- Today on "Pilots, Props, and Planes."

We'll take a look at three airplanes that were instrumental in training pilots during World War Two.

We'll check out the future of aviation with an electric airplane and we'll take a flight in a classic Beechcraft detail Bonanza.

Also we'll open my scrapbook and visit the one of a kind Gee Bee R2 replica racer, and we'll go to an elementary school that trains future pilots on flight simulators.

That's all on Pilots, Props and Planes.

(plane engine roaring) (upbeat music) Funding for Pilots, Props and Planes is provided by, (upbeat music) - Reedley College is proud to be a part of the aviation industry, providing advanced education in all aspects of flight science, aviation mechanics and professional pilot training, Go Tigers (plane engine roaring) (upbeat music) - Hello, everyone today's episode brings us to Fresno, California's historic downtown Chandler airport.

Since this year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

I thought it would be appropriate to share with you the histories of a couple of training aircraft that were instrumental in training tens of thousands of pilots for the United States Army Air Corps, Navy and Marine Corps.

Join with me now, as we go out to the ramp and we'll meet Fresno's Arnie Schweer who's going to tell us a little bit about the two training airplanes you will see today.

- So we have the, the Boeing Stearman, the Kadet and the North American AT-6 Texan.

- Yeah.

- Tell us a little bit about the Boeing.

- You know, everybody calls 'em the Yellow Peril because when when see there are PT-17 and a PT stands for Primary Trainer.

So, when a 19 year old, when World War Two started, all, everybody lined up at the induction center, they wanted to go fly airplanes.

Well, okay.

You were either a ground pounder or you were gonna get into an airplane if you, if you could handle it.

And so a primary training was the Yellow Peril and the reason they call 'em that is because they were real good at ground looping.

And a ground loop is when you lose control of the airplane on the runway, and it goes this way that way and out into the weeds you go that was one quick way to get washed out.

- There were numerous other primary trainers besides the PT-13 and PT-17 Boeing Kadet.

One of them was the Fairchild PT-19.

- I liked Fairchild PT-19's.

This particular airplane was built in 1942 and it served at that time.

It was called the US Army Air Forces.

This particular airplane was built by a Aeronca and then the the ranger engine in the PT-19, it's an upside down engine.

It's inverted, six cylinder, air cooled that gives it that, that distinct sound that (plane engine roaring) This particular one was restored by a father and son in Pennsylvania in the eighties from 82 to 87.

As a matter of fact, they're still restoring, I think they restored 18 of 'em now 17 or 18 of them.

And some of them have won national grand champions at Oshkosh the big air venture.

So, anyway, it went from Pennsylvania to Texas from Texas to San Diego, San Diego here to Chandler.

- Now the, this aircraft, the, the PT-17 was built by the Boeing Aircraft Company but originally designed by Lloyd- - Lloyd Stearman.

Yep.

- All these guys are from Wichita.

You know something, Wichita was the center for all these all these air crafts - Walter Beech and Lloyd Stearman - And Clyde Cessna - Clyde Cessna all of them from Wichita.

In fact, they have the Travel Air company early on and then each of them went on to individual success with their careers.

Many of these airplanes survived after World War Two.

In what kinds of capacities?

- Oh, crop dusters used them.

They put 450 horsepower Pratt engines on on em, and, and and just flew the winds off of em, practically.

- One of the greatest training aircraft ever conceived and ever built the North American AT-6 Texan.

And that's the aircraft behind us.

- Yep.

- Tell us a little bit about that one.

- Well, the AT-6 is the real pilot maker.

If you graduated from the PT, you had your your sticking water skills.

They put you in a, in a, AT-6.

And, and, and that, that I, I have flown, I have flown an AT-6 from the, from the backseat, not solo, but I I remember it was the most work I ever had to do in an airplane because AT-6 was built like that.

It won't fly to straight on level.

You gotta fly it straight on level.

You, you can't trim it to be what you want it to do.

It'll just wander off.

And so you have to fly it.

When you have mastered AT-6, you can apply about any any kind of World War Two fighter, like a P-51 if you can fly a AT-6.

And that's how guys get qualified in P-51's today.

- So next up ladies and gentlemen we're gonna be Joseph Oldham.

He's gonna bring us up to date about the future of general aviation.

