Some functions come naturally to most humans, eating, sleeping, even defending ourselves … at least most of the time. But the message the House of Representatives just sent FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt with passage of the European Emissions Trading Scheme Prohibition Act of 2011 is pretty clear. Our administrator needs to find a sparing partner and get himself in shape for the scuffles ahead with Europe.

For years, the European Union has promoted its plan to reduce aviation’s carbon footprint anywhere in the group’s 21-nation states, despite the fact that research shows this industry contributes far less to global warming than just about any other segment such as automobiles — between two and three percent by most calculations.

No matter. It’s their union and they are free to make their own choices. Problem is that this new EU plan will significantly affect our industry here in the states because the EU intends to hold every country responsible for complying with their carbon trading scheme if they fly into EU airspace.

Most other countries are having a little heartburn with the plan, as is ICAO, the United Nations body focused on aviation that believes one country or one region setting it’s own standards – higher or lower than the rest of the world – is a rally bad idea, and one that will be enormously difficult to enforce. Read the rest of this entry »

At the August meeting about the AOPA Student Retention Initiative, a CFI in the audience suggested replacing a real airplane, the most expensive line of the flight training bill, with a simulator. Not totally, mind you, but enough to get students started, and to ease the natural anxiety arising with the noisy, demanding, distracting environment of the real thing.

The Aviation Training & Resource Center, I recently learned, is trying just such a program. Called Wannabee a Pilot, for $599 students get 5 hours with a CFI in a Redbird FMX1000 full-motion visual sim, complete with ground school and pre- and post-flight briefings. The time counts toward a private ticket, and given the 21st century proclivity for virtual experiences, this may be the perfect introduction to flying the real thing.

Let’s face it, to people who lived in a carefully controlled world where risk is managed at every turn, the cockpit of a single-engine general aviation trainer is a scary place. It’s loud. Glass or steam gauges gush with relentless and incomprehensible flow of information. You steer with your feet. And everybody is talking to you at the same time. The tower talks faster than you can listen. And the person sitting next to you is explaining everything in a foreign language. Oh, and you’re paying a lot of money to be here.

Honestly, my initial reaction to the simulator suggestion and, later, the Wannabee a Pilot program, was not positive because I compared them to my old-school life experiences. Fortunately, among the voices that mount my mental soapbox is a contrarian who objectively dissects initial reactions before they dribble from my mouth or fingertips. By putting me in the previous paragraph, it became immediately clear that a simulator is the perfect place to start the training of today’s pilots.

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I have always felt I’d be doing my flight students a disservice not to mention that while soaring aloft is an unmatched experience, it can and will snuff out a life in a moment if the pilot becomes too complacent … no matter how sophisticated the aircraft’s on-board equipment.

We’ve been reminded of the seriousness of that warning again as the investigation into the crash of Air France 447 continues. A CNN story Friday highlighted some of the elements again, but also walked listeners through a few of the final words of the pilots in the cockpit two years ago, moments before the aircraft hit the water after a 4 1/2 fall from 36,000 ft. The words were part of a new book written by French journalist Jean-Pierre Otelli that includes yet unheard portions of the crew’s cockpit conversations. Granted, Otelli is known as a bit of an ambulance chaser, but the words we hear are what’s important, not necessarily his motivation is recording them.

Having read the other transcripts, this one too seems to confirm that the crew was indeed overwhelmed by the cacophony of lights and aural alerts they must have been confronted with a very short time span. I was saddened just to listen, but also well aware that this could have been any of us in this situation and also, that there is much yet to learn from this watershed accident. Read the rest of this entry »

John Monnett has been dreaming about a homebuilt jet since the 1980s, so one can only imagine the barely controlled eagerness that filled him with the first flight of the SubSonex. And one can only imagine the internal debate between making that flight himself or turning it over to someone like, Bob Carleton, right, who has the necessary flight experience and, perhaps more important, experience with the PBS TJ-100 engine, which powers Carleton’s Super Salto Jet Sailplane.

