I’m wondering: Will Honeywell’s announcement that it’s acquiring airborne satcom system specialist EMS Technologies reignite calls for airlines to transmit live flight-data information rather than relying on what can be obtained from black boxes found at a crash site?

Here’s why I ask: Honeywell is the maker of the flight data recorder used aboard doomed Air France Flight 447. EMS Technologies is the world’s leading supplier of the type of satellite communications gear that could be used to beam flight-related information to airline data centers on the ground.

Honeywell’s acquisition of EMS Technologies, of course, has little if anything to do with the possibilities for live transmission of flight data from stricken airliners – but a number of industry experts have raised the question of why we aren’t doing just that. News outlets and the Internet-message-board-posting public have bought into the idea and, with millions of dollars potentially to be made from a whole new business model built around the concept, it could be only a matter of time before the folks at Honeywell/EMS Technologies start asking the same question.

EMS Aviation, the aerospace division of EMS Technologies, designs and manufactures a host of satellite-based broadband communication systems that enable worldwide high-speed Internet and voice and video capabilities aboard aircraft. Satcom boxes that say “Honeywell” on the side of them, in fact, are actually furnished by EMS Aviation. Based in Ottawa, this division serves a huge base of commercial and defense customers, delivering Inmarsat and Iridium satcom systems for tens of thousands of business airplanes and airliners, as well as for the U.S. Defense Department. In other words, they’ve got their hands full serving a massive customer base.

In his recent blog post, “Black Boxes Work Again,” Flying editor-in-chief Robert Goyer argues that traditional black box technology still makes sense and says that calls for live transmission of data are misguided.

Still, the companies that sell satellite data services, for obvious reasons, like the live-transmission idea.

“The technology is available, people agree it works, every technical issue has been solved,” Matthew Desch, the CEO of Iridium Communications, told ABC News recently. “An airplane should not go off the coast without anyone knowing where it is and what’s wrong with it.”

Iridium has joined with Canadian firm AeroMechanical Services to promote a system called AFIRS – Automated Flight Information Reporting System. Here’s how it would work: If an airliner over the ocean or other remote part of the world strays outside its normal flight envelope, or enters a dive, or loses cabin pressure, AFIRS would automatically send black box data by satellite to the airline or whoever else is authorized to receive it. The pilots, who might be busy dealing with the emergency, wouldn’t have to do a thing. The transmission would take just seconds.

Sounds pretty good. Especially for the people selling the technology to make it all work.

Again, Honeywell’s acquisition of EMS Technologies probably has nothing to do with the crash of an Air France airliner over the Atlantic Ocean on a dark and stormy night in 2009. But once engineers from Honeywell’s flight data recorders division start talking with their new colleagues from the suddenly massive Honeywell satcom division – and once their bosses see the potential impact on the bottom line such a pairing could bring – interesting things could happen.

We’ve all heard it. “More right rudder!” is such a common command during flight training that some avionics company would probably make a lot of money producing a small device that could transmit the instruction at the push of a button. But just because the most common place for an instructor to address rudder input is during the climb doesn’t mean the pedals should be ignored during the rest of the flight.

Unfortunately, the training airplanes of today are so forgiving that they fly just fine without the proper use of rudder, at least as long as the flight attitude is somewhat stable. And with the exception of the climb phase, it seems that many instructors don’t put enough emphasis on rudder control.

But the incorrect use of the rudder pedals won’t just make the airplane feel uncoordinated. Stomp on one of the pedals when you’re low and slow, and you may end up in the dirt much quicker than anticipated and pay the ultimate price for your mistake. There are way too many stall/spin accidents causing far too many deaths. Paying attention to the rudder input can help prevent these accidents. Correct rudder input will also help increase your cruise speed and prevent side-loaded landings.

The rudder controls the rotation around the vertical axis of the airplane – a motion also called yaw. You can also think of it as the way the nose moves back and forth toward each wingtip. Correct rudder application makes the longitudinal axis – the straight line from nose to tail – follow the airplane’s path of travel. That is what coordination is all about. If you can’t feel whether you’re coordinated, just look at the little ball inside the inclinometer at the bottom part of the turn coordinator. The ball needs to be inside the lines. Correct rudder application is simple – just add right rudder if the ball is displaced to the right or left rudder if the ball is displaced to the left. You may have heard “step on the ball,” but the question is: Is the ball a part of your regular scan?

