Volume 11, Number 21a — May 23, 2005

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The Top Headlines From AVweb's Expanded, Illustrated News Coverage At AVweb's NewsWire.

ADIZ-INCURSION PILOTS ISSUE STATEMENT
Hayden ''Jim'' Sheaffer and Troy D. Martin Friday released a statement regarding their May 11, 2005 breach of restricted airspace in the nation's capital. The statement begins: "We are mere private citizens from a small Pennsylvania town who have found ourselves thrust into the national spotlight after an unplanned and unintentional brush with local, state and federal authorities, during what was meant to be an uneventful flight from Lancaster to Lumberton, North Carolina. In an effort to help everyone understand what happened during this incident, the following is a recounting of those events associated with our flight..." The full statement is available in AVweb's NewsWire. More...

U.S. HOUSE SUPPORTS OPENING UP DCA...
Two bills that would mandate allowing GA operations back into Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) passed in the U.S. House last week. The first-ever authorization bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which passed on a vote of 424 to 4, requires the department to implement a security plan that would allow the airport to reopen to GA within 60 days of the bill's enactment. A separate DHS appropriations bill requires such a plan to be in place within 90 days of the bill's enactment. "We are very pleased that Congress continues to apply the pressure necessary to get the Department of Homeland Security moving," President James Coyne, of the National Air Transportation Association (NATA), said last week in a news release. More...

...AND ARMED PILOTS IN THE TERMINAL
The DHS authorization bill also mandates changes to the Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) program that have long been lobbied for by the participating pilots. If approved by the Senate, the bill would require the DHS to issue badges to qualified FFDOs and allow them to transport their weapons "on their persons," rather than inside a locked metal box as is now required. However, the department can prescribe any training, equipment, or procedures it finds necessary to ensure safety and maximize weapon retention. The bill also would allow FFDOs to be reimbursed for expenses incurred in traveling to a training site and would improve access to training facilities. More...

NEW AGE FLIGHT TRAINING...
Old training methods may not match new equipment and as glass cockpits grow ever more common on new (and retrofitted) aircraft, learning to fly on the old round gauges is a task going the way of navigating with a map and compass and E6-B. At Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), a NASA-funded experiment is researching the effects of teaching students on glass cockpits from the start. The project is called SATS Aerospace Flight Education Research (SAFER) and is part of NASA's Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) initiative. The first class began last September, and a second class started in January. The students are learning on five new Diamond DA-40 single-engine trainers equipped with Garmin G1000 glass cockpits. More...

...GOING IFR FROM THE START
The MTSU training also integrates private pilot and instrument training (with an FAA exemption to allow concurrent training) so students take both checkrides at once. According to Paul Craig, director of the MTSU program, "The new [glass-cockpit] technology solves the two problems that make IFR different from VFR: 1) We can see through clouds, and 2) we can see where we are. With these two problems solved, what is the difference between VFR and IFR? The answer: There is no longer a difference!" The SAFER students start flying GPS approaches even before their first solo. Although it's early in the project, the researchers have reported that they feel the new methodology has "great promise" and will lead to improved training that is more efficient. More...

SEEKING NEW PILOTS...
While university flight departments are forging new ground, most flight schools, whether their fleet has round dials or glass, are still facing the same old challenges -- how to find enough new students, and then keep them. To help fill that need, a new company in Nashville, Tenn., Flight School Success, has formed a sales and marketing group that is offering its services to flight schools. "Too often the sale process, if there is one, is left to people who have little or no sales or marketing experience -- people who need to focus on delivering flight education, not tracking prospects," said President Gary Bradshaw in a recent news release. The company has six Internet sites that generate leads, including PilotJourney.com, which has been online for a while. More...

...AS INDUSTRY RALLIES TO HELP
Meanwhile, Be A Pilot, the nonprofit industry group, is expanding its marketing efforts. A new marketing and business-practices e-newsletter for its 2,114 participating flight schools will debut this summer, BAP President Drew Steketee told AVweb on Saturday. Also, BAP is teaming up with one of its sponsors, AOPA, to provide to flight schools all the BAP leads within a 20- or 40-mile radius for their local follow-up, once a month, starting by June. Steketee said there is definitely a need out there for lead management and marketing, but it will be a challenge for start-ups like Flight School Success to get paying clients. "Flight schools have been loath to spend cash on marketing," he said. But, he added, "If [this] concept would gain some traction, it would be fine for the cause of better flight school marketing and building the pilot population." More...

CARRIER LANDINGS MADE EZ
Landing safely on an aircraft carrier has long been admired among pilots as one of the most challenging tasks to master, but those days could soon be over. GPS technology now allows the pilot to let the airplane land itself. While the landing system has been in the works for a while, it's now coming of age, and last week it was tested for the first time at sea in a short-takeoff vertical-landing aircraft -- that is, the Harrier jump-jet. The technology, which is also being studied by the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter program, reduces pilot workload at the end of a mission, when fatigue can be a factor and the pilot faces a critical and difficult landing. Besides reducing risk, the automated landings will enable pilots to conduct missions by day or night and in weather that would previously have been impossible, according to QinetiQ, the British technology company that developed the new system. More...

AOPA OPEN HOUSE SET FOR JUNE 4
AOPA's 15th annual Fly-In and Open House is coming up on Saturday, June 4, at the Frederick, Md., airport, and it's not just for the already-converted. AOPA is offering special activities for folks who want to fly but haven't yet made the plunge. Three one-hour seminars on "How to start learning to fly" will be held throughout the day, covering such topics as the value of being a pilot and the overall training process. A local flight school will have a 172 and flight instructors on hand, offering a chance for the newbies to sit in the cockpit and get a feel for what it's like. A drawing will select 10 prospects for free introductory flights at their local flight schools. More...

