AVmail

During the past three weeks, our region has been hit by two tropical storms. Mozambique is reeling under the effects of this flooding; which must be the worst flooding to hit the country in many decades. On Sunday evening (27 Feb 2000), the local TV news carried an interesting report on the problems in Mozambique, which has been hit by two tropical storms in three weeks, and also is the conduit for most of the run-off from Northern SA, Zimbabwe and Zambia and further afield as well. Most of the country is low-lying and very flat, so it does not take much water to cause a flood. The TV news reporter stated that "...the rescue effort is being seriously hampered by the TOTAL LACK of airports in the country. It is doubted whether many of the stranded people have much chance of being rescued, or whether much of the humanitarian aid has much chance of getting through to them..."

Mozambique is a country as large as Texas and Louisiana combined, and my copy of British Airways/Aerad Africa supplement shows only 18 registered airfields in the whole country -- four are for emergency use only, nine have nil services, and only five have any form of aviation services provided (typically fuel or a tower).

Now, do you suppose that this will stop our government and municipal authorities from closing down the unprofitable rural airports? Nah, sorry I asked!

The importance of general aviation is, to my mind, underestimated. In most parts of the world it is simply neglected, and Southern Africa is no exception. This is a situation that clearly indicates the resulting aftermath of not being able to get to the victims quickly and move them out of the affected areas in large numbers.

If we are able to use the tragedy that is developing in Mozambique to promote general aviation in some positive way, then this event will have served some good.

When we landed and tried to check in with the CAP as we were previously instructed, they said the mission was closed, and they were no longer making sure that everyone made it back safely. All in all, it was a pretty dismal demonstration of how to operate a search. Rather than criticize the organization and its members, since it was a volunteer group, I decided to join and see if I could make a difference.

That was nearly 30 years ago. As a CFI and A&P, I think I have been a factor in making my state CAP unit an effective search and rescue organization. A few years ago, I even flew a plane that found a missing aircraft and helped save the life of the injured passenger. I have also met some very fine people including retired combat pilots from WWII and Vietnam who have fascinating stories to tell.

So my message to Mark is don't criticize. Obviously your local CAP needs your help. If you can't find enough of the "right" people in the CAP, get some of your pilot friends to join and help you turn the unit into something you can be proud of.

Here's my two cents worth. I'm not in the CAP. I'm a member of the US Air Force Reserve, assigned to the organization designated to provide Air Force oversight, advice, and assistance to the CAP. I've worked closely with CAP personnel at the Squadron, Wing (i.e. State), Regional, and National level for the last four years. Though I have, on occasion, run into people whose priorities are as described by your letter-writers, let me assure you the vast majority of CAP members are hard-working, dedicated professionals who take their three missions of Emergency Services (read Search and Rescue and Disaster Response), Aerospace Education, and Cadet programs very seriously. These volunteers donate their time and money so that you, the flying public, have the reasonable assurance that if you are unfortunate enough to be involved in an aircraft mishap, someone is going to be out there looking for you as soon as possible. Last year CAP members flew over 4,000 sorties totaling almost 9,000 hours conducting search and rescue missions that saved 84 lives and that doesn't count the thousands of hours flown in support of disaster relief and counterdrug missions.

It was getting to the point where I was spending more time documenting my flights than I was actually flying. Who is requiring this - CAP bureaucrats? I don't think so. The Air Force is probably spending more money watching CAP than they are their major weapons systems programs, and for what? It hasn't improved the safety record or the missing aircraft find rate, which continue to remain high. I say this as a Government bureaucrat myself - USAF oversight of CAP is approaching the point of diminishing returns.

It's not that the CAP is blameless. We all know that in volunteer organizations some egos run wild on authoritarian power trips. My recommendation is to de-militarize the CAP for adults and let the Cadets continue the military heritage role. There's enough work to do without all the inflated rank-wearers creating more paperwork for the people in the trenches. The CAP mission continues to expand in vital areas serving all of our communities, and is a focal point for young men and women seeking entry to aviation careers in and out of Government.

which states that:

Your readers may be interested to know that that information is contained in Change 19 to the General Aviation Safety Inspector's handbook (FAA Order 8700.1), Vol. II, Chapter 44, Section 5.

