Joe Fishburn CFI, CFII, MEI, CFI RH, IGI, AGI
Sure is a lot of alphabet soup!
If you have questions about learning to fly try this link to questions!
Check out the 'Toy cars'... and the 1967 Corvette
You can send me email at:joe@joefishburn.com
June 2010, Hot Rod Power Tour, Bowling Green, KY
April 24 2001, I had the opportunity to fly AOPA Air Safety Foundations Archer (N1821K). It's a nice airplane. Kathleen is doing a safety study and there will be an article in AOPA "Pilot" magazine in a couple of months. The folks in Frederick MD were super nice to me.. I had a great time and would help them again in a femtosecond. They even bought me lunch!! ;-)You can read the report...
January 28, 2002 -- Now I can tell you what they (the AOPA folks) did to me while I was there. They had me fly under the hood and when I wasn't looking they killed the vacuum pump. They had it running using an electric motor.
I first flew one ILS-23 into KFDK for practice. I was then to turn right and fly over to KHGR (about 24 miles away) for a GPS approach. During the climb to altitude they shut the vacuum pump off. I didn't notice it until I lowered the nose to level. The attitude indicator didn't respond. I checked the vacuum gauge and it was at zero. Up to that point I didn't know what they were 'studying'. They then wanted to know what I was going to do. The safety pilot was playing ATC so I told him I was declaring an emergency and wanted no gyro victors back to KFDK ILS-23. He did that and I flew the approach to a full stop.
The fellow flying as safety pilot commented after we were on the ground that I was pilot number 10 to be studied and up to that point no one had had any problems getting the airplane on the ground. My arm pits were wet when I taxied in but it was fun. I had worked hard to do it right.
I found that I can reconize a vacuum failure and handle it. The weather was CAVU so if I screwed up it would have been easy to recover. They commented that they had done the same study on a sim and found that about 30% had crashed. I understand they changed to a Bonanza and did have some problems..
The bottom line is if you have a vacuum pump failure while IMC, declare an emergency!! And give ATC all the work you can.. You have a job and it's a hard one!! When you get on the ground you can then buy that controller a case of beer!!
The first of August 2003 I flew N40725, an R-22B, to Jonesboro Arkansas and spent about 3 week flying 'low over the rice' helping the rice pollinate. The downwash of the helo would blow the pollen around. The weather was hot for this Minnesota boy but I worked with a fun crew..
Here are the guys at our lunch break refueling the helos. We would land about noon, refuel and have a quick snack. Then it was back into the fields by 12:30.
Here is a pix of 4 of the guys flying to work.. There were 6 of us heading out that day. I was taking the pix and the other helo was headed in a different direction.
We flew about 5 hours each day.
This is Bryant flying a Schweizer 300C. He is demonstrating how low we fly. Since Bryant was flying the only Schweizer we were always giving him a hard time.
You can send me email at:joe@joefishburn.com
I'm a member of the Southeastern Minnesota Flying Club which has 6 airplanes.
Click here if you would like you can fill out a club application. You can also get the club information sheet at the same location.
Here is a link to the weight and balance for all the club airplanes.
Here are some interesting sites: