Given its  more than half century of tradition unimpeded by progress, I’ve always been cynical about the future of general aviation and its life’s blood, the flight training industry that educates new pilots. Then I attended the next-to-last regional meeting of the AOPA Flight Training Student Retention Initiative (FTSRI), held August 23 at the Hilton [...]

Throughout its life, now 75 years and counting, millions of words have been written about the iconic DC-3/C-47/R4D/Dakota. I’ve written some of them, and read most of them. So I cracked the cover on Together We Fly: Voices from the DC-3 with some trepidation. At best I expected to read stories I already knew told [...]

Surprises are delightful, especially when they reveal innovative and economical ways aviation solves a problem in a unique way. The latest example is the maneuverable kite Paul Garber (yeah, that one, the father of the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum) designed during World War II  to train shipboard anti-aircraft gunners. Rather than a dangly tail [...]

Few folks I know in the aviation industry doubt the value of social media for making the industry more … well, social. Mike Miley and Rod Rakic at MyTransponder.com have developed an entire Facebook-like enterprise around the entire concept of making our industry more social, in fact. It’s something we sorely need by the way. [...]

At AirVenture a friend asked if I’d seen the new Air Facts. What new Air Facts? All I knew about were the Air Facts videos Richard Collins produced with Sporty’s Pilot Shop that grew out of the eponymous print publication Leighton Collins launched in 1938. (Collins sold Air Facts in 1973, and changes made by [...]

Although most of my AirVenture 2011 time was spent getting the Wittman Airport social media presence up and running at, I did leave a little time for some of the more offbeat kinds of fun to be had around the show. This year’s award for the Best of Show for Computer Geeks – especially since [...]

Sitting on the front porch with my battered feet bared to a healing breeze, I celebrated the end of my 34th EAA AirVenture Oshkosh marathon. Delivering my second round of rehydration elixir, my wife joined me. Having made the trek herself, she knows that the seemingly countless waypoints of things to see and learn are [...]