A Pilot’s Blog
A blog about aviation, aviation news, and space.

Today is the one year “blogiversary” of A Pilot’s Blog in its current form. So, I’ve decided to create a little round-up of five of my favorite posts (not that I post all that often) from the past year.

Happy 7-8-7 Day (July 7, 2007)

Project Constellation (June 10, 2007)

Lunar Eclipse (March 3, 2007)

The Treadmill Problem Revisited (January 5, 2007)

The Treadmill Problem (December 12, 2006)

Being a government entity, the FAA always manages to come up with things with a straight face, that most anybody else would stop and go…wait a minute. All airports have a three-letter identifier with which they are referenced in the aviation world. The identifier that was given to Souix City, Iowa’s Gateway Airport? SUX. Of course, Souix City didn’t really like that, so they petitioned the FAA to have it changed. Their choices were “GWU, GYO, GYT, SGV and GAY”. Again, you’ve got to love the FAA. Anyways, the airport has decided to turn the tables around and use the unique identifier to their benefit. Fly SUX!.

AP story here.

On October 14, 1947 then Captain Chuck Yeager piloted his Bell X-1 “Glamorous Glennis” into the history books. What began as a flight that was just supposed to go to Mach .97, ended with a Mach 1.06 flight past the sound barrier. Captain Yeager went on to retire a Brigadier General in 1975. You are truly an inspiration General. I salute you.

Per a Press Release issued a few days ago:

LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Cobham said Thursday that a memorandum of agreement (MOA) has been signed between its U.S. subsidiary, Sargent Fletcher and Boeing Integrated Defense Systems to provide the composite Body Fuel Tank System for the KC-767 Advanced Tanker.

The MOA was issued by The Boeing Company to Sargent Fletcher, part of Cobham’s Air Refuelling and Auxiliary Mission Equipment Division, in support of the USAF Tanker KC-X proposal, the company said.

The English military is going to be using the Boeing 767 tankers, and I can only hope that the USAF will also continue to use Boeing aircraft for their mid-air refueling needs.

The official search for missing aviator Steve Fossett was halted a few days ago. I had hoped the situation would turn out differently, and I’m very saddened that Mr. Fossett has not yet been found – in any condition. Godspeed sir.

Through the efforts of Google and other companies, satellite images taken of the search area where Mr. Fossett is believed to be have been uploaded to Amazon Mechanical Turk. If you have an account there, and some free time, you can assist with the search to find this legendary aviator.

I was very startled to come home today and read this news.

MINDEN, Nev. (AP) — Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who has cheated death time and again in his successful pursuit of aviation records, was missing Tuesday after taking off in a single-engine plane the day before to scout locations for a land-speed record, officials said.

Teams searched a broad swath of rugged terrain in western Nevada near the ranch where he took off, but searchers had little to go on because he apparently didn’t file a flight plan, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said.

I was very fortunate to be able to watch Mr. Fossett’s record-breaking flight around the world in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer. Ironically enough, the picture I chose for my top logo last night was taken by me upon his landing following that flight. I pray that this turns out ok and he’s found alive and well.

As you can see the look of the blog has changed dramatically. This is because I have ported A Pilot’s Blog to WordPress. While the old software, Nucleus, was running the blog very well, it had been nearly a year since they last issued an update. I decided that it would be best to move to a more “mainstream” and regularly maintained blog engine. The most important thing for any readers that I might have out there is that the permalinks have changed. If you happen to be linking to one of my posts, please check that post and update your link.

I may still be tweaking things here and there, and if any other major changes come about I’ll let you know.

From the folks at Google comes a very neat feature in the newest version of Google Earth. An impromptu flight simulator! It’s no MSFS, but it’s pretty cool just the same.

To access the hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit [Ctrl+Alt+A].

The Google Earth Flight Simulator comes with two aircraft options, a F16 Viper and the more manageable SR22 4 seater. Players have the option of commencing the game from their current location in Google Earth or can pick from a list of pre-determined runways.

UPDATE: If [Ctrl+Alt+A] doesn’t work for you, try [Ctrl+Windows Key+A]. Some folks I’ve talked to have to use the latter to get it to work.

Hot on the heels of last month’s 38th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, Arizona State University is working with NASA to digitize all of the original Apollo films.

TEMPE, Ariz. – Nearly 40 years after man first walked on the Moon, the complete lunar photographic record from the Apollo project will be accessible to both researchers and the general public on the Internet. A new digital archive – created through a collaboration between Arizona State University and NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston – is making available high-resolution scans of original Apollo flight films. They are available to browse or download at: http://apollo.sese.asu.edu.

Very, very awesome if you ask me.