Nothing to smile about

Serbia’s Jat Airways saw passenger numbers diminish by 22% in the first 7 months of the year when compared to last. There has also been a decline in the number of operated flights compared to the same period last year, by 16.7%. The most drastic decrease in passenger figures was seen on flights to Montenegro where passenger numbers halved compared to last year, although there were 40% fewer flights operated to Podgorica and Tivat. On Euro-Mediterranean services there was a passenger decline of 13.6% compared to 2008. After last year’s record charter operations, this year there was a passenger decrease by 32%, although this is mostly due to the inability of Serbian tour operators to fill Jat’s aircraft this summer, compliments of the global financial crisis.

However, Jat has managed to drastically improve its cabin occupancy index which now stands at 75%. The airline’s most popular services are currently to Moscow, London, Stockholm and Gothenburg. The airline is continuing with the upgrade of its cabins and a total of 3 aircraft now have the new leather seats in Economy Class. A further 3 aircraft will receive the new look by the end of August. Serbian media have reported that the airline’s workers are unhappy with the management’s decision to shelve plans to lease 2 Boeing B737-700 aircraft and thus the management is now reviewing the decision.

How to fly RC helicopter? was the question when you started to dream about flying RC Helicopter but not anymore because with all the previous flying lessons and today's comprehensive training lesson you will feel more addicted to this hobby.
Here is the next RC Helicopter flying training lesson to give you the real taste of flying RC Helicopter in this hobby. Today we will learn to hover RC helicopter at much higher altitude and will fly RC helicopter at a much faster speed. This one is an advanced lesson of your RC helicopter flying lessons. We will learn about transitional lift and will see its application in the forward flight. We will have large flying circuits around our fixed position, which is similar to the earlier lesson but the difference is of the flying speed and the altitude. Will be starting slowly with a smaller circuit and slower speed and will gradually increase the circuit diameter and the speed too. So, practically we will flying a 100 to 150 feet in diameter circuits with the speed fast enough which will demand you for bank it a little to counter the centrifugal force which tries to pull it outwards. To be able to fly RC helicopter at that much of a speed, you will have to keep the altitude high enough too anywhere 15 to 35 feet. You are thinking right that today’s mistake is going to cost you dollars.

Preparing your RC helicopter for the flying training lesson:
You will have to increase the collective pitch range which must have been at the beginner’s learning setting by the RC helicopter manufacturer for most general flying. Most of the RC helicopters come with the setting of minus -3 degrees negative pitch, at low stick and plus + 10 degrees positive pitch at high stick, not more than that. You will have to increase the dual rate through on your right and left roll rate cyclic too in order to get the roll cyclic controls more responsive. You can leave the pitch cyclic dual rate as it is but if you want to have more pitch control you are allowed to do that.

What is transitional lift?
When you start to hover RC helicopter and then get it moving, you might have experienced transitional lift during your earlier RC Helicopter flying lessons. The transitional lift is the extra lift produced when wind or moving air collides with moving rotor blades. Actually the speed the wind is passing through the moving rotor produces equivalent lift to the RC helicopter as if it was moving with the speed equivalent to the wind speed. The rotor system becomes a bit more efficient when wind pass through it hence produces more lift. This effect is called ‘effective transitional lift’ in the real world of helicopters or simply ETL. The increased efficiency is directly proportional to the velocity of the air passing through the RC Helicopter blades. Effective transitional lift is added with the speed your RC helicopter is moving since ETL depends on the air speed not the ground speed. You may understand with this small example: if you are hovering your RC helicopter facing the wind and the wind is blowing at 30 km/h, the ETL produced will be equivalent to the lift created by RC helicopter moving at the speed of 30 km/h provided there is no wind.

Transitional lift is produced even when you fly rc heli backwards or sideways or when you see tailwind or cress wind. The amount of air passing the rotor blades will produce either by RC helicopter movement or wind will create Effective transitional lift. We only used forward movement of your helicopter in the above example because that is what we are going to practice today.



