November 23, 2021 Keys to the Bank

The Liberty Gazette

November 23, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: We were in the bank the other day and our business kept us there til near closing time. There weren’t many people around, and it brought back memories of flying to Blythe, California, back in the days of cancelled checks. In Blythe, I was not only the pilot delivering bank and courier mail to the airport, I also drove into town to drop it off at individual businesses and banks. 

In 1985, Blythe was a small farming community. It’s in the middle of the desert that rests on the bank of the Colorado River. During the winter months its population grows nearly three times because of “snowbirds.” There were three banks in Blythe, and I delivered and picked up all their cancelled checks and bank mail and transported it to the processing centers and clearing houses in Los Angeles. 

I would fly in from Burbank early in the morning, stopping along the way to hand off bags of bank work to drivers who met me at the Riverside and Twentynine Palms airports. After landing at Blythe, I loaded my remaining cargo into an old Chevy Chevette and made the rounds through town. By then, all the businesses were open and bustling. After my deliveries, I’d wait out the day by the pool at the layover motel, and then trek back through town to pick up anything the banks had going out. 

Most days all the businesses were still open in the afternoon. Except on Fridays when the banks closed before I came back through. Therefore, I had the keys to all the banks in Blythe. Seems shocking nowadays, what with the unpatriotic “Patriot Act” and all. 

No, back in the day, a man’s integrity meant something. I’d turn off the alarm before unlocking the door and enter the quiet, empty bank lobby. Piled in the middle of the floor was my “loot” – bags which I picked up and stacked in my car. Locking the door behind me and re-arming the alarm, I proceeded to the next bank, and the next, committing the same heist, and finally on to the airport to load my winged get-away.

In the year 2004, the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (“Check 21”) changed the way banks processed checks. Now it’s all done electronically, removing the need for airplanes to transport the paper.

I couldn’t help but tell my story as we stood at the teller’s window, the last customers of the day. I bet she wasn’t even born yet when I was turning off bank alarms every Friday night. You should have seen her face when I got to the part about having the keys. That always surprises people. And I thought about what today’s security measures are like. Background checks, fingerprinting, bio-identification, cameras, and who knows what else. 

The days are short this time of year. We left with just a hint of sunlight still on the western horizon, just like it was when I departed Blythe, loaded with bank work, keys, and trust.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

November 16, 2021 FAA vs FCC

The Liberty Gazette

November 16, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

A couple of common questions we hear are: how does a pilot know how to land at an airport without an air traffic control tower, and how do conditions in the air or on the ground affect our flight? Legally, pilots are charged with the full responsibility of knowing “all available information” that affects their flight – all of it. 

One of the new pieces of information will come from the FAA on December 5. Note that this is the date that the FCC said 5G service is supposed to be available. But 5G is scary, even to the FAA. So now those two oversized government agencies will have to duke it out. Which does the American public want more? Increased bandwidth or safe flights? Pick one.

Washington, D.C. is where problems are born. The FCC sold little slices of the frequency pie to investors of a private 5G network. Unfortunately, these little slices are in a frequency range dangerously close to the radio band dedicated to aircraft radar altimeters, used with instrument landing systems.

Since the FCC isn’t willing to restrict 5G antennas from placement near 46 major U.S. airports, the FAA will issue a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin and an Airworthiness Directive. Both are strong actions, and what they mean is that if a certain condition becomes true, then pilots and crew must take certain actions. 

That “certain condition” is the aircraft’s radar altimeter indicating erroneous altitudes due to 5G signals between towers and satellites. And that “certain action” will affect the possibility of landing using the instrument landing system.

Think about the times you’ve been on an airliner, descending to land, and you go through a low cloud layer. For each runway, there is an altitude which an aircraft cannot go below if the pilots cannot see the runway. Therefore, a decision has to be made when reaching that land/don’t land minimum altitude. 

While there are airliners are equipped to auto-land in near-zero visibility at specific airports, this feature can only be used by pilots who are trained to use that system. These approaches require radar altimeters to determine the aircraft’s height above the runway. But if the instrument that provides this information suddenly receives signal interference, the radar altimeter can become unreliable, and the landing cannot be completed. 

