Glacier Pilot Notes

Six years ago I was reading Glacier Pilot by Beth Day, a story about Bob Reeve, one of the pioneers of aviation in Alaska. Now I'm trying to clean out some old drafts, so here are some items that caught my eye.

Alaska
p. 25 Nunatak - A nunatak is the summit or ridge of a mountain that protrudes from an ice field or glacier that otherwise covers most of the mountain or ridge.
p. 26 Williwaw - a sudden violent squall blowing offshore from a mountainous coast.

Aviation pioneers, page 28:

• Lindbergh
• Doolittle
• Twining
• Curt Le May

Before Bob went to Alaska, he spent some time in South America. Pan American Grace airlines, aka PANAGRA, used several different airplanes when they started email service to Santiago Chile (page 38).

Loening Amphibian

Fairchild FC-2 flying over the Andes mountains

Ford Trimotor refueling in Guatemala 1933

Sikorsky S-38

The Sikorsky S-38 made an appearance in the movie The Aviator:


The Aviator (2004) - Howard and Kath Flying Scene (Spanish Subtitles)

New-to-me terms:
p. 38 sin publicadad - Spanish for 'without advertising'.
p. 41 Hegira - the journey the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers took from Mecca to Medina.
p. 43 gambling - "Ship, Captain, and Crew" is a dice game where players bet tokens (like "gold booty") and try to roll a 6 (Ship), 5 (Captain), and 4 (Crew) in that order, within three rolls, setting them aside to collect the score from the remaining two dice (Cargo) for the highest score to win the pot. It's a push-your-luck game that can be played for ante to a pot, with the winner taking all the tokens. 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry makes an appearance on page 41.

Flying between Santiago Chile and Buenos Aires Argentina means flying over the Andes mountains, and since aircraft weren't pressurized, you needed to find a pass. Uspallata Pass with statue of Christ was one.

1911 Uspallata Pass

Wikipedia article. Google 3D map.

Christ the Redeemer of the Andes

The statue of Christ the Redeemer is the hiding place for the red suitcase in Kleo.

Erwin Böhme - Lucky Man

Albatros C.III flown by Ltn. Erwin Böhme over the Eastern Front in 1916 - Jerry Boucher

This jigsaw puzzle was not too tough in spite of being 300 pieces. It was easy enough to assemble the edge and the airplane. The fields of cloud and sky were made simpler by having gradations of color that were easy to match.

What about the subject of this painting? Wikipedia knows:

The Albatros C.III was a German two-seat general-purpose biplane of World War I, built by Albatros Flugzeugwerke. The C.III was a refined version of the successful Albatros C.I and was eventually produced in greater numbers than any other C-type Albatros.

The C.III was superseded by the D.I, D.II and D.III.

And the pilot? Well, this guy was like the German Paul Bunyan:

Erwin Böhme (29 July 1879 – 29 November 1917) was a German World War I fighter ace credited with 24 aerial victories. He was born in Holzminden on 28 July 1879. Both studious and athletic, he became a champion swimmer, proficient ice skater, and expert skier, as well as an alpinist. After serving his mandated military service in 1899, and earning a civil engineering degree, he moved to Switzerland for three years of mountaineering.

He became interested in Africa. Walking solo, he crossed the Alps southward to Italy; there he took ship for German East Africa. From 1908 to 1914, Böhme completed a six-year employment contract on a timber plantation in Tanganyika where he oversaw construction of the Usambara Railway to export raw cedar timber to the Hubertus Mill in Germany. In July 1914, contract ended, Böhme sailed to Europe for an alpine holiday. He disembarked into World War I. Despite being 35 years old, he immediately returned to his old infantry unit, then trained as a pilot.

After serving in a bomber unit, he was transferred to Germany's first fighter squadron Jagdstaffel 2. During Böhme's combat career, he was a friend and eventual subordinate to Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. He was also friend, subordinate, and wingman to Germany's leading ace of the time, Oswald Boelcke. Böhme was inadvertently responsible for Boelcke's death on 28 October 1916. Although haunted by guilt, Böhme carried on, becoming a 24 victory ace (and a squadron leader). He also found heart for courtship via correspondence.

