I’m always looking for books and videos about aviation and flying. they’re a good way to spend ‘down time’ when I’m not in the mood to actually study a manual or take an online course. When I find something that I think you might like, I’ll pass it along in the Review section of my site.

I signed up as a volunteer with the EAA to test products and write reviews for their Sport Aviation magazine. So far I have received a DVD from them to review. The agreement with EAA restricts me from publishing any information on the product that they send me until their review appears in Sport Aviation.  Other than that agreement, all the reviews that I publish are of  items that I have purchased for my personal use.

The full title of this book is Zero 3 Bravo, Solo Across America in a Small Plane, written by Mariana Gosnell.

This book, first published in 1993, is the story of the author taking a 3-month leave of absence from her job and flying her 1950 Luscombe 8F around the United States. Her starting (and ending) point is her home airport in Spring Valley, New York, about 35 miles north of New York City.

She traveled down the east coast, across the southern states to Santa Paula, CA, up the west coast to the San Francisco Bay area and then east along the route taken by Interstate 80. Her flight then continued to the Black Hills and then turned southeast to Kansas City and St Louis. She took side trips along the way to visit friends and see places that she had heard about or which had been recommended by the people she met during her fuel and overnight stops.

Her writing style is easy to read and draws vivid pictures in your mind’s eye as she describes the sights (and smells) that she encounters on her flights.

For a pilot, this is a very easy book to read – but beware, you will find yourself dreaming of and planning a similar adventure before you are finished.

I have no recollection where I found the book, but I’m glad I took the effort to buy it. I have the hardback version, but the paperback printing is available through the Amazon affiliate link I have included above.

I participated in on my first EAA Webinar tonight – TIG Welding. The speaker was Scott Skrjanc of Lincoln Electric. The webinar was conducted using the software associated with GoToMeeting, a product of Citrix.

Clicking on the link to the webinar provided in the reminder emails took me directly to the webinar site and signing into the webinar started the download process for the GoToMeeting software. I was not required to sign up for GoToMeeting even though I was using their software to participate. The download and install process was quick and seamless. No interaction was needed. Within 30 seconds I was listening to the seminar moderator, EAA’s Charlie Becker,  give us a tour of the webinar screen. He explained the very simple process of submitting a question to the speaker. Charlie acted as the moderator and, when feasible posed the submitted questions when they would not be a detriment to the flow of the presentation material. No unusual equipment was needed to participate in the webinar – just a computer with a working speaker.

Scott’s presentation lasted about 45 minutes. He then spent almost another half hour answering the submitted questions that had not been covered during his talk. Scott’s presentation was an excellent overview of the TIG welding process. He started by posing a question to the webinar listeners (about 280 were signed in at that time). He asked what kind of welding experience everyone had. A multi-choice question appeared on the screen and we could answer by selecting one or more choices – experience in TIG, Oxy/Acetylene or MIG welding or no welding experience at all. Over 90% of the listeners submitted answers with about 45% having had Oxy/Acetylene experience while  27% of the listeners had no welding experience at all.

I have a little experience welding both with Oxy/Acetylene and TIG and have taken a community college welding course. I still felt that I gained a lot by participating in the webinar. I reviewed some material that I already knew and learned some things of which I was not aware. It was also good to hear the recommendations for amperage settings, electrode types and filler rod materials to use when welding various metals. Scott was about to leave for the Sun-N-Fun fly-in at Lakeland, FL where he will be manning the Lincoln Electric booth and helping out at the welding workshop. Stop by and say hello to him and pass along that the Webinar was great!

This was my first foray into the EAA Webinar experience, but I highly recommend the experience. You can learn of Webinars planned for the future by visiting the EAA Webinar site.

We had beautiful weather last weekend and had an opportunity to meet some new friends we had made on Twitter, so we drove down to Sacramento and spent a day looking at airplanes and further establishing the friendships. We started out with a few hours at the Aerospace Museum of Sacramento located at McClellan Airport (MCC), what used to be McClellan Air Force Base. They have a very nice museum building, clean and modern with very friendly workers and a nice store filled with aviation goodies. The entry fee for adults is $8 and there are various discounts for children and seniors (over 65). [This is another long post, but I have included plenty of photos, and each photo links to a larger version.]

