Driving back from the Santa Monica Airport to my friend’s house in Agoura Hills, I have the option of going the coastal route, skipping the 101 and its traffic vagaries and headaches.
The Pacific Coast Highway up to Malibu, with a turnoff right at Pepperdine (Waves!!) snuggles me in like a old pair of yoga pants as I join the parade past the beaches to the left and the Palisades rising to the right.
Just past the turnoff to the Bay Inn, a motion above the water ahead catches my eye. I think it’s a helicopter—those fly by regularly on this stretch of SoCal—but I register with a start that it could have been the Joby demonstrator, “N54LAX,” that had been on display all day at KSMO, in honor of Donald Douglas Day.
Screenshot
Had I just witnessed a milestone in history? Not quite. But I saw our future.
In a conversation with Joby founder JoeBen Bevirt last year, his tone and his passion as he related his desire to innovate point-to-point transport into a whisper-quiet, zero-emissions occurrence touched me. It came back in waves—yes—as I slowed and stopped at the next light, considering my trip up the coast versus the joyful flight those members of the Joby team would have enjoyed on their sightseeing cruise. While the 228-nm flight back home to Marina wasn’t in the cards—but could it be, at this moment in time, completed directly by airplane or helicopter—or eVTOL? In near silence, at dollars per hour instead of thousands?
Well, here we are. That future is imminent.
What a fitting close to Donald Douglas Day, celebrating a man who brought commercial air transport to the masses with the Douglas DC-3, nearly 90 years ago.
He would have *loved* the Joby, Archer, Pivotal, Pipistrel, and Airhart displays at Santa Monica on “his” day.
On that Tuesday 23 years ago we will never forget, I sat in my office at the Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association, getting started on the morning’s editing or writing or… I don’t recall anymore.
Because around 9 am, Miriam, our executive admin, popped into the doorway and said that an airplane had just struck the World Trade Center.
What unfolded thereafter, I have shared in several pieces over the years, but the memory never loses its power. It was perhaps my first experience with the world completely turning on a dime. There was before… and after. And only that moment in between.
We will always remember the attacks of September 11, when we lost airline crews and passengers, Pentagon workers, first responders, and people just going about their day in downtown Manhattan.
For the first time I’m collecting those stories in one place, so that others can share them. And never forget.
While a record number of folks flew in to Oshkosh, the forum wasn’t quite full for the EAGLE (Eliminate Aviation Gas Lead Emissions) briefing at 10 am on Monday, July 22. But a couple hundred interested parties (pilots) did show up—and they were in for quite a review, punctuated by events unfolding throughout the week at EAA AirVenture. To review, EAGLE’s goal is to eliminate the use of leaded fuels in piston-powered aircraft in the U.S. by the end of 2030.
In the briefing, the FAA and industry consortium put representatives up on the forum stage, including co-chairs Curt Castagna, of the National Air Transportation Association (NATA), and Wes Mooty, acting administrator on certification for the FAA. Walter Desrosier, GAMA’s technical lead on fuels, presented as well.
Walter Desrosier of GAMA presents on the long list of required materials testing in the path to approval for a fuel. [Credit: Julie Boatman]
Desrosier gave an in-depth look at where each of the candidate fuels are on the path to the marketplace. But even the “big picture” simplified version of that path appeared more complex than has been perhaps sold to constituents.
Three candidate fuels remain in the mix:
* GAMI’s G100UL, which has an STC but no ASTM specification acceptance
* Swift’s 100R, which is undergoing concurrent STC and ASTM compliance testing
* LyondellBasell Industries’ UL100E, going through the Piston Engine Aviation Fuels Initiative (PAFI) program, which progresses towards ASTM acceptance and fleet authorization
After compliance is unlocked, the stakeholders in the supply chain must accept it along the way: aircraft and engine OEMs, fuel distributors, FBOs, aircraft owners/operators, and pilots.
Dan Pourreau, of LyondellBasell Industries, maker of UL100E currently going through the PAFI process, led a separate presentation later in the week. In it, he noted that a true drop-in replacement for 100LL was quickly passing from reality. One reason? The MON (mean octane number) of 100LL with which many high-compression engines were certificated is roughly 104, and may be as high as 106.
