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Capt. Force Drags His Tail – And Manages to Keep It Behind Him

May 13, 2008 by Leave a Comment



This is a regular blog post. Please check out the other posts if you’re looking for show notes or episode audio.

Got some tailwheel time this afternoon at Sutton Aviation with Barry Sutton in a Citabria. I had been reading the materials that Dan Gryder provides and saw something to the effect that “if you can taxi the DC-3, you can probably fly it.” So I reconsidered the wisdom of flying the DC-3 while having had no previous tailwheel time. Taxiing or otherwise.

We flew a really nice Citabria, namely N157AC. Two high-speed taxi runs down 27L at Pontiac with Barry handling the stick and throttle and me on the rudder. Then eight takeoffs and landings for a total of 1.4 hours. All were wheel landings, with the idea being that you always do a wheel landing in the ‘three and it would be good to get an idea of what wheel landings are like and have an understanding of the forces involved. Obviously, the ‘three is going to be a lot heavier and more steady, but it’s still a tailwheel aircraft.

That’s Barry Sutton in the back. Thousands of hours in tailwheels and other aircraft. And a great manner as an instructor. I think he out-John-Kings John King. And, when you’re in a tandem configuration with the instructor behind you, it’s like you have this disembodied announcer voice coming from the sky that occasionally moves the controls, too.

Actually, it might be fun to just have the instructor be the voice of the airplane. “Hey, that hurt! Could you maybe point me down the runway now?”

I’ll post audio from this ride as soon as I can. Probably after the daily updates from the ‘three training May 23-25. But it’ll be fun. The tower was really chatty and it was a fun day to be in the pattern.

More information on Sutton Information:

Sutton Aviation, Inc.
Oakland County International Airport
6230 North Service Drive, Waterford, MI, 48327
248-666-9160

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Meet the Cessna Mustang!

May 13, 2008 by Leave a Comment

This is a regular blog post. Please see other entries if you’re looking for wshow notes or audio.

Just got back from the Cessna event at Willow Run. No time to write much at the moment (going out for some tailwheel this afternoon), but lots of good pictures and other stuff to come.

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Behind the Scenes with Pilot and Audio Ace Scott Cannizzaro

May 11, 2008 by Leave a Comment


Subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your favorite other podcatcher. Or listen online right here by clicking: http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedCannizzaro.mp3. It’s all free!

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Scott Cannizzaro. He’s a pilot, an Airspeed listener, and an audio professional at The Soundtrack Group in New York. Scott offered to take some of the Airspeed music and work it up, which is to say take it into the studio, remix it, pinch a little here, poke a little there, and see what he could do with it.

So I went back to my ADAT session tape, extracted the individual tracks (four drum tracks and one each of guitar, mandolin, and bass) in .wav form, dropped them into a .zip file, and sent them off to Scott.

A few weeks later, when I opened the files that he sent, I broke the space bar on my laptop because my chin hit it so hard. Scott took some well-intentioned recordings with passable (but not brilliant) performances, and turned them into something you might find as a theme for a prime time TV show.

I usually don’t like to talk about administrative or housekeeping stuff on the show. After all, people tune in to hear about airplanes and aviation. But I was so impressed that I thought the audience might enjoy it if I had Scott on and devoted an episode to the process.

So here’s the conversation with Scott. I’ve included all of the basic tracks and even put the new intro, its entirety, at the end of the episode. You can hear us discuss what Scott did with each of the elements (including tossing out the drums) and understand how it evolved in Scott’s capable hands.

Scott’s contact of information appears below. Thanks, Scott!

Scott Cannizzaro
The Soundtrack Group
936 Broadway
New York, NY 10010
212 420 6010
nycmixer@mac.com
http://www.scottcannizzaro.com/

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Shut Up and Listen to the Otter

May 7, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your favorite other podcatcher. Or listen online right here by clicking: http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedListenOtter.mp3. It’s all free!

The wonderful thing about having a podcast is that you’re often producer, host, editor, engineer, and janitor. It also means that you can put any darned thing you want in the feed.

I normally record flights by plugging the MP3 recorder into a headset jack. There are only two in the Otter that I flew with Dave Schwartz of Skydive Chicago at Midwest Freefall at Kunstman Field in Ray, Michigan on Sunday, so I normally use a “Y” adapter to split the signal with one lead going to my headset and the other going to the MP3 recorder. I didn’t have the right adapter for the flight on Sunday, so I though that, rather than getting no audio at all, I’d plug in the microphone, set the sensitivity as low as it would go, and just get the ambient sounds of the cockpit.