If you’re flying an airplane with a glass panel display, the “ball” is located the top of the PFD where you’ll find a small arrow with a line underneath it. I like to call it the sailboat – the arrow part being the sail, the line below the boat. You need to keep the sail over the boat to stay coordinated. If the boat slips to the right or left of the sail, step on the appropriate rudder pedal to center the boat under the sail.

During the climb, the airplane experiences several factors that make it want to yaw to the left. This is why you continuously need to apply rudder (or use the rudder trim, if you have it) to keep the airplane coordinated. It is particularly important to maintain coordination during the climb since the airplane is in a high pitch angle and slow. Uncoordinated flight in this flight attitude can have severe consequences.

The rudder isn’t as important during the cruise. Slight deviation from coordinated flight won’t hurt you or the airplane, but you’re going to lose efficiency. The airplane will fly slower and, through the course of the flight, you will burn more fuel or pay a higher rate for your rental airplane.

To keep the airplane coordinated during a turn, you need to apply rudder in the direction of the turn. If you don’t, the tail of the airplane will essentially slip outside its path of travel. Too much rudder and the airplane will skid – the tail will point to the inside of the turn.

While flying uncoordinated in cruise flight or during a cruise turn won’t damage your airplane, poor rudder input during the approach and landing phase may. A stall/spin accident can happen during a base-to-final turn when the pilot overcompensates for overshooting the final leg by applying too much bank and too much rudder. The airplane is too slow to maintain lift at a steep bank angle and the incorrect use of rudder makes the airplane uncoordinated. The unfortunate result is a stall and spin at an unrecoverable altitude. To prevent this situation, make shallow, coordinated turns in the pattern and simply go around if the approach is way off.

When you get close to the runway, pay attention to where the nose of the airplane is pointing. If the nose is pointed off to one side of the centerline and your path of travel is straight down the runway, apply rudder in the opposite direction of where the nose is pointing to align the longitudinal axis of the fuselage with the path of travel. Otherwise the airplane will land side-loaded, meaning it will land with the wheels angled, essentially touching down on the sidewall of the tires instead of the tread. This could, at best, damage the tires or landing gear and, at worse, smash up the airplane and injure its occupants. The consequences of landing side-loaded are much greater in a tailwheel airplane than in an airplane with tricycle gear. A side-loaded landing in a tailwheel airplane could result in a ground loop, which can come with very serious penalties.

Regardless of the type of airplane you fly, give the rudder the respect it deserves. You will fly more efficiently and safer, and your airplane will be thankful, too.

In the February issue, Robert Goyer reported on a project to convert Cessna Skyhawks to electric power. Many Skyhawks are used as trainers, and training flights seldom last more than 90 minutes; so batteries, though notoriously lacking in stamina, might be an adequate power source for this application.

Parenthetically, Robert mentioned that wingtip turbines — little windmills just behind the wingtips — could capture some of the energy of the tip vortices and return it to the batteries. I soon received an e-mail from a friend who objected that this sounded like some sort of harebrained perpetual-motion scheme. After all, your battery had to supply the energy that moved the airplane and created the tip vortex in the first place; wasn’t this something like charging the battery of an electric car with a rooftop windmill driven by the car’s own motion?

Not quite. The difference is that the turbine in the tip vortex makes use of the rotational energy of the vortex, not that of the forward speed of the airplane. If the tip vortex did not rotate, a tip turbine would be useless; the energy required to drive it would inevitably be greater than the energy it returned. But the rotational energy of the tip vortex is normally lost, like the heat energy in the exhaust of an engine. Just as some exhaust heat can be recaptured by a turbocharger and put to use, some of the energy of the tip vortex can be recaptured by a turbine. Not a lot: At cruising speed, less than 10 percent of energy used ends up in the tip vortex, and only a fraction of that could be retrieved by a turbine of practicable size. So we’re talking about a few percent of cruising power — coincidentally, about what could be saved by winglets. A winglet is, in fact, a sort of one-bladed, nonrotating tip turbine.

Of course, a tip turbine would work for a conventionally powered airplane too. The power required by the electrical system is normally drawn by the alternator from the engine. Using tip turbines instead would save 1.5 cents’ worth of fuel per ampere-hour at current prices (no pun intended) and increase cruising speed by an undetectable amount. (Now you know why you’ve never seen a tip turbine.)