But Monnett is the consummate professional, and safety always trumps decades of jet fueled desire. Carlton made the first flight on August 10, and explored the flight envelop from stalls to more than 200 knots true airspeed. Monnett climbed into the SubSonex for his first flight on August 25, and he has built his experience and confidence in the design since then. One happy revelation is that the TJ-100’s fuel economy has been better than expected. As the testing program moves forward, the Hornets’ Nest R&D team has replaced the nose wheel with a retractable unit to improve yaw stability in cruise (and an increase in cruise speed, too!).

A design study for the second SubSonex prototype is underway. Its goals are a larger cockpit, a sleeker nose, and (maybe) a removable wing for easier transport and storage. But the real question is this: As it flies now, how does the SubSonex compare to decades of jet propelled daydreams?

“Doesn’t everyone who has dreamed want one of these? Flying the jet is a hoot! It is like flying a sailplane only a lot faster,” John said. “So far, it has exceeded my expectations. It is, remarkably, very stable and comfortable at lower speeds and gets even better as you ramp up. Looking at the stoic cockpit videos doesn’t give the impression I am having a good time. I can’t think of any other aircraft I’ve flown that is this much fun! Beneath that old man’s skin is a kid again!”

Here in Wisconsin the maples are beginning their fall fashion season. Their shimmering coats in shades of reds and yellows blaze in the afternoon’s low, saturated light. It is a quiet refuge of peace in a world increasingly unable to give and take and coexist without hypocrisy and rancor.

To escape this incessant and self-inflicted turmoil I would give anything to go flying right now, to admire the trees from the still sky. Rather than grow sour about the circumstances that make this now impossible, I sought vicarious refuge in YouTube and found salvation in Photoguy73.

Flying over southeastern Minnesota in the fall of 2008, a powered parachute is the perfect getaway machine. It takes off, climbs, cruises, descends, and lands at the same speed in the mid to low two digits. Add power to climb and reduce it to descent.

You steer with your feet, so your hands are free to take pictures or, as Photoguy does midway through his low-level flight, wave to a farmer pacing a corn field in his combine. Think of it as a La-Z-Boy with a seat belt and shoulder harness hanging under a ram air awning.

What makes this flight special is the soundtrack of vocal tunes that tell of a better time, of what America has to offer its citizens, if they weren’t so busy trying to get theirs at the expense of others. Huh. Maybe I should go for another flight with Photoguy. –Scott Spangler

Everyone knows about the user fee battle.

How could you not. Current attack aside, we’ve been in this fight on and off for years. The problem though is that when you hear  similar stories from a dozen different blogs, magazines, podcasts and Twitter feeds you become numb.

That means thousands of aviation supporters are probably thinking about the current user fee battle, but doing  little else.

Right now, we need thousands of you who have been planning on raising your hand against this current assault, to click any of these fine sites – General Aviation Airport Coalition (GAAC) or the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) or the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) – and sign a petition and a letter to your individual members of Congress telling them to say no. It will take 30 seconds … no more, really!

If you promise to do this right now, I’ll spare you my regular the political diatribe about this President’s inability to grasp the value of our aviation, or any rants about what the Republicans did or what the Democrats didn’t do to bring this on.

But please, make this move today, as soon as you finish the next sentence. We only need 30 seconds of your time to fight a proposal that will seriously change the industry we love forever. Trust me, your vote WILL COUNT.

General Aviation Airport Coalition (GAAC), the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) or the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA)

And one more thing … please, please please pass this note on. We need 30 seconds from everyone you know too. Thanks.

Rob Mark, Publisher

Lately there hasn’t been much good news about aviation, general or otherwise. Then I went to North Dakota for a story on a one-tech avionics shop halfway between Fargo and Bismarck. A flight school was setting up in the next hangar, an indicator of better times at the airport, said Greg Earnest at Jamestown Avionics, because new pilots mean more airplanes. In passing, he mentioned the state’s Flight Training Assistance Program, which defrays the cost of bringing a CFI to airports where none live.

Say what?