That change, dated 2/11/2000, is now available in full text on the FAA Web site at http://www.faa.gov/avr/afs/faa/8700/8700.html. Change 19 may be downloaded as a separate file, is in Adobe Acrobat format, and looks exactly like the version that can be purchased from the GPO.

Another big part of Change 19 is Vol. II, Chapter 180 (48 pages) which pertains to Compliance and Enforcement in general and Chapter 182 which pertains to Compliance and Enforcement investigations.

I have no doubt how he got through security. As a traveler who puts over 100,000 miles per year on the system, I can tell you that security is at best lax -- and not just at LAX, either. Airport security personnel seem to be interested in either minutia, or the "probleme de jour." In general, they hassle the frequent travelers, never seeing them as their customers or reason-for-being. They will hassle one person for an oversize carry-on, while another takes through a steamer trunk without being questioned. What either has to do with safety is beyond me.

Maybe someone could explain why a laptop that turns on is not dangerous, while one that does not is... Of course, they don't test the CD bay for...

I did get stopped for taking a cordless drill from LAX to Houston -- BUT on the opposite-direction flight, it was fine. I even showed it to security, asking if it was okay. The rules are unclear, not uniformly enforced, or even made public to frequent fliers.

This past summer I gave DUATS a real workout while planning a trip from Massachusetts to Oklahoma and back. One of the things I noticed was that decoded forecasts would sometimes include phrases like "coastal volcanic ash."

That obviously wasn't right. A comparison of the coded and decoded text revealed the cause. The DUATS decoder was reading the state abbreviation VA (Virginia) as the ICAO designator for volcanic ash. There were a couple other similar glitches.

I reported these to the DUATS help desk and to their credit they dealt with the problem in fairly short order. Now when you get a decoded text you'll see something like "coastal (Virginia/volcanic ash)" so you can pick the decode that best fits the context. The point of all this is that the decoded text can sometimes be more confusing than the short version.

Available bandwidth and response time are still issues. Dialing in to DUATS can be difficult in the early morning and response time via the Web during the same period can be dismally slow. It gets worse during prolonged periods of bad weather over large areas. Providing sufficient resources to handle even the highest peak loads with minimal latency means that a lot of processing power and network capacity go unused a most of the time. Another writer pointed out that decoded printouts equals lots of paper, certainly more than I like to carry along.

Wow! I'll probably drop a $100 this month playing with it.

Anyway thanks for your efforts to put this out.

AOPA has indicated in Congressional testimony that as many as 120,000 general aviation aircraft are equipped with Loran. There are actually millions of Loran users in aviation, marine, surface transportation and the technology is used widely for timing purposes. AOPA, HAI, NBAA, NASAO, NATA and many in GA have helped enormously and been very strong and effective advocates for Loran in recent years.

There has also been strong bipartisan support in Congress among key members from the Appropriations and Authorizing Committees in the House and Senate. Senators Kohl (D-WI), Kerry (D-MA) and Snowe (R-ME) in particular have been strong, determined proponents.

or in combination with the AC00-6A Aviation Weather:

Keep up the great work!

First of all "the demon code" isn't the FAA's fault. It comes from an agreed-upon convention under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization -- so blame the NWS for finally agreeing to use it and catching up with the rest of the world. METARs and TAFs are international products, and using abbreviations is the only way to make them as understandable in Narita as they are in Peoria.

Pillory me if wish, but the GA community needs to put this in context. The U.S. GA population is only a very minor segment of the world aviation community (I am a financially challenged private pilot so I have some right to speak) and really needs to get over this.

