tell the difference. So I try to wear the CAP uniform properly and proudly and be worthy of it.

I used to try to explain to little kids at airshows that I'm not an active-duty shooter. (Really, I'm not even a toner.) It just confused the kids when I tried to do that. So now I simply receive the thanks with a big smile and save it up for today. Today, I pass on the greatest portion of the respect that I've received over the last year to those who have done the greater part of earning it.

So, Lt Col Sorenson, Uncle Denny, and others, I hereby pass along this year's installment: Five kids at Selfridge, a guy at Flint, the barista at Starbucks at Woodward and Square Lake, my daughter's kindergarten class, and the guy or gal from the restaurant. I pass along the thanks of these people and I add my own in heaping measure.

And I owe somebody breakfast.

A proud and reflective Veterans' Day to all.

The Hoppers Video is In the Feed!

2011-11-03T15:23:00.002-04:00

Touching the True Source: CAP NESA MAS 2010 - The Combined Audio Episode with Print Version

2011-10-19T06:00:00.002-04:00

Here it is! The full version of my experiences at Civil Air Patrol’s National Emergency Services Academy Mission Aircrew School in June of 2010. All of the audio and all 30,000 words, among with images!

As you know, Airspeed is primarily intended to be consumed (and is overwhelmingly consumed) through thousands of handheld audio and video devices all over the world. But this is a pretty epic presentation (nearly two hours) and some of the more ambitious of you are going to want a linkable place at which to access the whole thing by means of the web. So here you go!

An MP3 file containing the entire 1:49:19 (100MB) essay is available at http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedNESAEssayFull.mp3.

The PDF document with the whole essay and images from the school and the events leading up to it lives at http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/Airspeed_-_Touching_the_True_Source_-_CAP_NESA_MAS_2010_-_v2011-10-10.pdf.

More information about Civil Air Patrol is available at www.gocivilairpatrol.com. More information about NESA is available at www.nesa.cap.gov.

CAP NESA MAS 2010 - Part 3

2011-10-12T06:00:00.000-04:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedNESAEssay03.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

This is the third of a three-episode series covering my experience at Civil Air Patrol’s National Emergency Services Academy Mission Aircrew School (NESA-MAS) in Indiana in the summer of 2010.

You can check out the first episode here and the second episode here.

I intend to make available the entire 30,000-word piece in a single file and PDF document with photos at about the time at which I release the third episode. I might also put the long-form file into the podcast feed on its own.

In the meantime, enjoy this in-depth look at the nation’s premier civilian fixed-wing search-and-rescue flight training school from the perspective of a zero-to-hero CAP Mission Pilot candidate.

The Pile of Awesome on My Desk: IFR Currency, L-39 Editing, NESA MAS Part 3, and Acro Camp Rough Cut

2011-10-07T13:58:00.005-04:00

I’m slowly getting back to the point of editing down some of this summer’s content into episodes. Airshow season here in the northern climes is essentially over, the last aerobatic contest in the area was last weekend, and things are calming down to the low roar that precedes ICAS in December.

I didn’t fly at all in September. Not for lack of trying! I had three attempts get rained or ceilinged out before finally getting up in a glass CAP C-182T on Wednesday to try to claw back some instrument proficiency. After devoting the summer to flying upside down or training for the commercial maneuvers, I had precious little time under the hood or in the clouds. I nailed down my six approaches in April and May, but they were about to fall off for currency purposes. So I launched with Capt Malek in the right seat as safety pilot and banged out four approaches in rapid succession: VOR-A 77G with the published miss and a hold, RNAV 27 77G, RNAV 19 77G, and ILS 9R KPTK. I hand-flew the VOR and ILS and let the G1000 and GFC700 handle the RNAVs. We landed about 40 minutes after sunset and, though the landing didn’t count for night currency, it was pretty darned dark.

I’ve taken to putting two cases of bottled water in the back of the C-182T when flying with just two aircrew. The CG is really far forward in the aircraft with no scanner(s) in the back, and the extra 50 lbs in Cargo Area B helps to take some of the nose-heaviness out of the equation. I love the G1000. I just don’t like to see the nose strut poking through it. The aircraft behaves sooooo much better in the flare with a slightly more aft CG!

I have an annual stan/eval ride coming up in the airplane this month, and I think I’m pretty much ready for that, pending only a little sim time to get my switchology polished.

Otherwise, I have a number of projects that I’m able to dive into.

I need to get the Hoppers promo video done. You’ll recall that I embedded with the team in July and shot two four-ship sorties with seven cameras plus audio, and then went up myself in the 3 and 4 ships to shoot hand-held video. The sky was gray and crappy for the flights, but there are enough good moments to make a primo promotional video for the team.

I need to do the last ingestion of the footage from the Acro Camp shoot at Ray in August and then get the footage of some of the crew guys out to them on a hard drive that Larry Overstreet has kindly sent to me, but that has been sitting on the desk staring at me. I also need to get David Allen’s footage to him so that he can crank out some OPA episodes.

I also need to edit the last part of the NESA MAS series and put together the huge 30,000-word single-MP3 edition, complete with an associated PDF file that will have the full text and pictures.

And, lastly, I need to finish a rough cut of the first rough cut of the first Acro Camp movie. That’s going to take some serious time. But it’s doable.

Thanks for all the downloads last month! Pretty good for the off-season and it suggests that core subscribership is up.

And I have proposals on desks at one Air Force unit and one Navy unit for jet media/orientation flights for the upcoming season of the show. As always, there’s no guarantee with respect to any flight, but the proposals are solid, you guys are a great audience, and the intrepid video, audio, and still crew is locked and loaded if and when the word comes. Airspeed changed the game in aviation new media this year with the T-38 episode. And it’s ready to continue pushing the boundaries.

But you knew that!

CAP NESA MAS 2010 - Part 2

2011-09-27T06:00:00.000-04:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedNESAEssay02.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

This is the second of a three-episode series covering my experience at Civil Air Patrol’s National Emergency Services Academy Mission Aircrew School (NESA-MAS) in Indiana in the summer of 2010.

You can check out the first episode here.

I intend to make available the entire 30,000-word piece in a single file and PDF document with photos at about the time at which I release the third episode. I might also put the long-form file into the podcast feed on its own.

In the meantime, enjoy this in-depth look at the nation’s premier civilian fixed-wing search-and-rescue flight training school from the perspective of a zero-to-hero CAP Mission Pilot candidate.

Airshow Safety: The View from ICAS

2011-09-22T09:08:00.003-04:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedICASCudahy01.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

In the wake of a difficult weekend (and, indeed, a difficult season) for the airshow community, I asked John Cudahy to sit down for a few minutes to talk about airshow safety.

John has been the president of the International Council of Air Shows, Inc. (“ICAS”) since 1997. I’ve heard him speak at the annual convention in Las Vegas for the past two years and I’m returning to Las Vegas again this December.

John is one of those people who has always been on my list of people to bring onto the show at some appropriate time. I had thoughts of bringing him on as a part of the upcoming episode encapsulating my experience attending ICAS’s Airshows 101 class at the last convention. But the events of the summer conspired to make it more important to bring John onto the show now to talk about the ICAS safety culture.

In this interview, John gives you a recap of the history of airshow safety in North America and talks fully and frankly about how the airshow community discusses, addresses, and lives with risk. He identifies the differences between airshow operations and air race operations. And he talks about safety from the standpoint of the crowd and that of the performers themselves.

One note on the audio: In the early going, John differentiates air race and air show operations, but probably misspeaks and says “air show” when he means to say “air race.” But the context makes the audio pretty clear in spite of the transposition.

The photo that leads these show notes is of ICAS member and air boss George Cline (www.airbossinc.com) presenting the Airshows 101 course at the ICAS Convention in 2009. Airshows 101 is a day-long introductory course that explains the basics of airshow logistics, layout, regulatory approvals, and other important information for newer members of airshow organizers. I covered the event in 2009 and attended as a full-up paid student in 2010.

More information about ICAS is available at www.airshows.aero. John’s ICAS bio is at http://www.airshows.aero/MemberProfile/14038.

CAP NESA MAS 2010 - Part 1

2011-09-18T01:16:00.001-04:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedNESAEssay01.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

This is the first of a three-episode series covering my experience at Civil Air Patrol’s National Emergency Services Academy Mission Aircrew School (NESA-MAS) in Indiana in the summer of 2010.

I intend to make available the entire 30,000-word piece in a single file and PDF document with photos at about the time at which I release the third episode. I might also put the long-form file into the podcast feed on its own.

In the meantime, enjoy this in-depth look at the nation’s premier civilian fixed-wing search-and-rescue flight training school from the perspective of a zero-to-hero CAP Mission Pilot candidate.

Reno Air Race Accident 16 September 2011

2011-09-17T11:10:00.004-04:00

Acro Camp 2 Now Filming!

2011-08-25T12:39:00.002-04:00

Selfridge 2011

2011-08-23T05:21:00.002-04:00

Temperatures never got much past 80 and there was a good breeze. Good weather for being in Nomex all day. Not so much for photography. I headed out to the show line to shoot the Rhino demo and the heritage flight, but gray airplanes against a dark gray sky don’t work that well. Still, the F/A-18F is a beautiful airframe and it makes great noise.

For those who have asked, I was on the base when Todd Green fell. I was down near Base Ops the CAP display. I probably saw the pass on which Todd fell, but show center, where the fall occurred, was obscured by the roof of the structure under which I was standing. I found out about the fall about 15 minutes later from a friend who was returning from seeing Brett Hunter fly. My thoughts are with Todd’s family and friends. I met Todd briefly at the ICAS convention in Vegas in December.

I also briefly met Bryan Jensen at the same convention. Bryan died on Saturday at the Kansas City Aviation Expo Airshow when he failed to recover his Pitts Model 12 from a maneuver.

It’s been a rough weekend for the airshow community. We lost Todd and Bryan, as well as Flight Lieutenant Jon Egging at the Bournemouth Air Festival in Dorset, England. That makes four fatals this year.

Aerobatics and airshow performance are risky. The performers understand the risks better than anyone else. Safety in operations is a passion for these people. They manage risk in every way they can. I know. I’ve spent time in the box and on the flight line with performers, especially this season. I also attended Airshows 101 at ICAS in December and had other opportunities to see and hear safety discussed in a frank and open way.

Even random data is necessarily clumpy. I’m hoping that the mainstream media realizes that there were no airshow fatalities in 2009 or 2010 and there was only one in 2008. And there hasn’t been a spectator fatality in North America since 1952.

Any accident or incident is one too many. Perfect is the goal. Nobody understands this better than those who participate in the airshow industry. And, as a guy who has flown with airshow performers in an Extra, several Pitts, an F-16D, and two L-39s, I’ve seen the safety culture and commitment firsthand.

What’ll happen going forward? The same thing that happens in with every airshow accident or incident. Performers and others in the industry will scour the circumstances for details and then will debrief it thoroughly, openly, and with brutal honesty.

I remember the debrief scenes from Blue Angels: A Year in the Life. Each pilot ended each critique session, no matter how good or brutal, by saying, “I’ll fix my safeties and I’m glad to be here.” It’s not just rhetoric. And that attitude is not confined to the Blues. It pervades this very special industry.

Futher affiant sayeth not.

The crew for the Acro Camp 2 movie shoot begins arriving later today. Jack Hodgson, the writer, arrives this afternoon. Will, Tori, Shawn, David, and Ruby arrive in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. And the campers arrive Thursday with ground school beginning at 1700. I’ve been up since 0300. I can’t sleep. There’s unbelievable energy surrounding this shoot and it’s not hard to get caught up in it, even when I should be stockpiling sleep.

Watch this space and www.acrocamp.com for more information!

Airspeed Demo Flight: Remos GX NXT

2011-08-22T07:46:00.002-04:00

We went out to the aircraft to see the features Christian described. Being an all-composite design the lack of riveting and associated bumps and lumps was striking. As you look past the propeller, the engine cowling starts to flare out to provide a spacious interior. The composite construction allows for complex curves to make a comfortable and roomy interior that you don't expect in a two-place aircraft. Nice straight lines on trailing edges and even gaps between control surfaces shows their attention to detail.

Christian explained that the tapering aft of the fuselage allowed for reduced weight and drag reduction made possible by the composite construction. He described the aircraft is rated for +4/-2 Gs and, if it's under a 1,000 lbs., then it becomes +5/-3 Gs. It has a 100-knot cruising speed at a conservative 5 gph fuel flow so, with the 21 gallons on board, it gill give 3.5 hours of cruise with VFR reserve.

The demo aircraft was equipped with two Dynon SkyView displays and a Garmin 696 in the center panel, providing airport diagrams on the ground and a wealth of airport information on the large display.

The center stick appeals to me. It just seems like the right way to control an airplane. The aircraft has dual linked throttles, so the pilot in the left seat can use either left or right hand on the stick and then the other hand can use either left or right mounted throttle. Thus, the aircraft accommodates both pilots who are accustomed to the traditional control configuration of stick-flown aircraft while those who might be more comfortable with a yoke and the left-handedness that that engenders will also find the controls intuitive.

The GX NXT accelerates quickly and Ryan allowed me to perform the takeoff after the photo ship departed. The controls were light but not touchy. It was a brisk climb of 700 FPM despite the mid afternoon departure and warm temps. The Rotax 912 engine started instantly was very smooth despite the RPMs being twice what I'm used to from the engines behind which I typically fly.

Fully articulating tinted sun visors allow the operator to position them horizontally or vertically with ease to reduce sun glare to increase comfort and viewing pleasure.

The Remos features nose wheel steering and a single push lever seen angling up between the seats that activates both brakes. It's very intuitive to use and is a nice change from differential braking.

Ryan showed me the various ways the PFD can be configured to emphasis more on the attitude instruments or engine parameters based on the user preference and flight regime. That's just one of the advantages of the Dynon system. The integrated EFIS and EMS displays along with the transponder reduces panel space as it's all in a single unit.

Our patience paid off on the third day as we had near-cloudless skies in which to shoot air-to-air. Ryan explained that the doors can be removed for even better visibility to enjoy the open air aspect. I preferred the doors on but still enjoyed an amazing view out my door as the plexiglass extends very low and makes for an incredible view.

The Remos GX NXT showed exceptional handling and was an ease to fly and land. Most importantly, it was fun and enjoyable to fly and we need more of that in general aviation to attract and keep pilots flying. If I continued talking to Tommy I think he would have sold me a plane as he made a great case for the economics of it being on a leaseback. Something worth considering so more people can have the opportunity to rent it and enjoy this fun flying machine.

Afte the flight, I asked Christian what feature they left off the plane due to time constraints or any other reason that something would have to be left off to include in the next version. His answer? An Espresso machine, Barrista not included though…. Now that would be a great way to travel.

There’s more information about the Remos GX NXT at www.remos.com.

Story by Ron Klutts

Photos by Jo Hunter (www.futurshox.net)

The Rutan Boomerang

2011-08-14T14:45:00.005-04:00

This is a regular blog post that updates listeners and viewers on events in the Airspeed world. Airspeed is an audio and video Internet media source that brings the best in aviation and aerospace to media devices and desktops everywhere. If you’re looking for the audio and video content, please check the other entries on the site. It’s all here! In the meantime, enjoy this update about what’s going on in Airspeed’s world.

California-based CFI Ron Klutts is an occasional contributor to Airspeed. He captured this story at AirVenture Oshkosh 2011.

I was admiring the Rutan Boomerang in the Wednesday of Airventure Oshkosh when I spotted two guys who appeared to be working on it. Intrigued, I approached and introduced myself and that's when I met Tres Clements. He is a manufacturing engineer with Scaled Composites. He lead a team of volunteers who worked over several months to get the Boomerang ready for a tribute to Burt Rutan at Oshkosh.

Unique Design Features

The asymmetric features of the Boomerang are apparent in this view but, as Tres describes the flying qualities, it's more symmetric than it looks. He discovered during the renovation why certain design choices were made and how they solved aerodynamic problems in an unexpected way. With the CG actually between the two engine pods, use of rudder is mostly not required at high angles of attack. The design cancels out much asymmetry during this phase of flight.

Tres recounted how that was one of the benefits in working on this project in getting to know and sit next to Mike Melvill in Burt's personal airplane. While waiting for the air show to end, I had the opportunity to hear Mike recount many stories of flying to airshows in his own Long-EZ and later perform aerobatics in the show and his take on the other performers and safety was always on his mind. The wealth of experience he has gained and was willing to share with others was apparent.

Each engine of the Boomerang has a vertical stabilizer behind it so the propwash adds to the directional control. Adding to the asymmetric look is the lack of a horizontal stabilizer on the right side of the engine boom. Why add weight and more control surfaces if Burt says it's not needed?

Rebuilding the Panel

Tres estimates that the team spent more than 1,500 hours going through the systems to get the Bomerang airworthy again. That included the panel.

Burt used an Apple Macbook as the engine monitoring and data collection system. While the panel still worked when Tres and the team powered it up, the panel needed updating.

Ryan Malherbe from General Atomics helped to make and wire the panel. The center is dominated by a Garmin stack consisting of a GMA 350 Audio Panel, a GTN 750 touch screen WAAS GPS NAV/Comm, and a GTX 327. On the left is an iPad 2 running ForeFlight Mobile HD, supplying VFR/IFR charts and all the airport info and taxiway diagrams needed to keep a pilot informed. An AuRACLE 2120 with dual screens at the bottom of the panel monitors engine parameters.

With room for five and a pressurized cabin maintaining a 7,000 MSL cabin pressure at FL 200, the Boomerang can travel 1,500 miles with full fuel while carrying a payload of 865 pounds, this is a serious go places airplane.

Pictured here are Ryan Malherbe on the left with Tres Clements on the right.

Tres says that Burt didn't want the airplane just sitting in a museum on static display where it might convey the idea that it didn't fly or was unsafe. He felt the best way to get the message out was for the airplane to fly and demonstrate it's capabilities by doing what it does best. To fly and be seen.

So Tres is doing appearances and presentations. He’ll be at San Luis Obispo (KSBP) for the EAA Chapter 170 meeting at Hangar 49 at 11:30 on Saturday 20 August. Tres will discuss restoring and flying the Boomerang and then the chapter will host an after-meeting barbecue.

Photo credits (in order of appearance):

Brandon Inks

Tres Clements

Ron Klutts

Front Seat, Back Seat: Pitts Acro and Transition

2011-08-10T12:07:00.001-04:00

The back seat is better in all but a few respects. You can see much better because you’re further away from the wings. The sight gage is directly to your left. It’s really striking after you’ve been in the front.

