“You’ve got the coolest job in the world,” a customer would exclaim.

I’d smile.

To quote Ernest Hemingway, “What a pretty thought.”

“I don’t know how you do it. I’d last two weeks.” I heard that too, accompanied by sympathetic eyes.

What was my job? What “it” did I do?

I provided airframe and engine assembly, operation, and maintenance support to aircraft homebuilders, pilots, owners, and mechanics via phone and email. I supported those who claimed to have never tightened a bolt and actual rocket scientists, those who loved every moment of their project and those who seemed to endure under duress from the first. Those who ran their engine without a prop while making carburetor adjustments to try to lower cylinder head temperatures, and engineers prone to overthinking.

Sometimes they were one and the same. Subsets in each category included those with a can-do spirit, those with a can’t-do spirit, those wanting to learn, those wanting to complain, those who embraced challenges, and those who shouldn’t be in aviation at all.

There were those who abused me and those who brought me a cold six-pack from various Californian microbrews every EAA AirVenture. They all called me “Tech Guy.” Except one, who called me an “ass—-” and demanded I be fired.

Monday Morning, the Phone Rings…

Caller: “I sent you an email three days ago. I still don’t have an answer.”

Me: “I see it arrived Friday at 4:37 p.m.. That was 45 work minutes ago. How can I help you?”

Caller: “I have N12345.”

Me: “I don’t know what that is.”

Caller: “It’s the green Onyx.”

Me: (Ah, the green one.) “OK, how can I help you?”

Caller: “The Piston Banger engine makes a…”

Me: “I’m sorry, we don’t support Piston Banger engines. You’ll need to contact them.”

Caller: “But that’s what’s on the Onyx I just bought.”

Me: “That may be—by the way, it’s pronounced One-X—but we can’t help with that. Piston Banger probably can.”

Caller: “Do you have a phone number or anything for them?”

Me: “Hang on, let me Google that for you.” (I emphasize Google.)

The call winds down with, “How are things there?”

“Great! I have to let you go, I have another call to take.”

The coolest job in the world, indeed.

After a call like that, it’s hard to imagine why I’d want to do anything else. I stare at the phone. “Please,” I think, “let the next one be about low oil pressure.” But it’s not.

After a lengthy monologue on how hard I am to get a hold of, it’s mostly about the weather until the caller gets sidetracked and queries me on a bolt substitution. I dispense the local weather conditions—both current and forecast—and address their question.

While doing so I think of a friend, a professional musician who plies his trade in Nashville, Tennessee, recording studios and on stages around the world and my heart sinks. Thank goodness I never had guitar lessons or I might be slogging through life like him. The call ends with, “How are things there?”

“They’re great. I need to let you go. Someone else is calling.”

The third call begins, “You’re hard to get a hold of…” On the way to their question, they ask how the weather is and regale me with stories of flying cargo over the Himalayan Mountains.

Where Do Tech Guys Come From?

Support personnel in a field as unique as homebuilding don’t come from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and aren’t found through local staffing agencies.

Hands-on experience with a specific airframe and a lack of other employment options is the primary career path. That, and the belief working for a kit aircraft company is the coolest job in the world.

We come from garages, basements, unused bedrooms, and leaky T-hangars. We build our résumés one part at a time, one mistake at a time. Our graduation is our first fight. Our internship is flying off the flight test hours and successfully sorting the bugs.

From that pool of candidates, a company needs a person interested in both the job and moving to the factory’s location (have you seen where some kit companies are located?). A person capable of troubleshooting (without touching) and communicating the corrective action—maybe to someone who doesn’t know how to pronounce the name of the aircraft they’re building. A person capable of dealing with…people. Angry people. Worried people. People whose dream, financial investment, and literal life may hinge on what is said and how it is said.

They must do this while building and guarding a company’s reputation and, sometimes, advocating for a customer by arguing against a company’s policy.

But, no pressure.

Supporting the Product or the Customer?

Strictly speaking, my job was less about supporting customers than it was supporting products.

To support a customer is to open the door to infinite questions. It’s a door I’d step through, though seldom farther than the threshold.

“What kind of paint is on the factory airplanes?” I could answer that. “What kind of paint should I use?” I couldn’t answer that. “How do I wire the AeroVee?”  I could answer that—it’s a Sonex product. “How do I wire the intercom to my radio?” It wasn’t my place to say. I didn’t support third-party products and hoped other companies weren’t advising Sonex builders on aileron rigging.

It may surprise you, after a two-decade career, how little of my knowledge would transfer to another kit company. The expertise to effectively support a particular product comes from knowing the product. I could look at the plans of any airplane kit and see where slot A engaged tab B, but so can every builder, if only they would. I could advise on bolt length substitutions, removing bad rivets, bending parts and CG calculations, but you shouldn’t need factory support for that—that’s general homebuilding knowledge.

What Is a Company’s Support Obligation?

A kit company expects customers will bring a level of mechanical ability, resourcefulness, and desire to learn to their project.

For some, knowledge and skills acquisition begin when the kit is delivered. For others, it has been accumulating since childhood, as they absorbed the pages of KITPLANES and other homebuilding magazines, and their personal copy of the Aviation Maintenance Technician Handbook. (Please tell me I wasn’t the only eighth-grader with a tattered copy of that classic.)

What support should you expect? If pressed, I’d say a company owes you support to assemble and use the parts and products it provided in the manner it intended. If a hole needs to be drilled, it owes you the location of the hole and its size. The company does not owe you an explanation on why that hole is there or how to drill it. It doesn’t owe you an electrical schematic if it provides nothing that needs wiring. It doesn’t owe you advice on fitting alternate brakes, supplemental fuel, or increasing the size of the panel. And it certainly doesn’t owe you a way to salvage parts you’ve damaged beyond airworthiness.

The role of Tech Guy gets muddled when a project becomes a flying airplane. The factory didn’t deliver a finished airplane. Thousands of individual decisions go into turning a pallet of parts into an airplane, each unknown to the factory.

Here’s one example: Sonex recommends a specific Sensenich propeller for each airframe/engine combination it supports. Propellers from other manufacturers may share the same pitch and diameter specification, but in execution it varies.

One customer, who fitted a propeller from an alternate manufacturer, couldn’t get their airplane out of ground effect. In time, I persuaded them to borrow the recommended prop from another Sonex. That solved the problem. If I hadn’t pursued that, or if the builder had ignored my advice, they would have remained ground bound, chasing the wrong fixes, and Sonex could have taken heat within the builder community for the poor performance. “Those AeroVee engines are crap.” “Toss the AeroInjector and fit a Brand-X carb.” “You need a Rotax.” I saw it more often than I can count.

In the end, it’s your airplane and your problem. That’s blunt, and more than a bit true. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a phrase to be tossed about by Tech Guy so they can go to lunch early, but the help you seek may not be help they can provide.

Imagine taking a British sports car that someone stuffed with a Ford 302 to a Ford dealer when it doesn’t start. The dealer would turn you away faster than you can yank the positive battery cable off  to stop an electrical fire. (My personal best is 3.2 seconds.) The car’s factory-provided manual was rendered useless by someone with a vision and the desire to tinker. Maybe the modifications were documented, but probably not. You’ll have to trace wires—all of them white, none of them labeled.

I just described homebuilt airplanes. Tech Guy may try to help—I did, if I could—by providing common sense diagnostics: “Did you hit the starter with a hammer? That worked on my girlfriend’s Pinto.”

Supporting a product that is delivered as a collection of parts—or only as plans—to be interpreted into an airplane by a cross section of the general population is different from supporting a GA aircraft that is factory-assembled and maintained in strict compliance with its type certificate. When you embrace homebuilding, you have to embrace that you have a one-of-kind airplane whose problems, ultimately, are yours. Even small modifications can render factory support of kit aircraft difficult.

As a Tech Guy, when things didn’t add up, I had to coax modifications into the light. “Is it wired exactly per the schematic,” I’d both ask and emphasize.

“Yes, but…”

You’d be surprised how many shades of meaning “exactly” has.

Support By Committee

A customer’s email to me: “I try and help [on the builder forum] but rarely do any good. They come looking for help and then argue and tell you you’re full of crap. I’ve got to hand it to you guys. You do a darned good job of doing the almost impossible.”

As a product matures, the population of builders with opinions does as well. More builder modifications—“improvements,” in builder-speak—creep in. In time the number of people giving advice grows into a chorus of individuals singing different songs and singing them loudly. I increasingly received questions prefaced by “so-and-so says…”

Multiply that by thousands of builders and you see where the need to support the product, as designed, becomes critical. I saw dangerous modifications implemented and copied. When I’d point them out, it was common to be told, “That’s why it’s called experimental.”

Fair enough, but the outcome of some experiments can be foretold. Many builders put blind trust in the often-anonymous posts on builder forums. Think about this: The same ignorance and knee-jerk answers you see in online groups for topics you know very well (for instance, split-window Corvettes or how to bake cinnamon bread) exist in the online communities for topics you may know little about, including homebuilt airplane groups. While you may not have the knowledge to recognize them, Tech Guy does.

‘I Know You Have to Watch What You Say’

That whispered statement was sometimes invoked to solicit the “honest” answer to a question. My answers were informed by the engineering and testing that had proven the product, by my firsthand experience, and by the knowledge I accumulated from others’ experiences. They were never influenced by attorneys (the only attorney I spoke to was a customer. That’s who called me an “ass—-” and demanded I be fired) or the need to toe a company line. They were in a builder’s best interest, and sometimes not in the company’s financial interest, whether a builder believed it or not. Builders shouldn’t want it any other way.

Even after I’d warned of a dangerous condition, some forged ahead, as was their right in the Experimental/ Amateur-Built (E-AB) category.

A few times I urged pilots to ground an airplane until a problem was resolved. Not everyone listened. At least one will never read this. It was common for the FAA or National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to contact Sonex as part of an accident investigation. It wasn’t the factory it was investigating, it was the specific airplane’s history.

Sometimes the path between a customer’s last email and the accident was direct and only days old—“My engine seems starved for fuel.”

The Support Relationship

Your relationship with Tech Guy can last years or decades. For everyone’s sake, it should be a “we’re in this together” relationship.

Treating factory support as an adversary is not in your interest. I advanced my retirement a week because one more week of employment wasn’t worth the sarcastic, blame-laden emails I was getting from one particular builder. In contrast, within weeks of retiring I embarked on a road trip that included overnight stays at the homes of four of my best friends. Each entered my life when they needed the help of Sonex Tech Guy. Today, those friendships, and many more, transcend aviation.

By the time I retired I had supported thousands of souls who got 650 airplanes flying and another 2,100 airframes underway. I supported 1,000 AeroVee engine deliveries and a host of accessories.

In November 2023 Van’s Aircraft website stated that 11,278 RVs had been completed and an average of 1.5 were hatching each day. I estimate its full-time builder support staff to be three to four folks. I put the number of Tech Guys in the kitplane industry at one per 3,700 registered E-AB aircraft, or one per 9,000 kits/plans delivered.

At the same time, there are an unlimited number of questions any builder can ask, and secondhand sales reset the counter. The farther a kit or finished aircraft travels from its original owner/builder, the less familiarity each new owner, and Tech Guy, has with what they’ve purchased.

With that lengthy preface, I offer these suggestions to streamline the support experience for all involved. Before contacting Tech Guy, run this checklist:

• Is this a question for the product’s manufacturer? I answered a lot of generic building questions and some unrelated to the products I supported. I even served as Siri from time to time: “Kerry, what is Aircraft Spruce’s phone number?” “Kerry, what is the best fire extinguisher for a Sonex?”
• Have you utilized the manufacturer’s printed and online resources? In other words, don’t be lazy. “I’m sure the answer is in the plans, but they are in my basement and I’m in my hangar.”
• Are you the person that should make the call? A friend calling on behalf of an owner often couldn’t answer my follow-up questions, and I knew my answers got muddled in their delivery.
• Have you prepared for the call? Have the construction documentation available as well as pen and paper for notes. Referencing parts with the manufacturers’ nomenclature is more precise than calling something “that bracket thing that’s riveted to a channel.”
• Are you asking the company to comment on what another builder said or did? Don’t.
• Don’t call, email. The answer you want may not be immediately at hand. I often had to dig into a problem and I preferred giving accurate answers to fast ones. Coincidentally, many times someone would have gotten an answer faster if they had emailed rather than waited for business hours to call. I routinely answered emails during nonbusiness hours.
• Would you write a letter (and include an SASE) or pay long-distance charges to ask the question if it were 1980? Email, cell phones and free long-distance calling have made it easy for some to stop thinking for themselves. Don’t burden Tech Guy with your laziness.
• Don’t argue the answer. You can take it or leave it, but don’t argue about it. You should, however, challenge an answer that doesn’t make sense. Sometimes my answers were off base because I misinterpreted a question.
• Support those who support you. A customer who purchased engine parts elsewhere, to save money, called when they didn’t fit to compare the manufacturer’s numbers on his box to what we sold. He went on to complain that people used to get a price from him and then order online, for less. (You can’t make this stuff up.) If you value or use factory support, order your parts from them.
• Use an app to get the factory’s weather conditions, and assume things are going well for them.

