Aircraft Manufacturing comes to Newport

Tom Peghiny (left), president of Flight Design USA, has sold his light aircraft manufacturing company to Jay Peak co-owner Ariel Quiros (right). A newly created Flight Design Americas LLC will establish manufacturing and sales operations at the Newport State Airport, also managed in part by Quiros. Photo by Hilary Niles/VTDigger.

By Manfried Rieder Starhemberg

After many months of speculation and much press coverage it is now final: There will be a new aircraft manufacturing facility at the Newport State Airport and it will be owned by Jay Peak partner Ariel Quiros. The company has stated that its goal is to hire up to 100 personnel to facilitate the assembly and sales of a light sport aircraft, namely the flagship model of the company, the CTLS, a high wing monoplane which has been in production for years and some 1,800 of which are currently in use world wide.
Flight design expects to sell approximately 200 of its current models which come in various levels of sophistication in the coming year. The planes retail from $ 150,000.- to $ 180,000 depending on avionics choices and other available options.
So - aside from rejoicing that there will be new life injected into the NEK economy, how good is this airplane? We spoke to Karl Heinz Maier, a German sports photographer who owns a CTLS and uses it extensively for his work:
"I have owned four aircraft previously, first a Piper 180, then two Cessna 172s and before the CTLS flew a Mooney. The CTLS is the best aerial platform for photography by a long shot and it is far easier to insure, maintain and service than anything else I have owned" states Karl Heinz. "The economy of operation alone justifies the price and this little flying machine has a level of visibility and safety that is exceptional".
One of the fascinating features of the CTLS is an emergency automatic parachute system that will deploy when there is structural failure in airframe or wings and will let the craft descend in relative safety and the unavoidable hard "landing" impact is lessened by an excellent restraint system and a cockpit safetly cell which will be able to make even a catastrophic incident highly survivable, a first in the sport aviation industry.
When we mention "Sport Aviation" we must explain that this a new category of pilot licensing which falls between the largely unregulated "ultra light" category and the private pilot's license. Obtaining a sport pilot license takes approximately 20 hours of flight training as opposed to the minimum of about 40 for the private license. Ground school is also abbreviated and the cost of this new form of license is less than half of that of the conventional airman's certificate.
There are restrictions of course, a sport pilot will typically only be able to fly in good weather when the visual flight regulations apply as opposed to the available instrument rating obtainable by private pilots. However, as many of the CLTS owners are already licensed under the conventional regulations, they will be able to fly in IFR (instrument flight) conditions and may bring their craft into airports which are not permitted to sports pilots.
The new Vermont company expects to attract customers for the new sports pilot license to Newport as it will be operating a flight training center here. The Jay Peak partners envision the Northeast Kingdom to eventually be able to attract pilots to Newport as an aviation vacation center which could also have an impact on the tourism industry in Orleans county and the neighboring regions of Vermont.
Flight design states that 60% of the aircraft components will be manufactured in the United States. Currently, pieces come from Germany and the Ukraine and many avionics packages are made in the US. The interestingly designed airframe with its ventral fin and external winglets for short take offs and landings, is made mostly from carbon fibre, there is extensive lightweight honeycomb construction, the tanks are in the wings, safely away from the passengers and the cockpit layout is quite sensational: The control panel resembles something that is more familiar to jet jockeys than the common man yet it is straight forward with easy to read panels, superb visual presentation of all needed flight data, couples with pinpoint accuracy GPS. This is not your grandfather's Piper or Cessna. Gone are the confusing analog dials and even the old bubble compass. Radio systems are finely integrated and easy to understand and use and the all-round visibility is spectacular.
At the other side of all this electronic wonderland is the flight controls and pedals which still emulate the old Tiger Moth: A stick for pilot and co-pilot, aluminum rudder and brake bars and fixed landing gear still give the feeling of "seat-of-the-pants" aviation. Just don't forget the goggles, a leather bomber jacket and a scarf!
The loud part of the machine is a Rotax engine, the engine of choice for aviators from powered gliders to sophisticated ultralights and experimental aircraft. This engine has been around for decades and even powers drones! The newest versions are of course fuel injected and have been developed through so many iterations that it could be considered as about as bullet-proof as any motor in modern aircraft
Flight Design is currently developing a four seat version of this versatile craft and another variant for the current model is available as a float plane which should make it highly attractive to hunters, fishermen or anyone else who enjoys the open spaces still available in the North East or neighboring Canada.
The 100 horsepower engine is so fuel economical that it burns about five gallons an hour at approximately 13 mph and this gives the little machine a range of 800 to 1,000 miles depending on engine speed, weather and altitude.
As a life long pilot I am really looking forward to seeing this operation coming to Newport. Combined with the recently opened Parker Pye restaurant which has great view over the happenings at the flight line it will make a visit to the regional airport an outing for the whole family.

