pluto

Its a private airstrip 3km south of Sondrio. Its on Google earth. Very beautiful place. I've landed there a few years back in a motor glider (SF25) of the Aeroclub of Cremona. My friend landed significantly short of the threshold. The good thing is that nothing happened to them. They said that there was a strong updraft on the short final, immediately followed by a strong downdraft (classic fair weather thermal activity). But they approached at 90km/h which is the normal still air speed of the plane. They stalled at around 2m from the ground (according to them, but 3m according to spectators). We drove on Saturday to Latina (60km south of Rome) to get replacement parts. The plane is almost fixed now. N

Be careful of downdrafts in mountains... seriously! Dear Friends, Last weekend on Sunday a fellow pilot who owns a Storm 500L with a constant speed Hoffman prop, went to the mountains with another of our friends. While landing they encountered a strong thermal and subsequently a downdraft at the approach threshold. The plane stalled approximately 2m from the ground and the beautiful prop was broken. I went yesterday to help in the plane's retrieval. Since looking at and investigating a crashed aircraft is a great learning experience, I'm sharing some photos of the damage. For those interested in it, please swing over here to view. Many happy landings, N

Thank you for your interest!! Dear Friends, Thank you for your words of welcome! Much appreciated! Pluto is great, its a simple, no-nonsense basic airplane. The flight to South Italy was beautiful, and yes, I'm planning many more in this area. I'll be happy to report on my blog if it perks your curiosity. To give you a brief blurb on myself: I'm a world citizen, am born and grew up as an Indian, naturalized Dutch and married to a lovely Italian, thus currently live in Italy!!! Have worked mostly in the Holland, Germany, Switzerland and the US. I used to teach and research aerospace engineering at the T U Delft from 1991-1995. Perhaps like all of you, I'm totally nuts about planes. Enough to leave my job as a senior Tech Industry executive and Venture Capitalist, I've decided to pursue my passion and setup a new company to make beautiful airplanes for myself and my clients. Its called NASHERO. I set it up on the 1st of October 2009 for the purpose of making two prototypes (one for structural testing and another for flight testing) of an aircraft of my design. Among the many sites on recreational flying, I believe that your site is one of the better ones out there and its a honor to be part of this community. Thanks, N

Hello All, What a wonderful and organized site you folks have! Nice to be here! Best, N My flying blog and site is here: blog.neshe.com