Riding Around West Chester

Today's weather in West Chester was awesome. I know the word awesome is used way too much these days, it almost cheapens the word somehow when it's used for every slightly better than good thing, but really, mid August, 85 degrees, blue skies, low humidity? If I closed my eyes and imagine that the Pacific Ocean is just down the hill, it's like it's Carmel, California or something. Sure there are a lot of other sensory inputs missing, like the barking of the sea lions, and that musky salt air smell, but driving through tree lined streets of nice homes, quaint shops, hipsters and wealthy folks, it's like you'd expect to see Clint Eastwood walking his dog while he contemplates going to get an ice cream. (Yea, kind of weird imagery there, but he's not always shooting punks you know.)

When the weather is this nice, I think of flying. I really need to get on my horse and finish this pilot's license thing. Joe is about a 2 hour flight away by Cessna 172 in Norfolk, and I've always wanted to fly out to Rick Kohberger's compound near Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania. (That's not a typo, there is a town off of I-80 in central PA called Jersey Shore.) So to torture myself, I went out to Brandywine airport, (you know the one that had a little excitement a couple of weeks ago) and watch planes in the pattern do touch and goes. I got a few good photos, like the one of this absolutely beautiful T-28 Trojan,

some planes taking off and landing,


and of course the Helicopters in front of the American Helicopter Museum.


After about an hour of this, I hopped back on the scooter, but before I left the airport I managed to take one more photo, I couldn't resist.


Back in West Chester proper, I'm fooling around with my new Nikon Coolpix S550, and decided to take a few small movies so I can upload my first official videos on You Tube. I just held the camera close to my chest with my left hand, my right hand on the throttle. Probably not the safest thing in the world to do, but until I can build a mount for my helmet for the camera, it was an interesting experiment.



Before I went home though, I wanted to check out this new business on High Street. Imagine you're in that classic scenario, you need to get your hands on some high end Olive Oil, but it needs to be within walking distance. Well, West Chester now has A Taste of Olive, where you can get extra virgin Olive Oils from around the world.....On Tap! You go in, and you can taste them BEFORE you buy. I couldn't walk out without buying a bottle of some Olive Oil from Italy, now if I could only figure out what to cook.


All in all, a pretty good day in West Chester.

Aircraft Accident Update

Turns out Carb heat is probably not the problem! This aircraft is a brand new Eclipse 500 , a "VLJ" (Very Light Jet), a 6 seater, and an airplane that could be the future of air travel, under the concept of "Air Taxi", where for the price of the equivalent of a 1st Class commercial airline ticket, you could fly from your local airport to anywhere you want to go.

Now not to scare anybody, but the FAA recently grounded all Eclipse 500's until an Airworthiness Directive was complied with, as this was issued related to a throttle control problem incident upon landing at Chicago's Midway airport.

I'm not going to contemplate further what could have happened, I'm not with the FAA or the NTSB, I'm only a 100 hour student pilot and a former 1000 hour US Army Aircrewman, but suffice to say, the aircraft seems intact, the pilot walked away, and all is good.

Photo courtesy of Chopper 10, NBC 10 WCAU Philadelphia.

Aircraft Accident at Brandywine Airport

Whenever you see a local news helicopter hovering perfectly 800 feet over one spot, it's usually not a good sign, especially if it's over a highway, but really super especially bad if it's over an airport.

I don't have much info, my scooter commute takes me past the Brandywine Airport every day now, and they closed the road so I couldn't see, but there were a lot of cops and firemen, but no real sense of urgency that I could tell. Much more likely than a crash on final would be that this was another case of an aborted take off that went wrong, with a pilot going for the option of putting on the breaks and rolling off the end of Runway 27, rather than struggle to get airborne and having a problem getting over 202.

I'll go past it tomorrow, this is the 2nd time this is happened this year, but with this being a 3,347 foot long runway, and with the heat in July, pilots have to remember to take into consideration air density. The heat means wings have a harder time creating lift. Then with the humidity, there is a lot of moisture in the air, so one needs to be aware of Carburetor ice, so pilots have to have the carb heat on, (but this robs power) and you've got to make sure the mixture of air and fuel is not as rich you normally would have it.

With the price of fuel being pretty high, people are not getting the stick time they should to be in proficient in these conditions. Add the fact that most people don't fly during the winter, there are a lot of rusty pilots out there. If you haven't flown in a while go up with an instructor to knock the rust off, and then be safe and enjoy flying!