Recoverable energy turns up in surprising places. Sailplanes harvest the energy of the atmosphere by imposing human selection upon air movements whose sum is always zero. They linger in rising air by slowing down or circling, and they hasten through sinking air. This activity normally takes place on a grand scale, with mountain ridges and puffy clouds conveniently signaling veins of lift. But random small eddies in the atmosphere, especially near the surface, can be mined in the same way. What is required is a small, agile sailplane with a low wing loading, a high maximum lift coefficient and a rapid response — provided by an alert pilot or a microprocessor — to air movements. A few of these so-called microlift gliders exist, and they can remain aloft in conditions much too weak for normal sailplanes. Reduced to its simplest terms, the trick is just to pull the stick in rising air and push it in sinking air. In principle, given an airplane of the right characteristics, it is possible to remain aloft as long as the surrounding air continues to stir.

Dynamic soaring is similar. As an activity of radio-control modelers, it has led to some remarkable performances. YouTube videos — disappointing to watch, I’m afraid, because the airplanes are practically invisible and the tennis-match motions of the camera make you seasick — show model gliders circling in the upslope lift of ridges and attaining speeds above 400 knots. Those are extreme cases, requiring a strong wind, a well-placed slope and a determined hobbyist; but dynamic soaring occurs in nature too. The albatross, the sailplane of seabirds, may fly all the way around the world in a month and a half, flapping its wings only for takeoff and landing, and expending almost as little energy in flight as when resting on the ground. It uses two soaring techniques: slope-soaring on the flanks of ocean swells and dynamic soaring.

The albatross’s version of dynamic soaring is to fly a path that zigzags both side to side and vertically, first gliding downwind to gain groundspeed, then turning sharply into the wind and zooming upward. The increase in wind velocity farther from the surface, working against the bird’s inertia, carries it higher than it would rise in a uniform wind and gives the bird back the energy lost in the gliding descent. The albatross’s lift-to-drag ratio, between 20 and 25, is comparable to that of a low-performance sailplane; but the vast, unceasing winds of the southern oceans provide it with an inexhaustible bounty of fuel.

If it seems hard to imagine just how dynamic soaring works, think of a pendulum set up in such a way that at the peak of one end of its swing the bob enters the breeze of a continuously running fan. Each momentary boost cancels the frictional losses of the preceding swing and keeps the pendulum going indefinitely.

One of the more startling examples of reaping power from the wind goes by the initials DDFTTW, which stand for “directly downwind faster than the wind.” It has been the subject of heated debate on the Internet, demonstrating, if nothing else, that what makes things go is not always obvious.

The question is: Is it possible for a device powered by the wind alone to go downwind faster than the wind?

Suppose that you take a small cart — let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it has zero rolling friction — and you put a spinnaker or a square sail on it and point it downwind. It will accelerate until its speed is equal to that of the wind. At that point, an anemometer on the cart would register a wind speed of zero. Evidently it cannot go any faster, because if it did the sail would be blown backward and it would simply slow down again.

Now, suppose that you connect the rear wheels to the front wheels through a simple (and frictionless) transmission, such that the front wheels turn slightly faster than the rear wheels. Will the front wheels pull the cart to a slightly higher speed, once the sail has gotten it up to the speed of the wind?

If you are starting to get a headache, stop reading now.

Suppose that instead of this silly arrangement of wheels moving at different speeds — it reminds me of a boat I built as a child, which had two openings in each side, one to let water in and the other to let it out — you connect the wheels to a propeller. Get rid of the sail and just push the thing up to the speed of the wind. Now what happens?

Of 10 people who have heard of the conservation of energy, nine will reply that nothing happens, because there is no free lunch. The wind can push you only as fast as it can push you. You can’t trick it into pushing you faster.

However, if there is a sailor present, he will point out that it is a well-known fact that a fast sailboat, tacking, can outrun the wind. It will arrive at the end of a direct-downwind course sooner than a balloon. Ice yachts and other low-resistance sailcraft can do even better. They are tacking, that is, traveling at an angle to the wind, so that their sails operate like wings, not like parachutes or spinnakers.

