by
Darryl Phillips
It's almost 1996, in just four short years the new century will begin. What will personal aviation look like in the coming century?
There are two ways to think about the future, pragmatic or hopeful. Reality, versus the world of possibility. The latter is more fun, but let's get the pragmatic view out of the way first and then turn to the wonderful changes in store for aviation.
The reality is that most of the pilots who will be flying in the year 2000 are flying already. The airplanes of 2000 are the airplanes we see on the ramp today, plus a few thousand more just like them. By 2000 we will have lost some aircraft to accident, export, and old age, so we'll have about as many in the fleet as we have today. We can realistically expect the next four years in aviation to be similar to the last four.
The regulations will increase in number and complexity during the next four years, and the penalties will grow more harsh, just as they have in the last four. The number of pilots who quit flying because it just isn't fun anymore will exceed the number of students who complete their training, and the pilot population will decline a little more. The past is prologue.
More FSDOs will move from airports to offices inaccessable to airplanes. Private airfields will continue to be purchased, sued, or zoned out of existence. Public airports will add more security restrictions, more landing fees, and continue to make life more difficult for the private pilot, just as they have in the preceeding quadrennial.
During the past four years we've seen more aerostats, more tall towers, more restricted airspace. We have witnessed an increase in airspace jurisdiction by the National Park Service and the Wildlife Service. Probably this trend will continue. More military bases will close, and sell the land and buildings (or give them away), but the military airspace over them will still be military. Empty airspace where we are not allowed to fly.
If the last four years are any indication, AOPA will continue to be overloaded with struggles to save local airports, their resources will be strained in fights against unreasonable noise restrictions, they will be so busy putting out fires that they will have no time to plan for the long term. And if we can judge from the past, EAA will be busy too. Oshkosh was once the annual pilgrimage of pilots working to expand the scope of aviation technology. Today it is a huge state fair with jet truck races and vendors selling cheap gold jewelry and miracle car wax. By the year 2000, will it include carnival rides and a circus? Maybe a water park? Will the fake (but already very loud) bombing demonstrations be replaced by the real thing? Whatever sells the most tickets.
At the beginning of the next century, aviation will be just as it is now. Only moreso.
That's the pragmatic view as general aviation prepares to enter the new century. Ninety-six years ago when we began the present century, man had not yet experienced the joy of powered flight. From 1903 when the Wright boys first coaxed a motor-driven machine into the air, until 1927 when Lindy flew the Atlantic alone, only 24 years passed. In that timespan we learned airfoils, propulsion, navigation, night flight, instruments, and aviation weather. We advanced from fabric biplanes to metal monoplanes, and developed a coast to coast airmail network. Twenty-four years.
How much has aviation advanced in the last 24 years? Not much. The most recent major achievement was when man set foot on the moon, and that was more than 26 years ago. General aviation hasn't changed engines, most of us are still flying the same spark ignition four strokes that powered the Wright Flyer and the Spirit of St. Louis. Our propellers haven't changed much, our fuel efficiency hasn't changed much, our noise hasn't changed much. Aviation is overdue for some major improvements in the way we fly.
There are two ideas that hold great promise. One is FreeFlight, the other is the Stirling engine.
FreeFlight has been described as "IFR utility with VFR flexibility while putting the information and decision making in the cockpit." Or it might be VFR utility (you can go more places) with IFR flexibility (in any weather). Either way you slice it, FreeFlight will greatly increase our freedom to fly. Improvement in GA utility will increase the number of hours flown, the number of new students, the demand for more aircraft, the need for more airport services, it will be the force to rebuild general aviation.
On CompuServe AVSIG I've been following an ongoing discussion about FreeFlight. Although FAA has announced that they support the concept, the air traffic controllers aren't about to sign on. It amazes me to see so many controllers use the word "control" in the same sentence with the word "free". The controllers will have to learn that free and control are opposites. To the extent that anything is controlled, it is not free. And vice versa.
Why do we want to fly free? One reason is LEAST WIND MILES. Christopher Columbus understood that a straight line is not the shortest path, if "shortest" is measured in time rather than distance. Seagoing voyagers have known this for untold centuries. Crossing the ocean in a sailing vessel, the miles traveled cost nothing, the cost is in the days of rations consumed. If you can get there quicker it therefore costs less, and the length of the trip (in miles) doesn't enter into it.