As an aircraft dispatcher for a major airline, I flight plan and flight follow around 60-70 flights in an 8 hour shift. My colleagues at the regionals with their higher frequency schedules may work upwards of 120 flights in a shift! So on an average day, just checking departure, destination, and alternate weather means that I'm going through hundreds of TAFs and several hundred more METARs. There is no way we could wade through that much information in plain text. Now get out of your once weekly single flight mode for a moment and contemplate how much bandwidth and paper all that plain text for all these flights would occupy. For a visual, the next time you are at a major airport, find a captain just leaving ops with that wad of paper that comprises his dispatch release, flight plan, and weather package, and ask him to show you how many feet long it already is with the abbreviations.

Like I said earlier, these are international products. If you want to see a real mess with each country free to use plain text in its own language, take a look at international notams. They are in Portugese, Spanish, French, and many other less identifiable tongues. Go pull up some notams for Guyaquil or San Jose Costa Rica and tell me what they say. Talk about cryptic! At the bottom of each international notam (hopefully) is a 5 letter "q code" that is supposed to boil down all the verbiage and bring order to this modern version of Babel. So ILS 24 OTS in San Jose is QIACA or some such. At least with the weather, terms like sct, bkn, SPECI, RAB05E25, mean the same things in Peoria as they do in Narita and you can very quickly comprehend the information being conveyed. (Once you've learned what the abbreviations mean its easy ... honest.)

Tonight I went to the city and had dinner with my daughter and some people from her work (she's a magazine editor) and then we all went off to see "Charlie Victor Romeo."

Wow, wow, wow! What a stunning production. Absolutely riveting. My daughter and her friends are non-pilots, and they were blown away!

And I heard about it on AVweb first!

I met the producer outside after the performance (he is sort of a kid, standing around with a baseball cap on) and he said that people from Lockheed, or Martin Marrieta or somesuch, involved with Cockpit Resource Management, came up to see it. They said that this guy should make a videotape of the performance -- that if crews could see it, and the lack of CRM taking place in some instances, it would save lives.

It really is stunning. There's just no other word for it.

It was important to Rick for us to be there. After all, he was getting married. Rick really was hopeful that he would find his life's partner. We felt that we had to support our good friend. We were not judgmental about the method he was using to pick his spouse. Through the millennia people have used all sorts of methods, including arranged marriages (done by royal families and the wealthy as a matter of course) and mail-order brides. Who was to say that this couldn't work?

Martha and I will celebrate 35 years of marriage this June. Our marriage is the most important thing in our lives, but we are not judgmental about other people's attempts to find happiness. However, one of our core values is to support good friends.

Rick was sincere in his search for a life's partner and we felt that we should be there for him. Our role now is to support Rick in going through one of the most difficult periods of his life.

In "Close Encounters of the Worst Kind" [AVmail, 23 Feb 2000], Roger Long describes a near midair collision which occurred "right outside" Class C airspace, in which the other airplane didn't show a transponder return, and hadn't been seen by the radar controller. Those who have commented on this, including Mike Busch and the 3 others so far all assume that the other pilot wasn't required by FAR's to turn his transponder on. If an aircraft is equipped with a usable transponder, it MUST be operated while flying in controlled airspace. Almost all airspace is controlled above 1200' AGL (Class E); adjacent to Class C it is probably controlled above 700' AGL. Mike listed requirements for transponder use from 91.215 (b), but omitted the requirement from the next subparagraph. Here it is:

I'd like to see AVweb take the lead in communicating to the pilot community that the use of the transponder and encoder (if you have them) is not only very good operating practice, it is required by law.

My thoughts on a comment Mike Busch made in response to a letter from the latest AVmail.

Yes, but did you also see upon closer examination the provision contained in FAR 91.215(c)? You included the statement that "As currently written, the regs require a transponder to be turned on above 10,000 feet MSL, and in airspace where radar service is mandatory (Class B and C), and within 30 NM of a primary Class B Airspace airport". This is confirmed in 91.215(c) as requiring transponder use in the airspace mentioned in 91.215(b). However notice the next few words of 91.215(c), which also require transponder use "in all controlled airspace". Since the majority of airspace in the United States today is classified as controlled in some fashion, it is almost as if we do have a regulation which requires the use of an operable transponder at all times in an aircraft which are so equipped.

