In case you hadn’t heard, this is the Year of the Cub…the 75th anniversary celebration of that wonderful proto-LSA, the *** Piper J3 Cub. *** All aircraft have their special places in our hearts. But was there ever anything quite like the wonderful Cub? If you haven’t had the pleasure, take some dual just to see what our forebears learned to fly in. You’ll not only gain appreciation for how much better your stick-and-rudder skills could be, but it will, I’ll wager, also infuse your soul with a real bit of love for flying, true grassroots Americana style. There just isn’t anything quite like the sensation of lifting off behind a Continental four-banger of varying horsepower (the one I rent is a Continental with 65 ponies) and struggling at a leisurely pace for altitude. *** Wikipedia has a tasty lead-off to its abstract that I want to share with you: it cuts through the flowery verbosity to capture in unadorned prose the essence of what the Cub has meant to generations of pilots: *** The Piper J-3 Cub is a small, simple, light aircraft that was built between 1937 and 1947 by Piper Aircraft. With tandem (fore and aft) seating, it was intended for flight training but became one of the most popular and best-known light aircraft of all time. The Cub’s simplicity, affordability and popularity invokes comparisons to the Ford Model T automobile.The aircraft’s standard chrome yellow paint has come to be known as “Cub Yellow” or “Lock Haven Yellow” *** As my pics, shot a couple winters ago, no doubt betray, there’s nothing in aviation *** EAA has put out a call to all J3 Cub owners to fly in to the big airshow later this month. There will be a big fly in to Wittman Field and prominent events including a zillion of them parked at the Antique section on the show grounds. *** And if you see someone putting their chin up against that wonderful Cub Yellow and making a wish, like we did as kids with buttercup flowers, please say hello: that’ll be me, unabashedly indulging my own version of Cub Love.

It’s premature if not off the point to say this exotic, beautiful prototype will be the death of the helicopter. I will flat out make a prediction: a whole new type of flight is here … and it will change everything … and I mean everything about how we fly. I was musing the other day, while catching up on the latest multi-rotor RC model technology with which to populate my Christmas wish list, about how long it would take before we saw a serious effort to build a human-carrying version. Clearly I was way behind the buzz curve: talk about instant gratification! E-volo of Karlsruhe, Germany has just made a lightspeed leapfrog over pretty much every other vertical takeoff/landing design or project I’ve heard about. The gamechanger: the just-maidened VC200 Volocopter. Watch the video, then read on. This project and others like it is going to change flight as we know it, make no mistake. It would even be a legal SLSA since it carries a max two occupants and, well, look at it: no way can Volocopter weigh more than 1,320 pounds since it’s all carbon-fiber composite. There is one glitch though, or rather 18 of them: it has more than the single piston-powered engine mandated in FAA’s LSA regulation. No matter. This nicely sculpted, mechano-buglike craft not only looks right, but could lead to a wave of simplest powered flying vehicles ever … unless you’re thinking powered parachutes, which is sort of like saying beating a bowl of eggs into submission with a cement mixer is the simplest way to make an omelet. (No offense intended against PPCs; they’re a ton of fun to fly.). So while FAA must first change the LSA regulation to allow electric propulsion for LSA (or perhaps issue an exemption), industry is ahead of the game. ASTM has already finished an electric propulsion standard. However, even more significant I believe is this: No force on earth will keep this burgeoning technology out of the hands of eager pilots…and those who have always dreamed of simply flying without hours and hours of flight instruction just to get the feel of how an airplane or chopper must be controlled to fly safely. The multi-rotor flying concept will, as it evolves and is refined, be more like learning to drive a car than fly an airplane. As such, E-volo’s impressive accomplishment signals a paradigm shift in manned flight. Similar flying machines like the eternally-in-development Moller Skycar or the recently announced Terrafugia TF-X, projected to debut in, oh, about a decade or so, riff on the vertical rotor concept by sporting tilt-rotor designs. The E-volo VC200 dismisses in one 18-brush stroke all the mechanical complexity and expense that tilt rotors are heir to, thanks to its ability to instantaneously migrate thrust to each and several – or all – of the rotors independently, entirely through electronic computer control. And how does that work, you ask? Rather intuitively I would imagine, once the control synchronization is perfected, and so easily that it should revolutionize piloting forever. Want to take off? Give it full power to climb straight up. Want to move forward? Piece of cake: Push the yoke and the rear array of motors automatically increases thrust while the forward motors decrease thrust. Result: the “nose” of the circular motor array dips down as the “tail” raises up and you slide forward. I imagine it would feel very much like accelerating in a chopper, or catching a big wave on a surfboard. Kind of exciting, in other words. Think about it a bit more and you’ll realize you can do the same thing in reverse … I mean back up just like driving a car, without changing heading first. Or slide (not bank or turn, but slide, to the left, or to the right, or in any direction). You’re not required to bank at all to turn in fact, like you would with a rudder (airplane) or tail rotor (helicopter). The same variable-thrust concept works, and rather finely nuanced I would imagine, with 18 motors each providing its increment of thrust vectors, to turn you anywhere you want to go … without adverse yaw or stalls to worry about either. As long as those props are turning, you’re flying. Consider all this hybrid versatility: You will be able to fly the VC200 like an airplane, but also make vertical takeoffs with it like a helicopter, or hover in position and rotate around the vertical axis. Quadcopter and multi-rotor RC models have been demonstrating these traits for years now, and with excellent, refined control. It’s a hoot to fly the models … imagine flying in a full-sized one! I’ll be doing my next column in Plane & Pilot magazine on this technology simply because it’s potentially the most exciting, revolutionary flight concept to come along since possibly the first, unheralded flight of Gustave Whitehead, who flew a powered aircraft in 1901 – two years before the Wright Flyer. It’s all part of the Remote Control technology that led to the explosive development of UAV (drone) flight and huge and ongoing advances in electric powerplants, battery technology and computer control. And this is just the beginning folks. Follow the link above for more from E-volo, and look for my magazine column in the January/February 2014 issue, on sale in December. Some quick specs on Volocopter (and remember, this is just a prototype): 6 blocks of batteries power the 18 rotorsCurrent endurance: about 20 minutes, with one hour anticipated and extended range as technology evolves.Cruising speed projected at 54 knots and max altitude of 6,500 feet. I’ve seen You Tube videos of small quadcopters flying well over 100 mph … speeds will increase as the complex aerodynamics of several simultaneously spinning propellers is better understood and refined.Redundant power wiring: three batteries power each “arm” of rotors, so two batteries could fail and the VC-200 would still be able to land safely.A ballistic parachute system will be on board for backup in case of catastrophic power failure or mid air collision. Conceptually, the rotor array would be jettisoned first: now that would make for a fun ride. Another check in the plus column over helicopters: shed a rotor blade there and you’re toast.E-Volo’s goal: to make this mode of flying safer than any air vehicle in history.More redundancy: 20 small but powerful computers are the brains of the operation … and any single computer can fly the VC-200 on its own.The several-minute maiden flight, with multiple landings and takeoffs, was held in an indoor arena. Early indications were that the craft performed better than expected, in particular with less vibration although 18 motors were doing the heavy lifting.It was also much quieter than anticipated; you can hear on the video what a nice, whirring-sans-eggbeating sound it puts out.Visionary Erik Lindbergh presented his Lindbergh Prize for Innovation to e-volo in 2012 for its single-seat experimental multi-copter, saying, “We believe that the development of the Volocopter holds significant promise to radically change short distance transportation.”

