EAA AirVenture Oshkosh showcases every facet of aviation, making it an excellent indicator of aviation’s emotional and economic health. As a whole the industry has weathered a number of ups and downs since I first started wandering through its many venues in 1978, but never to the magnitude we now endure, which is why I [...]

Trekking west from EAA AirVenture’s AeroShell Square, past the Nature Center and around KidVenture, my destination was the new Founder’s Wing at the EAA AirVenture Museum. Savoring the cool quiet and subdued light, a line of exquisite 16-by-20-inch black and white prints in the gallery across from the Wright Flyer caught my attention and changed [...]

Broadcasting from high atop the massive MyTransponder mobile HQ the other night on the grounds at AirVenture 2009, I managed to add my two cents to a pretty nice Episode 58 of the Airplane Geeks podcast that I now co-host with Max Flight and Dan Webb. Those digs – a huge RV actually – were [...]

Nestled in a corner of homebuilt parking across from the EAA AirVenture forums campus is the small Replica Fighters Association compound. It’s where I annually visit with friends Dick and Sharon Starks of the Kansas City Dawn Patrol. As usual, they were surrounded by people attracted to their unusual airplanes, like iron filings to a [...]

EAA AirVenture Oshkosh is an overdose of aviation happiness. To avoid the pain (sunburn, swollen feet, and locked-up brain caused by information overload) of trying to do and see it all, a week before I make plans, keeping track of everything in Outlook and then printing out daily schedules. Being a long-time denizen of aviation [...]

I was a teenager in the 60′s which for me translates into a few key trigger points etched in my mind. The day President Kennedy was shot I was in shop class. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, I was off on active duty with the U.S. Air Force wondering what in the heck was [...]

My thanks to AvWeek’s Benet Wilson for allowing me a little space on her blog while she was out on vacation. I’ll try and coax her to write something for Jetwhine. Rob GUEST POST: Business Aviation Is Still a Secret Posted by Benet Wilson at 7/17/2009 10:14 AM CDT Editor’s Note: On the last day [...]

Several days ago a JetWhine reader, James, emailed this question: How much does recreational flight school cost in Michigan?  What things should I be considering before going ahead? No matter where you live, calculating the cost of learning to fly with any accuracy is impossible because the equation is filled with variables that multiply the [...]

Some folks really believe that the hit of this month’s AirVenture is going to be the arrival of the Airbus A380 at AeroShell Square. And no, the big deal this year is not going to be EAA’s director of public relations Dick Knapinski dancing the Macarena at Theatre in the Woods … at least I [...]

Living in the land of beer and cheese, I  expect Wisconsin to be up there on the list of states with the most obese populations. After hearing reports on TV and in the papers about a new report from Trust for America’s Health,    F as in Fat 2009: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America, [...]

For reasons unimportant here, I look at a lot of airport websites because they are a primary communication channel for anyone who uses or is interested in learning more about them. So I’m on the Airport Information page of the Centennial Airport website the other day, and a large subhead — 2008 Economic Impact Study [...]