The gentleman who wrote the letter indicated that his close encounter "took place just after pulling up into a steep climb during airwork right outside our Class C." In my experience, it's most likely that due to the proximity to the Class C airspace, Class E airspace (another controlled airspace) also existed above at least 1,200 feet AGL in his current location. Which leads me to believe that the aircraft he encountered without the operating transponder could have been in violation of 91.215(c) for not operating the transponder "in all controlled airspace".

FAR 91.215(c) only requires the use of the transponder in these airspace areas when the aircraft is equipped with an operable transponder, which has been properly maintained. Due to various maintenance or certification issues, there are number of exemptions why one may visually detect an "aircraft" which is operating without the transponder and yet is operating legally.

There have been any number of comments from the GA community suggesting that privatization of the ATC system will inevitably lead to a disaster of Canadian proportions. Why must this be so?

Obviously the people working the system get paid in the current and a privatized system. So what is the motive of the working stiff to do a better job in one system or the other? The principle difference is that the investors would seek a financial return in a private system while the profit motive is not present in the public system. Obviously these investors will seek to maximize total return on their investment which means doing what brings the cash in as efficiently as possible. The control mechanism is to regulate what brings the cash in.

There have been many valid points made that direct charges for services such as weather briefings, flight plans, etc. will compromise safety by causing pilots to opt out of the system. That doesn't mean that we don't pay for them, we just do it indirectly with the fuel taxes. There is no reason that a private system cannot be reimbursed for each service provided without requiring direct user fees.

I suggest that a system which ties profitability to the number of safe aircraft operations with penalties for unsafe operations will motivate the investors to make the improvements which are so often suggested in this column. Indeed, if such a system were installed, we might have an ATC system which actually encourages private aircraft to fly rather than viewing them as a nuisance to be dealt with.

Part of the reason more pilots don't do weight and balance calculations is that the chart and calculator approach isn't easy to do using the horizontal stabilizer as a desk.

There is any easier way. There are several software packages available for the 3Com PalmPilot that allow the pilot to input all the necessary data just once and then modify only the items that change for each flight. One very good example is AV8R which is an electronic E6B as well as a weight and balance calculator. It's available for only ten dollars, a portion of which the author donates to the EAA Young Eagles program. You can see this program and download a fully functioning, time limited demo at http://www.wavefront.com/~dd/av8r/.

I've been a private pilot for nearly 15 years, though calling myself a "pilot" still gives me the willies, given that I was/am fortunate to have airline pilots as mentors/instructors/friends.

I co-owned my first aircraft, a beautiful 172H ('67) with the local (Indianapolis) CAP "Safety Officer." I was green then, still with a student certificate, and didn't pay much attention to the CAP, though when the saddled up one weekend a month for simulated rescue missions it was difficult not to notice an air of supremacy regarding their importance. "self-importance?" I mean after all, Indianapolis isn't Alaska for goodness' sake.

More disturbing was that I soon found out that my partner had been disqualified years before from obtaining a 3rd class medical certificate due to high blood pressure. Again being green I didn't fully understand the ramifications of his grounding. He'd been flying for some time without it. What "spilled the beans" regarding his condition was a massive stroke at home which left him nearly incapacitated, wheelchair-and-homebound. THE SAFETY OFFICER!

Two years ago, with considerable more humble experience in my logbook I relocated to a smaller town . . Bobby Knight's town . . in Southern Indiana. Again I was fortunate to fall in with a group of experienced pilots, one who just retired off an MD-11 and #2 seniority at AA. He allowed the local CAP to use his magnificent hangar for meetings. Again I was distressed by the grim, paramilitary demeanor of the recruits and their "leaders," one of whom was a cop groupie who was never seen without a scanner in his back pocket and who'd self-appointed himself as "airport security."

Perhaps my experiences were dissimilar to others'. But I can't help to feel that, at least in this area of the country, that CAP members are more impressed with their uniforms and ranks than they are with the purpose of the CAP.

Perhaps I'm mistaken and the "mission" is more serious than I imagine/know.

In January 1997 the FCC set the deadline for all aviation radios to conform to the tighter frequency tolerances, which many older radios will not meet.