Yes, Airventure fans, it’s been fair, mild, low humidity, refreshing, beautiful weather…all descriptors none of us is used to using in the same sentence with the words Oshkosh and summer. *** It’s been a delight not to drop with exhaustion at the end of a long day slogging around the miles of paths and thousands of exhibits, planes and aviation sundry. *** Here’s some more cool stuff from my travels across the great cement/grass/asphalt immensity known simply as “Oshkosh.”

In the wee and foot-throbbing hours after wandering the highways and byways of the vast Oshkosh Airventure showgrounds all day, here’s a taste of some of the cool things encountered so far from my abbreviated visit – my 32nd year in attendance since 1981…and every year brings new wonders and old friends: threads of gold and silver. *** *** ***

“How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm … after they’ve seen Paree?” That’s a timely reprise of an old show tune to bring our attention to the Paris Air Show, which is sending out some ripples in the “What’s New” Dept. Chances look better every year that electric flight will be a major player in how we take the air. And for those of you who think that’s just a bunch of hot air, you could be right, too! Read on. Jason Paur who writes for Wired magazine gets to do all the fun stuff I just get to fantasize about … specifically, electric flight. He’s at Le Bourget Field in Paris and filed this report on an exciting new electric prototype that fits nicely into the Light Sport Aircraft specification. Here are some highlights and you can read the rest first hand at the link above. First, it’s an electric aerobatic trainer…not a combo of descriptors that’s all that common. It’s called the E-Fan and comes to us from one Didier Esteyne, the same engineer/pilot who brought us the electric Cri-Cri a couple years ago. That bizarre little creature – the aircraft, not the pilot – mounted a couple small electric motors onto the nose of an existing single seat homebuilt airplane and showed us that you can indeed have electric flight right now and have fun doing it too – the Cri Cri is also aerobatic. Now comes his E-Fan, a significantly more sophisticated entry into the wattflight sweepstakes, a joint effort with EADS, the aerospace giant that produces the Airbus A-380. Jason reports EADS gave Esteyne the go ahead last October, and just a few months later, he wheeled it into Paris (the maiden flight won’t come for a few months) for the 50th anniversary of the show. Nice. Leading some exciting new innovation wrinkles are the electric ducted fan units on either side of the fuselage. If you’ve seen the near-legendary A-10 ground attack jet you know what a ducted fan is: essentially a shrouded prop that has some performance and efficiency advantages over sticking a prop all by its lonesome into the relative wind. Wikipedia serves up a good summation on the efficacy of ducted fans: propeller blade tip vortices are reduced, bringing higher thrust efficiency especially at low speeds and high static thrust level (as in airships and hovercraft…and the A-10)With proper design, air velocity is controlled through the fan to bring more efficiency at higher air speedsA ducted fan can produce the same thrust as a larger diameter free prop. One benefit: lower-to-ground landing gearQuieter operationlimited thrust vectoring possible (think: tiltrotors)Greater safety on the ground – you can’t accidently walk into a ducted fan blade, at least not from the side Since electric flight realities are still challenged by a high weight-to-power ratio (heavy batteries are the culprit here since electric motors are highly efficient and smaller than equivalent-powered gas engines), anything that might help shift the ratio toward the power side is worth considering. That was Esteyne’s rationale: small motors, big thrust. And smaller motors means, you guessed it, a smaller battery payload, which as we know is still the big stumbling block. Bonus: lighter weight overall, and less money to build…and sell. As designed, the E-Fan motors along just fine with just 20 kW power per engine. ”Just fine” means one hour’s flying duration at around 110 mph. Some initial specs: • wingspan 31 feet • max weight 1,212 pounds, right in the LSA wheelhouse • batteries: two, 250 volt, 40 amp-hour, multi-cell lithium ion battery packs in each wing root • ground help: Paur reports, “To maximize flight time, one main landing gear wheel has a small electric motor that can propel the airplane up to 35 mph, which is more efficient than using thrust to taxi.” As an acrobat, E-Fan’s endurance drops to 30 minutes. That’s about the turn-me-loose endurance level of most acrobatic students anyway. Still, we’re talking a two-seat electric airplane, folks. The stated goal of the project is to produce a certified electric aircraft for the market. We’ll be keeping an eye on the E-fan. Meanwhile, perhaps Yuneec can work out whatever has delayed its two seat, beautiful E-430 electric LSA soon so we can get some of these aircraft in the air and really get the excitement going. Now for the “hot air” segment of our blogcast: Although it’s not an LSA-worthy contender, this new breakthrough, also debuting at Paris, is just too good to pass up. Wait for it…a hot air-driven helicopter! The Sherpa, by a new Belgian company named Sagita, intends to make the case that choppers can be less complex and more efficient, reliable and affordable. The technology eyebrow-raiser here: Sherpa’s rotors are directly driven by enclosed turbines which are in turn powered by hot air and exhaust fumes from the helicopter’s conventional power plant. Sagita claims an 85 percent efficiency doing things this way…and another big plus: no tail rotor needed. Here’s a sketch of how it works: the Sherpa’s engine drives a compressor which has an air intake at the rear of the helicopter. Some of its compressed air goes back to the engine to boost combustion, but the rest of it first extracts heat from Sherpa’s cooling system, then mixes with engine exhaust fumes to heat the air to 212 F. That hot air mix then feeds to two turbines, which directly drive the eggbeater’s two contra-rotating rotors. Sagita says no additional cooling measures are needed, and fewer moving parts mean reduced maintenance. There’s a full-scale mockup at Paris, but to date, only a one-fifth scale RC model has flown. Sagita calculates the 573 pound full-scale helicopter will be capable of lifting 377 pounds of payload, cruise at 85 knots, reach out 250 miles and endure for 3 hours. Ceiling: 6,600 feet. Consider Sherpa a proof-of-concept that could lead to a whole new generation of simpler, safer, cheaper choppers … or possibly UAVs. Why not? Everybody else is jumping into that market. Target price: $200,000. First flight is projected to 2015.