Greg aimed me at the North Dakota Aeronautics Commission. Its website was as open, friendly, helpful, and positive as the people I’d so far met in Jamestown. “The state aviation system is an attractive front door to our state’s economic growth,” reads the first sentence of the commission’s philosophy. Here’s the rest of it: “To ensure this growth, the system needs continual enhancement with state-of-the-art technology. With this goal, continued flexibility and responsiveness by the Aeronautics Commission will fulfill the needs of the aviation community.”

Which brings us back to the flight training program. Keeping track of FAA pilot statistics, the commission decided to do something about the declining pilot population in the state—down 22 percent, from 4,095 to 3,207 over the past 30 years. Its analysis revealed a disproportional decline between rural and urban areas, in part attributed to the dearth of CFIs at rural areas. North Dakota law says that the commission shall cooperate with towns to develop and coordinate aviation activities, this includes educational grants, i.e. the Flight Training Assistance Program.

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Sometime next month, a few anniversaries begin jumping out at me. And no, my 20th wedding anniversary doesn’t pop up til next spring, but I’m told I can still choose between China and Platinum trinkets with my Happy Meals.

I was actually thinking more of a few aviation-related milestones as I penned this, both the events and the people those events brought me together with.

October 27, 2011 will be Jetwhine’s 5th anniversary.

It just about coincides with a date five years ago when a Gol Boeing 737 and an Embraer Legacy ran together in the skies over the Brazilian rainforest. The stories that followed the tragedy filled countless posts here in our first six months as many writers and pilots tried to make sense of the accident. Five years later, no one is really sure what happened for certain, except that the Boeing crashed and the Legacy managed an emergency landing at a Brazilian air Force base. The pilots were found guilty in absentia by a Brazilian court and the Brazilian air traffic controllers were also found to be at fault.

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September started with an AP story that revealed the cost of airline cockpit automation, atrophied stick and rudder skills. As one might expect, there’s been a lot of comment on both sides of the argument. Some GA types have been, without justification, overconfidently smug.

GA pilots can become addicted to cockpit automation just as easily as their airline peers. What makes this worse is that unlike airline pilots, who must fly according to thick and specific operations manuals, GA pilots consciously chose to become addicted. And they’ve been doing that ever since glass-controlled started taking up residence in GA cockpits.

Back when I was flying for publication, airframe manufacturers were like street corner pushers, “Hey there, magazine writer guy, want some stick time?” Call me old school, but in my vocabulary “stick time” means I’m holding the stick (or yoke) and actually flying the airplane. About 15 years ago the definition changed: “stick time” was a takeoff and landing separated by a lot of button pushing and knob twisting.

On my last flight for publication, I was looking forward to getting hands-on with a tumultuous Midwestern wind. Having been a while since my last flight, I was looking forward to realigning the seat of my pants to such things as crab angles and smoothing out the bumps.

When I didn’t automatically engage the autopilot after takeoff, the demo pilot (a CFI, like most are)  looked at me in amazement, like I was some sort of alien being. But he said nothing. For about 10 minutes, until he couldn’t stand it any more. Then, with my PR minder in the back seat, over the intercom he shamed me into giving up command to technology.

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When I wrote the second edition of Professional Pilot Career Guide a few years back, a great economy was in full swing with many more flying jobs than there were pilots to accept. If it had not been for the economy taking a nosedive  in 2008, the pilot shortage would easily have become a fact, not a dream.

But of course the U.S. and much of the world economy took a huge nosedive which put thousands of pilots on the street and brought hiring to a halt. Over the past three years, many people have simply given up the dream and decided an aviation career isn’t worth the effort. For those folks I can only say “I’m sorry,” because the hiring boom is just around the corner.

I sat down with Louis Smith, President of FLTops.com, the pilot career information service during their recent job fair in Chicago. If you’ve ever had a hankering to fly for a living, I hope you’ll give this podcast (below) a listen because Smith makes it clear that the airlines have finally realized there aren’t enough professional aviators out there to match attrition and retirements.

For those who say they can’t imagine working for the crummy wages of the regionals, I won’t pull the wool over your eyes. The wages are poor, but the incentives to convince pilots to fly are here beginning with American’s recent decision to offer a seniority number to any American Eagle pilot on the job by late next month. It won’t be the last nudge to fly either.