But, with the back seat comes a lot more workload, You start and shut down the airplane (and hot-starting a Pitts is MUCH more art than science). The mixture and trim controls are back there. You have to watch the temperatures and pressures. You have to tune the radios and watch the GPS.

It makes sense to start out in the front. For one thing, as long as you have a talented and trusty IP in the back, you can pretty much just climb in and go, thus making lessons a lot more efficient. You learn to be very technical and precise with your airspeed and other elements of landings because you don’t have a lot of outside stimulus to tempt you to just wing it. And, if you’re not very precise with your feet just yet, you have a very short arm from the center of yaw and you aren’t going to make yourself sick on the early flights by failing to be coordinated (although your instructor will likely suffer kidney damage if you’re really wild).

You have to get pretty good at landing the Pitts from the first seat before you move to the back. Landing a Pitts from the front is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. You line up on the runway and set airspeed for precisely 95 KIAS. At about 50 AGL, you make one last check for deer on the runway and begin the flare. You lose all visibility in front of you. You just wait for the runway edges to sneak into your peripheral vision and then hope that you sink in a landing attitude until meeting the runway a little above stall speed.

If you don’t see both runway edges after a few seconds, it’s time to go around. It’s not hard to land left or right and I can easily imagine taking out an entire row of runway identifier lights.

If you get it down, then it’s full back on the stick to keep the tail down and you tap dance down the centerline while sneaking your feet up onto the brakes to think about slowing it down.

This is what you need to do reliably before you move to the back seat.

Once you get to move to the back seat, you have a new learning curve to deal with, but that happens fairly quickly. And then you can get on with the business of flying acro with better visibility and situational awareness.

There are any number of reasons for starting out in the front seat, but I buy the one that has to do with the instructor. Landing a Pitts from the front seat is very hard. But I would imagine that recovering somebody else’s bad landing (or other botched maneuver) is even harder in the front seat. Thus, when you go to the back seat, your IP is necessarily moving to the front seat. It would be a really good idea if you had made most or all of your major screw-ups in the front seat (while the IP can have an easier time recovering from the back) before moving to the back seat and putting your IP up front where things are not only harder, but where your IP isn’t likely to be called upon urgently until you’ve already served him or her a crap sandwich from which you’ll be expecting him or her to help you escape.

The shots in this post were taken during my last practice session at Ray before going to Jackson for the IAC Michigan Aerobatic Open. I’ve since done the first flight of my back seat transition and I’ll get some stills and video of the transition flights soon.

In the meantime, the Pitts just gets cooler. I can feel a genuine addition coming on!

Return from AirVenture 2011; FOD Re-Revisited

2011-07-31T15:37:00.004-04:00

FOD and I are back from AirVenture Oshkosh 2011. The washing machine and dryer are humming away upstairs. The camping equipment is drying out on the porch. The memory cards are hemorrhaging their content onto several hard drives. The Airspeed crew vehicle still bears such dust and mud as has been able to stick to the vehicle over the course of the nine-hour drive yesterday.

This is the third year that we’ve hit the Russell Military Museum on the way to and/or from Oshkosh. And we’ve taken a picture of FOD outside the gas station at Exit 1A each year, obscuring one of the Os in “FOOD” to make “FOD.”

Airspeed correspondent Ron Klutts and photographer extraordinaire Jo Hunter got up for a flight in the new Remos model and I’ll have some content up from that ride shortly.

In the meantime, it’s now all about getting ready for principal photography for Acro Camp 2 at Ray Community Airport. It’s less than 30 days away and the real work begins now.

Look for maybe one more Airspeed episode before Acro Camp and possible some additional pictures and other content. And then there’ll be a content blitz during the actual camp!

My Movie Ate My Podcast!

2011-07-30T08:00:00.000-04:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedMovieAtePodcast.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

By way of getting some content up into the feed, I though it might be a good time to sit down with Will Hawkins, director of A Pilot’s Story and talk about both his film and my film, Acro Camp. We’re each coming down to the final stages of editing our respective films and this conversation turned into a good discussion of what independent filmmaking is and can be. Especially when it’s independent filmmaking about aviation!

Check out A Pilot’s Story at www.apilotsstory.com. Check out Will and Rico’s production company at www.wilcofilms.com.

And, of course, follow progress on the Acro Camp films at www.acrocamp.com!

Technical note: The mic on my headset didn’t connect properly, so my voice is being picked up by the built-in mic on my Mac. Not the best audio quality, but a good conversation nevertheless.

Firebase Airspeed - OSH 2011

2011-07-29T17:55:00.001-04:00

It’s Friday here at Oshkosh and FOD and I have checked off several of our traditional activities. Most important is the annual Bell 47 helicopter ride from Pioneer Airport. This is FOD’s fifth AirVenture. I first brought him when he was five.

We like to get an aerial shot of the campground each year and mark the campsite in a photo like this. We’re again camping with the myTransponder crew and lots of other social media mavens from both hemispheres. I’m very grateful again this year to have access to Home Sweet Road, myTransponder’s Class A motor home, which is providing the electricity to power the laptop for this post and the air conditioning that makes conscious thought possible. We’re at Lindbergh and 48th this year, kitty-corner from the WiFi hut. If you’re so inclined, please stop by and say hello!

Oshkosh Arrival; T-6B Texan II

2011-07-28T10:22:00.004-04:00

We arrived yesterday at Oshkosh and hooked up with the myTransponder crew at Lindbergh and 48th. Thunderstorms and rain kept the skies pretty low and gray most of the day and the shooting was iffy at best. But that’s the beauty of Oshkosh. There’s something to do no matter the conditions. So I went strolling in the static area.

It’s not as though there aren’t a load of really fast and pointy aircraft on the ramp. There’s even a 9th RW T-38A from Beale. But I remain a sucker for the T-6 Texan II.

The copy on ramp yesterday was a B-model in the unmistakable Navy yellow. The Navy uses it for for Primary and Intermediate Joint Naval Flight Officer (NFO) training. It’s also a B model, which I hadn’t yet had the chance to see up close.

The airframe and powerplant are essentially the same as those in the T-6A. A Pratt & Whitney PT-6A-68 engine, downrated to 1,100 hp, provides all of the power you’ll need for maneuvering and the straightforward flying characteristics provide a platform that makes pilots out of pedestrians. The T-6A and B are both essentially Pilatus PC-9s with Martin-Baker ejection seats.

Lt Col Tom Priest is the Operations Officer at Training Wing Five at NAS Whiting Field in Florida. He brought the aircraft to OSH and was taking questions from the crowd. I asked him about the difference that make the B model what it is. A quick hop up onto the wing made it all pretty clear. Where the A model has an overwhelmingly round-gage cockpit, the B model is wall-to-wall glass.

Lt Col Priest says that the glass makes sense because most of the destination platforms for NFO trainees are either glass now or will be soon. The only downside of the automation of avionics and flight systems appears to affect NFO trainees who go on to helicopter platforms, where that automation is either not available in the airframe or of a kind that doesn’t really lend itself to automation in the first place. Just as we’re seeing in the GA fleet, glass is taking over cockpits.

There’s nothing wrong with anything else on the ramp. But I just keep coming back to the T-6A/B. It’s a go-kart in the sky that makes military pilots. It’s a blast to fly in the lower parts of the MOA and it has better power and performance than the Air Force had with the T-37 Tweet or the Navy’s T-34C Mentor. I look back very fondly on the 1.4 hours I got to log with the 559th FTS at Randolph AFB. And I’d climb back into one of these airframes any time.

If you’re headed for NFO/UPT, I envy you. You have a spectacular airframe to look forward to. Especially if it’s yellow like this one!

Shooting the MacGyver Six

2011-07-23T13:00:00.003-04:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedMacGuyverSix.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

Many of us are used to the aircraft that we regularly fly. We know how the engine sounds during all phases of flight. We know where all the gages are. We know what kind of control pressures to expect. We know how all of the avionics work. And there’s a lot to be said about being familiar with your aircraft. You’re safer and more competent that way.

But sometimes it’s a good idea to break out of the familiar and go stretch the envelope a little. And not necessarily by flying upside down or pulling Gs. Anyone who’s listened to Airspeed for very long knows that I have an ongoing love of a certain Cessna 152, tail number N94891. Almost 10 years ago, I flew 891 on my first solo from Runway 5L at Willow Run Airport (KYIP) in southeast Michigan. 891 lives at Solo Aviation at Ann Arbor Municipal Airport (KARB) now. Two years ago, I tracked her down and got up with an instructor to get checked out in her. I did it mostly for the nostalgia of it.

But I realized that it’s also good every once in awhile to go fly an airplane that’s different from what you usually fly. I mostly fly Cessna 172s and 182s, and that’s mostly Civil Air Patrol aircraft when I’m out flying proficiency missions. Not that the C-172 or C-182 are huge aircraft, but they’re pretty stable for what they are. I noticed at Oshkosh two years ago when I was flying the Remos that it struck me at touchy at the controls and very susceptible to turbulence. Really, the Remos is fine. It’s just smaller and more responsive and I wasn’t used to that.

So I’ve made it a point to go get checked out in 891 or a similar aircraft every year as a way of flying something different and making sure that my skills continue to embrace a broader range of aircraft sizes and handling qualities. And, while I was at it, I realized that I could also turn the flight into an additional exercise.

Do you remember the TV series MacGuyver that ran on ABC from 1985 to 1992? Secret agent Angus MacGuyver would escape from the bad guys and save western civilization using only a sock, a flashlight, some clarinet reeds, and Scotch tape. To “MacGyver” is even a verb in certain circles.

891 was an IFR-capable aircraft when I first flew her, but she’s VFR only at this point. But she has a VOR head and everything else that one would need to shoot a basic VOR approach. There’s only one nav radio and no flip-flop switch, so it would be tough, but not impossible, to identify an intersection by re-tuning the VOR to a cross-radial.

But let’s make it more difficult. What else might you have in your flight bag? What about that Sporty’s handheld radio that has a VOR tuner and a primitive OBS display? What about that hunting and fishing GPS that you carry as a backup? Wouldn’t those and other knick-knacks be the ingredients for a simulated partial-everything emergency VOR 6 into Ann Arbor? The “MacGuyver 6?”

I arrived early and preflighted 891. About halfway though, Theresa Whiting arrived. Theresa is a CFI at Solo Aviation and is the 2010 Great Lakes Region CFI of the Year. She woulf conduct the checkout. I did my usual flow-based preflight without the checklist and then stood at the nose of the airplane with the checklist to go catch anything that I might have missed. We briefed the flight and I got points for my CAP-style brief format and flow. Then we started up and taxied out.

I had my hunting/fishing GPS in the pocket of my thermal vest and was wearing my headset that has the view-limiting device on it for IFR practice. I had the approach plate for the VOR 6 at Ann Arbor handy on my kneeboard. Shortly after the run-up, we were cleared to take off.

[Audio 01]

We went south of the airport, being careful to avoid the Detroit Class B to the east. Visibility was between four and six miles with haze and there was no horizon to speak of. I did the steep turns more or less on instruments with the occasional glance out the left window to track by progress around the compass. I got the burble of my own wake turbulence on both steep turns. I climbed a little on the second one, but got it back on track by the time we got back around to the initial point. Kind of like Chi Chi Rodriguez’s gold swing. It might be ugly at points, but it’s nearly perfect for that half-inch interval when he actually made contact with the ball.

Then the stall and the engine-out. Both went beautifully. Proof that training pays off. I hadn’t flown for four months before that day and it certainly wasn’t mad kinesthetic skills that caused me to fly that well. It was ingrained training. Doing the same thing the same way every time for hundreds of hours over the course of years. I might be a pretty good pilot someday! So I stretched the parameters a little by getting the ATIS, tuning the VOR, and setting up the approach.

[Audio 02]

Then the hood came down. To set the table, I’m going to fly the VOR 6 approach, which involves tracking in to Runway 6 on the 215 radial of the Salem VOR (SVM). I’m using the single VOR head in the airplane to track my inbound course. I need to identify HARTZ, the final approach fix at some point. I could technically do that by re-tuning the VOR to check a cross-radial, but there’s no flip-flop switch and only knobs to turn to set the frequency. The other way is to use the distance from the Salem VOR with either DME or an IFR GPS.

To add complications to this approach scenario, I assumed that the VOR cross-radial wouldn’t work and instead loaded in Salem on my little hunting GPS and put that in my lap to use for DME.

Remember, we’re VFR and there’s no actual emergency. But I wanted to see how I’d deal with an unfamiliar setup in the cockpit.

[Audio 03]

The instrument scan came back to me pretty quickly. Even though I mostly fly G1000 equipment when I’m IFR, I’ve made it a habit of shooting approaches in round-gage aircraft pretty frequently to keep that scan internalized. I’d never been in a C-152 under the hood before. It’s a lot more squirrely than even a C-152. I had to back off on the controls and fly with my fingertips to keep from over-commanding the aircraft. The attitude indicator was disagreeing with the turn coordinator and the DG. I let the panel vote and concluded that the Attitude indicator was goofy. Theresa confirmed it.

[Audio 04]

It got worse and I started getting the leans.

[Audio 05]

It continues to amaze me that, even though I know that the attitude indicator is goofy, I keep looking at it and I want in the worst way to fly based on what it says. I try focusing on the turn coordinator instead, but to little avail. Theresa found an instrument cover and I blocked out the attitude indicator. By that time, we were about 10 miles from the airport and it was time to call the tower.

[Audio 06]

We decided to go to the circling minimum of 1,540 MSL. Theresa would tell me when I got within visibility minimums for that approach and I’d do the landing just like I had descended from the mist.

[Audio 07]

So there I am, partial panel in an aircraft that I’d never flown under the hood before with a failed attitude indicator, a single VOR, and a hunting GPS in my lap. And the winds aloft are from the left at a pretty good clip. I’m taking big cuts at the approach course, but not doing too badly.

Not having things where I expected to see them really added to the workload. I think I had to work twice as hard to get the same result. Using the turn coordinator and DG for bank. Using the little GPS in my lap for DME. Managing altitude and airspeed in an airplane for which, if I ever had preferred power settings, I’ve since forgotten them. We hit the final approach fix and started down.

[Audio 08]

A few minutes later, the tower cleared us to land and Theresa called the airport in sight. The wind was more or less directly across the runway and the tower offered me either landing direction. I chose 24 out of force of habit. I came out from under the hood and kept the airplane in close.

[Audio 09]

One more GUMPS check and it’s time to get down.

[Audio 10]

We did a total of three takeoffs and landings. My approaches were pretty good. My touchdowns were not beautiful, but competent. On the last one, Theresa tried to compliment me, but the airplane immediately left the pavement again for a moment before settling back down.

So I’m checked out in the airplane for another year or so and I can go back to Ann Arbor and fly 891 whenever I like. And it was a good experience in other ways. It’s not that I know how I’d react and perform if systems really started crapping out in IMC. There’s no way to simulate the sweat and the pucker factor. But it’s a good exercise to change things up every once in awhile, add to your workload, and see how you respond. Unfamiliar airplane, failed attitude indicator, single VOR, and nonstandard DME were pretty good for this time.

I still need to get up and try out the VOR function on my Sporty’s radio. I think that that’d be at least interesting if not actually helpful as a training exercise.

If you’re flying the same airplane the same way all the time, you’re missing out on an opportunity to test your skills and become a better pilot.

I hope you never have to shoot the MacGyver 6. But if you ever had to, wouldn’t it be great if you had done something like it before on a nice VFR day with a competent safety pilot watching out for you?

More information about Solo Aviation:

801 Airport Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
sharon@soloaviation.aero
Phone: 734.994.6651
Fax: 734.994.6671
http://www.soloaviation.aero/

IAC Michigan Aerobatic Open Diary: Making Good on a Deal

2011-07-10T21:38:00.003-04:00

The IAC Michigan Aerobatic Open has wrapped up and I left the field this afternoon with the second place plaque for the Primary category.

I started today in second place, where I've been since the first flight. On the second flight, first and third places swapped places and the lead widened to about 15 points (not much). So first place was within striking distance.

I walked the ramp mumbling to myself and doing the acro dance for which aerobatic pilots are sometimes known. I set up the cockpit just the way I wanted it (kidney-relocating tight). Then I flew the last sortie and left everything I had in the box.

I scored about as well as I had in the prior flights (and so did the other competitors) and thus ended up second. But I had much better situational awareness and my peripheral comprehension was a load better. I didn't do anything that would impress Mike Goulian, but I broke out of a plateau and began to better understand what I was doing up there.

There's something about an epiphany that comes to you when you're inverted on a 45-degree downline, timing the roll and pullout. Actually understanding what you're seeing over the nose and reacting to it in a businesslike and competent manner. Not as precisely as I'd like to, mind you. But, hanging in the straps a couple of thousand feet above the judges, I realized that this is a doable thing. I could get good at this. It is within my ability. It's not impossible. It's a simple matter of hard work.

When a thing that previously existed only in a dreamstate as some abstract thing suddenly becomes sharply possible with only hard work between here and there, it's an exceedingly rare and special thing. I got that this weekend.

I made a deal with myself not long ago. By going to Jackson and ramming the throttle forward in anger, I made good on that deal. Three flights. 18 minutes each from startup to shutdown. I flew aerobatics in anger.

I'm not Greg Koontz or Brett Hunter. I never will be. But now, when I stand there along the show line, I feel as though I have more right to be there. Because I took the next step beyond mere fanboy. Because I reached over the fence and tasted some small part of what happens in the box. And I'll keep reaching in there for the electric stuff that happens there.

I made a deal with myself. This weekend, I made good on that deal. And it feels good.

IAC Michigan Aerobatic Open Diary: Flying Aerobatics in Anger

2011-07-10T00:08:00.002-04:00

“Steve Tupper, the box is yours. Have a good flight.”

These words have now been uttered twice on a discreet frequency in the skies near Jackson, Michigan. Each time, they have caused the occupant of the front seat of a growling Pitts S-2B circling at 3,800 MSL to hunch down behind the windshield, swallow hard, and think thoughts to the effect of, “Your damned right it is! Watch this!”

I have now flown aerobatics in anger.

I have sucked, mind you. In fact, I have sucked mightily. But I have flown acro in (or near) a box with judges looking up and giving scores.