What we may be prepared to believe about a sailboat, however, makes us incredulous when it is asserted about a four-wheel cart whose rear wheels drive a propeller. It looks like a practical joke. But once set in motion by the wind, this contraption accelerates to the wind speed and keeps accelerating past it until it arrives at an equilibrium, that is, a maximum speed. The current record — which is not claimed to represent any sort of absolute physical limit — is 2.8 times the wind speed.

As the writer of a 1,500-word column with only 150 words to go, I am now obliged to resort to the time-honored formula “It is left to the interested reader to analyze … ”

A hint: All these examples of seemingly getting something from the wind for nothing involve differences in velocity — between ground and air, water and air, or two adjacent masses of air — that the vehicle is able to exploit. They also involve the almost miraculous ability of wings, in one form or another, to multiply force. Wings are like levers: They turn a small force — drag — in one direction into a large one — lift — in another. It’s not quite something for nothing — but it’s one of the better bargains that the natural world has to offer.

The special light-sport aircraft market offers a range of airplanes — there are 115 S-LSA models approved by the FAA — that serve many missions. To gain a bit more perspective on the offerings, I arranged for demo rides in three S-LSAs during this year’s Sun ’n Fun in Lakeland, Florida. Each was touted as serving primary missions, from touring and training to taildragger fun.

Flight Design CTLS
(from $139,800)
When I introduced myself to Flight Design USA national sales manager John Gilmore at the FD booth, after shaking my hand and saying hello, the next words out of his mouth were about how his 10-hour, one-stop flight in a CTLS to Lakeland from Minnesota was a breeze. I didn’t demo the carbon-fiber-constructed CTLS on a 10-hour flight, but I did have the chance to fly in the left seat with John on a two-hour cross-country from Orlando-Apopka (X04) to Gainesville (KGNV) and back.

Immediately apparent to me as I strapped in was the roominess. The 49-inch-wide cabin could easily accommodate the tall and long-legged. Next, I couldn’t miss the equipment: namely the optional dual 10-inch Dynon SkyView displays and the Garmin 696 panel. Both offer all the necessary data a VFR pilot could ever need, from XM Weather to terrain, real-time traffic, dual ADAHRS and georeferenced charts.

Now, how fast can the CTLS get there? Both to and back from KGNV, this LSA’s swiftness was easily demonstrated with a 115-knot cruise speed. With the minus-6-degree flap setting at cruise, we were burning 5.5 gph. The winglets and strutless wing helped with that speed too. The CTLS is powered by the 100 hp Rotax 912S, and its two 17-gallon tanks are approved for less expensive mogas. With an economy range of 830 nm at 4,300 rpm, fuel burn is 4.7 gph. Fully loaded, including the standard BRS parachute system, the CTLS can carry a useful load of 550 pounds. Altogether, the comfort, technology, speed and range of the CTLS made it easy to see why John’s 10-hour cross-country was a breeze.

Tecnam P92 Eaglet
(from $130,999)
Tecnam North America procured slots during Sun ’n Fun’s daily Showcase Fly-Bys to display the Eaglet LSA. Dave Lubore, Tecnam’s vice president of training services, invited me to ride along in the Eaglet on one of the flights with demo pilot Andrew Jones (read more in my blog post, “Tecnam Showcases Eaglet”). Prior to launching from Winter Haven (KGIF), where the Eaglet was based, I had some time to chat with Dave about the Eaglet and its mission.

“It makes sense some of the LSAs should step up to meet demands of flight schools and modern training with less expensive airplanes, modern equipment and simpler engines,” Dave says. “The Eaglet does that and has great training characteristics, thanks to a fatter wing design that produces power-off stall speeds at 36 knots clean [9 knots lower than required by the LSA rule] and 26 knots dirty.”

Although I rode shotgun during the showcase flight, it was hard not to notice that the airplane remained stable and at altitude in the windy conditions while we waited in the predetermined holding pattern for the radio call to proceed to Linder Regional. Andrew kept us banked in a 30- to 45-degree left-hand turn with two-finger control for nearly 15 minutes. On the way back to KGIF, Andrew offered me the controls. Holding altitude en route was easy, and maintaining a steady approach speed of 70 knots coming into KGIF, even with an 18-knot crosswind, was manageable, as was recovery from a gust right at flare. The Eaglet did seem forgiving and more like a standard category trainer. Just like Dave said it would.

