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It’s About Aircrew

February 26, 2012 By 1 Comment

The low clouds and snow flurries retreated today and, as luck would have it, Capt Norm Malek and I had scheduled the G1000-equipped CAP C-182 all afternoon.  So we launched around 1:00 and wrung out the aircraft for a total of 3.3 Hobbs hours.

As of this morning, all of my approaches for instrument currency dated from October, which means that they’re going to expire next month.  So I clearly needed some approaches.  Capt Malek didn’t need as many, having recently flown some single-pilot actual as part of some aircraft repositioning work this week.

So I rocked out a hold on a DME fix about 18 miles sooutheast of Flint, then went in for the ILS 27, the RNAV 18, the ILS 27 again, and the VOR 18 before landing and switching pilots.  2.0 ASEL high-performance and 1.6 of it under the hood.  We had some VFR traffic around NUPUE, my intended IAF, and I volunteered to be vectored to JUBER instead, so there was some fast fingerwork on the G1000.  But no worries. [Read more...]

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Indoc in the Schweizer SGM 2-37

February 25, 2012 By 1 Comment

I love Twitter.  Not necessarily for the hours of timesuck that it has represented over the course of the three an a half years and 10,000+ tweets.  I love it because every once in awhile, you tweet that you’re getting a haircut and you end up getting to fly a really cool aircraft.

Yesterday, I tweeted that I was heading downtown Saturday morning to get a haircut from Vic, a commercial pilot who’s also my barber of some 15 years.  John Harte responded, suggesting that he might be able to get me up in a motorglider if I could make it over to Detroit City Airport while I was downtown.

The motorglider in question is a Schweizer SGM 2-37, registered under tail number N26AF.  Only 12 were made, nine (including this one) of which went to the US Air Force Academy under the designation T-G 7A and flew at the academy until 2003.

Schweizer designed the aircraft at the request of the USAF to allow flight training in both powered and glider roles.  For that reason, it’s a bit of a mutt. The nose, cowling, and engine installation are adapted from the Piper PA-38 Tomahawk.  The wings are adapted from the Schweizer SGS 1-36 Sprite, including extensions that stretch the wings to 59.5 feet and leading edge cuffs to make it spin-resistant.  Those who know and love the Schweizer SGS 2-32 will recognize the tail section.

6AF, like all nine of the USAFA models, has aLycoming O-235-L2C four-cylinder engine that puts out 112 hp and gets the 1,850 MTOW aircraft up into the air with reasonable aplomb and allows the aircraft to cruise somewhere around 110 KIAS. [Read more...]

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Airplanes 50¢

February 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I spent part of this afternoon at Marvin’s Magnificent Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills.  It’s tucked in behind a strip shopping center and you probably wouldn’t know it was there despite the big sign.  Inside, in addition to the pinball machines and video games, is one of the largest collections of old-style automated arcade attractions I think I’ve ever seen outside of Cedar Point.

But the coolest thing is when I detected movement above my head.  The ceiling is pretty busy with stuff attached to it.  But, running around the place is a conveyor system with dozens of model aircraft attached to it.  The conveyor system is static most of the time but there’s a box next to the door that says “Airplanes 50¢.”  If you put a couple of quarters into the box, the conveyor system starts and the airplanes make circuits of the place.

Really cool.  Worth a couple of quarters any day!  I especially appreciate that several of the aerobatic aircraft are inverted.

I shot the above video on my iPhone and then stitched it together this afternoon.  Enjoy!

 

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Like a Boss

February 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

You’re seen the whole “what my wife/boss/etc. thinks I do” meme, right?  I couldn’t resist putting together an Airspeed take on it.

 

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Subscribe on Facebook for More Immediate Airspeed Content

February 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

When we decided to re-tool the Airspeed website, we also worked out a strategy to more fully connect Airspeed to other social media.  The show notes and the blog here at airspeedonline.com hold the long-form, detailed commentary that you’ve come to expect from the show and its related projects.  But you can also subscribe to get all of the as-it-happens content.  Here’s how!

Head over to Steve Tupper’s timeline on Facebook.  It’s at www.facebook.com/StephenLTupper.   Then click the “Subscribe” button (highlighted by the arrows above).  And done!  It’s that simple.

Thanks to Mark Curtis and the folks at C3Designs, we’re rapidly adding tentacles to the Airspeed octopus!

Keep coming to the website for show notes, think-pieces, and the rest of the in-depth content that you expect from Airspeed.  But, if I walk out of the flight surgeon’s office cleared to fly at some Air Force base or Naval Air Station, the as-it-happens commentary will be available immediately through the Facebook subscription feed and it’ll land right in your brain automatically.

Just another way that we’re making great content even more available to the best audience in all of online media:  You!

 

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