For those just joining the story in progress, I’m flying in the Primary (easiest) category at the IAC Michigan Aerobatic open at Jackson County Reynolds Field (KJXN). I’m flying a Pitts S-2B with Don Weaver in the trunk as safety pilot. Don is as talkative and helpful as ever through takeoff, climb, and orbit until I wave into the box. Then he falls silent and says and does nothing until I finish and wave back out (or make a genuine attempt to kill us or ask for his help).

Three competitors are flying primary here at Jackson. After two of the three times flying the Primary sequence, I’m in second place and only 15 points out of the lead. First place is within reach and I’m going to make a real run at it tomorrow.

I have scored very consistently the first two flights. Within a few hundredths of a percent the same. I have screwed up slightly different things each time. I felt a lot better about the second flight. And I have a pretty good idea of what I need to do on the third one.

The thing that is getting to me is the second maneuver. The spin. I haven’t gotten good entries into the spin on either of the two competition flights thus far. And that affects my setup for the remaining maneuvers. If I can nail the spin, that might be enough to pull this out.

In any case, it’s late. I need to hit the sack so I can fly my best tomorrow. More when I get back to the keyboard.

IAC Michigan Aerobatic Open Diary: I SUCK!

2011-07-07T23:33:00.003-04:00

The good news is that I’ve signed onto my very first FAA waiver. That’s the signature page right there. The FAA waiver allows a number of things, including the obvious items like being able to fly upside down in active Class D airspace. And some not-so-obvious things, such as being able to fly with less than the full fuel reserves (essential when you’re flying aerobatics and need the aircraft as light as possible – As long as you can glide to the runway when you’re done, you’re good to go).

The other good news is that the contest inspector teched out the aircraft, parachutes and pilots, so Don, I, the parachutes, and the Pitts are all good to go. Don and I flew back to Ray Community Airport (57D) in the Archer and then Don and I flew the Pitts back to Jackson (KJXN) to get teched out and to fly some practice sorties in the box. It was kind of nice to just fly the Pitts straight and level. In fact, I actually tracked the course pretty consistently from the front seat. There’s no GPS (or much of anything else) up there, so Don would call out the occasional heading correction and I’d pick a cloud or a lake or some other landmark and fly the course visually. I think that many pilots get goofed up by the instrument rating and forget how consistently one can fly by just picking landmarks and flying to them. I know that I’m one of those pilots.

We also got some formation in with the Archer during the first few minutes after departing Ray. Pierre shot some pictures of the Pitts from the Archer and I’m looking forward to seeing those.

Having declared good news, there’s bad news, too. I SUCK!

I flew the whole IAC 2011 primary with Don out above the farm fields this past Sunday and I was really happy with my performance. Don seemed to be happy with it, too. So I went into this practice session excited and optimistic.

That all evaporated as soon as I was about 500 feet up and climbing. I have studied the airport grounds using Google Maps and I know where the box is. Heck, I spent the morning out there staking out Tyvek to mark it. But everything went into a cocked hat when I got up there to fly the sequence. Box? What box? Where’s the damned box?

I had an awful time identifying where the box was. In my defense, the box is to the west of, and parallel to, Runway 6/24. It doesn’t line up with anything else. No roads, no section markers, no nothing. And it’s nearly impossible to see anything (much less the box markers) out of the front seat of a Pitts S-2B. But I ought to be able to get the general gist.

So, thus lacking situational awareness and really preoccupied with how disoriented I was, I flew for crap. I over-rotated on the spin and got disoriented on the pull-out. The Cuban was pinched at the top, I was shallow on the downline, and I didn’t hold it long enough. The loop was pinched at the top. My slow roll sucked as badly as it usually does. The second run through didn’t show much improvement. I got the spin stopped at the right point (even if I was cocked over with too much right rudder), but I forgot the aerobatic turn and even got turned around by 90 degrees, confused Runway 14/32 for Runway 6/24, and started heading out of the box to the east over the airport (a maneuver guaranteed to get the tower nervous, if not angry).

I knew that I’d probably have an outing like this the first time I tried to fly the sequence in a box. I knew that a certain amount of Sunday was dumb luck. But I didn’t expect to suck this badly. I absolutely stank up the joint.

But that is, in large part, why I’m here on Thursday and why I’m going to go practice a few times on Friday before competing Saturday and Sunday. I’m at least smart enough to know that I need to work on this stuff.

I have a lot to think about tonight and tomorrow morning. Really think about the box location. Really think about the maneuvers. Get a list of questions together for Don so that I can fully debrief the flight tomorrow morning.

And then get a little more comfortable in my office there in the front seat. When you boil my time down, I have something like 1.5 hours flying the Pitts aerobatically. And that’s in bits and pieces from five flights

And I suppose that I could add a couple of other items of good news. My takeoffs and landings are getting a lot better. Nowhere near perfect, mind you. But Don hasn’t had to intervene in five of my last six landings and I think I’m getting the feel of the airplane. I still have a way to go in getting my footwork right. I need to get the pitch attitude on takeoff more consistent. I need to round out a little more gracefully on the landings. But I’m getting it. I’ll probably move to the back seat after a the competition is over and I get in a few more flights. That’ll make things easier in terms of visibility.

And my acro tolerance is really improving. I had no nausea in the course of flying the sequence twice and doing some other maneuvering. That’s a real improvement. It’s hard to fly when you’re worried getting lunch all over what few instruments you have up there in the front seat. I’ve know for years that I can fly a fair amount of acro once I build up tolerance. And flying lots of short hops like this is a good way to build it. I have a weaker stomach than most people who fly acro. But I keep at it. I think that I get a certain amount of respect from people b ecause of that. I’m the dog who keeps chasing cars. Because, one day, I might catch one.

So tomorrow is another day and another series of sorties in the box. I have a LOT to work on. But I’ll keep at it. The goal for the competition is to complete the sequence with no safeties and no FAA violations. I have tomorrow to get to the point where I can do that. And I’m going to take that opportunity.

I have a deal to make good on, you see. And I intend to make good on that deal.

IAC Michigan Aerobatic Open Diary: Setting the Box Markers

2011-07-07T23:18:00.003-04:00

I’m in Jackson for the IAC Michigan Aerobatic Open. Competition is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday and the aerobatic box is open for practice today and Friday. It’s being held at Jackson County Reynolds Field (KJXN).

That is, once the box gets marked.

I spent the morning driving around the airport and environs with the IAC crew setting up box markers. Basically, three-foot-wide rolls of Tyvek about 30 feet long. You stake out these sheets of Tyvek at the corners of the box, at the midpoints, and at the center.

The box is 3,000 feet by 3,000 feet and it goes 3,000 feet vertically from 1,500 AGL (about 2,500 MSL here) up to 4,500 AGL (5,500 MSL). The box sits to the west of the airport proper and it’s parallel with Runway 6/24. Because it’s aligned with a runway and not with any section lines or other intuitive landmarks, the box marking is particularly important here at Jackson.

Grab a couple of vehicles and a couple of airband radios, get clearance from the tower, and head out onto the airport nailing down Tyvek at all of the important points. We used GPS to precisely locate the points and then aligned them using a sighting device with a whiskey compass.

Not all of the places we needed to reach were accessible from the airport grounds themselves. At one point, we drove behind the local Sam’s Club and hopped the fence to lay out a marker in a little meadow just on the other side of the fence.

Although I’ve always known that something like this must necessarily precede an aerobatic contest or similar event, this is the first time that I’ve actually gone out and helped. A lot goes into the process.

Making Good on a Deal

2011-07-04T22:12:00.008-04:00

This is a regular blog post. Looking for show notes or links to show audio or video? Keep scolling or check ou the archives in the sidebar. It’s all here!

On Sunday, I went to the Battle Creek Field of Flight Airshow and Balloon Festival in the more traditional sense. I spent Friday and Saturday at Hangar 1 on the field, embedded with The Hoppers, a civilian L-39 jet team, setting up cameras, offloading video, and riding on a couple of hops in the back seat. Sunday was about hanging out with the crowd and touching base with that element of the airshow experience.

I got to see Kent Pietsch fly his Interstate Cadet from the other end of the show line. It’s closer to the staging areas for the show aircraft and it’s a different view. Kent has long captured my imagination in much the same way that Greg Koontz or John Mohr have. In the “It’s not how fast, it’s how slow” vein of classic barnstorming. Hammerheads peaking at 200 AGL. Doing a steep turn at treetop level around the TACAN station. Picking up Tom Green from the top of a camper. Really wonderful control with light wing loading and low horsepower.

Then the F-15E Strike Eagle Demo. Cash and BUDA wringing out the jet in one of the best-orchestrated and executed single ship demos I think I’ve ever seen. This was the second show at which I’ve seen them fly and second, third, and fourth time I’ve seen the 2011 demo. It just gets better every time.

About the time the Eagle landed, my iPhone buzzed. It was a text message from Don Weaver saying that Don had the Berz Flight Training Pitts at Pontiac. Don and some others were practicing for next weekend’s IAC Michigan Aerobatic Open and, if I could get there, there was a slot for me to fly.

I had enough content from the Battle Creek show. And I had even handed off in-cockpit video of the Hopper flights to the local TV station. Mission, for all practical purposes, accomplished.

I packed up, headed through the trampled grass, said goodbye to the Battle Creek media chair, and pulled out of the parking area.

The world has more than its share of aviation enthusiasts. I know. I’m one of them. And I’m as competent an enthusiast as you’ll ever meet. Climbing in, on, and around jets with hot seats. Setting cameras, knowing the angles. Troubleshooting technical issues. Being a very-low-maintenance rider who needs only the safety brief and is never a distraction in the back seat. Being a guy who has a better than average chance of being able to land the jet if the front-seater ever took a nap.

But, at the end of the day, I’m something of a poser. I post gorgeous shots of myself looking stern and competent in the back of the jet. I look good. But the fact of the matter is that my hands are in my lap or holding one or more cameras. I purposely crop the shots so almost every shot leaves the shot ambiguous as to whether I might be flying the jet.

I don’t have a problem with that. And I’ll keep doing it. No shame there. But, driving home in the car all alone with myself, it’s hard not to think about the disconnect between the guy in the pictures and who I actually am and what I actually do. It’s not guilt, exactly. But there’s a sense that I spend this time basking in the glow of others and then hope that some of that residual glow makes it into the podcast or the blog.

But this year is a little different. This is the year that I put my skills where my mouth is. On Thursday, I go to Jackson (KJXN). I’m not going to be there looking for a ride with another pilot. I’m going to Jackson to fly.

The IAC Michigan Aerobatic Open is slated for Saturday and Sunday. And there will be practice times on Thursday and Friday. One of the entrants is flying the Primary sequence in a Pitts S-2B. That guy is me.

The Primary is not complicated. You can fly it in a minute or so. 45-degree upline to level, one-turn spin, half-Cuban, loop, 180-degree aerobatic turn, and slow roll. It is by no means anything that would impress even the average airshow crowd. But I will fly it. In a box. With people watching. Some of whom will be judges.

Don and I launched in the Pitts at about 7:30. The sun was low in the sky. We turned west toward Ray Community Airport, where we’d be dropping off the aircraft after the flight. About two thirds of the way there, I cleared the area, then flew the sequence. Good spin! Stopped right where it was supposed to. Even better Cuban. The loop needed work. The aerobatic turn was pure joy, performed (as I like them) with more G than is strictly necessary. The slow roll was a train wreck (as usual). I went over the maneuvers that needed work until I was reasonably satisfied with that session. Then we proceeded to Ray and got some dinner with Rod Rakic before flying back to Pontiac in Don’s Archer.

I’ll probably have at least two more practice sessions before I fly for the judges. I’ll be ready. For now, it was a good flight and a great evening. And a step along a path that I’m only just beginning to tread.

I’m flying in the competition for a number of reasons. I’m flying for the challenge against objective measures that has drawn me to ratings and endorsements. I’m flying because it’s a perfect next step in my evolution as a pilot.

But no reason is as important as this: I’m flying because it’s no longer acceptable to be a poser. Because it is no longer enough to show up for a military media/fam flight with the manual memorized. Because it’s no longer enough to know the vocabulary and pass in conversation as one of the bros.

Because it is time to take the controls with my hands and feet and do this above a field surrounded by upturned faces.

This weekend, I go find out.

It’s just the IAC primary. No one that I admire in the airshow community will be especially impressed that I flew the Primary, even if I fly it well.

But the guy who drives back from airshows all alone in the car will want to know about it. He’ll care. And he’ll look me in the eye and know that I took up this challenge, even when I could have avoided it for any of hundreds of reasons.

That’s because I made a deal with him. If I firewall the throttle, rotate, climb, fly my ass off, and leave everything I have up there in the box, he’ll no longer have reason to think that it’s all a veneer. He’ll know that I reached up into the wind for the real thing and either caught it or tried as well as I’m capable.

There are worse deals one could make.

I’m not Kent Pietsch. I’m not Greg Koontz. I’m not Dawg, Puck, Mildred, Skids, GH, Cash, BUDA, Bloke, Slick, or Snort.

But on Sunday, I expect to be, if only in the most basic sense, a competition aerobatic pilot. And no longer a poser.

See you this weekend. I have a deal to make good on.

Embedded with The Hoppers: Battle Creek 2011

2011-07-03T04:38:00.004-04:00

If it's Independence Day weekend, you can be pretty sure that you'll find me in Battle Creek, Michigan for the Field of Flight Airshow and Balloon Festival.

This year is really special. Several months go, I made arrangements to embed for a couple of days as media guy with The Hoppers.

The Hoppers are a civilian L-39 formation team with members from all around the midwest. I've wanted for some time to rig cameras in multiple ships of a formation team and the Hoppers presented a perfect opportunity to do that.

I arrived hurt-early on Friday and spent the morning figuring out where to place cameras for the best effect. This was an ideal situation. The team flew two demo sorties on Friday and a show demo on Saturday. This allowed me to fly up to seven cameras in the aircraft to identify the best angles and wring out any technical issues, as well as get footage for both an Airspeed episode and a promo video for the team.

The team's members come from all over the midwest. Tim "Dawg" Brutsche is a longstanding pillar of the Battle Creek show. Tim flew lead for all three demo sorties and I placed a rearward-looking camera in his cockpit, as well as a forward-facing nose cam. I also hung a couple of cameras in the back seat to catch the two and three ships and wired Tim for sound so I could capture the communications. Three other cameras placed in the other three aircraft rounded out the tech setup.

Although I ended up facing some unexpected technical issues (e.g. fogging of the cameras due to the climate control in the aircraft), I got more than I need to come up with a great video.

And, of course, it's always good to fly the media guy. I rode along on two sorties. One around the airport practicing demo formations and the break for landing and the other further away and a lot higher to practice formation rejoins and other skills.

So I have loads of footage and I'm looking forward to really sitting down with it to put together exciting stuff for both Airspeed and the team. It's really late (actually, it's so late, it's early) and I'm about to fall over. But I wanted to get these shots up.

More soon!

Airspeed Announces Casting Call for Acro Camp 2

2011-05-21T15:43:00.003-04:00

These are the show notes for an audio episode. You can listen by subscribing to Airspeed though iTunes or your favorite other podcatcher. Or listen right here by clicking: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedAcroCamp02CastingCall.mp3. Either way, it’s all free!

In May of 2010, four pilots from around the country gathered in southeast Michigan at my home airport. Two men and two women. Experience ranging from 300 hours to 12,000 hours. A lawyer and Air Force officer with a brand new commercial certificate. A psychologist with a CFI ticket. A furloughed NetJets pilot who runs a nonprofit. And an airline driver with type ratings in lots of heavy iron.

As different as different can be. But they all had a few things in common.

None had a tailwheel endorsement. And none had ever flown aerobatics.

Lined up on the ramp when they arrived were a Citabria, a Super Decathlon, and a Pitts S-2B. And two talented instructors who had cleared their schedules for the next four days. And a camera crew made up pilots and aviation enthusiasts with deserved reputations for translating the thrill of flight into digital adrenaline for thousands of the flying faithful.

You know what happened next.

At some point, you quit wondering, climb over the fence, and go find out.

Acro Camp, the independent documentary feature film that captured the whole experience, is in post and is slated for release late this summer. I’m editing video, arranging and recording music, and designing the packaging. And, frankly, re-living the event.

The experience was amazing. All four pilots – “campers” if you will – climbed into the airplanes and became superheroes of one kind or another. They faced fears, made friends, ate, drank, and became better, more confident, and safer pilots.

Fans arrived from as far away as Wisconsin, Iowa, and Pennsylvania, just to see what was going on. The airport regulars came by to see what was up. I got to drive my car at 80 mph down Taxiway D chasing airplanes with Will Hawkins and his camera hanging out the window and Jack Hodgson in the right seat working the taxi diagram.

For my part, I averaged something like two hours of sleep each night. It’s the most time I’ve ever spent at an airport without flying. And the most I’ve been awake in a long time. The evening after we wrapped, I fell asleep in mid-sentence while sitting there talking to Jack Hodgson in my living room. Twice.

Jim Rodriguez has become a CFI. Paul Berliner is still flying heavy iron, but talked his check airman at his next recurrent sim session into letting him barrel-roll the jet 707-style. I see Lynda Meeks at industry events as she grows Girls With Wings. And Michelle Kole looks out at me from the cover of this month’s Plane & Pilot as she flies the new Super Decathlon that she bought after we wrapped.

Acro Camp was so much more than a movie shoot. It was an opportunity to create, even if only for a little while, a perfect microcosm of what general aviation could be and should be. Birds chirping. A sun-dappled ramp. Pilots. Airplanes. Enthusiasts. Challenges. Parachutes. And not one person who doesn’t “get it” at some level.

I miss it. Everybody misses it. Even people who weren’t there miss it.

It’s interesting that, in one way or another, each camper, IP, and crew member has said words to the effect of, “Let’s do it again. Even if you don’t put memory cards or batteries in the cameras.” I understand that. I feel it.

But I think we ought to put memory cards and batteries in the cameras.

That’s right. We’re doing it again. And you’re invited to be a part of it.

This is the casting call for Acro Camp II.

Listen up. Much of this will be the same as last year. But important things have changed.

By now, you know the drill. We need four pilots who want to fly aerobatics for the first time.

You need to be at least a private pilot with no substantial aerobatic training. An upset recovery course or spin training won’t disqualify you. Neither will any aerobatic flight where you were just a passenger and didn’t manipulate the flight controls to a substantial extent.