Since we cannot have airplanes taking off if their ability to land is uncertain, this could lead to many delays and cancellations, because right now, 5G appears to wield a significant threat to safety of flight.

Even if it is possible to modify the altimeters to shake off the stray energy that will come from 5G cell phones, that will come at an enormous cost, and the FCC isn’t offering to pay for it. It’s a fair bet that airlines may not be in a position to refit the instruments in their entire fleet. Certainly not by December 5. Interestingly, Canadians have solved the problem by structuring no-5G-zones near major Canadian airports. That may be the only thing Canada is doing right these days.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

November 9, 2021 Weather Phobias

The Liberty Gazette

November 9, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: The 2022 Old Farmer’s Almanac is out. I picked up my copy at Tractor Supply. Thumbing through it, near the end, I found a list of weather phobias. I hadn’t considered such a category of things would actually have names, but now that I think about it, sure, why not? For instance, our dog Abby, and many other dogs as well, have astraphobia, a fear of lightning and thunder. It’s also known as tonitrophobia, brontophobia, and keraunophobia. Keraunos is ancient Greek for lightning or thunderbolt. Bronte is another Greek word for thunder. While I don’t harbor this fear, I certainly respect it when flying and stay far from thunderstorms in the Elyminator. Lately, we’ve had some gorgeous flying weather, with a few dud-days sprinkled in between. 

Oh, those beautiful days, when the crisp blue sky looks like it needs a little red and white airplane with black and white checkered wingtips! We cannot resist. Plus, we peek in at the progress of various construction projects, such as the railroad, completion of 99, and River Ranch, the neighborhood under construction in Dayton.

Mike: A few years back, we had some conversations with one of the developers, Eddie Gray, about building a runway as part of River Ranch. He approached us one morning after church looking for suggestions on ways to improve the planned development. He had an idea that an airport would be a worthwhile addition. That conversation led to a meeting at his offices in Baytown where he unveiled what is now under construction.

Near the development, there’s a grass strip called Gum Island. It’s still officially charted by the FAA, meaning it isn’t closed. M&M Air Service from Beaumont and other crop duster companies used it when they worked fields in the area, but much of the time the grass was overgrown. Eddie thought the runway could be extended and paved, and we thought so too. Our conversations mostly centered around what that it would look like and how it would benefit the community. 

Taking into consideration how underserved the east side of Houston is by airports, I must admit my creative juices flowed with the idea of building a new airport, something rare in today’s world. I drew up several concept pictures for Mr. Gray, and we discussed what would work and what wouldn’t. We talked about safety, noise-filtering landscaping, the optimum runway length which would not be intrusive yet adequately serve the area, and necessary infrastructure and construction investments.

Unfortunately, the other partners nixed the deal on a new runway for River Ranch. I was disappointed but not really surprised. A new airport is a hard idea to sell even if it does make economic sense. 

Surveying the progress from above, one has to wonder, with such a major project, where plans can be hindered by nature, do the workers and investors have any weather phobias? I couldn’t blame them if they were lilapsophobes (fearing hurricanes and tornadoes), or antlophobes (afraid of floods). So here’s wishing them good weather and great success.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

November 2, 2021 The Rain in Spain

The Liberty Gazette

November 2, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Prior to moving to Liberty, I was the manager and chief pilot of a corporate flight department based in Miami. The company I worked for had entities on three continents, and I spent more time flying to destinations outside our country than in it. I flew the company’s Learjet, and later a Gulfstream, to some rather exotic locations, many with challenging conditions. 

One such destination was Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of Spain. We didn’t stay in Santiago, rather, we used it as a technical refueling stop when we flew the Learjet across the Atlantic. A tech stop is an allowable, provisional stop and does not include clearing customs, although customs officials often met the airplane there to save time. Otherwise, Rosalia de Castro airport was where we would land for customs on our way to Madrid, which was our primary base of operations in Europe. By contrast, the Gulfstream, with its longer fuel range, could bypass Santiago and go straight to Madrid or Paris when we crossed the pond from St. Johns, Newfoundland. 