One final thought: My job was to support a person’s hobby. I stood in an odd crossroad—under observation by those who paid me and often wanted me to do other things, things that looked more like making money, while those I supported wanted to share their experiences with me. I enjoyed hangar flying—it was relationship building—but Tech Guys only have time for a touch-and-go or two.

I Was You. Few Were Me.

Before I was Tech Guy, I was a guy building an airplane in a garage. I knew what it was like to want an answer when it seemed I may have ruined critical parts.

As a Tech Guy I was acutely aware of my impact on a customer’s success. When the workday ended, unresolved issues went home with me. They ran with me, showered with me, ate with me, watched TV with me, vacationed with me, and celebrated holidays with me. Many slept with me.

I knew someone’s lifetime dream could hinge on my answer. I knew the company’s reputation was earned, confirmed, or diminished with each answer I gave. For better or worse—and years of nightly aviation nightmares, which subsided after I retired, would indicate for worse—I took on a builder’s problems as if they were my own. Tech Guy was my world. It is a world few in homebuilt aviation occupy. It’s a world few would want to occupy.

“You’ve got the coolest job in the world.”

What a pretty thought.

Help Yourself

Many of the questions I was asked and answered never needed to be asked of me or anyone in a tech support role. Homebuilding encompasses a wide range of skills and knowledge that each builder must acquire on their own.

To use an analogy, paint manufacturers aren’t expected to teach their customers how to scrape paint, hold a paintbrush, or climb a ladder.

The good news is learning the basic knowledge, often framed as “best practices,” pays dividends in speeding your project along and building your confidence. A kit’s manufacturer, however, should always be your first stop for design-specific questions.

Here are a few tried-and-true resources builders should avail themselves to:

• AC 43.13-1B, Acceptable Methods, Techniques and Practices—Aircraft Inspection and Repair
• FAA-H-8083-30A, Aviation Maintenance Technician Handbook
• Aviation Mechanic Handbook
• Homebuilding publications, such as KITPLANES magazine
• The FAA, for licensing and registration questions
• Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) and its vast homebuilder resources, including local chapters and technical counselors.
• The four-volume collection of Tony Bingelis’ homebuilder reference manuals
• Fellow homebuilders
• Skill-building classes at local schools
• Aircraft-specific builder workshops
• Skill-building seminars offered at fly-ins or through EAA

This feature first appeared in the Summer 2024 Ultimate Issue print edition.

The post Ultimate Issue: Welcome to My ‘Tech Guy’ World appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

And if you are lucky and you become a docent at an aviation museum, you get to share your knowledge with people from all walks of life. Most, if not all, are volunteers who donate their time and expertise to educate the public about aviation. Museums simply could not function without them.

They may volunteer at a museum once a week (or more) or work alternate weekends. They often wear a uniform of sorts, such as a polo shirt with the museum logo or a jacket or vest and have a museum ID lanyard around their neck. A great many also wear a “fun meter” button with the needle pegged to maximum.

• READ MORE: Earhart Museum to Explore Evidence Related to Aviatrix’s Disappearance

The reason? They love what they do.

As someone who spends a great deal of time at aviation museums, I can tell you they all have their own character and energy, and they all rely on volunteers to operate. Some of the volunteers bring special skills and restore airplanes to their former glory. But many more are the faces of the museum to the public—the docents. You don’t necessarily have to be a pilot, mechanic, engineer, or retired from an aviation career to be a docent—you just need to bring your enthusiasm.

EAA Aviation Museum (Oshkosh, Wisconsin)

“Storytellers are the best docents,” says Chris Henry, manager at the EAA Aviation Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. “They can help make the planes pop to life and make you inspired

to learn more at home. A good docent should lead you to wonderful stories, leaving you wanting to know more and wanting to go home and research further.”

Henry notes the museum has a large cross section of society as docents coming from different walks of life and age ranges.

• READ MORE: New Museum of Flight Exhibit Explores Living in Space

“We have everything from WWII veterans to current high school kids,” he says. “It’s helpful if the docent has a passion to keep learning, and they are passionate about sharing what they learn, and they just enjoy showing people new things that they have never seen or heard before.”

Museum of Flight (Seattle)

The larger the museum, the more docents it has.

According to Brenda Mandt, docent programs supervisor at the Museum of Flight (MOF) in Seattle, the docent cadre is made up of 162 volunteers.

“Most of them work one day a week, and they work the same day and shift each week,” says Mandt.

To become a docent at the MOF, a person must take a 12-week basic training class that acquaints them with museum policy and procedures and teaches how to build a tour.

• READ MORE: Michigan Flight Museum Sells Centerpiece B-17 ‘Yankee Lady’

“Docents have a great deal of freedom to create tours that interest them most,” says Mandt.

Many of the docents either have or have had careers in aerospace or the military and often build tours around their experience.

For example, docents Jim Frank and Dave Cable are retired Navy aviators who served aboard aircraft carriers, so they know about “landing on a postage stamp.” Frank’s talk on the history of carriers is informative and entertaining, and Cable’s tour of the A-6E Intruder, the airplane that brought him home many times, and the F-14 Tomcat are quite moving and bring a smile to the face of museum visitor Jack Schoch, a retired Navy chief who served on five different carriers, including a war cruise during Vietnam aboard the USS Enterprise.

That’s one of the best parts of these tours—the docents are able to make them relatable to visitors.

Palm Springs Air Museum (California)

Requirements for docent training vary by museum.

At the Palm Springs Museum in California, the applicants are required to go through a background check and approximately 40 hours of training, “most of which can be done online,” says spokesperson Ann Greer. They also undergo on-the-job training in one of the 10 different areas of the museum.

“We have over 300 docents, and the museum is run with military precision,” says Greer. “They work four-hour shifts, [and] they may be in one of the hangars or on the hot ramp [where aircraft move] or in the library or gift shop. In the hangars we have a crew chief who keeps an eye on things, and if we want to talk to a particular docent, we have to ask the crew chief. There is a chain of command as the docents’ main job is to interact with the visitors and keep an eye on exhibits and airplanes.”

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum (McMinnville, Oregon)

At the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum, docents in training will spend at least 50 hours under the wing of Don Bowie, a retired Air Force aviator who has been with the gallery for 26 years.

Although the facility is most famous as the location of the Howard Hughes HK-1, the flying boat famously known as the “Spruce Goose,” according to Bowie, there is a lot more going on besides that popular exhibit.”

The museum features two buildings—one houses the HK-1, and the other is devoted to the Space race. Bowie works the floor, helping visitors and docent candidates learn about the aircraft and spacecraft on display.

“You are a volunteer here, and the job has to be fun and you have to be a people person,” he says. “You meet people from all over the world.”

Bowie says the best part of being a docent is when someone comes in and asks about a specific aircraft that is special to them, and there is a docent who shares their interest.

Docent Schedules

Because docents are volunteers, they aren’t required to put in massive amounts of hours on the job, but many do because it is a labor of love. Most museums ask for a commitment of at least one day a week, and often the docents rotate working weekends.

The docent’s typical day often begins with a crew briefing before the museum doors open. This is when they learn about special events at the museum, such as school tours or corporate meetings, and when exhibits are being installed or removed.

This column first appeared in the Summer 2024 Ultimate Issue print edition.

The post Ultimate Issue: Being Aviation Docent Simply Labor of Love appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Our visit was almost perfect, with exciting matches, great competition, and enough spare time to enjoy some of the city’s attractions. The only downside was the drive, which took about six hours from our home in New Jersey. As we crept on a congested section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I glanced at Ben and said, “Let’s fly next time.”

I have learned to make such suggestions in a confident tone that belies the complex, often unpredictable nature of traveling in light aircraft. High winds , freezing rain, or any hint of a winter storm could scuttle our plans with little notice. If things go as planned, though, Dad might look like he knows what he is doing. It all worked out this year.

Getting There

Ben and I planned to fly right after school dismissal on a Friday afternoon so we would arrive in time to meet up with teammates for dinner. As usual, though, a number of delays conspired to grant us a departure at the tail end of sunset. Cleared for takeoff from Essex County Airport (KCDW), I lined up on Runway 22, applied full power, and soon Annie, our Commander 114B, was rising above suburban New Jersey, bending to the north to avoid nearby Morristown Airport’s (KMMU) Class D and heading straight for Pittsburgh.

Within 15 minutes the orange sky just above the horizon faded to black, and we were cruising through darkness, listening to radio traffic and acknowledging occasional handoffs from ATC. We also monitored our progress across Pennsylvania’s vastness based on the clusters of lights marking waypoints on the ground.

• READ MORE: New Orleans Is a GA-Friendly, Fly-In Locale

Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Hazleton, a solo cross-country destination from my student-pilot days, slipped by quickly. Getting past Harrisburg to our south, however, seemed to take forever. The headwind at 6,500 had risen to 30 knots almost directly on the nose, adding to the sense of slog. Still, we were making far better time than the many closely packed headlights on the turnpike below.

Ben had retreated into slumber long before Harrisburg but awoke in time to see the encouraging glow of Altoona, followed closely by Johnstown before Pittsburgh loomed ahead. Soon we had our runway in sight and were cleared to descend and contact the Allegheny County tower. After shutting down I checked my watch. The trip took 2 hours and 30 minutes, which was not bad considering the wind and far better than a six-hour drive. We picked up our rental car and got to the hotel before the kitchen closed. Just.

The Airport

There are several airports convenient to Pittsburgh, from turf strips to the 2-mile-long runways of Pittsburgh International Airport (KPIT). Many general aviation pilots have long considered Allegheny County Airport (KAGC) the most convenient access point because it is in town, close to the places business and personal travelers want to visit. For those approaching from the east, as we did, KAGC is especially efficient because it is nearly 20 nm short of KPIT, tucked beneath the big airport’s 4,000-foot Class B shelf.

Opened in 1931, Allegheny County Airport succeeded Bettis Field, an airport developed in the 1920s on former farmland as part of the rapidly growing airmail network. Bettis became an aviation crossroads that hosted a number of notable pilots, including Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. KAGC was the primary field serving Pittsburgh until KPIT opened in 1952. By that time it was clear that the old airport was too small to handle the jet airlines that were on the way. Standing on the ramp now, however, it is easy to imagine DC-3s, DC-6s, and other propeller-driven transports operating there.

• READ MORE: New Orleans Is a GA-Friendly, Fly-In Locale

To understand what a big deal the airport was, GA pilots have to visit the original art deco terminal. Typical of early airline terminals, the building is beautifully decorated but impossibly small by modern standards, without the space required to handle modern ticketing lines and TSA checks. Airplanes and the flying public were smaller then. The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation added the airport to its list of historic landmarks in 1981.

Things to Do

Pittsburgh is a stunning place, beginning with its geography. The famous three rivers—the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela—converge downtown, and parts of the city sit high above atop steep inclines and sheer cliffs. Beginning in the 1800s, steam-powered incline planes, also called funiculars and gravity railways, were used mainly to transport coal but quickly caught on as passenger services connecting many of the hilltop communities with the busy riverbank districts below.

More than 20 funiculars operated through the early 20th century before ridership gradually declined and most of the tracks were removed. Today you can ride the restored Duquesne and Monongahela inclines that have long provided direct access to the hard-to-reach Mount Washington and Duquesne Heights neighborhoods high above the city. The funiculars’ hilltop stations provide some of the area’s best views.

• READ MORE: Mackinac Island Is Especially Stunning by Air

Visitors could spend weeks walking and driving across the city’s many bridges and studying their varied designs. With three rivers meeting downtown, Pittsburgh’s transportation network revolves around the bridges. Anyone interested in architecture could also become happily lost among the wide-ranging styles of Pittsburgh, where one can find colonial-style taverns sandwiched between steel and glass high-rises and Brutalist apartment blocks.

Historical groups offer numerous walking, bicycle, and bus tours that can give visitors concentrated doses of Pittsburgh’s rich history in specific areas of interest. One example is “Fire in the Valley: Carnegie Steel and the Town That Built America,” an in-depth tour of the Steel City’s industrial past, including sites of former mills and pivotal events such as the 1892 Battle of Homestead, a clash between members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union and Carnegie Steel’s security force.

There is so much to see that you might want to stage your own walking tour by choosing a group of waypoints within a reasonable distance. During breaks in the volleyball tournament, I joined groups of parents to check out local shops, galleries, and the vibrant craft beer scene. Our hotel was around the corner from the Andy Warhol Museum, a must-see for any visitor and a wonderful resource for anyone interested in learning more about the late artist and Pittsburgh native. Warhol is buried in St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in nearby Bethel Park.

Pittsburgh is not a small town, but it feels like everything is close. Its sports venues are in town, all of them easily walkable. Acrisure Stadium, where the NFL’s Steelers play, sits in a picturesque spot near a riverfront promenade. Last year our downtown hotel was across the street from PNC Park, where the MLB’s Pirates play. The PPG Paints Arena is home to the NHL’s Penguins and is situated within a few blocks of the convention center where our volleyball tournament takes place. Our rental car remained parked for most of our stay.