Matevz Lenarcic, a Slovenian pilot I met briefly when I was at the Pipistrel factory last fall, has raised the bar to ridiculous heights from his previous long distance exploits (including his around-the-worlder in a Pipistrel Sinus motorglider in 2004), by landing in Antarctica! *** He’s making another globe-circling, solo marathon — that’s right, the entire trip, east to west — all by himself, in a  modified Pipistrel Virus SW 914 Turbo. The engine has an Intercooler unit but at least for Antarctica as well as some high-altitude reaches he has planned, engine cooling will be the lesser of his challenges. *** The epic flight in the SW (for Short Wing) began last January from Ljubljana, Slovenia where Pipistrel has its state-of-the-art sustainable energy factory (it actually sells surplus energy back to the Slovenian grid.) *** The route Matevz mapped out is by no means intended to be a short haul either, even by globe-circling standards. By the time he lands back in Slovenia, his route will have crossed the equator six times, ranged more than 48,000 miles (!), overflown seven continents, nearly 60 countries, 120 National Parks, three oceans and will also have topped five world-beater mountain peaks, including Mt. Everest! Yeah, that deserves an exclamation point alright, it's going to be hard to keep them to a minimum in this piece. *** His landing in Antarctica last Thursday (16 Feb) makes the distance covered so far about 15,000 miles. That’s enough to whip most of us... and he’s got no company and no ground or ocean support for the trip, which adds emphasis to the term “solo” for sure, doesn’t it?   *** Matevz's Antartica landing was made at the Base Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva, Chile's primary base on the continent. It's located on the Fildes Peninsula, an ice-free area adjacent to Fildes Bay, west of King George Island.To handle the extremes of cold and altitude, the SW is specially modified to handle temperatures down to 60 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit, which he could face above Mt. Everest. He's also of course carrying supplemental oxygen. *** As a stock plane, the short wing Virus SW cruises at 145 knots at 75% power, which puts it outside the LSA max speed of 120 knots (a longer wing version is sold as an Light-Sport). *** Once he launches from the Antarctic, the intrepid pilot will face some mighty long legs over the Pacific Ocean, including one of more than 2,400 miles! Yikes, is he nuts? *** The airplane has been tanked to carry more fuel but let’s contemplate for a moment flying at 145 knots over the open ocean for more than 16 hours! I’m getting a cold sweat just thinking about it. *** Matevz Lenarcic is no stranger to accomplishment. He has a biology degree and is an alpine climber, paraglider pilot, environmentalist, and photographer. He’s climbed all over the world and summited 26,414-foot Broad Peak in the Himalayas as well as many challenging peaks and routes in Patagonia.He’s written 11 books on nature, photography, climbing and flying, many of which have won awards. He enjoys flying in Europe both for pleasure and his aerial photography business, but as noted above, Iron Man-style flights seem to float his boat... or lift his wings.  *** His warm ups for the current flight include: • a 16,000 mile flight across Siberia in 2002 • the globe-circler in 2004 (nearly 23,000 miles and 23 countries) • Africa — Valley of Life 2005 (10,200 miles and 13 countries) • in 2009 the Alps, A Bird's Eye View 2006, (36,000 miles all over the Alps) *** Part of his motivation is to show how lightweight, light sport aircraft like the Virus SW can take pilots on great adventures with low fuel burn at decent speeds. The LSA Virus that I flew has a near-41-foot wingspan and is an excellent cruiser as well as a respectable motorglider thanks to the superbly clean aerodynamics and a real fuel-sipper (2.5-3 gph at 75% cruise and 115 knots.) *** Bon Voyage, Matevz Lenarcic!

