What looks from the NTSB factual report to be a bobbled soft-field takeoff in an Evektor SportStar by a light sport student pilot turned out to be a close call for he and his instructor as well as for a homeowner adjacent to the Erie Municipal airport in Erie, Colorado on 14 June.

The instructor took over as the aircraft drifted to the right after liftoff, but things couldn't be righted.

"The aircraft had just enough airspeed to respond to a climb when the instructor pulled back on the control stick in order to clear the home," the NTSB writes. "The aircraft momentarily climbed, the right wing clipped a portion of the roof, and then lost altitude and impacted the driveway on the east side of the house before sliding across the street and coming to a stop."

And when the NTSB says "coming to a stop", they mean it...

 

 

Cirrus Aircraft says it will unveil "The Next Leap Forward" on 18 April, next Wednesday. What could it be?

We knew of several things the company was working on, including path forward for its single-engine jet, the SF50 Vision, which the company was to begin discussing in January 2012 but did not.

Cirrus had also been tinkinering with smaller entry-level aircraft, and perhaps a turbine-powered version of the four-seat SR22.

The promotional video below makes the news sound even more enticing however.... 

One of the most interesting sites at the Sun n' Fun aviation gathering in Lakeland, Florida last week was a retired aircraft I found, not on the flight line, but sitting in front of the Florida Air Museum down the road.

The PiperJet prototype in all it's DC-10-like glory now graces the museum (where in years past it would have been at Piper's Sun n' Fun booth, drumming up orders...), a testament to the fact that the programme really is dead, or at least dormant for a long, long time.

No that's not the corvette in the foreground, but that's definitely the soon-to-be-crashed AH-1F (N197LE) in the background.

According to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in a preliminary report, the pilot and his passenger had just completed a practice run of the race course when he experienced a control malfunction.

The sequence, at the Coolidge Municipal Airport (P08) in Arizona on 1 March, used the Cobra operated by the Army Aviation Heritage Foundation and Musuem for a segment to be aired as part of the Korean Top Gear television series.

The pilot and and mechanic onboard received "minor injuries", says the NTSB.

"The pilot stated that the next filming sequence, when the accident occurred, was to consist of a racing sequence with a Corvette," the NTSB says. "At 1205, they began a practice run/filming sequence that terminated at the start/finish line. The pilot initiated a right 150 to 180 degree turn reaching about 200 feet above the ground."

"He was attempting to neutralize the controls in preparation for a normal approach for landing when he realized the controls were 'locked and unmovable in any direction.' The pilot stated that the helicopter remained in the same rate of turn with the same collective pitch and cyclic input as when he had initiated the turn. The helicopter maintained the same arc through the turn and descent until it impacted the ground. The pilot further stated that he was reaching to activate the emergency hydraulic switch at impact." The investigation continues...

Here's a video clip of the accident in action.

A trick used by missionaries to drop and retrieve supplies to remote native villages in Ecuador more than 50 years ago is now the centrepiece of an innovative idea by Aurora Flight Sciences.

As suggested by the title of a 2011 patent application (#20120048996 published on 1 March), "System and method for the retrieval of a smaller unmanned aerial vehicle by a larger unmanned aerial vehicle", Aurora has proposed a method for a larger UAV to capture and potentially deploy a smaller, slower UAV in flight, allowing a holistic mix of the two in remote areas. Big UAVs are good for long-term stationkeeping and persistent surveillance while small, or micro, UAVs (MAVs) are best for short-term up-close-and-personal contacts.

"A system or method that synergistically combines the advantages of both MAVs and larger UAVs will yield a truly revolutionary capability," says Aurora, adding that a larger UAV that would deploy and capture MAVs would "create the capability of rapidly deploying MAVs at much farther distances than ever before".

But how to dock and undock the two given a large difference in flying speeds of the two?

That's where Aurora took the cue from the missionaries. In Operation Auca in Ecaudor (an endeavour that did not go all that well, as you'll note from the Wiki site), a pilot would fly a Piper PA-14 in a tight spiral over the drop point while an assistant would lower a basket to the ground below. The rope and bucket follow a helical shape, and when the bank angle is right and the rope long enough, the bucket, in theory, lands at a stationary position on the ground, allowing the transfer of goods.

