Airports Posts
July 3, 2016
Wisconsin Flying Hamburger Social Unites Airports & Gives Pilots a Reason to Fly
Employing social media, airports across Wisconsin have taken the $100 hamburger flight to the next level with the Wisconsin Flying Hamburger Social. They divided the state in to eight regions or “branches,” with an airport in each of them holding a …
Jan. 3, 2016
Taking Time to Find Aviation Serendipity
On your way someplace else, how many times have you passed a sign pointing to a small town airport? The more important question is how many times have you followed that sign? With the potential for unknown delays between the sign and your intended d…
Dec. 20, 2015
It Takes a Community to Promote Aviation
Promoting aviation to ensure its future viability and growth is something important to most of us who are involved with it personally or professionally. Individuals and organizations have promoted and pursued programs dedicated to inviting newcomers…
Sept. 28, 2015
ATC and Pilots: When to Keep your Mouth Shut and when to Speak Up
ATC and Pilots This sounds a bit pathetic, but most of the professional pilots I’ve known in my life have been smart alecks, me included … always ready with an opinion, whether anyone asked for it or not. We’re all control freaks to some degree I s…
Aug. 11, 2015
Aviation Safety: Courage and the Pragmatic Acceptance of Inalienable Power
Like pilots everywhere, I never surrender an opportunity to go flying. And then there are days like today. Thunder rumbles closer, rain beats on the windows, and online radar reveals the crawling approach of a large green blob with an enlarged blood…
Aug. 7, 2015
Jetwhine to AirVenture: Lunch for 20 Please
Jetwhine to AirVenture: Lunch for 20 Please One of the best parts of my annual trek to AirVenture is that happily, I have always found it next to impossible to sit anywhere on the grounds and NOT talk to the person next to me. Over the years I’ve ru…
July 29, 2015
AirVenture Gateway Park: Portal to Drone Integration & Safety?
Framed by the diagonal street that connects the main gate of EAA AirVenture to the forums area is a triangle of land that over the years has proven to be a prism that spotlights a newest member of the aviation community before it mixes invisibly int…
July 13, 2015
AirVenture 2015, Jetwhine AND a Free Lunch?
Here’s Tom Poberezny scooting around AirVenture in Red One VW that his dad Paul made famous decades ago. Ed Note: We’ve had such a great response to the story that I’m sad to say we’ve run out of slots for lunch. Do send along an e-mail if you’d sti…
July 6, 2015
Delusions Impede Aviation Future
Airbus recently flew the first production version of its Voltair E-Fan 2.0, a two-seat electric airplane. The realization of this aviation technology is something we should all celebrate because it is another important step toward aviation’s future.…
June 21, 2015
Brennand Airport Invests in Fun Flying
Needing an airplane fix on the Saturday before Father’s Day I wandered over to Brennand Airport (79C), 10 miles north of Oshkosh and 4 miles west of Neenah. It is today what small, nontowered airports used to be, fence free and focused on fun flying…
June 7, 2015
Commercial Drones Facing Pilot Shortage
To learn more about commercial drone operations, I recently attended a 4-hour introductory course for pilots conducted by Vortex UAS. The thorough presentation covered everything from history to the current legal landscape. What I did not expect wa…
April 29, 2015
Biz Av Pilots Have Eaten Enough [Training] Cake
Publisher’s Note: Every once in awhile we receive a story that’s well enough written on a timely topic that we know we want to publish it after just the first read. Meet Kyle and Linda Reynolds from Flight Level Group. Kyle is a business aviation p…
April 19, 2015
Looking Up at the Sounds & Sights of Spring
As aviators, the sky is where we’d rather be. While many factors conspire against the fulfillment of this desire, being attuned to and looking up at the inhabitants in the ocean of air above us sustains our connection to it, which is why spring is s…
April 5, 2015
Air Mail Centennial is Opportunity for Grassroots Birth of National Park of the Air
In less than a month in late 1911, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and the United States each made their inaugural air mail flights. All of them were short distance experiments that led to regular delivery schedules along established routes. The…
March 8, 2015
Cabin Fever Compiles an Aviation To-Do List
The older I get the more susceptible to hypothermia I seem to be, which is a roundabout way of saying that I’ve not been out much because many of these Wisconsin winter days have begun below zero. To combat cabin fever, I’ve been cataloging—and appr…
Feb. 26, 2015
How Passengers Helped Mess Up Frequent Flyer Programs
How Passengers Helped Mess Up Frequent Flyer Programs Dear Reader / Listeners – You now have the option to listen to The Aviation Minute podcast or just read the script of the show below. If you receive Jetwhine via e-mail, you can click here to lis…
Feb. 22, 2015
The FAA Invites Comments on Drone NPRM
Over the past quarter century I’ve read most of the Notices of Proposed Rulemaking that would affect general aviation. What separates the just released NPRM that introduces Part 107, Operation and Certification of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems, fr…
Feb. 8, 2015
Is GA Included in NASA’s Low-Altitude Drone Traffic Management Program?
Late last year, NASA launched it Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) program to devise and test an automated system that would keep drones from bumping into each other as they performed a variety of missions. What concerns me is th…
Jan. 25, 2015
First-Person View: The Future of Flight
Simply put, first-person view (FPV) is a smart phone perspective of flight. It gives the person in command of a remotely piloted aircraft a real-time look at where it is going. And it is the future of flying because it provides what people want—a …
Dec. 28, 2014
Airmanship and the Fundamentals of Flight
Sporty’s debut of its Cessna 172LITE Project has rightfully attracted the attention of a cannonball launched from the high dive at the deep end of the aviation pool. While most are paying attention to the splash made by the airplane’s rental afforda…
Dec. 4, 2014
Drones in the News
Drones in the News When I was a kid my mom told me she could always tell when I was hiding something … “It shows all over your face,” she’d say. No one, not even me, believes drones this size are a threat. So what does this have to do with the rec…
Nov. 23, 2014
Seeing Where Bird Strikes are a Threat
Bird strikes are perhaps the greatest unappreciated risk pilots face. There are a number of reasons for this, but among the primary contenders is the fact that most strikes result in expensive airframe and powerplant repairs rather than catastrophic…
Nov. 19, 2014
Droning on About UAS
Dear Reader / Listeners – You now have the option to listen to The Aviation Minute podcast or read the text below. If you receive Jetwhine via e-mail, you can click here to listen as well. At the risk of droning on about a topic my pals David and M…
Nov. 4, 2014
Time to Give ATC an “Atta Boy”
Dear Reader / Listeners – You now have the option to listen to the Aviation Minute podcast or read the text below. If you receive Jetwhine via e-mail, you can click here to listen as well. Time to Give ATC an “Atta Boy” Most aviation stories only s…