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Articles by Peter Garrison
Off Target: The High Cost of Trying to Salvage a Bad Approach
A Georgia pilot, 52, had 380 hours, an instrument rating, and a Cirrus SR22. He was working on his commercial. He had the day free, so he called an instructor friend and arranged to do some flying. One of the skills tested for the commercial license—it used to be required for the private as well, but no longer—is the 180-degree, power-off approach to a landing. You cut power to idle on the downwind leg abeam a target point on the runway.
Off Target: The High Cost of Trying to Salvage a Bad Approach
A Georgia pilot, 52, had 380 hours, an instrument rating, and a Cirrus SR22. He was working on his commercial. He had the day free, so he called an instructor friend and arranged to do some flying. One of the skills tested for the commercial license-it used to be required for the private as well, but no longer-is the 180-degree, power-off approach to a landing. You cut power to idle on the downwind leg abeam a target point on the runway.
Pilots Must Be Prepared for ‘Unacceptable Stall Behavior'
It is a truth universally acknowledged that when an airplane stalls, the pilot must push its nose down. And yet it sometimes happens that even quite experienced pilots do the opposite. That was the case in February 2024, when two airline transport pilots, who had a combined total of more than 23,000 hours in their logbooks, conducted a post-maintenance stall check on a Hawker Beechcraft 900XP.
In the Cockpit, Are Two Heads Better Than One? Original
The scattered wreckage of the 1948 A-model Bonanza was identified by comparing photos, taken from a circling Cessna, with ones of the formerly pristine polished-aluminum airplane. It had fallen and slid more than a mile after flying, under control and at cruising speed, into the sheer cliff that formed one face of a 12,000-foot mountain. There it remained. The terrain was too hazardous to permit recovery of the wreckage. If you're not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for?
Medley of Errors Causes Alaska Pilot's Downfall
It was the last day of the hunting season. Tanks of fuel stashed at a remote Alaskan airstrip had to be retrieved. Time was short since a storm was approaching. A Cessna 206 landed on a gravel bar in the Porcupine River, and the pilot began loading 15-gallon fuel containers into the plane. To save time, she asked two hunters, who were waiting there for a different airplane, to empty two of the containers into her wing tanks. The whole operation lasted 12 minutes.
Peter Garrison: The Saving of Air France 447, as told by St. Exupéry (This Did Not Happen)
Jean-Claude was in the left seat. He was senior to me, but I was flying. We were near the Equator, where Mermoz and Guillaumet – salut, old comrades! – had once flown. But they, poor fellows, had not been at 35,000 feet! We entered the clouds at what looked like a soft spot in a squall line. Then the turbulence came, and with it lightning that never stopped. The laughing ogres of the night were shaking their lanterns at us, trespassers in their secret caves.
Staggerwing - Already Old When New
Peter Garrison The Staggerwing was the climax, and the end, of an era. Late in 1932, the newly formed Beech Aircraft Company flew its first product, a five-seat biplane with a 420-hp radial engine and fixed landing gear enclosed in huge fairings. Walter Beech gave it model number 17, since the last model built by the Travel Air company, which he had founded in 1925 with an all-star cast of Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman and sold in 1929 to Curtiss-Wright, had been its 16th.
Lift Unexplained
Peter Garrison An explanation is a collage in which bits and pieces of the familiar combine to make an image of the unfamiliar. The more obscure the thing being explained, the more numerous and remote the elements that comprise the explanation. It’s a wonder we understand anything at all.
Peter Garrison:” Why Can Aeroplanes Fly Upside-Down?
In 1945, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, precursor of NASA and source of much of our knowledge about practical aerodynamics, published a hefty compendium of aerofoil data, NACA Technical Report 824, which later appeared in book form under the title Theory of Wing Sections. The names of the authors, Abbott and von Doenhoff, have become household words wherever aerofoils are regularly discussed at the dinner table.
Peter Garrison - What worked on his homebuilts - and what didn’t
After 20 years of flying my second homebuilt, preceded by 9 years in my first, I wish I could say that most things that can go wrong already have; but the gods might think me insolent. At this point, however, I can at least say what has worked and what has not. My first project, Melmoth, which was destroyed in 1982, on the ground, as I sat in it, by an errant Cessna, had several features that were unusual at the time.
