April 2006 Edition Chapter #407

 

                                                             www.eaa407.org

South East Idaho Officers:

    Austin Moses, President

    Jerry Phillips, Vice President

    John Bakken, Treasurer

    Pete Stewart, Secretary

    Harold Mothersill, Website

    Dale Cresap, Newsletter

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President's Message:

Due to Easter this weekend we will delay our April meeting to April 22, 2006 at 6:00 pm in Pocatello .  John Bakken will take us through pre-flight inspections and owner authorized maintenance demonstrations.  If any of you have specific items you would like John to cover, please let him know directly.

 

EAA CHAPTER 407 Minutes, March 18, 2006

 

Our March meeting was the annual builder’s tour and was held in Blackfoot.  Two builder’s aircraft were reviewed.  The meeting opened at 4:00 PM at Pete Stewart's Hanger on the airport with 15 members in attendance.  The minutes from the February meeting were read.  No new business was proposed; John Bakken was not in attendance so a review of the financial summary was postponed until April. 

 

Old Business: Dale Cresap said that he has made contact with the Idaho School for the blind and is finalizing the date for the Young Eagles Flight.  He asked for volunteers to both fly and for ground duty. (As of this date, April 12, the scheduled date is Wednesday, May 3rd in Gooding)

 

Pete and his son Andrew are building a Murphy Elite.  The kit was ordered in October, 2005 and received January 12, 2006.  To date, just over 300 hours have been invested in the project resulting in the completion of the entire empennage and the right wing.  The Elite is assembled from mostly pre-punched parts and Avex rivets.  Pete anticipates completion some time this summer.

 

The second site on the tour was at Terry and Natalie Bergiven's in Moreland.  They are building a Sonex.  This is a completely scratch built plane from plans.  They have been working on this project for several years and have the empennage, both wings and most of the structural on the fuselage complete to the point where Terry can sit in it and make engine noises.  Natalie is the proclaimed parts and storage member of the team.  When Terry wants to know where a part is stored, Natalie can lay her hands right on it.  The workmanship on this project is just beautiful.  Kudos to both of them.

 

The next meeting will be in Pocatello , Saturday, April 15th at 6:00 PM.

 

Pete Stewart

Secretary

 

Young Eagles

The Young Eagle rally for the Idaho School for the Deaf and the Blind in Gooding is set for Wednesday May 3. I went to Gooding and met with the school superintendent and principal on Friday 3/31 and they are really excited about the rally. They already have the permission slips signed and are teaching the kids about airplanes. The expected turnout is 60 kids, so I am still looking for additional pilots.

 

Editor’s Column:

I saw an interesting documentary about post WWII military aircraft development and took some notes that you may find interesting:

 

From the end of WWII through the beginning of the Cold war was a time of dramatic changes in military aviation. The introduction of jets and nuclear weapons and the consolidation of world powers played a large part. An early USAF fighter design after the war involved a Mustang wing with a jet engine embedded in a newly designed fuselage. Then our designers gained access to German swept wing studies, and this plane was re-designed and became the F-86 Saber.

 

The F-82 Twin Mustang had long range, but was too slow for jets. The Russians learned quickly and their early MIGs were hot fighter planes. How did they get Rolls Royce engines? In some ways we had to catch up with them.

 

There was a turf battle in the newly formed Air Force. Curtis LeMay wanted all the resources for SAC strategic bombers. There wasn’t much support for air superiority fighters, and the compromise fighter/bombers, such as the Phantom and Thud were essentially fast trucks for delivering nuclear bombs. These had high top speeds (mach 2), but that is not the whole story. One went over Hanoi at mach 1.6 and ran out of gas. The pilot spent the rest of the war in the Hanoi Hilton.

 

Speed was an issue for bombers as well, such as the Hustler and XB-70, which were really fast, but few were built and their deployment histories, if any, were short. On the other hand, the lumbering B-52 has had a long service life with no end in sight.

 

There were holdover ideas from WWII, such as fighter escorts. Range was an issue for the fighters, since the bomber range had increased. A B-36 had 5 times the range of a B-17. Some innovative solutions were tried. The Goblin escort was a parasite. It was carried inside a big bomber and launched if enemy fighters were encountered. It had no wheels and was intended to reattach to the mother ship after combat, but on the first test flight could not reattach in the wake of the large plane and belly landed in the desert. The program was cancelled after the 2 hour test flight. I saw one of these at the Wright Patterson AFB museum in Dayton years ago, and did not realize at the time it was a non-starter.

 

Major Boyd was an outspoken fighter jock who made a lot of enemies and founded the ‘Fighter mafia’. This was the source of a new generation of air superiority fighters, the F-16 and F-15.