General Aviation

This New Year’s eve I would like to introduce my readers to the World’s First Deaf Instrument Rated Pilot, Stephen Hopson. You might have read his post about his Flight Instructor who gave selflessly, if not please do so (pilots are from out of this world, just a different breed). Stephen, who is deaf since birth, is a Private Pilot with an Instrument Rating, a Charles Schwab Stock Broker and an Inspirational Speaker of great magnitude!

Adversity does not discriminate – Stephen Hopson

Becoming an airline pilot, is usually not an easy path (with some lucky exceptional cases). There are always a lot of obstacles on the way; and some give up, while the others keep pushing and trying, and never give up until they achieve that goal. I have the honor of knowing many such determined pilots, the pilots who never accepted the “fate” and the stronger the resistance, the stronger their desire became to make it.

Stephen is one of them. Do you know how a deaf person can hear an airplane takeoff? Well, I didn’t until I saw this video of Stephen explaining how. I am still amazed at the fact that a deaf since birth person can learn how to talk, and he shows us how he can hear the airplanes takeoff!

And then to top it off, he even became the first deaf pilot to get an Instrument Rating! For those who are not familiar with the term Instrument Rating; it means flying an airplane in the clouds by reference to only the airplane instruments. In my career as a flight instructor for over a decade, I know that instrument rating is in fact the hardest pilot rating to obtain. Stephen got it because he was told that he can not have it.

Now I can fly both Blind and Deaf – Stephen Hopson, upon getting his IR

His stock broker career also began on a similar note. The tougher the circumstances, more the determination. And this is what I wanted to share with all of us today – the year 2009 may not have been the best for a lot of us, but we need to get prepared for the 2010. Many pilots lost their jobs, or were put on furloughs, many recently certified Commercial Pilots who were hoping to get hired and all of a sudden found themselves with no job and a huge student loan to pay, many flight instructors ended up working for minimum wages as their flight schools shut down. But then, this is our adversity, and our chance to conquer the fate.

May 2010 be a better year for all. Happy New Year.

Stephen writes on his blog at http://adversityuniversityblog.com.

There are scholarships available for physically disabled or handicapped individuals who want to become pilots. There are other Scholarships, Grants and Student Loans available as well, and then there is Federal Aid for Flight Training.

This blog is about General Aviation and Flight Training. So far I have been writing about flying lessons in an airplane, as this is what I have been involved in as a professional pilot and flight instructor. Even though before I got into airplanes, I used to fly gliders. And during my own flight training I got me an opportunity to sky dive, which was a total blast!

As a matter of fact, a few weeks ago I decided to drive down to the Lodi, CA airport, which is right off highway 99, and got some information on taking some professional sky diving lessons. I was hoping to be able to do this before I get back to working full time again. And today, a friend and a former student Christophe (from France) sent me a link to this cool Hang Glider pilot’s video on YouTube, and now I am thinking….:-)

I want to be that Guy – Nicholas Cage

Pilot or a passenger, we all have wondered what would happen if the airplane that I’m flying in is hit by lightning?

We know that friction causes drag.  What we may not realize is that this same friction also creates static electricity.  As an airplane flies through the air it continuously creates a static charge, especially on the aircraft control surfaces.  This situation is only made worse when flying through any kind of precipitation or even worse, volcanic ash.   Static wicks which are attached to the trailing edges of control surfaces are designed to help dissipate this charge to the surrounding air.  Static wicks protect not only our flight instruments and radios but also the flight surfaces themselves.  Without the static wicks attached, the static charge on the surface would try to “jump” the un-conductive control hinges to the rest of the aircraft.  This “jump” or arc could cause permanent damage to the surface itself if the static charge had the opportunity to build sufficiently.  To further protect against this damaging “jump”, manufacturers also attach conductive bonding strips to keep the static build-up to a minimum.

The airplanes are primarily made of aluminum which is an excellent conductor of electricity.  This conductive property of aluminum creates a “Faraday cage” around the airplane protecting its’ contents. This “cage” shields the contents inside from the current that might be present on the surface of the Faraday cage.   Although there is a lot of static electricity on the outside skin of an aircraft, the aluminum conducts the electricity away from the interior and towards those static wicks.

Now some aircraft are not manufactured with traditional aluminum but with a high-strength composite material; like the Beechcraft Premier or Cessna Columbia.  Fortunately, engineers have designed strike protection into the composite material by making one of the layers a graphite cloth and aluminum ply.  This ply, which is highly conductive, also serves to create the same “Faraday cage” affect that is found on traditionally manufactured airplanes.  Some composite airplanes also have an additional layer of protection against lightning strikes by installing Metal Oxide Varistors (MOV) throughout the circuitry.  MOVs are designed for failure.  If an MOV senses a sudden surge of current (from say a lightning strike) than it is designed to break and protect the rest of the aircraft’s delicate electronic systems.

So obviously with all these various lightning strike/static electricity protection systems, engineers are designing aircraft with the assumption that aircraft stand a reasonable good chance of being struck by lightning.  In fact, it is believed that most commercial aircraft are struck up to twice a year. Most of the time, a lightning strike is a minor event (thanks to those protective systems).  The only evidence left behind in most strikes is a small lightning entry and exit point.   In the photo below, you can see where lightning made a small entry point on the top part of the aircraft’s radome (nose) and you can see the exit point about 6 inches lower.

Sometimes aircraft damage from a lightning strike is more severe.  Lightning has been known to pop circuit breakers (which fails aircraft systems), magnetize control surfaces, punch large holes through aluminum (although this is extremely rare) and flicker or even cause the failure of some glass cockpit displays. This leads us to the next question, has an airplane ever crashed as a direct result of lightning?

I wish I could say no, but accident investigation evidence says otherwise.  The Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) through the Aviation Safety Network lists several airplane accidents where lightning was a direct contributing factor in the accident.  You can see the list for yourself.  The most recent listing is a Dornier 228 that on December 04, 2003 took a direct lightning strike that the crew immediately reported.  The lightning apparently damaged the rudder and made aircraft control very difficult.  Fortunately, there were no fatalities although but the aircraft was considered a total loss.  There are older accidents listed as well by the Aviation Safety Network and some of these, although very tragic, have benefited travel safety today in the form of better design and engineering in aircraft systems.