Letters

The first 100 feet

Readers responded to Dave Hirschman’s tips for precision landings with some advice of their own.

No wonder pilots have a difficult time understanding precision landings. The first 100 feet may be appropriate for floatplanes (“Technique: The First 100 Feet”); however, 10-foot accuracy is required for making wheel landings on river bars. Pilots use orange cones set at 10 by 60 feet on a river bar to practice spot landings. Your aiming point is the box. Learn to place the wheels in the box at stall speed on every landing. Use a high approach to landing and make the approach at stall speed with intermittent use of the throttle. This is the way to learn how to perform meaningful precision landings.

William A. Quirk lll
AOPA 5053580
Anchorage, Alaska

Friendly skies

I was saddened and alarmed after reading “America’s Unfriendly Skies” by Stephen Moore, in the conservative publication Townhall. As a conservative and wife of a pilot, the issue of ATC privatization has challenged me. Am I only considering what’s best for my personal situation and not what’s best for my country? 

Then I think back to the Prescott AOPA Fly-In, where my husband and I listened to Adrian Eichhorn talk about his experience flying around the world in a Beechcraft Bonanza. I found myself in tears as he described the death of private aviation.

I never thought I would read an article by a libertarian economist with such bias against the rich private jet owners who must not be paying their fair share. There are completely average Americans trying to keep the spirit of aviation and freedom alive; people who are flying 60-year-old airplanes inherited from their grandfathers.

My husband started out as a baby riding in his dad’s airplane, grew up to fly the AV–8B Harrier for the Marine Corps, and now is a United Boeing 737 first officer. Our airplane belonged first to my husband’s grandfather, who passed it to his son, who passed it to his son, and God willing some day we will pass it to our own son. My husband and I both grew up living in trailer houses—far from the opulent airplane owner lifestyle Moore envisions. 

Moore seems to forget that private jet owners support an entire chain of employees in support industries and contribute much to the economy. He forgets that general aviation pilots become corporate jet pilots or military pilots who become airline pilots. He forgets some of us are flying propeller planes. He forgets we all pay our fair share of gas taxes and many other taxes to support American infrastructure.

As Thomas B. Haines said of privatization in “Waypoints: Concrete”: “This giveaway of assets and control is akin to handing over the interstate highway system lock, stock, and barrel to six trucking companies and asking them to be sure to look after those driving cars.” What a shame “The airports are regulated by...concrete” is still as true today as it was in 1986.

Corie Vessey
AOPA 3021984
Yuma, Arizona

Yankee memories

The first airplane I ever owned was a 1969 AA–1 Yankee, the first year built. It had the “fast wing,” before the leading-edge cuff was added to the AA–1A in 1970 and retained in the AA–1B and AA–1C (1977 to 1978). The AA–1A and –1B were about eight knots slower in cruise but also in takeoff and landing. I got an honest 135-mph cruise out of my 108-horsepower Yankee, but I had to carry power all the way through the landing at 75 mph. The AA–1B was identical to the AA–1A, except it got a gross weight increase of 100 pounds, which made it actually slower (not faster as “Budget Buy: Grumman AA–1B” reported) than both the AA–1 and the AA–1A.

The AA–1C Lynx in 1977 introduced more horsepower, which can be tweaked up to 125 horsepower with a propeller speed mod. The C model also extended the horizontal stabilizer and elevator by a foot or so, which compensated for the sharp break in the fuselage aft of the cockpit that causes the airflow to delaminate and become turbulent over the inboard half of the tailplanes in the earlier models, which is why power-on landings are required. Bottom line: The AA–1C is the only model to own if you don’t have at least a thousand hours in your logbook or you are not actually a fighter pilot.

Gary Peppers
AOPA 1131712
Cape Coral, Florida

It gives you wings

Great article on the Red Bull Flugtag (“A Wish for Wings That Work”) in the October 2017 AOPA Pilot. I was the designer and general manager for the Survivor Tractor team based out of New Holland, Pennsylvania, and sponsored by New Holland agriculture. We appreciate the mention of our team’s cause to raise money for cancer research.

I am a single-engine land private pilot and previously participated in the 2012 and 2013 Red Bull Flugtags. Piloting the winning 2013 craft was the impetus for me to shake off the pilot rust, and I added 60 hours to my logbook since getting behind the yoke again in 2014.

I do need to give a bit of good-natured ribbing at the description of Flite Tester’s craft as Burt Rutan-inspired. It was a beautiful canard-wing craft, but it was a semiconventional construction with wooden frame and wooden spar. Survivor Tractor was actually built with the Rutan method of fiberglass-covered foam to make the body and spar. If something were to go wrong, I wanted the pilot to hit foam rather than wood or metal. As the injury at Pittsburgh from a competitor hitting a hard wood platform showed, I think our design strategy was correct. 

Mark Dilts
AOPA 5746731
New Holland, Pennsylvania

Under pressure

Reading the October 2017 AOPA Pilot, “To Infinity and Beyond”: I don’t think you really mean “peak pressures of up to 5 Gs.” I think you mean “peak accelerations of up to 5 Gs.”

Roger Bourke
AOPA 731702
Alta, Utah