Erwin Böhme was killed in action on 29 November 1917, a month after his betrothal, while leading his squadron into combat. He died five days after receiving notice that he had won the German Empire's highest award for valor, the Pour le Merite. In 1930, his edited collected letters were published as Letters From a German Fighter Pilot to a Young Maiden.

Walked across the Alps and built a railroad in Africa before becoming a WW1 Ace. Quit the dude.

Africa Railways - Deutsch Ost Afrika (Usambara Eisenbahn) 0-4-4-0 mallet type steam locomotive (Arnold Jung 414-418 / 1900) and mixed train (vintage postcard)

The Usambara Railway is still in business.

Usambara Railway

Smart, capable and strong, but that didn't save him.

 

Lucky Man (2012 Stereo Mix)
Emerson, Lake and Palmer

P-51C

P-51C Thunderbird First Flight (1949 Bendix Race Winner)
AirCorps Aviation

That sort of looks like a P-51 Mustang, but where's the bubble canopy? It is a P-51, but it's the C model. The P-51 didn't get the bubble canopy until the D model. Of the 15,000 P-51s built during WW2, 12,000 were the D model, so that's what you usually see.

This particular airplane was owned by Jimmy Stewart, famed actor and Brigadier General in the United States Air Force. In 1949 it was used by Joe De Bona to win the Bendix Trophy Race and by Jackie Cochran to set a speed record.

Aircorps Aviation is co-located with the Dakota Territory Air Museum in Minot, North Dakota. They have upwards of a dozen old warbirds in their collection, several of which are air worthy. The Minot Air Force Base is just down the road.

Via Brucexo

Stowaway

Temperature in degrees Celsius (horizontal scale) versus Altitude if thousands of feet (vertical scale)

Tam talks about airliner stowaways and links to a gummint PDF wherein they mention a rule of thumb for calculating the temperature at a given altitude, so I thought I would plot it to see if it checked out.

The rule is given in this paragraph:

'double the first two numbers of altitude' is the same as dividing by 1,000 and the multiplying by 2, which is the same as dividing by 500. In order to make the graph readable, we are going to scale the altitude by a factor of 1,000, so we can leave off with the dividing by 1,000. Munging it around we end up with an equation that looks like this:

The section at the end tells Desmos that we don't care about altitudes (y) below ground level or above 40,000 feet.

I should compare this equation with another source, but duty calls, so no.

Airplane of the Day - Jetpack Man

Wait a minute, that's not an airplane! It's Jetpack man flying around off the coast of LAX.

Via Knuckledraggin My Life Away

Iron Man

Navy Assault Trials!
It appears that the Royal Navy is experimenting with jet suits. I didn't even know they were a thing. I've seen:

• guys flying in wingsuits,
• the guy flying around with a jet powered wing strapped to his back, and
• people flying over water supported by a fire hose, 

so I suppose I should have expected this. Anyway, it seems to be here now.

How Gravity Built the World's Fastest Jet Suit | WIRED
The Unwanted Blog got me started.

Wing suit demo by Jeb Corliss

Jeb Corliss wing-suit demo from Jeb Corliss on Vimeo.
Digital daughter sent me the original link on Wimp.com. They don't support embedded video, so I tried some other sites. YouTube sticks advertising on it. LiveLeak cuts the sides off on the embedded version. Vimeo wins.

At the very beginning, up to about 15 seconds, there is a very faint smoke trail coming in from the upper right corner, above the mountain. Then it appears to disappear behind the mountain. Around the 35 second mark I see something appear in the lower right quadrant, dropping and then shooting across the screen. At first I thought they were unrelated, but then I put it in full screen mode and I saw that both trails were part of the same flight. I was able to track him zig-zagging down the face of the mountain, well, except for a couple of spots where he disappears in front of a patch of snow.

Update February 2017 replaced missing video.

Rocket Man

Flight of Fusion Man Previous title: FUSIONMAN - YVES ROSSY'S 1st OFFICIAL FLIGHT - 14 MAY 2008 | HUBLOT
Yves Rossy flying his jet wing backpack in Switzerland.

Via Law Dog.

Update June 9, 2010. Original video gone bye-bye. Found another one.
Update December 2016. Original video gone bye-bye. Found another one.
Update May 2020. Original video gone bye-bye. Found another one.