I’d also prefer that you not have a tailwheel endorsement. More about that later, but the idea is that, if the weather is too low for acro but high enough for pattern work, you’ll train for your tailwheel endorsement. And might even obtain it.

You need to be physically of a shape, size, and weight that will fit within the volume, weight, and balance of a Super Decathlon, Citabria, or Pitts S-2B, be able to see over the dash without hitting your head on the ceiling, be able to reach the rudder pedals with full travel without being so long of leg that your knees interfere with the stick or the throttle, and be able to properly wear, and operate if need be, a parachute. We’ll do actual weight and balance calculations for the actual aircraft and look at the weight limits of the available parachutes and come up with a hard weight number soon. In the meantime, figure a weight maximum of 190 lbs. If you think that you might be outside the envelope, e-mail me and I’ll check with the school.

All flight will be dual, so you won’t need a current medical. Obviously, if there’s anything wrong with you that would impair your ability to fly and pull Gs without bending yourself or the airplane, this isn’t for you. But a medical certificate isn’t required.

Two campers soloed in tailwheel aircraft last year. We had a pretty special situation with the school’s insurance and really good weather for it. It’s possible that we’ll see some solos this year, but don’t count on it.

You need to be able to get yourself to southeast Michigan on your own power and feed and house yourself for a four-day period in late August.

You have to get along with other people. The camp might be boring at times and stressful at others. Prima donnas and whiners need not apply. I care a lot more about your personality and your willingness to fly to the best of your ability than your beauty or your manly cleft chin or your mad pilot skills. If you’re going to sit around and whine if it rains or complain that the restraint system is relocating your kidneys (and it does), stay home. If this sounds like a huge adventure that’s about discovering things with a team of some of your future best friends, tuck in your shirt and keep listening.

In parts of the camp, you’ll feel completely alone in the front seat of the aircraft, even with an instructor in the back. At other times, it’ll be a mob of your fellow campers, production crew, instructors, and others. Your capacity to have these experiences under widely-varying circumstances during a short time period, and in a way that evokes empathy from a broad audience, is by far the most important thing.

In the early going, you’ll go up with an instructor, get the feel of the airplane, and learn some basic energy management concepts and maneuvers. Probably some wingovers, a few stalls, some pitch oscillations, and some unusual attitude recoveries. Then whatever the instructor thinks is appropriate.

As your sorties go on, you’ll learn such additional maneuvers as the instructor thinks you can handle. It’s all about doing things at whatever pace is best for you. Nobody will laugh at you if you’re not doing Lomcevaks by the end of Day 2. Nobody cares. You’re at the airport and learning and that’s more than enough for anybody.

If you feel motion-sick, you’ll just knock off the acro at that point. No harm and no shame. You finish out the sortie by heading back to the airport and getting tailwheel instruction for whatever’s left of your sortie. Nobody has to throw up in – or on – an airplane, instructor, the ramp, or a fellow camper. And throwing up in the back of the crew car is strictly prohibited.

If you do throw up in or on any of the foregoing, it’s truly no big deal. I’ve done it three times. Twice on camera and once in an open cockpit. Many others have done it. Heck, I’ve even dry-heaved on the ramp after the flight was over. There are three kinds of pilots. Those who have hurled, those who will, and those who lie about it.

If you know for sure that you have a hair-trigger tummy, this thing probably isn’t going to work for you. But DO NOT forego this opportunity because you don’t know how your tummy will react. The only way you can know is to do it. Even NASA still has no good predictor of which astronaut candidates will experience space sickness and which ones won’t.

You might be pleased to find that it doesn’t bother you at all. You might be bummed to find that you’re green around the gills after three maneuvers. There’s no way to tell until you do it, so don’t fail to express your interest for lack of confidence about your tummy.

And the good news is that, even if you’re a little urpy after the first flight, motion sickness improves over subsequent flights. Even airshow pilots tell me that they can only handle about 20 minutes or so their first time up for the season. The sorties can be relatively short if it’s bothersome early on. And you’ll have three or four days over which to condition your tummy.

The idea is to have each camper fly three sorties on each day. More if we can fit it in. Probably a maximum of 10 hours Hobbs over the course of the camp. Last year, several of the campers mixed in a few purpose-planned tailwheel sessions just to break up the experience and take a rest. We want you flying as much acro as possible, but it’s not a death march.

And other factors will influence the amount of flying we get to do. Weather, the health of the aircraft, the health of the instructors, etc. will, of course, come into play.

I flew a Cirrus SR22 to Raleigh-Durham this weekend with Acro Camp IP Don Weaver and then we drove back for 12 hours. We had a lot of time to talk about this film. We have a lot of ideas about how to make this one better, both on screen and in terms of the campers’ experience.

For one thing, we’re thinking about having everyone learn the 2011 IAC primary competition sequence. It’s a 45-degree upline, a one-turn spin, a half Cuban, a loop, a 180-degree aerobatic turn, and a slow roll. Well within the reach of a pilot who’s trained at an event like Acro Camp. If time and personnel permit, we might be able to bring a judge from the local IAC chapter out to the box and have him or her judge each camper’s primary. Not to figure out who’s the best acro maniac, but to give each person a look at a judge’s scorecard and to better understand the competition process.

And there are more ideas where that came from. From barnstorming to BFM, it’s all running around in our heads.

Let’s talk money and control.

Like almost all new-media projects, I have a shoestring budget for this. I’ve plowed most of it into the HD cameras and other equipment and going out and flying the equipment so I know the best positions and angles. I’ve also spent hundreds of hours logging and editing so I don’t have to pay anyone out of pocket to do it. Even the soundtrack is homegrown so I can put what little money there is into equipment and other stuff that will make the movie better.

In a way, I think that this is a great thing. It’s the ultimate expression of democracy in media production. Everybody says that technology is such that you can go shoot a good movie with a few thousand bucks’ worth of equipment. That’s exactly what we’re going to try to do. It’s as much a testament to new media as anything else.

The other thing that this is going to mean is that each camper is going to have to pay his or her own way for the entire thing. Getting there, the airplane rental, the instruction, food, hotel, ground transport, and the trip home.

I can help in some ways. Like feeding everybody at the end of one or two of the days. Like getting a friends-and-family discount on hotel through a friend who works for a major hotel chain. Like arranging a block time deal on the aircraft and instructors. I’ll try to make it so that it costs no more than it has to.

There are two reasons for structuring the thing this way. First, the aforementioned shoestring budget. Second, the campers will likely be private pilots and I don’t want to get anyone in trouble with the FAA or otherwise with any allegations that any private pilot camper received compensation for flying. Or even paid less than his or her pro rata share of the cost of the flight.

And a third reason when we get to the liability issues.

Last year, the campers spent between $3,000 and $3,500 on aircraft and instruction. This year might be more expensive because of fuel prices, a different mix of aircraft, and other factors.

Remember that we’re taking over a school for four days. The school is going to clear its schedule for the aircraft and instructors and give it all to us. Just like your local FBO, if you don’t fly when you can and nobody else takes over your time, you might have to pay a part of what you didn’t fly.

You can figure out your own travel costs to and from the location. The closest major airports are Detroit Metro (KDTW) and Flint (KFNT). Last year, I managed to swing hotel rates in Marriott properties of around $90/night.

Whatever the cost ends up being, let me make one thing perfectly clear. Neither I nor Airspeed is taking any money from you for the camp, either directly or indirectly. You’re paying the school, the airlines, the taxi driver, the hotel, and the waitress. And paying them directly and only for what you actually buy. From them. I get nothing from the flight school or the instructors or the aircraft lessors or anybody else. No kickbacks, no nothing. I don’t charge you anything to come participate if you come. The only thing that Airspeed has going here is gathering raw material for a movie and eventually making and distributing the movie.

Let’s say that it ends up running you $4,500 with your airfare, hotel, training, and whatever else. Wouldn’t you pay something like that for a new rating or a similar accelerated school? There are places in the US where you pay in excess of $2,500 for an upset course that involves a lot less flying. And they don’t give you the possibility of being in a movie. Or being a part of the groundswell of new media. I think that that experience is well worth it. I’m putting in more than that, and I probably won’t even get to fly. Make up your own mind, but it sure seems worth it to me.

Liability, insurance, and other related issues: Neither I nor Airspeed nor anyone else associated with the movie is taking on any liability. This is a shoestring thing. And it’s aerobatic flight, so, like a lot of other things worth doing, it involves risk. I’m merely helping make arrangements and I’m going to try to put together a movie out of the footage that we get. The flying is strictly a thing between you and the flight school just as though this wasn’t Acro Camp and as though I’m not involved. You’re going to get some flight training and I’m there to watch and document. Period.

Accordingly, you’ll sign the biggest, baddest waiver you’ve ever seen. It’s something to behold and I expect that later civilizations will be studying it in awe for millennia to come. I wrote it. I’m a pretty good lawyer and I’m slightly paranoid. The campers from the first movie were slack-jawed, and duly so. There’s a copy of last year’s waiver here (http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/Acro_Camp_-_Release_-_2010-03-16.pdf). It might change for this year, but I think it’s a pretty good form.

That’s the only way we can do this. If you want a piece of me or Airspeed, you can’t be a camper. Stay home. That’s a benefit of the bargain upon which I insist. And, yes, this piece of audio will be Exhibit B right behind the waiver and right in front of a mountain of other stuff. You bend yourself or an airplane or walk into a prop or get into a car wreck on the way to or from, you’re on your own.

Unless I actively call you out, chase you across the ramp in an airplane, and run you down with the prop in cold blood, you’re on your own. I’m not trying to be a jerk. This is the only way that Airspeed can do the project. I hope that everyone understands.

Any waivers or liability issues or any other matter between you and the flight school are between you and the flight school. Period. I’m not involved, other than to show you where it is and shoot video of you while you’re doing whatever it is you do there.

You’ll sign a participant agreement that allows Airspeed to use your likeness and video and stills of your activities in connection with Acro Camp in the movie and in any promotion of it, like in trailers, on posters, and in similar ways.

I don’t plan to use anything embarrassing or personally awful. This isn’t The Real World or Road Rules or The Real Housewives of anyplace. But, if you hurl or are scared or things like that happen, it goes in the movie. This is about challenges and facing up to them. Fear and hurling are okay. Sometimes, they’re par for the course. Nobody wants to watch a movie about people who aren’t challenging themselves in some way.

You’ll get credited, but you get no points, no back-end, and no other piece of the movie if it makes any money. The movie is almost guaranteed to lose money and not go anywhere beyond an insular minority of pilots and aviation enthusiasts. And, if it does, you can be reasonably assured that I’ll piss away large portions of the proceeds doing more stuff for Airspeed and you’ll benefit from having the content that those efforts yield. I’m eating the costs mentioned above and putting in the sweat to make it happen, so I think that’s fair.

There’s a copy of last year’s participant agreement here (http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/Acro_Camp_-_Participant_Agreement_2010-03-16.pdf). Again, it’s a good form, but it might change.

You’ll be welcome to blog, podcast, write, Tweet, or otherwise express your experiences. In fact, it’s encouraged. We might even invite traditional media in to cover this and ask you to tell those folks about your experiences.

In any case, this isn’t Survivor or some other reality show where the producers stand on your neck and make you go through them to talk about your experiences. First, having those involved blog or podcast or Tweet, or whatever is great publicity for the project. Second, it strikes me as slightly evil and a violation of the unwritten tribal charter to try to clamp down on that kind of expression. Third, this thing has grown out of a new-media ethic than encourages sharing and free expression and I don’t think that it’d be true to the project’s roots to try to funnel the buzz through a central point and put AdSense up against it.

Offloading the audio and video every day is going to be a monumental task but, if we can swing it, we’ll even try to give you audio or video clips that you can use for your podcast, blog, or other outlet to go with your new-media chronicling of the event.
That said, there’ll be reasonable limitations on the use of the Acro Camp and Airspeed trademarks and the other rights necessary to make the movie happen and to protect the franchise if I or the school decides to do more with it. You won’t be able to distribute the movie yourself and you won’t be able to hold yourself out as speaking for the movie. Reasonable stuff like that.

Last comment I’ll make in this piece about control, rights, and stuff like that:

You’ve noticed that I’m pretty absolute in terms of rights and control and other elements of this project. I’m not trying to be a jerk, except where it serves the project. Insisting on having certain rights and being the sole decision-maker in a lot of respects is the only way that I can give myself the best chance of having the artistic control and fulfilling the vision that I have for the project. And if, by some miracle, this project gets a distribution deal, I want to be able to sit down at that table knowing that I have all of the rights I need to go forward without being beholden to any third party for licenses, permissions, or other things that put a drag on the process or make it so that I can’t sign up for stuff like warranties and indemnification that distributors and others are going to demand.

Does this mean that you’ll need to trust Airspeed and trust me? You bet. There’s no way around it. Do I deserve your trust? I hope so. I’ve put hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars over the last five years bringing you more than 170 episodes of the best podcast I know how to make. I’ve walked the walk for you and given it away for free, together with a little piece of my soul with each installment. I hope that I’ve demonstrated that I “get it” and that I’m a worthy conduit for the energy that I’m proposing that we release with this project.

Okay, on to fun stuff like dates.

I’m thinking a four- or five-day thing with an arrival the day before the first day. Day Zero would be an arrival day. You show up around 4:00 or 6:00 p.m. Eastern. The campers meet and have dinner with the instructors and the crew and do ground school. The instructors go over the aircraft and the safety systems. Everybody learns how to strap on a parachute. Everybody learns how to get the door or canopy off the aircraft in an emergency. The instructors go over the basic maneuvers for the next day.

Days one, two, three, and four we fly all we can. Three sorties per day per person is the target in the early going.

Day four or five, those who have to leave in the afternoon fly first and then leave. Those who don’t have to leave until later fly last.

We have nailed down two periods that bookend the two possible timeframes during which we will do the camp. Period One begins August 10 and ends August 16. Period Two begins August 24 and ends August 30. The camp itself will certainly include the Saturday and Sunday within whichever of the periods we pick. The only thing we don’t know is which of the weekdays before and/or after will be included. We’ll nail that down after the selection process.

We’re leaning heavily toward Period Two because some of the tech personnel will likely have am easier time making that period. But we’re maintaining a little flexibility for now. They’re putting in a taxiway at the host airport beginning on August 1 and the main runway will likely be shut down for all or part of three days during construction. We don’t know when those days will be. And it’s probably goofy to think that we’ll be able to know any better when those days will be by waiting until June or July to set the dates. But we’re maintaining as much flexibility as possible until then.

And I don’t think it’s going to affect us one way or the other. There’s another airport nearby that’s friendly to acro. If we had to, we could ferry the aircraft there and launch from the other airport while they’re working on the runway at the primary airport. It would be a royal pain for the tech crew to move all of the support equipment for the movie, but it won’t affect the flying much, if at all.

Either way, we’ll nail down the precise dates not later that the time at which we announce the cast, which we’re trying to make at least 30 days before the camp so that we save campers the more ridiculous air fares that happen closer to travel dates if they’re flying in commercially.

One other note on timing. The weather in Michigan is usually pretty nice around that time of year. But the weather could knock out a day or more of flying. If we can’t do acro but it’s still VFR out there, you’ll fly tailwheel and go for your endorsement. The idea is to fly as much as the weather allows and to do the kind of flying that the weather allows.

If we get most of the material that we need for the movie done, but we’re up against the end of the camp, we might need you to stretch it a day or come back to finish up. Your willingness and flexibility to stretch your stay a day or come back is not dispositive, but it’ll be a factor in whether you get selected as a camper.

We’re going to stage the camp at Berz Flight Training at Ray Community Airport (57D) in Ray Township, Michigan. Ray is a beautiful rural airport. Two runways. 9-27 is about 2500 feet long and 60 feet wide and it’s paved. Runway 18/36 is about 2,200 feet long, and half grass, half pavement. No gates. Low fences. If you drive your car back to the hangars, you have to stop short of the threshold of 18 to check final. The foot path that goes between the terminal building and the hangars crosses Runway 18/36.

Ray is the most beautiful airport to which I’ve ever personally been. It didn’t inspire the apocryphal Harper’s Field of Fingers in the Airport Fence Entwined, but it could be that airport. I love it. And you’ll love it.

Berz Flight Training started operations in 1948. It’s a Part 61 flight school that offers all kinds of primary and advanced instruction. The Pitts S-2B from the film is operated by Berz. Todd Yuhas, the principal, has been instrumental in bringing Acro Camp to Ray and helping us interface with the local pilot population. We’ve been received with open arms thus far and we’re looking forward to shooting the film there.

We plan to again use Barry Sutton and Don Weaver as instructors. Check out the Acro Camp website to see Barry and Don flying and instructing. And there’s even a sequence of Don and Barry in the studio playing for the soundtrack. Barry’s an excellent drummer and Don’s a classically-trained keyboard player.

By way of aircraft, the only one that I have down in ink is the Berz Pitts S-2B. The Super Decathlon from last year has been sold and the Citabria from last year is now strictly tailwheel and spin training – no acro. I’m working on lining up a different Citabria and Super-D or aircraft like them for the film. I’ve also received suggestions of other aircraft, but they’re working themselves out now.

There’s a lot to organize over the next few weeks and months to make sure that this happens. There remains some substantial chance that things won’t pan out and that Acro Camp won’t happen. But you don’t get a movie made by being timid or waiting until the last minute to talk to your constituencies about it.

A lot could go wrong. It could rain. One or more aircraft might be squawked and be unavailable to fly. Instructors can get sick. It could turn out that the video we shoot sucks or that we end up without a compelling story to tell. Too many things to try to shake a stick at.

Think of it this way. If you’d go to southeast Michigan in late summer to fly such acro as you could, play some euchre if it rains, fly some tailwheel if it’s low, and have a few beers with like-minded people regardless of whether anyone was shooting a movie, that’s great. If it isn’t low IFR, doesn’t rain, none of the airplanes is squawked, everybody’s fun and cool to be around, and you also get to star in an independent movie by doing it, that’s icing on the cake.

So, if you’re interested in participating in this little project as one of the pilots – one of the “campers” – head to www.acrocamp.com. There’s an online application in the sidebar on the right. You’ll need to have a couple of pictures of yourself ready to upload and you might want to have a tape measure, a pair of jeans, and a bathroom scale handy. You don’t need your logbook unless you haven’t added up your time in awhile. Approximations are fine.

The application process is open right now. It’ll stay open until 11:59 PM US EDT on June 24 (that’s 0400Z on June 25).

