If It's Good Enough for Europe, It's Good Enough for the US!

In my aircraft owner’s group, a discussion about rising gas prices last year brought comments from our European members that what we were paying still wasn’t that bad. I always hate that kind of minimalization, because it is a disguished way of discounting the pain of the initial commenter. It’s also the biggest piece of hogwash I’ve ever heard. Why? Because the United States of America is the way it is because we didn’t want to be like any other European nation.
We left there and then victoriously fought a war to make sure we didn’t go back. So, it makes little sense now to think that Americans would ever necessarily want a political or economic system like Europe’s. If we did, why wouldn’t we all be French?

Yet, the current Executive Branch of our Federal Government, the one that has made itself known for its American Cowboy stances, now wants to impose on this country an aviation system financed on a model invented in Europe. Like most European systems, that system is designed to stifle growth, not encourage it. There’s just not enough space over there to accommodate everyone who might want to do everything they can, i.e., act like an American. They don’t want you to fly. If you do, they’re going to make damned sure you pay for it!

If you haven’t seen the latest AOPA magazine, go take a look at it. A large part of the magazine is devoted to making sure us pilots understand how bad user fees have made flying in Europe. A 350 nm IFR flight cost approximately $235 in user fees alone! Landing fees can and do increase one’s efforts to get a pilot rating by thousands of dollars. If you’re naïve enough to think that such a thing can’t happen over here, think again. Our government has already shown it has little regard for our rights to fly or the effect on the general aviation community by introducing the user fee idea. It is a modern, disguised form of taxation without representation, and one way of removing your right to fly without being obvious about it.

One of the things that bothers me the most about this idea is it’s presented as a purely economic one, and it is not. This proposal affects aviation safety. The imposition of user fees will discourage general aviation pilots from using the Air Traffic Control system. It will encourage people who could file and fly IFR in Marginal VFR conditions not to do so, and increase the accident rate in one of the areas of aviation safety that has consistently been one of the worst. It will decrease the number of IFR rated pilots as the ratings become too expensive to pursue, as well as the number of pilots in general. That’s exactly what it’s intended to do. There’s lot of folks who wouldn’t mind seeing fewer IFR (and VFR, for that matter) general aviation pilots in the system (i.e., the airlines and the military).

The constant role of a democratic government is to provide the infrastructure to ensure its people enjoy and even expand their freedoms. The ATC system was put in place to protect the traveling public, not to protect general aviation pilots. We have, undoubtedly, enjoyed use of the system and it has expanded the use of our aircraft; and we have helped pay for the system with the taxes we’ve paid on aviation fuel and through the other Federal taxes we ALL pay! The government also erected the system to enhance air commerce, and general aviation is as much a part of that air commerce as not. Anyone who thinks that aircraft owners and pilots don’t contribute economically doesn’t know or understand the hundred dollar hamburger or how we often have to sell off our first born children to pay our mechanics.

User fees have become a bureaucratic means of controlling access to natural areas (like the air and national parks). Our government often forgets it is founded on the idea that it’s a public servant. Some of the officials involved in the user fee debate (like Trent Lott) have demonstrated they suffer from such dementia. The beauty of the democratic system is that we can express our displeasure at governmental policies by writing our Congressmen and Senators and saying so and, ultimately, by voting out of office the people who have supported them.

You’ve got to wonder if there is one economic system the U.S. government can successfully manage. First, they broke Social Security. Now, it’s the ATC system, or so they say. Somebody tell me what will be next!!?

Eatin' Our Lunch...Again!

The Cheetah’s been back up for a little over a week now. I’ve flown a few short local flights in it, and the machine behaved just fine for me. The good news is that Connie took her first, official flight with an instructor and is now working on getting her private pilot rating. The bad news is the instructor came back complaining about the right brake on the passenger side being soft. I am getting really tired of the almost continuous maintenance the airplane seems to require, though I believe this problem can be solved with a simple servicing of the brakes. To be honest, I haven’t flown from the right side in a long time, Connie almost never touches the brakes when she’s over there, and the brake reservoirs are so hard to get to it takes some dedicated effort and time to check them. We had all the brake master cylinders rebuilt last year and the pilot’s left one replaced; that and the airplane’s recent month of downtime due to the starter problems have me hoping this is due to normal brake “bleed off”. I’ll know more after I have the brakes serviced by a mechanic over at Pearland on Tuesday morning.

We got the invoice for the starter, relay, and fuse repair and it came in at $1355, a lot more than I was expecting. I noticed that I had been charged $575 for a Sky-Tec 149-12LS starter, and I knew the Sky-Tec website had told me to expect a charge of about $355. A quick web check showed that Aircraft Spruce was selling the starter for $378 and Wag Aero for about $360, so I gave a Bill a call and questioned the charge for the starter. At first, he seemed ready to blow me off until I told him I had confirmed the starter model number and price; then, he responded he’d check into it on Monday and get back to me. Getting $180-$200 off the bill will ease the sticker shock a little, but I’m still scratching my head about why I’ve been so good at estimating our previous bills but really missed the mark on this one.

