This Date in Aviation History: August 24 - August 27

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 08/27/2019 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, Planelopnik, TDIAH

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Welcome to This Date in Aviation History , getting of you caught up on milestones, important historical events and people in aviation from August 24 through August 27.

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August 24, 2001 – Air Transat Flight 236 runs out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean and glides to a landing in the Azores. Flying across the great expanses of the open ocean has always been a risky proposition, though certainly less so in the modern era. In the early days of commercial aviation, transoceanic flight was the bailiwick of large flying boats that could land on the surface of the water should an emergency arise far from land. Following the flying boat era, transoceanic flights were restricted to airliners with more than two engines for added insurance against engine failure, until new regulations, known as !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , recognized the reliability of modern jet engines and allowed for flights across the oceans with two-engined airliners.

But any engine, be it piston, turboprop or jet, requires fuel to run, and pilots must make rigorous calculations to prevent an aircraft from running out of fuel. These calculations also include extra fuel to allow for holding patterns and diversions to different airfields. But if those calculations are done incorrectly, an airliner can become starved of fuel and turn into a giant glider, as happened famously in 1983 to an Air Canada flight known as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . In that case, crews simply didn’t put a sufficient amount of fuel onboard the airliner. But undetected mechanical faults can also lead to fuel starvation, and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is a terrible place see your fuel gauge reading empty.

Air Transat Flight 236 was !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (C-GITS) service from Toronto, Canada to Lisbon, Portugal. The flight, carrying 293 passengers and 13 crew, took off without incident, but a little more than four hours into the crossing the flight deck crew received a warning for low oil temperature and high oil pressure in the number two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engine. Twenty minutes later, the crew received a warning for fuel imbalance, and they responded by transferring fuel from the left wing tank to the right wing tank, which was nearly empty. What the crew did not realize was that a leak had caused the imbalance, and the fuel transfer caused what fuel they had remaining to flow through the leaking fuel line and drain out at roughly one gallon per second. The pilots declared a fuel emergency and decided to divert to Lajes Air Base in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which lies in the Atlantic Ocean 850 miles west of Portugal.

Air Transat 236 on the ground at Lajes (Author unknown)

Within ten minutes, and still far from Lajes, both engines flamed out, and the Airbus lost all primary electrical power, as well as its main hydraulic power. The captain of the flight, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , an experienced glider pilot, put all his gliding skills to use as he and First Officer Dirk de Jager worked to control the powerless plane with minimal controls. Their skill kept the plane in the air for 19 minutes and roughly 75 miles, the longest distance ever flown by an unpowered passenger jet. Military air traffic controllers at Lajes guided the airliner to the runway, and the plane touched down at a speed of 200 knots, resulting in a fire in the braking system that caused the loss of all eight main wheels.

Fourteen passengers and two crew members received minor injuries during the evacuation, and two passengers were seriously hurt. The plane experienced damage to the landing gear and lower fuselage. Investigators traced the cause of the leak in the number two engine to the installation of an incorrect part in the hydraulics system by Air Transat maintenance staff, and though pilot error was also listed for the crew’s failure to identify the fuel leak, Captain Piché was awarded the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! by the Air Line Pilots Association. The French aeronautics board also issued a directive leading to a revision in the flight manual to prevent future incidents.

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President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy arrive in Mexico City on a Boeing VC-137A (National Archives)

August 26, 1959 – The first VC-137 enters service. In 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first US President to fly on an airplane, a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! flying boat named the Yankee Clipper, for official government business when he traveled to Casablanca on the Moroccan coast for a war strategy meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In 1945, when Roosevelt went to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , he flew in a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! named the Flying White House but popularly known as Sacred Cow , the first purpose-built presidential aircraft. His successor, President Harry S. Truman, used a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! named Independence . President Dwight Eisenhower then flew in two different !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! named Columbine II and Columbine III .

But with the arrival of America’s first jet airliner in 1958, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , it was clear to the Air Force that it was time for the President to transition to a jet-powered transport. In 1958, the Air Force accepted its first 707, dubbed the VC-137A, and it was given the designation Special Air Mission (SAM) 970 based on its serial number (59-6970A). Two more 707s were then added and were given the designations SAM 971 and SAM 972.

