Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Saturday, February 28, 2009

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.


2 comments:

Dan brock said...

Hey! Happy to see I'm back.
I wasn't going to whine about being left off because I know what an unmitigated prick I can be at times (like when I'm awake).
I get dropped from blogrolls like turds from a neo-cons mouth.
Thanks for the vote o' confidence or whatever.

Mark Rossmore said...

I flew in the Lancair's production cousin a few years back, the Columbia 350 (now Cessna 350). What an extraordinary airplane. High up on my "if I won the lottery" list. If your fixed-gear piston single has spoilers built into the wings, you know you've got a smoking fast airplane.

I've also worked them before as traffic. One time I had a Columbia 400 going across my scope showing 290 knots of ground speed - in a climb. Winds aloft or not... holy crap.