SuperStol: Able to leap tall RVs at a single bound. Drawing lots of attention is the Just Aircraft SuperStol LSA kitplane (soon to be an SLSA) that has self-deploying leading edge slats, oleo main gear shock-absorbing struts (with humongous tires), even a shock absorber for the tailwheel. I found out later I was the first flywriter to get some time in the critter. Whether true or not, I felt like a kid on his first flight again: what a fun airplane! True — and amazing — STOL performance befitting a Helio Courier-style plane. My report will be out soon in Plane & Pilot magazine. It’s the third day at Sun ‘n Fun. Breezy, hottish (high 80s), humid: in other words, classic Florida Spring weather. The attendance seems steady if not overwhelming. I’ve been hanging out a lot in the new Paradise City Light Sport/Ultralight area and grass landing strip in the southeast corner of Lakeland Linder Airport, and enthusiastically report it is vastly improved over previous years. Biggest news is probably the merging of Dan Johnson’s LSA Mall showcase for Light Sport manufacturers right next to the grass demonstration flying strip. Now industry reps can show their wares, then roll said wares right across the grass to the strip and give their customers a demo flight. How cool is that? In the past, the Mall was near the main entrance, and Paradise City seemed much more remote than it does now. Well done, Sun ‘n Fun, for making such an improvement! There have been some kinks in the demo flight information about who can do what, when, such as a rumor that flew around a couple days ago that anyone leaving the 5-mile TFR from Paradise City (a common practice for potential customer demo flights) would not be able to return until the TFR was lifted at day’s end. Obviously, a ridiculous damper on the purpose of the entire restructuring of Paradise City if true, but the info was mostly a misunderstanding. Restrictions were in place only during a couple acts of the main airshow. The rest of the time, it was ops as usual in Paradise, including allowing demos even during the airshow except as noted, another improvement. Another welcome change to go along with the extended runway and filled-in runway-end ditches that used to make landing sometimes daunting is the road from the main part of the show to Paradise City. Now it curves down nice and close to the runway, there are regular trams from the main gate to the area, and all in all the entire operation makes the Mall and Light Sport and ultralight flying activity dramatically more accessible and appealing ... easier for folks to find, get to and enjoy. So come on out to the show, have fun and support the winged troops, folks! LAMA President Dan Johnson's right hand gal and spousal unit Randee Laskewitz shows me the map of the new Paradise City layout. The road from the airshow's main entrance now arcs down much closer to the now-1,400 foot grass strip at bottom. Mike Zidziunas, or Mike Z as we all call him, hosted a big Bahamas Bash at the Breezer tent after he and his cronies did a four-ship, tight formation flyby of the airshow. Mort Crim's 22-minute video of the LSA flyover to Grand Bahama and Bimini after the Sebring 2013 Expo drew a lot of thirsty pilots. Mike's in the foreground in front of the Breezer prop, at left. Thanks Mike, great party! At Sun 'n Fun, there's always something to catch your eye. Here's a kit car for sale; in the background, the new Zenith CH 750 Cruzer, flown 1,000 miles to the show by company head honcho Sebastien Heintz. The kit (no word yet on whether it will go SLSA) is equipped with the UL350iS 130-hp fuel-injected UL-Power engine and a Dynon SkyView glass panel. The leading edge slats of the CH 750 are gone: this is meant to be an LSA-style ... well, Cruzer. This year, bright blue, puffy-cloud skies drew more than 20 SeaReys to the Garner's back yard/grass ramp on a small lake in Auburndale. Even Progressive Aerodyne (SeaRey builders) CEO Adam Yang and President Kerry Richter dropped in. Kerry gave enthusiastic demos well into the afternoon ... on his day off. Globe-hopping SeaRey veteran owner/pilot Dan Nickens who flew me around for air2air photos in the Bahamas (story in April issue of P&P) did me great service once again so I could get air2ground shots of the event. Thanks again, Dan!!!

Pilot Workshops of Nashua, NH is getting with the program to help ease pilot anxiety about the transition. The company just put out three free videos that are aimed to help us all refresh our memories about Non-Towered Airport operations. PilotWorkshops founder Mark Robidoux had this to say: “With the recent announcement of 149 tower closures, there will suddenly be thousands of pilots flying into and out of airports that had ATC services one day, and none the next. While all of us are trained in these procedures, it’s easy to become rusty if you aren’t using a skill. We wanted to make this refresher available to all pilots for free in the hopes that it makes flying a bit safer for all of us.” PilotWorkshops.com LLC was founded in 2005 and is best-known for its free ”Pilot’s Tip of the Week” emails received by over 100,000 pilots each week. They’re crafted by several nationally known flight instructors and experts, and cover single pilot IFR operations, weather, airmanship, ATC , emergencies and more using a unique, multi-media format. PilotWorkshops also creates and sells a range of pilot proficiency programs including IFR Mastery scenario-based training. Many thanks to the group for jumping right in to help us brush off the cobwebs. Check out the whole list of offerings for their other refreshers.

Update 3/22/13 ... CHICAGO / Associated Press announced that the FAA put the final list of air traffic control tower closures at 149. The process of shutdown will start early in April. One key point: closures will not force the airports themselves to shut down, but all pilots will use unicom frequencies to communicate their position and intentions to other pilots in the vicinity. "We will work with the airports and the operators to ensure the procedures are in place to maintain the high level of safety at non-towered airports," FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a statement. In what could be a major impact on smaller regional airports such as Salinas Municipal in California, Lakeland Linder Regional in Florida (home of the Sun 'n Fun show next month), and Wittman Regional in Wisconsin (home of Oshkosh Airventure), airlines have yet to say whether they will continue offering service to airports that lose tower staff. With the huge increase in air traffic at both those Oshkosh and Sun 'n Fun, it's likely that both venues will hire tower staff at least for those events. It's impossible to imagine them without ATC! So far, Airlines for America said its member carriers have no plans to cancel or suspend flights as a result of the closures. This is all part of the sequestration budget cuts. FAA's mandate from Congress is to cut $637 million by September 30, 2013. The agency said it had no choice but to subject most of its 47,000 employees, including tower controllers, to periodic furloughs and to close air traffic facilities at small airports with lighter traffic. (According to another report all 47,000 FAA employees must take one day off every two weeks without pay, essentially a 10% pay cut. —DJ) The airports targeted for tower shutdowns have fewer than 150,000 total flight operations per year. Of those, fewer than 10,000 are commercial flights by passenger airlines. Airport directors, pilots and others in the aviation sector have argued that stripping away an extra layer of safety during the most critical stages of flight will elevate risks and at the very least slow years of progress that made the U.S. aviation network the safest in the world. For example, one of the facilities on the final closure list is Ogden-Hinckley Airport in Utah, where air traffic controllers keep planes safely separated from the F-16s operating out of nearby Hill Air Force Base and from flights using Salt Lake City International Airport. The 149 air traffic facilities slated to begin closing on April 7 are out of a total of 516 control towers in the FAA's national network. The targeted towers are all staffed by contract employees who are not FAA staffers. There were 65 other facilities staffed by FAA employees on the preliminary list of towers that could be closed. A final decision on their closure will require