What’s Up
by LeRoy Cook
November 2, 2026
Suggested Banner: Whatever It Is, It’s Not Okay
Finally, we can fly at dawn without waiting interminably for
DST sunrise. As of Sunday, we’re back on God’s Time, so there’s no flying after
work unless you’re current for night flight. Don’t forget to check the
airplane’s lights when preflighting, just in case you run late and have to land
in the dark.
The out-of-towners observed on the Butler runway this week
included a pair of Pipers, an Archer and a Cherokee 180, and Cirrus SR22. Les
Gorden was in with his Cessna 340 twin and Mark Otter was down from Warrensburg
in his Cessna 182. From the based fleet, Jim Ferguson flew his Cessna Skylane,
Jeremie Platt exercised his Grumman Tiger, and Steve Koehn had the company
Skyhawk up.
We were saddened to learn of the too-soon passing of David
Jennings last week. It seems like only yesterday that he was a student pilot
here at Butler, in 1979, before he went to the Air Force. I enjoyed giving him
his first 10 hours of flight training, little knowing that he would go on to
become Captain Jennings at American Airlines. Our profound sympathies go out to
his family; rest easy, Captain David.
On the national scene, our U.S. Air Force is contacting out
some its services, like air-to-air refueling, and a private firm has purchased
one of the retired KC-10 tankers stored in the boneyard at Davis-Monthan AFB in
Arizona. Omega Aerial Refueling is refurbishing it and returning it to service
along with its Boeing and Douglas tankers. The old boomers may as well be put
back to work.
In another NIMBY brouhaha, a Colorado pilot has been
commuting from his house to his office, using an electric-powered Pipistrel
Velis airplane to take off from his Jefferson County property and leap over
traffic in 16 minutes to a suburban airport. Now the County objects, citing
zoning violations; he used to use a helicopter for his trips, but that was
ruled illegal, so his near-silent electric plane has been substituted. I
imagine if he floated in and out a balloon, somebody would still object.
The Nacogdoches, Texas, airport is proposing “fueling fees”
to crack down on pilots packing their own gas to their hangar instead of using
the airport’s fuel farm. The practice is legal, under FAA grant assurances, but
the airport wants to charge a $500 yearly permit plus 20-cents per each gallon
self-imported. Some Rotex-engine sportplanes need to burn unleaded auto gas,
and low-compression Continental and Lycoming motors can run on 91-octane as
well. I guess flying gas in after filling up elsewhere would still be okay...
In far-out flight, a recently-released photo shows China’s
secret “space plane,” much like our retired Space Shuttle, operating in earth
orbit. The picture was taken by a commercial satellite that does custom
surveillance. It evidently is used to deploy satellites and other work, as a
reusable alternative to one-way rockets, much like the USAF’s clandestine
unmanned spacecraft. The layer of space in low-altitude orbit is rapidly
filling up with various types of vehicles.
The question from last week’s column was about the 1935
twin-engine bombers developed by the Glenn L. Martin company (now Lockheed-Martin),
the just-alike B-10 and B-12 that were soon replaced by Boeing and North
American models. They were identical except for the engine type; the B-10 was
Wright-powered and the B-12 used Pratt & Whitneys. For next week, what’s
the difference between a fuel cell, fuel bay and fuel tank, all used to store
fuel in an aircraft? You can send your answers to [email protected].
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