Now I here people saying Ref. 1996 PRIVATE PILOT "Wait! Don't Junk Those Radios Yet!" article which states those radio that meet the 30 parts per million tolerance weather they are the older radio or not are legal to use as long as they fall within the 30 parts per million requirement of FCC regulation 87.133

My local FAA avionics inspector says its not an FAA issue its a FCC issue .

The recent cluster of midairs makes this a timely bit of airborne dialogue. It took place just after pulling up into a steep climb during airwork right outside our Class C.

"Uh, approach, this is 827, do you have another Cessna in our area?"

"I have a faint target but I don't know whether he's real or not."

"Oh, he's real all right. He just went about 300 feet over our heads."

"Well, he's not talking to me and his transponder's off."

The Captain on American Flight 1420 was a Chief Pilot -- a management pilot whose primary job is to line check other pilots. Management pilots normally fly as a line Captain only one month out of the year!

Boeing recently announced that they will NOT stretch the 747-400.

The only airplane in Product Development is 777X -- big deal hang larger engines on a 777-200 and add body/tail fuel.

The only NEW airplane developments on the horizon are bigger than 747-400 which Boeing has said they do not plan on pursuing, and SST which the "watermelons" (environmentalist -- green on the outside and red on the inside) will not allow to happen.

Stonecipher wants to do at Commercial Airplanes what he did at Douglas: get rid of a bunch of engineers and replace many of the remaining with contract labor. In order to replace direct engineers with contract labor, he needs a large number of voluntary terminations -- thus a much more stingy engineer/tech contract than IAM got and a strike.

The joy of having the GNS430s versus the King KLN90B has been well covered. But the hidden prize, which I did not understand until I fired up the Bonanza for the first time after installation was the beautiful new interface between the GNS430 and the Ryan 9900B.

The GNS430 NAV page three in this installation is a 360 degree view of everything the Ryan 9900 can see. There is a screen shot available at the Ryan web site of this Garmin page http://www.ryan-tcad.com/ . Having a full 360 degree view of the traffic really changes your perception about how much traffic is around - much more than I ever thought! I just leave my number 2 Garmin on this page anytime I am low level. Sitting on the ground at Ramona the first day I power up it immediately showed all four aircraft in the pattern with altitude and exactly the right distance. I could go on and on about this combination of the 430 and the 9900, but if the display was not enough, the installation is $3,000 cheaper because you don't need to buy the Ryan TCAD display head, everything is viewed and selected through the Garmin Nav page 3.

The truth of the matter is that Loran-C has received Congressional support for the past three years with funding for upgrading the loran system. This year for the first time the President's Budget included an additional $20 million to continue with the upgrade program and $27 million for the Coast Guard. The old tube transmitters are to be replaced and time synchronization is to be improved so that "all-in-view" transmitters can be used. In addition the automatic blink system (ABS) that has been delayed for so many years was completed earlier this month and is currently waiting acceptance by the FAA. This will enable certification of Loran-C for NPA's which was thrown off course a decade ago by short term transmitter outages that could not be detected without the automatic 10 second blink (ABS) now in operation.

Industry in the United States and Europe is developing GPS/Loran equipment designed to avoid becoming totally dependent upon one system. Loran is important not only for aviation but for marine and precision timing for communications.

The language in the Federal Radionavigation Plan relating to loran being continued in the short-term was a result of a negotiation between the Department of Transportation and the Office of Management and Budget. It is understandably confusing in the face of the loran system being upgraded for the long-term but stems from this Adminstration's goal of decommissioning all terrestrial radionavigation systems - an unsafe and unacceptable policy.

I do not know if any one from New Zealand has added his or her opinion on the latest from the Principal Medical Officer (PMO) of the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority.

The PMO is a young woman who holds a private Pilots License, and is of average ability, except that it took her four hours to convert to a Piper Tomahawk ... a complicated difficult aircraft to fly?

She has introduced standards of medical assessment that takes the decisions that were made by in field Aeronautical Medical Assessors (AMA) away from the assessor if the pilot applicant is over 50 years of age.