After passing from the lobby into the indoor display area you find yourself in a large open area with aviation displays positioned throughout the room.

This photo is of a Le Rhône Rotary engine on display. I don’t remember what the display sign said, but according to this aviation history site it appears to be the 110 HP version.  the engine was made circa 1916 and is one of the unique early “round” engines in which the cylinders rotate around the crankshaft. This display model allows you to rotate the whole assembly and see how it works. In the background you can just make out a beautifully restored 1932 Curtiss-Wright B-14-B “Speedmail”. Behind the aircraft you can see the doors that open from the entrance lobby.

There are several other engine and aircraft exhibits in the main hall. Three more engine displays caught my eye. These first two were both used in the Curtiss Jenny.  There was a Jenny in the National Aviation Heritage Invitational (NAHI) at Reno in 2006, so I spent a little time looking at the engines that had been used to power the plane. The JN-4D Jenny was equipped with the Curtiss OX-5 engine, shown here. The OX-5 was first manufactured in 1915 and has quite a cult following and it’s own organization called the OX-5 Aviation Pioneers. It is a very maintenance-intensive engine due to it’s design, but it develops it’s rated horsepower (90 hp) at only 1400 RPM. This allowed the use of large efficient propellers.

The other Jenny engine on display is the Hispano-Suiza that powered the JN-4H model, commonly referred to at the “Hisso” Jenny. There are currently only two JN-4H Jennys flying in the world, one being the aircraft that won the overall trophy at the NAHI competition. The early version of the engine produced 140 HP at 1900 RPM while later variations produced as much as 300 HP. It is sometimes referred to as the “Rolls-Royce Merlin of World War I.”  It came into production around 1915 just when the rotary engines of the time were reaching their limit of horsepower output. Increases in cylinder size on the rotary engines to produce more horsepower would have resulted in unacceptable amounts of torque due to the rotational mass of the larger cylinders. The water-cooled V-8 engines came into being and provided a more efficient, lighter engine capable of further refinements to increase horsepower. The Hispano-Suiza engines used a cast steel block and aluminum heads, reducing engine weight by as much as 50% over the rotary competition. The larger horsepower versions were used on some WW I fighters such as the Spad. Some were manufactured with hollow crankshafts which allowed a cannon to be fired through the propeller boss, avoiding the synchronization problem of firing through the propeller arc.

The last of the reciprocating engine displays that I took note of was this cut-away display of the Pratt & Whitney R-4360 “Wasp Major” radial engine, sometimes referred to as the “corncob” engine.

This engine was interesting to me for several reasons. It has four rows of seven cylinders, each offset slightly from the previous row.  Apparently if you were ham-fisted at starting this behemoth you could foul all 56 plugs. Can you imagine being sent out to clean and gap the plugs? It was used on Boeing’s model 377 Stratocruiser and C-97 Stratofreighter,  Convair’s B-36 and XC-99,  Fairchild’s C-119, Douglas’s C-124 and  Goodyear’s F-2G Corsair among others.  All models had four distributors, one for each row, that kept the plugs firing in the correct order. The later models had two turbochargers and a supercharger and generated 4300 HP. These engines are now seen in Reno Air Race planes, notably Dreadnaught and September Fury, both previous Unlimited Gold winners. The commercial version of the engine had an overhaul time of about 600 hours and as you would expect, was very labor-intensive. I would not want to guess how long the overhaul interval would be when used in the race environment.