One thing you should think about when planning a visit to Pittsburgh is when you might be able to make a return trip. There will always be something that you missed because you ran out of time. Even if you carefully choose your points of interest, you are bound to meet someone who will recommend an attraction you had not considered.

In our case it was the Mount Washington neighborhood, once known as Coal Hill. After the tournament we wound up spending hours exploring this one-of-a-kind community and its challenging terrain. It is the kind of place that impressed even teenage Ben, who took dozens of photos and kept asking if we could walk just a bit farther to see what was around the next corner—a minor miracle.

Eventually we got back to the airport and prepared for another night flight. I had planned to be airborne earlier but could not complain because the Mount Washington stop was so much fun. As usual, Ben poked fun at the headlamp I wear when preflighting at night. He finds it almost too nerdy for words, but I would not fly without it.

We took off toward the city, taking in a beautiful parting view before making the 180-degree turn that put us on course back to KCDW. ATC cleared us to climb through the Class B, and soon we were cruising at 5,500 feet. Ben fell asleep before we cleared the Mode C veil, leaving me with the hum of Annie’s IO-540 for company. The 30-knot winds aloft from Friday night were still with us, too.

Only on the tail this time.

Allegheny County Airport (KAGC)

Location: West Mifflin, Pennsylvania

Airport elevation: 1,251.5 feet msl

Airspace: Class D

Airport hours: Continuous

Runways: 10/28, 13/31

Lighted: Yes, all runways

Pattern altitude: 1,000 feet agl for all traffic

This column first appeared in the April 2024/Issue 947 of FLYING’s print edition.

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To mitigate that, I chose two short flights that can be accomplished in a normal evening’s flight sim session. My selection criteria was to fly my first flight in New England, between two airports that I flew out of when I was training to complete my private pilot certificate. The second flight was a departure and destination in a part of the world where I had zero experience and no prior knowledge of the topography. The idea was to use the first flight of the evening as a warmup with the familiar and then end the night with the challenge of the unknown.

To add to the fun, I met up with a friend of mine from college in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020) multiplayer environment so that we could pilot the flights together in a very loose formation. My friend was just getting back into flight simulation after many years away from the hobby. We used Discord, the free communication app, to stay connected during the flights. Although we flew on MSFS2020, these flights are software-agnostic, and you can easily fly them on X-Plane 11 or XP12. Across both flights, there was only a short time spent in cruise, allowing all phases of the flight to occur quickly, adding to the challenge of staying ahead of the airplane. As a result, both flights delivered adequate feelings of accomplishment and a chance to enjoy a fun, aviation-themed experience from home.

Flight 1, The Familiar: New England Island Hop

• Purpose: Sightseeing
• Software: MSFS2020 with free enhanced airports from www.Flightsim.to
• Route: Departed Nantucket (KACK) Runway 24 to Katama Airpark (1B2) Runway 3
• Aircraft: Cessna 208 Caravan
• Conditions: Summer; live weather, adjusted to midday at noon local time
• Distance: 22 nm
• Time en route: 14 minutes
• Modification: If you are interested in roughly doubling your flight time, I recommend you depart from Block Island (KBID), especially if you have never flown out of the 2,500-foot runway.

After getting Discord set up outside of the flight sim environment, we met up on the ramp at Nantucket, Massachusetts (KACK), using the multiplayer function in MSFS2020. My friend’s father was an active pilot during his childhood and even flew one of the B-17s that toured the country during the 1980s and ’90s.

Since we both share an interest in all things aviation, I jumped at the opportunity to welcome him back into the exciting world of flight simulation, especially considering all the advances made since the flight sims of our college days. Neither of us had tried the multiplayer function in MSFS2020 before, and I was eager to fly with some company since most of my flights from home are solo endeavors, save for the excitement and immersion offered by live ATC services provided by VATSIM and PilotEdge that I regularly layer into my experiences for added realism and a chance to practice on the radio.

• READ MORE: Our Pilots of the Future May Share Sim Stories

For our first flight, we selected the venerable Cessna 208 Caravan, a popular island-hopping aircraft with robust landing gear, which seemed like an ideal choice for our destination. Sitting in our cold and dark aircraft, my friend suggested that I try the digital checklist function in MSFS2020, which is accessed by clicking the icon in the menu bar near the top of your screen once you are loaded into an airplane. Having never flown the Caravan, the digital checklist features a small “eye” icon to the right of the instructions listed. Clicking the “eye” causes the camera to cleanly sweep to the individual button, switch, or lever you need to operate to perform the checklist item. Using the “eye” icon provided a visual flow of the checklist during engine start and helped me understand the layout of the cockpit and controls.

Alternatively, you can use your mouse or hat switch on your yoke to move the camera manually to each item in the cockpit, but the “eye” was much faster and more convenient. Many general aviation aircraft in MSFS and X-Plane offer in-depth systems modeling, making the start-up experience a learning opportunity for the curious sim pilot. On the evening before I try a new airplane, I search for a start-up procedure video on YouTube, just to get familiar ahead of time. @JonBeckett’s channel on YouTube offers both videos and checklists to help get you started. For many years, I used a physical paper checklist in-sim but recently started using the ForeFlight checklist function on the iPad mounted in my flight sim cockpit.

Even though it is another piece of technology to manage, I like the green check mark that is displayed next to each completed item in the ForeFlight checklist. This shows your progress, making it easier to see if you skipped a step. You can also edit a checklist in ForeFlight. I added reminders to complete a takeoff briefing before departure and tap the brakes during climbout to halt the wheels from spinning before raising the landing gear. The sim is an ideal environment to become comfortable with new checklist behaviors, and I have enough practice that I am ready to try it on a future real-world flight.

After engine start, my friend and I taxied our Caravans to Runway 24 for takeoff. We opted for a formation takeoff, and I found it very difficult to stay within 500 feet of my friend’s aircraft. I could immediately tell why formation flying requires a lot of training and how challenging it must be to hone this skill in the real world.

Departing KACK in the Cessna 208 Caravan

Once in the air, we turned west over the ocean toward Katama Airpark (1B2), located on the southeastern corner of nearby Martha’s Vineyard. A popular real-world New England fly-in destination, Katama features a short taxiway connected to a grass parking area right next to the beach, making it one of few beach-side general aviation airports accessible to private aircraft in New England.

I selected Runway 3 as I had landed on it a few times with my instructor during my private pilot flight training a decade earlier. I hadn’t been back to visit Katama in the sim yet, so I hoped my memory of the real-world location would help me with my visual approach. It was a short flight across Nantucket Sound, and I opted for a 2,000-foot cruising altitude, keeping our two-ship flight VFR below a broken line of puffy, fair weather clouds at 2,500 feet that stretched south of the island out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Turning Final for Runway 3 at Katama Airpark (1B2)

Since I use a single 4K 55-inch TV screen as my main monitor, I supplement my situational awareness with ForeFlight on my tablet and my Real Sim Gear G1000 PFD and MFD sitting in my Stay Level Avionix panel. Using all of this information together kept me from overflying the right-base-to-final approach turn, and I rolled out on a 3-mile final with “030” bugged on my heading indicator. Spotting Runway 3 is an interesting visual exercise in both the real and flight sim world.

• READ MORE: Taking a Virtual Flight with the Yawman Arrow

The runways at Katama are neatly cut from the flora of a large field. As there are fields that border the airpark on both the left and right sides, I double-checked to make sure I was lined up with the correct one.

Although Runway 3 is 50 feet wide and 3,700 feet long, it looks narrower and shorter from the air. The light winds kept the last few hundred feet of my approach stable, and I checked to make sure I was at 75 knots, with full flaps and prop full forward. I was interested to find out if grass had been modeled differently than pavement, as the surface in the real world typically requires a soft-field landing, slightly nose high, to minimize the vibration on the aircraft’s landing gear.

With one last trim adjustment before touching down, the Caravan’s muscular suspension deftly swallowed up any surface undulations that may or may not have been modeled, and I let the aircraft roll out to the end of the runway, where I turned around in time to watch my friend come in for his landing.

I particularly enjoy landing at airfields that I have flown into in real life, using the flight sim’s digital version as a bridge back to a memory from my real-world logbook. However, one of the many benefits of home flight simulation is the option to leave behind the familiar and try new destinations in unfamiliar parts of the world. The only cost is your time, and selecting from any of the 37,000 registered airports in MSFS2020 can spark some anxiety of choice, which often leads me to stay in New England, where I have the most real-world flying experience.

But such “comfort zone” behavior does a disservice to a world full of new airport destinations, re-created in impressive detail, waiting just beyond the click of a mouse.

Flight 2, The Unfamiliar: Skagway to Haines, Alaska

• Purpose: Sightseeing
• Software: MSFS2020
• Route: Departed Skagway (PAGY) Runway 20 to Haines (PAHN) Runway 26
• Aircraft: Beechcraft Baron BE58
• Conditions: October; live weather, marginal VFR, light rain, 4 p.m. local time
• Distance: 19 nm
• Time en route: 15 minutes
• Modification: Consider departing from PAHN and then returning to Skagway (PAGY) to try landing on Runway 2. The airport at Skagway sits at 44 feet msl but is ringed by 5,000-plus-foot peaks, making it an intimidating approach but visually stunning.

My friend from college spent part of his formative years living outside of Seattle. An Alaskan cruise with his wife found them departing as passengers in a single-engine GA aircraft out of a small airport called Skagway (PAGY), located roughly 65 nm north of Juneau in a mountainous and glacial region of Alaska near the Canadian border and Coast Mountains. It would have taken me decades of sim flying to find Skagway, and when my friend described the unique geography of steep mountains rising around three sides of the airport, it sounded like the ideal unfamiliar departure point for our next flight.

With live weather enabled, my friend and I met up on the ramp in marginal VFR conditions with light rain and 3 miles visibility. Despite the weather being definitely below my personal minimums in the real world, the conditions gave us a chance to test our visual navigation skills as we flew down the Taiya Inlet to Haines Airport (PAHN). Climbing out of Skagway in the MSFS Baron, I had all the de-icing equipment and pitot heat on as a precaution and was cruising at 3,000, well below the 5,000-foot ridges, to avoid the clouds.

The light rain stopped, and the weather in-sim improved as we approached the town of Haines, and I had a clearer picture of the mountain peaks through the remaining tattered clouds. Beautiful was an understatement, and I used my camera commands to look out over the wings for a better view. The geography of Haines was no less striking than Skagway, and both airports should be on your short list if you have never explored Alaska in the real world or flight simulator. MSFS pulls local METARs when using live weather, and I cross-referenced the information on ForeFlight. The winds were coming from the west out of 220 degrees at 23 knots, providing a 40-degree left crosswind for landing on Runway 26. We chose a flight path that had us make a right turn over Haines toward the airport located northwest of town. My friend opted for a 3-mile right base to final.

Wanting a closer view of the mountains to the west of the airfield, I flew southwest over the Chilkat Inlet. Being mindful of the peaks to the west and blowing snow that was starting to lower visibility, I turned back toward the airport and descended to traffic pattern altitude, which I had set using my altitude selector on the Garmin G1000 PFD. I entered the pattern using a standard 45-degree entry to a left downwind for Runway 26. Consequently, that also gave me a great view of my friend’s aircraft on final approach.

We kept it mostly quiet on the comms for landing, but my friend mentioned the strong crosswind on final. Turning from left base to final, I double-checked that my fuel selectors were on, verified my gear was down, mixtures were set to full, and I moved the Baron’s props to full forward. The strong westerly wind was pushing me off the centerline of 26, which I started correcting with rudder and aileron. I opted for approach flaps only and worked pretty hard to touch down on the left rear wheel first. My Virtual Fly YOKO+ flight yoke builds up mechanical resistance as you approach the edges of the control travel, providing valuable immersion during high workload moments like short final. I landed a bit off the centerline but kept the Baron out of the snowy grass and taxied to the end of the runway, having needed most of the 4,000 feet available.

The unfamiliar geography, marginal VFR conditions, and crosswind on final provided plenty of challenges for a short flight, reminding me how much the home sim experience has to offer. Add to that the unexpected challenges of live dynamic weather, and there were a lot of variables to be managed during the 20-minute flight.

Sometime this winter when the weather in the real world is below your minimums, load up MSFS or X-Plane and try one of the innumerable short flights to a new destination. I hope you enjoy the exploration. Let us know your favorite short flight aircraft/airport combination by writing to edit@flying.media.

Quick MSFS2020 Tips

Visit www.flightsim.to and search for the airports you will be using for your flight. The flight sim community has built enhancements of all kinds to the base Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 sim experience, including both free and payware.

You may find free upgraded airport scenery that you can download and place into your MSFS2020 community folder so that it will be loaded automatically for your flight. Run a search for how to find your community folder, and then set the location as a favorite so you can find it easily in the future.