Modern looks and functionality make this plane stand out

Mixture of traditional and Space Shuttle make up the cockpit

No Power? Heat your home cheaply:

I tried this out in my work shop and it works amazingly well:

http://www.realfarmacy.com/how-to-heat-your-room-for-15-cents-a-day/

I used tea candled from the Family Dollar and they do not burn quite as long as the IKEA ones mentioned but the result is the same - good steady heat for almost nothing. Now I am using two of those and the shop which is normally unheated, is comfortable enough to keep working even with all that snow and ice outside.
Manfried

Beware of Scam Artists on Craigslist!

SAMPLE OF A FORGED CHECK SENT TO US

By Manfried Rieder Starhemberg

Nancy and I recently put up a vintage car for sale on Craigslist. The price was $ 3,500.- and within a few days we were contacted by a buyer from Massachussets who asked us to open a Paypal account so that he may send us the money immediately. We did so and sent him an invoice. Within a few hours we received a Paypal confirmation that the money had been deposited in our account. When I checked my Paypal balance, there was so such deposit. The "buyer" had faked a whole list of Paypal notices and what initially alerted us what that the language was grammatically somewhat questionable, something that never happens on Paypal. So I contacted Paypal and they told me that the guy was a fraud artist. The clincher was that he had "overpaid" us and wanted us to send him the amount of the over payment immediately via Western Union money transfer. Not this old guy!

Anyhow - this was the first one.

Last week another "buyer" wrote to us and told us that he would send a check immediately but would make it out to a larger amount (see check above) so that I could send a cash-withdrawal to his "Shipping Company" after I had deposited the check. The shipping company is a woman with the name Shauna Rogers in Topeka, Kansas, no other information given.

When I got the check this morning I called Maida International and they told me that - as I had assumed, this is a fake check and that they had about 20 inquiries of the same nature within the last week alone but that the police claims to be powerless to do anything until someone is actually dumb enough to send those people money. Sadly, there are probably people out there gullible enough to do so and when the fake check bounces, they are screwed and could possibly even be prosecuted for tendering a forged check if they already spent the money and have no way to repay the bank. The bank does not give a hoot about the fraud perpetrated on you - CAVEAT!

So watch out when dealing with people on Craigslist - this seems to be a very common kind of internet fraud these days.