AIR FORCE UNITS TO SLASH TRAINING HOURS
The U.S. Air Force is feeling the crunch of a budget strained by the global war on terror, and it's going to mean cutting flight experience by about 32,000 hours, the Air Combat Command (ACC) said last week. The Air Force's projected shortfall for fiscal year 2005 is about $3.7 billion. Cutting up to 60 percent of the year's remaining training flight hours will save about $272 million, according to the ACC. Several key units, such as F/A-22 units, test and training units, and the Thunderbirds, may be exempted from the cuts. "Our first priority is to protect combat capability," said Maj. Gen. Mike DeCuir, ACC director of operations. More...

EPA AEROCOMMANDER SUPPORTS ANTI-TERRORISM EFFORT
When the Environmental Protection Agency began work on a project to develop an airborne chemical detector system, it was for the purpose of monitoring industrial accidents. But in the last few years, the EPA's Aero Commander 680 has been pressed into duty for national security, to detect chemical hazards. The Commander carries high-tech sensors known as ASPECT, for Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology. "By providing a capability to accurately measure and locate hazardous and toxic chemical plumes, emergency responders near disaster plumes will be able to make better decisions regarding civilian evacuations, resource deployments and ensuring the safety of response crews," said Robert Kroutil, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. More...

VICKERS VIMY EN ROUTE FOR TRANS-ATLANTIC FLIGHT
The Vickers Vimy replica that flew 15,000 miles from England to Australia in 1994, then 9,000 miles from London to Capetown in 1999, is ready for adventure No. 3 -- retracing the first nonstop Atlantic crossing, made by the British team of John Alcock and Arthur Brown, flying a Vimy, in June 1919. The open-cockpit biplane, with two engines and a 70-foot wingspan, left California on Thursday, en route to St John's, Newfoundland. The Vimy will stop in Oshkosh, Toronto and Ottawa, and launch from St. John's sometime in mid-June. At the controls this time is ubiquitous aeronautical adventurer Steve Fossett, along with co-pilot Mark Rebholz, a veteran Vimy pilot and 747 captain. They will navigate using only a sextant and compass, the same instruments that Alcock and Brown relied on. More...

PRODUCTION-READY AMPHIB MAKES FIRST FLIGHT
The Czech Aircraft Works caught our attention at last year's Sun 'n Fun when they exhibited, with little fanfare, the already-flying prototype of their first in-house design, a Sport Pilot-ready two-seat aluminum-hulled amphibian called the Mermaid. Now they've taken what they learned from that prototype and started test flights on the first production model. The final design flies faster, lands slower, and is lighter, allowing for more useful load, the company said in a news release last week. About a square meter was added to the wing area, and the wingtips were redesigned for greater efficiency. Chip Erwin, president of Czech Aircraft Works, said, "We did not rush the Mermaid into production but rather took the time to flight-test properly, and then refine and optimize the design. More...

ON THE FLY...
A 172 crashed on a Coney Island beach Saturday, four died...
Web site offers info on auto fuel STCs...
Officials asked FAA to shut down Bader Field after jet crash...
FAA wants authority to prohibit billboards in space...
A Michigan teen wrote a book on his state's fighter aces. More...

AVWEB'S NEWSTIPS ADDRESS ...
Drop us a line. Heard something that 130,000 news-savvy pilots might want to know about? If it caught your eye, it would likely interest someone else. Submit news tips via email to newstips@avweb.com. ... With our thanks. More...

READER FEEDBACK ON AVWEB'S NEWS COVERAGE AND FEATURE ARTICLES:
AVmail: May 23, 2005
Reader mail this week about Chicago's lack of fighter protection, a snake strike, and answers to the question, "The D.C. Insursion: Who deserves more blame?" More...

NEW ARTICLES AND FEATURES ON AVWEB
ATIS
Is Sport Pilot Training Uninsurable for Commercial Flight Schools?
As the details emerge of just how the Sport Pilot rules will work in the "real world," one major block has turned up: Insurance companies may not be willing to underwrite it. AVweb presents a guest opinion piece from a frustrated Sport Pilot flight school.

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COLUMNS
Say Again? #50: Lost Communications -- NORDO
"Atlanta Center -- how do you read?" "Atlanta Center?" "Anybody?!" Lost comm can be a minor event when your flight plan follows the rules. But when you're going Direct, how can ATC get all those other planes away from you? AVweb's Don Brown takes us on a flight when you don't talk to anybody. More...

AVWEB'S BUSINESS AVFLASH
HAVE YOU SIGNED UP yet for AVweb's NO-COST twice monthly Business AVflash? Reporting on breaking news, Business AVflash also focuses on the companies, the products and the industry leaders that make headlines in the Business of Aviation. Business AVflash is a must read. Watch for a Business AVflash regular feature, TSA WATCH: GA IN THE "SPOTLIGHT". Sign up today at http://www.avweb.com/profile/ More...

SHORT FINAL...
Sometimes a little sports knowledge goes a long way. Overheard on the Houston Deperture frequency...

DEP: Aircraft XYZ, Contact Yao Ming on 123.45

Pilot: ...Huh?

DEP: Houston Center. More...

AVflash is a twice-weekly summary of the latest aviation news, articles, products, features and events featured on AVweb, the Internet's Aviation Magazine and News Service. http://www.avweb.com

Letters to the editor intended for publication in AVmail should be sent to mailto:editor@avweb.com.com. Have a comment or question? Send it to mailto:newsteam@avweb.com.

Today's issue written by News Writer Mary Grady:
http://www.avweb.com/contact/authors.html#mgrady
AVweb's editorial team: http://avweb.com/contact/authors.html.

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Fly it till every part stops.

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