The best that unleaded fuel can do with non-lead boosters has been around 100 MON. That means that if an engine cannot accept the 100 MON, it may need mods to its operating conditions, such as cylinder head temperature limitations (“paper mods”), or further mechanical or technical mods.
Materials Testing?
There’s another concern raising a specter over the viability of GAMI’s fuel in particular. And that has to do with the materials testing that earlier candidate fuels in the PAFI program failed to pass. When you put fuel into the wing of an airplane, you pump it into a tank and start its journey through a system that includes elastomers (O-rings, hoses), metals, rubbers and other bladder materials, plastics, sealants, and paint. You have the certified fleet to consider when walking through the potential interactions—and then there’s the experimental fleet.
During Desrosier’s presentation, he popped up a Materials Compatibility Testing Matrix slide listing an outline of the materials that EAA has put forward through the EAGLE consortium for consideration in the process of ensuring a candidate fuel won’t negatively interact with anything it comes into regular contact with. While the OEM holds responsibility for testing certified aircraft (including its legacy models), the individual builder must test their own.
So, one of the 2,846 showplanes on EAA’s display last week drew my interest as a result of this question: the Beechcraft Baron that the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) is using to demonstrate to its members the high-octane unleaded fuels vying to replace 100LL. I’d have reason to take a close look at it as the week wore on—Oshkosh often serves as a proving ground for new designs and technologies, in that they must sit out in the sun, wind, and storms for more than a week in many cases. That’ll test anyone’s material makeup.
AOPA flew the Baron to the show with GAMI’s fuel powering the left engine. As the week wore on, two things raised questions in the area of materials compatibility—though nothing is conclusive yet. The first one feels perhaps cosmetic: the stain growing on and around the fuel cap on the left main tank where white paint had been previously.
The fuel cap on the left main tank of the Baron flown by AOPA for unleaded fuels testing. [Credit: Julie Boatman]Sludge weeping from seams under the wing of the Baron at the AOPA exhibit. [Credit: Julie Boatman]Reaching a low point in the wing, perhaps, the substance had the appearance of oil but smelled more of sealant. [Credit: Julie Boatman]
The second one feels more onerous, though we don’t yet know what the cause is. A line of oil-colored sludge reeking vaguely of sealant seeped from the seams underneath the wing, at low points near where the tank sits inside the wing. I crawled under to take a look myself, and it was there for all to see. Until the source of the sludge is inspected, however, its origin is inconclusive. Stay tuned for more as other results of long-term testing/demonstrations come to light.
We Have a Mixing Problem
The FAA recently published data that indicates GAMI’s fuel uses m-toluidine, an aromatic amine, as an octane booster. Not only does this set of chemicals potentially pose materials compatibility problems, but it also raise the problem of intermixing in the field—or within a tank. For its part, Swift Fuels has stated that any fuels containing aromatic amines cannot be intermixed with any Swift Fuel, including the 100R.
LyondellBasell reported that its fuel will be fully miscible with 100LL, since it runs very close to the leaded fuel in its chemical and physical properties. But it too is not likely to be mixable with either GAMI’s or Swift’s fuels.
And that prompted me to ask the question at the forum, is there a point at which the FAA and industry will need to get behind one fuel to move forward with—especially since FBOs are unlikely to have multiple tanks to dedicate to unleaded fuels? The market is so small as it is, and the risk of bifurcating it into two or three high octane unleaded fuels doesn’t sit well.
With these clouds on the horizon, the race to field a workable unleaded fuel solution for the GA fleet by 2030 has only intensified. The next EAGLE report will be virtual, in October. I plan to be there—will you?
Lots of pilots come to EAA AirVenture each year to learn, whether it’s in a builder’s forum, an expert panel, or a session in a flight sim at the Pilot Proficiency Center.
Thursday held a training theme for me around master instructors, with three gatherings tuned to bring CFIs together.
The first was the annual member breakfast for the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI). During the event, NAFI inducted Doug Stewart and Tim Tucker into the Instructor Hall of Fame, and gave the Eggespuehler and Laslo awards to Samantha Bowyer and author Steve Rutland.
The second was the annual King Schools press conference and lunch, which gathered flight school leaders and scholarship winners along with John and Martha King—legendary instructors who take the time to talk with everyone who comes their way.
Third was the dinner hosted by the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators (SAFE), during which Instructor Hall of Fame member Rich Stowell gave his presentation on 9 Principles of Light Aircraft Flying.