The airplane is a time machine. It gets us to the destination sooner. Aircraft owners pay dearly for this speed, a 15 or 20 knot difference can sometimes double the cost of the plane, and virtually double the fuel expense too. Any idea that can reduce the trip time without increasing the dollar cost has immense value. FreeFlight is that idea.
One version of least wind miles is PRESSURE PATTERN NAVIGATION. This was used in WWII to ferry planes across the ocean. Some of those aircraft simply didn't have enough range to reach Europe flying a straight line (great circle) route. They would have gone down in the drink hundreds of miles short of the coast. But by routing the planes in a curve, taking advantage of tailwinds, it was routine to make the trip with fuel to spare.
The idea is to deviate around a high or a low to gain the tailwind advantage. In the northern hemisphere, fly to the left around a high, to the right around a low. Airline dispatchers use the same idea, the Atlantic and Pacific routes change every day, sometimes every few hours, in accordance with the winds.
That's a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, oceanic controllers often can't approve the desired route. There are only about 800 transatlantic flights per day during the busiest season (and sometimes only 300 per day) spread all over the Atlantic ocean. But the huge blocks of protected airspace assigned to each flight prevent reasonable use of pressure pattern navigation.
Meanwhile, the newest GPS units still only take us along a straight line. (The correct term is great circle, if we literally travelled a straight line between LAX and JFK we would be tunneling deep under Kansas! A great circle is a straight line as drawn on a globe.)
Suppose a Cherokee, a Bonanza, and a P-210 fly from Dallas to Oshkosh. What path should they take? If left up to ATC, they will all three fly the same zig-zag course. If they are able to fly GPS direct, they will all take the same straight path. Each pilot will make some determination as to optimum altitude, depending on wind forecasts. If they're VFR they can choose 3500, 5500, 7500, etc. If IFR, they're at the mercy of the system.
It's not practical, perhaps not humanly possible, to figure every combination of wind and altitude and fuel flow and TAS and rate of climb and descent to arrive at the quickest trip. And that's before even considering deviation around high or low pressure areas. How much to deviate? And where? The calculations would take the pilot longer than it would take to just get in the plane and fly the trip straight. Furthermore, the FAA-supplied wind data is old and not very reliable so the answer wouldn't be dependable anyway.
But that is about to change. Pilots shouldn't make repetitive calculations, computers should. The GPS is a computer, the Loran is a computer, modern autopilots are computers, there is no shortage of computers in the cockpit. What they need is the right software, and the right data input.
Software is easy, we have plenty of experience with pressure pattern navigation. And with NEXRAD, the atmospheric data is available. At least it's available on the ground, and soon with datalink it will be available in the air. If FAA drags it's feet and won't uplink it to us, some entrepreneur will work out a way to do it. The volume of data coming out of NEXRAD is beyond anything a human can use, it's custom made for computer analysis.
So, what path should our three aircraft take? Each will take a different path. They will be three dimensional twisting, curving paths. Neither course nor altitude will be constant, they will be slowly changing all the time.
The fundamental idea is to take up a HEADING and hold it throughout the flight. Allowances need to be made for changing magnetic variation and other factors, but when you depart the point of origin there is one heading that, if held, will bring you to the destination. If there were no wind, then obviously the heading and the course would be the same. But the wind is always there, constantly varying in direction and velocity. Flying GPS or Loran direct, a plane will trace the shortest path over the earth, but it will fly through more miles of air than necessary. Least wind miles will trace a curve, perhaps an S curve, between origin and destination as plotted on a map, but if plotted in the airmass it will be a straight line. In a car the shortest path is a straight line on the ground, regardless of the vagaries of the wind. But in an airplane it's shorter to trace a straight line through the air, regardless of the drift over the ground!
Overall, the plane will fly where the winds are a maximum aid, or at least a minimum hindrance, in accord with the flight characteristics of the individual aircraft and the loading on this particular trip. And with datalink, the GPS will be recalculating the path as the flight progresses and new wind data is available. Any desired fuel stops can be planned in advance. On the return trip, a very different route will be taken.