further review, the FAA said. The agency is also still considering eliminating overnight shifts at 72 additional air traffic facilities, including major airports like Chicago's Midway International and General Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee. There was no word Friday on when that decision will come. John Lampson, who took me through my Sport Pilot training, is one of the busiest CFIs at Hartford Brainard, CT, wrote me to say: "Thanks for addressing this. Earning my Private ticket at a non-towered airport, I was fortunate to learn from the start that non-towered airports are not "uncontrolled" fields ... that is to say, there is plenty of order and regard for safety in that environment. Calling a fairly busy towered airport my home for the past decade, I can also absolutely see the value in having an operating control tower at certain airports. In my opinion, either environment can be operated within quite safely. One issue, however, that may arise from the abrupt closure of these control towers is the adjustment period, mixing 'towered' students who are used to taking directives from a controller, with non-towered pilots, who are quite comfortable relying on the 'transmit in-the-blind,' and using 45 degree-entry methods of arriving and departure. And that is without even mentioning higher-speed, heavier, corporate-type fixed-wing and rotorcraft traffic that frequent many towered airports on a regular basis, day and night. Form a teaching standpoint, I'm not sure exactly how Private Pilot applicants will obtain the Class D experience they can now so easily access. It is my hope that for both the pilot community, as well as the controllers who do such a great job helping keep things running smoothly, calmly offering assistance when needed to the fledglings in the pattern, and helping to keep us all separated and safe on a daily basis, that this otherwise well-oiled machine is not dismantled and left to rust while government continues to create new problems and wastes more money." Meanwhile, back at the political ranch, the Senate and House have both passed budgets at long last, each of which is pretty much guaranteed not to get through the opposite house. ••• Now back to Jim Lawrence's original article posted March 21, 2013. ••• You've probably heard by now that part of the fun of the so-called sequestration budget cuts across the U.S. economy includes the planned closure of as many as 238 FAA and contract control towers — nearly half the national figure of 515. Other reports cite 177, 189 and 212 airports. No matter who you believe, it’s a major change that will affect thousands of FAA and contract employees and could have a negative impact on air safety and traffic control, just for starters. Local FBOs and pilots, aviation organizations like AOPA and EAA, GA business commuters to name just a few have raised a hue and cry from coast to coast. FAA has been notifying airports that their towers are scheduled to close in the coming weeks. The list spreads the pain nationwide and includes names most of us are at least aware of, and many have flown into at one time or another — Mobile Downtown in Alabama, Santa Monica in Southern California (one of 9 in So Cal alone!), Front Range in Colorado, Orlando Executive in Florida, Hartford-Brainard in Massachusetts (the busy GA airport where I got my Sport Pilot ticket) and Cuyahoga County in Cleveland, Ohio. Only six states escaped the cut, with the largest, most-active GA states such as California (23), Florida (20) and Texas (19) among the hardest hit. Here’s a complete list of ATC facilities that could be closed. Most airports that have their towers shut down will transition to uncontrolled fields. That should be interesting, to put it mildy, in places like Santa Monica, Collin County Regional in Dallas and Orlando Executive. Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas (think Wichita Tin) proposes a bill to restore funding to nearly 200 FAA and contract control towers. EAA applauds the effort but cautions against “undermining other FAA programs that would provide long-term benefits. Sen. Moran’s proposed amendment would move $50 million of undesignated funds from FAA research and capital projects to fund contract control towers throughout the nation. EAA’s VP of Government Relations, Doug Macnair, said, “With general aviation bearing more than 90 percent of the FAA’s mandated budget cuts under sequestration, it’s gratifying to see Congress engaging in a discussion about maintaining safety through important GA services that have been proven cost-effective. While the contract tower program is very important to busy GA airports, we must be mindful that diverting R&D funds to support contract towers is not without significant consequences.” Another downside, says EAA, would be the loss of the Piston Aviation Fuel Initiative, a program was designed by industry and the FAA to evaluate viable unleaded replacement options for 100LL avgas. Cuts would affect most GA operators, in an atmosphere of the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempts to kill leaded aviation fuel altogether. LSA aircraft will not be impacted by such a shelving, at least not models that use Rotax or other powerplants that run just fine on mogas (auto fuel), which is nearly the entire fleet. Online aviation readers across the country are weighing in. Here’s a sample from various aviation websites: Many of these towers should have closed years ago. GA has declined while the number of towers has increased. Uncontrolled fields work very well when the traffic is low.Alas, “everyone” DOESN’T agree that the federal government spends too much money. To wit: Until we agree on what we want the government to do, we don’t know if it’s spending “too much” or not…What’s clear is that we’re not paying for what we’re currently asking the government to do, so something definitely needs to change to get that into rough balance.Flying in and out of a non-towered airport is easy. Folks get nervous when their routine is disturbed or their workload changes.I like the folks in our local control tower, but from a financial and traffic count point of view, I have to say that the local tower makes no sense. Must be really boring to sit there and see nothing going on hour after hour.Most of the airports scheduled to lose their towers should have them closed. Those towers are …relics of past glory days or as political gifts to support a local politician’s delusion of grandeur.In looking through the list, there are airports on there I could never figure why they had a control tower to begin with!I regularly fly into a good number of the airports on the list, especially in Florida. Most every time I wonder why they have a tower, they are just not that busy!Pew just did a study asking people about 19 different potential areas for cuts – and the public answer was essentially none of them. In the abstract, people say “spend less”, but in specific terms, the answer changes. We need to get over that and make some hard decisions.Oh no!!! Not Roswell!!! Little green men might die!!! Rather than picking 100, out of that list of 200 towers, why don’t we just close all 200 of ‘em?This reminds me of electricity and its supply. People oppose all aspects of its expansion – no new generation plants, no new transmission lines etc. But demand is increasing! At some point everything will collapse then what does everyone do? Blame the government of course.The meat-axe is a poor way to do this…(“Tea-Partiers”) have finally shut off the Federal government spigot and cost jobs and safety. You will soon learn how vital the government really is, and it may cost a few pilots’ lives, and some on the ground, to re-learn that aviation safety is a TEAM effort, not just a “pilot” thing.Fundamentally this is about maintaining the current tax structure enacted under President Bush while President Obama wants to go back to a tax structure that looks an awful lot like the tax policy of the Clinton years…and which produced better results? Spending cuts Republicans are proposing are very much like the current UK austerity program. Look at those results – the deeper the austerity, they deeper the deficit. As you can see, opinions range all over the map. My take: politics aside, intelligent leadership at all levels must include a willingness to compromise for the good of all. That has traditionally been the only rising thermal that lifts all aircraft.