President Kennedy exits SAM 970. The aircraft’s serial number is visible beneath the pilot’s window. (NASA)

The new aircraft featured living and working spaces for the president and his staff, as well as modern communications equipment. President Eisenhower was the first US President to fly in the new airliner, visiting 11 Asian nations during his “Flight to Peace” goodwill tour in 1959. But the SAM jets used by Eisenhower, and briefly by his successor, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , looked nothing like the iconic blue and white jets we see today. The original 707s featured a rather gaudy, bright red-orange nose and bright orange tail stripe. It wasn’t until the next generation of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! purchased for President Kennedy that the airliners were decked out in the famous blue, white and silver livery designed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

SAM 970 served Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and, after the original SAM 970 was replaced in 1962 by two newer VC-137Cs (SAM 26000 and SAM 27000), the executive transport continued flying VIPs and the Vice President until 1996, with its last executive passenger being Vice President !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . SAM 970 is preserved and is on display at the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in Seattle, Washington, while SAM 971, a V137B, resides at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Arizona. SAM 972 was scrapped in 1996.

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The two YF-23s, nicknamed Gray Ghost and Black Widow, fly in formation (US Air Force)

August 27, 1990 – The first flight of the Northrop YF-23. In war,   control of the airspace over the battlefield is of paramount importance and, by the 1980s, the US Air Force needed to counter the latest generation of Russian fighters such as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Air Force issued requirements for a new !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that would take advantage of developments in cutting-edge construction materials, engines that could provide !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . But perhaps most importantly, the new fighters would include the latest developments in !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that were first demonstrated brilliantly by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . While stealth doesn’t make an aircraft invisible, it does reduce its radar signature so that it can be difficult to detect against the background clutter of the radar screen.

This head-on view of the YF-23 displays the stealthy design features of the radical air superiority fighter (US Air Force)

In 1981, the year that the F-117 took its maiden flight (though designated as a fighter, the Nighthawk is truly a tactical bomber), the Air Force initiated its !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (ATF) program to find a replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in the air superiority role. Two groups of manufacturers—Lockheed/Boeing/General Dynamics and Northrop/McDonnell Douglas—paired with Pratt & Whitney and General Electric to produce two prototype aircraft each. The Lockheed-led group proposed the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which incorporated stealth capability along with thrust-vectoring engines for increased maneuverability. The Northrop-led group offered the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (the second prototype was dubbed Gray Ghost due to its lighter paint scheme). The Northrop proposal placed greater emphasis on stealthy design but saved weight and complexity by eliminating thrust-vectoring. The YF-23 also made extensive use of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to reduce drag at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! speeds. The first YF-23 was powered by a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! afterburning turbofans, while the second received !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engines. To increase the stealthiness of the fighter, the exhaust from the engines was routed through troughs lined with materials to reduce the aircraft’s heat signature.

The YF-22 and the YF-23 fly in formation during testing and evaluation (US Air Force)

Both aircraft underwent four years of testing and competition, during which the YF-23 proved to be stealthier and faster than the YF-22. However, the YF-22, with its vectored thrust, proved to be more agile. On April 23, 1991, the Air Force announced that the Lockheed design was the winner, and the YF-22 entered production as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1996. Both YF-23 prototypes were sent to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for use as test beds, but they were never flown again. Some consideration was given to having Northrop develop a carrier-based version of the YF-23 for the US Navy, or an interim bomber version for the Air Force, but those plans never came to fruition. The first prototype is now housed at the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in Ohio, and the second is on display at the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in California.

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Short Takeoff

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(Author unknown)

August 24, 1979 – The death of Hanna Reitsch, a German aviatrix and test pilot and the only woman awarded the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for her service during WWII. Born March 29, 1912, Reitsch set over 40 altitude and endurance records flying gliders. She later served as a test pilot on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! rocket plane. She was the first female helicopter pilot and one of the few to fly the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the world’s first fully controllable helicopter, which she famously !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! inside the Deutschlandhalle during the International Automobile Exhibition in Berlin in 1938. Reitsch was captured near the end of the war and, after her release, she continued flying gliders and set yet more records.

