The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1001

This weekend we had, what I believe, is a first; security screening for a hot air balloon launch!
The last weekend in July is a fairly large, very commercial (8-figure economic impact) hot air balloon festival at Solberg Airport/N51. Solberg is extremely close to the summer White House, so close, that it’s actually used in the TFR Airspace Definition. Plans were made for it to happen but fortunately someone decided to stay in DC; he does listen to advisors occassionally. :rolleyes:
This past week was the 17th year of another balloon festival, also in NJ but a few miles further West. As with most balloon festivals (& I presume most air shows) the festival had a waiver. However, that waiver was somewhat overridden the last two days by a VIP TFR for #45’s summer vacation. Launch field is, I believe, 22 miles from SWH / TFR center. However, an exception was made for the festival to continue.

USSS on hand, w/ handheld wands/metal detectors. Baskets are inspected & special numbered banners are affixed to the each basket that is going to fly. There is a photo of each balloon in the event program. All of this information, along with some other info* is collected & relayed to USSS staff at SWH so if they get a report of, say, a yellow balloon with blue & white or a dinosaur balloon inbound, they wouldn’t freak out & start aiming long guns skyward & scramble the 177th.

Friday evening looks to be a bit ‘sporty’. We have the usual briefing: roll call, balloonmeister speech, pax/rides speech, weather guy; however, tonight we have an extra speaker. One that I don’t ever believe has spoken at a festival briefing before, a secret service agent! Winds are 190/200°ish so if we fly, the direction is taking us further away from SWH. As it turns out, they don’t die off quick enough so the field isn’t even open for flying.
Saturday is not only flyable but winds are going to take us in the general direction of SWH so USSS give the extra, extra, extra precautions in briefing in case we end up there. I heard that one made it to Solberg, 25 miles from launch point but no one ended up at SWH.

All in all, they broke one of the 4 biggest lies; they were from the government & they were there to help! :slight_smile:

  • I’m intentionally being a bit vague on details for OpSec reasons as we may have to do this again for a few more years.
1002

Oh by the way . . .

License plate frame seen in parking lot at Truckee gliderport:
Lady pilots don’t stall around

1003

I posted this in another (unrelated) thread, but I suppose it should go here too.

Sign seen at local skydiving business:

:eek:

1004

I’m looking at the three airplanes in this image. The one on the left is clearly a Mooney. The one on the right is some sort of Cessna. I think it’s a 206. The one in the middle looks like a Piper Aztec with its wingtips off. (Unless later models had square wingtips.)

Anyone want to take a stab at them?

1005

I can’t - the TSA took away all of my sharp items. :smiley:

1006

That’s why we have General Aviation. You can take what you want. :wink:

1007

IIRC the later Aztecs did have square wingtips. Earlier Aztecs also had a very short blunt nose which doesn’t match your pic. Some later Aztecs had a longer nose, but IIRC it was still more blunt than your pic seems to be. Another thing that gives me pause is that the Aztec’s vertical fin & rudder had a really long chord. Which your pic of both airplane and shadow doesn’t really demonstrate.

Here’s another candidate: Gulfstream American GA-7 Cougar - Wikipedia. These are vastly less common than Aztecs, but the tail shadow fits the shape maybe a bit better. Just based on statistics I’d still go with Aztec, but that’s tentative.

There are a couple of other really obscure GA aircraft I can’t rule out without finding some detailed pix of them. So just based on statistics, it’s probably an Aztec.

The Aztec was the Chevy Impala of its era and lots of mod kits were produced and installed. There were several distinct shape changes over the years too. Without comprehensive pix of each model year we’re stabbing in the dusk, if not the dark.
I doubt the Cessna is a 206. Simply not large enough compared to the Mooney & maybe-Aztec. More likely a 182.

I had fun looking up these old pix and specs, but I admit I’m very much non-confident of my conclusions.

1008

Cougar 3-view drawing. The tail exptension looks a little long to me. The nose doesn’t look right, and the wings look to skinny to match the plane in the photo. The horizontal stab looks close.

Aztec B 3-view. I think the nose looks closer on this one, and I think I see the ‘fillets’ on each side of the engines. I think the horizontal stab looks right. But the drawing has round wingtips, and the plane in the photo doesn’t.

Cessna 206 3-view, Cessna 182 3-view. I think it’s a 206 because of the position of the rear window.

Yes, I have fun looking stuff like this up too. :slight_smile:

1009

You found much better pix than I did. After some more digging here’s an decent Aztec C photo: http://imgproc.airliners.net/photos/airliners/4/3/9/2226934.jpg.

Looking at the clear sharp shadow more than the aircraft itself we can see the square wingtips and the relationship between nose shape and size vs. the engines. I think I see a pretty good match.

Your Google overhead has very little if any fillet in the wing leading edge inboard of the engines. Which is one of the ways I removed the Seneca with its large filets from consideration. This pic is far from ideal to show either the left or right wing root.

Here’s another source for pics that won’t be here 6 months from now but will do great for now: Pardon Our Interruption These are very nice pix from a bunch of angles. The shadow in the very first pic shows a small filet which is confirmed in later pix. But this one has round wingtips.

I’m liking the idea of Aztec C or later more and more.

I now agree that 206 is the right Cessna.

All in all quite the trip down memory lane. I was a kid deep into GA when all this stuff was new or new-ish. None of those things are true now: not kid, sadly not into GA, and almost none of GA is new anymore. Nor affordable. More’s the pity.

1010

Good find. Looking at pics, I’m like, ‘But the wingtips are still rounded!’ Then I took another look at the google image, and saw that the airplane’s wingtips are painted (blue). Thanks for the assist!