Remember too, it’s not the end of the world to spend a few years seasoning yourself before you try for the big time. Besides beefing up your resume, that experience might just someday save your life. (Applicants meet airline recruiters face-to-face in Chicago. Where were you?) — Rob Mark, Publisher

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To appreciate what we have—and how far we’ve come, now is the time to celebrate the centennials of aviation’s many achievements. In the process, we might attract some new participants, which is surely aviation’s more pressing concern as it marches into its second century. It sure seems to be working for the US Navy and its nationwide naval aviation extravaganza.

Now is the time to start celebrating, because 1911 is when thing started to happen again in aviation. As the Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame reminded me during a program celebrating the centennial of the first flight in Green Bay, most of the time between the Wrights’ first flight and 1911 was spend in court, fighting patent lawsuits. With most of the lawsuits settled, the inaugural aviation events to celebrate will grow rapidly, so dig out your aviation history books and get to work.

About four dozen people of all ages surrounded me at the the WAHF presentation. Held in the spotless Jet Air hangar at Green Bay’s Austin Straubel International airport, I wasn’t the only one who noticed the difference between the rickety airplanes on screen and the sleek Cessna Mustang, Cirrus Turbo, and MU-2 parked in the corner. Before the program began, the aviators in the room showed others around and answered their questions.

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In our house when I was a kid, Labor Day was always a big celebration. My father retired at age 65 from life as a union plasterer, a profession few people can even define today. My grandfather on my mom’s side, John Kikulski, was one of the first presidents of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union in Chicago in the early 1920’s so that side of the family understood union cards, worker rallies and strikes pretty well.

I carried it all down for a portion of my life as a member of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) and the AirLine Pilots Association (ALPA). Today, having run CommAvia for 16 years, being part of those groups seems as if it happened to me in another life. But much of what I learned in those years of working for someone else still sticks pretty closely with me.

Where We Came From

Labor Day began with an 1894 request from then President Grover Cleveland in an attempt to satisfy the demands for such an event from the unions and also – Cleveland hoped – to help end a crushing strike against the Pullman Railway Company in Chicago. He eventually sent 12,000 Army troops to Chicago to help squash the strike, which led to the death of two-dozen workers. Imagine a Democratic president in the U.S. trying something like that today should ALPA walk out at United Airlines.

Looking at the state of the economy here in the U.S. today though, makes me realize that many of the same issues labor fought for a hundred years ago may have fallen to the sidelines for awhile, but are still around if anyone chooses to notice.

In the early 1900’s, work life in the United States was tough, with people struggling to make ends meet, while the controllers of capital had the easy life. Some thought the analogy of famous CEOs stealing the food right out of the mouths of hungry workers and their families captured the sentiments pretty well, hence the robber baron label attached to the George Pullmans, John Rockefellers and the J.P. Morgans of the time.

Today, much is the same here in the states, although we must clearly acknowledge that the life of the average working stiff is not much better in other parts of the world either. Hundreds of American companies have shipped tens of thousands of jobs overseas to take advantage of cheaper labor in the past few decades, something that in a capitalist society they are perfectly free to do of course. Those cost-cutting measures have kept millions of Americans out of the labor pool as companies have stashed billions of dollars in cash in the kitty for a rainy day, unwilling to reinvest that cash here in the U.S. – as in hiring more employees. Read the rest of this entry »

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 Garden Inn across the street from the Chicago-DuPage Airport. It offset my cynicism to the point where I think they have a 50-50 chance of making a difference.

The 2.5-hour meeting got off to a good start. About 50 people registered for the gathering, and 40 of them showed up. Disbursed at 10 tables, before the break I sat with three student pilots and a new private pilot. During the break, Jennifer Storm, who leads FTSRI, asked if I would relocate to even out a table occupied by a CFI, a student pilot, and a new private. Another gathering, which I did not attend, would be held the next day for CFIs and flight school operators, she said.

Both regional meetings operated with the same rules: Focus on what we can do, not what’s wrong. Yeah, I’ve heard that before, but the well structured and led program pulled it off! Before a break at the hour mark,  Storm PowerPointed AOPA’s research findings (see The Flight Training Experience: A survey of students, pilots, and instructors). Afterwards, each table would achieve consensus on a pertinent retention attribute and  propose a workable solution. With each shared solution, and news of AOPA efforts in beta test, a dory of hope started to float on my ocean of cynicism.