Having collective pitch RC helicopters is what is needed to control ETL, that is why we the real RC helicopter Hobby people stay away from fixed pitch RC helicopters. I asked you to start your rc helicopter flying lessons in a calm day when there is no or very little wind because of ETL. If you were to start flying your RC helicopter in gusting wind and while hovering it you will experience sudden bounce in the hovering height of the RC helicopter. As a beginner of RC helicopter flying you might not be able to react fast enough to control this constant shift in lift and might have come across a crash, which would have caused your motivation to break and a hole in your pocket.

One very practical example I want to give to make you understand the practicality of effective transitional lift effect. What do you think will happen when you are flying a large circuit at 30 km/h and the wind is gusty at 30KM/h? As soon as you will point nose into the wind the ETL will double the lift and it will be 60 km/h. Well now that you complete half the circuit and wind is gusting from your tail end…. Yes the ETL will be zero and your RC helicopter will face a sudden decrease in lift and drop. To counter this you will have to increase the throttle or collective. You need to remember this while doing fast circuits in high velocity winds, you will have to increase throttle when turning opposite of wind direction to save your RC helicopter from sudden drop and an ultimate crash. This is specially required when you are flying large RC helicopters and at lower heights. Do this or learn the lesson the hard way…

The point of explaining transitional lift in detail was to make you understand the how your RC helicopter is going to behave in your forward flight RC Helicopter training lesson and how to control the sudden change in lift when your move in or out of the transitional lift effect.

RC helicopter Flying training Lesson:
You will be required to practice going into and coming out of transitional lift before getting into fast circuit circle. You will also be comfortable at RC helicopter flying left and right of your side which means at right angle to you; earlier lessons have already prepared you for this. Your pre flight checks should be automatic by now… hope you have done them.
You will start by hovering 5 to 6 feet above the ground and then turning it either left or right of your side, whichever is comfortable to you. Now start giving a little forward cyclic to get it moving forward at around 6 to 8 km/h only fast walking pace. When it gets 25 to 30 feet away from you stop it at a hover. What do you experience? You must have seen that RC helicopter have gained the altitude without your increasing the throttle/ collective. You just experienced transit experienced transitional lift.



To counter transitional lift effect, you will have to increase throttle/ collective when you come out of the forward flying back into the hover and will have to decrease the throttle/ collective when coming into forward flying into the wind to maintain the altitude. This will take your practice and focus to have good hands on it. The more you will practice it the more it will become your sense, and sooner you will be applying counter collective/ throttle for transitional lift without even knowing you are doing it.

Let’s do the RC Helicopter fast forward circuit flying lesson:
The only difference in last RC helicopter flying lesson and today’s one is that in the previous one you kept the circuit small and the velocity of your RC helicopter was not that fast. Today you will be flying fast larger circuits with more altitude.

Start with the speed of last RC helicopter flying lesson slow and with small circuit, you may want to fly it counter clock wise or the clockwise whichever suits you( you must have found your rotation type during the last exercise). Now start increasing the speed of your rc helicopter and start increasing the circle with gradual increase in the altitude. You may not want to fly too fast or it will create dizziness. You may start with a circle of 50 to 60 feet in diameter with an altitude of 10 to 12 feet in the air with a speed of 15 to 20 km/h. After completing few circuits start decreasing the rc helicopter and bring the diameter of the circle smaller to the size of last RC helicopter flying training lesson. Safely lad you rc helicopter and take a little rest.

Analyze your performance with the larger and fast circuits, if you feel nervous, you might want to spend more time practicing the last rc helicopter exercise and make yourself comfortable. When you feel comfortable, start the same large circuit with same speed and altitude but in opposite direction which will most possibly be in the clockwise direction.
This RC helicopter training should make you confident and comfortable with flying rc helicopter in 60 feet circle both clockwise and counter clockwise directions. Now it’s time to make the circles larger and faster with higher altitude. Do 80 feet diameter circle this time and go to 120 feet with more speed and with altitude of 30 to 35 feet. The larger the circle with more speed you can fly without getting the dizziness from it. You must maintain the higher altitude in order to give yourself chance of making up with your mistake with quickly reaching the ground.

Once you get comfortable with flying faster in both directions, you must start banking the rc heli. It will be felt very natural to you when flying clockwise give right cyclic and give left when flying counter clockwise. You will have to pull back on the cyclic slightly to help the heli on the banking turning edge. RC helicopters much behave like RC airplanes when flying fast and this effect may have been experienced by you if you are an RC airplane or RC Jets flyer.