Tail wags Dog - SA Flyer
Peter Garrison ‘Hinge moment’ is the technical name for the force required to deflect a control surface. In small, relatively slow aeroplanes hinge moments are not very large; pilots move the controls with ease. But as control surfaces get larger and speeds get higher, hinge moments grow rapidly. Hinge moments increase with the chord length of the control surface, with the square of speed and with the cube of the linear dimensions of the aeroplane.
Don’t be scared of the Lift Coefficient
Block that Coefficient! I have to admit that when I encounter equations in a book, I usually just skip over them. Often some phrase like, “It may be readily seen that…” precedes them, and so I figure that since plenty of other people must be readily seeing whatever there is to see, there’s no reason that I need to as well. Nevertheless, I think of equations as something like fibre in food: nutritionally null, but indispensable to mental digestion.
X-15 and the Fastest Men
SCOTT CROSSFIELD WAS THE FIRST to fly the X-15, and he probably knew the airplane better than anyone else. He had left his job at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1955 and gone to North American Aviation, which had just won the X-15 contract, to bring a pilot's perspective to the design. Crossfield was an extraordinary test pilot, but at the end of the first flight, a seemingly simple power-off glide on June 8, 1959, the airplane tested him.
REMEMBER THE GERMAN AEROPLANE
My son Nick, who was screening a series of classic films for his friends, put on the 1981 Spielberg pulse-pounder, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which came out in the year he was born and therefore stood to him, in terms of the history of film and the decline of taste, as Casablanca does to me. FOR MOST PEOPLE, THE MOVIE’S most memorable scene was the encounter between our bullwhip-wielding archaeologist hero and an Arab swordsman in a Cairo marketplace.
DROP TEST - SA Flyer
Safety in aviation means coming down softly. I once wrote that it would be impossible for a skydiver in a wingsuit to flare and land without a parachute. THE AERODYNAMIC EFFICIENCY of a wingsuit is so low, and its area so small, that even with all the stored energy of a 100-mph fall it could not simultaneously support a human body and slow to a safe landing speed. Shortly after I delivered this pronouncement, a 42-year old British stuntman named Gary Connery did it.
Inside How, Why Plane Crashed in Queens
The November 2001 crash, shortly after takeoff from JFK, of American Airlines Flight 587 sent a tremor through the aviation community. It involved an extremely rare event: the structural failure, and complete separation, of one of the major flying surfaces-namely, the vertical stabilizer-of the airplane, an Airbus A300-600. In the ensuing loss of control, the engines also broke away from the airplane, which crashed on Long Island killing all 265 persons aboard.
IMPOSTORS IN THE COCKPIT
Things aren’t always what they seem. One of the pleasures of this job is hearing from readers. Some write to correct my errors or to note my omissions. Some are hostile, though the population recommending my immediate consignment to the infernal fires has for some reason dwindled in recent years. Maybe they went first. Some ask questions. Some of the questions are standard ones, but some are ones that would never have occurred to me and get me thinking about stuff in new ways.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
You may have noticed, if you follow the adverts in American aviation magazines, a sudden multiplication of the number and variety of angle of attack (AoA) indicators on offer for smaller general aviation aircraft. THIS BURST OF ACTIVITY was triggered by a new FAA policy allowing AoA instrumentation to be installed in certificated aircraft without a burdensome STC process, as long as it is independent of the existing pitot-static plumbing.
Invert to Untangle
When climbing, you need some right rudder to keep the ball centred. If you perform a half roll and continue to climb upside-down, which rudder will you have to use to stay coordinated? Why do we need right rudder in a climb, anyway? Is it because of slipstream rotation? The propeller drags some air around with it, and the aeroplane continually advances through this slipstream of deflected air.
WINGED VICTORY - SA Flyer
(BOOK REVIEW by PETER GARRISON) From time to time I find myself in the study of some aficionado of aviation – former Flying Magazine editor Stephan Wilkinson, for example – admiring the cargo of his bookshelves. Many a volume that I would like to sit down with on a rainy afternoon; many that I have never heard of.