Last year, 51 people applied. We selected 12 to interview. We talked to 11. And we selected four campers and two alternates. This year, we’re thinking that we might get 100 applications.

We’re again planning to narrow the field to 12 based on the applications, interview those 12 over Skype, and then pick four campers and two alternates. We’re hoping to get the process complete and announce the cast by mid-July.

Take as much time as you need to give good answers, but my best advice is to apply early. We start reviewing applications as soon as they come in and, if you’ve applied early, you’ll probably be under our eyeballs sooner and longer.

Don’t pre-stress over the application. We’re expecting quite a few applications, but, if you’re the right person, you’ll stand out by just being yourself. Write short, declarative sentences. Read what you write out loud. If what you write sounds unnatural when you read it out loud, you’re probably trying too hard. Back off a notch, relax, and be yourself. We’ll sense the genuineness if it’s real.

In the meantime, there are three places you can go for additional information about Acro Camp.

The first is myTransponder. The exclusive official online group for Acro Camp will be the Acro Camp group on myTranponder. It’s free to sign up for myT and it’s free to join the group and interact with others about the movie. myTransponder understands new media and social media better than anyone else. It’s run by fellow members of our aviation tribe and I think it’s only right to have the pilot lounge for this effort be on myT. Additionally, I find that people who are active on myT are usually more involved in general aviation and make better candidates. If you spend some time on myT, you might well find a tidbit or two that’s helpful on the application.

The second is the Acro Camp website at www.acrocamp.com. The site will have ongoing outward-facing information about Acro Camp, as well as links to information about Berz Flight Training, the aircraft, the instructors, and other materials. Press releases will also appear on the site and it’ll be a particularly good as a contact point for (ahem) traditional media.

And, as always, I’ll be doing episodes updating everyone right here on Airspeed and at www.airspeedonline.com.

So that’s the casting call. This is your chance to crawl through that USB cable and enter Airspeed’s world for a few days.

I hope that as many people as possible apply and that we have a really tough time picking the next set of campers. I hope that we pick you. I hope that you show up and meet some of your new best friends. I hope you laugh. I hope you cry. I hope that you scare yourself silly at least once. I hope that you surprise yourself many times by what you can do. I hope that you come away a more confident and safer pilot. I hope that the experience changes you and causes you to stretch the boundaries of what you thought was possible and reexamine who you are and what you believe about yourself. I hope that the project carries a little bit of general aviation outside the airport fence and entices some of our neighbors to join our tribe.

At some point, you quit wondering, climb over the fence, and go find out.

Blues, Blue Ridge, and the Commercial Checkride Looms

2011-05-18T21:28:00.007-04:00

This is a regular blog post. If you're looking for show notes for audio and video episodes, you've come to the right place! Just scroll around and you'll find 'em!

I'm almost decompressed from the weekend. Saturday at Indy, I was invited to head over to Indianapolis International for an interview with CDR Dave Koss, Boss of the Blue Angels. They had lined up an F-4U Corsair, an FM-2 Wildcat, and an F/A-18D Hornet (Blue Angel jet No. 7) on the ramp as a backdrop highlighting the Centennial of Naval Aviation ("CONA" for short).

I did my best to ask some nonstandard questions, but Boss is both well-prepared and enthusiastic. I asked him how all of the aircraft behind him were . . . wait for it . . . the same. He didn't skip a beat. "The Naval Aviators who fly them." And he's dead right.

It was a short interview because it was raining and the Wildcat and Corsair had to beat feet back to indianapolis Regional (KMQJ), where they were on static display. But it turned into a really good three or four minutes that I'll likely edit into an episode for the show. I might also try to grab a piece of it to use in Acro Camp.

The remainder of the weekend was also pretty epic. I got home around 0400 local on Sunday morning. After a reasonably full day of domestic bliss, I met up with Don Weaver at Pontiac (KPTK) and proceeded to knock out my long commercial cross-country by repositioning a Cirrus SR22 (N711CG) from Pontiac Raleigh-Durham (KRDU) via Mansfield, Ohio (KMFD) and Upshur County, West Virginia (W22).

We were inside the eggshell from about 1,200 AGL off of KPTK all the way to KMFD. We shot the ILS to 300 feet in actual with a stiff crosswind from the right. Later, we broke out of the clag and had some fun poking through fat, ragged cumulus piles most of the way to W22. We cancelled IFR and landed at W22 for gas.

It looked as though we'd be able to stay above the mountain ridges and below the clouds the rest of the way to KRDU, so we departed W22 VFR and had an amazing time navigating through the valleys and over the ridges using a sectional. The peaks were around 4,000 MSL and the clouds varied from 4,500 to 6,000. Plenty of room to stay legal both above and below. But it's the kind of flying that makes you really work on your SA and keep all of the back doors available in case you round a corner and find out that the next cloud and the next peak are in contact.

We landed at KRDU and buttoned up the airplane. Then we did an almost equally epic 13-hour dash back to KPTK in a rental car. We traded driving duties and whoever was the PND took on DJ duties, digging into the deepest depths of his iPod to introduce the PD to the best of the best in music and motor skills. Don went out and immediately bought Chris Thile's Not All Who Wander Are Lost after we returned, so I was reasonably successful in my PND shifts.

Now it's back to the grind. Lots of interesting clients with interesting work. But I also have only a 100nm night cross-country to go in the aeronautical experience department to go, then it's polish the maneuvers, get the written out of the way, and I'll be ready to take the commercial checkride.

Back to the trenches! Ttere's a movie to edit and Battle Creek is only a few weeks away!

Indy 2011: Day 2

2011-05-14T18:38:00.006-04:00

This is a regular blog post. If you're looking for show notes to audio or video episodes, they're all here. Just keep scrolling!

The Airspeed crew vehicle likes to think of itself as Blue Angel Zero. There she is, parked next to CDR David Koss's No. 1 ship. Waiting for the crew to top up her smoke oil for tomorrow's demo.

Day 2 (Saturday) at Indy is complete. Worries about the weather were worth having, but - at the end of the day - not worth getting bunched up over. Ceilings started out high and gradually came down. The Blues flew a low or flat show, which was fine with me because I was on my way out to Indianapolis International to catch a photo op with CDR Koss and the pilots of two WWII-era predecessors of the F/A-18C. I opened up the sun roof so I could hear the jet noise better.

The shoot went well and I got a three-minute piece that I might release as an ultra-short video episode.

I love Dave Dacy's big, honking 500-hp Super Stearman. It's clean, it's white, and it's round. It makes the right noices. You can attach a human speed brake to the top wing. What more do you really need?

I hooked up with the Heavy Metal Jet Team in the late morning and got interviews with Snort and Slick for Acro Camp. The interviews look very crisp in HD. And they should. As long as the light doesn't completely stink. you have an airplae that the team has gone to the trouble to paint with large areas of the three most useful background colors. Don't like how the frame looks? Not popping? Take two steps to the left and you have a completely different contrast proposition. Three to choose from. No waiting.

Both Slick and Snort are very, very well-spoken. Great answers to the questions and a sincerity that you can't fake. Having interviewed about a dozen airshow performers for the movie, I have begun hearing substantially the same answer from multiple performers to the same question. It's to be expected. There's probably a limited universe of answers to the same core four or five questions. But both Snort and Slick had new, different, and dead-nuts-on things to say. I had to remember that I was asking questions and not just sitting in my living room watching the movie.

I'm writing this at a Steak n Shake a couple of miles from Indianapolis International. I just offloaded the day's still pictures from the camera and sent a couple off to the media folks at the airshow. Now it's back on the road for Michigan. There's an SR22 at Pontiac that needs to get to the Carolinas and Don Weaver and I are just the guys to take it there!

Indy 2011: Friday - Part 2 - A Ride on Fat Albert Airlines

2011-05-13T21:43:00.004-04:00

This is a regular blog post. If you're looking for show notes to a video or audio episode, you've come to the right place. Just keep scrolling. It's all here!

The Blue Angels are back again at the Indy Airshow. And that means that the ubiquitous blue and gold C-130, Fat Albert, is on the field supporting the Blues and thrilling spectators. And fanboys like me.

Fat Albert is operated by an all-Marine aircrew. I had the opportunity once again to ride on Fat Albert. The first time (2009) was great. But I learned a few things that allowed me to prepare much better for this ride.

For one thing, I showed up with five cameras. Four were small clampable models (two GoPro HD HEROes and two ContourHDs) and the fifth was the trusty Panasonic for handheld use. I checked in with GySgt Ben Chapman when we arrived at the aircraft staging area and he was kind enough to point out some good mount points. Two in the cockpit and two in the back.

The best footage is from the cockpit camera, a frame grab from which appears at the beginning of this post. There's a fair amount of vibration, but what mount in a C-130 doesn't vibrate when you're yanking and banking as much as this one did during the demo? Have you ever wondered what it looks like in the cockpit during the demo? Yep, that's GySgt Chapman floating at the top of the climb-out as Capt Edward Jorge pushes the yoke full forward after a 45-degree initial ascent.

I sat further aft than last time and I'm glad I did. The guys in the back do this all the time and are pretty good at knowing the flight profile and when they're going to be at zero-G. And taking advantage of it. The shot above is not photoshopped. It's the real deal. I got it from my seat with the hand-held. He has a good grip on the ladder and the ladder is firmly secured to the cargo deck. But it's still pretty dramatic-looking.

The main camera for the rear compartment was up on the front bulkhead looking back. It's rock-solid and doesn't vibrate. I'll pull some frame grabs from that one and post them soon.

And, because all of the cameras ran the entire time, I'm going to synch them up so that the video episode is able to cut among the camera angles to giver you a pretty good idea of what it's like to be among the pax on Fat Albert Airlines.

Thanks much to the crew of Fat Albert and to the Blue Angels! Watch for the video episode coming soon!

Indy 2011: Friday - Part 1

2011-05-13T21:40:00.003-04:00

This is a regular blog entry. If you're looking for show notes to a video or audio episode, just scroll around. You're sure to find it!

Yeah, it's my favorite time of year again. I'm a little blue as I find myself in mid-May and not out at the Aviation Station shooting a movie. I miss my Acro Camp crew more than I thought I might. But there's nothing like an airshow to take the edge off of that particular blueness.

Indy is one of my favorite shows. This is my third year covering it. It's at Indiana Regional Airport (formerly Mount Comfort) (KMQJ), which has excellent surroundings that offer performance lines that can accommodate almost anything you'd want to fly in the airspace. It's reasonably accessible. Firebase Airspeed this year is at the Super 8 in Greefield, which is only a few miles to the east. But for the construction on the main highway that has things down to one lane for much of the going, it's easy access. And I'm getting to the show around 0700 each morning, so it's no big deal for me.

I spent most of the day shooting cameo interviews for Acro Camp. I re-shot the Billy Werth interview that I did last year (the audio was unusable) and added fellow Red Eagle Dan McClung, hang glider pilot Dan Buchanan, Super Stearman pilot Dave Dacy, and wingwalker Tony Kazian.

And I shot as much of the practice flying as I could. Most notable was Billy and Dave Werth's Sibling Rivalry demo. Billy flies a Pitts S-2C (in which I've flown with him) and Dave rides a ridiculously powerful motorcycle. The act initially involved racing down the runway. But it has evolved since then.

Billy and Dave are now doing a lot of formation performing. In the lead shot to this entry, Billy heads down the runway and Dave reaches up and grabs the wing. And today, for the first time that anyone can think of, Billy flew inverted ahead of Dave and Dave was able to grab the tail of the Pitts. Pretty precise stuff on the part of both pilot and rider!

The Viper West F-16 Demo Team tore it up very nicely. Although ti wasn't terribly hot, it was pretty humid. And that meant huge blankets of moisture cascading over the wings of the Viper at almost any positive angle of attack. The sky was pretty gray and the circumstances weren't great for shooting either video or stills. And, let's face it, I mostly do audio or close-up video. But the 200mm Nikon rig yields up competent images from time to time. The above wasn't the best representation of the Viper that I've ever captured, but you can see the burner and there are huge clouds on the wings. Good enough for me!

Capt Garrett Dover cranked the aircraft around very convincingly. The tight-turning capability of the aircraft continues to amaze me. It just rolls over and cranks around at +9G for a full circle. You're always sure that the Viper is going to bust the 1,500-foot line coming back around, but it never does. That's just unbelievable pull!

I'm still chasing the Heavy Metal Jet Team for a couple of planeside interviews for Acro Camp and the podcast. I was close to Jive and Rook during the briefing in the morning, but had to leave early to interview Billy, then lost them. Heavy Metal does a lot for the Make-a-Wish Foundation and I understand that the team was engaged in taking care of some commitments along those lines. That's fine. I still have tomorrow before heading back to Michigan.

I'm planning to ferry a Cirrus SR-22 from Pontiac down to the Carolinas for maintenance on Sunday and then drive back to Michigan on Monday. Then back to the office and my mild-mannered lawyer alter-ego until the next show. But, until then, it's freshly-mown grass and the smell of 100LL and JP-8!

Mike "Bloke" Robinson of the Starfighters

2011-05-08T23:23:00.007-04:00

These are the show notes for a video episode of Airspeed. You can watch the episode by subscribing to Airspeed through iTunes or your favorite other podcatcher or by watching the video on Vimeo by clicking above. Either way, it's all free!

Mike "Bloke" Robinson - the Supervisor of Flying for the Starfighters - and I go back a few years. It turns out that Bloke was one of the links in a long and unlikely chain of events that culminated in my getting the Thunderbirds ride in 2008. Bloke happened to be confirming some details with the Battle Creek show's director and mentioned that he had heard her on Airspeed in the preceding week. That apparently stick my name in her head at just the time at which the show was thinking about who might be a good alternate Thunderbirds rider. And the rest is history.

Bloke and I connected recently at ICAS in December and he was nice enough to invite me down to spend parts of the TICO Valiant Air Command airshow in Titusville, Florida in March. I spent Friday and Saturday on the ramp with The Starfighters, Heavy Metal, Scooter Yoak, Mark Sorenson, David Allen, and others.

When I could get Bloke to hold still for a few minutes (he's an amazingly busy guy during a show, as you might imagine), he was gracious enough to do it in perfect light next to a gorgeous F-104 in front of a couple of cameras. We talked about the F-104 and his impressions of it and even went a little into acro and energy management for use in the Acro Camp movie.

Here's the interview, along with other images from the two days at TICO.

The Starfighters use the F-104 Starfighter for suborbital flight training, flight test, threat simulation, photo chase, and - of course - airshows. The team is based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. More information is available at www.starfighters.net.

Duckin' Fark

2011-04-24T12:57:00.008-04:00

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CAP captain, myTransponder co-founder, and friend Rod Rakic happened to be in town this weekend and we made it a point to try to get up in a CAP aircraft for some proficiency work and aircrew activities.

I've flown in the same aircraft with Rod on several occasions. The first was the Cessna Citation Mustang flight during AirVenture Oshkosh 2009 with me in the left seat and Rod in the back. Then Rod flew me in a C-182T Nav III to Marshall, Missouri and back to get some B-2A weapons system trainer time in our logbooks.

But I had not yet flown Rod under circumstances under which I was in the left seat and was in the right seat. Where he could reach the flight controls and make it a fair fight.

Saturday afternoon, the wind howled like hell. I'm talking 18 knots with gusts over 30. Even with the wind coming pretty close to right down the pipe, that's a log of gust factor, especially considering that I hadn't flown the C-182 since last October or so. And I'm a pretty typical non-primarily-182 driver inasmuch as it's a very nose-heavy airplane that likes to sink quickly and I live in fear of whacking the nosewheel.

I have no problem with the G1000. I just don't like seeing the nosewheel strut come through it.

I arrived early and preflighted the airplane like I was buying it. The wind howled around the hangar. Badly enough that I feared opening the hangar door and badly enough that I had a hard time being understood on the phone by my flight release officer because of the noise of all that sheet metal that wanted to depart the tee hangar.

But around 6:30, it magically calmed down to a steady 18 knots right down the runway. Rod arrived, I got my flight release, we stomped the ramp (a very abbreviated ritual along the lines of the Haka - you had to be there) and we launched about an hour before sunset.

We flew up to Yale, Michigan located my high school buddy's place, descended to about 1,600 MSL, and did a mock photo mission over it. Flying at 90 KIAS in a 45-degree bank that low would have bothered me a lot just a year ago. But, after NESA MAS and flying as much tailwheel and acro as I have, it seemed really natural. And the C-182 is a really stable platform for those kinds of maneuvers. You can almost roll in and fly the maneuver on trim alone.

Takeoffs, as they say, are optional. Landings, as they also say, are mandatory. Aviation, unlike maritime pursuits, has a perfect safety record. We've never left one up there.

We went to St. Clair County Airport (KPHN), whose Runway 28 was within 20 degrees of a 15-knot steady wind. Rod had spent a lot of time there in his youth as a line guy and student pilot, so it was a bit of a trip down memory lane for him. I was reluctant to face my C-182 demons more than 40 nm from the airplane's home base in case I yard-saled it across the TDZ. And I began by mistaking Runway 22 for Runway 28.

But I got her headed in the right direction (without entering Canadian airspace in the process) and turned a very nonstandard entry into a very stabilized approach. 70 over the numbers, then kissed it down. I taxied back and got another trip around the patch, this time getting it a little flat, but serviceable and most of the parts stayed in formation with the rest of the airframe.

Rod is getting ready to become a CFI. And the CFI manner is beginning to creep into his right-seat personality. I pointed out a couple of the things that he said or did and made that comment. He was a little taken aback, but admitted it. I assured him that there were no violations of Wheaton's Law involved. In fact, it's very cool to see one's friends constantly evolving and challenging themselves.

Additionally, Rod is going to be a great instructor. He's already a very precise and disciplined pilot. But he also has an excellent way of inspiring confidence and channeling knowledge without being imperious about it. As someone who has watched new student pilot starts fall off and student pilot completions plummet, it would be important to me that Rod become a CFi regardless of whether he was one of my bros. But having him as one of my bros as well? Bonus!

To be sure, Rod gave no "instruction" per se in the aircraft. He's not a CFI. And, even if he were, he's not authorized by CAP to give instruction in CAP birds. (Yet.) We even briefed our roles standing at the nose of the aircraft before leaving. As PIC, I told him that input was welcome. And expected. But I was PIC and any yard sale that I laid out on a runway was mine and mine alone. A good way to brief almost any flight, in fact.