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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 with new words, but the author, Julie Boatman Filucci, served up a delightful surprise: intriguing new stories about the people who designed, built, flew, maintained, and lived a better life—or just lived—because this airplane existed.

Voices subdivides more than 75 years of DC-3 history into 30 clear, concise, and evocative chapters that fill all but a handful of its 192 well illustrated pages. In the preface, which follows the forward by Jack Pelton, the retired Cessna CEO who started his career as a Douglas Aircraft engineer, Filucci explains that the book grew out of the December 2005 story she did for AOPA Pilot about the airplane’s 70th birthday. In response to it, “pilots, mechanics, flight attendants, engineers, soldiers, passengers, and spectators wanted to share their relationship with the airplane.” Do yourself a favor, don’t start reading until you take care of all your immediate responsibilities—work, making dinner, sleep, whatever.

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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 the kites, which spanned five feet or more, had a rudder that enabled the maneuvers shown below. The kites came in a crate of 25, with repair kits, if crews were able to recover them after the crews on .50 caliber machine guns and 20 mm and 40 mm Bofors gun mounts finished with them. According to the World War II training film, the kite fliers needed at least a 10-knot breeze to fly.

The complete history of the kites, made by Spalding and Comet Models, is available on its website.  I spent an enjoyable and educational afternoon there, reading everything about the kites instead of researching the topic that led me to them.

Established shortly after Pearl Harbor, the WAVES opened a number of aviation jobs, such as aviation machinist mate, aviation metal smith, aerographer, and parachute rigger, to women. They also served in specialist positions such as air traffic controller and aerial gunnery instructors. The last is where I learned about the kites. In the Navy, aerial gunners are those who shoot at airplanes with small caliber weapons. Those who pulled the trigger on bigger guns, the three, five, eight, and 16-inchers, were referred to as naval gunners.

My afternoon ended in a wave of nostalgic longing. After the war, the Office of Aircraft Disposal had to sell 130,000 surplus kites, along with all those unneeded airplanes whose value then was often measured by the amount of fuel in their tanks. They went for $2.65 each, in lots of 7,500 or $2.79 in smaller lots, with all purchases in multiples of 10 or 25. Hmmm, I wonder what today’s targets cost. – Scott Spangler

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.

What makes the process so easy is that most of the tools to engage with other airplane geeks are free and relatively easy to use.

Our show, The Airplane Geeks in fact, uses SKYPE as the primary method of bringing all the hosts together at one time, no small feat when they live on three different continents. Despite free, we all know problems pop up, like this weekend’s major SKYPE cough just as we were recording the show. We’ve learned to brush it off though since 99% of the time everything works just fine.

Google, of course, is the 800 pound gorilla on the net these days and offers a host of free services that make airplane-geeking even easier. But beware of that free price tag. You certainly get what you pay for, a concept brought home to me this weekend when I apparently enraged the monster in Mountain View.

It started with a Jetwhine Tweet hoping Google would squelch what seems to have become a monthly affair … changing it’s free apps to better serve me.

Good Grief Google! Can you PLEASE stop giving my Gmail and apps a new look and feel every month. You’re making us crazy … OK, crazier.

Next thing I knew, my Google-owned YouTube account was destroyed. No warning of any kind, just a big whack of the Google chopping knife reserved for bad guys, of which I’d apparently become one.

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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 the new owners were its demise.) Yup, she said, but it’s now an online journal, a continuation of the productive collaboration between Collins and Sporty’s.

It was worth a look, if for no other reason to see if it made a successful leap from old school to new. Having seen a number of the original digest-sized magazines in various library archives, it was a first-class publication dedicated to the safe and productive use of airplanes as transportation and noted for its prose. During its lifetime Air Facts launched the aviation journalism careers of Richard Bach, Bob Buck, Richard Collins, Bill Mauldin, and the immortal Wolfgang Langewieshe.