The good news is that we have enough money in a special “airplane” account we keep to cover the bill. The bad news is that we will wipe it out with this, and that means we have zero saved to help us get through the next annual. We typically put a little over $300 a month away to cover maintenance and annual costs. That’s not proving to be enough. There’s only five months until the annual is due, so we’ll have only about $1500 to walk into that with if we don’t do anything extra. A piece of good news is that I did our taxes today and we’re getting enough refund to bring the airplane fund back up to where it was before all this happened. I’m going to try to sock away an extra hundred or so for the next five months, too. So, we will be in reasonable shape by the time the annual hits. Considering the six grand we dumped into the airplane’s annual last year, one would hope this year wouldn’t be too bad.

I hate to say it; but one more major maintenance upset between now and the annual, and I’m going to be forced to put the airplane up for sale. Admittedly, we could handle all this if I hadn’t done all the computer upgrades we did; but they actually are more necessary than the airplane is. They certainly don’t break as much; but then they are not 30 years old.

The Lidle Legacy - More Harm to GA

I’d like to think that if Corey Lidle could still somehow talk to his wife, he’d tell her not to pursue her current lawsuit against Cirrus aircraft. In another saga in the sad “deep pockets” story of our legal system, she’s suing the aircraft manufacturer because the aircraft’s flight control system was faulty and wouldn’t allow the pilots to make tight turns. I’d like to believe that most juries would know enough about aircraft to understand the fallacy of that argument; but juries have shown in the past that truth and true justice has nothing to do with their awards. It’s the prime reason general aviation has so few new aircraft manufacturers and why general aviation aircraft cost so much. Product liability is the keyword all of us pilots have come to hate.

Every pilot knows that each aircraft he flies is different. Every aircraft has its own set of limitations, whether it’s in rate of turn, pitch rate, control responsiveness, gust response, stability, climb performance, gliding range, landing performance, etc. It’s up to the pilot to understand the limitations of his aircraft and his own limitations. I’ll wait and see what the NTSB accident report has to say; but from what I know right now, the accident will be almost completely attributable to pilot error. They flew the airplane into a situation it couldn’t get them out of.

Corey Lidle knew he was taking risks. He had to have known he was risking his life as well as the life insurance policy payout the Yankees had on him. He lost it all. Now, his estate is being sued for a million dollars in damages by a dentist who lived in the building damaged by the crash. I believe the lawsuit is a desperate move to exploit the only “deep pockets” the Lidle’s can go after, the Cirrus Aircraft corp. In the end, there’s only two things that can come out of this. It’s going to dirty Corey’s reputation as a pilot and it may put the company that built the very airplane he loved out of business.

That is a screwed up ending to what already is a very big tragedy.

Dead Cheetah Month

I haven't written much about flying in the Cheetah because I haven't been doing any. The airplane went down almost a month ago, and it took a couple of weeks for my mechanic to get up here to troubleshoot the thing. Now, we’re waiting for parts, and he seems to be having a little trouble getting his hands on a starter relay.

The trouble started when I noticed on two successive flights that the starter Bendix wasn't cleanly disengaging after I released the engine Start button. Bill thought the starter ring gear might have some corrosion on it that was causing the hang up, so I bought some LPS1 lubricant and sprayed it liberally on the ring gear and bendix gear assemblies. But when I got in the airplane to start it up and hit the Master switch and Starter button, I got a short “hurrumph” without the prop even hitting one lick, acting like the battery had no juice in it. A second attempt seemed to drain the battery completely. Everything electrical in the cockpit went dead.

After talking on the phone with my mechanic and checking the Grumman Service manual, it was evident the first place to start was with the battery. I pulled it out and charged it up but got no better result when I put it back in the airplane and tried it again. To rule out the possibility that the battery was only taking a surface charge, I even bought another one, had Bill charge that one, and tried it. No joy. It made us think the battery relay (some folks call it the “master relay”) look like the probable culprit. So, Bill ordered a new one.

About a week later, Bill finally made it up to the Cheetah and put it in. When the electrical system stayed dead for him, too, he finally started some serious troubleshooting. He found that the starter had shorted out, and the short had fried the Starter Relay and the Master Relay with it. The large wire carrying current to the starter had also gotten pretty hot, so he wanted to replace it, too. He’d have to fabricate that, but I told him to go ahead and to replace the old Prestolite starter with a lighter weight Sky Tec starter. Not only is it some eight pounds lighter, but it is designed without a Bendix to eliminate that failure mode. He’s already got that but we’ve been stalled waiting for a starter bendix to arrive. We’re hoping it gets here early next week.