Everest helo landing triggers an avalanche of debate
It seemed about as likely as seeing a yeti. A helicopter landing on Mount Everest? How could that be?
The landing of a Eurocopter Ecureuil/AStar AS350 B3 helicopter on the Earth's highest point on May 14 and again the following day touched off a debate within the mountaineering community. While perching on top of the world is certainly an incredible achievement by pilot and machine, mountain climbers have a thing about getting there under your own power.
Soon after Eurocopter announced the unofficial record, newspapers in Nepal and India questioned the feat because of an apparent misunderstanding over paperwork with the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal. EverestNews.com, a mountaineering Web site, raised doubts about a video of the landing and whether the helicopter actually made the summit. The criticism subsided with Eurocopter's defense of the record, but climbers began to ponder what it means for the future of extreme mountaineering.
To claim the record, Eurocopter pilot Didier Delsalle did a hover landing and sat at the controls for more than two minutes with the skids in contact with the icy pyramid. "You need two feet on the ground for a summit, so it was not a summit. What was it? Strange," said EverestNews.com.
The Web site collected comments from its readers. Hardliners disagreed with Delsalle's statement that the feat could open the door for future high-altitude rescues where traditional rescues are nearly impossible. "They [helicopters] should never be allowed to operate above base camp, not even in rescue missions. Climbing high mountains should be limited to serious mountaineers or people [who] accept the risk of dying while doing so." Others thought that an added safety net would just attract more people to the big mountains.
Yet others saw it as a universal human achievement: "Rescue and supplies. How can that be a bad thing? It's an amazing feat for a copter in that part of the world!" Another quipped, "Are all those climbers who professed disappointment that a Frenchman had landed on the top of Everest in a helicopter planning to swim to Europe to protest in person?"
The event brings up the question of aerial tourism, something that might be more technically feasible than rescues, assuming that the governments of China and Nepal would allow it. "I'm sure this will be a big hit for rich foreign tourists who can't relate to physical demands. Be sure to bring your camera and a little flag from your country of origin," a reader wrote.
FAA rule petitions range from unusual to frivolous
The FAA gets many requests from the public for new rules or changes to current ones. Even legitimate requests are seldom granted, such as individual pleas from airline pilots to fly past the age of 60 and operator requests for limited flights without required equipment. Sometimes the requests are unusual.
One, apparently from a college student either fulfilling a class requirement to file a petition for a new rule or just playing a prank at taxpayer expense, asks that all flight attendants be female, "32 years of age or younger, and be a size five in the waist." His request was denied, but not until his joke had wasted considerable administrative time and cost at the FAA.
Another petitioner, an AOPA member who passionately believes in the future of road-worthy vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, made an unusual request for landing sites to be designated on highways. The FAA is reviewing the petition but is expected to deny it or forward it to federal highway authorities.
One individual wanted a "no-fly" zone above his house. The request was denied.
A petition that neither flight attendants nor passengers be allowed to wear perfume seems frivolous at first, until you understand that the request comes from someone with damage to his nervous system who is extremely sensitive to odors. Again, denied.
Others included an airline passenger, possibly one with allergies, who wants cats kept out of the cabin. General aviation pilots filed requests that all traffic, even VFR, be in mandatory contact with air traffic control and that the age requirement for flight instructors be lowered to 16. None made it to the formal rulemaking process. — Alton K. Marsh
'Ernie would have liked this'
Aviation writer Ernest K. Gann made his home on San Juan Island in the Pacific Northwest, in a picturesque town 75 miles north of Seattle in the Pacific Ocean. Friday Harbor Airport was Gann's home base until his death in 1991. Gann's wife, Dodie, officially opened Ernie's Café at the airport in June. Owned by James Crossley, a pilot for FedEx, the café is the first restaurant at Friday Harbor Airport. Crossley met Gann while he was serving in a U-2 squadron and Gann was researching material for his book, Black Watch. Gann was a well-known figure in the island community and, as Dodie said on the café's opening, "Ernie would have liked this." — Charles W. Lindenberg
A rule of thumb
Abort the takeoff if 70 percent of the takeoff velocity is not reached within 50 percent of the available runway.
