I first learned of Rocco from a video posted on a website called “Lucky Lab Rescue.” He looked like the lab mix he was reported to be. Tellingly, he had no “bio.” Usually dogs up for adoption have been fostered and their traits have been cataloged. “Needs lots of space to run” and “not good with children” are a couple of red flags. Rocco had none. He was cute, if a little “mouthy,” on the 20-second video, so my wife, Cathy, and I arranged to have him join a caravan of dogs being shipped from the Midwest to the good folks of New England. Apparently, there is a well-worn path for dogs abandoned at kill shelters to adoption facilities in the Northeast.

We have had excellent luck with labs and lab mixes. We knew Rocco first showed up in a kill shelter in Kentucky and was transferred to a veterinary technical school in Indiana. From the paperwork that accompanied him, we found that he had been used for students to practice putting him under anesthesia and drawing his blood. I’m thinking that might give a fellow an attitude.

It did. Surprisingly, his animosity is not toward humans but dogs. It took several surprise attacks against friends’ and neighborhood dogs before we learned to keep him separated from all canines. His vet hospital and human emergency department visit bills topped 10 grand before we got the picture. We spent similar amounts on dog training with the graduation certificates as proof.

“Why don’t you put him down?” We heard this a lot. There was one problem: We were falling in love. With the kids, grandkids, furnace repair guy, and the pest man, he was an enthusiastic lab love. Our vet said, “I will not put a dog down for dog aggression. Your job is to keep him safe.” That sealed it.

Rocco’s first flight and first airplane was in our 1980 Piper Cheyenne I. He acted like it was natural to scurry up the airstairs and to make himself comfortable in an empty seat. When that became uncomfortable, he’d come forward, put his front paws on the wing spar, and peer into the flight deck with a bemused expression. “Can’t this thing go any faster?” he seemed to say. He’d stare in hypnotic trance at the blinking reply light on the transponder.

It wasn’t long before we decided to buy a jet. Three years of Part 135 flying had finally taught me how, and I felt comfortable with single-pilot jet ops. We bought a Raytheon Premier 1. With its magnificent height, imposing airstairs, and lavish interior, not to mention Pro Line 21 avionics, I was in heaven.

Apparently, so was Rocco. It gradually dawned on us that perhaps this dog had been fibbing about his background. He climbed into the Premier and looked around as if to say, “This is all you got?” I wondered if he’d actually belonged to a family with a Gulfstream. We sent off his DNA to see if he was related to a Rockefeller, but no joy.

Still, he got awfully cozy awfully quickly, though he seemed to look askance at the ornate gold fixtures—not the kind of thing a well-bred dog would accept for haute couture.

• READ MORE: Rescue Dogs and Airplanes

When an errant pelican commuting at 4,500 feet dinged the wing, we sought the comfort of a Cessna Citation CJ1. Not quite as fast as the Premier, but never as maintenance needy, the airplane fit like a glove. Rocco claimed a seat, which we protected with a sheet. There was no question this was a smaller seat than the one to which he had been accustomed, but he took the indignity like a lab. He logged hundreds of trouble-free hours curled up in a ball and ready to party when he arrived.

Alas, my abilities as a dog aircraft provider atrophied with age, and we had to sell the CJ1 owing to insurance costs for “elderly” single-pilot jet ops. Looking to be “unleashed” myself from the aerospace medical boys and girls in Oklahoma City, I chose BasicMed. This led to a fine Beechcraft P-Baron.

And guess what? This is the most comfortable airplane for Rocco. He leaps easily into the back cabin, and the rear seats are so close together that he now effectively has a bench seat. This allows uninterrupted sleep for hours and hours. Rocco is good at this. It’s one of his finest skills. This is a good thing as his commute has become longer and regularly features a tech stop. At such interruptions, he parades around the FBO while Cathy and I keep an eye out for some unsuspecting fellow dog traveler.

We’d hate for him to have a rap sheet in another state. His countenance at the high-end FBOs could be best described as expectant. Just don’t let him spot a Chihuahua with a rhinestone collar—the fur will fly. So far, so good, though—just a dog and his airplane in harmony.

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

The post Master of Airplanes: Rocco Is One Lucky Lab, Indeed appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

• READ MORE: New Five-Blade Propeller Gains FAA STC for Cessna 206 Series

For the tests, the German company said it mounted the propeller on the right side of a Piper PA-31T1 powered by two Pratt & Whitney PT6A-135A turbine engines. When the aircraft flew, MT said, the new propeller generated “an impressive noise and sound signature.”

Among the test results was a 15 percent increase in static thrust compared with the standard certified 5-blade propeller. The company said the power system als showed promise in terms of cutting engine and prop noise.

The company said the new propeller, which is still in the development stage, “combined with a low rpm power supply from a turbine or an electric engine opens new possibilities for performance, efficiency and noise.”

It is unclear whether MT plans to apply for a supplemental type certificate for the propeller. The company has experimented with numerous prop configurations in recent years, including a 9-blade model tested on the Cheyenne in 2019.

The post MT Flight-Tests Propeller With 11 Blades On A Piper Cheyenne appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Here’s the tale (tail) of three dogs and three airplanes. All had a budget; you will see how they spent their allowance.