This column first appeared in the January-February 2024/Issue 945 of FLYING’s print edition.

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Bevirt thought up the premise for an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) as he walked home from the last point a school bus could take him near his home in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains. Today, Joby is a roughly $4 billion-cap enterprise on the cusp of its type certification for-credit testing with the FAA on an evolution of the very vehicle Bevirt envisioned would lift him from that dusty bus stop into the peaceful meadow near his parents’ forest home.

From a flying prototype launched in an empty quarry in 2010 to the first flight of the latest conforming production prototype, the final iteration of this initial commercially viable eVTOL will carry a pilot and up to four passengers as far as a 100 sm range solely using electric motors, bringing with it a new way of managing flight.

However, though the Joby aircraft is piloted, the team is not building an aircraft for pilots. By deliberate choice, the idiosyncrasies that make up the kinesthetic joy of flying are dialed out of the aircraft’s flight control system—they have to be in order to make the Joby fly like it does. You can hand fly it, sure, but like other aircraft aimed at owner operators who are new to the game and not interested in the romance of flight, you’re in a version of autoflight all the time. In fact, an autopilot per se is unnecessary because the foundations of autoflight run continuously—designed to manage the cascade of failures and corners of the envelope we train so hard to avoid and mitigate and respond to.

• READ MORE: We Fly: Diamond DA62

While we can’t yet fly the version slated for the final rounds of type certificate (TC) testing—the production aircraft, in company parlance—we can fly the sim. As one six-month Joby employee at the company’s Washington, D.C., office told me, even they like to fly it—and they’re not into driving themselves anywhere. Being “in control” just doesn’t interest them—quite a change from what we think of as a pilot.

So where is this going? I had to find out for myself. In a series of introductions, I visited Joby’s R&D and production facilities in Santa Clara and Marina, California, last summer and Joby’s offices in D.C. in January, along with an interview with Bevirt at the Paris Air Show in June, which we covered in Issue 940 (“In Depth”).

How It Works

The Joby aircraft consists of a rounded, wide-windowed fuselage to carry passengers with a single pilot seat up front. A wing transects the top at about its midsection, with a V-shaped tail in the back. Six equally sized rotors stand in a roughly hexagonic position: two in front, two at the wingtips, and two aft, on the apex of each V in the tail. They pivot and rotate in such a way as to produce both thrust translating into airspeed and thrust directed for flight control. The aircraft also uses ailerons and ruddervators (akin to those on the Vision Jet or V35 Bonanza). But those are sectioned, with two sets of aileron-style controls on the wings and three sections of ruddervators on the V-shaped tail.

The previous conforming prototype version had flaps, but according to Greg Bowles, head of government affairs for Joby, “they didn’t buy their way onto the production version.” In other words, no need for them. The six motors obtain their juice from a series of battery packs, but these are unlike any created for electric aircraft thus far. They work in pairs for each motor and in isolation from the other pairs so that they are doubly redundant. We learned how Joby arrived at this arrangement—along with other details regarding their makeup—when we walked through the plant at Santa Clara earlier on the day of our visit preparing us for the observation of the remotely piloted demo flight of the preproduction prototype later on.

With an aspect that looks like a helicopter with six rotors instead of main and tail rotors, the quietness of the Joby’s departure struck me immediately. Normally, hearing the main rotor spool up causes you to plug your ears against the sound. But with the powering up and lifting off of the Joby, the high-pitched rpm of the blades barely registered over the wind about 100 feet away.

A New Kind of Motor

The “engine” driving the Joby aircraft is unlike any motor I’ve ever seen. Granted, I’m not versed in much outside of the two- and four-stroke combustion engines that provide thrust for light airplanes and the odd motorbike. But this is essentially a 3D-printed titanium ring. A doughnut of sorts, outlined by a series of copper-and- tan-colored power packs.

A lot of people have asked why Joby didn’t buy motors from another company—with so many electric choices out there on the market. “What we found was that [by] making it fit exactly for purpose, we could do much better in terms of weight and size,” said Jon Wagner—head of batteries, powertrain, and electronics and based at the Santa Clara facility—during our tour. The core starts with a 3D-printed titanium housing in the middle, and the magnetics that drive the rotation are made from copper and steel. “And we buy big rolls of copper and big sheets of steel, and we build this thing up out of the raw materials,” said Wagner. At the D.C. office, Bowles handed me a featherweight bottle opener made from the remnant titanium dust—an elegant example of upcycling waste from the process.

Three pins, and three pins—this is actually two motors, with two sets of three-phase windings. “That’s two different electrical circuits inside this motor that drive the rotation,” said Wagner. “So if you have a failure, you’ve segmented the system and now you have a secondary means of driving the motor.” The electronic brain that’s always on in the background figures out how to redistribute the remaining power, cycling up and down as needed for both thrust and flight control. This requires a new way of managing that control.

Unified in Flight

The world of eVTOL will almost certainly be based on the use of “simplified flight controls”—as outlined in the Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certificates (MOSAIC), which update light sport aircraft (LSA) certification but also set the stage for use of similar regulatory structure in the Special Federal Aviation Regulations (SFARs) covering eVTOLs.

The simplified flight control is simple to the pilot— taking the most basic of inputs and figuring out what the pilot wants to have happen and ensconcing them in a swaddle of envelope protection so they will neither stall nor exceed limit load factors. To do this, those controls are anything but simple under the surface. Joby has patterned these after the unified controls in high-end military hardware, such as the F-35.

The Joby aircraft is flown with a power lever in the left hand and a joystick-style flight control in the right—and you sit in a single seat centered in the cockpit. Though at first it feels familiar, you don’t use the control stick in quite the same way as you do in a traditional airplane—you rarely hold in continuous pressure, for example. So it’s OK that it’s purposefully stiff. You give input, then take it out. The power lever is similarly centering—hold in to speed up in airplane mode, and leave it in place while in TRC (translate, or hover) mode. You twist to yaw about the vertical axis in translate mode, and you bank to either translate or side step while in TRC or bank while flying the wing. But you don’t need to hold back pressure in the bank to maintain a level attitude since the rotors are compensating for the change in lift vector direction.

To illustrate, let’s look at one common failure mode in rotorcraft: One commonality to the Joby is the bearing plate—“but we can get around it,” said Bowles. If there’s a motor failure, the computer picks up load, slows the rotor on the diagonal corner, and speeds up the rest. The aircraft also retains the ability to glide on its wing—so Joby has tested that mode as well—which, as a fixed-wing pilot, I admit helps me wrap my brain around the whole package.

On Speed, On Target

You don’t think of stall speeds and V_NE in the same way either, since the aircraft’s flight computers protect you from those exceedances in most all situations. “It is important to understand that the aircraft has 6 propellers and 10 control surfaces along with a rather advanced fly-by-wire control system,” said Jason Thomas, flight engineering lead for Joby, “and those propellers can tilt as well as change their blade pitch…It creates a situation, unlike a traditional fixed wing aircraft or helicopter, where there is more than one way to trim the aircraft at a given state or maneuver.”

How will pilots transition to Joby? It helps that the controls feel fairly intuitive. In my sim flights at Marina and D.C., it took just a few minutes to understand how to take off, land, and maneuver in the traffic pattern at a normal airport—KOAR and KSEA were programmed into the sim—during a standard flight. The FAA has established an SFAR for existing pilots under the powered-lift category—and the goal is to allow them to transition by taking essentially a type-rating course.

As a foundation for its business model, Joby established a Part 135 operation using a Cirrus SR22 between KSQL, Palo Alto, California, and KOAR. It plans to add the SFAR-covered aircraft to the certificate, with a track record in flight operations, maintenance, and safety management with the local FSDO. Similarly, the company has also set up a Part 141 operation, training internal pilots, to which it will add the Joby aircraft.

And the proof, then, will be flying the actual aircraft—and seeing just how that feels as a pilot.

Cockpit at a Glance

A. The pair of displays can be laid out in many ways for the pilot. The MFD hosts the power and propulsion system schematic in this view.

B. The primary flight display features a familiar Garmin interface, with airspeed and altitude tapes, plus standardized callouts for winged and vertical flight regime modes.

C. A Garmin GTC-style touchscreen controller also feels familiar to many pilots, following on to the similar control unit found in many new piston and turboprop airplanes and rotorcraft.

D. The power lever on the left side of the pilot’s seat is self-centering and allows for acceleration and deceleration control, as opposed to placing it at a given power setting.

E. The flight control stick self centers as well as twists for yaw control and banks to either turn or translate sideways, depending on the flight mode.

Spec Sheet: Joby Aircraft

Price, Projected: Not for sale, operated exclusively by Joby

Propulsion System: 6 electric dual wound motors, 4 on the wings, 2 on the V-tail

Crew: 1

Passenger Seats: 4

Length: 21 ft.

Height: TK

Wingspan: 39 ft.

Maximum Takeoff Weight: 5,300 lbs.

Empty Weight: TK

Useful Load/Payload: 1,000 lbs.

Cabin Width: TK

Cabin Height: TK

Power Capacity: Four lithium-ion battery packs

Endurance: TK

Range: Up to 100 sm (87 nm)

Liftoff Speed: Hover

Top Speed: 170 kt (200 mph)

Landing Speed: Hover

Stall Speed: N/A

Part Two: Building the Childhood Dream

It starts with a specific type of composite.

The sourcing of the raw materials to make the part that goes into the component that tucks into an aircraft in a strategic place—in the post-pandemic global aerospace industry, that perhaps is not so uncommon.

But when Joby Aviation first began coalescing into reality in various warehouses in the Bay Area southeast of San Francisco, most manufacturers didn’t get involved with the creation of the material—let alone purchasing the raw stuff from which to produce minor hardware in house.

That’s exactly what Joby has been up to since those early days—the development of the requirement alongside the technology needed to deliver the performance and capability of a new type of aircraft. By taking control of every aspect of the requirement to the final disposition of a part, it gets more precisely what it wants.

Diving into the Works

We took a walk around the skunk works—well, just one portion of them—in nondescript buildings, feeling like we were walking through a back lot on land adjacent to the San Carlos Regional Airport (KSQL). Leading the way was the perfect guide, Jon Wagner, as noted, Joby’s head of batteries, powertrain, and electronics. If that job title feels a bit cobbled together, it’s not. He’s the juice guy—how to store it and how to deliver it to the motors as well as the avionics and flight control system.

Working with Wagner is Jason Thomas, flight engineering lead. Thomas came to the company in 2021 from a designated engineering representative firm in Florida called EQ Dynamics. Before that, he worked with Aurora Flight Systems and its UAS concepts, and prior to that, at Honda Aircraft Company and Gulfstream Aerospace, in flutter and structural engineering roles. “I am the sole DER for external loads, aeroelasticity (flutter), and ground vibration testing (GVT),” said Thomas of the fascinating confluence of disciplines that by necessity must cover new territory in just about every mode of flight on the airframe.

The prop blades, for example, land under Thomas’ oversight—with their wide chord and downturned tips to dramatically reduce resonance and, thereby, noise.

“We design and make everything inside the airplane here,” said Wagner, as he kicked off our walk-through of the Santa Clara facility. “Six years ago [in 2017], we flew the first full-scale airplane, and coming out of that experience, we realized that, OK, this airplane works, the concept is solid, and we could architect the business. We made a really important decision—it was right around the time I was joining—that we were going to build up an engineering team to design and manufacture all of the electronic equipment in the plane.

“It started with a discussion about batteries and progressed [to] talking about motors, talking about actuators, talking about all the flight computers, things like that.”

Joby’s founding members decided to hire the team—design, manufacturing, and testing engineers— to create each critical component.

“When you buy something from a vendor, you’re gonna get whatever they have, with maybe some small changes to fit what you need,” said Wagner. “And when you design it yourself, you’re going to get exactly what you need.”

That takes enormous investment and engineering bench depth to pull off—that’s why so many OEMs work with vendors for a long parts list in the construction of an airplane. But CEO JoeBen Bevirt planned to vertically integrate Joby to that level from the beginning.

How They Got Here

Though the company boasted more than 1,000 employees around the time of our visit—and keeps growing daily—it still feels like a startup. The origin stories encased in various discarded components and updated blueprints lay around in plain sight. We stop in a showroom that’s between engagements, but it still houses one of the iterations of the fuselage and the cockpit and cabin contained therein. The moves Joby has made to determine the best combinations and materials for the interior and exterior it calls “explorations,” and posters walking back through those imaginings line a wall behind the mock-up. It’s like they’re not quite ready to put these pieces in storage yet, because they may gain use or traction somewhere down the line.

Following that experimental phase, the last seven years have been the more traditional aerospace development path, with requirements-based design “fit for purpose.” From scratch, it builds all of the battery packs for the airplane, the motors, and all of the electronics. “With the exception of the pilot interface—that’s the Garmin, we purchase that from Garmin, the displays—but all the rest of the avionics and electronics we build,” Wagner said.