Amelia Earhart’s Final Flight
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The Case of the Absent Avgas
Some accidents are preceded by warning signs. The takeoff into the teeth of an impending thunderstorm, the pilots smelling of alcohol, the stuffing of the last bag into an airplane already almost tipping over onto its tail—onlookers shake their heads or hold their breath. But some accidents arrive entirely without warning, and it is hard to know what or whom to blame.
The Riddle of Takeoff Distance
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Clarity in Communication
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How Does an Airplane Glide?
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Aftermath: Mountain, Cloud, Highway
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The Electric Airplane
It’s just 55 miles from my home airport in Los Angeles to the Tehachapi gliderport where Pete Buck has his hangar, but it’s usually a jarring flight through torrents of wind that tumble eastward off the mountains like whitewater. Not today. The air is perfectly still. The hundreds of huge windmills that dot the ridges are motionless, the sky is without clouds, the visibility without limit.
Technicalities: Papa’s Place
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Aftermath: A Siege of Troubles
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Technicalities: Making Aviation Sustainable
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What the Red Baron Never Knew
Computer analysis of World War I aircraft shows precisely why some were deadly and others, death traps. Pilots of the Sopwith Camel complained that the engine, guns, fuel tank, and pilot were clustered too close. They didn't know the airplane's very shape generated drag that hampered its performance. (NASM) By Peter Garrison Air & Space Magazine | Subscribe January 2008 The “flying machine,” born only a decade before World War I, matured swiftly during its teenage years.
Technicalities: I Sing the Airplane Electric
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Aftermath: Midair
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Technicalities: The Story Behind the German Airplane in Raiders of the Lost Ark
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White Rocket
How all U.S. Air Force pilots since 1968 have met their Mach. Excellent visibility helps T-38 pilots fly tight formations. (Northrop Grumman Corporation (NASM SI NEG. #00079050)) By Peter Garrison Air & Space Magazine | Subscribe September 2005 TWENTY-THREE YEARS OLD, FRESH OUT OF COLLEGE, and a newly minted Air Force lieutenant, Howard Morland reported to Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas, for flight training in January 1966.
Flameout
Why the fire in a perfectly healthy jet engine can die. By Peter Garrison Air & Space Magazine | Subscribe September 2006 In the early afternoon of May 24, 1988, TACA Flight 110, a Salvadoran Boeing 737 arriving from Belize, was picking its way among thunderstorms ringing New Orleans when the unthinkable happened: Both of the airliner’s jet engines quit. Frantically, the crew members tried to restart them.
Is There An Overbanking Tendency?
A friend sent me a copy of an article with the title, “Questioning the Overbanking Tendency.” I did not have to read far to discover the author’s answer: “For all practical purposes,” he states, “there is no such thing as an overbanking tendency.” He has the honour of contradicting the FAA’s Airplane Flying Handbook, which he quotes: “As the radius of the turn becomes smaller, a significant difference develops between the speed of the inside wing and the speed of the outside wing … This...
Making Range - SA Flyer
It ought not to be true, but it is: In every life there comes a moment when you wish you had a little more fuel. Perhaps the headwind was stronger than forecast; the gauges dropped below a quarter sooner than you hoped they would; the descent and climb for an en-route stop to drop off a passenger used up more fuel than you expected; you took a detour around weather; or your planning was careless in the first place.
In the Mustang’s Wake
By Peter Garrison 7/2/2015 • Aviation History Magazine The P-51 Mustang was fast. Historian Ray Wagner called its last iteration, the 490-mph P-51H, “probably the fastest prop-driven plane actually used in wartime.” The cautious “probably” and “actually used” are significant; like the Focke Wulf Ta-152, a high-altitude variant of the Fw-190, the H model Mustang arrived very late in World War II and played scarcely any part in the fighting.
How Warehouses Help Ecommerce Rewire Asian Shopping
Peter Garrison is Head of Strategic Customers at LOGOS Property, based in Singapore The development of new transportation networks has a profound impact on the organization of our societies, changing the relationship between physical goods and people, and in turn changing the institutions that govern our societies.
