Coshocton Ethanol

Today was another beautiful day, so I went out to do some landing practice in the DA40. I have plenty of G1000 skills, lots of straight & level flight, but I really haven't spent that much time at lower airspeeds, close to the ground. So, today, I went out in the calm winds and high pressure (30.33inHg) to work the pattern. I logged 5 landings and 0.9hrs of time. It was a really clear day, especially above 4000ft. In the smal inset photo, you can see the dark layer of humid, turbulent air close to the surface of the earth. At that sharp line in the sky, the air just turns rock solid and is crystal clear. I did some steep turns at 5000ft and was rewarded with the little burble of air as I passed through my slipstream. Niiiice. Still have the skills. Then, I slowed the DA40 down and did some slow flight. It's amazing to me how stable the DA40 is at low speeds. I was really really light - only 18gals of gas, and just me in the cockpit, so the speeds were pretty slow. For power off stalls, the stall drop came in around 44-45kts. For power-on stalls, I was hanging almost motionless at a 15-20° pitch angle at 36-37kts before the drop came. Very cool. However, since the normal approach is 75kts, if I should be in a lightweight condition - I'll have to account for the slower speeds in an emergency landing situation. This bird wants to fly!

Landing practice went well. Compared to the limited visibility of the high wing 172, it's really easy to judge your turns, because you can see the runway the entire time through the turn. Sorry - no pictures on that one - I was busy flying:). Most of my landings were really good - greasers, and just the right glideslope....and wouldn't you know it. My last landing of the day wasn't so hot. Turns out Dad had just pulled up and was grading away. I should've known -

I flew over the ethanol plant currently under construction just south of Coshocton today as well. It's really coming along! There are a lot of cars parked out there, and they haven't even started running pipe yet! Just pouring concrete and building tanks. Speaking of which, take a look at the detail photo, and you can see that one of the silos or bulk tanks got blown in due to some of the high winds here recently. OUCH! I'll bet that screwed the budget and the schedule. I'm glad that we didn't have any problems like that on our last project...it would've been a disaster and everyone is blaming you, Whitaker Walt!

Coshocton Ethanol, LLC from 2500ft

Coshocton Ethanol, LLC - Check out the collapsed in tank/silo - OUCH!

Of course, I'm not really so gung-ho about the ethanol craze in the first place. I say craze, because everyone is frothing at the mouth to get some piece of the pie. I talked to a vendor selling rail tank cars, and he said that they had booked their ethanol tank car production through 2009. That's 9000, 25,000gal cars.....225,000,000gallons. Just a drop in the bucket....still not big enough for a pipeline. Regardless of the excitement, it's not a viable energy replacement source, because it's either a net energy loss or very close. I can't say that I'm going to be super thrilled about getting 10-15% lower gas mileage, and having to support all the corporate tax subsidies as well. If it was such a great energy saver and so economical, the path to energy independence, then why would Ethanol as a fuel need subsidies and low grain prices in order to make it? Plain fact of the matter is that it is just another government program to support some industry special interests and to help the proletariot make the right choices. I heard on the radio recently that farmers were going to get some subsidies from the USDA to compensate them for higher grain feed prices, because of the demand ethanol production has placed on corn. Is this a screwed up system or what? Subsidize one group, then subsidize another group in a weak attempt to adjust the economic disparity created by the first subsidy. I guess this is what you get when a central government starts deciding what is best for us. We can't be trusted to make economic and manufacturing decisions on our own. Central planning, anyone? Plank 9 of the Communist Manifesto, anyone? Sounds like the worker's paradise to me....let's get back to work - I've only got another month or so, before I finish paying my fair share and will be free to work for my family.