Regardless which aircraft we flew, the complexities of flying across the Atlantic required logistical planning. For instance, there are one-way “tracks” to follow depending on which direction you’re flying over the ocean. Eastbound flights start in the afternoon from the U.S. and Canada, fly all night, and land in Europe early to mid-morning. Westbound flights leave Europe in the afternoon and arrive at night in North America. However, because the Learjet lacked the range, our flight times were different from those following the tracks. We’d leave Florida in the morning, and after fueling in Canada, fly across the ocean in between the usual morning and afternoon flights, giving us the benefit of a more direct route. We would make landfall in Spain around 10:00 pm. It seemed it was always raining, with turbulence blowing in from the Atlantic. 

Once landed, we’d have less than an hour to refuel and take off for Madrid before they closed the airport for the night. Often, I could be seen standing next to the jet on the dark, wet ramp in Santiago, holding a flashlight for the fueler while trying to keep the umbrella in my other hand from collapsing as I held it over him and the open tank while wind and rain whipped and pummeled us.

Sometimes that job was demanding, but the significant memory of flying into Santiago that remains with me today is their approach lighting system, and how they built it to adapt to the conditions that were common there. Most major airports have very bright approach light systems that can be seen from 25 miles away. But Santiago far exceeds that. Their approach lights are visible a hundred miles out over the sea, even through all that rain. This is a huge help for pilots. Like the new weather reporting system at the Liberty Municipal Airport here, it’s like a kind of welcome mat, helping us find our way.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

October 26, 2021 Amarillo by Midday

The Liberty Gazette

October 26, 2021

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: We’ve been teased by the recent cooler weather, just a taste of lovely autumn (without the unparalleled leaf-peeping in the country’s northeast). We did that once, about a decade ago, made up our own “Fall Foliage Flying Tour” through New England states. In Maine, there’s an ice cream store on nearly every corner, and they all tout the best blueberry frozen treats. The folks in New Hampshire compete ferociously in the maple arena, claiming “those folks across the Connecticut River paint their leaves,” as they hand over a bottle of their best syrup. I would love to take another fall trip like that, but this time, Amarillo offered a divergent stand-in. Not for a whole week, thankfully, but a one-day jaunt. Just up and back in the Elyminator. 

When we plan a full day, we pack a lunch and plenty of water, in case we have unexpected delays. That happened once when we were flying out to visit some of Mike’s siblings in Arizona and Nevada. The vacuum pump began to fail somewhere between here and Midland, which was our planned fuel stop. Fortunately, there was a mechanic on the field there. Unfortunately, there was a storm coming. Fortunately, the mechanic worked fast. He must have replaced it in record time. But still unfortunately, the black sky was bearing down on Midland. Fortunately, we flew out just in time. 

But this day was sunny, with lower temps and less humidity. A check of the weather along our route showed we could snag a tailwind at a lower altitude on the way up and higher for the trip back. Before we could climb to 4,500 feet, we had to get past the arrivals into Intercontinental. An airliner descending from the east crossed above and ahead of us a few miles. The air was smooth until we went through their falling wake turbulence a few minutes later. The disrupted, swirling air gave us a nudge, but not too bad, as the wake was dissipating. 

Once past Houston’s airspace and back in smooth air, we climbed to our cruise altitude and pointed the nose toward “the yellow rose of Texas,” sometimes called, “Rotor City, USA” for its V-22 Osprey hybrid aircraft assembly plant. In-flight dining service started at some point during the 475-nautical-mile trip. We unpacked cold spaghetti left-overs, careful to hold the containers close to the chin to avoid sprinkling the airplane with Rao’s spaghetti sauce. It was a good thing we finished before reaching Palo Duro Canyon, because the wind picked up about that point, and the ride turned bumpy. 

Mike: As the canyon seemingly slid beneath the wings of the Elyminator, my imagination took flight. Those wind-carved spires and water-worn washes had cut side canyons down from the caprock, meandering into the Red River. This is kind of place where the western novel would grow to epic proportions. And we, like an eagle or hawk, buzzed above the storied land as Terry Stafford’s famous song played in my head.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com