Ubu and the Cessna 340

Ubu was a rescue in the sense that one of my kids had a friend whose dog had gotten loose, and next thing you know, there were several Lab-shepherd puppies to offer up to unsuspecting teenagers and their families. Ubu learned to fly in a box in the hold of commercial airliners. On one memorable escapade, my wife, Cathy, and I were flying from sunny Tampa, Florida, to snowy Boston, Massachusetts, with Ubu down below.

Four hours into the flight, the Delta captain announced a diversion to Bangor, Maine. After refueling, we took to the gray and cold skies again, headed back to Boston. (“The airport should open soon,” we were reassured.) Three hours of holding later, we landed in Providence, Rhode Island. I met the captain on the jet bridge and pleaded with him to release the dog, even though we weren’t at our destination. He relented. When the crate came out on the luggage carousel, you could hear a loud tail thump, thump, thump. Ubu had spotted us. It was a snowy drive in that rental car, but we were reunited.

Man and dog both upgraded when we sold the Cessna P210 and bought the 340. Ubu was happy to leave behind the airlines and switch to air-stair entry and unrestricted cabin—and sometimes cockpit—access. The dog was nobody’s fool, and neither was the 340. Ubu’s Labrador genes were evident in his exuberance, which matched the airplane’s speed and altitude. When we landed, Ubu invariably demonstrated his approval with a characteristic male-dog “happy meter,” if you know what I mean. Then, when the door was opened and the stairs extended, Ubu would survey his domain. There was one lineman at home base that Ubu didn’t like. If he spotted that poor man, he’d lunge out of the airplane and head right for the poor guys private parts.

As the dog aged and became infirm , I could not bring myself to put him down. He still ate voraciously and his eyes still glowed. I wrote a piece in the local newspaper about the dilemma entitled, “When is it time to help Ubu along?” A friend read the piece and told me she could find a new dog when we were ready. That’s how we met Corbett.

Corbett and the Cheyenne

Corbett was a yellow Labrador retriever whose only issues were unbridled exuberance and a cancer that took him too soon. His size and energy proved too much for his original owner, so we got this wild thing at one year old, just after we had upgraded to a Piper Cheyenne I turboprop. I approached our first flight with this crazy 80-pound dog with trepidation. A visiting friend, a senior Southwest Airlines captain, volunteered to be copilot on a short test flight. The plan was for Cathy to sit in the back with Corbett, while Tony and I sat in the cockpit barricaded in with large FedEx boxes. Tony informed the ground controller that we wanted to do a dog test flight around the pattern, and off we went. When switched from tower to departure to arrival back to tower, the last controller said, “I don’t hear any barking—I guess you guys are OK.”

Were we ever. In many ways, that dog and that airplane were the best fit any man has ever known. The airplane was sturdy, fast, burned jet-A, looked great, and gave us 17 years of very happy flying. Corbett was an equal contributor to our lives, filling our days with ball-chasing, swimming and flying. He’d come up to the cockpit once in a while and check on the captain’s navigation and energy-management skills. He was born to fly. When we landed and lowered the air stairs, the linemen would see a dog and cover themselves with defensive hands. They had remembered Ubu.

Corbett died too young of lung cancer. He spent his allowance on medical treatment. I tried to console myself by buying a fast jet and searching for a new dog. By then, I had learned about flying while employed by a great Part 135 carrier stocked amply with generous captains. They taught me a lot and made flying a jet a real possibility. 

Rocco and the Premier

I got my head turned by a 2000 Beechcraft/Raytheon Premier 1. Despite the extensive pre-buy and acceptance test flight, my advisors and I missed the fact that the airplane had a persistent and likely not-fixable flaw in the speed-brake logic. On the delivery flight home with an instructor, we got a “speed-brake fail” and “roll fail” light. Fittingly, around this time, we tried to replace Corbett with a dog we found on a Lucky Lab Rescue site. Because I had always wanted a dog named Rocco, we picked one out on the Internet with that name. Both the airplane and the dog tested our patience.

Rocco had been found at a kill shelter in Kentucky and then shipped to a veterinary school in Indiana, where he was used for practice—as in practice drawing blood, practice anesthetizing. I was oblivious as to how this history might alter a happy dog’s view of life. In retrospect, we had zero information about his personality. Like the airplane’s spoilers, we slowly learned about Rocco’s dog aggression. There were some nights when Cathy went with an injured dog to the vet while I took the injured human to the emergency room. These episodes matched the expense and frustration we had with the speed brakes. If Corbett’s allowance was spent on treatment for his heart and lungs, Rocco’s was spent on vet bills for victims and multiple training schools.

In the end, the Premier was put out of its misery with a bird strike, and we learned to keep Rocco in crates or fenced-in areas. I felt bad about the airplane—who wants to preside over the destruction of any aircraft? We felt obligated to Rocco, though. We knew if we turned him back in, he’d be euthanized. We just couldn’t do it, so he now rides in style in our Cessna CJ1, acting like he’s always owned a jet. Who knows? Maybe his previous owners had a Gulfstream.

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