Cubcrafters CarbonCub SS
(from $163,280)
Jim Richmond, president of Cubcrafters, told me point-blank the morning of the CarbonCub demo flight out of South Lakeland Airport (X49) that the company’s focus “is not so much that we produce LSAs, but that we produce fun. The fact it’s an LSA is a bonus.” About 1.5 hours later, after general manager Randy Lervold and I returned from our flight, I couldn’t have agreed with him more. (Check out the “Taildragger Fun: The CarbonCub SS LSA” video of the demo ride and see for yourself.) The airplane can be certified as an S-LSA or E-LSA and comes equipped with a whopping 180-horsepower CC340 engine that makes quick and fun work of takeoff runs and climb-outs (at sea level up to 2,100 fpm). Loosely based on the Super Cub, this modern design meets the LSA maximum weight with carbon-fiber construction and 50 percent fewer parts, making it 250 pounds lighter than its distant relative.

The design updates were apparent. The demo came equipped with the optional Garmin Aera 560 GPS (it can be ordered with full glass too), which was handy in the unfamiliar environs as we cruised to Wauchula (CHN) to fill up the two 12-gallon wing tanks in preparation for a day of demo rides. It was a beautiful morning for a flight, made all the more apparent by the excellent visibility ahead, to the sides and above, through the skylight. The stick control forces were a bit heavier than in the other LSAs, but not unlike those in the Cubs I spent some training time in as a teenager, and the airplane felt solid and stable in flight. The real fun for me, however, started with takeoff out of CHN. The airplane wanted to fly itself off the paved runway as soon we got under way with full power. The fun continued back at X49. Easy maneuverability at the slow approach speed of 55 mph helped make my three landings passable. Randy showed the CC’s true stuff for the camera with a no-wind fourth takeoff that had wheels off the ground in 150 feet (counted off by ground crew) and a climb to pattern altitude in no time. At the end of the demo, I couldn’t describe the flight as being anything other than fun. A ton of fun.

Every once in a while, you read something, a note, email or even a press release, that reveals more than its authors really intended it to. Such was the case this week with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which publicly aired its misunderstanding of the challenges facing light aircraft safety. It wasn’t a flattering revelation.

Now, every year the NTSB comes out with its annual hit list of its most desired safety improvements. What gets included and what doesn’t has as much to do with what accidents have happened recently as any other factor. This year, on the heels of a few near collisions between airliners on or close to the ground at major US airports, it’s no surprise that runway safety made the list.

While runway safety is a critical concern, it also perfectly underscores why the Board is so tied up in knots over GA safety. Let me explain.

There are very few accident types remaining that result in regular kinds of air transport accidents. Controlled Flight into Terrain (CFIT) used to account for a large number of them, but TAWS solved that problem. (Talk about technology improving safety. That argument is a slam-dunk.) Today’s airline crashes–what few of them there are–are a result almost exclusively of some very difficult to predict problems. Such was the case when a center fuel tank exploded on the 747 that was TWA Flight 800 and on SwissAir 111, which was brought down by an in-flight fire caused by cabin electronics systems. These kinds of eccentric issues can generally be solved. We are not likely to ever see either one of those accidents types again. Airliners are remarkably safe. We haven’t had a large, fatal airliner accident in nearly two years.

But with GA just the opposite is true. Every year, as the NTSB pointed out in its list, around 400 people are killed in accidents and many times that number are injured. And they are killed and injured in exactly the same kinds of accidents over and over again. The biggest one is pilots losing control of the airplane at low level. Another is caused by an unskilled or uncertified pilot flying into IMC, with predictably tragic results. Yet another is caused by pilots running their airplanes out of fuel, which greatly degrades the airplane’s performance.

There are other types. Engines fail (much more frequently in Experimental airplanes by the way). When this happens and when there is just one engine, it has the same effect as having no fuel, but with an increased risk of fire. There are equipment failures to components other than engines, like vacuum pumps, the loss of which in IMC forces the pilot to have to recognize the failure and save the day partial panel–yes, the prospects are grim. Then there’s the issue of medical incapacitation and landing and takeoff accidents.

There is a common thread among all of these dangers. They almost never happen in airliners.

