October 30, 2018 Fun Tech Stuff

The Liberty Gazette

October 30, 2018

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Last Wednesday I saw Bruce Campbell at the Liberty-Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon. That’s no surprise since he helps the Chamber with tech stuff. He was chatting with Cynthia Smith, the owner of this newspaper, so I thought I’d be a smart-aleck and ask Bruce if he had an idea for our column this week. He pulled out his phone and showed me an app he uses to spot planes overhead when he’s at home. We thought Gazette readers might enjoy knowing about it, just for fun.

The app is appropriately named PlaneFinder, and you can download it from the App Store. Of course, there are similar apps, but we’ll talk about this one. If you go to their website and click on “About,” you’ll be presented with a ton of technical information about how their app works. It’s not something you have to know in order to enjoy the benefits of satisfying your curiosity about planes flying overhead. Bush Intercontinental Airport has runways oriented east-west, and we are right under approach paths for traffic landing to the west.

Bruce stood there in the city hall room and held up his phone. Through the app, we watched a signal transmitted by an airliner flying somewhere within range and saw what kind of airplane, where it had departed, and the destination. I’m sure there was more information available as well, but that’s all I saw in that brief moment.

We are well acquainted of course with the way that system works. We have the equipment on our plane too. The government (actually, we the taxpayers) put up towers all over the U.S. and planes have these broadcast units installed that send out encoded signals to those towers. The codes are picked up by compatible receiver units and then translated. Tap on a plane icon on the PlaneFinder map and see aircraft type, altitude, heading, speed, and lots more. I don’t think PlaneFinder does as much as well-known FlightAware (a Houston-based company), but I believe FlightAware has been in business longer.

Mike: Another fun snooping activity is listening to LiveATC.net. Go to their website and listen in on all the air traffic conversations between controllers and pilots. You can select frequencies for arrivals, departures, ground, and en route for airports and airspace all over this great country.

Busy airports such as New York’s JFK or Los Angeles International offer plenty of entertainment but you have to keep up with the rapid-fire transmissions. LiveATC.net is a good resource for students in flight training to have playing in the background, just to get used to hearing the exchanges. You’ll probably either love or hate the thick accents of controllers in the northeast, such as Newark, New Jersey, where ground controllers can be especially interesting during peak traffic times. They spout instructions so fast I wonder when they take a breath.

Whether app-tracking or eavesdropping, there are ways to indulge in aviation without leaving home.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

October 23, 2018 Flying Solo

The Liberty Gazette

October 23, 2018

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: There are such things as wine flights and wine tasting flying tours. Wine flights have nothing to do with aviation. It’s just what they call a few samples one can order instead of a regular glass, if one wants to taste a small amount of different wines.

Wine tasting flying tours on the other hand do indeed involve aviation. One could either hire a company to take them on a tour or, if one is a pilot, one may soar above the vineyards, the boss of one’s own schedule. Helicopter companies offer charter flights around popular vineyards in Napa Valley and the Pacific Northwest.

In the summer of 2015 several friends took off from their home airports and met on the west coast to fly their own airplanes on a wine flying tour. Of course, flying and alcohol don’t mix, so when they sampled a vineyard, they stayed the night.

While we didn’t stop for a tour, I remember flying over Napa Valley, finding the landscape to be a lovely wave of green carpet.

Reminds me of the island of Vis in the Adriatic, off the coast of Croatia. We toured a beautiful vineyard and winery there after trudging through underground bunkers used during World War II. There are grape fields everywhere, but there is no longer an airport on Vis. The land was vineyard first, and to the vine it has returned. Yet their young generation seems uninterested in inheriting family farms. Many of those once-fruitful fields are now overgrown terraced weeds.

Back at home, as I rounded the corner to the last aisle in the grocery store I entered the wine and cheese area. This was the kind of store that has a bar inside. Among the shelves filled with drink, and right at reading level, was a bottle that caught my eye.

“Flying Solo” had a beautiful label in the style of a vintage postage stamp with a drawing that looks like a Ryan, except that it doesn’t have that big round engine. Charles Lindbergh flew his Ryan, “Spirit of St. Louis,” across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. If you can picture that, you have an idea of what was drawn on this label. I have no idea how the wine tastes, but I was interested in the story behind the name.