We departed St. Clair and pointed the airplane at Ray Community Airport (57D). I have some plans for things this summer at Ray and I wanted to show the airport to Rod. Ray is the prettiest airport to which I have ever personally been. And Runway at Ray 9/27 is just under 2,500 feet, which I had just proved was a distance within which I could get a C-182T down and stopped. But it was a little dark to actually see anything there and I was reluctant to put my C-182 skills to the test on a shorter runway in the dark.

So back to Pontiac. We got the straight-in approach to Runway 27R. No excuses. I had the airspeed and configuration dialed in from five miles out. the only issue was that it was dark. I mean "duckin' fark." It was less than an hour after sunset, but not a lot less.

Last notch of flaps at a half mile. Yeah, a half mile is further than I could glide with the barn doors hanging out, but a stable approach coming over the fence was more important in this case with this pilot in this airplane than the much-lesser chance of being screwed by an engine failure on short final.

Airspeed 75 KIAS over the fence. 70 KIAS over the numbers. I had my attention way over the nose and off to the side. Rod was looking directly out the side at the ground.

He said "flare."

It was a little earlier than I expected to flare. But I had five more knots of airspeed than I really needed and lots of power available. And Rod has lots of experience in the C-182. All of the input funneled through that high-speed pachinko machine that I've built in my head. I made the decision as PIC to accept the suggestion from my PNF and flare.

I flared. A moment or two of feeling the sink and beginning to think about pushing in the power. Then "doink." Mains down. Yoke in my chest. Nosewheel down. Nice! Let her roll to Kilo and then taxi to Royal for gas.

I think that the landing would have come out safe either way. My way might have been flatter, but would likely have been okay. In any case, it's good to have two sets of eyes and two brains focused on the issue. And it's one of the most special things in all of aviation to have a PNF next to you that you know well and whose thoughts will accelerate through your pachinko machine and get quickly to the place where you make the right decisions.

We hit the Pontiac pilot watering hole (the Shark Club) for beers and dinner after. I think it bothered Rod slightly that I had noticed CFI noises coming out of him on the flight and he was concered that it had been bothersome and launched into a discussion that was part apology.

I cut him off. "Dude, you had me at 'Flare.'"

Laughter, beer, food, and pilot talk, then the departure - me for home and and he for his family in Clawson. I a slightly better pilot. He with a little more time in the right seat trying out the view from there and really thinking about what it's going to be like when he adds the rating and starts flying with people who need his counsel more than I do.

All epic. In a smaller way than Dick-Collins-ing through the yellow IMC over Chicagoland at 2:00 a.m. But in an important way nevertheless.

Up aircrew! Huah!

Acro Camp Sneak Peek 02 - Formation

2011-04-20T00:01:00.002-04:00

These are the show notes to a video episode. You can watch by subscribing to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. Or just click above to watch the episode through Vimeo. It's all free!

On the third day of filming for Acro Camp, Don Weaver and Barry Sutton decided to do a formation flight out in the practice area. They gathered the Pitts and Paul, and the Super Decathlon and Lynda, respectively, and briefed the sortie at Pontiac. The Super D departed first and the Pitts followed shortly thereafter.

This sequence captures the join-up and two passes.

Editing is coming along well. Believe it or not, I think that I'm going to be able to complete the whole thing with nothing more than a Mac Book Pro and an array of outboard hard drives. The ultimate shoestring movie from beginning to end.

But still a beautiful movie! Just look at some of the near-golden-hour lighting in this sequence!

This sequence was a lot of fun to edit. I synched up all of the cameras and audio so that you get to hear all of the people in each of the aircraft all simultaneously, including both the radio transmissions and the intra-cockpit communications.

Everybody has his or her fears. Paul Berliner, the high-time airline driver, was fine with all of the acro, but was not at all comfortable with formation flight. He was a trooper and agreed to do the flight. And he stuck it out all the way through both passes. But I'd be lying if I said that I thought that he enjoyed it.

That's a great deal of what Acro Camp is about. Confronting areas of discomfort. And exploring one's envelope, whether mentally, physically, or otherwise.

Side note: Formation flight, like aerobatics, is not for the untrained or unfamiliar. Both Don and Barry have prior formation experience and they were on the controls of the respective aircraft during the entire formation sequence. And, although the footage looks in places as though the aircraft are pretty close, that's an effect of the lenses and the aircraft kept a healthy buffer between them. Especially, you'll notice, where Don rolled inverted.

Do try this at home. You'll be a better, safer, more competent pilot. It might even safe your life someday. But do it with an experienced instructor in a capable aircraft and in compliance with the regs. And ease into it. You don't have to be ready to fly wing for the Thunderbirds after your first flight.

The movie is on track for release later this summer, so stay tuned. More information about post-production and release coming soon. Stay subscribed to Airspeed and check out the Acro Camp website at www.acrocamp.com.

Acro Camp Debrief with Don Weaver and Barry Sutton

2011-04-17T00:01:00.001-04:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedAcroCampDonBarryDebrief.mp3 . Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

After the props stopped turning for the last flights of Acro Camp, I took Michelle Kole back to Detroit Metro for her flight back to California. While I was gone, DP Will Hawkins sat down instructor pilots Don Weaver and Barry Sutton to debrief after five days and 41 sorties.

This is the audio, essentially unedited, from that debrief.

Neither Don nor Barry had done a camp as intensive as this in some time. Both were ready for some rest. But both remained energetic about what happened at the camp. Each felt that he had made a difference in each pilot's life and flying skills. Each was impressed at the transformation that each pilot experienced.

Will initially planned to ask questions to keep the conversation going. In fact, all he had to do was say "So how did it go?" and adjust the camera once. These guys laid a rope 25 minutes or more long that was every bit as poignant as anything that any camper had to say.

It's a privilege having guys like this with whom to shoot a movie. And, for me personally, it's amazing that I get to go fly with each of them with some regularity.

Stay tuned for an announcement about Acro Camp II. It's tentatively planned and don't be surprised to hear a casting call go out some time in the next few weeks!

#NotAtSnF11

2011-04-11T12:19:00.005-04:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedNotAtSnF11.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

I’ve been fortunate over the last three years to make appearances on Sun ‘N Fun Radio, the event radio station for the Sun ‘N Fun Fly-In in Lakeland, Florida. And, the last two years, I’ve done it even though I was a good 900 miles from the show site.

With the assistance of David Allen at the station’s site, I looped in podcasters from all over the US and from Australia for #NotAtSnF11, a show featuring people who are not at the show but who wish they were. Although this has all of the material that went out over the air, we kept the tape rolling so that you guys get to hear what does on behind the scenes during one of these shows.

Participants this year were as follows.

Steve Visscher and Grant McHerron of Plane Crazy Down Under

Chris Holub and John Conway, two thirds of the In the Pattern

Will Hawkins from The Pilot’s Flight PodLog and A Pilot’s Story

Bill Williams of The Pilotcast

CAP NESA MAS Narrative Episode Nearing Completion

2011-03-27T11:07:00.004-04:00

This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for show notes or links to show audio, please check out the other entries. They’re all here!

Part 2 of the NESA coverage is coming along, slowly but surely. It’s about 12,000 words at the moment and shows little sign of slowing before it has topped 15,000. It’ll be another characteristic epic-length Airspeed episode. And that’s a good thing.

As many of you know, I attended the Mission Aircrew School at CAP’s National Emergency Services Academy at Camp Atterbury in Indiana this year as part of the Mission Pilot track. I really don’t want to hurry the episode out of my head. There’s a nice stew of ideas in there and the prose only gets better with reflection. I rarely take an entire week off from work for any reason. The last time I did that was in 2005. So you can tell that I went down to Camp Atterbury with a mission to do the school and to get it right.

That resulted in a great experience and a lot learned in my first real taste of CAP operations. Flying a SAR pattern to within 50 feet laterally and vertically by GPS raw data without touching the yoke except to turn for the next swath of the lawn. All while sweating profusely with a demanding IP in the back and having to take a leak most of the time. Genuine bandwidth challenges.

And the reflective belts, all-ranks club, death by PowerPoint, and all of the other elements that have given Dos Gringos’ SOS new meaning. Yeah, I almost made a red hat disappear while I was there. So the episode is coming along and it’ll likely be one of the next two to hit the feed. And I’ll update you if it’ll be longer than that.

Information about this year’s NESA is available at http://www.nesa.cap.gov/.

Video Episode: The "Hammer-Spin" Sequence from Acro Camp

2011-03-19T23:51:00.005-04:00

These are the show notes to a video episode. You can see the video by subscribing to Airspeed through iTunes or your favorite other podcatcher or by clicking on the embedded Vimeo video above (helpful if you're reaching out through a .mil firewall). In any case it's all free!

The movie is coming along! After spending most of February dealing with a bacterial infection in my leg (which, by the way, the doc says is looking great and won't affect my fitness to fly in any way), I'm back to burning the midnight oil (and whatever else is nearby and flammable) and editing Acro Camp, Airspeed's first feature film.

The sequence in this episode is Jim Rodriguez's "hammer-spin" from the third day of flying at Acro Camp. Jim had just begun to get the hang of the hammerhead in the Super-D when he went up with Don in the Berz Flight Training Pitts S-2B. And he found out the exciting way that the Pitts doesn't need anywhere near as much forward stick.

The cool thing is that he also found out that the Pitts is pretty well-behaved when you get off the power and let go of the stick. It comes right out of the spin and wants to know what else you want to go do.

There's a lot of editing yet to be done. But I think that I have the workflows pretty well nailed down and it's going a lot more quickly than it was this fall. We have between one and three cameras and a cockpit audio track to load in for each flight and this was the first flight that I went and put together with that workflow. It worked like a charm.

On the musical front, I just got in a treatment of Acro Grass, one of the themes that we've crowdsourced to Airspeed fans, from Grammy-nominated audio ace Scott Cannizzaro and it's amazing. It's been spewing from my iPod all day now and I think I like it better each time.

If you're musically inclined and want to lay down some tracks for consideration for inclusion in the film's soundtrack, there's still time. I'm in no danger of finishing the film soon, so you probably have at least through April to get your tracks in.

I'm also working on the CAP NESA audio episode. As is obvious to anyone who knows me, the NESA experience made a big impression and I really want to capture the whole experience. Thus, the writing is taking its own sweet time. But it'll be a characteristically epic Airspeed episode when it comes out.

More soon. Stay tuned!

Valiant Air Command TICO Airshow 2011

2011-03-12T17:10:00.005-05:00

This is a regular blog post. Need show notes or links to show and video? Keep scrolling. It’s all here!

I spent Friday at the Valiant Air Command TICO airshow at the Space Coast Regional Airport in Titusville, Florida. I went primarily to meet and hang out with the Starfighters, who operate the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. My primary objective was to shoot the F-104 and get a couple of interviews to use on Airspeed and for Acro Camp.

That meant being there most of the day with the team there on the ramp, which is actually in the aerobatic box for the show. Oh, no! Please don’t throw me in that briar patch! How ever will I cope!

So, whenever nothing was happening with the blue-and-white Century Series jet, David Allen and I shot the rest of the show in both stills and video. The only downside of shooting from the ramp was the fact that the showline is positioned so that you have to shoot up-sun. I can’t really complain about that, but it did result in most of the usable shots being of those performers with more to-and-fro (as opposed to back-and-forth) elements to their demos.

Take, for instance, this one of the Maj Mike "Cash" Maeder and Capt Steven "Buda" Bofferding tearing it up in the F-15E. Great noise and great three-dimensionality to the demo. And, although I could be mistaken, it looked to me as though there’s a lot more inversion and a lot more high-G maneuvering in this year’s routine.

Because of the aforementioned geometry of the show, the remainder of the shots are heavily weighted in favor of the Heavy Metal Jet Team, which flew its inaugural demos this weekend.

This one probably benefited from the geometry. It’s still pretty up-sun, but I don’t think that one could shoot down the length of the solo’s barrel roll from any other angle.

Among my new favorites is Mark Sorenson, who flies a Yak-55 named Titus that’s painted in tiger livery. Mark embraces the playful presentation of the airplane and he loves to show off the airplane to kids.

Dave and I helped Mark wipe down the aircraft after he returned from flying and I had a chance to talk to him at length. We met initially at ICAS in December, but the proper place to hang out with a pilot is on the ramp or in the hangar while scraping bugs off the leading edges of a pretty airplane. I’ve maintained a loose correspondence with Mark’s brother, who’s an F-15E driver at Nellis AFB. I frequently wish that my family was a little more aviation-intensive like the Sorensons.

Mark operates ground-based smoke-ring generators that put huge black smoke rings up into the box that he then flies through. I didn’t get to see the smoke rings on this occasion, but I’ve seen the video and I’ll bet that it adds a more three-dimensional feeling to his presentation. Mark doesn’t fly many shows to the north, where I am, so I doubt that I’ll get to see him fly at another show. But you never know.

More information about the Valiant Air Command TICO Airshow is available at http://www.vacwarbirds.org/.

Endeavour Rolls Out

2011-03-10T23:37:00.003-05:00

This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for snow notes or links to show audio or video, please keep scrolling. It’s all right here!

How many times should one try to start a blog post before giving up on erudition and just writing something that poses a grave danger of sounding like a fifth-grade book report? The number is at least three, but it’s greater than the number of tries that I ultimately made before writing this.

I normally head down to Jekyll Island, Georgia each march to visit my folks, who spend two months there each winter. About every other year, I detour to Kennedy Space Center to feed my space monster. I need to touch home there on the Cape to recharge the batteries.

I was thinking about that awhile ago and called up Mike Robinson of the Starfighters to see if he might want to drink such beer as I might buy upon passing through. Mike, ever the considerate guy that he is, suggested sliding my schedule to the left by a week to include the TICO airshow here at the Space Coast Airport. And, being that the Starfighters have a NASA connection, he allowed as how I might be able to see some of their operations there at KSC.

Say no more. I moved the dates and came down this weekend instead of last weekend.

And then, by happy chance, it happened that the roll-out of STS orbiter Endeavour for STS-134 was slated to occur this evening. Long story short, I spend a bit of this evening at the VAB watching Endeavour roll out to Pad 39A.

The launch assembly crawls out of the VAB and then hits the gas and begins to move at a more blistering mile-per-hour pace. Once it’s well and truly out of the VAB, the spotlights illuminate it and it stands out in dazzling white.

The parking lot is full of people. Most, like me, are shooting pictures, babbling like kids, or drooling. It’s going on 9:00 at night, so just about everyone on this side of the fence is here because he or she wants to be here. Everybody’s a fanboy and it shows.

STS-134 is a run to the ISS to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and spare parts, including two S-band communications antennas, a high-pressure gas tank, additional spare parts for Dextre and micrometeoroid debris shields.

Also, as matters stand, it’s slated to be the second to the last STS mission. Which makes it bittersweet to see it roll out. Discovery just landed from its final flight yesterday. So everyone is aware of the era ending.

I suppose that I shouldn’t be bothered as much as I am. I’ve always been the first guy to complain that the STS has given us a space pacifier that has kept the public’s mind off the fact that our manned space program hasn’t left low earth orbit since 1972.

But the STS has been the county’s flagship space program for most of the time during which I was growing up so, like it or not, the STS has a place in my heart. It’s weird to see an orbiter recede into the night like that.

There are much more profound things to say about this evening. Probably in some larger context and in more concise form. For the time being, I think it’s probably enough to acklowledge how grateful I am to the Starfighters for the access to the rollout and the chance to see the great lady up close. And to walk among a crowd of people that is just as excited as I am about being there.

Big day tomorrow here on the Space Coast. More soon!

Heavy Metal - First Impressions

2011-03-10T22:23:00.005-05:00

This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for snow notes or links to show audio or video, please keep scrolling. It’s all right here!

I’m spending a couple of days here on the Space Coast, mostly in and around Titusville, Florida. I arrived Wednesday night to assist David Allen with an unfortunate infestation of Leinenkugel Berry Weiss. I’m pleased to report that the fridge is now nearly Leinie’s-free. And we took care of some pesky ribeyes while we were at it.

I’m writing this at the Starbucks at Target in Titusville which, although possessed of the usual high-quality caffeinated beverages, has no WiFi. Thus, please pretend that this was posted Thursday afternoon instead of late Thursday night or early Friday morning. Not that timing is all that important usually, but I’m heading out to the Cape this evening to see them roll out Endeavour for STS-134 and I’m bound to have pictures and other assorted media to post right after this goes up.

On the way back from getting my NASA badge (let me say that again . . . On the way back from getting my NASA badge), I decided to take a swing by the Space Coast Executive Airport, the site of the Valiant Air Command TICO Airshow, which will be my first of the season. This is the first year that I’ve started the airshow season this early, but an amazingly kind offer by the Starfighters was too good to pass up. Thus, I’ll be spending the day Friday on the ramp with the performers and drooling (respectfully, mind you) on some F-104s.

I found my way to the ramp area just as the Heavy Metal Jet Team took the box for a practice flight. Heavy Metal has captured the imaginations of many, and for good reason. It’s a five-ship demo team that’s both entirely civilian and entirely sponsored. That means that the shows that don’t get a big military jet team (Thunderbirds, Blue Angels, Snowbirds, etc.) can still have a jet team as a headliner without the expense that would normally be associated with a civilian team.

Heavy Metal is a five-ship team. A lead T-33 Shooting Star/Silver Star flown by Dale “Snort” Snodgrass (but an L-39 substituted this weekend) and four L-39s flown by 1/Team Lead Jerry “Jive” Kerby, 2/Right Wing Jared “Rook” Isaacman, 3/Left wing Doug “H-Dog” Demko, and 4/Slot Sean “Stroker” Gustafson.

I shot a lot of pictures and watched the practice pretty closely. It was a rotten day to shoot airplanes. Gray overcast all around with jets pained in arctic camouflage. So these shots aren’t going to grace any posters or magazine covers (not that any of my stuff ever will – my shtick is strapping into the aircraft and emoting for the cameras and on audio).

But I think that I saw enough to make some worthwhile observations.

There’s a lot more interesting geometry to what I saw than you usually see from a civilian jet act. Most civilian jet teams usually just swing back and forth along the 1,500-foot line with formation passes. The most interesting stuff in those cases are the breaks where each of the jets in the formation takes a bit of a solo in its break before landing. Otherwise, it’s echelon passes, finger-four, line-abreast, etc. Not that I don’t love that. (I do!) But it’s kind of flat.