Those airplanes have two turbine engines, redundant everything, including coffee pots, two pilots, more reliable engines by a factor of around 1,000, better flight planning, better crew coordination, and superior crew training, and airliners typically fly over and over again to the same destinations with long runways and multiple instrument approaches, which, by the way, the pilots all know how to fly pretty well.

The bottom line is, what we do in light airplanes is fundamentally different from what the airlines–or even air taxi operators–do and there is increased risk.

But how much greater that risk is for us than for the airlines, I agree with Board, is completely unacceptable.

The NTSB has done a great job of identifying the problems while not identifying a single solution, except for a few vague notions, like better airplanes and pilot training. There are very good reasons–cost, weight and complexity–that our light airplanes are what they are, and there are equally good reasons for our poor overall pilot performance, most of which are not the fault of us pilots.

General aviation safety is a tough nut to crack, and it would be nice if the NTSB would acknowledge that fact. We’ve all been trying for decades with limited success at effecting a change. I believe wholeheartedly that there is room for improvement. Better technology, better training, and different ways of looking at what we do and how we vet our risks are all surely going to part of what will never be a complete solution but will hopefully someday soon be a dramatic improvement to a safety record in dire need of good news.

On Feb. 12, 2009, A Bombardier Q400 (a modernized Dash operated by Colgan Air crashed near Buffalo, New York, claiming the lives of 50 people. In the intervening years the fallout from the disaster has had a sweeping impact on aviation regulation in the United States, arguably more than any other accident in the past 25 years. (The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are not classified as accidents.) As a result of the Buffalo mishap, the government has enacted or proposed a number of new rules or changes to rules on everything from pilot fatigue to minimum ATP qualifications.

One of the changes that has already taken effect is the way that examiners grade stalls on a check ride. At issue is how we teach stall recoveries, how we grade pilot performance on the maneuver and what unintended lessons pilots might come away with after training.

As many of you know, the Colgan flight had just been cleared for the approach to Buffalo International on a dark night with some icing having been reported by the pilots of other airplanes in the terminal area. As the Q400 leveled off, the captain, who was the pilot flying, failed to add sufficient power to keep the airspeed from bleeding off excessively. The stick shaker, which alerts the pilot to a coming stall, came alive. Moments later, the stick pusher, designed to force the nose over to prevent a stall, activated as well. According to data from the airplane’s digital flight data recorder, power was increased to around 75 percent, though standard operating procedures call for maximum power for a stall recovery.

However, the thing that likely doomed the flight is that the pilot, instead of lowering the nose, pulled back on the elevator, ignoring the stick shaker. He then, seconds later, overpowered the stick pusher, which is designed to allow the pilot to do just that but not without great exertion.

Tragically, the result was all too predictable. The airplane stalled, went out of control and then crashed. Everyone on the airplane was killed, as was one resident of the house into which the airplane crashed.

Now, the impulse for a pilot to pull up when an airplane starts to stall is a natural one, one that, like relying on our inner ear’s sense of up and down in instrument conditions, has to be consciously overcome. This is something we learn to do very early in our pilot training. We’ve all been taught since our initial lessons that, when the first sign of the stall comes, you reduce the angle of attack and add power. Goodbye stall. But in the process, you might lose some altitude. If you catch the stall early enough, and that’s what a stick shaker is intended to do, the loss of altitude will almost certainly be minimal.

To paraphrase a famous American philosopher, predictions can be hard to make, especially when they’re about the future. But seeing the future of the entry-level business jet market 20 years ago, Cessna, with the creation of its seminal CitationJet, must have been watching the future in some late ’80s version of high definition. The airplane it created not only sold very well for a long time — Cessna has built 359 original CitationJets during the airplane’s run — but that entry-level jet also spawned several close derivatives. The company has produced 1,450 CJs in all. These airplanes have helped Cessna dominate the market for light, small-cabin jets up to the boundary of midsize.

In some cases Cessna’s competitors have tried, with limited success, to create an alternative vision of the light jet paradigm that Cessna seems to have both invented and perfected.

That original CitationJet was a wonder. At a top cruise speed of 380 knots, it was between 30 and 40 knots faster than its predecessor, and it was lighter while having similar payload numbers. It was also a single-pilot airplane from the start, and its solid and predictable handling qualities made it a realistic step-up airplane for all kinds of pilots.

