Up and Away

A SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket carrying one of the company's Dragon capsules departed the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A at 12:00 EDT on Wednesday, 05 October 2022. The successful launch marked the beginning of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission to the International Space Station, and the sixth instance of crewed flight aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. The Dragon capsule—dubbed Endurance—will dock autonomously to the space-facing port of the ISS’s Harmony module on Thursday, 6 October at approximately 16:57 EDT.

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Welcome to this special edition of Airborne. As we work our way through the sport aviation industry, it's impossible to ignore the excitement and following that’s built up around a new generation of aviation competitions... all involving short take off and landing skills. STOL skills can be critical to a number of aviation jobs but this skill set also can be a lot of fun to pursue. The new wave of STOL competitions has popularized the genre far more than originally envisioned. Few pilots have proven this better than Wild West Aircraft’s Steve Henry who has won a slew of competitions around the country and is getting ready to win even more. He has built 7 personal airplanes and named each one YeeHaw 1-7. He is currently flying YeeHaw 6, which is a Highlander with an Edge Performance EPeX 300 hp Yamaha engine. YeeHaw 8 is currently getting ready to make its first fli

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On 12 August 2022, a hard clutch engagement forced an AFSOC (U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command) CV-22 Osprey crew to make an emergency landing in a nature preserve on the Norwegian island of Senja. Onsite repairs to the downed aircraft were deemed impossible, and Norwegian authorities—citing the delicacy of the Stongodden nature preserve’s bucolic terrain—balked at the notion of a conventional salvage operation. Lilium has announced that its Phoenix II eVTOL technology demonstrator aircraft achieved its first full transition from vertical, thrust-powered flight to horizontal, wing-borne, aerodynamic flight. This was accomplished during a 23 September test-flight. The company currently holds provisional sales agreements for 483 aircraft. The pilot shortage may see a small respite of sorts, as statisticians dig into FAA number

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At approximately 21:30 EDT on the night of 27 September 2022, as the southeastern U.S. braced for Hurricane Ian’s landfall, a separate storm—believed to have been a tornado—struck the city of Pembroke Pines in southeastern Florida’s Broward County. Damage caused by the storm, though widespread, was particularly heavy at North Perry Airport (HWO), where some 15 aircraft were overturned and otherwise battered about. The U.S. National Aerobatic Championships will return to Salina, Kansas in October 2022. The 2022 U.S. National Aerobatic Championships will see pilots of both powered aircraft and gliders compete in five categories: Primary, Sportsman, Intermediate, Advanced, and Unlimited. ANN expects to have to offer up more than a few announcements like this one as the state of Florida dries out and shakes out after the indi

Jenny, I’ve Got Your Number...

Among the magnificent antique aircraft on display at EAA’s AirVenture 2022 was a 1918 Curtiss Jenny painstakingly constructed to Curtiss’s original specifications by the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Chapter 1414 in cooperation with the Vintage Wings and Wheels Museum. The two organizations, both of which hail from the village of Poplar Grove in north-central Illinois, set about the project in service of a noble, joint ambition to build a flying aircraft representative of aviation’s iconic early days.

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Lilium has announced that its Phoenix II eVTOL technology demonstrator aircraft achieved its first full transition from vertical, thrust-powered flight to horizontal, wing-borne, aerodynamic flight. This was accomplished during a 23 September test-flight. The company currently holds provisional sales agreements for 483 aircraft. DJI has introduced its new DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise Series. The DJI Mavic 3E and DJI Mavic 3T are reportedly the most comprehensive improvement to the world’s compact drone offerings in three years. The two new Mavic 3 Enterprise drones are based on DJI’s prosumer Mavic 3 series. The Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences has partnered with Wingcopter—the German maker of eVTOL delivery-drones—to test the logistics, economics, and general feasibility of delivering consumer-goods to rural residents via a system comprising Win

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The pilot shortage may see a small respite of sorts, as statisticians dig into FAA numbers to see that 9,087 freshly certificated commercial airline pilots have been minted in the last 12 months, besting 2019 numbers by nearly 2,500 pilots. The AirLine Pilot’s Association is happy to see the improvement, as Captain Joe DePete announced at the Association’s annual Air Safety Forum. Wright State University and First Flight Aviation will be teaming up to offer flight training near the birthplace of aviation itself in Huffman Prairie, Ohio. The trustees of Wright State University have passed a resolution approving the provision of pilot training classes in the course catalog, allowing enrolled students to take them as electives. The United States’ Air National Guard’s 1st Lieutenant Klsey Flannery took to th

To Everything Turn, Turn, Turn

Hartzell Propeller’s latest works can be seen in the fullness of their sleek, purposeful splendor at the National Business Aviation Association’s 2022 Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (NBAA-BACE) in Orlando, Florida from 18 through 20 October. New aircraft sporting Hartzell’s aluminum and composite propellers for piston and turboprop-engined aircraft will be on static-display for public viewing.

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Plans are moving forward to begin year-round programming at a new facility, the EAA Education Center, that opened in July adjacent to the EAA Aviation Museum in Oshkosh. The Pilot Proficiency Center area hosted numerous full-capacity sessions during AirVenture week that featured clinics that incorporated flight simulators in scenarios that ranged from mountain flying techniques to emergency flight procedures. A very fortunate Commercial pilot and CFI has earned a $2,500 award. Mike Petrucci has been enamored with aviation from a very early age. His father would take him to airshows and help foster his passion for flight. A close family friend, who was a pilot and operated a charter business, further encouraged his interest in aviation. The U.S. National Aerobatic Championships will return to Salina, Kansas in October 2022. The 2022 U.S. National Aerobatic

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Following years of intensive development and choruses of naysaying, Alice, the all-electric, nine-passenger commuter aircraft designed and built by Eviation, has made its inaugural flight. The nine minute undertaking saw the unconventional machine liftoff at approximately 07:10 PDT from Grant County International Airport (MWH) in Moses Lake, Washington. Test pilot Steve Crane urged Alice to an altitude of 3,500-feet and made several passes over the airport vicinity before bringing the sleek, low-wing aircraft to safe landing. Prince Albert II, of Monaco, has announced first details of the World Sky Race—a race around the world by airships (blimps, dirigibles, and zeppelins). Winner's prize: $5 million. Explorers Club member Prince Albert, Google co-founder Serge Brin, and Iron Maiden front man Bruce Dickinson are all among the world figures who now see air