The last engine I wanted to show you is this unobtrusive model we found near the back of the room. It is on loan to this museum from the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH. Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle is considered one of the fathers of the jet engine. The engine shown here is an outgrowth of Whittle’s original model W-1 which was flown for the first time in a Gloster Pioneer on May 15, 1941. In mid-1942, Whittle was sent to the United States to work with engine designers for General Electric. The outcome was this W.2B engine design which was installed in the Bell XP-59A Airacomet and flew in the autumn of 1942. At the same time that Whittle was working in England to develop the jet engine, Dr. Hans von Ohain was working on his jet engine design in Germany. One of my assignments in the USAF was as an aeronautical engineer at Wright-Patterson AFB (1975-1980). At that time Dr. von Ohain was the Chief Scientist at the Air Force Propulsion Laboratory at Wright-Patterson. I had the pleasure and honor to have lunch with Dr. von Ohain and talked to him about his design experiences and problems. Dr. von Ohain said that, in his opinion,  one of the biggest factors in Germany flying a jet-powered aircraft before the Allies was that he was working with an airframe manufacturer to develop a new aircraft while Whittle was working with engine manufacturers to design a new engine. The airframe manufacturer, Heinkel, had more incentive to push the project forward and have a new aircraft design flying than did the British engine manufacturers who would then need to sell this new propulsion idea to an aircraft manufacturer to have it installed in an aircraft. The first German engine flew in the Heinkel HE178 on August 27, 1939, almost two full years ahead of the British design.

From there we moved outside to see the aircraft on display. The museum has  large selection of aircraft, generally in good shape, however  you can see that the weather and sunlight are starting to take a toll on the finishes and furnishings inside the closed canopies. They have the full complement of  Century Series aircraft including the F- 100, 101, 102, 104, 105 and 106. There also examples of the A-10, T-6, T-28, and T-33 as well as the F-4, A-1 and CH-53 “Jolly Green.” On the large aircraft side are the EC-121D, C-54D, C-47, C-119G and HU-16B “Albatross.” This is just a partial list of the collection on display. Here are a few photos from the collection.

The museum’s C-53 Skytrooper was open so that we could walk up inside the aircraft and see the cockpit and fuselage furnishings. The C-53 is the military version of the DC-3 that was used for carrying troops. It differs from the C-47 in that it does not have the large side door or a reinforced floor. The fuselage was outfitted with “seats” along each sidewall.

The Aerospace Museum of California is located at 3200 Freedom Park  Drive,  Sacramento, CA  95652.  At the time of this article, they are open 7 days a week excluding the major holidays. Their hours of operation are Mon-Sat 9 am to 5 pm and Sun 10 am to 5 pm. You can find more information about the museum at the Aerospace Museum of California web site or you can call ahead at (916) 643-3192. It is possible to fly into McClellan Airport and visit the museum. My Flight Guide shows McClellan Jet Services located at the ramp with the blue “X” in the photo. The blue mark is where there are some general aviation aircraft parked on the ramp. The “A” is the location of the Museum. The information in the Flight Guide says the museum is 1.25 miles from the Jet Services facility and notes that a courtesy car is available. I have not landed at MCC, so I am not familiar with the facilities or the logistics of getting to the museum building, but I highly recommend a visit.

A few days ago I attended the AOPA Air Safety Foundation’s (ASF) safety seminar GPS from the Ground Up. It was the first presentation of this new seminar in the ASF series. Since that night the seminar has been presented several more times on the U.S. West Coast.

The presenter was Andy Miller, a veteran presenter of ASF seminars. As would be expected with the first ‘live’ presentation, there were a couple of minor glitches with the audiovisual system and this first run-through went a little longer than scheduled, but overall the night want smoothly.

What the seminar did not cover

The seminar did not attempt to teach the attendees how GPS uses the satellite signals to calculate position. Nor did the seminar  cover the specific button-pushing operations of the various GPS units that are currently available, other than in a very general way.

What the seminar did cover

Information was presented on the utility of  units from handhelds up to the Garmin G-1000 and the progression from area navigation (RNAV) up to today’s latest WAAS approach capabilities. The material was organized in a ‘phase of flight’ sequence. Each phase of a representative flight was related to the steps in GPS operation that would be accomplished during that phase and how those steps would impact the operation of the aircraft or how the GPS unit could be used to increase the situational awareness of the pilot during that phase of the flight. An example would be using the GPS on a VFR  flight when arriving at the destination to provide orientation with the landing runway by programming in a “runway extension.”  Helpful hints like this were supplemented with ‘gotchas,’ GPS quirks or operations which have caused problems for pilots in the past.

