Mojave Plane Crazy this Saturday!

The handful of cool and unusual aircraft that graced Mojave's traffic pattern yesterday provide a great opportunity to remind everyone that this Saturday it is time once again for the Mojave Flightline to open up to the public for another Plane Crazy Saturday. Featured this month will be Ralph Wise's one-of-a-kind GT-400 (this brute is not to be mistaken for the ultralight of the same designation!).

As for yesterday, Mojave's own Mark Street had his gorgeous yellow Pitts S-1 up playing in the early hours of the morning. A little later, a competition aerobatic Zivko Edge 540 came screaming down Rwy 26. This beauty is either a visitor or a newly acquired resident (it was up flying again today), and is registered to a consulting company in Cornwall, UK. To keep the international flavor going, a venerable Canadian-registered de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver floated in for a nice wheel landing.

Seawind in the Desert

There's something about Mojave that just attracts the strangest-looking aircraft. And it's not enough that we create our own here, even the transient aircraft that stop by have that futuristic, spacey look, like this Canadian-registered Seawind 3000 amphibian that took off this morning.

The Seawind 3000 was originally a kit-plane, although sales of kits have ceased as the company, Seawind LLC of Kimberton PA, attempted to get a production version, the 300C, certified and into production. Unfortunately, the fatal crash of the flight test aircraft in August 2007, as well as funding issues, threatened to cancel the project. In late 2008, the company announced that additional funding had been secured, so we'll see if this unusual seaplane makes it into production. In the meantime, it was certainly a delight to see this one here in the desert.

A Spartan in the Desert

The Army and Air Force's newest cargo aircraft, the GMAS C-27J Spartan, paid a visit to Mojave, where it will be based for the next few days during a short flight test program. The Spartan is an updated version of the Italian Alenia G.222, which won the competition for the services' new Joint Cargo Aircraft, or JCA.

The G.222 dates back to 1970, when it made its maiden flight. The type was designed to meet a NATO specification, although initially only Italy operated them. In 1990, the USAF bought ten G.222s, designating them the C-27A, for their "Rapid-Response Intra-Theater Airlifter" program, but they were withdrawn from service nine years later due to high maintenance costs. In 1997, Alenia teamed with Lockheed Martin to propose an updated version of the aircraft, powered with two of the Rolls Royce AE2100 engines used on the C-130J Hercules, for the Army/Air Force JCA program. The deal fell through, though, when LM pulled out and offered the C-130J as a competing contender (for comparison, besides having half the engines of the C-130J, the C-27J carries about 3/5 the cargo).

Alenia then teamed with L3 Communications and Boeing, with the alliance going under the name Global Military Aircraft Systems, Inc. The plane visiting Mojave is registered to GMAS and is flown by a joint L3 and Alenia crew (in an interesting comparison of cultures, the L3 guys were standard green flight suits, while the Alenia folks were a stylish red/black suit that you'd more expect to find being worn by a Formula One racing team!).



The Army took delivery of their first flight test aircraft on September 25. The aircraft visiting Mojave is a civilian-registered ship that serves as the programs testbed aircraft. As such, there are a number of differences between it and the actual JCA aircraft, which will begin delivery after the first five test birds are received. The Georgia Air Guard is slated to receive the first production aircraft in 2010, and will likely deploy fairly quickly to Iraq or Afghanistan. All in all, it's quite an impressive little aircraft - and even smells like a new car inside!

Crane Visit

While the 2008 fire season has been pretty mild in this part of the state, we nonetheless got an up-close-and-personal visit with one of the frontline wildland firefighting tools, an Erickson Air Crane S-64E. Heading home from Washington State to Hemet, the crew of Tanker 744, nicknamed ''Jerry'', stopped by Mojave for some gas today.

Considered a "Type 1" helitanker, the Aircrane can carry up to 2,650 gallons of water. The helicopter's flexible snorkel uses a high pressure impeller, and can draw water from a source as shallow as 18 inches, and can fill the tank in 45 seconds

The Aircrane / Sky Crane has a long history. Sikorsky started work on the type in 1958, and the first prototype, which Sikorsky called the S-64, flew May 9, 1962 (three days after I was born, for the record). In all, six pre-production aircraft were built, which the Army designated as YCH-54. Meeting with approval, the CH-54 Tarhe went into production, with the Army buying 105 of them. (The helicopter's namesake, Tarhe, was a Chief of the Wyandot Tribe in the Ohio area, and lived from 1742 to 1818. His nickname was "The Crane".) In addition to the military aircraft, Sikorsky also built a small number of civilian certified S-64s Skycranes, but did not seem terribly interested in aggressively marketing the model.

The CH-54 was phased out of Army service, being supplanted by the Boeing CH-47 Chinook, but found a unique niche in the civilian world, where it was quickly recognized as a useful tool as a helitanker for aerial firefighting. In 1992, Erickson Air Crane purchased the FAA Type Certificate from Sikorsky, thus becoming the Crane's manufacturer, as well as the largest operator of the type. Erickson has "remanufactured" old military-surplus airframes, as well as built brand new ones.

Jerry started life during the Vietnam era as a CH-54A, serial 68-18450, but was then rebuilt by Erickson as a civilian certificated S-64E, serial 64052.

The Coasties Stop In for Lunch

In the leisure and sport aviation world, a "$100 hamburger" refers to the practice of flying to a different airport than your home for lunch. . .in other words, a justification to hop into your single engine toy and go fly. So when this U.S. Coast Guard HC-130H from Sacramento stopped in at lunchtime on Thursday and parked at Mojave's Voyager Restaurant (a long way from any coast), it got me wondering: with four engines, was this a $400 hamburger?

Total Eclipse

Eclipse Aviation's latest innovation, the ECJ (for Eclipse Concept Jet) is visiting Mojave for a few days during its flight test program. The ECJ was first announced at the 2007 Oshkosh AirVenture as a concept for a 4-place "personal jet", and at the time Eclipse's CEO Vern Raburn said that within 12 months the company would announce whether the aircraft would be going into production.

This proof-of-concept version is currently unpressurized, but the goal is to have an aircraft capable of 345 knots and a 41,000 foot service ceiling. According to Raburn, the ECJ has about 60% commonality with the Eclipse 500 VLJ, including the Avio NG, the computerized system which controls the autopilot, FADEC, air data system, and flap and landing gear actuation. Power is produced by a single Pratt & Whitney PW615F turbofan engine, which produces 1,100 pounds of thrust.

While it remains to be seen whether this innovative, all-composite jet will turned into a production model, one thing is certain: the designers (Eclipse partnered with Swift Engineering to design and build the plane) came up with a concept that looks like it's fast even when simply sitting in the hangar.

(Many thanks to the folks at Eclipse for letting me shoot such a gorgeous plane!)