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Red Hot Patty World Champion aerobatic pilot Patty Wagstaff, the "red hot Gypsy" of the sky, tears up the air over Jabara Airport, Wichita, at the Kansas Flight Festival, Summer 2005. Patty's fast-rolling, high-climbing Extra 300 can barely keep up with her energetic thrashing of the joystick as she dances on red and white wings to the song "Red Hot."(While waiting the few minutes for this great video to download, check out the other pix below. If you get a message saying sound doesn't work, it's your computer -- you can still see the video; click the "close" button, and continue waiting for the video. When it's all downloaded, press the "PLAY" (->) button on your viewer.) |
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PAMA-FlightSafety (HawkerBeechcraft) Grand Tour - Jan 19, 2010 (CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE) |
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The Wichita Chapter of the Professional Aviation Maintenance Assn. (PAMA), was generously invited by FlightSafety International (FSI) to tour their new Hawker-Beechcraft Maintenance Training Center, adjacent to Beech Airport -- and sample a bit of their instructional offerings. PAMA techs got to see the latest in aerospace training, for some of the most advanced aircraft flying today. |
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ABOVE: A tour of FSI's huge hangar, with multimillion-dollar Hawker bizjets and a Beech commuter airliner donated by Hawker-Beechcraft, as "project aircraft" for students to work with. For student exercises, test stands scattered around the room hold working aircraft subsystems.
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RIGHT: Classroom briefing on the Beech Starship, the first FAA-certified all-composite (carbon fiber) aircraft. Beech's birthing struggles with the Starship gave them a huge lead in composite aircraft manfacturing. |
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ABOVE: The magic ingredient in the latest Beech and Hawker designs - a honeycomb of phenol-impregnated paper, sandwiched between two multi-layered skins of carbon-graphite cloth, impregnated with chemical resin. The result is as strong as aluminum, at a fraction of the weight.
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ABOVE: FSI instructor Jim Vann shows how to patch a hole in composites -- a tricky, delicate business, requiring a healthy respect for safety (toxic dust and chemicals), and a scrupulous attention to detail, procedures, and timing (the stuff dries fast). |
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BELOW, LEFT: A special treat: We got to sample FSI's jet and turboprop cockpit simulators. Using the latest "touch-screen" technology, most of the controls are simulated by images on the "MATRIX" screens, which are activated by the students' touch.
I tried the sim for the "world's most advanced busines jet," the Hawker 4000 (born "Hawker Horizon"), shown below.
Years ago, briefly, I was the first person outside of Hawker-Beech and FSI to sample the regular, actual-cockpit, full-motion Hawker Horizon simulator. But it's been years ago, and I was REALLY rusty! After much head-scratching and educated guesswork, my "copilot" and I managed to get the 4000 "started up," and "rollin' down the road." The representation of the glass cockpit is quite realistic, but the act of learning to "turn" a knob or "flip" a switch, by touching something on a screen, is quite unnatural and awkward, at first. The real plane (above) has real knobs and switches -- but all its instruments are glass-panel "EFIS" ("Electronic Flight Instrumentation System") displays, much as depicted on the MATRIX monitor screens here. |
BELOW, RIGHT: Both engines humming, and a full panel of instruments. The black screen with blue & brown , at far left, is the "PFD" ("Primary Flight Display") indicating aircraft attitude, altitude, airspeed, compass heading, and such. Beside it, in green and white, the "MFD" ("Multi-Function Display"), shows many things, including navigation guidance, communcations settings, and weather radar. It can also show schematic diagrams indicating the current condition of each aircraft system -- depicting fuel flows in this instance. (A matching set of PFD/MFD screens appears on the copilot's side, though the copilot is looking at another system on his MFD). We're each using a "drop-down menu" to change our MFD displays to other aircraft systems. My hand is barely visible in lower right corner, resting on a touchpad, which works like a computer mouse, to allow you to control the displays. Truly the bizjet for the video-game generation! |
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In the middle, an "EICAS" display ("Engine Indicating & Crew Alerting System") substitutes for traditional engine instruments and warning lights. The center console, between the pilots, mounts a matched pair of flight computers -- providing detailed navigation guidance (or you can program it to basically fly itself from about takeoff to about landing), and the lowest video panel contains images of throttles and other controls -- which you can actually "move" by tapping and moving your fingers over them (the real airplane, however, DOES have real throttles and controls you can grip). Over the top of the console, facing downward, another screen holds the various controls for electrical system, fuel distribution, ice and rain protection, and other systems. Environmental controls are on the copilot's armrest. |
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Amelia Earhart
Kansas State Network
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With the debut of the motion picture "Amelia," interest in the show's real-life subject, Kansas aviatrix Amelia Earhart -- the most famous of women aviators -- has seen a resurgence.