While slowing down your RC helicopter in smaller circuit, don’t forget to increase throttle/ collective to make up for the reduced amount of transitional lift. I believe by the time you reach this stage you will be doing all this automatically without even realizing.

Hurray!! You have just completed a very important RC helicopter training flying lesson which must have shown you the actual potential of your RC helicopter and have made you a little more addicted to RC helicopter hobby. You can actually record your length of RC flying lesson on video and see the fly RC helicopter DVD video after you have completed the lesson to see what was going on. By seeing your own fly RC helicopter video you will learn a lot and improve faster.

The next flying lesson will be more thrilling…. Even I can’t wait to write about it. Till then..

Happy flying!

Tonja

New air traffic control centre in Belgrade (under construction)

Serbia’s capital Belgrade will become one of the most important cities for the control of air traffic across the Balkans. Belgrade Centre, which already monitors traffic above parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia has been given even more work. Eurocotnrol, which is the main body for the regulation of air traffic in Europe, has proposed for airlines to avoid Croatian airspace and instead fly over Serbia. This is because there are currently mass delays (greater than 45 minutes) in Croatian skies. CroControl, which keeps the skies safe above Croatia, can only control 4 to 7 sectors out of a total of 17 in the country. This is because of a lack of trained air traffic controllers and mass flyovers. Foreign airlines flying over a country can be a source of great revenue.

Meanwhile, across from Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport, the largest air traffic control centre in South Eastern Europe is under construction. The state of the art multi million Euro project has been under construction for just over 100 days with its completion expected in late 2010. The centre will begin work in 2011 making Serbia a regional leader in air traffic control. Eurocontrol plans to close down individual air control centres and keep open only a handful across Europe which would control the skies over entire regions. Belgrade is the front runner for controlling the skies above the Balkans.

Passengers skipping Sarajevo

The services for using airports across Bosnia and Herzegovina are expensive and the airports are failing to attract customers. Nudžeim Rečica, the CEO of B&H Airlines says, “At Sarajevo Airport where most of Bosnia’s air traffic is handled, taxes amount to 18 Euros per passenger plus a further 10 Euros is paid for tax for the development of civil aviation in the Bosnian Federation. In the rest of Europe taxes mostly vary between 15 to 20 Euros but most airports have their own taxes added as well, such as a security tax". The CEO of Sarajevo Airport, Bakir Karahasanović, says that prices have never deterred airlines from Sarajevo but the country’s major problem is that there is a lack of a middle class and thus airlines do not see the potential of flying to Sarajevo. ”We do not have enough passengers so airlines are avoiding Sarajevo", the CEO of Sarajevo Airport says adding that the airport handles approximately 500.000 passengers annually which is nearly 90% of all air traffic in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Banja Luka Airport has only 2 scheduled services, to Zurich (operated by B&H Airlines) and Belgrade (operated by Jat Airways). Airports in Tuzla and Mostar have no scheduled services. Marin Raspudić, the CEO of Mostar Airport, says that airports in Croatia pose the greatest competition. "Despite its location most passengers are avoiding Mostar. This is a city which is regressing and its airport is no exception", Raspudić says. In order to attract airlines to smaller airports many governments in European countries finance low cost airlines for a certain amount of time to fly on these services, which is not the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Soon in Skopje?

Britain's national carrier, British Airways, wants to establish services to Macedonia, according to Zoran Kristevski, the head of the Macedonian Civil Aviation Agency. Talks between British Airways and Macedonian officials began this Wednesday and the government is hoping to wow the British carrier into returning to the Macedonian market. The Minister of Transportation and Communication, Mile Jankieski, presented the advantages of operating in Macedonia as well as plans to modernise the airport system through the project of giving Macedonian Airports under concession. British Airways representatives, who are currently attending the talks in Skopje, are said to be interested as Macedonia currently lacks a national carrier. From January 1, 2010 Macedonian citizens will no longer need visas to travel to European countries (although this excludes the United Kingdom) and therefore an increase in passengers in expected. The British Airways representatives have said that if the airline begins services to Skopje it would do so from March 2010, at the beginning of the 2010 summer season.