As he tells us about the Pipistrel Electric Airplane how does this airplane affect the future of light sport aviation?

- Well, this is the first production electric airplane in the world.

There's a lot of prototypes that are out there.

This company has many of those prototypes right now.

This air aircraft though has provided the platform in terms of its development to support the development of those future aircraft that are gonna use electrical propulsion systems, either pure electric that's, you know battery powered or hybrids, or even fuel cells.

So even a, a fuel cell aircraft is an electric aircraft.

It still uses electric motor to provide the propulsion.

It's just that the fuel cell provides the electricity that feeds into the battery pack that then feeds the electric motor.

So this is really the basis.

And for all of the production aircraft going forward is the learning that's going on with this aircraft and others.

Like it there's many other companies that are doing the same thing, but the basic components, the motor, the batteries, the use of inverters the charging unit systems, all of that is gonna be heavily dependent on everything that's learned with these aircraft and the others that are following.

- You described the various sources of electrical power, - right?

- Which source powers this airplane.

- These are battery electric.

So these are fully battery electric.

They've got a 21 kilowatt hour battery pack.

There's actually two packs that form the actual battery source for the aircraft.

There's a 10 and a half kilowatt hour pack in the nose.

And there's a 10 and a half kilowatt hour pack behind the pilot and the passenger.

And together that's 21 kilowatt hours 20 kilowatts hours is usable.

There's about one kilowatt hour that's not usable in the packs.

And that's consistent with what we see in cars and trucks and buses.

- Okay.

How long will the charge last?

- These aircraft can fly for about an hour and still have at least a 20% or more battery state of charge reserve which is what the manufacturer recommends for prolonging the battery life.

- Okay.

- And, you know, I've flown this, these aircraft for one and a third hours, 1.3 hours, and still had over 20% state of charge remaining when I shut the system down.

And so a lot of it is, is how you use the aircraft.

If you, it, in pattern work, you know just repetitive takeoff and landing operations you actually regen the batteries as you're descending the prop turns into a wind generator when you pull a throttle to zero and it puts power back into the batteries not a whole lot, but a little bit.

And so that extends the flight time.

I oftentimes say that this is the 21st century Piper Cub.

And in many ways it is, it is an easy airplane to fly but it also demands that you fly it well.

And the Cub is the same way.

The flight characteristics it's full span, Aileron flaperons.

So it has very, very rapid response in role.

And it also has very rapid response in pitch.

And it also has a very responsive rudder.

So flight characteristics are very smooth but they're also very responsive.

So you fly it with two fingers in a thumb.

You don't grab onto the stick and make big motions to, you know, get response.

In fact, if you do that, you're gonna find yourself all over the sky because the airplane is just so responsive.

- What is the market like here in the US for an air craft of this type at this point in our general aviation and light sport aviation history?

- Well, based on kind of the interest level with this project I'd say it's probably very good.

You know, our fuel costs here while they're not as high as Europe are still significant, you know and cost of operation for conventional training aircraft is, is pretty high.

You know, if you've got a six or seven gallon an hour of fuel burn and the fuel costs five bucks a gallon you know, it doesn't take long.

That adds up pretty, pretty quick.

And so when you're, when a student is trying to accumulate 40 hours or 50 hours of flight time just to get their private pilot certificate or 25, 20 to 35 hours to get their sport pilot certificate that added cost for fuel is a fairly substantial component in their total cost to get those, to get those ratings.

So these aircraft as I said, you know is four bucks an hour to fly one.

And, you know, that compares very very favorably with, you know, piston engine aircraft conventional piston engine airplanes.

These aircraft are owned (upbeat music) by the city of Reedley, this one 244 Alfa Romeo and 243 Alfa Romeo.

- Earlier today, we had a chance to talk with Fresno's Arnie Schweer about two classic World War Two trainers.

Now we're gonna have a chance to visit with Arnie about another classic the magnificent 1959 Beechcraft V-tail Bonanza.

Arnie's very own airplane Arnie your Bonanza is absolutely beautiful.

The classic 1959 V-tail Bonanza.

- Thank you.

- What drew you to this airplane?

- You know, when I was a little kid, Bonanzas came out in 1947, I was nine years old and my uncle bought one.

When guys came back from World War Two Beechcraft thought that, you know, let's get a jump on this.