What I got was about 24 minutes of noise, but it’s my favorite kind of noise. On the chance that it’s the kind of noise that you like, too, I thought that I’d just post the audio here in the feed. If you like it, that’s great. If not, just tune in to the next episode or download some back episodes to tide you over.

I’m flying from about 1,000 AGL to downwind abeam with the exception of the very end of the jump run and the start of the descent, when I was taking pictures that you can see on the website.

I’ve posted a rough time-indexed description of what’s going on the website at http://www.airspeedonline.com/ and it’ll be a part of the notes in the RSS feed so you can probably pick it up right there on the screen of your MP3 player, too.

The sound levels were just below maximum for the takeoff, climb, and jump run, so the audio is pretty good. Things get a little noisy and max out the recorder when the door opens in back and then it’s cacophonous during the descent (which, by the way, happens with an initial pitch down of 30 degrees and roll to 60 degrees of bank and then a descent at 160 KIAS, which is Vne for the Otter. So it’s noisy as heck and maybe even a little unpleasant to listen to during the descent.

But, overall, I think it’s a cool little piece of audio in the tradition of last year’s episode “Shut Up and Listen to the Airplanes.” (http://airspeedonline.blogspot.com/2007/04/airspeed-shut-up-and-listen-to.html).

This one’s for London Area Control Centre air traffic controller Andy Amor and for anyone else who loves the Twin Otter and/or airplane noise.

3:30 Startup

6:30 Takeoff

7:30 Throttle back

9:30 Synching the props

18:45 Door opens

20:15 Begin descent

24:30 Level-off downwind

25:15 Landing

26:00 Taxi (right engine shutdown and taxi on left engine)

27:00 Shutdown

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Around the Drop Zone – A Sunday Afternoon at Midwest Freefall

May 6, 2008 by Leave a Comment


This is a regular blog post. Show notes and links to episode audio appear in the other entries.

I spent Sunday afternoon at Midwest Freefall, a drop zone in Ray, Michigan between Romeo State Airport (D98) and Ray Community Airport (57D).

Dave Schwartz of Skydive Chicago was in town flying skydivers while the drop zone is between aircraft. Midwest had been using a Cessna Caravan or similar aircraft and is in the process of obtaining another one. In the meantime, the Otter is filling in.

Really nice, laid back DZ. Here’s the observation line right near the loading point for the jumpers. A pretty good group of family and friends watching the departures and landings. A guy had a grill going with steaks, burgers, and dogs and even delivered a couple to the cockpit after the second load that I flew. I’m the first to admit that I’m still a bit of a pretender in the cockpit of aircraft like the Otter, but it was really cool to be respected (and fed) as a pilot.

Here’s a load shortly before takeoff. More folks in the aircraft than we flew at Skydive Chicago (mainly due to the fact that we were flying on a Monday morning then and it was understandably slow) and there were more definite and pronounced changes in CG as jumpers moved back and departed the aircraft. Definitely had to pull and re-trim.

Here’s the last jumper of the second load. Wingsuit flyer. It’s kind of hard to get a picture that captures the fact that the jumper is heading out the door while still getting the jumper in the shot.


Here’s the view out the front window right after the wingsuited jumper left. You pitch 30 degrees nose-down, bank over 60 degrees, throttle back, pitch for Vne of 160, and get the airplane down as quickly as possible. Lots of planet in the window, as you can see.
On a busy day, you night save enough time to be able to get another couple of loads of jumpers up in a day.

That’s Romeo State Airport down there. Kunstman Airfield is between Romeo and Ray, and you announce on the CTAFs of both airports (122.8 and 122.7, respectively) before you greenlight the jumpers. You’re also talking to Selfridge ANGB (KMTC) approach, so you have good eyes on you.

If you’re interested in checking out Midwest Freefall, the contact information is below.

Midwest Freefall Sport Parachute Club
62912 Kunstman Road
Ray, Michigan 48096
586.75 2 JUMP (586.752.5867)
http://www.midwestfreefall.com/
skydive@midwestfreefall.com

Midwest accommodates first-timers, experienced jumpers, and everyone in between. Tandems are available.

The DZ runs a United States Parachute Association‘s Accelerated Freefall (AFF) program.

You start with an extensive ground school session (6 – 8 hours). The club provides special student equipment that includes industry standard safety features and ground-to-air radio. You exit from more than 12,000 feet AGL and you and your two freefall instructors fly for approximately 60 seconds. You deploy your own parachute and descend to the landing area with the assistance of ground-to-air radio instruction.

Really nice DZ with really nice people.

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