At each event, I took away something I intend to apply to my own dual given.
The 2024 inductees to the National Instructor Hall of Fame were honored at NAFI’s breakfast. [Credit: Julie Boatman]John and Martha King pose for their raving fans at their lunch press conference. [Credit: Julie Boatman]David St. George kicks off the annual SAFE dinner on Thursday evening. [Credit: Julie Boatman]Rich Stowell and Doug Stewart catch up at the 2024 SAFE dinner at Oshkosh 2024. [Credit: Julie Boatman]
For an Oshkosh lacking major announcements—no totally new aircraft, no killer app—the quiet part out loud could be found in applications of new technology to familiar aircraft.
The headliner has to be the Harbour Air eBeaver, tucked into the main aircraft display, featuring a Magni650 power train. We spoke with Riona Armesmith, CTO of MagniX, and she briefed us on the operation of the dual motor, four inverter system driving a Hartzell composite prop. The STC is in work while flight tests comtinue.
The next pair involve simplified flight controls. We signed up for a demo of the Skyryse system in the sim set up in the shadow of the tower. We’re under NDA, but if the four-axis controls work as advertised, in a Robinson R66, we’ll likely need a different pilot certificate for traditional rotorcraft—worse than giving a manual transmission car to a kid who has only driven an automatic.
We also met up with Airhart’s founder and CEO Nikita Ermoshkin, who we interviewed for a story on Robb Report last week. The team is testing simplified flight controls in a Sling E-LSA, after flying its first proof-of-concept in an RV-12. The idea? Bringing easy flight to the masses. And I say making it possible to get a sport pilot certificate in 20 hours or less—for real.
With the relaunch of JulietBravoFox Media, we’ve captured back a bit more time to volunteer with the aviation missions closest to our hearts. Day Two at AirVenture was filled with meet-ups for two key groups: the Recreational Aviation Foundation and LightHawk.
We kicked off the day with doughnuts and coffee and good times with our fellow RAF volunteers on the top of the Hartzell booth, with a great view of the main aircraft display. Pete Bunce of GAMA honored a couple of special contributors, and then we went on a walk to take photos of the orange RAF gaggle at sponsors’ exhibits around the show: Redbird Flight Simulations, Daher, and Aviat.
Next, we had a gathering of LightHawk volunteer pilots, of which Julie just became one—along with the contribution of Stephen’s photography. We met at the Textron Aviation booth, hosted by board chairman Steve Kent. We shared our latest missions and took a tour of the Cessna, Beech, and Pipistrel aircraft on display.
Our evening capped off with two parties celebrating community: AOPA’s 85th anniversary bash at The Waters, and the Pilatus/Piper Block Party, where we met up with old friends.
Doughnuts and coffee and camaraderie celebrate the Hartzell rooftop gathering of volunteers with the Recreational Aviation Foundation. [Credit: Julie Boatman]Stephen and Julie met up with fellow LightHawk volunteer pilots at the Textron Aviation exhibit, sharing stories with friends old and new. [Credit: Julie Boatman]AOPA brough New Glarus on tap for its 85th anniversary party at the Waters. [Credit: Julie Boatman]Pilatus and Piper hosted their annual “block party” showing that even competitors find community at Oshkosh. [Credit: Julie Boatman]
This year’s EAA AirVenture launched with a relentless lineup of press conferences and events impossible for one person to cover—so it’s great to have a team here!
We started off with the Cirrus presser and Todd Simmons gave his characteristically enthusiastic run down of the company’s recent success—and the 10,000th SR and 500th Vision Jet are on display here at the show.
Daher’s Nicolas Chabbert introduced the Multi-Mission Kodiak 900 with its truly dynamic paint scheme to show off the company’s new paint facility in Sandpoint. Chabbert gave the mike to CEO and group chair Didier Kayat for his update, then introduced the interns for 2024—one from the US, one from Canada, and two from France.
The EAGLE initiative delivered a detailed update—and raised a lot of questions. More on this in an in depth edition of #JustJuliesTakes later this week.