Let's get an airplane.

That's all metal.

Because before that, most airplanes were fabric.

You sit 'em out in the sun for a few years the fabric rocks off of 'em.

So they said, let's make it an all aluminum very light airplane, the V-tail goes back to prior to World War Two, but Beech wanted it because they thought, well, it's gonna be lighter because you've only got two thirds of weight back there.

So it's gonna be faster.

And they wanted something sleek and fast for the, for the, for the all the guys coming home from World War Two that were used to flying fighters, well they're gonna get a Bonanza rather than something else.

Right.

So that's kind of what they did.

It flies like a dream.

Let's go flying.

- Let's go fly.

- Okay.

(upbeat music) - When the Beechcraft Bonanza emerged at the end of World War Two it was a brand new approach to an all metal light aircraft at the premium end of the civil aviation market (upbeat music) The model 35 featured a retractable tricycle landing gear an easier to manage horizontally opposed six cylinder engine and an elegantly streamlined metal Fuselage with its signature V-tail (upbeat music) Still in production today 73 years later, the Beechcraft Bonanza with more than 17,000 built has the distinction of having the longest production run in aviation history.

Time to open my scrapbook from 2001, we visited with Delmar Benjamin and his Gee Bee R-2 replica racer.

- This airplane was originally designed, flown in 1932, held a world speed record in 1932, 300 miles an hour which was actually a hundred miles an hour faster than any airplane that the military had in 1932.

And the Gee Bee was flown to the world's speed record by Jimmy Doolittle it was 296.8 miles an hour.

And that record stood for four years.

This airplane's been doing shows for going on 10 years Now, I've got about 1500 hours on it, which is 1,490 hours more than the original accumulated.

The reason for the strange shape of this airplane is due to they had this big round engine, which was pretty reliable for sitting world speed records.

That's what they were looking at is reliable big horsepower, but it was a big ground frontal area.

So they designed a, a raindrop or a teardrop shape behind it.

Therefore you have the strange shape of the airplane but actually flies quite well.

Looks like it shouldn't fly, but it flies quite well.

The Gee Bee does some strange maneuvers that other airplanes won't do.

The fuselage actually creates enough lift that it'll fly without using the wings so I can fly knife edge or on the airplane side with the wings perpendicular to the earth, it'll actually climb out on the side without using the wings.

I grew up on a farm.

We had an airplane around, used it for transportation all the time, But A to B airplanes like Cessna and Pipers, didn't really turn my crank.

And then In the seventies, I discovered Hot rod airplanes, small airplanes with large engines.

And that's what got me fired up flying again.

I built a Pitts Special several Pitts Specials And refine them down faster, always faster and more horsepower.

And that kind of culminated in this Gee Bee that you see behind me it's kind of the smallest package with the biggest engine.

I've flown a close to 1500 hours.

And I don't know if I've formed an opinion on it that I could pass on.

I've gotten to know the airplane very well.

I'm not really comfortable at any time flying it but I've learned to deal with it.

I've flown all over the country, flown in Europe flown Canada and Alaska.

I've done a lot of cross country in it.

Most of the time it's actually cross country.

We fly at the air show about 10 minutes.

It's not a very good trainer.

That's for sure.

Landing at a hundred miles an hour or 120 actually is what I land at most people think a Pitts Special is a fairly demanding airplane.

This airplane lands at twice the speed of a Pitts Special.

It's about four times as sensitive directionally as the Pitts Special, you have be very careful like approaching landing speeds are the same as an F-16 but we don't have an ejection seat.

So when things go wrong they really go wrong in this airplane.

There are a lot of wild stories.

Jimmy Doolittle flew the airplane five times and three of those times he was racing it the original R-1 actually only accumulated 10 hours in its entire life.

And the R-2 accumulated 33 hours mainly due to it was cross country, airplane and accumulated.

Most of those hours racing cross country going as fast as it would go and getting off the ground with the most fuel they actually put 300 gallons of fuel in this airplane.

1800 pounds of fuel which is about what the airplane weighs.

So the, the wild stories were due to the the high performance of this airplane.

What they were used to flying was travel airs and such stalled about walking speed.

This airplane stalls at a hundred miles an hour.

And that's where the wild stories of it was.