Members in the news
Andrew Cousins, AOPA 5349545, has been selected by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association as the 2005 Edward W. Stimpson Aviation Excellence Award recipient. A panel of aviation professionals chose Cousins for maintaining his solid scholastic record, completing college courses while still in high school, and taking an active role in his church and community. He plans to earn a degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and become a corporate pilot.
John Anthony Teipen, AOPA 875882, has been named 2005 FAA Certificated Flight Instructor of the Year for being involved at all levels of flight instruction. Teipen teaches in the aviation program at St. Louis Community College and is an independent flight instructor in the St. Louis area, specializing in tailwheel endorsements and upset/spin training. As a designated pilot examiner, he conducts practical tests in airplanes and gliders.
Africa welcomes enhanced GPS
Technology that boosts the performance of GPS signals is sweeping the planet, bringing ILS-like or near-precision approaches to places that need it the most.
The same technology that will bring safer approaches to America's airports — but without the expensive infrastructure of the past — is being tested on the African continent by the European Space Agency (ESA). The Interregional Satellite Based Augmentation System (you know it as the Wide Area Augmentation System, or WAAS, in the United States) consists of 10 ground stations in Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Namibia, and South Africa to serve the Africa-Indian Ocean region. The stations are linked to the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service's testbed in Norway and used to improve the integrity of the GPS signal that comes from space.
ESA recently completed its most successful test by flying across Africa's widest part, from Dakar to Mombasa, and making approaches using a receiver made by Thales Avionics. ESA officials said the system should help improve safety at airports in Africa that have traditionally seen a high rate of controlled flight into terrain accidents during approaches.
Dept. of R&D
A whale of a tale
To improve aircraft wing design, scientists have turned to one of the most unlikely sources in nature: humpback whales.
Wind-tunnel tests using scale models of humpback pectoral flippers have shown that the bumpy flipper is a more efficient design and has better stall characteristics than anything currently in aviation. The results were previously reported by researchers from West Chester University, Duke University, and the U.S. Naval Academy in the journal Physics of Fluids.
The researchers compared a smooth flipper, similar to a modern airplane wing, with one that had bumps or what are called tubercles. The bumpy flipper produced 8 percent more lift and 32 percent less drag, and stalled at a 40 percent steeper angle. The researchers said that as a whale moves through water, the tubercles cause swirling vortices by disrupting the line of pressure against the leading edge of the flippers. The water is redirected into the scalloped valleys between the tubercles, keeping the flow attached to the upper surface of the flipper.
The findings could be applied not only to airplane wings, but also to the tips of helicopter rotors, airplane propellers, and ship rudders.
World War II pilots group may disband
During World War II the Army Air Forces established a first of its kind: a 24-hour, all-weather aerial supply route to keep China in the war with Japan. Now, some 60 years later, the China-Burma-India Hump Pilots Association Inc. is thinking about packing it in.
Originally, the group was supposed to disband after 2005, but many members wanted it to continue. The group will decide what to do in late September at its board meeting in Nashville. The group's president, J.V. Vinyard, said the group has about 1,750 members left and the average age is around 85, making traveling more difficult with declining health. Some 300 turned out for the most recent reunion.
When the group does disband, artifacts will go to the Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins, Georgia, but the member database will remain open so members can contact each other.
Vinyard started flying the Hump in July 1944 and completed the then-standard tour of 650 hours. Pilots flew the roughly 550-mile route from the Assam Valley in India to the Yunnan Province in far southwestern China. Vinyard said they used low-powered ADF radio navigation but mostly relied on dead reckoning — that is, when they could see the ground. The mountains towering to more than 20,000 feet coupled with monsoon weather mixed a menacing brew.