British Airways began services from London to Skopje in 1999 however discontinued all services in 2001. The airline cited a lack of passengers as the reason for its withdrawal however it is believed that the airline’s true reasons was the political instability and war which took place in the country that year.

Cessna 185 ZK-CAV , c/n 185-0212 , was tied down at Rangiora on 01-08-2009.
This seldom seen 185 is currently for sale and carries a sign to this effect in the port window.
A Rural Aviation Ltd import, first flying here on 12-10-1961 and then listed with the Manawatu Aerial Top Dressing Co Ltd the following day with whom it became fleet number "7".
In March of 1968 it went to Mount Cook Air Services, which became Mount Cook & Southern Lakes Tourist Co Ltd in 1973 and then The Mount Cook Group in 1978. It was fleet number "18"with them. As a ski plane it had a couple of woopsies: April 1977 on the Tasman Glacier and October 1978 on the Franz Neve.
On 13-01-1986 it transferred to Richard John Aubrey out of Omarama and has resided there ever since.

This is the fourth in a series of archival news items which are being published each Saturday. The news items date back from the late 1970s until 1989. This collection of news articles have been published in various newspapers and official historic publications.

The following article talks about the second oil crisis which hit Yugoslavia and the world in 1979. The first crisis took place in 1976, which Yugoslav Airlines managed to overcome successfully. In 2008 the world went through another oil shock which caused mass financial losses to all Ex-Yu carriers while the 1979 oil shock is reminiscent of the 2008 global financial crisis.

Surviving the oil crisis

The prices of fuel for aircraft in Yugoslavia rose by an incredible 280% in 1979 and the first half of 1980. Among other things, this was the first indication of the deteriorating economic situation, the consequences of which would have serious impact on JAT’s operations and business. In the following years, the company would constantly be recording financial losses.

However, the situation for Yugoslav Airlines was particularly difficult because of two events which took place, unrelated to the oil crisis. The first one was the disastrous earthquake which hit Montenegro’s coast leading to mass cancelation of services from European countries to Tivat and Titograd. Then, following an American Airlines DC10 crash in Chicago, the aircraft manufacturer grounded all aircraft of this type until a full investigation was complete throwing JAT’s international services into disarray. Once the flight ban was lifted JAT resumed services to New York, Sydney and Melbourne with this aircraft and deployed it on services to the Iraqi capital Baghdad. In 1979 the airline carried 4 million passengers, 2.145.983 of which travelled on domestic services. In 1980 living standards began rapidly declining across Yugoslavia. JAT knew it had to respond to these challenges and instead of cutting frequency and capacity it first introduced charter services to Chicago. A few months later the service became an all year round line. Cleveland was introduced as a stopover on these flights during the summer season, thus greatly enhancing the route’s economic viability and boosting the cabin load factor. Furthermore, 2 flights were added to the regular New York service. Also, another flight was introduced to the Sydney and Melbourne flights.

The crisis continued into 1981 and the measures taken by JAT (focusing on international services) did not work. British Airways, like it would be in 2009, was hard hit, sacking 3.000 employees, cutting down frequencies and dumping services. The year 1982 was immensely difficult for JAT. Due to the shortage of kerosene at airports in Yugoslavia, JAT’s aircraft mostly took on fuel from abroad. The year was described as the most difficult in the airline’s history to that date. JAT opened merger talks with Zagreb based Trans Adria which eventually merged with Yugoslav Airlines on April 7, 1982. Many of JAT’s unprofitable services had to be re-examined. Traffic on domestic services was reduced, many services were merged but losses persisted. The upside that year was the increase in passenger numbers (over 4 million). However, in 1983 the crisis continued and passenger numbers declined despite the fact that the airline resumed services to Beirut and began new flights to Algiers, Thessaloniki, Kuwait and Warsaw. JAT leased 2 Boeing B727s to Air Africa and cut costs where it could. The revival of the world aviation industry would begin in 1984 and JAT would fly into its “golden years”. Little did the management know that in less than 10 years the airline would change forever.

Next week: Luxury in the sky – Adriatic Class introduced on JAT