They became the flying coffin the bud maker, flying pickle barrel (upbeat ) - We're Jefferson Elementary School in Reedley a small farming community in the Central San Joaquin Valley of California.

And today we're gonna share with you how bringing a flight simulator into the classroom is going to change the future of aviation.

- It started with the electric aircraft that we have that City Reedley and City of Mendola and the County of Fresno invested in a few years ago.

And those electric aircraft were a draw for many companies that are interested in that type of propulsion system for the future, right?

And Boeing was one of those companies.

And through that relationship that we developed with them they sent a team down to actually engage with us about the challenges that they had recognized over their assessment of the pilot shortage.

Over the next 20 years, we both agreed that we would find these pilots that are needed to fill that shortage in communities that previously had not been exposed to aviation as a career path.

And most of those are in communities of color.

And as you probably are aware, the majority of the pilot population in the United States is white males of actually my age in their sixties.

And so to reverse that and to get more diversity and to adjust how that population evolves in the future, we need to actively seek people from these communities of color that previously have not even considered aviation as a career path.

So their plan was to put flight simulators into schools to try to find where these kids were at a young age.

And the first simulator that Boeing provided was actually deployed here at Jefferson Elementary in Reedley the whole plan was to build a pipeline 'cause we've all recognized that the current pipeline for producing pilots is broken.

It's been broken for quite some time.

- How will students at an elementary school level work their way up?

And what's the process?

What is the goal for them to attain, to move from the elementary level, to the middle school level high school, junior college, and then college - Boeing's idea, and ours was that these kids are growing up playing on video games.

And so the simulators are kind of a video game designed program that will get them into an interest in aviation looking at how they play video games.

But at the same time that they're working on these simulators, they're actually fulfilling the same requirements that a pilot would do as they go through the FFA approved ACS standards.

- Sure.

- Right?

So each module that they go through, they get a score.

Those scores then are uploaded to a cloud-based database that is accessible from Boeing and as well as the schools so that we can track these kids and begin to find out which ones have a desire and a skillset that is conducive to them continuing on in this pipeline we then start looking for ways to get them resources to move them to the next level of actual flight training, potentially in glider.

Then eventually moving them into light sport aircraft when they're about 15 or 16.

And then the ultimate goal is to, by the time they graduate from high school would have a private pilot certificate.

And Reedley College has a flight science program that starts at as a, at a college level.

And they could move then into that program to go ahead and get their commercial instruments and fulfill the requirements that they would need to get an airline job say by the time they're about 25 - Let's go into the classroom and take a look at the simulator.

And, and you can explain to everybody how the simulator is going to work.

- Our flight simulator pilot today is Mr. Michael Murphy.

And he is our chief flight simulator instructor.

And he started flying on flight simulator when he was about an nine years old.

And he's currently 20.

He is a engineering student at CSU Fresno and he has a real skill for using these flight simulators and for instructing with them.

- So, Michael, I see on your screen that you have a variety of different attitudes that you can choose from to begin today's flight simulation demonstration which one of those are you gonna start with first?

- So I'm gonna start on the first one, the intro flight.

This is the first one that that kids will normally see.

So the scenarios give off a, a pretty good detailed explanation on how to finish the scenario.

It'll evaluate you and then it'll give you a score.

So.

- What type of an aircraft are you going to employ in this simulation?

- We're gonna be an Cessna 172.

- Great.

- Yeah.

So let's go ahead and start it up now just to get everything loaded.

(plane engine roaring) - Michael, thank you very much for your simulator presentation today.

I've got one more favorite ask of you though.

- Alright.

- Will you take us back to Chandler Field.

- Of course (plane engine roaring) - So it looks off like you're on final for Chandler.

Can you tell us what's going on on the simulator now?

- Yeah.

So right now we're on final for three zero left coming in into Fresno Chandler.

Just making sure I maintain my speed.

We're in a high performance airplane right now.

So Coming down, we got two red two whites on the glass slope.

So we're just gonna keep that coming all the way down.

Our gear is down.

(Plane engine roaring) - And thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time on Pilots, Props and Planes (upbeat music) Funding for Pilots, Props and Planes is provided by... - Reedley College nestled against the Sierra in Central California offers a full spectrum of flight science, aviation mechanics, and professional pilot education in an affordable community college setting Go Tigers!

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