I’d love to get my dad’s 1970 172K Skyhawk (I’m pretty sure it’s tied down at FUL) and restore it. Or see if I can buy the one (registration about 250 higher than dad’s) that’s about 140 miles from here, that is already restored to the way I’d restore dad’s. The good thing about older 172s is that they’re still relatively affordable. But alas, I can’t even afford to rent right now.

1011

So, anyone know if unleaded avgas is becoming a thing? Because I do want to get my PPL, but don’t want to inhale all that lead (even if 100LL is “low-lead.”)

1012

I agree. I spent way too much time in the military with 115/145 purple in my Zippo to light up my unfiltered Pall Malls.

Probably getting greasy stuff off me with 100/130 green did not help much.

But casting my own melted tire weights into bullets was the only way I could afford to shoot as much as I wanted.

Now being the kind of biker I was for a while, I had a lot of lead rings, bracelets and ‘do dads’ than might not have been really healthy.

Gonna be 74 in a couple of weeks. So far so good.

*** Being lucky is better than being good IMO. ***

:smiley: :cool: :eek: :rolleyes: :wink: Bawahahahaha

1013

They are working on it.

1014

Got it, thanks!

1015

Eclipse from the air.
Also saw that Alaska Airlines adjusted a flight for last year’s eclipse.

1016

Honestly, if you’re inhaling lead from airplane exhaust fumes, you’ve got a bigger and much more urgent problem than lead inhalation - carbon monoxide. You should NOT be inhaling ANY engine exhaust in the cabin of the airplane during flight. This is a symptom of a leak in the engine exhaust system, which needs to be addressed before further flight.

Unleaded avgas alternatives have been in the works for a long time now. A few have been found that *could *work, but their price makes avgas look cheap in comparison. They have other issues as well.

If you really want to avoid 100LL, see if you can find a flight school that runs their fleet on mogas. The STC has been out there for many years, and plenty of airplanes have it.

1017

We did a fun flight tonight; tracking right down the main (State route) road. We’re on one side, maybe one block back, over a housing development, about 1000’ up & 2-3 mph.

Hear a BOOM & look out, someone on the other side of the main road (maybe 150 yards horizontal) has just shot off an illegal/non-consumer grade/small professional firework (even though it’s still daylight). I grab my camera but all they launch after that is Roman candles. I can see the smoke trail & a little flash but no more of the mortars. I shoot a couple pics anyway. I also make a mental note of where the house is as it was very close to our launch point/vehicles.

After the flight when I get back to my car, I go over to where I think the house is (they were shooting from a backyard, so it was hard to be certain which one it was.) There’s one house with a bunch of cars so I pull into the driveway (no legal parking on road), park, grab my camera & get out. There are people in the back yard; this must be the place! Then I hear a firework go off. Yup, right place.

I start heading into the backyard, knowing full well that I am, technically, trespassing. There’s about 10 guys in the backyard; ½ by a table on the right, & the rest scattered around. Ten big guys. One notices me & calls something out, then they’re all looking at me & shouting this word. Oh, @#!t, I think, it’s some foreign word for intruder. I’m gonna die & no one knows I’m here.

Then one of them calls out, “That’s not <whatever word they’re shouting>.” Oh good, I think, it’s not some variant of “Pendejo”, but their buddy’s name. “No, you don’t know me.” I respond & they all start coming over to see who this stranger is. Ten big, redneck guys. A certain body part puckers a bit.

I’m wearing an old ABQ/Fiesta t-shirt w/ one balloon covering about 50% of the front. They gather around me in a, “Can we help you?” manner.

Did you see a balloon fly by earlier? I ask. - Yes.
Were you shooting fireworks? I ask. - (collective) Yes.

The one guy pieces it together - No Way! That was you?!?!
Others look at him like he’s nuts.
He was the shooter; he immediately apologies & states that he started shooting the smaller stuff as soon as he saw me. I ‘scold’ him saying the bigger stuff would have made for better pictures.

“Wanna see what they looked like from the air?” I ask.
I pull out my camera & show them the shots on the 2" screen on the back. All of a sudden, I’m getting handshakes, & bro-shakes, & “That’s so cool” & “Look at his pictures, man” & offers of, “Do you want a beer?” (The table on the right was a game of beer pong; there was lots of beer!)

I took a gamble, survived, & did wonders for landowner relations; if any of them have large enough properties, they’ll now love a balloon landing there.

1018

Sorry for lack of clarification - my concern is with inhaling leaded 100LL exhaust during the time when the aircraft is sitting on the ground, pilots in the cabin but engines running (the windows cranked open.)

Also, touching the stuff during sump fuel tests too.

1019

IMO …

Somebody like Gus who spent a lifetime flying working GA airplanes many of which reek of fully leaded avgas has (or had) some reason to worry about his total lifetime lead exposure.

Somebody like an A&P who works on recips every day and is or was using leaded avgas as a solvent to clean parts or wash his hands several times a day for decades has some reason to worry about his total lifetime lead exposure.

Somebody that flies a 100LL airplane even 100 hours a year and uses a sump-drain cup rather than just let it run down their arm has effectively zippo to worry about. You’d do as well to worry about the increased cosmic rays up at 5000 feet altitude.

The rest of the chemistry in avgas or car gasoline is not that healthy either. When you fuel your car do you always stand upwind & wear gloves when handling the pump & gas cap? If not you’re getting hundreds of times more lifetime exposure to carcinogens from fueling your car versus flying a plane. Just because you do the car so much more often.
Bottom line:
Humans are bad at intuitive risk assessment. Unusual or new risks are overvalued, and humdrum or familiar risks are undervalued.

1020

At the same airshow I mentioned in another thread there was a MiG 17 demonstration. What a beautiful airplane. I don’t know if it was the swept wings or what but that may have been my favorite demo of the day. That thing must be a blast to fly.