Turns out the company, Domaine Gayda, is in France and their Flying Solo “celebrates the intrepid ‘Aéropostale’ pilots who risked life and limb to ensure postal deliveries in the 1920s.”

Flying the mail in the 1920s was daring. Lindbergh had been a mail pilot and on his trans-Atlantic flight he fought against fatigue and nasty weather. He landed safely in Paris after flying over 3,600 miles in thirty-three and a half hours, the first to go solo over the ocean.

Becoming an aviator had changed him. “In flying,” he said, “I tasted a wine of the gods of which people on the ground could know nothing.” Now there’s a “wine” we give five stars.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

October 16, 2018 Lt. Logan

The Liberty Gazette

October 16, 2018

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: I stood in quiet survey of the scene, cold water crashed on the shore before me. A faint murmur accented the air, emerging quickly into a crackling roar. In seconds, a French Mirage fighter jet screamed past, a hundred feet above the churning English Channel. The pilot banked hard north and disappeared in the distance. Silence returned.

From the overlook, a lush green carpet of grass spotted by immaculately maintained trees unfolded behind me. There, in perfect symmetry, ten thousand white marble crosses declared the war was over. Nothing competed with my contemplation except for that jet paying respects to the soldiers buried here.

To be present in the American Military Cemetery and Memorial in Normandy, the realization sinks much deeper. Touching the sand of Omaha Beach, one cannot fathom the terror and dedication of those who took part in this colossal undertaking. I stepped with humble reverence around the headstones, reading names; three hundred and seven are Known But to God. Over fifteen hundred names of sons who were never recovered or identified are etched in a circular stone wall. If they could, they’d speak of family, of going home.

Linda: It began on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when these brave souls spilled their blood for freedom. A relative of mine was one who joined those ranks less than a month later, on July 2, 1944 when the 487th Bomb Group dispatched two squadrons of B-24s to bomb the German V-weapon site. Cousin James A. Logan and his crew were among them. Returning from their mission they were shot down near Bethune-St. Pol, France. He was 23.

March 14, 1949 Logan was awarded posthumously the Distinguished Flying Cross and Purple Heart. The dedication states that he:

“Distinguished himself by extraordinary achievement as pilot of a B-24 type aircraft on an operational mission to Belloy-Sur-Somme, France. Near the target his aircraft was severely damaged and set on fire by anti-aircraft fire, causing it to veer sharply toward other aircraft in the formation, in a moment of great peril to himself and his crew, Lieutenant Logan remained at the controls and skillfully maneuvered the burning aircraft out of formation in order to prevent damage to other aircraft and injury to his fellow airmen. He stands in the unbroken line of patriots who have dared to die that freedom might live and grow and increase its blessings. Freedom lives and through it, lives in a way that humbles the undertakings of most men.”

Cousin Logan and his co-pilot, Second Lt. Bruno Matika rode the aircraft to the ground, along with the radio operator, and three gunners. The navigator, engineer, and the tail turret gunner parachuted out but were captured, prisoners of war. Logan’s remains were brought home to Massachusetts but most of the others were buried at Normandy.

Mike: At sunset, life in the cemetery paused as two American flags were lowered from half-mast, and all who were breathing saluted or placed their hand over their heart for Taps. I whispered, “Thank you.”

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

October 9, 2018 Art Lacey's Bomber Gas Station

The Liberty Gazette

October 9, 2018

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: At the end of the Second World War there were many surplus military aircraft, and Art Lacey determined one of those B17G’s that had served our country would make a good awning over his gas station near Portland, Oregon. At his birthday party in 1947 he wagered a friend five dollars he could make it happen. After the hand shake, Art turned to another friend and asked to borrow money to win the bet. The man handed him $15,000 and Art ventured out to Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma, where he would pick out his bomber.

He could choose any one he wanted from the lot. He just had to get it to Oregon. Only problem was, Art didn’t know how to fly a four-engine airplane. So he read the manual and taxied it around until he felt comfortable enough to take it up. But the folks handing it over to him weren’t so comfortable. They told him he had to have a co-pilot. I’m guessing they may not have explained why.

