When, in a few years, we're flying all-electric aircraft and the piston-powered
flivvers we zoom around in now are relegated to museums, we'll still have to know what to do when thrust is lost.
On The Cover: Starting an airplane without an electrical system is a time-honored procedure, but one many pilots never learned because it usually isn't necessary with modern
flivvers. At least until the battery dies.
At the other extreme is the big-city FBO, where piston-powered
flivvers get parked in the South 40 and you'll catch a shuttle to get to the front desk.
That the pilot apparently couldn't power it out of the incipient stalls he encountered argues strongly against you or me being able to do so with our relatively underpowered
flivvers.
For the
flivvers many of us fly, there may not be complete performance data, however.
From the unlikely beginnings of rickety
flivvers and a tent city grew the annual migration that's supplied so much of Sarasota's prosperity.
They often required equipment (e.g., DME) or performance our piston
flivvers didn't offer.
In "Huckleberry Finn" Mark Twain described some of those towns perched along the Mississippi River, with their fierce feuds and their equally fierce revivals - and some of them haven't fundamentally changed beneath their new surface of
flivvers and radios.
The
flivvers I fly have steerable nose- and tailwheels, so I don't have to depend on the brakes to maintain directional control on the ground unless I'm flying a different airplane.
With that heat also comes humidity, both of which combine to rob your
flivvers of the crisp, healthy performance we enjoyed just a couple of months ago.
Although technologies like inflatable boots and the TKS "weeping wing" system have brought FIKI to the personal airplane, a warm pitot tube is the only icing armor we have aboard the
flivvers most of us fly.