Heavy metal gets a lot more three-dimensional in its performances. It’s tough to do that for a number of reasons, probably the biggest of which is the fact that you’re not supposed to direct aerobatic energy at the crowd. If the aircraft goes to flinders at any given point in the show, the momentum has to be in a direction that will cause the the debris to land outside the crowd area. Think about it. Even the big sweeping dedication passes or photo passes are usually from way out behind the crowd’s flank and around in front so that the outside of the turn is toward the safe area out on the field or on the other side of the field.

But it makes a big difference if you can get some elements going toward, or away from, the crowd to beak up the monotony of the back-and forth. I’ve seen Gene Soucy, Greg Koontz, and other piston-drivers do this because they have smaller, slower aircraft. Gene can point the Show Cat right at the crowd for a few seconds and do it safely because he’s going slow enough that he can turn well before any aerobatic energy could reach the crowd if something goes amiss. It makes for dramatic shows.

Maybe it was just a practice and maybe I didn’t see the actual routine that Heavy Metal is going to fly for the crowd. And maybe it’s because I saw it from over at the terminal side of the field, which is in the box. Whatever the case, it seemed that the solo gets a lot of to-and-fro (as opposed to back-and-forth) in the performance. Much more than simple passes. And he’s working pretty hard and putting as much of that as possible into the show.

The four-ship formation element is just plain stinkin’ tight. Oh, holy crap are they tight, especially for one of the very first shows of the season. Lots of overlap. Really close formation. Well-coordinated. On at least one case I got that “hey-it’s-one-big-airplane” sensation, as illustrated in this shot as the team does an excellent imitation of Virgin Galactic’s EVE (fka WhiteKnightTwo). Hard to tell in the picture, but the four-ship hung exactly for the whole turn.

Makes me want to just give up and never look at a Pitts again, much less a Citabria. But you know that I’ll swallow my pride and try again to approximate that kind of precision. Soon.

Lastly, and probably most impressive for the crowds, the four-ship actually does formation acro in the style of the military jet teams. I’m not aware of anyone else who does that.

They’re not the Thunderbirds or the Blues. They really can’t be because they’re flying jets with a 0.37 thrust-to-weight ratio. So at least half of the usual military maneuvers are off the table. But the team does an excellent job of managing the energy that they develop and they keep it pretty close to the crowd for more of the fight time than the other teams do.

Bottom line? The airshow faithful and those who understand aerobatics and energy management are going to love watching this team. I did, even on a crappy-weather day watching a practice.

The rest of the crowd? Really, the only thing lacking is the big noise. These jets are pleasantly noisy and they smell right from just downwind, but they don’t grab you by the scruff of the neck and beat you in the chest with sound pressure.

I think that Heavy Metal has a great back story, a talented group of pilots, and great poster-appeal. They’ve also apparently been training hard and are really tight, especially this early in the season. Hey, nobody can anchor an airshow like the Thunderbirds or the Blues. But, with both of those teams stretched pretty thin over a long season, the airshow industry has long needed an impressive act to anchor those shows that don’t get the big jet teams. I think that Heavy Metal is going to very competently anchor a long list of shows and give good account of itself. I enjoyed the heck out of watching them. They’re three-dimensional, they’re pretty, and they’re tight. They can come to my town any day and I’ll go home from that airshow with the same stab-marks on my shirt from leaning into the snow fence at the crowd line.

The skies are supposed to be a lot more clear tomorrow and I’m looking forward to seeing the team tear it up again.

Going a Little Meta

2011-03-07T16:48:00.001-05:00

This is a regular blog post. Looking for show notes or links to show audio and video? Keep scrolling. It’s all here and it’s all free!

Not to go all meta on you people, but I thought it worthwhile to devote a post to the state of the aviation new-media community. And it’s an apt time because we’re expecting the whole thing to step up a level this year.

I’d like to pat myself on the back a little over the T-38 episode, which launched on 24 January. The episode raised the bar for video podcasting to broadcast- or near-broadcast quality. All HD and with more and better cameras than even Discovery Channel usually fields. And a depth of coverage unrivaled by broadcast or cable. I get the aircraft manuals ahead of time and arrive ready to fly the airplane. Not that I usually get to fly the airplane, but I’m ready to do so if given the opportunity. And the coverage benefits from that level of prep.

Later this summer, we’re going to get to see Wilco Films’ first feature, A Pilot’s Story. Will and Rico have been shooting footage for that film for something like three years. They finally put together enough funding to shoot the air-to-air sequences late last year and they now have the critical mass to put out the film. I can’t wait for you to see it. I’ve seen several rough-cut sequences and they’re magnificent. I can only imagine how they’re going to look on the big screen at AirVenture.

The frame grabs in this post are from my interview for A Pilot’s Story. We shot it in a hangar at the Watsonville airport (KWVI) in early October after Rico’s Thunderbird ride. I look pretty good for a guy who was still jetlagged and had just climbed out of an RV-8. But I found out that it’s sometimes hard to sit there and just let profound things spew from my lips. I can do that, but I’m much better with a script and lots of time to edit. Just be kind to me if my footage makes it into the film.

Last, but by no means least, I’m going to get Acro Camp done sometime soon and you’re going to get to see that film as well. I plan to release some extended sequences from the film in the Airspeed feed as I go, the better to whip you into a frenzy for the film by the time it comes out.

I leave this week for KMCO to get some hyper-close-up contact at Kennedy Space Center and talk to the Starfighters. Then I head back across the causeway to Space Coast Airport in Titusville for the TICO Airshow. And I’m taking the big bag of media equipment, so you can be reasonably assured that I’ll be capturing the whole experience for you.

Fingers in the Airport Fence Entwined

2011-02-12T18:00:00.003-05:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedFingers2011.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

In the Fall of 2007, I began writing a ballad to fill out a book that I was in the process of finishing up. I had been inspired in the mid 1990s by a ballad written by folk singer Mike Agranoff called The Ballad of the Sandman. You might have heard Sandman once or twice here on Airspeed. It’s the story of the apocryphal rock and roll radio DJ Paul Sandman in the wee hours of New Year’s Day 1970 when he barricades himself in the studio and puts on the kind of show that would make radio great if it would dare. And how his fellow DJs pick up his signal and relay it across the nation to the overnight hardcore rock and roll radio listeners.

Inspired by Heritage Flights that I had seen at airshows and by fly-bys that friends and co-workers had performed in honor of Will Hawkins’ grandfather, I put pen to paper and tried to come up with a waking dream that just might happen in a world as special as aviation.

The result was Fingers in the Airport Fence Entwined – The Ballad of Jimmy Short.

Fingers has loomed quietly but large in the Airspeed universe. The reverse of the Airspeed challenge coin bears the inscription around the edge, “standing with my fingers in the airport fence entwined.” Harper’s Field, the fictional rural airport that I made up as the centerpiece of the story, has become my own personal Lake Wobegone and has been the setting for stories such as my own treatment of O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi. And I’ve developed a strange attraction to Ray Community Airport (57D) over the past few years because it reminds me so much of the Harper’s Field of my imagination. More about Ray very soon, I hope.

I’ve maintained an irregular correspondence with Mike Agranoff since the late 1990s. A few years ago, Mike offered to trade me a recitation of Sandman for a reading of Fingers. I jumped at the chance. After one of his concerts, he and I sat down in the living room of one of his friends with a crowd of a dozen or so folk musicians and hangers-on and we made the trade. Mike went first (at my suggestion – the better to make it obvious how derivative my piece is of his). He recited Sandman from memory and breathed life into it there before my eyes. Then I did Fingers. I had to read most of it, not having the knack for memorizing epic poetry. But I got through it and I held up my end of the trade with reasonable aplomb. That was an unexpected and amazing opportunity and I’ll never forget it.

It occurred to me shortly after I put Fingers out in the feed that the episode in which it appeared was largely taken up by my lead-in commentary about the book. And that Fingers never really got its own episode.

As I’m in the process of editing a movie and putting out proposals for some really amazing coverage opportunities for the upcoming season, I though that this might be a good time to give Fingers its very own episode. The reading is the original one from 2007, but it’s at a slightly higher bitrate and, as long as I shut up pretty shortly here, it’s presented without much distracting lead-in.

So here, without further fuss or introduction, is Fingers in the Airport Fence Entwined.

_______________________________________________

Fingers in the Airport Fence Entwined
(The Ballad of Jimmy Short)

by Steve Tupper (http://www.airspeedonline.com/)

Harper’s Field is smallish strip a mile from the edge of town,
Parallel to the section lines with farm fields all around.
An FBO, two dozen Tees ‘mid green alfalfa hay,
And a battered sign on the county road: “Airplane rides this way.”

Sometimes, when I was back from school, I’d drive down to the field,
And park the car in the gravel lot to see what the sky might yield.
I’d stand there by the airport fence with a Coke or a Huber beer,
And while away the afternoon at the sky and ground’s frontier.

It doesn’t happen often, though there’re some who say it should,
That we get a glimpse of a fleeting thing that we thought was gone for good.
When zephyrs of the atmosphere meet dreamers on the ground,
And magic, love, and science merge in a roar of deaf’ning sound.

I’d watch them make their takeoff runs; their Continentals whined,
Standing with my fingers in the airport fence entwined.

* * * * *

Jimmy Short arrived in town in 1952.
He’d served in South Korea, but his fighting days were through.
He got a job and the stamping plant and married a local girl,
And made a home and family and his corner of the world.

Sometime in the spring of ‘56 a friend from his platoon,
Called to say he was passing through and might Jim have a room?
Jim met him down at Harper’s Field when he pulled up to the ramp,
And got his very first airplane ride in his friend’s Aeronca Champ.

Jim kept his friend up half the night and talked ‘bout how to fly,
Got another ride in the morning before they said goodbye,
And when his buddy dropped him off and taxied off to go,
Jim turned around and followed the fenceline down to the FBO.

So Jim began his training with a crusty world war vet.
They’d stay aloft on weekday nights ‘til the sun began to set.
And Saturdays and Sundays he’d be at the field at dawn.
His preflight done and the oil topped off; by seven, they were gone.

When the shift let out and the bars filled up, he was at the field instead,
And mowers moved across the hay as he soloed overhead.
And by the time the leaves had turned from green to fiery gold,
His private chit was in his in his hands and twenty hours old.

Jim bought the Cub that winter, though it wasn’t much to see.
The tires were flat and the fabric slack and it sat there in the Tee.
The engine was in baskets, too, but Jimmy wasn’t fazed.
The A&P who signed it off could only stand amazed,

At the gorgeous Cub that Jim pulled out in the second week of May.
That winter in the hangar, Jimmy working night and day,
Had made a bond ‘tween man and plane, both glowed there in the sun,
As Jimmy swing her ‘round and poised to make his takeoff run.

Harper’s field was younger then and, just like Jim, it changed.
Its spirit kept the beat of time but scenery rearranged.
They paved it back in seventy-six and stretched three thousand feet,
And added in an NDB just past the white concrete.

In ‘85, the airspace changed and, though Harper’s Field was “G,”
They added on a speed ring and an overhead of “C.”
You had to stay three thousand or get on the radio,
But Harper’s pilots didn’t mind. They liked to keep it low.

* * * * *

The first time I met Jimmy Short was twenty years ago,
By the fence at Harper’s Field when he stopped to say hello.
He was in his fifties and I was twenty-three,
But that didn’t seem to matter when he stopped to talk to me.

“I’ve seen you here all summer, son, just standing where you are,
Sipping on your Coke and standing, watching from afar.
There’s more to this than what you see when you stand in the parking lot.
There’s a view, you know, there that gives you more perspective than this spot.”

“And what might that be?” I asked, and stood somewhat beguiled.
He hooked his thumb toward the ramp and turned, and then he smiled.
He said, “My name is Jimmy Short and I fly the yellow Cub.
It’s time to stop just standing here. It’s time to take you up.”

I followed him down the fenceline and he waved me through the gate.
I helped him pull the Cub out and he asked about my weight.
Some scrib’ling on an envelope, a finger in the wind,
Then he waved me to the front seat and he helped to strap me in.

And so, that day, I saw where I had stood there by the fence.
But I saw it from a thousand feet and I had a different sense,
Of where I stood in other ways and what I really wanted,
I knew that it would challenge me, but I set my teeth undaunted.

And when the Cub came back to earth (and later, so did I),
I turned around, asked Jimmy Short “Where do I learn to fly?”
He chuckled and took off his hat, ran his hand through his thinning hair.
“The next step’s at the FBO and, son, it’s over there.”

It seems I didn’t sleep much through the summer and the fall.
There were groceries to bag and lawns to mow and clippings left to haul.
And every cent I took to the FBO to rent the plane;
A beat-up C-150 but a perfect ship to train.

And, as I flew and talked to folks, before too long, I found,
That the name of the pilot Jimmy Short was known for miles around.
No job to small, he volunteered at every county show,
And went to every fly-in where the Cub would let him go.

You could put him on the flight line or in the parking lot,
And Jim would see that every camper pulled into its slot.
You’d see him folding tables and hauling Porta-Johns,
And many a warbird was marshaled with a wave of Jim’s batons.

You’d see him flipping pancakes and you’d see him cleaning up,
Or smiling as he showed the folks his yellow Piper Cub.
His dues were current in the EAA and when they called the roll,
Jimmy was a captain in the Civil Air Patrol.

And I found that my ride on that summer day wasn’t Jimmy’s first.
Many a pilot had Jim to thank for giving them the thirst,
For the smell of hundred low-lead and the sound of the takeoff run,
Or the landing on two-seven in a setting summer sun.

It doesn’t happen often, though there’re some who say it should,
That we get a glimpse of a fleeting thing that we thought was gone for good.
When zephyrs of the atmosphere meet dreamers on the ground,
And magic, love, and science merge in a love that’s newly found.

I’d sometimes watch as he gave a kid his very first airplane ride.
Standing with my fingers in the airport fence entwined.

* * * * *

Like I said, it’s been twenty years and I’ve flown for all that time.
I’m based right here at Harper’s Field and Six-Five-Six is mine.
I still saw Jim most weekends and we’d talk and hangar-fly,
And jaw about the weather as we watched the summer sky.

Until the day I saw him at his hangar, moving slow.
I gave him a wave, but he turned away and shuffled off to go.
The bounce was gone from Jimmy’s step and I stopped to look at him.
Then walked two down to his hangar door; called, “Hey, what ails you, Jim?”

“My medical’s been touch-and-go for years and now, you see,
I’m creaky and my eyesight just ain’t what it used to be.
The family doc says I could go again and try my luck,
But I’ll never make it by this time. It’s time to hang ‘em up.

“So I put the Cub in Trade-a-Plane and I got a call last week.
And the buyer’s A&P came by and said he’d take a peek.
And now we’ve done the haggling and it’s time to sell the Cub,
They’re coming in tomorrow and they’re going to pick her up.”

He saw the look that stole across my face and said, “It’s fine.
I’ve flown her nearly forty years and, man, I’ve had my time.
I’d give an arm and a leg or two for another summer’s flight
But it’s time for me to pass her on. I think it’s only right.”

I departed on the downwind and I dialed one-two-two-eight,
And listened to the traffic at Big Bear and Applegate.
I cruised around the countryside with nowhere planned to go,
Just listening to the engine and the calls on the radio.

Now and then, I’d hear a voice I knew and key the mic,
And make a little small talk and ask about their flight,
But my heart just wasn’t in it, and soon enough I’d say,
“Jimmy Short has hung ‘em up. He’s going to sell the plane.”

Their thoughts were all the same as mine and somber grew the talk,
As word began to reach the general aviation flock.
I heard it on each CTAF and each rural UNICOM,
The sad refrain from plane to plane that “Jimmy’s moving on.”

And in the air that carried Jim in summers long gone by,
There grew a song of the mournful news that rose and filled the sky,
From two-two-eight to two-zero-five and up and down the dial,
Across the fields and lakes and on for mile on airy mile.

* * * * *

The morning dawned on Harper’s Field and the sky was clear and bright.
I was there to see the sunrise; only restless sleep that night.
For I couldn’t help but think of Jimmy Short as there I lay,
And figured I’d be near in case he needed me that day.

By nine o’clock, I’d finished cleaning my Tee for the second time,
And a Cessna 182 pulled to parking on the line.
Three men got out of the Cessna and walked to Jimmy’s Tee,
And the door rolled back and Jim stood there and waved to greet the three.

The all shook hands, then pulled the doors of the hangar open wide,
And then, a moment later, rolled Jimmy’s Cub outside.
One circled the Cub with a practiced eye ‘til his preflight was complete,
And, smiling, gave a nod to Jim; laid the papers on the seat.

Each of them in turn leaned in and signed, then passed the pen,
And stood aside to let the next in line lean in and sign again,
‘Til all was done. Jim shook their hands and handed one the key,
And turned away and walked across the ramp to stand by me.

Jim said hello to me, not with his voice, but with a nod,
His countenance inscrutable. His face was a façade.
I searched words to say to him to lend a friend’s support,
But words had all abandoned, so I just stood by Jimmy Short.

We stared out at the windsock as it dangled on the pole.
Neither spoke for a longish time; each searched within his soul.
Gone the resolve that buoyed Jim when I talked to him yesterday,
And Harper’s field stood solemnly in a veil of deep dismay.

Then slowly in the silence there came a distant song.
It wound along the hangar row and then continued on.
It played there in the parking lot, then scattered in the hay,
And rose to cover all the field as it doubled back our way.

Our eyes were turned of one accord, both us and the buyers there.
A J3 Cub on a low approach was floating through the air.
And by us flew the Cub midfield, he rolling left and right,
Then, straightening out and climbing high, he slowly passed from sight.

And ‘ere the song of the Six-five Continental bid adieu,
Came the drone of the N2Cs of a pair of C-152s.
They passed abeam the midfield line in tight right echelon,
Then powered up and, turning right, they climbed and soon were gone.

I looked at Jim, he looked at me, and all I could do was shrug.
The lineman stared and so did the men with Jimmy’s former Cub.
Now skimming low was an old T-6 with a Pratt & Whitney wail,
And close behind with a glint of blue was an F4U in trail.

I grabbed my handheld from my plane and quickly flipped it on,
Then punched in the frequency for the CTAF and UNICOM.
I could tell right away that something was up. The chatter was fast and thick.
Voices I didn’t recognize and mic click after click.

“Eight-Niner-One is clear to the north. Just don’t tear up the cement!”
I saw the Corsair banking right and wondered what he meant.
Until thirty seconds later, when came roaring o’er the trees,
A monster four-prop Air Force C-130 Hercules.