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(US Air Force; US Department of Defense)

August 24, 1951 – US Air Force Major Louis J. Sebille is posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. After serving as a bomber pilot in WWII, Maj. Sebille served as the commander of the 67th Squadron, Jet after the war before transferring to Japan at the outbreak of the Korean War. In the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! early in the war, United Nations forces were pushed back to the South Korean city of Pusan and nearly overrun by North Korean forces. While supporting UN troops in the Perimeter, Maj. Sebille was flying a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and attacked a column of North Korean armored vehicles. When the first of his two 500-pound bombs malfunctioned, Maj. Sebille, gravely wounded by North Korean antiaircraft fire, turned and dove directly into the line of vehicles, firing his machine guns as he struck the column. Maj. Sebille was the first member of the newly-formed United States Air Force to receive the Medal of Honor, and the first of four USAF pilots to be awarded the CMH in Korea, all of whom were killed in action.

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August 24, 1932 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly nonstop across the United States. America’s most famous aviatrix, Amelia Earhart set a number of flying records for her day and achieved many firsts for female pilots. Perhaps her greatest feat was her solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1932, but she followed that just three months later with another first when she became the the first woman to fly nonstop across the United States. In doing so, she also set a new transcontinental speed record in her !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! by completing the 2,448 mile journey in 19 hours 5 minutes, a record she would break the following year. Earhart, along with navigator Fred Noonan, disappeared on July 2, 1937 while attempting to fly around the world.

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(NASA)

August 25, 2012 – The death of Neil Armstrong . Born on August 5, 1930 near Wapakoneta, Ohio, Armstrong took his first flight at age five on board a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . After beginning an engineering degree at Purdue University at age 17, Armstrong joined the US Navy, where he flew the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in Korea. Armstrong then served as a test pilot before joining the astronaut program, where he was selected as Command Pilot for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! mission in 1966 which performed the first successful docking in space. In 1967, Armstrong was chosen along with 17 other astronauts to form the crews for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! missions that would eventually take astronauts to the Moon. Armstrong was tapped as the commander of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the mission that put the first human footprint on the lunar surface. Uttering the famous words, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind,” Armstrong set foot on the Moon at 2:56 UTC on July 21, 1969. He retired from NASA following that flight, and became a college professor and businessman before his death in 2012 at age 82.

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(Tim Shaffer)

August 25, 1995 – The first flight of the Airbus A319, a narrow-body, short-to-medium-range airliner that was developed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . A shorter version of the A320, the A319 was developed based on a request by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (IFLC) and was intended to provide direct competition to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Though it carries slightly fewer passengers than the A320, it has the same fuel capacity, thus the range is extended up to 3,700 nautical miles with the addition !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (called Sharklets by Airbus). Just under 1,500 A319s have been produced, and it is in service with over 100 operators worldwide.

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August 26, 2012 – Ron Akana retires as the longest-serving flight attendant in history. Born in 1928 in Honolulu, Hawai’i, Akana responded to an advertisement placed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1949 to fill a steward position. A college student at the time, Akana said that his main reason for joining United was the opportunity to fly to the mainland. His first flight on a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! began a 63-year run of service, with only a two-year interruption from 1950-1951 to serve in the military during the Korean War. When Akana retired following a flight from Denver to Kauai after spending his entire career with United, he had logged 200 million airmiles and crossed the Pacific Ocean 10,000 times.

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August 26, 2002 – The first flight of the Eclipse 500, a small, six-seat business jet and the first in a new class of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (VLJ). Previously called microjets, VLJs are approved for single-pilot operation and seat four to eight passengers with a maximum take-off weight (MTOW) of under 10,000 pounds. The Eclipse 500 is based on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which was designed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and is powered by a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbofans that give it a maximum speed of 425 mph and a range of nearly 1,300 miles. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! entered bankruptcy in 2008 due to a lack of funding, and production stopped at 560 aircraft. After liquidation, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! took over, and development of a more advanced !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is underway.