My flyin’ pal, industry leader, and co-blogger Dan Johnson suggested recently that I throw some tips your way about how I put together and do air2air photography. Since I’ve done around 600 in my 30 year career, it’s not a topic I have to research, always good news. So for those of you interested in what it takes to pull off such an undertaking, here we go. First big challenge: finding a decent photo ship. That’s tougher away from your home airport (mine was for many years Santa Paula Airport north of Los Angeles, and Long Beach Airport just south.) My birds of prey have included: single-seat ultralights, flying with one hand and holding the camera with the other – that was lots of fun although I was constantly anxious about dropping the big old Nikon SLR camera I used back in the early ’80s.homebuilt gyrocopters and choppers (airframe vibration is a big challenge here: faster shutter speeds are important)Piper Saratoga/Cherokee 6, Beech Bonanza. I’ve flown many missions in these fine aircraft with the rear door and often also the cargo door removed. That brings a nice big open window to shoot out of, from the 2 o’clock back to near 6 o’clock, with the target able to be placed high, level or low relative to the camera. One of my favorite shots is putting the target above the horizontal stab, just left of the vertical fin, in a slight climb so I can get a near-head on shot of the airplane and a bit of the horizon for reference too…all without any of the photo ship intruding into the shot, which is a no no. Another advantage is it’s easier to see hand signals when the photographer’s entire body is visible.Cessna 150/152/172/182: All these mainstay, ubiquitous birds have one thing in common: they’re high wingers and decent photo platforms on the (relative) cheap. Your view is more restricted than a low winger, especially upward and around the wing strut, but you can still pull off a decent shoot and I’ve done a couple hundred out of these workhorses. They’re easy to find and rent everywhere, and a lot of pilots can fly them well enough as a photo ship to get the job done.Patty Wagstaff’s Beech Baron was a hoot: the rear seats were 86′d, I could shoot out of either rear side window, left or right, and there was a magical door in the floor, about 9″ on a side, for straight-down shots: almost impossible to get with any common GA airplane. One of my two favorite all time platforms, the other being a B-25 Mitchell medium bomber (you know, the 30 Seconds Over Tokyo bird the Doolittle Raiders used). Yeah, like we can all afford to rent one of those!Speaking of Warbirds: I’ve shot out of AT-6 Texans (Navy version SNJ) with a greenhouse canopy, a B-25, an Extra 300 and Saia Marchetti whilst shooting aerobatics (in formation, and yes, I got sick but I didn’t barf in the airplane…only after we landed). You can shoot in the B-25 from the tail gunner position. In my case, photographing the Glacier Girl P-38 and two P-51 Mustangs in formation, you crawled down the tail tube, clipped into a couple constraints to keep you from sliding all the way out the tail and into one or a couple huge, spinning props – yes, it was completely open – and got what you got as quick as you could, since the rental was a couple thousand dollars, or more, per hour. Nothing better for head-on shots, which are impossible to get like this, hanging out the side of an airplane. Next, the formation pilots: both yours and the target airplane’s. Without really good formation pilots, you’re taking unnecessary risks, plus you likely won’t get many quality shots. Likewise, your photo ship pilot is as vital to success, and safety, as the target pilot: perhaps more so, because he/she’s got to keep the airplane stable – no sudden turns or changes in altitude or airspeed without plenty of communication first by radio (from photo pilot or me) and hand signals (me). Surprises are enemies in formation work. I have had my share of shoots where a willing target pilot, of course only eager to help and be part of the fun, said something like this: ”Aw hellfire, I been flying formation for years, you just tell me where you want it and I’ll nail it right there for ya.” Once airborne, that old stick’s version of “nailing it” proved akin to the inability to hit a barn with a soccer ball from three feet away. Not to be unkind: most likely, “formation” for these willing folks meant anywhere within 300 yards of me. For cross country flying, that’s fine. For photo work, that means images with a mosquito-sized airplane in the frame. A corollary: if either pilot does something that makes you bark something like, “Pull up! He’s crossing under the plane!” or “Don’t look over your shoulder at the target, you’re turning into him!” or in general you don’lt feel it’s going well, bingo the shoot and go land to talk it over. Sweaty palms and muttered curses for more than 30 seconds do not a safe shoot make. Moral: don’t force it. If you can’t get a target pilot to give you what you want – solid, stable positions where you need him/her to be, blow off the shoot and regroup with a different pilot. It’s not worth getting scared sick or killed for. I always tell people in the preflight brief, “If I ask you to do anything you’re not comfortable with, just say ‘Can’t do that,’ and I’ll try something else. I once had my photo pilot tell me that the target pilot, an ex-military combat instructor type at that and an excellent stick, tell me, only after we were in the air, that the target pilot was uncomfortable getting close enough for what I needed for the story, and didn’t want to do inside turns. I got a little hot under the collar. My first question was, “Why are you telling me this now? We should have talked this out on the ground.” My point was, things happen fast: light is constantly changing, especially during formation 360-degree turns which are great for getting lots of different looks without flying all over Creation. Inside as well as outside turns are important to get lots of variety for the art director (or your wife/husband) to appreciate and choose. I’m getting ahead of myself though. More basics: The light is everything. Don’t shoot between 10 and 4 if you can help it. The first hour after sunrise and last hour before sunset (and sometimes beyond sunset) are magical golden light