A CJ in Every Niche
Today the CJ lineup includes three airplanes, the CJ2+, the CJ3 and the flagship CJ4. The derivatives started coming in 2000, when Cessna delivered the first CJ1, an improved CJ with updated avionics — Collins Pro Line 21, the current standard across the CJ line — and higher maximum takeoff weight. More notably, the CJ2, which featured a stretched fuselage, more powerful engines and better range, was a roomier, faster, more modern CJ. The CJ3, an immediate hit, came four years later. It was stretched even more and was even faster, to the point that it began attracting customers that Cessna never figured would be asking for a CJ, including fractional providers. The ultimate expression, at least so far, is the CJ4, a 2,000 nm, 450-knot airplane. Cessna delivered the first CJ4 just last year. Today, every CJ is outfitted with digitally controlled (fadec) engines, which makes single-pilot flying safer and easier.

Citation: A Better Idea
There are relatively few truly significant product introductions in the short history of the entry-level business/personal jet, yet most of them have been pioneered by one company, Cessna Aircraft out of Wichita, Kansas. The certification in 1971 of the Citation, the CitationJet’s inspiration, was one such event.

The airplane was originally called the Fanjet, for the Pratt & Whitney JT15D-1A turbofan engines that powered them. Though the Fanjet moniker was soon abandoned, Cessna’s instinct to focus on the fan was right on the money. The Citation’s light jet competition at the time, the Lear 24, was a whole different animal. It was a true turbojet; it featured a moderately swept wing; it was much faster, and it was demanding to fly. The new Cessna jet, on the other hand, was anything but a barnburner, a fact that some had fun with, calling it the “Slow-tation” or the “Nearjet.” But the truth was that Cessna turned the airplane’s performance into a selling point. The Citation handled easily and could use runways considerably shorter than the Lear could.

It makes me want to go back to high school,” I confessed to Patrick J. Cwayna Sr., CEO of the West Michigan Aviation Academy (WMAA). His response wasn’t surprising. “I hear that a lot,” he said. “Many of the students’ parents tell me that; they really recognize the value of what we’re offering the students.”

High school has changed a great deal since I was a student. Soccer has become a popular sport; personal computers hadn’t yet been invented; and cell phones and texting were the things of science fiction. Although we had some “commercial classes” (auto shop, cosmetology, wood shop, print shop, etc.), the idea that a public high school might be devoted to preparing students for a variety of careers in a single industry wasn’t on the educational horizon.

West Michigan Aviation Academy may be unique. It bills itself as the “only aviation-focused charter high school in the nation” and boasts proudly that, while other high schools have football fields, it has access to hangars, runways and airplanes; it has no athletic teams; and, instead, it focuses solely on preparing its students for the world beyond high school.

The school, which first opened its doors to a class of 80 freshmen on Sept. 7, 2010, began to accept applications for this year’s fall school term earlier this spring. The current class of freshmen (class of 2014) will move up to sophomores, and when the class of 2017 enters in the fall of 2013, the school will be at its intended capacity of approximately 320 students.
West Michigan Aviation Academy

Based at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, the West Michigan Aviation Academy offers all the classes required of any Michigan state-approved high school. English, biology, chemistry, physics, algebra, geometry, civics, world history and geography are just some of the classes the school offers in addition to its aviation requirements and electives.

Students at WMAA can choose from three educational paths: aviation flight, aviation business administration and aviation mechanics. According to the school, the skills learned in these tracks can be applied to various fields in aviation as well in other industries.

As a charter school, WMAA receives public funds, so it’s not permitted to charge tuition. And since it is a charter school, any student who resides in Michigan is eligible to apply. “It’s open to any and all who want to come here,” Cwayna said. Although enrollment is open to anyone in the state, he acknowledged that logistics would be a problem for students not living or staying within commuting distance of the school.

Eric Radtke is an airline transport pilot, Gold Seal flight instructor, advanced ground instructor and NAFI-accredited Master Flight Instructor. Eric has been involved in aviation education since 1998 and currently serves as president and chief instructor of Sporty’s Academy — the educational arm of Sporty’s Pilot Shop. He says:

It’s impossible to estimate how many student pilots are lost because they feel like an intrusion into a flight school’s operations. As evidenced by the recent data from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s Flight Training Student Retention Initiative on the abysmal retention rate the flight training industry has experienced, flight schools must welcome everyone coming to the airport into the aviation community.