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August 26, 1975 – The first flight of the McDonnell Douglas YC-15, an unsuccessful entrant into the US Air Force competition to procure a jet-powered replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . McDonnell Douglas competed against the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for the Air Force contract, but neither aircraft was selected. The YC-15 featured advances such as a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to reduce drag and increase lift, along with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to improve low-speed performance. Only two YC-15 prototypes were built and, while it failed to enter production, many elements of its design served as the basis for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! following McDonnell Douglas’ merger with Boeing in 1997.

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August 27, 1990 – Blues guitatist Stevie Ray Vaughan is killed in a helicopter crash. Following a performance with Eric Clapton in East Troy, Wisconsin, Vaughan and members of his band boarded four helicopters to take them to Chicago’s Meigs Field. Accompanied by three members of Clapton’s entourage, Vaughan boarded a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the pilot took off, despite haze, fog and low clouds in the area. The flight path required the pilot to fly over a 1,000-foot high ski hill, but the helicopter struck the hill approximately 50 feet from the summit, killing all on board. The National Transportation Safety Board cited pilot error as the cause of the crash, and listed weather conditions as a contributing factor.

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(Author unknown)

August 27, 1940 – The first flight of the Caproni Campini N.1, an experimental aircraft powered by a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a precursor to the modern jet engine. The N.1 was incorrectly credited by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (FAI) as the first jet-powered aircraft to take flight, as news of an earlier flight by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! had not been widely reported. However, the N.1 was not a true jet, as it used a standard aircraft engine to turn the compressor in an arrangement Caproni called a “thermojet.” Two prototypes were built, and one is on display at the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! near Rome.

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(US Air Force)

August 27, 1939 – The first flight of the Heinkel He 178, the world’s first practical !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! -powered aircraft. First demonstrated in 1937, the engine was developed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! at the same time as, but separate from, work being done in England by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Heinkel received little support from the German Air Ministry for his private venture, as the government was more focused on development of traditional piston engines being made by BMW and Junkers. The He 178 featured a metal fuselage with high-mounted wooden wings and retractable landing gear, though the gear remained fixed during flight tests. Despite the promise of the new powerplant, only one airframe was built by Heinkel, and it was destroyed in an Allied air raid in 1943.

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Connecting Flights

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If you enjoy these Aviation History posts, please let me know in the comments. And if you missed any of the past articles, you can find them all at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . You can also find more stories about aviation, aviators and airplane oddities at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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f86sabre > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 13:04

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Speaking of the Azores.

Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 13:36

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The Northrop engineers still love to talk about just how fast the YF-23 was. Obviously it’s still classified, but apparently it was way way faster than the F-22.

phenotyp > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 13:37

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Goddamn, the F-23 is still the rockingest plane.

It’s like the FD RX-7, for me.

user314 > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 13:46

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What might have been...

ttyymmnn > f86sabre 08/27/2019 at 13:59

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Hah!

You gonna go for that sweet 7-day free trial?

ttyymmnn > Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) 08/27/2019 at 14:01

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If they had put thrust vectoring on it, I wonder if it would have won. I still believe that it looked too weird for AF brass. They like fighters that look like fighters.

ttyymmnn > user314 08/27/2019 at 14:02

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What maybe should have been?

user314 > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 14:13

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Eh, I’m still not convinced the F-23A would have been a better fighter than the F-22A, as it would still lack TVNs .

Now, had Northrop been given the opportunity to develop it into the FB-23?

That might have been a winner.

ttyymmnn > user314 08/27/2019 at 14:15

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I’ve actually heard some rumblings about bringing it back and turning it into a bomb/missile truck. That would be awesome.

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 14:18

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I think it looked cooler.  Too bad it couldn’t be sold to our allies at least as an export.  I wonder if that kind of real world testing might have back doored it into US service.

facw > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 14:21

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I was just on-board SAM970 yesterday, might post some pics after work.