Cruisin’ Down the Coast

Schedules kept us from hitching a ride with Bonny Simi, now president of air operations for Joby, in the Cirrus SR22 it operates. But we made our way nevertheless to the primary production and assembly and flight test operation in Marina, located on the airport there in a series of massive white Quonset hut-style tent hangars—that echoed in a way reminiscent of the big historic hangar at Moffett Field to the north, when it housed the dirigibles and other experimental aircraft in development. Fitting.

Once there, we were going to meet up with Didier Papadopoulos, head of the aircraft OEM for Joby, and the one responsible for much of what was going on inside those hangars. Instead—because we were there right after Memorial Day, our own scheduling concern, we had the next best thing, Scott Berry, a nine-year veteran of Joby. He’s also, tall, ranging, with a preternatural goodness and health emanating from him that feels like a trademark here. Berry has also built a Lancair Legacy and posts an AirCam on his LinkedIn profile. Taking aviation into an innovative direction feels like a natural fit.

“I had this dream that I always wanted to fly a seaplane into this area [Santa Cruz Wharf] and bring my children in and surfboards, put out an anchor, and then fly away,” Berry said. “I literally did that yesterday [in the AirCam on floats].”

The Joby aircraft will take this concept up another notch.

“I got my job because I had started my own eVTOL company,” Berry continued. “I was working for General Atomics…and I always wanted to develop my own aircraft. I was trying to convince General Atomics to do a version of the Predator drone with electrics…and I couldn’t do it, so I started my own company. I came to try and sell my aircraft to [Bevirt while on a holiday in Santa Cruz], and he convinced me to come work for Joby.”

Berry has spent the last nine years developing the design and certification team, running flight tests, and leading the company’s establishment of culture. That’s a critical element when what you’re doing is constantly pushing the human-machine interface—to watch the “human” part of the equation.

Humans and Robots

The production line order was still a bit out of sequence during our visit. At every turn, the interface between man and machine took center stage. We expect the use of robots in a variety of roles in manufacturing—and with Joby, they have been integrated from the beginning. Those integrations resonate in aerospace, but much of what I saw around me has roots in automotive manufacturing. Early on, Toyota invested in the company, and a significant part of its investment lay in the dedication of teams of Toyota colleagues embedded within Joby’s research and development—and that pattern continues as it transitions to production. But wait—it isn’t the same as a traditional transition from R&D and prototyping to building a conforming, deliverable model. Joby has been building the production line as it has developed the string of prototypes, so it would be ready as soon as the final fix was in to start production. That’s what we saw.

First, we toured the composites manufacturing facility, where boxcar-sized automated CNC machines crafted parts and shepherded through components from raw materials to layup.

Then we moved into the next big white tent, through a pass-through, hangar-sized door, on to the assembly and integration facility, where those components would join together into the airframe.

About Lunch

Back to culture now. Douglas Aircraft Company pioneered the concept of providing holistically for its employees, in the supposition that if they were healthy, well fed, and well housed, that security would translate to better job performance, less sick leave, and fewer HR issues. In Joby’s world, that means everyone gets fed, family style, at the Marina complex. But the shared tacos are just an indicator.

“The vibe at Joby is energizing and unprecedented in my career,” said Thomas. “Joby embodies a truly unique and interesting mix of talent, passion, energy, innovation, focus and a can-do attitude that is very pervasive.”

Watching It Fly

During that visit in late May 2023, we had a unique window open to see the conforming prototype fly. The production unit was nearing completion at the apex of the line (also under construction), and though we couldn’t talk about that at the time, we can now.

A small team of specialists hovered around the model, smiles illuminating the obvious pride it felt in being so close to the completion of this next critical stage. Our ability to walk around the unit gave us an opportunity to talk through in more detail how the prototype had evolved into the airframe that would be ready for the final flight-test program of the primary campaign to TC.

In parallel, other teams at Joby are working on the business and operational cases, figuring out how the initial run of aircraft will fit into the national airspace system. “We’re not trying to create segregated airspace,” said Bowles, “but to blend in, working heavily with ATC in key regions that are in the initial target, i.e. [helicopter] routes in New York and LA.”

At the state and local level, the question is, are communities excited and ready? The low-noise profile helps immensely—at 65 dBA at 100 meters away on takeoff (vs. 93 dBA for a traditional helicopter liftoff) and in cruise down to 45 dBA—barely recognizable over the wind noise, as we discovered on the ramp in Marina.

It’s a “very torquey motor” in Bowles’ words, to turn the props slowly enough, with a big chord, so efficient at low rpm; plus a drooped tip lowers the vortex a blade length; plus five blades, with their angle of incidence not common to each other. The arrangement is such that it doesn’t stand up a resonance—so no sine wave and its resulting noise footprint.

As the teams look at every geographic location as a special case—procedures are always local—they assess the existing infrastructure—airports, helipads—and, over time, the development of a vertiport: a 50-foot piece of concrete with electric charging and noise limits.

Joby already can make use of the roughly 5,080 GA airports in the U.S. but adds 5,000 more heliports. That’s a lot of opportunity already in place if we can keep those landing sites open. With most people living an average 16-minute drive from an airport, that future lies in clear sight.

These columns first appeared in the March 2024/Issue 946 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post A First Look at Joby’s eVTOL Future appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I was obsessed. Once college approached, I knew I was going to become an airline pilot, and I wouldn’t stop until I was an old man flying a Boeing 747. I was originally going to go to college to become a TV meteorologist, but failing grades in math kept that dream far away. I found it much easier to get into a state college with an aviation program, so off I went to one in New England to become a pilot.

While earning all my primary ratings, private through commercial and CFII, Microsoft Flight Simulator was right there with me. It provided all I needed for that extra boost when studying ILSs, holding patterns, VOR tracking, stalls, slow flight, cross countries, and more. Once the newer versions of MSFS were released (these major new versions were anticipated and sold in PC software stores in malls back then), it would cause so much excitement and anxiety for me that I’d be prepared to drive hours to get the coveted box in hand before the stores ran out, or other friends I knew grabbed theirs. Then the worries over computer strength and how the new version would run upped the anxiety. But it was a fun time back then, one that blew past any young child’s Christmas morning memory on any new release day.

After acing my IFR rating (the CFIs never understood how I knew all this stuff prior to beginning flying), my next big “ace event” was years later during my first real job as a Cape Air captain flying a nine-seat Cessna 402. I had to go for weeks of indoc and training, and my monthlong-stay hotel room was filled with some great multiengine hardware. Throttle quadrants, rudder pedals, and all were a fixture in my small room along with the PC. Today, I highly recommend the Sporty’s Pilot Shop Flight Sim Starter Set—quality Honeycomb equipment—or FLYING’s custom rig.

• READ MORE: Ultimate Realism ‘X-posed’ in 747-200 Classic

Some fellow classmates came to observe or try engine failures in a Cessna 421 add-on, the closest thing we had to the lower-powered 402. But it all worked and made sense. My multiengine failures and a simulated ATP check ride—complete with many single-engine NDB approaches to minimums in the real airplane—all seemed easy to me as I was able to fly all this before. The heck with imaginary “armchair flying”—I had the real thing in my hotel room as far as I was concerned.

Years later, once again another big event was my initial type rating in my first jet—the Beechjet 400A—in Wichita, Kansas. Most folks get a full initial type school of more than three weeks for most bizjets. However, my Part 135 boss was a cheapskate (imagine that) and wanted me typed within a four-day recurrent session the other pilots get every year. That was a lot to accomplish. The instructors said they didn’t think I could do it, as nobody gets a type off a recurrent session. And since it was my first jet rating, I had to take the four-day FMS ground training event as well.

Learning an aircraft FMS is the hardest thing for new jet pilots, and I had no time to learn it. Well, I said let me try the sim and see how I do in the FMS. I had a secret weapon nobody knew about. I had been using an FMS for years in MSFS, thanks to PMDG (www.PMDG.com), the makers of the finest Boeing airliners for the sim platform. Once I was in the real Beechjet sim, I discovered, sure enough, the FMS is exactly like the one in the Boeing jets. Even the glass cockpit was similar. The instructors were dumbfounded as to how I could suddenly bang away at all the keys, programming and modifying all the while learning to fly the jet. I let the cat out of the bag and told them, thanks to me being a geek on MSFS, I had learned all this years ago. They’re reaction was “no way” … but I was told to go ahead and skip the FMS course. I got my type rating in four days!

There was a fairly good Beechjet add-on for MSFS2004 made by Eaglesoft, and I used it during this training event and subsequent recurrents as I became a captain for the 135 outfit I flew with for several years before getting a new type rating on a big, beefy Dassault Falcon 2000 eventually. Sadly, no Falcon products existed for any sim platform, so I was a bit overwhelmed during that initial type rating. But, as most flying jobs change, so did this one. I was suddenly changing jobs and getting typed in a Hawker 800 series—a bit of a step back from the big Falcon.

Now, once again I had the sim advantage as one did exist from designer Carenado (www.carenado.com). The Hawker 850 was out for MSFSX at the time, and it was excellent in preparing me for the overall layout, look, and feel for learning the cockpit. However, it was not too big on exact systems modeling, so I used it as more of a visual familiarization tool than anything else, as well as for some basic flying qualities I believed were probably modeled pretty well.

Soon that 135 job ended, as those old 800s were poorly maintained and most flights were an exercise in using the emergency section of the POH. So I quit, only to find a job flying a much newer, late model Hawker 850, exactly as I had in MSFSX. This was a hoot. The newness and power was so much greater than the older sister. But that new boss suddenly traded in the 850XP for a big, powerful Challenger 300. This was the pinnacle of my career back then, and I had yet another sim weapon—the incredible Challenger 300 for X-Plane 11.

This favorite of many was sadly discontinued years ago, but I used it to the fullest extent while it was available. Systems, operations, layout, and flying quality were all simulated. I became extremely familiar with the CL300 during this time, and once I was type rated and flying the real thing, I became a reviewer of the X-Plane version. I was even able to help the author a bit on tweaking some parameters to better equal the real jet.

But the more I flew the real thing, the more I realized how well done the X-Plane version really was. I used to think it was too powerful, easily performing initial climb rates hitting 10,000 fpm, then I found out, yes, indeed the real thing does it too. What a ride!

Now that sims have helped me learn the real aircraft I fly, what about other stuff? How about life and death? Through no fault of my own, or perhaps a clumsy error, or maybe being even wreckless a bit while flying on the PC, I have found myself in sudden potentially dangerous scenarios that require immediate thinking and problem solving. I often leave the airplane on autopilot to do other things but have returned on a few occasions to discover one or more engines have failed for some reason. In jets it could be because of high-altitude weather, lack of anti-icing items being used, or other issues. Now I must think and react as a real pilot.

Even without a checklist at hand, it’s a brain exercise that is nothing but beneficial. So in a way, that is an actual emergency not planned at all and definitely a surprise. In smaller airplanes I have experienced total loss of power, so a visual landing off airport is an incredible “big picture” situational awareness type of tool that’s very realistic. I have written about such emergencies in past issues of FLYING’s digital platform.

Actual live weather feeding can provide an unexpected moment. So now, it’s time to dig out approach plates or perhaps attempt a visual with terrain. How about a planned emergency? Sure can. Options in either MSFS2020 or X-Plane 12 (XP12) give you the ability to randomly have a failure of anything you choose at a specific time, keystroke, or random period. XP12 goes farther and gives you the chance of random bird impact and resulting crisis, with hundreds more just waiting for you to activate. During jet recurrent events, we practice multiple engine failures at V₁, so that is easily something I’ll do in the sims at home.

Get a friend involved to secretly program something bad to happen. Back when I was a single guy and had a fellow roommate pilot pal (Rob, this is you) whom I taught how to fly, we’d call these randomized, intentional moments of doom “horror flights.” We’d set up the other guy while he wasn’t looking to have to fly the Cessna 182 and have total electrical failures combined with vacuum failure at night. Looking up to see nothing but a turn coordinator to live by is terror in IFR. Use engine sound for rpm and wind noise for pitch. If the outcome was bad, we’d throw each other down the stairs to simulate a crash and resulting injury. This added to the fun and realism. I don’t think any of us really lost too much blood.

I have been to many airfields in the real world where I’ve experienced that “been-there-done-that” feeling. Places like KASE, KTEX, KHSP, KJAC, KVNY, KSFO, KTRK, CYVR, PHLI, and dozens more where, if it weren’t for the sim, I’d be a level behind. Most involve high terrain or odd procedures. My first European trips in the Challenger were done in MSFS or X-Plane. Any new places I know of that I am heading to will be at least seen virtually before going in real life.

Every sim session is educational and keeps the brain in “big picture” mode. SA, or situational awareness, is key. I have flown with so many other pilots that lack this skill or are somewhat always behind the jet. A home simulator keeps these skills sharp. You’re always thinking ahead about “What if…?”

You don’t even need the latest MSFS or X-Plane to do this—or a fancy PC. Any version would do. I’d go as far as to say some of the big picture things can even be accomplished with an air combat sim. If you’re always thinking and doing, planning and preparing with a home flight sim, you’re leaps and bounds ahead of the traditional “armchair” pilot.