She has presented a graph that is biased against all males over 50 years, but a female can still pass a medical at 70 years without special assessments.

The special assessments include, in addition to the standard ICAO requirements:

Bruce Protocol Stress Tests,(Stress ECG) Invasive blood tests, Chest X-rays, Ophthalmology special eye report, and an Audiogram.

It is so geared that I (D.O.B January 1935) who flew for the national carrier for 20 years and was a captain on DC8 DC10, and 747-200, would have failed my medical prior to age 40.

Now that I am 65, I need to have a below-average cholesterol level, weigh less than 190 pounds (I am 6' 2" tall) and have a blood pressure of less than 120/75.

In fact when her chart is scrutinized, someone with low BP, low weight, low cholesterol, one still has difficulty passing unscathed at 40 years of age.

But if you are female, you would be fine at 50, not so good at 60 but could still just slip in at 70.

The PMO,s protocol is that if we fall outside her predetermined risk factor, which is a 1% chance of a incapacitating heart problem, one must not set foot in an aircraft.

The risk factor has been calculated by several in field pilots of mature age and experience, and the chance of a pilot who flies about 50 hours a year, has more chance of winning the first prize in the national lotto than suffering an MI in flight whilst being Pilot In Command!

Your FAA looked at this protocol some years ago and threw it out as being "a complete waste of time and money."

The cap to the NZ PMO's invasive medical assessments is this: she requires the candidate to pay her NZ$266.00 (2 hours of CAA charges) to assess your medical(2 to 4 minutes work) and then the special medical assessing fees start. To date those that have continued down this track have spent in excess of NZ$2,000.00, and this is a recurring fee to be fronted up each 6 months if one holds a Class One medical.

There are a good number of pilots over 75 years of age and they have about the same chance as a snowball in Hell of ever passing a medical.

We are fighting this issue but NZ laws have a special Draconian section that allows Government departments to do as they like without recourse.

In CAA case, this new standard was introduce without consultation with the industry, and even the NZ equivalent of the British Medical Association.

NZ is going to be encumbered with a large amount of unlicensed pilots in the near future.

We already have to pay for landing fees, flight plans, SAR watch, met reports, airways communications when landing at a controlled airport, annual registration fees for all aircraft,annual fees for the radio equipment,annual levy to cover CAA's added expenses, local government fuel tax.

How can I obtain a green card and come and reside in USA?.

On January 6, 1977, Dolly Sinatra departed Palm Springs in a Learjet charter to Las Vegas for a show by her only child, Frank. She, a friend, and two pilots took off a little before 5:00 p.m. -- dark, IMC, rain on ground, snow higher. They departed from RWY 30, cleared via Palm Springs, direct Twenty-Nine Palms, climb and maintain 17 thousand. There was no radar service at low altitudes in the departure area.

The pilots climbed out on runway heading and never made any significant turns. Air Traffic Control was tracking them based on reported positions by radio. There was confusion between the pilots and ATC. The pilots seemed to be waiting for ATC to clear them to turn towards Twenty-Nine Palms. ATC thought they were established on a radial to Twenty-Nine Palms VOR to the NE based on radio reports from the pilots who were still established on a NW radial from Palm Springs VOR -- direct to high mountains. How the pilots who knew the area well could have thought it was OK to continue flying up towards an area where the minimum applicable altitude is 13,000 was a sad case of lack of spatial awareness.

Or, as the NTSB determined, "The flight crew may not have been aware that they were operating in a non-radar environment and believed that they were under radar control. The company chief pilot stated that the only other facility similar to Palm Springs that they serviced regularly was Sun Valley, Idaho, and that was 'strictly a VFR operation.'"

At 1657:45 a Los Angeles Center controller was informed of the Lear's departure and waiting for it to appear NE of Palm Springs. The controller saw a primary (paint) radar return without a data block pop up NW of Palm Springs. At 1658:36 the data block popped up. The controller noticed it but didn't have access to its radio frequency. At 1659:40 the interphone controller called Palm Springs to find out what that plane was doing flying to the NW since it was starting to intrude on traffic in a Los Angeles Center sector. At the same time, Palm Springs was vectoring another plane for an IFR approach into Twenty-Nine Palms. At about 1700:00, radio and radar contact was lost with the Sinatra Lear.