He put a mannequin in the right seat and took off to fly around the airport to get used to the B17. That’s likely when he figured out why they told him he needed a co-pilot…to help with stuck landing gear.

Mike: The story goes that he survived a “crash-landing,” although his B17 and another plane he hit did not. They told him to go find another one, writing up the accident as “wind damage.”

Some of Art’s more experienced pilot friends came to the rescue to help him ferry the airplane home. When they stopped in Palm Springs for fuel, Art wrote a check. He didn’t bother to mention there were no funds in the account to cover it.

Off they went and flew right into a snow storm, and had to descend below a thousand feet to see where they were. Things like street signs and water towers help in such a situation. At least there were no cell towers, but it’s hard to imagine living through a careless flight like that.

Photo of Art Lacey's Bomber Gas Station from the B17Alliance.com

When he got home, Art made good on the hot check, then turned his attention to the permits he needed to move that bomber down the highway.

Unfortunately, the highway department didn’t want him to truck a plane on the roads and repeatedly denied his requests. He got tired of arguing and late one Saturday night he had the aircraft loaded onto a truck and told the driver not to stop. The ten dollar ticket he got the next day for a wide load was much less than the permit would have cost.

In 1991 the gas station became a restaurant. By 2014 the bomber was so valuable it was removed for restoration to flying condition.

What remains as a memory of the Texaco station in Milwaukie, Oregon is a postcard boasting, “Art Lacey’s Bomber Station. The only one in the world---6 mi. so. of Portland, Ore., on 99E.”

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

October 2, 2018 Hi-Ho Stipa!

The Liberty Gazette

October 2, 2018

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Luigi Stipa isn’t exactly a household name. Not even in Italy. But airplane manufacturer Caproni di Milano-Taliedo knew him and thought he had a great idea. In fact, the Caproni company liked Luigi’s airplane design so well, they committed to build it (with government funding, of course).

This was the 1930’s. Jet-powered aircraft wouldn’t be flying until the next decade. The Stipa-Caproni airplane would be a gateway to the future.

As significant as this airplane’s place in history is, first, it didn’t last long, and second, its importance isn’t really what prompted me to want to tell you about it. I am admittedly more motivated by its humorous appearance than its place in history.

When I first saw a photo of it, I thought it was a joke. Surely there was no flyable aircraft shaped like that! If you’ve ever seen the Super Guppy around Houston skies as it arrives or departs Ellington Airport, start with that image—a blimp morphing into an airplane. Just scale it down a bit. A Smallish Guppy. A cross between the old Gee Bee racer and the Guppy.

But those airplanes have propellers outside the fuselage, either out on the wings, or one in the front. The Stipa’s propeller isn’t on the outside. From the profile view, it looks like the airplane’s nose was sawed off, leaving a gaping hole. But look closer and that’s where you’ll find the engine and propeller—inside that ballooned-out tube.

Mike: With his slide rule, pencil and paper, Luigi studied Bernoulli’s principles of fluid dynamics. He aimed to prove a better aerodynamic ship with the propeller directing its thrust into a tapered venturi tube.

Since the engine and prop were hidden inside the barrel-shaped fuselage, the air that was thrust into it by the prop blades made the propulsion system more aerodynamically efficient.

The pilots reported it flew well, too. Hard to turn, but very stable. Granted, this was an experiment...a brave one.

But the fact is that Luigi’s design was the forerunner to jet aircraft. This was an airplane with a ducted fan, the concept that led to jet engines.

Today’s Boeing 777 and the Airbus A-380 have engines with high bypass fans which follow Stipa’s ideas. Those wide turbine fans you see hanging from the wings are the grandbabies of Luigi’s propeller in the center of the bloated tube.

His design was meant only as a prototype to prove his theories, and then he would go on to work those theories into passenger and cargo planes. But the Italian government dropped its funding.

There was another funny thing about this airplane. It only had two seats and they were up high. Of course they were, because that engine was inside the plane, just below them. The effect was a totally cartoon-looking contraption. Like a couple cowboys riding a whale whose head was cut off. It would make a perfect caricature: Linda and me, the wind in our faces, and our speech bubble, “Hi-ho, Stipa!”

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com