Today is historic for two reasons. First, it is the four year anniversary of my receiving a life-saving kidney from my big brother, Butch. Second, it is the day that the federal government has gotten controlling interest in two out of three of the biggest automobile manufacturers.

Butch – I can’t tell you how much better my life has been the past four years and hopefully into the future because of your gift to me. As you know, I am a wimp of almost cosmic proportions so your gift saved us all years and years of me whining and complaining. Seriously, thanks.

President Obama – good luck running the auto industry. Now that you have the labor unions involved this all is beginning to look like a really bad rendition of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.; everybody in government and business looks and sounds like Wesley Mooch.

GAMA people should be doing double back-flips over the fact that almost every domestic made car will be done by the government now. Once Obama and the others get involved in the day-to-day of car making, they will be turning out cars much like the former Soviet Union did when they controlled their industries. I’m talking about terrible cars that nobody wants to buy.

This will lead people to flock to the skies and buy aircraft that are still made by rational human beings. At least until the Government takes over that business as well. Are Cessna, Mooney, Piper and Boeing “too big to fail”?

We would be well advised to place our deposits on future aircraft deliveries now to preclude that sad day. Personally, I don’t want to fly a plane with federally mandated air mileage figures, eighteen federally mandated airbags and charges built into the price of the thing two cover federally mandated two month paid vacations for the union/management workers.

So, Comrades, buy your airplane today before the next five year plan for aviation is announced.

The whole concept of a light sport aircraft is a strange thing. I understand that the Federal Aviation Administration wanted to begin a whole new class of aircraft that people could fly without having a third class medical, but the rules seem a little arbitrary to me.

For example, where did they come up with that 1,320 max gross weight? It is pretty clear that they set the gross weight limit so low that your average sport pilot would not be allowed to fly a Cessna 150, 172 or Cherokee. He or she would have to either fly an airplane like a Champ (which is likely sixty or more years old) or shell out over a hundred grand for a new light sport airplane. In other words, the government pretty much made the whole thing too expensive from the beginning. They were clearly working for the aircraft manufacturers in this case, not the pilots.

I have been flying the Champ as a light sport airplane for a while now and really enjoy every minute of it. For one thing, it takes me back to my younger days. I flew Champs a lot when I was a teen aged line boy. Second, there is nothing more fun than flying a champ with the window open and the door off on a warm day.

 I recently thought I would move up and fly another kind of light sport airplane. This is the kind that has the bubble canopy, the high-tech instrument panel and (oh my gawd) the Rotax engine.

I am sure that some of you out there in reader land just love the Rotax engine. You, of course, are idiots.

The Rotax is the devil and represents everything evil about aviation today.

First of all, the damn thing doesn’t have magnetos – it has some weird-assed European electronic ignition system. I just can’t trust an airplane that doesn’t have mags. It just ain’t natural.

Next, in order to check the stupid thing you have to remove the entire top of the cowling. To check the oil requires that you turn the prop about fifty times to “burp” the engine. Excuse me? Wasn’t moving the prop considered dangerous? They even want you to rotate the prop in the regular direction. (about seventy five revolutions) Having no mags and no impulse couplers, this is perfectly safe with a Rotax – how about when the Light sport pilots move on to Champs? It’ll be “finger losing time” at the old Aeronca hangar.

Finally, this engine-related spawn of Satan runs at about fifty gazillion RPM. Hell, if you get below 2,000 RPM they get all upset because you are FUBARing the gear box. Which leads to the incredulous question: The DAMN THING HAS a GEAR BOX???

Once I climbed into the little bubble canopied POS to go flying, I noticed that there was no airflow in the cockpit during taxi. It was hotter than the surface of Spock’s home planet. We finally got it into the air only to learn that it only had a 10 knot crosswind limitation and flew like a short-coupled, under-powered, un-stable and much harder to fly version of the 1972 American Yankee, which at least had a normal engine.

I am going back to my champ and cubs thank you very much. The future may belong to these overpriced hard to fly pieces of crap but I won’t be piloting them. Mo-bettah they are flown by thirteen year olds from the ground using radio control boxes.

There was a big ballyhoo at Sun & Fun this year about the brand new flying car that is touted to change the way we think about flying and driving. I saw it and suppose that it is an okay idea – as far as it goes. I can’t imagine anybody but your average rich eccentric wanting to own one. Even though the idea of a flying car sounds modern, it has been done before and I am pretty sure it has no practical application other than you can get it washed cheaper at the carwash than you probably can at the airport.

Also, the flying car that we really all want and are angry that our futures didn’t provide us is the classic Jetson’s flying car. It would swoop around and fold up into a briefcase so that George had absolutely no parking problems. Strangely, when Jetson got his car home he always parked it and never folded it.