The California Civil Air Patrol and the County Sheriff started a search. The weather was foul the entire search. Frank Sinatra searched in a helicopter provided by the Lear's owner. The Civil Air Patrol and the FAA processed the raw radar data -- it was a time when a group of 12 CAP members from San Carlos Airport, CA and their local FAA Center were processing by data transfer from all around the country all radar data for all military and civilian searches to prove the value of radar tracking for searches.

The initial search area was in an extremely rugged area with snow up to searchers' armpits. By the third day, searchers finally had the full radar dataset. It showed the track being automatically extended through the 11,502' Mt. San Gorgonio since the FAA then and now will automatically extend a radar track for a few more seconds when a target drops off temporarily. When searchers looked at the "proper" side of the mountain, the wreckage scattered over a half mile with no survivors was found near the tree the plane first hit at almost 300 knots about 9,700'.

Frank Sinatra lobbied hard for Palm Springs to get radar service -- which it got fairly fast despite the fact the airport did not have enough traffic to have otherwise qualified for area radar service.

Within thirty days of the search, the FAA Administrator issued an FAA policy letter to all Centers that FAA Centers' priorities were: first, IFR separations; second, radar data processing for missing aircraft searches; and third, everything else. It can be said that the Sinatra search finally proved to the FAA the value of radar data processing for missing aircraft searches. With today's computers, processing radar data for searches is usually much faster than it was in 1977 when it was all done with computer fan paper and hand calculators, and the FAA's MSAW system now allows many controllers to notice quicker when a plane is too close to the ground.

I don't get in an aircraft to give dual for under $50/hour, and I have the waiting list you mentioned that some CFI's are getting. It is about time, right?

The little picture they provided of a 727 sitting out in the water just off of a beach is obviously a computer concoction and a very bad one at that. This is obviously not a real photograph. Look at the column under the airplane. I clicked through the photographs they provided of the actual airplane undergoing modification, and I was only further skeptical to find that not one photograph showed one of their finished products. Not one photo showed furniture inside of a 727. They showed a lot of photographs which they could have gotten from anywhere of real 727's being stripped or converted into freight planes. Another thing that didn't hold water was their assertion that they remove the horizontal stabilizer so that the airplane won't fly anymore. This doesn't make any sense. They claim that they bolt this plane to a column capable of withstanding several million pounds of force, so how could this plane flying off the pedestal possibly be an issue. I was further intrigued by the fact that this company did not show one picture of an airplane on an actual purchaser's property.

Mike, I have not seen any official opinion from FAA medical on corneal rings. Without a blanket guidance statement from them a pilot might be on a little shakier ground resuming flying after the procedure without a clearance. INTACS may need to be approved on an individual basis until they issue a policy. I would be interested to know if any of our readers have any direct experience with this. I don't know of any specific airline policies addressing INTACS.

I had a VFR BE35, N1856Z, out of Lee Summit, Missouri, to Ardmore Downtown, who said he'd go on over for a look. He went maybe 50 miles out of his way, cruised up and down the highway in both directions before pressing on to Downtown. He didn't find anything and there was no ELT either, a good sign that maybe there hadn't been a crash after all.

Controllers never derive any pleasure out of working with crashes. There is some satisfaction in finding a crash site so that the survivors can be rescued, if there are any to be rescued - and you always hope there are.

One of the hardest things I've ever had to do out there was get information from an air taxi pilot about another pilot from the same company. On a mid-shift some years ago I was working a Bankcheck out of Kansas City to Dallas Love when Kansas City Center called to say that a company flight had crashed north of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and could I get some information from the pilot I was working, the victim's name, the chief pilot's name, phone number and all that.

It was difficult asking the questions. The fellow knew something was wrong when the questions started and it didn't take him long to figure it out.