Vintage curling

We should do this in Vermont - Free-style curling

By Manfried Rieder Starhemberg

Eisstockschiessen, an ancient folk-sport with historical roots in Scandinavia, is one of the most popular winter sports in Central Europe. The first "real" proof of the popularity of the sport can be found in a 1601 painting by Pieter Breughel, who depicts ice stock shooters in "Winter Landscape With Bird Trap." However, clubs in Austria and Bavaria own old stocks which are dated before this time.
In my native Austria there are right now more than 120 organized clubs and tens of thousands of active participants, even in the smallest villages. The same applies to Bavaria, Hungary, Switzerland, the northern part of Italy, and to some extent the Czech Republic. The venue might be a frozen pond, lake, river, or man-made ice surface in an inn's rear yard. Thousands of country restaurants, hotels, and bars have ice stock areas and many ski centers groom them every year to provide an alternate activity to skiing.
The stock used to be a lovingly hand- or machine-turned piece of beech wood, alder, or pear wood. In its top center was attached a stick, mostly of oak. The stock had a wrought iron ring at its bottom to give it heft and also to push snow and debris out of the way. The stock bottoms were waxed with ski wax and every shooter had a special formula to use in specific ice conditions. Generally, for regulation play, the surface must be a rectangle of 40 meters in length, but for informal play any ice can be used.
The target is called the "Daube," a 10 cm by 10 cm piece of wood with canted edges, and, as in curling, the object of the play is to land as close to the Daube as possible, whereafter the opposing player will try to knock your stock to kingdom come. Just like curling but without sweepers.
I recall many evenings at my grandfather's favorite hangout, a local beer garden, where the men built the ice in a meadow behind the establishment much in the manner Canadians make their temporary hockey rinks. And then the first glorious days or nights when 20 or 30 men would get on with serious play, mostly after a few steins of Pilsner lager or Goesser Urquell bitter. Usually at night the ice was illuminated by light bulbs strung over the playing surface, and night Schiessen was magical. I still remember the hissing of the stock as it slid over the ice and the sharp rap as iron met iron, or the dull thump if it impacted the Daube.
Many times those weekend plays would go on till midnight or later. In my area we had women's nights where the men groomed the ice and it was the girls' time to play. Currently, club membership is evenly divided between men and women, and in the international championships the women play to the same rules as the men.
Today the sport has become so popular that it even has its own world championship. It was also an exhibition sport in the 1936 and 1961 winter Olympics, but eventually the I.O.C. chose curling because of its global acceptance. The big change in the sport came when new stocks of heavy lead-lined plastic, or even today's carbon fiber stocks, were introduced. Just the old-timers in the farm country or the Alps still hold on to their wooden stocks, but competitors in serious events avail themselves of the most modern technology. There are four weight classes for the stocks ranging from 2.75 to 3.8 kilograms.
There are also two kinds of sticks, the straight stick which is the traditional stock and the curved stick which was introduced in central Europe in the mid 1920's. Even the modern stocks of today offer the two stick options, which affords me a lovely anecdote:
In the Austria of the 1950's a great schism developed between straight stick shooters and the "curvies," whom of course could not be trusted. I had the privilege of listening to many hours of heated pro and con discussions about the relative merits of either stick form. It went so far that parents forbade their respective offspring from dating a kid from the opposing side. So if your dad was a straight you better not bring a curvie girl home. For us Roman Catholics it was almost as bad or possibly equally unacceptable as a Lutheran girl in a Roman household.

Those biases died of course with our elders, but sometimes when I go on some stock club websites and see the photo albums, I still cannot totally reconcile in my mind the fact that a lot of the good-looking young women with their event trophies are curvies. This might have something to do with the fact that I am married to a straight stick...
I wish we had a club here - we have the ponds and the lakes and this would make an inexpensive and fun winter outdoors activity for many, and possibly an added attraction to any town or village in Vermont. We used to have the best times just doing it informally: gather some friends, find a piece of ice, have a picnic and a beer or bottle of wine, and shoot for fun.
Manfried can be contacted at:
mapleleafpress@yahoo.com

An Icy Evening Walk in Newport City

Took another walkabout through our iced in city. Enjoy the photos:

Surrealism - a new show at Gallery 99

Chris Hudson ceramic

Mary Alice Brenner painting

A cheerful gallery

Surreal all right...

By Manfried Rieder Starhemberg

A new exhibition in Diane Peel's Gallery 99 across from the Family Dollar is a captivating collection of pieces by twelve local artists. Called "Surreal" it is a bit of that all right as different styles, mediums and levels of professionalism make for an enchanting show in this tastefully decorated and easily accessible space.
Mrs Peel, a local nurse who self finances this gallery and community center originally wanted a place to store and perhaps showcase her later father, the noted Seattle painter Donald Peel's remaining work. He is of course represented as well in this exhibit and would possibly have himself a great time being among the local talent some of whose work complement his own whimsical style and others who clash to starkly that it makes for an amusing counterpoint to his disciplined brush work.
The show will be on through the end of January and it is well worth seeing even by people who are not great art connoisseurs but simply because there are a bunch of good fun pieces, mostly quite affordable but all thought provoking and done by local artists

Join us at Newport's new community Facebook site

https://www.facebook.com/newportvt.community.

Great Fun at the Santa Parade

Nancy and I had a lovely time taking our 29 year old Fifth Avenue Chrysler into the Santa Claus Parade in Newport. Cold hands but warm hearts everywhere...We will have to do this again.

Share some pictures with us: