Focus On Aviation Photo Contest 3-8-17 Here's an email from Steve Bourque about the photo contest: "The third annual A Focus On Aviation photo contest is underway! This is a fantastic way to engage non-aviation people to get interested and involved with aviation. The flyer for the contest is attached (CLICK HERE TO LOAD THE FLYER).Please print it out and post it everywhere! The event information can be found at the GSAMA website below: http://www.gsama.org/events.html Please help spread the word! Many thanks to Rita Hunt for all of her hard work on this ongoing project, outstanding work Rita!  Stephen Bourque, C.M."

New England Flying Gourmet Challenge  3-4-17  Here's some information that appeared in General Aviation News recently. A group of aviation folks launched the New England Flying Gourmet Challenge. It's a joint marketing effort between eight airport restaurants in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, with a goal to reintroduce New England pilots to airport restaurants in the area. They say it's the updated version of the $100 hamburger. Below is a route that goes to all airports in one flight. However, if you rent Sanford's glass 172 at $160/hr, and do the Waterbury Conn airport, the numbers look something like the insert on the map. If you use a 172m @ $90/hr, and bring 3 passenger, you can get your hamburger down to $80! MORE

GKN Aerospace Manufacturing Facility in Florida  3-2-17 PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. - GKN Aerospace, "one of the world’s largest independent first tier suppliers to the international aviation industry," will expand its operations by locating a new manufacturing facility in Florida. The company intends to lease a new manufacturing facility and plans to make a capital investment of approximately $50 million and create 170 new jobs for highly skilled employees.

VFR To Nowhere 3-1-17:  We begin the month of March with a LIFR day. So plan on brushing up on your gps/MFD/EFIS/ADS-B manuals and getting ready for your biennial review. You may also need to decide whether to take your 3rd class medical or do you try the new medical reform procedure and ask your doctor to do the FAA paperwork? Unfortunately, the famous John King of John and Martha King school of flight training does not have that option as he fights with the FAA to get his medical back.

TFRs Paralyze Florida Flight Ops2-20-17:  In a preliminary economic analysis presented to Palm Beach County, Miller estimated losses for operators for just one weekend to total about $30,000 and his losses for the year could reach $200,000. The second-largest flight school has already relocated and Miller anticipates that others will follow. “Even though the tower at Palm Beach is willing to pick up the traffic and the TSA is willing to put some officers down here, the Secret Service has declined that. I don’t know whether that’s temporarily or permanently." Sonic booms rattled the southeast coast of Florida Friday evening as two F-15s were scrambled to intercept an aircraft that violated presidential restricted airspace over West Palm Beach.

Morphing Wing Design 2-07-17:  Universities and research labs have major programs trying to develop wing warping designs into aircraft. "Engineers at NASA and MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) combined new digital materials concepts with a highly advanced robotic assembly method to create a new, “bendable” wing architecture that optimizes lift and roll. The benefits of such an approach applied to an aerospace application like wing design, researchers say, is to increase aerodynamics and thus improve fuel efficiency."    ...more

VFR IN JANUARY 1-26-17: In between the wind, ice, snow storms and rain, the weather maps open up to show a temporary flight condition called VFR. If your airplane is in a hangar, at least you can do the preflight in a hospitable area before venturing out in the cold. The other day I tuned in to AWOS and it said, "Density Altitude minus 3,000 feet."  The pic on the right shows a white dot at the top of the screen. That's Venus and the picture does not do it justice. It actually looks like a landing light on a KC135.

PRATT & WHITNEY New High-Bypass Engine 1-18-17: Pratt & Whitney has a new engine that has some impressive numbers. Here's a bit from Forbes: Pratt has spent $10 billion and 20 years developing the geared turbofan. The engines will reduce fuel consumption 15%, extend the plane's range by 500 nautical miles, reduce environmental emissions by 50% and reduce noise by 75%.  Airbus upgraded family of A320neo narrow body jetliners to Lufthansa. The "neo" designation of the Airbus family stands for "new engine option," and the planes Lufthansa has bought will be equipped with the "geared turbofan" engine made by Pratt & Whitney.

SAAC Member Update: 1-10-17  The SAAC member list has been updated. Click (or press) here to download.

Hangars: 1-9-17  We currently have hangar vacancies available.
For more information contact:

Andrew B. Pomeroy
Airport Operations Supervisor
Pease Airport Management (KPSM & KDAW)
(603) 433-6536

SOLARSHIP1-9-17:  Another airship article emerges on finding new ways to re-invent the blimp. Jay Godsall from Ontario Canada is designing an airship that's been shaped into a fat looking wing that has solar cells on the top and huge control surfaces like ailerons and elevators and can run on solar power. They also mention it can use piston engines. Looking at some of the videos it looks like the Rotax is being used. His claim to fame is being able to fly in and out of a soccer field...   more.

Finding Skyhaven 12-30-16:  Before the days of GPS, finding an airport at night required keeping the CDI centered on a VOR radial and cross referencing your position from another VOR radial. Another thing you might be looking for is the airport beacon which normally verifies the airport location. In the case for Skyhaven, the beacon is not at the airport which becomes evident when lining up with runway 33.

Computer Program Replaces Physical Test Stand 12-24-16:  Many people do not realize that wings and tail surfaces on planes may seem fixed and unmovable, but they are actually designed to flex under the load of the aircraft when they lift the plane. Some articles talk about the wing tips moving up 4 m (13 feet) before lift off. During flight as the plane goes through turbulence, you might say that the wings are flapping up and down around 13 feet. (YouTube has video's of this.) To ensure the wings can take the strain, physical test stands are built to bend the wings and horizontal stabilizers to verify mechanical operation during all the bending. However, recently, Airbus has replaced a physical test stand with a computer program that is saving Airbus millions in time and material costs.

Blimps Are Back 12-21-16:  Articles are showing up again about Lockheed Martin's hybrid blimp project that has gone from a Skunkworks secret project for the U.S. Army to a commercial project. It started 10 years ago with the P-791 which was modified to the  LMH-1 craft and announced to operate in Alaska through a private company called Straightline Aviation. The blimp is helium filled and it looks like the aerodynamic shape is a custom shaped fabric bag that is susceptible to getting holes in it. To fix the holes, they designed a special robot that crawls the surface of the blimp and repairs the holes when it finds one. That sounds strange to me...   CLICK HERE to see the spiders