One time Ardmore Tower called to ask if I'd run an aircraft over the Red River to find a VFR aircraft that had supposedly crashed there. I did and the pilot found the aircraft which led to a rescue of the plane's occupants. That was a great ending to what could have been a tragedy.

It has always amazed me that some people go through their entire ATC careers never working even an emergency, much less something worse. I've been the D-side on two serious crashes, one fatal and one where the Navy pilot ejected safely. If I never work another one, that'll be soon enough for me.

From AVflash 6.07b:

The statements published regarding the inspection are not necessarily contradictory. For a measurement, such as the stabilizer end play, there is a tolerance. The initial statement that the assembly had "maximum allowable end play" means that the measurement was at the limit of the tolerance, or barely "good". For example an end-play measurement for the assembly may be 0.040 inch. If you measure 0.040 inch, the test passes ... if you measure 0.041 inch, it fails.

Whether you should replace a part at maximum tolerance depends on a lot of other issues. When the manufacturer specified the tolerance they knew what the inspection interval was and believed they knew the expected lifetime of the part. From that knowledge they set the maximum value that the aircraft could be returned to service: the tolerance.

It appears someone recommended replacement even though the measurement passed the test, although with little margin. Subsequent inspections resulted in confirming -- five times I recall -- that the measurement was within tolerance, the part was "good."

I hope you can see fit to present the whole story. I work for Horizon Air, Alaska's Sister company and they have taken a beating from the aviation ignorant media. Time Magazine even made reference to them as "Value Jet II", they deserve better that that, especially from you.

Your news story talks about "...acquisition of AlliedSignal by Honeywell..." when the exact opposite is more nearly true.

Twenty three years later I found myself in Tucson with some extra money and clear blue skies, so I got current again. After I got my instrument rating and commercial license, I decided to go for the CFI. My undergraduate degree is in Education, and though I have never taught full time, after I got my Masters I began teaching aviation management courses at local colleges. The thought of teaching in an airplane appealed to me, so I did it. Now I have my CFII and fly every weekend, and as many days during the week as I dare, without getting my business partner too upset. My plan is to go through the MEI as well, using my 'earnings' from teaching to fund it.

I am 46 and reasonably successful and I am pretty amazed at the pay that CFI's get. It is disgraceful how some FBO's treat their CFI's. I see a lot of young guys go through the place where I work and they use the CFI job as a way to gain hours, not to teach. If the pay was such that you could actually support yourself as a CFI then I think the quality would be improved measurably. I don't think people object to paying for quality, but they do object when they pay for substandard service.

For me, the fun part is when one of my students 'gets it'; to see the light go on and watch them learn something new. Flight Instructing has also taught me a lot about flying and made me a better pilot. When you teach something to someone else you learn it all over again yourself, and watching a student commit a common error helps reinforce the right way to do it whenever I fly myself. It also gratifying when one of my rated students gives me a call to ride along on a trip when the weather is forecasted to be a bit low, or the when they fly in to a high-elevation airport for the first time.

The gland nut that the jackscrew runs through stripped out. The crew was able to deploy the spoilers in order to correct the nose down pitch in accordance with emergency procedures. The established the approach and things were looking under control until....

This crash had no voice recorded, and a very limited 4-channel FDR. All data was collected through intense investigation. On approach over Cameron Bay, the crew added power either to go around or correct glide slope. The C-141-A has a 54 degree switch in the throttle assembly. The purpose in to retract the spoilers in the event of an emergency go around. When the pilots advanced the throttles beyond this limit, the switch did it's job, it retracted the spoilers. In turn, the aircraft pitched over, and the crew was unable to react in time, the aircraft crashed into the water. There was only one survivor.

Investigation showed maintenance had failed to properly inspect and lubricate the jackscrew. Corrective action included a modification to the aircraft that installed flight limit bypass switch. Crews have been practicing this emergency procedure in the simulator ever since.

The accident report may not be released, I don't know. The accident was over 20 years ago.

What a shame all those people died. Our safety program should have prevented the failure. I'm certain the crew never had a chance.

However, we