Wednesday, June 07, 2017

Q-Tips and Canoes

En route to a busy GA aerodrome, I checked the ATIS and started setting up for the runway in use. I needed one more approach before the end of the month to maintain my IFR currency, and was planning on flying it simulated just to get that box ticked. The time then passed the top of the hour, so I checked again, and discovered that the runway with the approach was now "closed per NOTAM" and the cross runway, with no instrument approach was in use. Unexpected, but perfectly manageable. On final I saw a light twin and a pick up truck on the grass at the side of the runway. Something had not gone well for someone.

I landed without incident and taxied to the FBO, where we learned that the disabled aircraft had had a gear collapse, a term which the FBO staff seemed pretty sure had been applied euphemistically to a situation where the pilot had neglected to extend the landing gear. The poor airplane was lifted back to its wheels and towed past the windows of the FBO, where I pointed out to my non-pilot co-worker the characteristic Q-tipped props of an aircraft that lands gear up with the engines powered. I paused as I wrote that. Of a propeller, Q-tipped refers to the ends being bent over. I've always called them that, and I remember the first time I saw a Q-tipped prop, on a fixed gear single whose pilot had tried to make it stop flying and land on a short runway, rather than going around and trying again with a better short-field approach. I think someone with me must have called them that, and I absorbed the term. Searching for an etymology, I discovered that there is a company that makes Q-tip propellers on purpose (and a funny story about an FAA inspector who didn't know that). Trying to find when they were invented, to help determine whether the company was named after the condition or vice versa, I wandered down a rabbit hole of the history of the tip-fin propeller, invented by J.J. Kappel, initially for marine applications. If anyone knows when they were first put on airplanes, let me know. I had to escape from articles like this one before I got wrapped up in the physics. This was meant to be a quickie blog entry.

So we're watching the remains of this once-airworthy vessel towed past, and the FBO staff are all fixated on it. One of them is scrambling for a ramp pass so he can drive down and check it out. My co-worker is confused about the excitement. "Remember how much we had to spend to get the engines overhauled on [the new plane we just bought for our fleet]?" I asked my co-worker. "The engines on the gear-up plane, no matter how new they are, are done now." The force of the prop strike bends and breaks other components of the engine.

"But what's the spectator value?"

I thought about it a while and finally came up with an analogy he could appreciate. He's an outdoorsman. "You know when someone drives their van into a parking garage or under a bridge with a canoe on top? No one is hurt, but the canoe is destroyed, and the van is damaged, and the person who did it is in emotional pain from how stupid they just were, and how much money they just destroyed. And everyone comes to look, and take pictures. You feel the pain, and you're so glad it wasn't you, because you know it could have been you." He got it.

Thursday, June 01, 2017

Flare Stack Unserviceable

I love this NOTAM. It's in oil country, just north of Edmonton and advises pilots that the flare stack, a pipe with gouts of flame shooting out the top, is currently not doing that thing. One often sees NOTAMs for things that are on fire, so one for something that is not on approach fire amuses me. I can think of two possible reasons why it is NOTAMed. One is that pilots are using the stack as a navigation beacon for night VFR, and the other, more likely one, is that the stack is close enough to the Josephburg aerodrome that its lack of illumination could cause a hazard for aircraft maneuvering to land. I've used Josephburg and remember the plant just past the runway, but not that the stack was worrisome.

160266 CYEG EDMONTON/JOSEPHBURG
CFB6 OBST FLARE STACK FLAME U/S 534751N 1130559W
(APRX 4 NM N AD) 310 FT AGL 2354 MSL
1604051926 TIL 1604191900

And then there's this one.

CZEG AIRBORNE LASER ACT IN AREA BOUNDED BY
81N 90W-81N 70W-78N 70W-78N 90W-81N 90W. ACFT AT 1500 FT AGL.
LASER BEAM IS PROJECTED FM ACFT IN THE NADIR DIRECTION. LASER BEAM
MAY BE HAZARDOUS IF VIEWED DIRECTLY ON AXIS WITHIN 935 FT OF ACFT.
THE BEAM WILL BE IMMEDIATELY TERMINATED BY THE OPR IF ANY ACFT ARE
DETECTED THAT MAY ENTER THE HAZARDOUS AREA.
1604181100 TIL 1604181900

So long as you're 936 feet or more away, there's no hazard. I don't know where they came up with that. It's 285 m, so not a really round number there, either. Also the airborne laser thing isn't me anymore. Used to be. But never that far north. I think the Canadian Armed Forces are testing a super weapon to stop the Russians from coming in and messing with the Canadian Arctic. Another line of defense, should they make it past the trained polar bear attack squadron, and the Rangers in bunny hugs.