The bottom line

The seminar presented non-specific GPS information in a well organized manner reinforced with real-life examples gleaned from actual ASRS and NTSB reports. Though the information was primarily generic in nature, the seminar will be educational for both novice and experienced GPS users. It will be worth your time to attend one of your local seminars.

Attendance at the seminar qualifies for the ground instruction portion of the FAA Wings Pilot Proficiency Awards Program. The AIG aircraft insurance program recognizes the value of attending an AOPA ASF safety seminar by waiving the insurance deductible if you have an accident within 6 months of attending a seminar. An attendance certificate will also be accepted by the FAA as a waiver of any required remedial training.

If you cannot attend one of many presentations of the seminar, you can download the ASF GPS from the Ground Up Safety Advisor brochure in PDF format.

As a bonus at the Reno seminar we were treated to some of the new AOPA safety spots that you may be seeing on TV in the coming months. They are directed at general aviation pilots and use humor to emphasize to the problem areas that are seen in general aviation operations.  Here is one directed at the problems we continue to have with fuel management.

The weather hasn’t been too conducive to hangar work lately and today wasn’t forecast to be much better, so I decided not to go out to the airport. Instead,  I thought I’d see what I could do about that list of Aviation New Year’s Resolutions that I came up with way back last year.

I was inspired by the newest issue of AOPA Pilot magazine. In the January 2009 issue there are at least three articles that either deal with aeronautical decision making or follow a pilot’s thought process as he/she works through an in-flight maintenance or operational issue.

I logged into the AOPA Air Safety Foundation(ASF)  website, accessed the list of  online safety courses and scrolled to the one titled Do the Right Thing: Decision Making for Pilots. It looked interesting, so started progressing through the course.

I was very impressed with the professional presentation of the course material. It is programmed primarily in Flash and is very interactive, using both animations and sound. There are plenty of links to supplementary material related to the course both for additional reading and for downloading. The course is broken down into seven sections. The last section of the course is made up of flight scenarios, three VFR and two IFR. You must complete at least two of the scenarios in order to complete the course, but if you are like me you’ll try all five of them just for the experience. At various points in each scenario you are given decisions to make and provided at least three options for continuing or terminating the flight. Once you make your decision, the flight continues from that decision point using the option that you have chosen. You can later return to that decision point and chose a different path and see how the outcome of the flight will change.

The final section of the course is a quiz consisting of 15 questions covering the material in the course, including the More Info material associated with several of the sections. A passing grade is 80%, so you must get 12 of the questions correct to be awarded the course completion certificate and credit for the Wings program. If you miss more than three questions you may go back and review the course material and retake the test.

Course Problems

Although I thoroughly enjoyed the course and will definitely take more of the ASF courses, I did have a couple of problems with the program.

The first problem appeared when I selected the end of course quiz.  The “loading” symbol appeared in the center of the screen and continued to rotate, indicating that it was downloading the questions, but it stuck in that mode. I tried logging out of the course and then logging back in and re-selecting the quiz but received the same result. The following morning I logged in again and selected the quiz. This time the questions appeared almost immediately. I am going to assume that either my server or the ASF server had a problem that night and it was an isolated incident.

The other problem appeared when I attempted to print my course completion certificate. The course information does not (at least not the parts I read) warn you that you must allow pop-ups for this function to work correctly. My computer is configured to automatically block pop-ups, so the certificate printing process aborted with no way to make it continue. I had noticed that each of the course sections had a link to FAQs, so I re-entered the course and clicked on one of the FAQ buttons in an early section of the course. Within the information found in FAQ there  is a reference and a link to your individual ASF online course transcript. When you access your transcript you can see all of the online courses that you have taken or are taking. If a course has been completed, your test score is shown and you are provided with a link to print or reprint your course completion certificate. Make sure you allow pop-ups, click on the link and the printing process will begin.

Bottom Line

The ASF Online Course Do the Tight Thing: Decision Making for Pilots is well worth your time to complete. The information is presented in a clear, conscise manner and is reinforced with interactive flight scenarios. As a bonus, completion of the course qualifies for the safety seminar portion of the FAA Wings Pilot Proficiency Award Program.