Going from class to a hotel room, sitting in a chair with a cockpit diagram in hand, isn’t going to cut it. You’re missing the other half.

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Healthy Obsession: What Flight Sim Has Done for Me appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The airstrips defended and nurtured by the Recreational Aviation Foundation have triggered an urgent message to keep them safe. They represent some of our most precious resources—places for pilots to touch down and gather—beyond the physical runways they contain.

Whether a manicured landing lawn in Maryland, or a sandy strip hideaway in Florida, or a desert oasis in New Mexico, or a gravel bar by a lake in Oregon, these points on the map string together the lives and hearts of the RAF volunteers who have kept them up over the past 20 years—building friendships along with the fences and branded fire rings they leave behind.

Founded in 2003, when a handful of aviation friends came together with a shared mission around a campfire at Schafer Meadows airstrip (8U2) in Montana, RAF now stands third-largest among nonprofit aviation associations. And its reach embraces all pilots, as it keeps vital airports and backcountry strips in play—assessed, upgraded, and safe to use. RAF chairman

John McKenna was one of those initial pilots around the campfire, and he recalls their consensus: “This really needs doing, we agreed. We didn’t know what ‘this’ was,” he admits, but they soon discovered the “human capital” raised by the group, though hard to measure adequately, was exactly what was needed to save airstrips.

While not a membership organization per se—there are no annual dues, no codified list of benefits, and no chapters—RAF remains without question driven by the collective efforts of a committed group of folks. More so than a lot of membership associations I’ve given time and money to over the years, in fact. You can donate—in cash or through buying its cool clothing, tools, and other gifts via the website—and/or you can volunteer. That’s it. It’s a simple equation that has added up to a large sum of investment and effort over the past two decades. To date, more than 11,000 pilots and aviation enthusiasts have “joined” the RAF in these ways.

The Last Best Places

Most pilots become involved in the RAF because of other pilots—they hear of friends in the aviation family talking about all the fun they had putting up cabins and transporting goods. For me, my connection happened just like this—resonating especially since I spent a lot of my early flying time in Colorado and have been hiking in the Idaho and Montana mountains since I was a kid, barely able to shoulder a pack. To this day, I’m way more comfortable in hiking boots than high heels—as anyone who has seen me try to walk in the latter will attest.

My first flyout with RAF folks came in the height of the pandemic summer of 2020, when I found myself in Wisconsin in July without an “Oshkosh” at which to spend time with my aviation family.

I called up Wisconsin-based FLYING contributor Jason McDowell, and he put me in touch with Cessna 170 guy and photographer Jim Stevenson and Husky owner and RAF social media ambassador Ross Wilke to flit around a few strips they called home in their backyard northwest of Madison. RAF director Jeff Russell wasn’t around in his hangar at Morey Field (C29) to join us, but our paths would cross in July 2023 when I sat in on his presentation at EAA AirVenture on what it takes to join an RAF work party—or launch one at a worthy field.

My next intersection came in October 2020 with RAF director Steve Taylor, recently retired from Boeing Flight Services and a former colleague of mine. Taylor and his son Finley have made a point of participating in a wide range of RAF service projects together, strengthening their already close bond as Fin has earned his pilot certificate. Taylor and I flew around the San Juan Islands in his Cessna “184-and-a-half”—there are few projects in Washington right now, though the folks there stand ready to assist and do so quite a bit in neighboring states, like Idaho and Montana.

Moose Creek

At the heart of RAF lies the work party, and I really needed to get some mud under the tires in order to understand what this was all about. After amassing a number of texts, schedule changes, and other machinations, FLYING photographer Stephen Yeates and I finally made it to Moose Creek U.S. Forest Service airstrip (1U1) in Idaho for an end-of-season, get-it-in-before-the-snow-flies work project led by Bill McGlynn, current RAF president. Because Moose Creek sits at a relatively low elevation of 2,454 feet msl, it stays open later in the fall than other strips in this part of the Rocky Mountains.

The goal of the party was to begin replacing the couple thousand feet of fence surrounding the corrals and cabins of the oldest USFS ranger station still in operation. Because of its location in the heart of the wilderness, the use of motorized vehicles and other equipment is strictly limited or prohibited, therefore all of the materials for construction and operation of the station must be brought in by pack mule or aircraft.

The USFS has used a Short Sherpa to deliver bulky goods and materials, such as the 10-foot-long rails that make up much of the fencing. But with additional airlift a clear need, Daher stepped up this past summer to support the operations within Idaho—the location of its Kodiak manufacturing facility—and its environs with the use of Kodiak 100s and 900s by RAF pilots.

Nicolas Chabbert, CEO of Daher Kodiak in the U.S. and senior vice president of Daher’s aircraft division, said that the donated aircraft time fit perfectly into both the company’s responsibility to the community, as well as leveraging the single-engine turboprop’s capabilities.

“Our contribution to the Recreational Aviation Foundation is supported by the fact we are in Idaho,” said Chabbert when we caught up at NBAA-BACE in Las Vegas after the mission. “And we are very interested in preserving and conserving these strips—in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. We believe that the best way to help is not to just come with a cash contribution, but [with] the use of a Kodiak 100 or Kodiak 900. [The RAF] needs to load and fly in some very basic stuff. It could be a bear box, so that you won’t have any problem at night if you go and camp under the wing of your airplane.”

He also added the Kodiaks could fly in loads of materials to fence the airports—and the people to make that happen.

Hauling It In

For our flight into Moose Creek, we met up with RAF volunteer pilot J.C. Carroll and one of the Kodiak 100s at Daher’s R&D hangar in Sandpoint (KSZT) on a Friday afternoon in mid-October. We had all of our camping and photography gear—plus suits and other finery for the NBAA-BACE show in Vegas we would fly to the following week. Carroll trusted me with the controls for part of our flight over Lake Pend Oreille and the 143 nm south to Idaho County Airport (KGIC). That’s where we picked up our camp cooks, Fred Hebert and Alex Cravener, and much of the food for the next few days, packed in Styrofoam coolers. It made for quite a load, but we were still off the pavement in about one-third of the 5,000-foot runway at Grangeville.

We tracked the drainage of the Selway River up to its confluence with Moose Creek, where the crossing grass runways of the ranger station perch on a shelf over the tumbling waters on either side. Carroll took us overhead for a survey of the site, then lined up for the “new, long” Runway 19 (4,100 feet). Unloading at the apex of the shorter, original 2,300-foot-long runway—first cleared by the Forest Service starting in 1931—we were soon pitching a blaze-orange, six-person Marmot special and blowing up the air mattress that would guarantee a cozy night. After a campfire around a reburning and efficient Solo Stove and a review of the next day’s plan of attack, McGlynn sent us off to get a solid night of sleep in the quietest spot I have bunked down in many moons. Only the predawn calls of a local owl broke the intense silence.

Coffee went on the wood stove early Saturday morning in the cookhouse, and soon after we sorted into ad hoc groups to tackle the work ahead. First came the demolition, with sledges flying, and then we stacked the rotted beams in a bonfire heap to burn later once enough snow lay on the ground to dampen the very real fire danger. Then came the construction, which we soon put into a rhythm, with many hands making quick work of the setting and hammering of nails. In a day, we put up about 600 feet of new fence—and by the close of the project, the group of about 25 volunteers finished 1,300 feet plus odds and ends. They only stopped work because they ran out of materials.

According to McKenna, the USFS folks were surprised that so much had been accomplished. “They can’t believe all this happened,” he told me in early November. But that’s the beauty of the RAF’s collaborative programs with entities such as the Forest Service, Nature Conservancy, and Bureau of Land Management—a committed team of passionate pilots and enthusiasts can get the job done. In a recent note, McGlynn was already “firing everyone up for next year.” The USFS will coordinate next summer’s loads of fence rail to fly in by Sherpa—and the Moose Creek RAF work parties plan to convene in September to complete the roughly 1,450 feet of fencing remaining for that project.

Truly the Sum of Its Hearts

In a recent online newsletter from the RAF, McKenna encapsulated the past 20 years: “Like a long cross-country flight, the RAF has always had a destination in mind. En route, we have had to adjust. Without taking into account the deviation and changes that take place in our magnetic world—just like in the RAF world—we might lose our way. Like magnetic north, the world continues to move, and so has the RAF.”

In every state of the union, there are opportunities for local RAF volunteers to identify airstrips that need attention and the appropriate state, local, and private agencies to engage and partner with to ensure these efforts continue.

Carroll sums up the experience—and why he continues to volunteer with the organization.

“I’ve been a part of the RAF for about six years. In that time I’ve been as far west as the San Juans and as far east as northeastern Maine, as far north as [Upper Peninsula] Michigan and south to Florida. I live in Indiana. I’ve visited many areas in between. The common thread in all of those travels is not the airstrips or the scenery, it’s the people. These are people I want to spend my time with when I can. Everyone I run into at the RAF are bonded by the selfless culture of the organization. We (the RAF) profess this when we go to the backcountry and ask folks to ‘leave it better than you found it.’

“Well, I have to admit I feel that I’m better off after spending time volunteering with RAF than before the event because of the people. Sweat equity amongst my friends that leaves a lasting impact on the backcountry—how does it get much better than that?”

Truly, it doesn’t. Because the one airstrip that happens to touch your soul can connect all of us to aviation— and around that RAF fire ring with each other.

Moose Creek USFS Airstrip (1U1)

From the RAF Airfield Guide, subject to change

Elevation: 2,412 feet msl

Region: North Pacific

State: Idaho

Near: Kooskia, Idaho

Comm: 122.900

Fuel: None

Lat/Long: 46.12453 / -114.92335 46° 7′ 28.32″ / -114° 55′ 24.06″

Variation: 13E (05-14-2018)

Time Zone: UTC-7 (UTC-8 during standard time)

Contact: Nez Perce Forest Air Officer

Address: 104 Airport Road, Grangeville, Idaho, 83530

Phone: 208-983-9571

The Airfield Guide

Like the pocket tool you reach for when you plan to fly, the RAF’s airfield guide comes in handy every time you turn around, it seems.

Once you acknowledge the necessary disclaimers, reminding of the risks and responsibilities inherent whenever we fly, you can access airstrip information through a U.S. map. Chip Gibbons created the guide, and RAF liaisons compiled data for the airfields listed, according to Kodi Myhre, RAF’s director of marketing.

“They find the strips, evaluate the recreational value, and talk with the owner/manager of the strip,” Myhre said. “Arkansas liaison Dave Powell enters the data into the guide.”

Amanda Levin, RAF liaison to the state of Wisconsin, has pitched in her programming skills to expand the guide’s reach as well. It’s another example in the RAF of how many hands help create a great product.

How to Help the RAF

Even if you don’t consider yourself a carpenter or a camp cook, you can find a way to help the RAF with its mission.

• Fly supplies into a strip for a work project.

• Provide camping gear to a team on a project.

• Make baked goods to help feed the workers.

• Donate your time and skill with back office tasks—just ask what the need is.

• Suggest to friends and family that you’d accept a donation to the RAF in lieu of a present for a birthday or other special occasion.

After all, the work serves all of us who fly, whether we make it into the true backcountry or not.

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Recreational Aviation Foundation Remains the Sum of Its Hearts appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Now I think those folks might have been correct. A recent visit to the Greater Tahoe area confirmed that it held more appeal than I had imagined, beginning with some of the most striking natural views I have experienced.

From the air or ground, the natural splendor of the lake is breathtaking, from its clear, greenish-blue water that changes color with the seasons and more than 70 miles of jagged shoreline to its mountainous surroundings.

My first surprise was how large Lake Tahoe is. One can read about how it straddles a large stretch of the California-Nevada border, spanning roughly 22 miles long and 12 miles wide with a surface area covering 191 square miles, but it appears much larger in person than on paper.

Part of the impressive visual effect is because of the lake’s location high in the Sierra Nevada. Its surface is 6,225 feet msl, and the terrain around it rises thousands of feet above.

Getting There

That terrain is among several factors pilots have to consider when flying into the area, which is dotted with airports whose field elevations fall between 4,400 feet and 6,300 feet. Many piston pilots have a good idea of how operating from such high airports would affect their airplane’s performance. Others might be surprised by the reduced power they are likely to experience, especially when flying normally aspirated aircraft. Density altitude, gusting winds, and weather that often changes quickly can add to the challenge.

Operating at high-elevation fields for the first time warrants additional research and preparation, especially for “flatlanders” not accustomed to mountain flying. High ground around Lake Tahoe and beyond can complicate approaches to certain airports. Well-known peaks in the  area—including Mount Donner at just over 8,000 feet, Mount Pluto at 8,610 feet, and Mount Rose at 10,785 feet—severely restrict maneuvering space and make accurate navigation and situational awareness critical.

