{"id":11140,"date":"2016-10-05T08:59:32","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T15:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/?p=11140"},"modified":"2016-10-05T08:59:32","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T15:59:32","slug":"hy4-makes-first-public-flight-your-editor-rides-eaas-ford-trimotor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/hy4-makes-first-public-flight-your-editor-rides-eaas-ford-trimotor\/","title":{"rendered":"HY4 Makes First Public Flight \u2013 Your Editor Rides EAA\u2019s Ford Trimotor"},"content":{"rendered":"

A day after Pipistrel, the DLR and associates flew the first public demonstration of their four-seat hydrogen-powered HY4, your editor and a friend took a brief hop around the Aurora State Airport in Oregon in EAA\u2019s Ford Trimotor<\/a>, the first certified airliner in America.\u00a0 The two events, roughly equal in duration, if not in historicity, demonstrate a readily observable progress in aeronautics.<\/p>\n

\"HY4

HY4 is pictured at the airport in Stuttgart, Germany, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2016. (Christoph Schmidt\/dpa via AP)<\/p><\/div>\n

A quickening of design and technology<\/strong><\/p>\n

14 years after the Ford 5AT first flew on a scheduled route that\u00a0took 51 hours total time to cross the United States (and split transport duties with trains), your editor\u2019s father was whisked nonstop by Army Air Corps C-54 across the Atlantic to Shannon, Ireland, and then to Bobbington and Newquay, England to work on bombers for the duration of the conflict.<\/p>\n

Those 14 years seem like a major quickening of design and technology, which brought us pressurized cockpits, turbocharged engines, and great leaps forward in speed, endurance and reliability.<\/p>\n

Following the war, a great number of aircraft became available to civilian flyers, many of whom had benefited from flight training during the conflict.\u00a0 All those craft were essentially pre-war designs, and with few exceptions, continued as trainers and private craft for decades afterward.\u00a0 Many flew behind opposed-cylinder engines also designed before the war.\u00a0 Your editor learned to fly in a 65-horsepower Aeronca Champion, for instance.<\/p>\n

Some brilliant new designs managed to find their way to market, with homebuilt aviation aficionados often duplicating existing designs, but frequently advancing the state of the art. \u00a0Burt Rutan and Dick VanGrunsven (whose Vans Aircraft factory was next to our boarding point) re-imagined design and fabrication techniques to make high performance available with the same general aviation engines used on their humbler brethren.\u00a0 Even with such stellar engineering, many private airports are windows to past glory.<\/p>\n