Okay, I’ve only spent about 45 minutes browsing this online journal, but it is worth a frequently visited bookmark in any pilot’s list of favorites. The site is well designed and organized with top flight prose categorized as features, opinion, and “Air Mail.” There’s even a comprehensive library of  Richard Collins’ Air Facts videos. They’ve even recreated a number of the original Air Facts stories that are still relevant to pilots today.

A distinctive aspect of the original was that its readers submitted a large percentage of the content. The same is true with the online publication. Early in its online life, they include Richard Collins, Bob Buck, Russell Munson, Phil Scott, Hal Shevers, and Bob Stangarone, who, like Collins, got his start at the print Air Facts. The articles not only talk about how to fly someplace safely and efficiently, several talk about places to go.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the time for browsing Air Facts is done. It’s time to read. –Scott Spangler

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 Microsoft stopped attending with Flight Sim products – must go to GE Aviation and their Future Flight, Terminal Command game.

Neil Siddons (@neilsiddons) and his AirVenture social media marketing communications team – Hi Audrey and Eden (@geaviation) – have a firm grasp on how the rest of us New-Age Marcom Geeks think and gather information. So rather than tell me about some of GE Aviation new products with a bunch of press releases I’d never read anyway – sorry, nothing personal here – the company built Terminal Command to demonstrate just how tough running an airport cab be – especially a number of busy gates with at times annoyingly demanding pilots.

The game is simple enough to operate by dragging and dropping items with a mouse, while watching for a variety of color and mood changes on the screen … or at least I thought it would be a piece of cake at least. Your results may vary, of course, since you can play Terminal Command at home right here. Neil says an iPhone app version might just be in the works too.   

But rather than share the entire experience in writing, give a listen to the quick chat I had with Neil about the why behind Terminal Command, as well as a live demonstration of my first day as a ramp manager. 

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Rob Mark – Publisher

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 overwhelming, and that each year is defined by those things that survive in memory on the day after it’s over.

First thing Monday morning I eagerly found a seat close to the stage at the FAA Safety Center for an update on the Next Generation Air Transportation system. In its place was a member of the FAA Safety Team from the Great Lakes Region talking about ATC communications. The FAA exhibit area was almost a ghost town. In most of the booths usually staffed by FAAers in that division was an empty chair and a laminated explanation:

Congressional authorization for several FAA programs expired at 12:01 a.m. on July 23. As a result, nearly 4,000 FAA employers are now furloughed without pay. Given these circumstances, we are restricting our participation at AirVenture this year.

The Administration is working with Congress to resolve this unfortunate situation, and we regret the hardship this situation may cause for our employees and our stakeholders, including the attendees at AirVenture.

We wish you a successful event and hope to see you next year under getter circumstances.

Hoping that this was not an omen of what I would find elsewhere on my AirVenture hike, I trudged north. Each successive waypoint restored my hope and interest in aviation’s future, and these are the standouts.

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Performing missions no other aircraft can accomplish, helicopters are a vital part of the aviation industry. But they are a minority among flying machines, so their presence is often overshadowed by their fixed-wing peers, especially when they gather in numbers, as they do every year at EAA AirVenture.

But the rotorheads made their presence known this year with the debut of the Helicopter Association International’s Heli-Center.

On the main drag that parallels the flight line, HAI’s unique 60-by-80-foot chalet has a covered balcony that offers an unparalleled view of the flight line and air show.

At a media reception dedicating the Heli-Center, HAI President Matthew Zuccaro addressed questions of why with why not? Plying the same airspace, helicopters are a contributing member of general and commercial aviation subject to the same regulations that affect all flying machines from ultralights to the latest transport category jetliners.

Achieving its goal of attracting public and pilot interest in rotary-wing flight, the chalet offers information for all levels of interest. The Kids Copter Corner was next to a desk where a flight instructor explained what it took to become a helo pilot or to add the rating to an existing certificate. In an alcove next to meeting rooms a big screen displayed a series of videos of civilian and military helicopters performing myriad missions. At in information kiosk in the center of the floor, people answered any and all questions relative to HAI and vertical flight. Read the rest of this entry »