An important facet of the Jetson flying car that current flying automobile designers are totally missing is that it never ever drove on the ground. It always flew. Sure, it flew along “highways in the sky” with traffic lights and such, but the flying car we all dreamed about as kids would never get stuck on a toll bridge or in the construction that is eternally around Knoxville and south of Atlanta.

The flying car idea has a special relevance in today’s government controlled stinky economy. If the flying car ever becomes a reality in the marketplace, then two industries – the automobile and the aircraft manufacturers – can all go bankrupt at one fell swoop, thereby saving the bankruptcy courts half of their time.

I would like to suggest that aircraft designers haven’t thought out this airplane/automobile thing well enough. I think somebody should come up with the “Total Utility Recreational-Flying Device” or “TURD”.

This aircraft hybrid would do it all. Everybody would want a flying TURD in their lives. I suggest that from the very first design stage, the TURD should have the ability to do the following:

• Recover from a spin (Cessna, get right on that – willya?)


• The TURD should float


• Mow my grass


• Pull a medium to large sized travel trailer or horse trailer


• Hover


• Fully aerobatic


• Mach 2 capable


• Excellent sound system

I personally think an aircraft like this would sell itself. The possibilities for marketing it are almost endless, but in these troubled times I can see the very first sales pitch that can appear on billboards and advertisements world-wide:

When the Poop Hits the Fan, You Belong in a Flying TURD

The NTSB has come out with some findings on the airline crash in Buffalo and it looks like the flight crew could not have done things more wrong. Sterile cockpit violations, lack of systems knowledge, a cavalier attitude toward flight operations and a staggeringly inadequate flight experience background killed those passengers and the poor guy on the ground.

Apparently, the captain had flunked multiple check rides during his career including a recent simulator ride. He had a checkered past, very little flight total flight time and almost no flight time in type. The copilot was from a hot climate and had never seen airframe ice before. No experience, no flight wisdom and no common sense combined with a very long day in absolutely terrible weather in a weak airplane is a deadly mixture and one that could have been avoided.

But, then again, everybody wanted cheap tickets and the airline system gave those passengers exactly what they paid for – minimum training, minimum maintenance and minimum attention to safety.

The existence of pilot stupidity is not a new phenomenon. Pilots have been doing idiotic things since flight began in the last century and a lot of NTSB accident reports record the gaffes that can kill hapless passengers.

In cases like this, I have always thought that the pilots getting killed isn’t such a bad thing – it is merely God weeding out the dumb pilots from the gene pool to ensure that eventually no stupid pilots will be bred.

The sad part happens when the aviation god’s plan of future pilot purity kills innocent victims like passengers and people sitting in their homes; aka: the crash scene watching the newest show on Fox.

What can we do during this time when God is sorting out and eliminating all the stupid pilots from our herd? Not much, I’m afraid. It may be hundreds of years before natural selection ensures that only smart professional pilots are allowed to fly our beat-up turbo-prop airliners into blizzards in Buffalo.

For every Captain Sully, rest assured that there is at least one pilot as stupid as the guy who thought that stall recovery required yanking the nose up. For every Neil Armstrong out there flying there is a person operating and airplane that has absolutely no idea of what they are doing or how their aircraft works.

Return to www.kevincreates.com

I have the perfect solution for the problem of executive jets being ostracized by the media and the president – Jet Use Credits!

Are you a harried executive or CEO who is tired of having to justify every single trip you and your family take to Aspen or Monte Carlo? Are you an aviation oriented business who operates a business aircraft on charters or to re-locate key employees or perhaps vital machine parts to critical assembly lines so they don’t’ shut down and waste hundreds of thousands of dollars but are worried that the president will “send in the people with the pitchforks” if he finds out you are using your Citation?

 Is that what is bothering you, Boopsie?

Well, worry no more!

My new company, Guilt Free Flight ® will be happy to sell “jet use credits” to either corporations or individuals who use aircraft for any reason whatsoever. When you buy our aviation off-sets, you can rest assured that our company will use the money you send us to replace the vital air that you flew your jet through. We promise (in writing!) to charge you just enough money to assuage your guilt, turn away critics and make the public love you once again.

Here is a quick break-down of our basic aviation off-set fees:

Micro-Jet: $75 per flight hour

Medium-Jet $135 per flight hour

Tom Hanks or John Travolta sized Jet: $250 per flight hour

These fees are not all we offer here at Green Jets LLC. We offer: Catering Trash off-sets, environmental impact of your flight toilet fees and offer a very affordable insurance underwriting program to protect you when your flight crews go on rampages and wreck local bars.

So, please contact us today at www.kevincreates.com and we will be able to reduce your business flying guilt right after your deposit check clears and is composted.