Todd Simmons heads up the customer experience team at Cirrus. [Credit: Julie Boatman]Nicolas Chabbert, CEO of Daher’s Aircraft Division, introduces the 2024 interns in the company’s program with GAMA. [Credit: Julie Boatman]The EAGLE update on unleaded fuel for GA sparked a lot of questions from the crowd. [Credit: Julie Boatman]EAA Chairman and CEO Jack Pelton and Director of Coms Dick Knapinski kick off AirVenture with a big lineup and lots of folks flying in. [Credit: Julie Boatman]
We cruised in 24 hours ago, and that first day at EAA AirVenture 2024 has filled up with friends, and tents, and requisitioning from the local commisaries: Columbia Outlet, Kwik Trip, Mills Fleet Farm, and Festival Foods.
We start the business end of our stay in an hour, and I’ll plan to share my #JustJuliesTakes from each day of the show. But for now, I’ll leave you with a quartet of images that capture today’s day of active rest in the Oshkosh Bubble.
You can adorn your airplane any way you want in the North 40. [Credit: Julie Boatman]The first beer of Oshkosh 2024 has to be to local favorite, Spotted Cow from New Glarus. [Credit: Julie Boatman]A full moon rises over the V-tail Bo… is it a Tomato Moon? [Credit: Julie Boatman]Sunday morning from the campsite breaks with a soft sunrise. [Credit: Julie Boatman]
Simplified flight controls have been on my mind of late. Triggered this week by a conversation with Nikita Ermoshkin, founder of Airhart, and past ones with various flight control engineers and pilots at Dassault, Embraer, and Gulfstream, translating aileron, elevator, and rudder input into a single joystick control won’t just be for bizjets and F35s.
Airhart began proving its model in a Van’s RV-12, and now a Sling E-LSA. Joby’s flight control system takes it a step further by incorporating VTOL flight requirements into a speed control (set it and forget it) and a side stick. Could creating an ease of flight for the average person finally make possible the increase in aircraft production necessary to reduce its overall cost? We’re quickly approaching this first transformational point.
At the same time, another sea change approaches. While Joby builds toward its first certificated eVTOL using electric motors and battery packs charged through currently available ground based sources (renewable or not), it is working concurrently on a hybrid-electric model fueled by liquid hydrogen. In fact, it flew one of its remotely piloted test articles (with a power system developed by H2FLY) in the vicinity of the Marina Airport in California for an eye popping 523 statute miles during a flight time of four hours, 47 minutes. The intention? To prove the viability of the next version for regional transportation, not just the 50-to-100-mile hops planned for the all-electric model.
“Rather than just connecting metropolitan areas, we’re able to connect between metropolitan areas,” said JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby, in a technology roundtable hosted by Joby virtually on July 17. “We think this is another game-changing technology.”
“It’s just a glimpse as to what the power of this platform is,” said Eric Allison, Joby’s chief product officer, in the same discussion.
Hydrogen-fueled flight compels in spite of the challenges to contain it because it is so energy dense, and leaves only water vapor behind. Putting this power into Joby’s platform would actually make possible the timeline for achieving net-zero carbon emissions in aviation by 2050. A second key element.
The third? The ability to bring these aircraft into our neighborhoods because of the substantial reduction in noise they produce as compared to a piston airplane, let alone a helicopter. Ever been surprised by a Tesla sneaking up on you? That’s the relative quiet of Joby’s first production model, based on both their objective noise reporting and my impression of it standing on the ramp at Marina about 100 feet away.
Ease of flight control. Hydrogen power. Big noise reduction. The intersection of these three elements lies just ahead, if Joby makes good on its efforts.
“I want to frame this moment in time as one of the most exciting times in aviation,” said Bevirt. I happen to agree.
Joby also recently announced plans for a large flight training facility in Watsonville, so I asked Bevirt and Allison: Is the plan to continue with the original piloted version to be first to market, with an autonomous version to follow, given the acquisition of the Xwing autonomous platform development business?
“We are laser-focused on bringing a piloted eVTOL aircraft to market, and are establishing pilot training facilities, curricula, and simulators to support the introduction of that aircraft to markets around the globe,” Joby’s team replied after the roundtable.
“Xwing’s comprehensive approach, and expertise in perception technology, system integration and certification, is expected to benefit both near-term piloted operations for Joby as well as fully autonomous operations in the future.“
Joby’s plan has long been to apply autonomous versions of its aircraft to the air taxi market once the concepts underpinning them are proven operationally. So the Xwing acquisition, along with the recent announcement of ElevateOS, Joby’s customer interface, feel timely.
We’re not quite ready for autonomous flight. But more than ever, we can see it from here.
The wind picked up white tips on the wave tops below, little cirrus wisps on a teal-blue field.
Turning south to parallel the Atlantic coast down from Rehoboth Beach, we made good on a promise I’d made myself 4 years ago when we first flew with LightHawk for a story for Flying magazine.
With the pivot to our own business this spring, I saw clearly the gift of time we could now dedicate to volunteering for several aviation organizations near to my heart: the Recreational Aviation Foundation, the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators, and LightHawk. I could spend meaningful time with each, and give purpose to my flying as well as collaborate with some of my favorite folks in the aviation family.
I went through the process to become a LightHawk volunteer pilot (VP), a series of interviews and reflection on my experience, as well as recommendations from key folks I’d flown with the in past. They set a minimum total time of 1,000 hours PIC for a reason: The flights typically involve carrying non-aviation passengers and photographers. The flights may also follow routing at low level and/or in congested airspace, or in varying terrain for the sake of capturing a broad breadth of the natural resources we collectively seek to protect.
Our first mission would just involve Stephen and I, capturing a couple hours’ worth of video of the high tide at the end of June along Maryland’s Atlantic coast and around the Delmarva Peninsula into the Chesapeake Bay. LightHawk will add the reels to their archives, and use them to compare to similar footage to be collected during the King Tides in September. We’d fly our friend Bobbie’s Cessna 182, the perfect steed for this, and test out a couple of new GoPro mounts along the way. It was an ideal one to start for us.
But it wasn’t without its complications. We’d need good VFR weather—no low coastal clouds, and no convection down low bumping us around. We’d also need to navigate the special use airspace peppering the Bay and the southern tip of the peninsula. The length of the mission would stretch our legs (but not the 182’s, with its nearly 6 hours endurance), and the afternoon timing meant we would be flying in the hottest part of the day.
We chose our day: Saturday, June 29. We had to wait for the weather to clear off on the peninsula, and some last-minute fiddling with the tiedown-ring mount on the wing meant we got off a little later than hoped. We’d still make the coast by a few minutes after the high tide mark, but we’d be an hour past that by the time we got to the bay side. C’est la vie! We’d capture what we could and take lessons learned for the next time.
However, we completely lucked out when it came to airspace: the summer weekend with the DC and Delaware areas quiet as far as VIP movements (read TFRs) nixed the one centered on KILG that would have affected the northern part of our route. And, the closed tower at Wallops and cold restricted areas throughout the bay meant we could fly out straight over Aberdeen, down the coast past Chincoteague, cut across the tip as needed, and back up the other side.
We even managed a Class B clearance just north of BWI on the return, giving us a clear view of the Key Bridge (or its remnants) and our best shot at making it back to KHGR before the thunderstorms came over the mountains from the west. Many thanks to those nameless folks at Potomac, Dover, and Patuxent Approach for your help and creative suggestions.
The remote control on the wing mount worked, as we found coming over KGED, and a glareshield mounted GoPro as a backup worked well too. Stephen ran video on his iPhone for triple redundancy. We’re now in the tedious process of uploading all of the footage to LightHawk for their review and consideration.
Regardless of that outcome, we’re calling the mission a success. We clocked 4.1 hours on the Hobbs, and got the airplane back in the hangar before the rain began at the surface.
I figure we managed to generate all four of the “happy chemicals” a person needs to lift their spirits: dopamine (achieving a goal); serotonin (being above nature); oxytocin (helping others); and endorphin (being creative).
LightHawk is in the midst of its #50in50Challenge to launch 50 flights in the 50 days starting from June 15. If you’re interested in becoming a LightHawk VP, check it out here.
Crossing the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay just south of Aberdeen. [Credit: Julie Boatman]Flying out to the coast near Rehoboth Beach [Credit: Julie Boatman]Turning south towards Chincoteague [Credit: Julie Boatman]Patterns on the shoals and waves below [Credit: Julie Boatman]Capturing the wetlands along the coast [Credit: Julie Boatman]A wing view out to the water [Credit: Julie Boatman]The town of Chincoteague and the seashore below [Credit: Julie Boatman]Passing the Cape Charles VOR to the bay side [Credit: Julie Boatman]