In a slower aircraft the least wind miles path will be more curved, in a faster plane it will be less so. But fast aircraft typically have more altitude capability, so there is more freedom to maximize speed in the vertical dimension.
Obviously this degree of FreeFlight isn't totally compatible with today's ATC, or with the FARs. But it is more compatible with safety than the way we do aviation today. Most pilots have learned to not cross directly over a VOR because of the focusing effect VORs have on airplanes. There is less chance of a midair if you miss the VOR by a mile or so. Likewise, if all VFR traffic is religiously adhereing to the legally correct altitudes there is a much higher chance of collision than if they are spread out at random altitudes. The Victor airways decrease safety too, anything that puts more planes in the same place increases the chance of collision. The FARs make sense until you enter the real world. FreeFlight will put all the planes at random headings and random altitudes, which is the least likely chance of collision. Of course we will have electronic means to see our traffic in FreeFlight, we just won't have as much traffic to see.
There is another safety benefit to FreeFlight. If the trip is quicker and the aircraft is aloft a shorter time, there is less exposure. Less chance of mechanical trouble, less chance of a weather problem, less chance for anything to go wrong. On many trips, saving an hour means saving a fuel stop, which means saving the extra hour that a stop typically takes, which means getting home before dark, which means more safety.
FAA and ATC claim to be working for safety, but in fact many components of the system actually reduce the margin of safety in our flying environment. FreeFlight contains many improvements.
Notice that FreeFlight will work with the planes in the fleet today, the same planes that will be in the fleet in the year 2000. It will take a new black box, but we can pitch several of the old ones. And it will save enough time and fuel to more than offset the cost of the box.
Least wind miles is only one small part of FreeFlight, there are more advantages than I can cover here. The airlines want FreeFlight, general aviation wants FreeFlight, the budget people at FAA want FreeFlight. The controllers don't. It will be interesting to see who wins.
The second major improvement coming to general aviation is the Stirling engine. If you're a regular reader of THE OTHER WING you're aware of the advantages of this powerplant.
In the history of manned flight, we have had four sources of power. The first was burning straw under a paper bag. This is the way man first rose above the surface of the earth. Today, balloons are fueled by propane rather than straw, but the idea is the same.
The second engine was the four stroke spark ignition powerplant. It allowed man, for the first time, to fly forward thru the airmass under power. Orville and Wilbur used it, Piper and Beech and Mooney use it today, and when Cessna gets their new plant going in Independence they'll be using it again too. Piston engines advanced rapidly at first, but little has changed in the last 50 years.
Third, we have the turbine. It allows us to fly higher and faster. It also developed rapidly during the first 15 or 20 years, and much slower since.
The fourth powerplant is the rocket engine. With it, man was able to leave his home planet. But rockets are not the answer for the flying most of us do.
In each case, when we developed a new powerplant we were able to expand aviation and accomplish things that were simply impossible before. Sadly, in the four steps aviation has seen, most of us are stuck at step two. The Stirling engine can be step five.
A Stirling engine is silent, a major plus in the relationship between aviation and society. It has smooth torque without vibration, allowing it to drive a quiet, more efficient propeller. The Stirling cycle is the most fuel efficient engine possible, which means we can fly further and at a lower cost. It burns kerosene or other less explosive fuel, which is a big safety factor in an accident.
And the Stirling is the only powerplant applicable to general aviation that puts out more power as the plane climbs. Think of it! No ceiling limitations due to the engine. If a plane can hold constant power, it will fly twice as fast at 40,000 ft. as it does at sea level. The Stirling will actually put out more power at high altitude, so the plane will go even faster. Of course we won't want to take a Baron or Archer to that altitude, we will need a whole new design. With Stirling power there will finally be a reason to advance beyond the airframes of the last 40 years. A renaissance in aviation.
Imagine smooth quiet flight above the weather nonstop coast to coast in a single engine personal aircraft. Imagine flying where you want, when you want, with datalink feeding the onboard computer to get you there in minimum time. Imagine being able to see all your traffic and obstructions regardless of weather.
It's all possible, we have the technology today. All we need is the will. The vision. The year 2000 represents more than a new century, it is the beginning of a new millenium. Four years, and counting.