Flying the 'Hump'
- 650,000 tons of supplies delivered
- 509 aircraft crashed, 81 missing
- 1,314 crewmembers killed
- 1,171 crewmembers walked off Hump after bailout
- 16,000 feet msl highest elevation along route
- 1,750 members, with average age around 85
Skywritings
The good news is that they survived the airplane crash. The bad news is that they are severely injured and, by the way, it's November in the Sierra Nevada. In Survive! My Fight for Life in the High Sierras, Peter DeLeo recounts his harrowing experience after the Maule airplane that he was flying crashed in the mountains in 1994. For 13 days and with 16 broken bones in subfreezing weather, he treks across the wilderness to find help for his two passengers. He drinks from small pools of melted snow and ice, eats insects from a hot spring, gets pinned down by a two-day blizzard, and nearly dies in a rock slide near a highway. Published by Simon & Schuster, the 241-page hardcover book sells for $24.
Author Robert Gandt has published Shadows of War, the fourth in a series of military adventure novels from Penguin Putnam that follows the career of Cmdr. Brick Maxwell, chief of an F/A-18 Super Hornet squadron aboard the USS Ronald Reagan. In the new novel, a squadron mate of Maxwell's is shot down in the first Gulf War, then secretly held prisoner in Iraq for the next several years. When Maxwell decides to bring him home, he finds himself in another Middle East war and a shocking betrayal. The 352-page soft-cover book is available in bookstores for $7.99.
Pilots interested in world travel may want to check out a book that takes a whimsical look at places and culture. Not So Dull! by McKinley Conway is about proving a point — that economic development and corporate real estate don't have to be dull subjects. The book chronicles Conway's 50 years of traveling the world — circling the Caribbean in a Cessna 182, flying to the Amazon in an Aero Commander 560A, and challenging the Arctic in a Mooney M20F. The soft-cover book is available from Amazon.com.
UAV watch
Company develops tiny jet engine
It's one thing to build an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and it's another thing to power it. Under the Navy's Small Business Innovative Research program, Accurate Automation Corp. has developed a high-performance turbojet engine for use in UAVs, air-launched missiles, target drones, and decoys. The AT-1500 is 15 inches long and 8.6 inches in diameter, and weighs 19 pounds yet produces 150 pounds of thrust at sea level. As part of a family of turbojet engines, the AT-1500 is being expanded for more thrust. The engine could very well power vehicles that you'll be sharing the skies with in the future.
What's in the August issue of AOPA Flight Training
Coming up in the August issue of AOPA Flight Training magazine:
- B is for Busy. Make your way more easily through congested airspace with a few tips from professional pilots.
- Art of the Chart. An insider's look at how your sectional charts are produced.
- Carb Heat. How much is too much? Learn the secret of proper carb heat use.
The August issue mailed on June 29. Current AOPA members can add a subscription to AOPA Flight Training for $18 per year. For more information, call 800/872-2672.
AOPA ePilot headlines
Recent news from AOPA's weekly e-mail newsletter
Commander owners bid for company
Fifty Commander owners from several countries have submitted a bid for the assets of the bankrupt Commander Aircraft Company.
First American-built LSA gets FAA nod
Fans of the Piper Cherokee line will recognize a few things when they first see the IndUS T211 Thorpedo, an $85,000 aircraft that in June became the first U.S.-built Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) category aircraft to receive an FAA special airworthiness certificate.
White Knight has new mission
The mother ship that launched SpaceShipOne is far from retiring.
The insectlike aircraft dubbed the White Knight will be carrying the Boeing-built X-37 unpiloted vehicle.
Garmin delays WAAS upgrade
Garmin announced delays in scheduled upgrades that will allow its GNS 430/530, GPS 400/500, and GNC 420 avionics units to take advantage of the Wide Area Augmentation System. Upgrades won't be available before the third quarter of 2006.
New turboprop bush plane
Quest Aircraft, of Sandpoint, Idaho, picked Alaska to debut its Kodiak, a 10-place turboprop utility airplane.
Symphony 160 gets FAA certified, again
Symphony Aircraft Industries cleared its final hurdle toward shipping aircraft to U.S. customers with the issuance of the FAA type certificate for the Symphony SA 160 on May 2.
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