times. Mid day, everything picks up the blue of the sky. Warm light is much more pleasing to most people, shadows are longer and define the ground more aesthetically too. In the air, the closer the airplane to you, the better, for you and for the target pilot. Closer equates to less zoom, which means less chance of motion blur. The more zoomed in you are, the more like trying to photograph through a telescope it becomes. In even light turbulence, forget it. Close formation also means it’s easier for the target pilot to react to changes in the photoship’s altitude…up to a point. Bill Cox, one of the best formation pilots any photographer will ever have the good fortune to fly with, taught me this. The photo ship should generally be the stable anchor, or “lead” of the shoot, which means the target plane should be briefed to fly on you. That means the photo ship holds whatever attitude (straight and level, climbing, descending, in a left 360 at 45 degree bank) and the target ship does its best to stay with you. Some people like to shoot with the photo pilot flying on the target, even when the photo plane is ahead, which can work if the target pilot is not a formation pilot but can at least hold heading, speed and altitude. The challenge there is the photo pilot has to be doing a lot of constant estimating of distances, while flying the plane, and looking over his/her shoulder when the airplane is behind. That’s a bit of a nerve-wracking experience, at least for me. I like keeping the piloting challenges to a minimum, and always prefer to set up shoots with us in the photo ship in the lead, providing the stable platform. For variety, say a shot of the target doing a break as seen from behind, I’ll have it pull ahead, so the “lead” changes hands. ”I’ve got the lead,” is a common radio acknowledgement. Then your photo pilot gets to show his formation chops by staying right where you ask him to stay, relative to the target. Often I’ll ask my pilot to call a break over the intercom as I’m focusing on the framing, something like this: ”Tell him I want a left break, dropping the left wing down rather than zooming up so he doesn’t disappear behind our wing, in five seconds, and count it down for him please.” Then I put all my attention into getting the shot as the break happens. The 3 C’s: Communicate, Communicate, Communicate: Talk it out before you take off, be on radio with each other constantly and make no moves, especially putting the photo ship into a turn, without letting the target know exactly what you’re doing, backed up by a visible hand signal from you, the photographer, and when possible, sun angle permitting, only after you’ve gotten a nod and/or radio acknowledgement from the target pilot Don’t shoot through plexiglass if you can help it. It distorts the picture, makes the target plane less sharp, shows reflections of whatever’s catching light in your cockpit – including your bright yellow shirt! – and when they’re tinted, it’s even worse. Shoot through open air, even through a vent if you must. Most Cessna windows will open all the way up to the wing: you just have to unscrew one window strap before takeoff. Be flexible: unless you don’t feel safe because of pilot skills or weather such as rough turbulence, keep trying things. Swap the lead: maybe your pilot is better at formation than the target pilot. Shutter speeds: If you want a full shiny prop arc, you need to be going toward the sun within an hour of sunrise or hour before sunset, to reflect the low sun angle. Heading should be maybe 30 degrees to either side of the sun, so you’re not on a heading that blinds your target pilot. If it’s a three blade prop and it’s turning near full throttle, 1/125th second should give you a pleasing disc. A two-blader might require 1/90 or even 1/60 second, which without a lens stabilizer such as Canon and Nikon et all have, will mean lots of unwanted blurs. For shots where prop discs aren’t so important, rack up the shutter speed as high as you can. I will shoot around 1/400th second or faster when I know the “propsicle” – frozen prop as if the engine had quit, which looks pretty crappy frankly – isn’t going to be a factor in the shot, such as a profile or when the plane is going away from you or other times when it’s just not visible at all. A useful mid-range where you get some prop blur, again where it’s not a big factor in the quality of the shot, is 1/180, 1/250 or 1/320. But technical considerations like this are always a factor of what’s required at the time, which means you need to be thinking technically to be sure you don’t muff the shot, but also creatively, for instance if you’re in a 360 and you need to move the target up in time to be just above the top of the mountain peak you know is coming up – because you saw it in the last 360 and you told both pilots to keep the turn going until you call it off. There’s a lot more: if anyone is interested in hearing more, please leave a comment or questions by clicking on the graphic for Jim's blog. Meanwhile, the key point is: everything is a thousand times better with two excellent formation pilots and a constant expectation that talking to each other on the ground and in the air are the most important imperatives. I’ve only had a few close calls in my career. I remember every one of them. All could have been avoided with better communication, quicker reaction when one of the pilots surprised me and the other pilot – or both. Comment from Dan... I've flown formation in the target aircraft more than 200 times. Reaching that number took many, many years and every time was something of a circus to get all those ducks in a row. Keeping it safe is critical with close-in flying, often with both aircraft turning, and with aircraft of different performance and handling. Jim Lawrence has done this more than 600 times, a number so large I struggle to comprehend it. Looking through the camera viewfinder and shooting nearby aircraft while both move around in the sky is harder than it looks. Managing to also capture beautiful photos that are well composed and expertly lit by mother nature demonstrates the professionalism of a photographer like Jim. Light-Sport aviation is lucky to have a man of this talent focusing his big lens on us. See more about Jim's photo career.