The Unconventional Burt Rutan
By Peter Garrison 9/20/2009 • Aviation History Magazine Rutan looks ahead to a future when ordinary people would spend their vacation nest eggs on hops outside the atmosphere, and ride “transfer vans” to unwind in orbiting hotels On June 21, 2004, the crowd at Mojave, California, cheered as an ebullient Mike Melvill wriggled out of the little winged capsule in which he had just made a brief, violent trip to the fringes of outer space.
Beech Starship: ‘Little Bighorn With Wings’
By Peter Garrison 3/6/2019 • Aviation History Magazine Expectations were high when Burt Rutan teamed up with Beech to produce the Starship business aircraft, but the result was a rare failure for the innovative designer. In 1955 the Beech Aircraft Company considered marketing the French Morane-Saulnier MS.760 Paris jet in the United States.
The Perfect Airplane Wing
The Perfect Airplane Wing Before the outbreak of World War II, relations between British and German aeronautical engineers were sufficiently cordial for Reginald Mitchell, chief designer of the Supermarine Spitfire, to write to his German counterpart, Ernst Heinkel, congratulating him on his He 70 Blitz. Read Full Article »
The Perfect Airplane Wing
Before the outbreak of World War II, relations between British and German aeronautical engineers were sufficiently cordial for Reginald Mitchell, chief designer of the Supermarine Spitfire, to write to his German counterpart, Ernst Heinkel, congratulating him on his He 70 Blitz. The Blitz (German for lightning), designed in 1932, was a fast five-seat mailplane.
How Cold Chain Innovation Powers China E-Commerce
LOGOS developed a new fulfillment center for Toll Group in Australia Ten minutes. That’s all it took to receive my recent order of chilled craft beer from Ele.me (an Alibaba Group company). There was no need for me to make a trip down to the local pub or to have planned ahead and bought, then refrigerated some beer from the grocery store. It was simply a click and a short wait away. Twenty minutes later a separate order of eggs, milk, and fresh chicken breast arrived.
Technicalities: A Casualty of the War
In May 2016, I met a woman named Susan Mozena. When she learned that I fly, she told me her father, Charles d’Olive, had been an ace with five victories in World War I. My first thought was that my friend Javier Arango would have gotten a kick out of my having had a close encounter with some genuine Great War DNA. But that could not be. A month earlier, Javier himself had become, so to speak, a delayed casualty of that war when the Nieuport 28 he was flying crashed for unknown reasons, killing him.
Aftermath: Scoping Out the Storms
A Missouri businessman, 54, and his dog, who accompanied him everywhere, died when his Piper Cherokee Six broke up in flight over Cuba, Missouri, in 2015. The 1,200-hour pilot had filed an instrument flight plan from Branson, Missouri, where he had a vacation home, northeastward to St. Louis. He was cruising at 5,000 feet.
Technicalities: Peter and Nick’s Excellent Adventure
A phalanx of restricted and Military Operating Areas confronts pilots heading north out of Los Angeles. Between sprawling Edwards Air Force Base and the Naval Air Weapons Station situated at water-free China Lake, a pilot studying the chart for the first time must think the way impassable.
Aftermath: Punching Through
Santa Paula Airport, in Southern California, lies between two mountain ridges oriented generally east-west. The closer of them, a couple of miles south of the runway, rises 2,000 feet above the airport elevation. On an August morning in 2015, a low stratus layer had crept up the valley from the Pacific, covering the airport. Fifteen hundred feet deep, it would thin and eventually burn off, probably by midmorning.
Aftermath: The Unseen
In September 2014, a Cessna 172 overtook and collided with a homebuilt Searey amphibian on final approach to the Buffalo-Lancaster Regional Airport (BQR) in Lancaster, New York. The 172 pilot, 78, with 2,500 hours, and his 14-year-old passenger died when their airplane spiraled out of control and crashed. Remarkably — since one tends to think of midair collisions as unsurvivable accidents, with both airplanes spinning out of the sky in pieces — the Searey fared much better.
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