Two Words to Strike Terror Into the Hearts of Aircraft Owners

I had to go to the airport to put the maintenance logbooks into the airplane, as the annual inspection starts in a week or so. It was windy, a little cold and I'm fighting off a bug, so I didn't fly. It didn't stop me from toting a camera, though.

This is a DHC-2 Beaver. Beavers have been used as bush aircraft for sixty years. It looks too pretty to be a working airplane.


This is a Lancair homebuilt. I think this is a IV-P, which is pressurized and can be flown in street clothes at 24,000 feet. They have a 350HP turbonormalized engine and almost all have glass panels. "Homebuilt" may not be quite right, as an all-up IV-P can cost as much as a half-million to build and are often professionally built.



This is a Bellanca Viking. Faster than almost all other airplanes of its class, capable of instrument flight and they are built using airframe technology that was common 80 years ago. The fuselage is made of tubular steel welded to form a cage; wooden stringers are used to maintain a shape and fabric is stretched over it. The wing is made of wood. If Vikings are not kept hangared, the wing is almost guaranteed to rot.

Vikings were one of the first turbocharged light aircraft in production. Back then, the turbochargers did not have automatic wastegates to control the pressures put out by the turbochargers, the wastegates had their own control. An inattentive pilot could severely overboost an engine and destroy it within a very short span of time.