It’s enough to be proud of flying a “real” airplane for 50 years without accident, incident, or citation for 50 years. But imagine if half of those years were flown in those crazy "death wish" machines: ultralights! Of course, those of us who’ve flown hang gliders, ultralights and other true bird experience aircraft know just how safe they are. Anything you fly requires skill but also flying it within its strengths and limitations – that’s the only fail-safe secret to safe flying. Nobody knows that truth better than George Karamitis. He’s just received the FAA’s Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, for half a century of impeccable flying in both GA airplanes and the all-time best selling ultralight, the Quicksilver. George started out like a lot of us did, gawking through the fence as a kid at his home airport, Oshkosh’s Wittman Field. The veteran aviation icon and airport namesake himself, Steve Wittman, gave wee Georgie a ride one day, which sure beat hanging out in the family bathroom at home, as he liked to do, sitting on the toilet seat lid and pretending to fly with a plunger for a joystick! A stint as a radar operator in the Navy led to George forming a swabbie flying club in Newfoundland. He earned his Private Pilot ticket, then at the University of Oshkosh he formed another flying club, flew a Cessna 140, and got his CFI ticket in 1966. Life flew by: in 2001, the Oshkosh sky boy retired as a Captain after 33 years flying for Trans World Airlines. You can take the boy out of the cockpit but never the cockpit out of the boy. Even while working for TWA, he’d been plying the skies in several Quicksilvers, starting out with a Sport II two-seater.“ I’ve been a Quicksilver fan for over 25 years,” says George. He’s owned a number of Quicks and a dozen GA planes too. Over time his stable included a Sprint II, single seat GT400, single place Sport and single seat Sprint. The Sprint and Sport are open cockpit side-by-side models. The Sport has a double-surface wing while the Sprint is a single surface membrane. Quicksilver over the years have made the most of the tube-and-Dacron fabric, steel cable-braced minimal airframe. And if you’ve never had the pleasure, you really don’t know what you’re missing…unless flitting along at 40 mph (stall is typically in the low 30 mph regime) five feet above a cornfield doesn’t hold any particular thrill for you. There’s simply nothing like an ultralight for easy, fun flying. After thousands of hours wrangling airliners, George admits, “I love sitting out in the open!” in an ultralight. Today his Quick of choice is a Sprint II in which he gives demo flights. “I couldn’t write a better story than I’ve lived,” says the veteran award winner. He continues to train student pilots at Lockwood Aviation, Sebring, Florida, in a Tecnam Echo LSA. You know, some kids just never grow up. And that’s a good thing for the rest of us.

In a recent article from Flying Magazine, an editor volunteered his opinion that the Light Sport industry is on life support. There are so many good arguments to refute such a sky-is-falling assessment, it kind of makes you wonder why a respected journalist would go out of his way to attract a lot of heat in the first place … but that’s another story. Dan Johnson makes a ton of solid rebuttal remarks in this article and in a video he did with UltralightFlyer.com — check those out. Meanwhile, here’s a magnificent retort to the LSA-is-dead silliness: Airtime Aviation out of Tulsa, OK. Owners Tom Gutmann and his son Tom Jr. just delivered their Number 100 Flight Design airplane, a new CTLSi with a fuel injected Rotax 912 iS engine. At Sebring I saw a bunch of installations of the new engine: it’s really catching on. Also got the chance to fly with Dan Johnson in his new (partner-shared) CTLSi for some air to air work in the Bahamas. He and Tom gave me some excellent looks over Bimini Island which I share happily and with gratitude to both those gents right here. Meanwhile, 100 airplanes delivered does not an argument make for an industry in its death throes. Flying mag, I rest my case. The Gutmann lads are a full-service dealership, offering sales, maintenance, upgrades and repair. This is the second CT for the lucky buyer, a veteran GA pilot named Rex Austin. He’s owned a Cessna 172, Piper Seneca, Bellanca Viking, a couple Mooneys and two Cirrus. Hey Rex, got any extra airplanes you feel like giving away to a needy aviation journalist I know? The instrument rated Private Pilot has single & multi-engine tickets in his wallet and has logged more than 2,600 hours in 30 years of flying. He says he likes the low operating cost and large cabin of the CT. Makes sense: he played basketball in school and at 6′ 6″, size matters in an LSA. ”The Flight Design is the only aircraft I have ever owned,” and that’s including GA aircraft, “that I didn’t bump my head on the roof in rough air.” He also reports his wife digs the added safety of the BRS parachute system, which comes standard on all the fast-cruising CT models. Airtime’s GA veteran Tom Sr. started flying after high school, went to Spartan School of Aeronautics and bought the first Flight Design CT in the U.S. “What started as a hobby soon turned into Airtime Aviation,” says Tom, who got so much positive feedback on the airplane from local pilots that he became a distributor for Flight Design in 2003. Tom Jr. joined the company and they’ve been a major force in light sport and Experimental aircraft in their area ever since. “We were the first to earn FAA acceptance for a Light-Sport CTSW in 2005 and the first in 2011 to win approval for the CTLS Floatplane,” added Tom Jr. Airtime Aviation is also a Flight Design Master Service Center. In this economy, heck, over the last three decades, 100 aircraft sales is an impressive achievement. Congratulations to Airtime Aviation: you’re showing us how to make a success making us look good.

Ken Godin, an endlessly enthusiastic, high-energy entrepreneur and 30 year ultralight, LSA and GA pilot, created his own company, Composiclean, a few years back, to market a line of pH-neutral and other cleaning products that are finding their way to air shows, car shows, dealer ramps and at docksides around the world.If you've scanned the Aircraft Spruce catalog recently you may have seen Ken's goods. *** Like many innovations, Compsiclean came about through a vacuum in the market place. Ken was a key player at Tom Peghiny's Flight Design USA operation until 2008, when he left to become Director of Sales and Service at REMOS Aircraft. *** "Tom asked me if I knew of a neutral cleaning product for his CT line of LSA. He had seen first hand that some composite components can be negatively affected by the alkaline pH of the cleaners typically available..most cleaners are either acidic or alkaline." Ken's a networking guy so he went looking for a neutral-pH cleaner. "But I couldn't find one anywhere!" Then he called chemical companies all over the country. Still no luck. *** Most of us would just drop it at that point. Not Ken. "I found a chemist willing to create a neutral ph cleaner for me. That first product evolved into Bucket-Wash." It has the same pH as clean water and so won't attack foam, or promote corrosion in dissimilar metals either (Composiclean's line isn't just for composites). *** Other products soon followed: Super Spray-Wax with Carnauba wax that stays in solution, tire dressing formulations, multi-purpose cleaners, leather and vinyl upholstery cleaners and lots of other goodies and tools for keeping airplanes,cars, motorcycles, RVs and boats looking great. *** I've used them and they really live up to their reputation, but don't take my word for it: check out the testimonial page on Ken's website. *** He's also rebuilding, from a completely rusted wreck, a 1953 Chevy pickup as a "mascot" for his car show displays.