Blog Posts

Discovering the Logbooks of a Life Rarely Discussed Covid sequestration is, it turns out, an inescapable cloister (especially now, with Wisconsin’s record-setting infections), perfect for undertaking long put off tasks you’ve always meant to get to …

Nothing in the world seems to make sense anymore. On Monday (September 14), GAMA published its aircraft shipping and billings report for the second quarter, and it’s not good. Every category took a significant hit. The surprise was that piston airpl…

Rarely are the dots so closely connected to an epiphany that turns a train of thought on the future of automated aviation in the opposite direction. SkyDrive The first dot was an August 29 New York Times story, Humans Take a Step Closer to “Flying C…

Instead of Ghostly Nostalgia, a Living Connection to What Was Pandemic stir-craziness manifested itself on a glorious mid-August Sunday afternoon. From my second-floor window, I watched scattered cumulus clouds in a blue sunny sky dapple my small to…

With thunderstorms lined in assaulting waves on radar and pathfinding drops splattering themselves against my office window, changing my Saturday morning plans for a two-wheel ride to Rio, Wisconsin, seemed prudent. Remembering that the EAA Aviation…

An excavator dismembers OSH’s terminal, making way for its replacement. SM Spangler Like several hundred thousand others who normally spend the summer preparing for their annual pilgrimage to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, I’ve been anxiously trying to decide …

Semantically, Students and Learners Are Not Synonymous The AOPA online headline about the 2020 update of the Aviation Instructor’s Handbook immediately captured my attention because — What’s Behind the FAA’s Switch from Student to Learner? — signa…

A Concise Look at Human Flight with an Unexpected Focus With my knowledge bank bereft all but the most rudimentary information about Zeppelins (aka rigid airships), my curious eye immediately focused on the tail end of the Zeppelin under the title, …

SM Spangler It is a statistical reality that regardless of the methods of dissemination, roughly 10 percent of the population will not get the word. Or they will forget they got the word and reflexively follow their atavistic inclinations. Some crea…

NASA As it did when Alan Shepard kicked off the US Space program with his suborbital flight in 1961, I eagerly anticipated watching the program’s most recent chapter, the resumption of flights launched from American soil. Watching the preparations f…

Weather.gov The FAA recently posted a fascinating story on Medium, Taking the Turbulence Out of Flight that said ADS-B turbulence reports offer the possibility of more accurate reports on the bumps in the sky. What the story never fully explained is…

Like one of Chicago’s other major aerospace companies, Boeing, the town’s hometown airline has had more than its own share of problems, in addition to those gnawing customer service problems that plague the airline. Certainly, many of the issues – …

S.M. Spangler Humans hate uncertainty, so after reading EAA’s early morning email on May 1 that confirmed what many expected, uncounted thousands of aviation-oriented minds posed, in one form or another, an unsettling question, “With no AirVenture, …

Concentrating on a short-term goal is natural when facing unpleasant restrictions, but these inconveniences pale in comparison to the long-term consequences. What unites both timeframes is the inescapable reality that as individuals, societies, and …

As most of us are coping with the geographic constraints of staying at home, one hopes the FAA did not schedule the release of the NRPM proposing Noise Certification of Supersonic Airplanes [FAA-2020-0316] for March 30, 2020 as an Easter egg or avia…

Bob Crandall retired in 1998 as chairman, president, and CEO of AMR, parent organization to American Airlines and while many people today might not remember his name, they’ll pretty quickly recognize what he created while he was at the helm. Bob Cra…

When things go chronically wrong in aviation, a safety stand down is an efficient and effective treatment because you stop all operations and dissect what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been doing it to ferret out—and fix—the root causes of what’s…

Unless you’ve been a disconnected intraterrestial for the past week or so, you’ve probably seen the memes noting the triple one-week whammy of the change to daylight savings time (for those of you living in states subjected to it), a full moon, and …

Embry Riddle Aeronautical University researchers are asking INSTRUMENT-rated PRIVATE pilots and AIRLINE pilots to complete a 2-5 minute questionnaire (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GK3ZD3B) as to the amount/type of NON-revenue flying in light aircr…

Wandering through Netflix’s streaming options hoping to trip over something that would hold my attention, in the Hidden Gems category I saw Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo. Having visited the recently restored facility (See 87 Steps to …

With the end of World War II lining up for its 75th anniversary celebration at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, one might think there was little new information about the pilots who fought it. I was one of them, until I read the review of Race of Aces: WWII’…

If wildlife encounters have made your flying life interesting during last year’s flying season, winter is the time to start thinking about doing something about it before the migrating critters return to your small nontowered aerodrome. Start by ask…

A recent New York Times story about the hidden drug epidemic rooted in the conflict between prescribed medications and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs and supplements focused on people in their 60s, but as I read, I could easily see that pilots taking …

Humility is the absence of vanity or excessive pride, a state or quality of being humble. Humble individuals are conscious of—and acknowledge—their defects or shortcomings. They are modest and not overly proud. Humility is an essential element in av…