Aviation BS and Photo Thread

CGI

 

Or a hell of an RC model!

 

I’ve seen countless sunrises by now, but this was a cool one.

 

Between general aviation and commercial flying, I flew my record hours in 2023: 840.7 hours.

 

490 hours for work, about 30 pleasure for me.

 

40 hrs in the cub with 200+ landings for '23. Wish my yearly time was more, but I just putz around when I do fly.

 

Taken tonight along I-5N @ USMC Camp Pendleton

 

@kodiakisland Were you putzing around yesterday in the yellow cub? Thought I saw it fly over a couple of times as I was taking down lights, and possibly another vintage aircraft looping around.

 

No, not me. Looks like someone was in the club plane just doing landings at the airport. If I’m just doing landings I’ll go to Gravette or Sugar for some terrain and obstacles.

 

I live just south of the Sugar strip, so I may catch traffic going in and out of there. Both passes looked to be headed back to the BV airport. Weather was great Sunday -- today, not so much.

 

What is the story of that.

 

Flying along at 35’ and 120kts and the one of bearings in the engine compressor section just let go. Instant grenade and total loss of the engine. Limped it on the other engine about 20 miles to a little concrete strip and then spent a few days replacing the engine.

 

Possibly looks like N559RA its definitely a LR55 and looks to be their paint scheme if so, that tail had a runway accident and substantial damage a few years back when it hit a snow bank due to pilots then had landed wrong runway on a closed runway instead of the assigned. fortunately the runway they landed on was closed for snow removal and the workers and their vehicles were on break and off the runway but tower had the lights on to assist the snow removal crew to see the edges. still no excuse for the pilots landing on the wrong assigned runway. again another reason why RAAS is now being implemented more and more to EGPWS units although just good lod fashion attention to detail should be expected.

it'll be interesting to see if they just landed long and/or hot and blew off the end or if there was a mechanical issue resulting from a previous repair from the previous incident on that airframe..we will have to watch NTSB for the report

reminds me of the Burbank incident "land and hold short of the chevron station" as i refer to it nowadays, but those pilots did not have a contaminated runway.. they just thought they could bring it in like the space shuttle and expect to stop before blowing thru the fence and crossing the street and laying there kissing the gas pumps

 

If you’ve never had to guess at night where the snow covered runway is based on the taxiway signs and other features you can see are, have you really lived? More than once I’ve done that, had the snow cloud clear and then realized that I’m actually in the sod next to the runway.

 

Haven’t had that but broke out on a mins approach to pellston, mi one winter night to say “where’s the runway”. We landed in between the runway edge lights and taxied in between the blue taxiway lights. Thank god for garmin surface watch

 

https://x.com/lockheedmartin/status/1745919334956851552?s=46