Edit: I guess one image doesn’t hurt (apparently I didn’t get any good exterior shots, so this will have to do ):

Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 14:32

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Hence their  continuing distaste for the A-10.

ttyymmnn > Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) 08/27/2019 at 14:35

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Back in the days of F-15 development, the AF’s motto was, “Not a pound for air-to-ground.” That’s not what dashing fighter pilots do. They fly around in the rarified air and duke it out mano a mano with the enemy. So yeah, I can see how some in the AF might feel that way. 

user314 > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 14:40

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I’m not sure I agree. I think the YF-22 was just a more polished design. Look at a YF-22, and then at an F-22, and the differences are very subtle. The differences between a YF-23 and the F-23A below, and they’re more apparent. Also, there were more unknowns with the F-23: the design did not account for TVNs, adding them would have been an expensive, extensive process, possibly compromising the plane’s speed and stealth. Too, a weapons test was never carried out; the YF-22 however fired Sidewinders and AIM-120s.

Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 14:53

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*The F-15E would like to know your  location*

ttyymmnn > Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) 08/27/2019 at 14:55

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Well, we’re talking early 1970s here. So some attitudes have changed. I’m still amazed that the F-15 took its maiden flight in 1972. And the F-16's first flight was in 1974. 

Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 14:57

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Yeah, it’d be fascinating to see what’s on the drawing boards now, and also just to see the F-35s actually doing stuff.

ttyymmnn > Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) 08/27/2019 at 15:01

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The IDF is putting their F-35s to good use.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/stealth-steroids-meet-israel’s-f-35i-adir-f-35-no-other-47862

user314 > Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) 08/27/2019 at 15:09

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That’s one of those AF things that drives me crazy: they don’t want to do CAS, but they don’t want anyone else to either. Give the damn Hogs to the USMC and be done with it! 

facw > f86sabre 08/27/2019 at 15:58

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Speaking of the An -124, look what I saw in Seattle:

f86sabre > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 19:07

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Probably not, but their AR function is pretty awesome. 

f86sabre > facw 08/27/2019 at 19:08

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They are doing a lot of work for Boeing. We got ours on a lucky off day. 

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 19:58

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CFIT - Controlled Flight Into Terrain. It’s not much of an issue here in the flat part of the world, but I am always on the lookout for towers. There are plenty of those tall bastards around. They’re surprisingly difficult to see during the day. Be acons make them stand out at night.

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/27/2019 at 20:27

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I watched this video on AvWeb this morning and thought of you. Not that you would do something like this, but it’s a good example of getting behind the aircraft and not making sound decisions . Thought you might appreciate it.

https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/technique/why-this-landing-went-bad/

facw > f86sabre 08/27/2019 at 20:39

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Yeah, the guide said this one was hauling engines.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 22:24

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One of the nice things about having a younger instructor is the liberal use of YouTube videos as teaching tools. This was one of the videos used to discuss short-field landings and appropriate speed and glide slope on descent. That particular runway is short, has a steep hill on approach, and not obvious from the video, the runway itself slopes downhill. All that makes it hard to land there.

You’re right, though. It’s easy to let events get the best of you. First rule: fly the plane. If it looks/feels wrong, it probably is and you should go around.

I flew late last week. It had been over a month since my previous flight. I’ll admit, the first couple of landings felt weird since the previous plane was a high-wing Cessna, not a low-wing Piper. I still stuck the landings!

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/27/2019 at 22:33

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I never thought about how a high vs low wing would change your landing. Is it simply a matter of perspective, or are the aerodynamics different?

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 08/27/2019 at 22:58

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It’s a bit of both. T he closer a wing is to the ground, t he stronger the ground effect. There are other differences between a Cessna and a Piper wing, so it’s hard to compare apples to apples, but the Cherokee felt more “floaty” to me. There’s also a change of visual reference. I’m used to a big wing being between me and the ground and I know what it should look like as I’m setting in for a landing. The Cessna’s gear disappears from the pilot’s field of vision unless he’s looking directly out the window and down. Landing feels incomplete because it’s like the plane is hovering a few feet above the runway. It’s strange. It’s almost like going out in public without a pair of pants. 

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/27/2019 at 23:26

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Interesting. Thanks.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > ttyymmnn 08/28/2019 at 09:37

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Ever wondered why all the Gen V fighters have twin vertical tails?

ttyymmnn > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 08/28/2019 at 09:52

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Ever wondered why all the Gen V fighters have angled twin vertical tails?

That was fascinating. Thanks !

iheartburpees > phenotyp 09/02/2019 at 03:34

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Looks about the size of a B-17...Am I right?