A cartoon in the Aurora patent shows the principle in action:

 

What Aurora noted was that different locations along the helical have lower speeds than the main aircraft, which in this case is the larger UAV, which could allow the lower-speed MAV to link up with the rope at essentially zero forward speed, completing the capture or deploy.

This Boeing 737-200 (N219PA) that I spotted on approach to Runway 22 at the Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on 12 March will look quite a bit more tasty in the near future...

According to sources, the former Pace Airlines workhorse will be hauled in the near future to a location in the Winston-Salem, North Carolina metro area where it will be reunited with its wings and empennage to become a restuarant called "Plane Food". 

The winged "diner" is no other than Boeing aircraft S/N 19956 (according to the website Planespotter.net), which started life as a United Airlines passenger hauler from 1969 through 1997 before becoming the property of the new-defunct Pace Airlines. And, retirement as a food joint seems to be favourable to being banished to the bone yard, or worse yet, the scrap yard.

I know of a few similar ventures, including DC-6 diner at the Coventry Airport in the UK, the KC-97 Airplane Restuarant in Colorado Springs, and Boeing 727 doubling as a hotel in Costa Rica. Anyone been to any?

I wish the new owner of S/N19956 much luck, and hope to visit some time.

The 1946-built Ercoupe 415-C took the worst part of a landing prang in Panacea, Florida on the evening of 16 December; its pilot and passenger walking away and wondering why the brakes didn't work after setting down on the 2,600ft turf strip at the Wakulla County airport (2JO) after a flight in from Atlanta.

Kyriakos Loumakis, the pilot, tells the FAA he was on final approach at 80mph. "I applied the brakes but the brakes failed to stop the aircraft," he says. "I went the remaining length of the runway and went through a fence at the end of the runway with the airplane ended up on its nose."

An FAA accident investigator had a mechanic look at the downed bird, finding that the brakes worked fine, and that there was no evidence of "torn loose sod or skid marks" leading up to the fence.

Regardless of whether the brakes were applied, the 80mph approach speed would seem to have been too high for the Ercoupe to prevent a long landing run given the suggested landing speed of 60 to 70mph in the Ercoupe instruction manual (snapshot of applicable pages were included in the NTSB report - click on the image below to see a larger version).

The manual provides lots of leeway though. In the colourful but not-so-technical talk of the 1940s, the Ercoupe company instructed pilots thusly about landing:

"A good airspeed reading during the approach to a landing is one between 60 and 70mph", the manual says, adding in later, "However the airplane may be set on the ground at up to twice the minimum speed, and as long as the control wheel is not pulled back, will stay on the ground....On the other hand, there is no point in steaming in at excessively high speed"

 

 

 

Eurocopter chief Lutz Bertling last year at the Heli-Expo show mentioned some enticing details about the company's EC155 Dauphin replacement for later this decade, dubbed the X4, the least of which being that it would not have a cockpit!

 

On Sunday at the 2012 Heli-Expo show in Dallas, Bertling gave up just a little bit more, including a couple of artist's conceptions.

Bertling says the total X4 will arrive in two waves, the first in 2017 when the helicopter will go to market with the advanced airframe, engines and dynamic chain portions, and in 2020 when the "game-changing" cockpit arrives that will be a "major breakthrough" in safety.

"The level of innovation is so huge that we need stepped approach," says Bertling, adding that Thales and Sagem are partners on the design. Along with FBW side-stick controllers, the company envisions a flight deck with small interactive central console, 3d audio information and helmet-mounted displays with large fields of view for the pilot.

 

On 8 December 2011, I grabbed my Nikon D3100 camera and joined Flight International helicopter test pilot Peter Gray (pictured above with his Sikorsky experimental test pilot for the day, Greg Barnes) for a test flight and photo shoot of the new Sikorsky S-76D twin-engine medium helicopter, set for certification and first deliveries later this year.