TV news anchor John Snyder, of KSN-W TV, Wichita's Channel 3 -- a keen student of aviation history, since his early career in the Wright Brothers' hometown, Dayton, Ohio -- called to interview me about Earhart, for a special segment on the evening news. |
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Snyder interviewed me in the Kansas Aviation Hall of Fame, at the Kansas Aviation Museum in southeast Wichita. Here, in the Hall, I'm pointing out Amelia's photo and plaque, noting her role as the most famous of all the important Kansas aviation pioneers there -- and the most famous and influential of all the women aviators in world history.
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The interview went well, and KSN News Director Jason Kravarik invited me to appear on his Cable 22 news magazine show, for an extended discussion of Earhart's colorful life, and her deep Kansas connections. |
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Bombardier's 2009 Safety Standdown
Sept.28 - Oct.1, 2009, Wichita Hyatt |
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To improve corporate jet safety, Bombardier Aerospace -- maker of Learjet and Challenger bizjets -- sponsors this annual week-long safety seminar. It draws nearly 400 bizjet pilots, mechanics and flight department chiefs, from around the world.
It's a sort of "Top Gun" school for corporate and charter jet pilots, whose "graduates" return to their flight departments to share the lessons learned.
Keynoted by speeches from FAA and NTSB chiefs -- an army of leading aviation industry safety experts give detailed technical safety presentations -- augmented with safety briefings and "there I was" stories from NASA experts and astronauts.
I attended all four days, and interviewed most of the speakers, including the astronauts and NASA men, NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman, and FAA Administrator Randy Babbit. National Test Pilot School director Sean Roberts graciously gave me a "private lesson" on bizjet upset recovery.
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ABOVE: National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman addresses the roughly 400 bizjet airmen in Hyatt's Grand Ballroom, expressing concern about the growing number of accidents attributable, in part, to pilot fatigue.
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ABOVE: FAA Administrator Randy Babbit calls for greater professionalism among pilots, and warns of new rules if it doesn't appear.
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BELOW: Astronaut Jack Lousma, during a break, visits with me about his post-space career, working on the trend-setting, but ill-fated, Avtek jet-development program. |
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ABOVE: Simulating a ditching in the dark, an intrepid aviator (and amateur Houdini), is strapped into his "cockpit seat," blindfolded, then dunked inverted into the water, and promptly extricates himself in seconds -- surfacing after finding his way through a designated "emergency exit." Students practice first without goggles, as the Stark Survival lifeguards monitor them closely. |
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ABOVE: Astronaut Lousma gives the banquet presentation, recounting his months in Skylab (in one of the longest spaceflights of the early years), and later missions in the first Space Shuttles. Here he details the Shuttles' one-shot landing approach procedure. |
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Aerial views of the sprawling airshow grounds, where over 40 aicraft were on display. (Decades earlier, my job was running this field at night, from its original buildings in the far background). |
2008 Wichita Flight Festival !August 29-31, Jabara Airport, Wichita, KS Photography by R.Harris,
This was one of the most spectacular civilian airshows in Wichita memory. For the Festival, I was privileged to serve as an advisor to the operations committee, assisted with promotions, displays and setup, and served as part-time announcer -- emphasizing historic and Kansas aviation topics. |
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Performers' pre-show briefing. At left, famous faces in the airshow biz: Patty Wagstaff in the foreground, Aeroshell T-6 team, Julie Clark, John Mohr, Corky Fornof, Greg Shelton & Ashley Battles, Red Eagles, and more. What a room to be in!
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A giant 4-engined Douglas DC-4 (miltary C-54/R5D) transport, housing a "flying museum," towers over the airport ramp, which accommodated over a dozen display aircraft (dozens more off-ramp) -- including these luxurious Wichita-built Beech "business" planes (below) -- and an estimated audience of over 10,000 people.
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| Air Capital 200 Air Race, opens the show, led by legendary Unlimited Class racer, "Miss America," a P-51 Mustang. | Looking straight up into the cockpit at John Mohr, the king of Stearman biplane acrobatics. Over 8,000 of these rugged Wichita-built aircraft trained WWII pilots. Today, 60+ years old, they star in every big airshow. | A rare, flying WWII Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, in the markings of the daring Flying Tigers, flys formation with today's equivalent -- a supersonic Air Force F-15 Eagle. | Airshow pioneer Julie Clark, in her gleaming Wichita-built Beech T-34 Mentor, shows off why this was America's primary military trainer for a generation of Air Force pilots, and three generations of Naval aviators. |
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Bill Stein in his unlimited-class acrobatic Zivko Edge, tears up the sky in every dimension.