I walked toward the taxiway to get a better view,
And a conga line of growing dots was on approach in queue.
I keyed approach on the radio to listen overhead,
And voice on voice fell on my ears and this is what they said.

“Turn left to one-six zero. That’s the best I can provide.
Lots of traffic over there, so keep your eyes outside.
Hey, what’s with all this traffic? You guys got some soiree?
I guess there’s something going on at Harper’s Field today.

“Approach, this here is Viper Six. We’re inbound over ROCHE.
We’d like to head for Harper’s field and make a low approach.”
“You’re cleared to the field, please say your type and report when you’re abeam.”
“Viper Six is a two-ship flight and, sir, we’re F-16s.”

I strained my eyes to the eastern sky and there they seemed to crawl
And, sure enough, on the UNICOM, there came the Viper’s call,
“Harper’s Field, this is Viper Six, approaching from the east.
Two-ship flight for a high-alpha pass; and we’re going to drag our feet.”

And in they came, with their noses high with the gear and the junk all down,
And the thunder of the engines kept them fifty off the ground,
‘Til at the midfield turnoff point, the gear came up and then,
Their afterburners thundered as they rose to fly again.

When the ground had ceased its shaking and the jets had disappeared,
I keyed the radio, said “Hey, what’s all the traffic here?”
“Four-Mike Fox on final,” came the crackling report.
“I though that everyone had heard. We’re here for Jimmy Short.

“I heard it at the restaurant last night at Stony Creek,
From a guy who was in from UPS and another one from fleet.
And then a guy from Kansas who was on the frequency.
The news sure seems to travel fast and I’m in good company.

“The word is out that Jimmy’s hung ‘em up and sold the plane.
Approach is all abuzz with talk and Center’s just the same.
Therere folks who owe Jim big time and it bothered them, you see,
And the word went out that we shouldn’t let this go so easily.

“It started in the pilot talk on a website board or two,
Then cell phone text and traffic calls and, hour by hour, it grew,
‘Till someone had a brainstorm that solidified from whim,
A low pass over at Harper’s Field and wag your wings for Jim.

“The message passed from field to field and it picked up steam all night,
And it made the Center chatter thanks to a red-eye Northwest flight.
And an F-16 maintainer passed the word to his command.
They remembered Jim from the air shows there when he came to lend a hand.

“So I fired her up this morning and I took off VFR.
I fly a Baron Fifty-Five, so Harper’s field ain’t far.
But I used to be a groundhog, see, when I was just a pup,
‘Til I got my first Young Eagles ride and Jimmy took me up.

“So I’m here to dip a wing for Jim and let him know I’m here
He’s the reason that I started and he’s why I persevere.”
And, sure enough, the Baron came in low and came in hot,
He wagged his wings amidfield; tracking down the line he shot.

Jim was standing next to me and he overheard the call.
A faraway look stole across his face as he listened to it all,
As each new plane passed the midfield line in flashing, proud review,
And the radio told of a first flight ride or a guy in Jim’s old crew.

Then down by the fence they began to arrive; drawn in from the town,
Drawn to the stately dance o’erhead in droves from all around.
They filled the little parking lot, then the access road further away,
And out to the sign on the county road that said: “Airplane rides this way.”

Faces upturned and spellbound, they knew not how or why,
Or whence this grand ballet had come to fill the summer sky.
But came they did and they gathered near and watched each passing plane,
And each was touched by a fleeting dream that none could quite explain.

Jimmy saw the cars pull in and he watched them for a while.
The stricken look of earlier was gone and now a smile,
Crossed Jimmy’s face as the last plane passed and, in the wake of the fading sound,
He grabbed my elbow, cleared his throat, and, grinning, turned me ‘round.

You see them there? They don’t know why, but still they’re drawn to see,
The miracles we daily work, just guys like you and me.
It’s time to pass the torch to you. The telling’s your job now.
The magic is within their reach, you just have to tell them how.

He smiled again, then shook my hand and turned and walked away.
And joined a knot of Harper’s guys who’d gathered down the way.
The buyer and the other guys all turned around to leave.
My eyes were slightly hazy, but I wiped them on my sleeve,

And turned and walked across the ramp toward the fence by the FBO,
Where the crowd still stood in silence, some with faces still aglow,
As they stood and contemplated what had just now filled the air,
And wondered at its meaning all along the fenceline there.

It doesn’t happen often, though there’re some who say it should,
That we get a glimpse of a fleeting thing that we thought was gone for good.
When zephyrs of the atmosphere meet dreamers on the ground,
And magic, love, and science merge in silence most profound.

I reached the fence and smiled at them gathered up and down the line,
Standing with their fingers in the airport fence entwined.

___________________________________

More information about Mike Agranoff is available at http://www.mikeagranoff.com/.

The full text of Sandman is located at http://www.mikeagranoff.com/lyrics/Sandman/htm%20and%20an%20MP3.

Mike’s recitation appears at http://mikeagranoff.com/audio/MFM/10%20-%20Ballad%20Of%20The%20Sandman.MP3.

Flying the Black Rocket: The Northrop T-38 Talon

2011-01-24T00:46:00.011-05:00

These are the show notes for a video episode. Check out the video episode on your handheld device or personal computer by subscribing to Airspeed using iTunes or your favorite other podcatcher. Or watch it right here by clicking above. It's all free!

Here it is! Airspeed's biggest and best video episode so far!

I've loved the Northrop T-38 for years. Born in the cauldron of the F-5 Freedom Fighter program in the late 1950s, it has since trained more than 50,000 military jet pilots throughout the world. It's sleek and pointy and fast (Mach 1.3 capable). It's the advanced jet trainer for the US Air Force. And it's also the companion trainer for many of the Air Force's most amazing aircraft.

In July, I got an orientation flight with the 99th Reconnaissance Sqn, 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale AFB near Sacramento, California. 1.2 hours in the White Rocket. (Or, if you're flying a "BB" tailed T-38, black and red.) It was a great experience.

It has taken some time, but I think that it has been worth it. 49 minutes of JP-4-burning acceleration, pull, and float. In true Airspeed style, the episode covers every angle and isn't afraid to dig for the details that aviators and aviation enthusiasts love.

From a tour of the ramp to see the U-2 Dragon Lady and the RQ-4 Global Hawk up close to egress and survival training to the briefing to highlights from the flight, it's all here.

And it's all swaddled in original music. This is the first outing for Acro Groove, a track that's going to be one of the major themes underlying Acro Camp. It's by 7600, a loose-knit group of aviator musicians. In this particular incarnation, it's FAA Designated Examiner Barry Sutton on drums, yours truly on guitar, and acro IP Don Weaver on keyboards.

This episode is game-changing in aviation podcasting. There's nothing else out there that comes close. I'm fiercely proud of this work. But, even so, it's a waypoint on a journey that will include even bigger, better, and more exciting projects.

Stay tuned! It only gets better from here.

CAP NESA Part 1 - CAP Lt Col John Desmarais

2011-01-18T18:00:00.001-05:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedNESA01.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

As many of you know, I attended the Civil Air Patrol’s National Emergency Services Academy (“NESA”) this summer at Camp Atterbury in Indiana. I did the Mission Pilot track in the Mission Aircrew School portion of the academy. But there’s a lot more than that to NESA that the aircrew training.

I'm working on an epic NESA episode that distills my own thoughts about the experience, but I wanted to be sure to get the full 30,000-foot view as well. To that end, I invited CAP Lt Col John Desmarais, CAP’s interim national Director of Operations, to talk about NESA.

There’s more information about NESA at http://www.nesa.cap.gov/ and more information about CAP (including a unit locator that can help you find a unit to visit and maybe join) at http://gocivilairpatrol.com/.

Still More Frame Grabs from the T-38 Ride

2011-01-10T13:07:00.002-05:00

This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for show notes or links to show audio or video, please check out the other entries.

After getting the Acro Camp trailer ready to show at the Great Lakes International Aviation Conference on Saturday, I sat down to really crank on the episode covering my T-38A ride with the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale AFB. All of the pieces other than the voiceover material is in the can and I’m going through all of the footage again to see where voiceover is necessary in order to help explain what’s happening on screen.

And, of course, that means that I get frame grabs as I go to post here.

The lead shot is an inverted moment out in the MOA. I didn’t have a chamber card, so we had to stay below FL 180. Given the elevation of the terrain, we couldn’t really get in a full loop, but the alternative maneuver was pretty cool regardless. Imagine a slashing loop that’s canted over 45 degrees. That presents a pretty sight out the window. Especially if you roll it at strategic moments like this one.

Here’s a view of three of the cameras that I flew on the sortie. The primary camera is a GoPro HD Hero mounted on the grab handle. Behind it, clamped to the AOA indicator housing, ate two ContourHDs, one looking forward and the other looking 90 degrees left. I also flew with a hand-held ContourHD so that I could shoot footage inside the cockpit.

Like this, in fact. If you look straight down into your lap in the back of a Talon, here’s what you see. I’ve got my sectional strapped down so I can follow along for the route. I also carry a couple of sic sacs, although I’m happy to say that I didn’t need either of them on this sortie. You get a pretty good idea of the ergonomics here. The stick is right there handy. There’s a T-handle on the panel just in front of the stick that moves the pedals fore and aft to give you the best distance. Obviously, the fact that you’re sitting in an ejection seat makes it more practical for the aircraft to have movable pedals than a movable seat. You can raise and lover it within an approx. 5-inch range, but that’s about it for the seat.

Here’s one of my favorite shots. Inverted at 15,500 MSL and 280 KIAS. Clearly, this shot is post-G-ex. You can see that we’ve already pulled/pushed +4.7/-0.8. I think that the range for the whole sortie was +5.0/-1.0.

I like the color in this one. This is just after launch on the first landing – a touch-and-go. We got a total of two takeoffs and two landings and I learned a lot about the sight picture in really pointy aircraft like the T-38. Something about a 160-KIAS short final really gets your attention.

More editing to do this week. I have a couple of proposals to draft for some additional military flights and the T-38 episode is going to be a big part of those packages. I’m really pleased with the way it the footage looks and it’s a lot of fun turning this into a cogent story for you guys. Stay tuned for the full episode, coming soon to a handheld device near you!

First Acro Camp Trailer is in Final Form

2011-01-07T23:53:00.003-05:00

The first trailer for Acro Camp is pretty much final! I'm going to start showing it to the aviating public tomorrow at the Great Lakes International Aviation Conference at Easter Michigan University's student center in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

And this version will likely go out as an Airspeed episode of its own Sunday or Monday.

Can't wait to see this movie! (Now all I have to do is finish making it!)

Airspeed LPA Part One - The Tradition of Military Challenge Coins

2011-01-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedLPA01Coinforce.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

As I’ve produced this show over the past five years, I’ve found that, although many in the audience love military aviation, most don’t have a deeper knowledge or appreciation of the customs, traditions, and insider information that go along with it. So I’ve come up with an occasional series that’ll help to fill in those gaps.

“Lieutenant Protection Association” or “LPA” is a largely Air Force term for an organization in most squadrons that helps to advise the newer members (first and second lieutenants) about how to integrate into the fighting unit and, on occasion, provide protection from the captains, majors, etc. in the organization. There are analogues in lots of other military organizations and there’s no particular reason to call this series the LPA other than the fact that this information bears a fleeting resemblance to what you’d learn in an LPA (and the fact that “gouge,” the term for a concentrated package of information, has zero chance of being understood by the target audience for the series).

For the first episode in the series, I invited Jordan Haines to come on and talk about the dos, don’ts, traditions, and heritage of those round metal objects called challenge coins. Jordan runs CoinForce.com, the company in Washington State that has been supplying Airspeed’s challenge coins since 2009. I ran into Jordan personally at ICAS in December and it seemed natural to pull him through the USB cable and let him be the one to introduce the Airspeed LPA to this fascinating subject.

And, even if you don’t think it’s fascinating, this is an episode that could save you buying more drinks than you had planned on buying. Surely, a worthwhile investment of your time.

Airspeed received no promotional or other consideration for bringing Jordan on the show. Airspeed pays retail for its products from CoinForce and brought Jordan on for the pure and simple reason that he’s an excellent resource on this subject matter. That’s how we roll here at Airspeed.

More information about CoinForce and challenge coins:

CornForce: http://www.coinforce.com/
Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge_coin

Rules of Engagement

2011-01-01T18:33:00.003-05:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedRulesOfEngagement01.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

As Airspeed completes its fifth year and with its 200th episode within reach, I thought it’d be a good time to go a little meta. This episode is a reading of the Airspeed FAQ and Rules of Engagement. It answers a lot of questions that audience members have about me and the show and lets you in on some of the behind-the-scenes machinations.

Thanks for five great years as the best audience anyone could want! I’m working harder than ever to bring you even bigger and better content.

There's a PDF version of the latest FAQ and Rules of Engagement in the link on the right-hand side of this page.

Zero to Hero - Part 2

2010-12-21T12:01:00.003-05:00

These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedZero02.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

I got together with myTransponder.com founder and fellow CAP officer Rod Rakic to talk about accelerated flight training. Rod has done accelerated programs as a part of both his commercial and instrument training. I did my AMEL, ASES, and DC-3 (SIC) training in accelerated programs. And Rod and I are both graduates of the CAP National Emergency Services Academy’s Mission Aircrew School.

We talked about the benefits and drawbacks of accelerated and/or concentrated training and how best to take advantage of it.

Acro Camp Soundtrack Studio Session

2010-12-18T15:09:00.006-05:00

This is a regular blog post. Looking for show notes or links to show audio or video? Keep on browsing. They’re all here!

On Friday, Barry (“Bernie”) Sutton and Don (“Seawall”) Weaver and I went into The Soundscape Recording Studio in Royal Oak, Michigan to do some work on the soundtrack for the upcoming independent film, Acro Camp. (Check out http://www.acrocamp.com/.)

This is a continuation in part of the crowdsourcing of Acro Grass, the bluegrass-flavored basic theme that we’re using for the film. We walked in with two versions of the tune. The first is the same version that I put out there earlier this year for people to use as a backing track for contributions. It’s an acounstic riff in D at 116 bpm. The second is an electrified version, also in D at 106 bpm with the electric guitar mostly clean and with a 563 ms delay to sound a lot like The Edge (guitarist for U2). Lastly, I did a very basic riff in 3/4 that, if you don’t play a G# or other notes that would capture it into a specific key, lacks a tonal center and is both cool and annoying for the same reason.

I sent Don and Barry links to just the basic tracks in MP3 form the week before and let them listen to them prior to coming into the studio. Uncharacteristically, that was the extent of my actual musical performance. I didn’t play anything in the studio. The idea for the session was to capture Barry and Don’s performances.

I brought in my drum kit and Tim (the engineer) supplemented it with a nice Sabian cymbal (I want to say that it was a 16” or 18” V Crash from the Vault series – Very nice as a ride, crash, bell, or otherwise with a lot of different sounds depending on how you whack it) and his vintage floor tom.
Don brought in his keyboard kit, which consists of both a really nice fully-weighted keyboard with lots of internal voices and an external box with yet more voices. The piano sound modeling is excellent.

The session started with Don and Barry just jamming together to the acoustic version of Acro Grass. I synched up one camera run so that I can put the actual board mix together with the video and use it for an extra on the DVD. Mostly floating the camera around the room. I’ll just run it continuously and intersperse footage from the camp for the parts where I’m moving the studio camera around in between float and other shots.

Once Barry and Don did the initial jam, we went to actually recording. We did them one at a time with each of them playing ideas over the courts of one or two ten-minute takes. It took about four hours, including tech setup, to get everything down for three different basic themes.

Now the drill is for Tim to bounce everything down to individual WAV tracks and shoot them to me on a data DVD. Then I’ll take them all and listen to them to pull out the parts that I like to create a sort of library of Barry and Don’s best themes, bits, and pieces. I’ll them put those in where they seem best and come up maybe a half-dozen variants of each theme to drop into the film at appropriate times. I’ll probably also add in some guitar, mando, banjo, shuttle-pipe, and other stuff as the mood moves me.

And that’s to say nothing of the music that podcast fans have been contributing over the last few months for the original Acro Grass theme.

Bottom line, I have enough raw stuff captured now (video, audio, and music) for the entire film. All else is gravy and improvement. And it also means that I have a boatload of both audio and video editing to do if I want this thing to be released in the spring in time to do Acro Camp II, as I’ve tentatively planned.

The studio session was a complete gas. It was Barry’s first time in a studio environment. Don is an old hand at recording and has played on several album projects. Both of them really seemed to enjoy it. It was my first time in a studio session in which I didn’t actually play and just functioned as producer. Much as I like to play, it was a good experience for me just managing artists and getting good performances out of them. And Tim is quintessentially pro as always, bringing his musical sensibilities and technical expertise together to support a truly organic process.

Luck is the meeting of preparation with opportunity. Both converged in good measure at The Soundscape last night. I’m very lucky.

Production Update: Return from ICAS, T-38A, Acro Camp Soundtrack, and More

2010-12-14T17:28:00.003-05:00

This is a regular blog post. Looking for show notes or links to audio and video for episodes? You’ve come to the right place! Just keep browsing.

Okay, I think my head is back from Vegas and ICAS 2010. Great convention, lots of contacts made, and lots of friends revisited.

And lots on the hot plate for the next few weeks. Don, Barry, and I go into the studio on Friday to record parts of the Acro Camp movie soundtrack. I have all of the basic tracks down, but the real magic won’t happen until we’re all together with the instruments set up and the click track begins.

And I’m close to finishing the episode covering the T-38A flight with the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale AFB. With that one, it’s an embarrassment of riches because of all of the great audio and video we captured. It’s no longer an issues of having a long episode. It’s an issue of how to make it shorter and more concise.

Rod Rakic and I will also likely record Part II of the Zero-to-Hero series, covering his intensive instrument and commercial training and me covering my multi-engine rating and DC-3 type school.

And there’s B-17 footage, Huey footage, and other great eye candy still in the can that I need to edit and get out into the feed.

I cant say enough things about this audience. Truth be told, I’d do this for my own benefit even if none of you tuned in. But knowing that there are thousands of you out there who really understand this stuff and care about it makes it that much more exciting. I’ll be channeling you guys in the studio on Friday and gain over the editing desk with the T-38A episode.

Airspeed alive, fuel, oil, rotate, climb, best glide . . . Smoke on!