andrewAZ Pilots Association Gives $6,000 in Scholarships 

 

By Andrew Vogeney 

 

As a part of our mission to support sustained GA in Arizona, the Arizona Pilots Association awarded three scholarships during our Annual Meeting. This year we are supporting three deserving high school students with a total of $6,000 toward their aviation educations!

Each of our 2017 Scholarship award winners will have finished their junior year of high school by the time you read this, and plan to re-enroll in EVIT’s aviation program next year. They’ll also be dual-enrolled in Chandler-Gilbert Community College’s aviation program, well on their way to joining our pilot ranks. 

Special thanks to scholarship committee members Rick Bosshardt and Jim Timm for going through the tough selection process with me this year. All of our applicants were deserving of our support, and as always it was tough for us to pick just three. But our three high school students who walked away with a “big check” really did deserve it. If you missed the meeting, here are this year’s winners.

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Kayla Phillips aspires to be a commercial pilot and work for Southwest Airlines, where her mom has been a flight attendant for over 20 years. She is an active volunteer in her community and served an 18-day mission trip in Africa. When thinking about flying in a small plane with a family friend, Kayla said “The moment that little, 2-seater, orange and white plane was off the runway, I knew that this is how I wanted to live my life - with my office in the sky. There's just something about being a few thousand feet above the world to help you see clearly and from a new perspective.”

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Avree Anderson also has ties to Southwest, where both of his parents are flight attendants. He’s learned through sports and volunteer work that hard work pays off, and hopes to bring his work ethic and perseverance to the airlines.  In addition to working as a commercial pilot, Avree hopes to own his own plane and take advantage of the Arizona backcountry. When asked about his goals, Avree shared “The feeling of lifting off the ground in an airplane is one that will never get old for me. With the long term view in mind, my goal is to work as an airline pilot for Southwest like my parents, and own my own small airplane as well.”

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Josiah Plant has been interested in aviation for as long has he can remember, and hopes to become a flight instructor so he can inspire others as well. He builds and flies RC planes, volunteers on weekends helping build EVIT’s Sonex aircraft, and has already completed college courses in aviation. When we asked why Josiah was interested in aviation, he shared what we probably all think every day: “Soaring through the clouds, being able to fly in wide open space is amazing, just the thought of flying through the sky thrills me. Aviation in all aspects, weather, mechanics, history, different careers, etc. is a field in which I aspire to learn and become more skilled.”

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All three award winners came highly recommended, and it was an honor to introduce them to our amazing community of Arizona pilots. I can’t wait to meet another group of deserving kids next year, and it’s my hope that we can do more and more for our next generation of pilots. 

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If you have a moment and are so inclined, consider visiting the AZ Pilots Website and making a donation toward our scholarship program. If we each make even a small donation, we can award a fourth scholarship next year… and maybe a fifth the year after that! Heck, you’re probably reading this article in triple digit heat, wishing summer wasn’t here already. If you’re leaving the plane hangered or tied down this weekend, consider donating whatever that $200 hamburger would have cost you had you gone up this weekend. And maybe again in July or August! Your donation goes a long way for these kids, and helps ensure the sky will be filled with the “tiny planes” for years to come. 

 

 

 

 

Now that you have reached your cruise altitude, you can switch off the fasten seatbelt sign and take a moment to relax. If you are in a technologically advanced airplane, or carrying a tablet, you are probably looking at multi-colored LCDs throwing all sorts of information at you. My Electronic Flight Information System has readouts of fuel flow, range, miles-per-gallon and indicated/true/ground speeds. Is there a way to minimize fuel flow, maximize MPG, and maximize airspeed all at once? Probably not, but we will explore the factors effecting each and some other performance metrics that we may not normally think about.

 

Maximum Time Aloft

The airplane's time aloft or endurance is its fuel on board (gal) divided by fuel flow (gph). To maximize time aloft, one must maximize fuel capacity and minimize fuel flow. Fuel flow is minimized by using the least amount of power to sustain flight. This is the bottom of the power required for level flight curve. On an endurance flight, as fuel is consumed and the airplane weight decreases the minimum power required will decrease and the throttle can be reduced. To fly for maximum endurance, you will be flying really slow, at or near your Vx speed, so this is rarely done in general aviation. An example of when this would be useful is on an observation mission where the airplane needs to remain on station for the longest possible time.

 

Best Miles per Gallon, Best Range Speed

This probably gets your attention because now we are talking about saving money. The best miles per gallon will result in the maximum range of the airplane. Another way to express it is that this cruise speed will use the least amount of fuel for a given trip distance. The fuel used on a trip depends on fuel flow and the time it takes to make the trip. So now we need to minimize fuel flow (keep power low) but make the trip fast enough to use as little fuel as possible (keep power high!). The middle ground is found at the bottom of the L/D curve of the airplane and is close to, if not the same as, the Vy speed. In the interest of saving fuel, we get to fly a little faster but still at a relatively slow airspeed.

 

Best Speed per Gallon

Optimum cruise speed was derived by B.H. Carson of the U.S. Naval Academy in 1980. For those of you that can remember back that far, this was after the oil embargo. Suddenly the country was focused on the fuel efficiency of cars and airplanes. Carson addressed the question of using miles-per-gallon as the optimizing metric for airplanes. He noted that for airplanes the speed for optimum fuel efficiency was quite slow and utilized only a small percentage of the airplane's available horse power. Instead he derived a new metric, the optimum cruise speed which maximizes the speed of the airplane relative to fuel flow. It is the best speed per gallon-per-hour ratio that can be achieved. The optimum cruise speed that he derived is 1.32 times the best miles-per gallon speed. It is a bit more practical than flying at best range speed.

 

Here are the V speeds discussed in this article derived from the performance charts I measured during the flight test period of my RV-10. The blue line is the thrust required for level flight and is read from the axis on the left in pounds. The red line is the power required for level flight and is read from the vertical axis on the right in horsepower. The maximum endurance speed is a very slow 70 KIAS and only requires 57 horsepower from the 260 horsepower engine. The maximum range speed is 90 KIAS and requires about 100 horsepower. The optimum cruise speed is 120 KIAS, still somewhat slow, but better, and requires around 120 horse power - still only 46% power.

 

Next month we will discuss how to determine these performance curves for an airplane through flight testing.

 

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