Avia Blog

Wes Lematta finally succumbed to bladder cancer on Christmas Eve Day, December 24, after battling the disease for 25 years. With his brothers, Lematta founded Columbia Helicopters in Aurora, Oreg. in 1957 with a single Hiller aircraft, working weekends at county fairs.

Columbia became known for its specialty work with Vertol 107 and Boeing 234 tandem-rotor helicopters that require no torque rotor and therefore direct 100 percent of the engines’ power to lift. Together with Erickson Air Crane, the company pioneered the practice of “heli-logging” in which felled timber is attached to choker cables and lifted vertically by helicopters to central loading areas, where the timber can be transported by truck. This unique technique eliminated the environmental impact of building extensive networks of logging roads, which scarred the landscape, and allowed timber to be extracted from sensitive areas. Lematta and Columbia eventually acquired the type certificates for both the helicopters it operates and received production certificates for both this past autumn.

In a recent statement, Helicopter Assocation International president Matt Zuccaro paid tribute to Lematta: “It was my distinct honor and privilege to have known Wes. He was the consummate gentleman, and a true founding pioneer of this industry. Individuals such as myself and others in the helicopter industry have benefited from the efforts and activities of individuals such as Wes Lematta. He will be missed.”

Aviation Week editors discuss the biggest story of 2009, of the past decade, and what it may be in the decade to come.

AOPA says it’s following with interest the case of Super Cub allegedly stolen by a homeless man from a neighboring hangar at the organization’s home airport at Frederick, Md.

A LIGHT aircraft pilot is flying 10,500 miles across the globe to sell his unique plane.

As airports turned less busy this year, flight instructors found themselves building alternative avenues.

Journal Record Staff ReportJournal Record Legislative Report The Oklahoma Aeronautics Commission has approved the 2010-2012 capital improvement program.

Well done: Works and Transport Minister Colm Imbert applauds as Airports Authority chairman John Eckstein looks proudly at a plaque marking the openin… The Airports Authority yesterday opened its new airport administration centre at the south terminal of the Piarco International Airport as part of the proposed Airports Authority Estate which will …

TULSA Sam Taylor wanted to get back into flying, but the former Navy pilot of 20 years soon realized that flying his small aircraft for a few hundred miles and returning home wasn’t enough.

You can clearly see the glow from the afterburners. The last one to take off was using the full burner, since it had a 10 foot flame coming from the back of the engine.

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NASA is celebrating the ten year anniversary of the Terra spacecraft’s launch this week.  Terra was first major part of an entire group of survey vehicles to be launched as part of the Earth Observatory System.  Their mission is to study climate change and trends and how human activity may be affecting them.  Launched on December 18, 1999, Terra began collecting data about two months later and should continue doing so until 2015.  The satellite has captured phenomenal changes over the past ten years, documenting lake beds drying up and green rain forests turning to brown terrain. 

Image courtesy the NASA Earth Observatory, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer.

Terra has five instruments onboard.  The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) will collect data to create detailed stereoscopic terrain maps with information on elevation, surface temperature, and more by imaging in 14 wavelengths and a varying angles.  The two Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments will image  in cross-track and biaxial scan mode to measure Earth’s radiation and cloud’s role in affecting it.  The Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR) measures changes in sunlight scattering.  The Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) can detect, among many things, large-scale changes in greenhouses gases.  Finally, the Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT, which wins for best acronym) uses gas correlation spectroscopy to, well, you can probably guess that one.

The next major segment of the Earth Observatory System was Aqua, launched into sun-synchronous orbit in 2002.  Aqua’s primary mission, as you might imagine, is to study our planet’s complicated water cycles.  It’s also first in the “A-train,” or Afternoon Constellation, a group of Earth observing satellites that will travel in formation together.  Aura and PARASOL were launched in 2004, while CloudSat and CALIPSO followed in 2006.  Two final satellites, OCO and Glory, which do not yet have a launch date, will make up the grouping.  Together these satellites will study just about everything that affects or is produced as a result of climate changes: ozone, air quality, carbon dioxide, aerosols, cloud formations and much more. 

The Earth Observatory satellites also produce some breathtaking images of storms, fires, floods, and even volcanic eruptions, not to mention the incredible natural and manmade formations around the world.  Terra has documented everything from deforestation in the Amazon to the incredible urbanization of Dubai.  Earth Observatory’s Image of the Day is a great site to bookmark; we were particularly impressed with yesterday’s image from Aqua, seen above, of the major East Coast snowstorm that socked us in here at Aviation Week headquarters in Washington, D.C. last weekend. You should also stop by the NASA Earth Observation’s site, at which you can search their collection of images and download them into GoogleEarth.