Simple, creative, inexpensive excuses to bring people together at the airport — cookouts, coffee and donuts, corn roasts, etc. — create venues that allow student pilots to interact with other community members on an informal basis. Customers have the opportunity to meet others pursuing a pilot certificate so they quickly learn they’re not alone. A support network is a powerful force.

Other techniques for creating a sense of community include blogging or providing any other central location for free advice, dispersing information and sharing stories highlighting the fun in general aviation. Safety seminars and open houses are also popular events. Active participation in social media, including Facebook and Twitter, is a must because it keeps customers close to the airport at all times.

Sporty’s Academy also honors learn-to-fly milestones by presenting awards and plaques. Signage, newsletters and news releases about each student to the local media guarantee that the customers understand the importance of their accomplishments. The publicity doesn’t hurt either.

Being part of the community means honoring its traditions. That includes the cutting of the shirttail after the student solos. We go one step further by framing that shirttail so the student will have it as a memento forever. And we also sound an alert throughout the building after the first solo so we can have a crowd on hand to give the occasion its due celebration.

The best advice I can provide — try something new!

I jumped down from Don’s red Ford 350 pickup and, with what I hoped was a disarming grin, sauntered up a gravel lane toward two men standing stolidly, feet apart, holding shotguns.

Don Harner wasn’t a pilot but was one of those people who have a lifelong love affair with airplanes. And there was a soft heart hidden under that crusty exterior. After retiring from the military, Don (to Mrs. Harner’s huge relief) spent a lot of time at Ohio’s Portsmouth Airport (PMH), devoting himself to airport gossip, critiquing landings and working on plans for the annual airshow. He deserved an “A” for effort but didn’t always score high in the “plays well with others” category. Like every other ex-Marine I’ve known, he was innately and irrevocably programmed to think and act like a Marine until his dying day.

For that year’s show this usually sleepy airport northeast of Portsmouth in Minford, Ohio, had snagged a jet aerobatic team that required a 1,500-foot clear zone on either side of the aerobatic show line, an area devoid of all humans except approved, “waivered” airshow people. This was no problem for the spectator area on the terminal ramp west of the runway, but a road and a handful of houses on the east side of the field fell within the restricted area. Don had assured the FSDO that “airshow personnel have addressed the problem.” (How can I even write that drivel?) The sheriff had agreed to close the road, and Don himself had met with the homeowners, who would vacate their properties during the show on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. It was, after all, the biggest event of the summer — heck, of the year — in Scioto County. Well, right behind Roy Rogers Days.

Except that Don hadn’t exactly consulted the homeowners; he’d told the local cops that FAA wanted the road closed and those houses vacated. So the sheriff dispatched a couple of deputies to inform the owners that the federals wanted them off their properties during the show. The neighbors were happy with free tickets for VIP seats at the airport, except one, a lawyer from Columbus who was well versed on the law and homeowner rights. And he wasn’t going to be ejected from his weekend country retreat by some cockamamie edict from the county sheriff, the highway patrol, the FAA, the U.N. or the United Federation of Planets.

I was assigned to monitor the show, probably because nobody else wanted to work the weekend, so I arrived late Friday afternoon in a rented A36. But the real reason I worked that weekend was because the guys at Portsmouth were my friends and I didn’t want to miss the wonderful party Everett and Sonja Sharp would throw in their hangar on airshow eve.

There was — still is — a nice little restaurant in the retro terminal, built when Lake Central Airlines DC-3s served Portsmouth in the ’50s. Although the airline days were long gone, there was a quirky little boutique in the lobby selling perfumes and frilly gifts owned by a glam gal named Becky who’d been a Miss West Virginia (just across the Ohio River). She and her mom were at the party, of course, Becky in short shorts and expansively filling one of the shop’s best-sellers, a T-shirt printed with the PMH airport diagram. The airport runway and taxiway had flashing multicolored lights powered by a battery pack mysteriously hidden somewhere on Becky.

Well, a heck of a thunderstorm blew up after dark that evening, and midway through the wind, rain and lightning all the power failed. So everybody in the hangar was milling around in what would have been total blackness except for blinking lights on Becky’s bosom. It caused a near riot. It was magnificent. Yeah, I know, I had far too much fun in the FAA.