As he tumbles, his iridescent-painted plane changes color as it twists about in the sunlight. |
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| Stunning, charming, graceful -- Ashley Battles dances a daring aerial ballet atop Greg Shelton's hulking 450-hp Stearman, as he expertly twists it through the sky, with her on top. | One plane & pilot short, due to a recent crash, a 3-plane Aeroshell T-6 team, roars into the sky in tight formation -- perfoming one of the most hazardous formation flights in airshow business -- whirling prop blades inches from each others' wingtips. From having stunted one of these 600-hp beasts, myself, I can't help but be amazed at how they manage to do it in perfect unison, so dangerously close together. |
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As two helpers hold poles suspending a ribbon across the runway, three-time World Champion acrobatic pilot Patty Wagstaff roars through it, inverted, her canopy less than a wingspan above the concrete! |
Barnstormer / airline captain Clay Adams (above) shuttles another pair of passengers aloft in his pristine 1920s Travel Air 4000 biplane (below) -- selling great rides in one of the most historic of all Wichita-made aircraft. Photographers S.&S. Alexander went aloft to celebrate their anniversary, and take great shots for me. A few years earlier, I'd had the pleasure, myself (see 2003 National Air Tour, below). | |
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| Chief announcer Danny Clisham and air-boss Wayne Boggs -- leaders from the world's biggest airshow (EAA AirVenture in Oskhsoh) -- flank Red Eagles' radio gal, as her team performs. Before and after Danny's gig, I handled the announcing -- emphasizing the Kansas connections & history of the show planes. | A LifeWatch Bell LongRanger ambulance helicopter settles into its display place on the tarmac, while -- in the distance, above and beyond it -- SchreibAir's Robinson R22 helicopter returns from a sightseeing ride, to pick up new passengers. | The Kansas Aviation Gallery fills a huge hangar with exhibits from six Kansas aircraft manufacturers -- Cessna, Beech, Bombardier/Learjet, Boeing, Spirit, Airbus -- along with Kansas aviation suppliers, schools and museums, amid huge displays outlining Kansas' spectacular aviation history. This year, one of the displays was mine... |
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Aviatrix Melinda Hopper polishes her pride-and-joy, a 1946 vintage Aeronca Champ, among the Festival's many display aircraft. |
Wichita-bred fighter pilot James Jabara (for whom the Festival's home airport is named), was America's "First Jet Ace." For this year's Gallery -- with generous help from his sister, Norma Jabara Ellis -- I was tasked to develop this display on his remarkable and historic career. |
NASCAR auto-racing legend, Bobby Unser, poses with a rare "Offy" racer (which raced a plane at the show ). In the 1960s, Unser drove this exact car in a rare side-trip into formula racing -- in the Indy 500. We talked airplanes, though. Unser flys the world's fastest production piston-engined vehicle, the Aerostar twin (below).
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Airbus A380
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The world's largest airliner -- the new Airbus A380 double-decker jetliner, 100 tons heavier than the Boeing 747, with room for up to 800 passengers -- is largely the product of Wichita engineers. Airbus opened their main North America engineering facility here, exploiting this famed aircraft-manufacturing city's engineers. Here, they designed the most precise and complex section of the super-jumbo's massive frame: its 250-foot-wide wing -- more than double the length of the Wright Brothers' first flight.
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60th Annual Fly-In of the
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For the 80th anniversary of Cessna Aircraft, and the 60th anniversary of it's first all-metal airplane -- the 190/195 -- the International 195 Association held its annual fly-in near Cessna's hometown (Wichita), at Stearman Field in nearby Benton. For five rollicking days, round-engines and tailwheels swarmed around the region, and the airfield was a rainbow of grandly painted aluminum statuary -- frequently springing to life for a dance in the traffic pattern -- as old friends met, and new friends were made.
Every kind of plane flew by, from the Pitts Special, to a Bell helicopter to the B-2 stealth bomber -- and just about every kind of single-engine Cessna. The airfield's namesake planes, big Stearman biplanes, gave open-cockpit rides while smoking the field. Big names and small melted together as equals. Aircraft parts, and knowledge, were swapped -- great lies, too! Food, frolicking, fun, and flying! Fabulous! |
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Sept. 22, 2007, at the International 195 Assn. Fly-In (see above), 99-year-old Mort Brown -- famed as one of the world's most experienced pilots -- arrives at the controls of one of his favorite aircraft, an especially historic Cessna 190/195. |
MORT BROWN,
Historic Cessna Aviator, Flying Again! 