The Airport

We visited Truckee-Tahoe Airport (KTRK), which for decades has served as a hub for vacationers and part-time area residents who shuttle between first and second homes. The area is considered a year-round destination for hiking, biking, horseback riding, boating, and watersports during summer, and skiing and other snow sports in the winter. The area is famous for its ski slopes, including Palisades Tahoe, site of the 1960 Winter Olympics.

• READ MORE: Chart Wise: Truckee-Tahoe RNAV (GPS)-A

The airport is challenging because of its elevation of 5,904 feet and surrounding higher terrain. Pilots must follow prescribed approach and departure paths not only to remain clear of terrain but also to avoid flying over noise-sensitive residential areas. Winds can also be challenging at Truckee-Tahoe.

Jeff Menasco, a former Air Force pilot who is the airport’s director of aviation, said the multiple windsocks positioned around the field often point in different directions at once.

A fatal accident involving a Bombardier Challenger jet in 2021 reinforces the notion that Truckee-Tahoe can be unforgiving.

Demanding and Appealing

Truckee-Tahoe is an inviting airport with a generous parking lot and a bright, airy terminal with lots of space to relax, flight plan, and conduct meetings. The second floor has a balcony overlooking the ramp and runway that is a great place for aircraft watching. There is an adjacent park and playground for families with children—and you might meet several staff members’ dogs during a visit.

The airport makes an effort to help pilots with advisories and tips, including a series of approach and departure videos on its website that demonstrate proper flight paths and point out landmarks, such as the truck weigh station on nearby Interstate 80, Kings Beach at the northern end of the lake, and Brockway Summit, which you have to clear on certain approaches.

• READ MORE: Mackinac Island Is Especially Stunning by Air

On the ramp, turbine pilots will notice that only blended sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is available. Menasco said the airport wants to take a leadership role in promoting sustainability. As a result, he said, some customers embrace the plan despite SAF’s higher cost. Others decline fuel, preferring to fill up with less-expensive standard jet-A at other airports.

Red Truck, the airport restaurant, draws a substantial nonpilot crowd to supplement fly-in customers. The menu features a range of breakfast and lunch treats that blend Mexican and South Asian influences. We arrived in time for lunch, which included a naan-dog consisting of a quarter-pound brisket frankfurter on a “bun” of naan with house-made mustard, relish, hilbeh, cabbage, and caramelized curried onions. Delicious.

We also ordered the lunch bowl, which combines dal, quinoa, fresh cabbage, fattoush, and a choice of meat or seasonal vegetables. The shaded outdoor dining area was ideal for planespotting and people-watching.

History

While the Truckee-Tahoe Airport got its start in the late 1950s, aviation had been part of the local culture for much longer. During the 1920s the federal airmail service established an intermediate landing field near the current airport. The field, which was 2,000 feet long and 600 feet wide, was part of the service’s airway between Salt Lake City and San Francisco. Instructions to pilots included directions that followed railroads and warnings about tall obstacles.

“On the direct course 10,000 feet will clear the highest peak, but an altitude of 15,000 feet should be maintained,” the instructions read, in part.

• READ MORE: Flying the Finger Lakes Region of New York

By the 1950s, business owners in Truckee were eager to build a new, larger, modern airport to attract more tourists. By 1958 they formed the Truckee Tahoe Airport District (TTAD), elected a board, and sought state and federal funding to build a runway and terminal and buy additional property around the airport. Today, the airport is funded by a number of sources, including aviation fuel sales, aircraft services, hangar leases, and local property taxes.

In 2017, when the control tower opened, the airport boasted 33,580 aircraft operations, made up of 14,978 piston single, 1,145 piston twin, 6,942 turboprop, 4,140 jet, 1,229 helicopter and 5,146 glider. The daily average was 92, though the figure grows significantly during holiday weekends and peak tourist periods in summer and winter. The record stands at 532 ops in one day.

Alternates

Other airports, all nontowered, that serve the Lake Tahoe area include Lake Tahoe Airport (KTVL), Minden-Tahoe (KMEV), Carson City (KCXP), Dayton Valley (A34), and Blue Canyon-Nyack (KBLU).

We arrived at Reno-Tahoe International (KRNO), the area’s Class C commercial hub, on our way to the annual weeklong National Championship Air Races at Reno-Stead Airport (KRTS). With an event as big as the races going on all day and local casinos and restaurants buzzing at night, it is easy for visitors to forget about the region’s other attractions, but there are many. Tahoe is close, well known, and clear in its appeal. But there is more to see in the Reno-Tahoe area. Hotel rooms are hard to find during race week, so we stayed 40 minutes away in Carson City, Nevada’s capital.

The town has developed a young, artistic vibe that we found welcoming. There is plenty of creative food, good coffee, and shopping to keep visitors busy. Carson City is also close to Tahoe and Virginia City, the preserved-in-time Old West town that feels like a scene from 3:10 to Yuma or perhaps High Plains Drifter.

Downtown Reno, where the Truckee River runs through, features shops, restaurants, bars, and large-scale outdoor art. If Las Vegas does not quite work for you, Reno might be your place.

For pilots, the network of airports in and around Reno and Lake Tahoe make the area a singular flying destination.

Truckee-Tahoe Airport (KTRK)

Location: Truckee, California

Airport elevation: 5,904 feet msl

Airspace: Nontowered, Class D

Airport hours: Continuous

Runways: 11/29, 02/20

Lighted: Yes, both runways

Pattern altitude: 7,000 feet msl for light piston aircraft, 7,500 feet msl for turboprops and jets

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Flying the Truckee-Lake Tahoe Region appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In contrast, all light sport aircraft (LSA), experimental amateur-built airplanes, and warbirds are issued special certificates. In my view, the rule can be divided into two main parts: airplane descriptions and capabilities, and pilot certificates, technician privileges, and operating limitations. In short, airplanes or people.

For airplanes, the NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) felt like Christmas in July, granting many capabilities industry and pilot member organizations had sought over some years of negotiation. The people part describes who gets to fly and maintain these MOSAIC LSAs and under what rules. This latter section inspired greater concern.

Airplanes: What We Gained

Here’s the list of what FAA offered and how each changed:

Gross weight: LSAs have been limited to 1,320 pounds (land) or 1,430 pounds (water). Under MOSAIC, the weight limit is removed and clean stall constrains size so the aircraft remains what FAA sought: those “easy to fly, operate, and maintain.” It is expected that weight can rise to 3,000 pounds depending on the design.

Stall speed: Presently, LSAs cannot stall faster than 45 knots. This will be raised 20 percent to 54 knots, but this is clean stall, the purpose of which is to limit aircraft size and difficulty. It has no relation to landing speed or slow-flight qualities. This more than doubled the potential size, hence a new term, “MOSAIC LSA.”

Four seats: LSAs are presently limited by definition to two seats. This rises to four in a MOSAIC LSA, but if operated by someone using sport pilot certificate privileges, then only one passenger can be carried. A private certificate with medical may fill all four seats, assuming weight and balance allows.

Retractable gear: Light sport aircraft have been fixed gear only, except for amphibious models. Now any MOSAIC LSA can be retractable. Several imported LSAs already offer retractable options in other countries.

Adjustable prop: LSAs were allowed only ground-adjustable props. Now a MOSAIC LSA can have an in-flight adjustable prop. Such equipment on similar aircraft is common in other countries.

250 knot max speed: An LSA was limited by definition to 120 knots at full power. Now the speed limit matches all other aircraft below 10,000 feet: 250 knots. No one expected such a large expansion, but now retractable and adjustable props make more sense.

Rotary expansion: After 20 years of waiting, fully built gyroplanes will be allowed. That followed years of advocacy effort, but when the opposition finally yielded, the FAA also granted helicopters.

Electric or hybrid: Because the FAA did not want turbine LSAs in 2004, it specified reciprocating engines, unintentionally knocking out electric motors that few were considering at the time. In fixing the definition to allow electric, the agency will also permit hybrids. Examples are already flying in Europe.

Turbine: Perhaps turbine engines were harder to operate 20 years ago when LSA were defined, but today they are seen as simpler, and the FAA will allow them. Turbine-powered MOSAIC LSA candidates are already flying in Europe.

Multiple engines/motors: The LSA has been limited to a single engine by definition. That constraint is removed, although no language was given to address how the pilot qualifies.

Aerial work: The Light Aircraft Manufacturers Association (LAMA) lobbied for MOSAIC LSAs to be permitted to do forms of aerial work, although not passenger or cargo hauling. The FAA has granted this opportunity to the manufacturers, which can specify what operations they will permit. A commercial pilot certificate will be required.

One downside to all these goodies? Each will increase the price. The good news? Present-day LSAs offer lower prices and have proven enjoyable and dependable. Many LSAs are fine as they are and have no need to change.

A lot of LSA producers already meet higher weights in other countries where permitted. They are merely reduced on paper to meet U.S. standards. It should be straightforward for them to redeclare meeting all MOSAIC-level ASTM standards to qualify for higher weights.

The only question is how far backward compatible they can go for aircraft in the field over which they have had no control for some time. It’s an industry question to resolve, and it will swiftly be handled to aid sales.

People and Areas of Concern

Medicals: Lots of questions surround one of the principal benefits of LSA operation: the lack of requirement for an aviation medical if operating as a sport pilot. More specifically, pilots want to fly larger aircraft using these privileges, meaning no medical certificate, or BasicMed, instead using the driver’s license as evidence of their medical fitness.

To keep within their budget, many pilots wish to buy (or keep flying) legacy GA aircraft such as the Cessna 150, 172, 177, and some 182s, plus certain Pipers, Diamonds, Champions, or other brands. Many of the latter aircraft are too heavy to allow such privilege today. MOSAIC appears to change that, but without presenting compelling evidence that possession of a medical assures a flight proceeds safely, the FAA nonetheless clings to this premise. Many assert the occurrence of medical problems sufficient to upset a flight or cause an accident are incredibly small in number.

Stall speed: Most NPRM readers agree that it was a worthy solution to use 54 knots clean stall as a means to limit the size of the airplane and to keep it within the FAA’s mantra of LSAs being “easy to fly, operate, and maintain.”

However, many respondents note that adding just a couple knots to that limit will allow several more airplanes that some wish to buy and fly under MOSAIC rules. Note that the 54-knot reference is not related to landing speeds or slow flight, where lift-enhancing devices like flaps would normally be used.

Some pilots asked if adding vortex generators could reduce stall speed enough to qualify. The problem lies in proving a slower stall speed was achieved. Stall (V_S1) printed in the POH will be the standard about compliance.

Several pilots have complained about use of calibrated versus indicated airspeed for the stall limit, but this is another matter that might be clarified after the comment period.

Endorsements: One of the significant lessons learned in 20 years of pilots operating LSAs is the so-called magic of endorsements. Instead of asking pilots to receive training, take a knowledge test and possibly an oral exam, followed by a practical flight test, they can just go get trained for added skills from an instructor who then endorses their logbook accordingly, and they’re good to go. This puts a significant burden on flight instructors to do their jobs well, but that’s already the situation.

The NPRM already refers to the use of endorsements for retractable gear training or adjustable prop training, and many believe that expanding endorsements to all privileges described in the MOSAIC proposal has merit.

Noise: For the first time, the NPRM introduced noise requirements that encompass several pages. Coincidentally, the LSA sector is already one of the quietest in the airborne fleet.

This is partly because of European noise regulations that have been in place for a long time, motivating quieter engine and exhaust system development. However, LSAs are also quieter because the powerplants are modern, thanks to the faster approval process implied by industry consensus standards.

The industry was not pleased about the noise proposal, as these requirements add burden without identifiable benefit. Nonetheless, the situation might be handled through the ASTM process more quickly and still satisfy political demands.

Night: MOSAIC’s language invigorated many readers when the NPRM expressed support for a sport pilot to fly at night—with proper training and a logbook endorsement. Then the proposal refers to other FAA regulations that require BasicMed or a medical. If you must have a medical, you are not exercising the central privilege of a sport pilot. Why suggest that a sport pilot can do things that are blocked by other regulations? This conflict should be resolved.

This is one of several aspects of the NPRM that many describe as “inconsistencies,” where one part of MOSAIC appears to restrict another part, often for unclear reasons. Such observations lead many to declare the NPRM looks “rushed to market.” Hopefully, most problems can be addressed in the post-comment period.

When surveyed about why night privileges are valued, most pilots wanted to be able to complete a cross-country flight with a landing after dark.

IFR/IMC: Contrary to what many think, the FAA has never prohibited LSAs from IFR/IMC operation. It is the lack of an ASTM standard to which manufacturers can declare compliance that prevents such sales. (Some special LSA owners elect a change to experimental LSA status and can then file IFR, assuming they have a rating, are current, and the airplane is properly equipped.)

However, as with night operations, many LSA owners report higher-level pilot certificates often including instrument ratings, and they would like to be able to use their LSAs to get through a thin cloud layer.

Maintenance and TBOs: The maintenance community has found several objections within the NPRM. It appears that changes could cause a loss of privilege for LSA owners who have taken training to perform basic maintenance on their own LSAs.

