Blogging Posts

Wandering around Addison Airport, a busy Dallas-area reliever, one Monday morning in late April, I dropped in, unannounced, at the airport’s four flight schools. Given the day and hour, I assumed they wouldn’t be busy and would have time…

Bowing to pressure from military and veterans groups who clearly don’t understand the rigors of combat at the controls of armed drones, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has replaced the proposed Distinguished Warfare Medal with a device that w…

The recent announcement that the American Bonanza Society and its ABS Air Safety Foundation had established the ABS Flight Instructor Academy was not only good news, it was a surprise. For some reason I’d thought that it had been around as lon…

Like many aviators I appreciate anything that flies whether it’s a manmade machine or product of natural selection. Among insect aeronauts the dragonfly is my favorite. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t envy its ability to rapidly fly fr…

Not long ago, the periodic newsgram from my alma mater reported the birth of a new course at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Science Investigative Reporting/Drone Journalism. The nation’s first J school, now more than a centur…

Since the FAA issued the list of contract towers it will close to satisfy the self-inflicted sequester, I’ve been reading a lot of wailing and gnashing and incredulous screeds of how could they? Common to everything I’ve read so far is t…

Most pilots know that the test of an airplane’s dynamic stability is to trim for a specific hands-off speed, increase or decrease pitch to a faster or slower speed, then let go of the stick and measure the time it takes to resume the hands-off…

As the official keeper of US aviation world records, the National Aeronautic Association each year lists the previous year’s most memorable records ratified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). Most years the most memorable …

As Baby Boomers march into retirement in increasing numbers, there’s an opportunity for general aviation and its surviving participants to recalibrate their desires and define the future of personal flight. It all hinges on flying clubs, which…

Ray Bethell choreographs three kites’ ballet on an azure stage.Kites were our first form of flight, and they played a crucial role in the Wright brothers’ quest for powered flight. Since then, the relentless pursuit of pragmatic prog…

Not long ago, I had a chance to visit some old friends here in Chicago when I took the family down to a few of the Chicago museums on the east edge of downtown. Having survived 12 years of the Chicago Public School system, I know the former field-tr…

Oh, the irony of progress.In 2005, the FAA issued its first Safety Alert for Operators, “an information tool that alerts, educates, and makes recommendations to the aviation community [that] includes air carrier certificate holders, fractiona…

In discussing a wide range of subjects starting with flight training, much has been said about the dilatory and disaffecting consequences of aviation’s financial requirements. But in order of importance, money must follow time, a finite resour…

At the risk of garnering the wrath of my buddy Scott Spangler who wondered here last week whether technology was really making us more goon-like than aviator, I present yet another piece of technology. This one functions much like a Swiss Army Knife…

When he passes through town, a friend, a long-time CFI and designated pilot examiner, calls so we can catch up over coffee. Like many people today, pilots or not, an iPad seems permanently attached to my friend. Curious, I asked how many applicants …

The day after Thanksgiving, Sporty’s Academy shared news of a week that any flight school would love to have, four first solos, two new private pilots, two new commercial pilots, and a new flight instructor. The cooperation of Mother Nature ma…

Beyond the kids, one of the pleasures of substitute teaching at Omro High School is talking with its principal, Brett Steffen. Infected in adulthood, he’s got a chronic case of aviation passion. I like it when he stops by during my student-fre…

When a single trip to the bargain matinee equals my monthly Netflix subscription, for most movies my frugality partners with patience and we add the title to our queue. On a 1997 date night, my wife and I saw Air Force One, and she didn’t real…

Given the rapid pace of change in cockpit technology, it’s really sad in a self-destructive way at how slowly change has come to the training paradigm that puts new pilots in those cockpits. With few exceptions, the way an instructor educates …

When you live in Wisconsin, where this October day never really dawned under thick ominous clouds and the temperature is struggling to reach the 40s, an e-mail about flying to the Bahamas really gets a pilot’s attention. And by doing so, earni…

Those with a proclivity for cynicism might judge this headline an oxymoron equal to military intelligence. But before you snigger and stop reading, consider this:  under its Center of Excellence banner, the FAA has selected a team of universities wi…

Working my way around Lake Michigan last week, I passed a small airport in Northport. This village of 526 people is at ring-fingertip of lower Michigan’s left-handed mitten. The fieldstone terminal with a conical roof in bumble-bee colors on i…

Certainly more details about its new Center to Advance the Pilot Community will be broadcast during October’s AOPA Aviation Summit in Palm Springs, but that doesn’t satisfy my need to know now. Ah, curiosity is an impatient task master, …

Here in Wisconsin, a swing state, we have been incessantly pummeled by political ads of both parties. This onslaught has been painfully punctuated almost daily by political surveys whose questions do little more than support the delusions of the per…