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| Click photo for more pix and text on Mort's flight, this very special plane, and Mort's surprising co-pilot. (R. Harris photo) |
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At the starting line of the 2007 U.S. Air Races .
Next morning, for the pilot's magazine In Flight USA, I interviewed some of the leaders and race crews, before they gathered on Wichita's Jabara Airport ramp in the dawn's early light, for final preflight inspections. Every kind of light plane imaginable, from Skylane to Lancair, from Cherokee to Baron, participates in this "handicapped" race, where higher-performance airplanes have their scores adjusted downward -- thus making this a true test of pilot skill, navigating against the unpredictable winds and weather, and delicately managing engine conditions -- while racing full-throttle across the country.
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Two Talking Tech
Nationally renowned airshow announcer John 'Hoot' Myers (right, in yellow shirt) thrills the show crowd at Benton Day airfest, near Wichita, with tales of flying locally-built aircraft and vintage warbirds, while yours truly fills in the historical and technical details about the aircraft as they fly by.
And I actually rolled this one through the summer sky! A two-and-a-half-ton, 600-horsepower AT-6 of the North American Top Gun flight school.
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Close Encounters of the Rotary Kind |
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During the "2003 National Air Tour," Up In the Air Pictures' master videographer Michael McMaster hangs out on the skid of Dr. Rich Sugden's turbine-mod Bell 47 helicopter, to "shoot" my photographer (Steve Alexander) and I, riding in the front cockpit of Clay Adam's 1929 Curtiss-Wright Travel Air 4000 biplane. Naturally, we shot back. The escapade wasn't just for sport. It was for the made-for-TV documentary " The Barnstormers ," for which I provided some historical consulting and image-hunting. |
| The "2003 National Air Tour" winds up for liftoff from Wichita. Some of the 20 antiques touring the nation inlcude this blue-and-orange Stearman Junior Speedmail, hiding green WACO cabin and Great Lakes acrobatic biplanes, a red Waco 10, a yellow-winged WACO, a silver Ryan monoplane, | a red-and-white Alexander Eaglerock (designed by Al Mooney), and another WACO -- as the last flying Ford Trimotor stretches its protective wings in front of the gathering brood. And oh, the music of all these radials purring! For more on the National Air Tour and its Wichita visit, click here. |
Mirror, mirror, on the plane: Who's the photographer, and what's his name?
Yep, that's me, reflected in the gleaming prop of a restored 1930's Cessna Airmaster. I'll leave it to your imagination as to how I took the picture.
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Twilight of the Gods
over the Air Capital of the World: Wichita, Kansas, USA. |
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Through her daring aerial exploits during the 1920s and 1930s, Earhart became the world's most conspicuous example of feminine talent in "masculine" endeavors, a graphic argument for women's equality, and a global icon of modern womanhood.
Historic Frank Phillips Field - once home to the legendary, adventuous air fleet of 'Phillips 66' oil colossus Phillips Petrolum Co., based here, whose planes set countless records and firsts in the Golden Age of Aviation. On this day, blanketed with biplanes from around the nation, it's still active as Bartlesville's main airport.
After being waved off by Wichita's Mayor, for the 300-mile round-robin Wichita 300 cross-country air race, the aviators ran their timed routes, and returned -- to rest up for the 1,800-mile cross-country race.
A sleek Piper Comanche, Race 1, the starting plane (right), begins the long tour by revving up at the end of the runway, awaiting the checkered-flag wave-off from elder Wichita aviator Rip Gooch, to start the 1,800-mile Marion P. Jayne cross-country race. The destination: Steven's Point, Wisconsin, for a final local race, and on to Oshkosh for a celebration at the world's biggest air show.
In the summer morning air, thinned by heat and humidity, race planes at maximum power struggled into the air loaded with fuel for the long journey. A third of the way down the Jabara runway, the veteran crew of Race 41, a Wichita-built Cessna Skymaster, rotates in front of my camera, lifting off for the long journey into challenging weather, and uncertain results.
But the original airport's grand old terminal building (left) -- between Boeing and McConnell AFB -- has become an air museum.
There, another, older, B 52 stands guard (right), along with various other big Boeings, and many other planes that have formative origins in the Air Capital.