In addition to altering the privileges of light sport repairman mechanic (LSRM) certificate holders, MOSAIC adds capabilities such as electric propulsion, hybrid, turbine, and powered-lift devices, which leaves the mechanic-training industry guessing where to start. Some organizations wonder if it’s worth the investment to create appropriate courses with uncertain privilege at the end.

Indeed, eight training organizations suggested they would petition for an extension to the comment period. It was successful, so the extension will delay the expected arrival of the finished MOSAIC regulation. Absent any extension, the FAA has repeatedly said 16 months were needed, equating to the end of 2024 or early 2025.

One group creatively suggested using add-on training modules to solve the problem in much the same way that endorsements can be used to solve pilot training enhancements.

Lack of sector expertise: The FAA knows a great deal about conventional, three-axis airplanes but far less about so-called “alternative LSAs.” For machines that use different control systems or operate substantially differently than airplanes—weight shift and powered parachutes come to mind—some industry experts believe a better system is to authorize an industry organization to manage these sectors. This has been common throughout Europe for many years and could work well in the U.S.

In a document of its size, some errors will arise and some clarifications will be needed. It is only a proposal after all. Pilots can comment on certain aspects but will have little idea how the FAA can or will solve various points, even if they offer solutions.

This frustrates some readers and can cause uncertainty about a pending or planned airplane purchase. In turn, purchase-decision delays frustrate airplane manufacturers. That’s the precarious terrain surrounding new regulations. Such comments on regulation are part of the American way, where the citizens can be part of the process. Here’s your chance to speak and be heard.

This column first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Pilots Have Questions When It Comes to MOSAIC appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

This is how the day in the life of a certified repair station begins. While the above may seem routine and mundane—no different from any other profession—it is not. Long before the day starts, scores of others are already hard at work. Teams operate in every corner of the globe, working to fulfill the mission.

Some companies are conglomerates with policies and procedures designed to ensure success at any facility across the world. Others are true small business ventures, staffed by family members.

Precision Aviation Group (PAG) FAA Repair Station is one of humble beginnings, as the company was literally founded in a broom closet. Since then, Atlanta-based PAG has begun an upward trajectory.

• READ MORE: The Aviation of Things

Adjacent to Atlanta Regional Airport-Falcon Field (KFFC), Aircraft Accessories International (AAI) FAA Repair Station in Peachtree City, Georgia, is an up-and-coming shop. Founded in 2014, it specializes in helping owners maintain older aircraft. Longtime readers of my Maintaining Your Airplane column online will be familiar with Pinnacle Aircraft Engines FAA Repair Station in Silverhill, Alabama, where JD Kuti overhauls Lycoming and Continental aircraft engines.

Not to be confused with the manufacturer, Sensenich Propeller Service FAA Repair Station in Lititz, Pennsylvania, specializes in propeller service and overhaul. Each of these is successful in its own right. Understanding their success means understanding the mission.

Mission-Critical Operator Support

PAG began life as Precision Heliparts Inc. (PHP). Founded in 1993 by Scott James, the company’s first business model was to supply parts to the helicopter industry, centering on mission-critical operators: medevac, law enforcement, and the Department of Defense (DOD). They rely on PAG’s supply chain to keep them mission ready. One canceled flight could lead to loss of life, a reminder of why PAG is in business.

In 1996, David Mast became president and CEO, and shortly after in 1999, PHP was named one of America’s fastest growing companies by Inc. magazine. Mast and James knew there was strength in numbers, and an expansion seemed to be the next step for progression. Western Canada is home to scores of helicopter operators, and in 2002 PHP established Precision Heliparts-Canada (PHP-C) in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Customers demand precision, so PAG begins its name with that. After expanding the company, the founders sought to control its destiny by becoming an FAA Part 145-certified repair station (CRS). In 2003, PHP obtained FAA certification and entered the maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) market.

AAI’s journey began when team members of another repair station wanted to take a different approach to the customer experience. There comes a time when one must exercise the freedom to make a choice if necessary. AAI recognized a need to upgrade the support of older aircraft and seized the opportunity.

When Pinnacle changed ownership, the new leaders expanded the business model from a single scope, serving essentially one customer, to expanding and offering top-quality reciprocating engine service to everyone.

Customer Support Commitment

PHP reached another milestone in 2004 with the acquisition of Atlanta neighbor Precision Avionics and Instruments (PAI), and rebranded as Precision Aviation Group (PAG). PAG maintains 20 repair stations and more than 850,000 square feet of sales and service facilities in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Singapore, and Brazil. Using an inventory-supported maintenance, repair, and overhaul (ISMRO) business model, PAG is well positioned to support its growing global client base, providing MRO and supply chain solutions for fixed and rotary-wing aircraft.

PAG world headquarters sits adjacent to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (KATL) in Atlanta, led by accountable manager David Scarbrough. The AM, as defined by the FAA in Advisory Circular (AC) No. 145-9A, is the person designated by the repair station to be responsible for and have the authority over all operations conducted under Part 145. The AM also acts as the station’s FAA point of contact.

“Things are busy, and we are growing,” Scarbrough said. “Please forgive the dust. The facility is going through a renovation and expansion.”

The company is creating centers of excellence and overhauling its workspaces, shops, and conference rooms. In today’s world of lean manufacturing, 5S methodology, and Kaizen events under Six Sigma, companies must evolve through continuous improvement or lose market share.

We started our tour in the shipping and receiving department. Here, rows of boxes lined up on conveyor belts wait their turn to be checked in by the crew. People overlook the importance of shipping and receiving, which is a huge mistake. This team is your first line of defense for spotting incoming errors, such as paperwork issues or critical damage incurred during shipping.

It is also the last to touch the parts before your customer sees them.

The tour then proceeds through the various repair shops at the Atlanta branch. Our next stop was the instrument shop. We visited several more functional shops, including gyro and pneumatic, starter generator, accessories, and avionics. We finished up at wheels and brakes. As we walk through the shops, my A&P brain cannot help but start to piece together all the different components I see. Pretty soon, we almost have an entire airplane.

One of PAG’s stated growth strategies is to combine unmatched customer service with investments in inventory and MRO capabilities. This is where the ISMRO comes into play. Let’s say you are the director of maintenance for a corporate aviation entity with a small fleet of Beechcraft King Airs and one Cessna Citation X. One of the King Airs is coming due for an inspection, and another just experienced a starter generator failure. The X is off on a trip, and one of the company executives has to be in Omaha, Nebraska, to close a huge deal. They could fly commercial, but why go to the trouble and expense of maintaining a corporate flight department if you have to buy a ticket and stand in line with your shoes off?

Your choice is clear: Fix the King Air, pronto. The engine cowling comes off, and the maintenance crew pulls off the starter generator from the left engine. The generator comes off, but the end of the shaft is still in the engine. Yep, it’s a sheared shaft. A quick trip down to PAG, and the shop inducts the part. The good news is it can fix it. The bad news is a shaft is on back order and will not be in for a week. When all hope seems lost, the DOM calls PAG, and a customer experience coordinator answers before the third ring. The rep states an exchange is ready to go, and they will accept the older part as a core. The part ships, the mechanics install it, and the executive makes the meeting. Everyone wins.

Adam Fett, director of sales for PAG Atlanta, said the company does not deploy an outside sales force. Rather, the inside team will make customer visits and solidify the relationship. When I asked if the team was split by region or aircraft platform, Fett said that was not the case. “At PAG, we let the client decide who their rep is,” he said of a concept that is revolutionary for the MRO industry.

Our stop at AAI is essentially the same, only on a much smaller scale. CEO Kevin Allen and I met at the shop, and I could tell from the first few minutes that his facility was squared away. Are you familiar with the book Broken Windows, Broken Business: How the Smallest Remedies Reap the Biggest Rewards by Michael Levine? Its main point: Take care of the little details in your business, and the rest will fall into line. AAI maintains a spotless facility, which is not easy when dealing with decades-old aircraft parts.

Dan Landis serves as the general manager of Sensenich Propeller Service, and he is the main point of contact for technical support. Landis recently told me that the best part of his job is getting into the field and talking propellers with his customers. One of the best ways to connect with people is through organized events, so there is always something on the company’s calendar. Landis attended the Beechcraft Heritage Museum’s biggest event of the year, the Beech Party, in October in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

Start with Why

Simon Sinek has a best-selling book called Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. To begin, a business must establish and live by its core values. Many companies lose sight of this and drift far from the intended path. PAG states its clearly: “passion, service, integrity, teamwork, and quality.”

The leaders of PAG’s four sectors, avionics, components, engines, and manufacturing/DER services gather periodically to map out a strategy for the future. Mast established this practice years ago and even saves old goals written on index cards. PAG’s growth is based on two key foundations: combining unmatched customer service with investments in inventory and MRO capabilities, and establishing sales and service facilities close to customers worldwide.

Keith Stringer, vice president of engine services, oversees PAG’s Engine division. When asked about his biggest challenges, Stringer singled out the supply chain, specifically raw materials. Jordan Webber, vice president of component services, joined the organization in 2012, launching from scratch and running several divisions of PAG. In addition to running the component services division, Webber is also managing Canada and Australia. The supply chain is also a headwind for him, along with rubber for tires.

Ketan Desai is PAG’s chief sales and marketing officer. Desai said he has to be conscious of the cultural nuances when operating in other parts of the world. Some cultures wish to negotiate the price of goods and services, and it is up to the on-site leadership to work with the team to manage the transactions. Each location takes pride in the region it serves and incorporates that culture into the local PAG business. This is evident in the PHP-Canada logo, which features the corporate brand but also sports a Canadian maple leaf.

For those who work in the aviation sales business, they know of special elements not found in other industries. Take, for example, the aircraft rotable parts sales and core charges. KT MacIntosh, chief financial officer, explained that she has specific internal controls for outstanding cores, core returns, and unserviceable core inventory. In the story of the starter generator mentioned earlier, there was no core charge because the mechanic provided the core in advance.

Mast first joined the company with a singular vision: serving customers. That was his “why.” He knew that the core customer base was wholly first responders, and every mission was critical for them. One key thing to remember is that helicopters require 10 hours of maintenance for every one hour of use on a fixed week. To PAG, there are 10 times more opportunities to serve. We aren’t discussing just missing a big presentation—someone could perish.

Following the day of interviews, I reviewed my Moleskine notebook and the notes from every interview from the executive team to the technicians. They all had the same “why,” simply to serve. This was real. As I type this out, I keep glancing back at the Sinek book subtitle. Service is baked into the culture.

Over at AAI, Allen will point-blank tell you his “why.” Allen and I met recently and discussed why he chose the small business route and what makes his shop tick. “There needs to be an alternative between the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and eBay,” Allen said. “At AAI, we have a passion to help older aircraft operate safely.”

We talked about how sometimes, if an older part is no longer available, a solution could be obtained using parts manufacturer approval (PMA) pieces or a designated engineering representative (DER) repair to return the unit to service.

At Kuti’s Pinnacle shop, the focus is on aircraft reciprocating engine service. Sometimes, diversification can dilute a brand, especially regarding reciprocating engine overhaul. Kuti said he needs to control quality, which means sticking to what he knows best—a passion for perfection.

PAG is constantly looking for ways to improve its business. When armature and stator rewinding became a bottleneck for production in 2020, it bought a rewind facility, invested some capital, and kept the line rolling. Landing gear requires a great deal of maintenance, and in the spirit of tip-to-tail coverage, PAG acquired landing gear provider Trace Aviation in 2021.

This is only the beginning, and each move forward is another step toward the vision set in the early days of the firm. We finished our conversation by touching on my favorite subject—aircraft maintenance. There is beauty in what those folks create behind the shop doors—honest work, technical in nature, and mission critical to serve the customer.

The Repair Station Process

Pilots need to understand specific, helpful nuances before engaging a certified repair station. This is hardly an all-inclusive list, but one that can provide familiarity with the process to significantly enhance your understanding:

BEFORE THE CALL

• Do your homework when choosing a repair station.

• Call or visit the shop and build a relationship with a specific rep. Building a rapport will give you confidence and may even save you some money.

• Ask for a detailed estimate, clearly identifying standard overhaul and over/above items. Inquire if the shop charges a clean-and-inspect fee.

DURING THE VISIT

• Ask to approve any new charges in writing not included in the original estimate.

• Do not try to source this material on your own. The shop is most likely receiving a discount and buying from approved sources. You may end up paying more for less of a product.

• Review the bill of material (BOM) and verify it matches the original estimate. If you see terms like “convenience assembly,” it is a legitimate charge the shop uses to cover additional costs like supplies, solvents, and hardware.

AFTER RETURN TO SERVICE

• Follow all post-visit instructions from the shop, including handling, setup, and break-in procedures.

• If your unit cannot be repaired or you decline the quote, the shop may initiate beyond economical repair (BER) charges.

• If it happens, always ask for your core back.

• After the visit is not time to negotiate. Take care of that before sending in the part for service.

This column first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post The Daily Life of a Repair Station appeared first on FLYING Magazine.