Blogging Posts

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 ai…

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 fli…

Photoguy73 over southeastern Minnesota in 2008. 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 peac…

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 …

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 m…

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 justificat…

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 pi…

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 i…

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 pr…

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 regiona…

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 tr…

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 Muse…

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 makin…

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 i…

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 …

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…

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 gathe…

Any pilot who says an air traffic controller hasn’t saved his or her butt at least once is either lying or stopped flying after solo. Air traffic controllers are my best friends, and you couldn’t pay me enough to attempt their job at any facility or…

Having grown up with the US space program (which celebrated the golden anniversary of Alan Shepard’s fight on May 5, 2011) and come of age when Apollo 11 touched the moon, I’m not sure how I feel about the final flight of Atlantis, which is writing …

The NTSB just published its top-10 Most Wanted improvements to transportation. Beware of Number  Three, Safety Management Systems, aka SMS. For newcomers, here’s the FAA definition: “SMS is the formal, top-down business approach to managing safety r…

Am I the only one who missed the news in July 2010 that the FAA nearly doubled the life of a student pilot certificate (and the third-class medical certificate) for those 40 and younger, from 36 months to 60 months? This discovery came with a questi…

There’s no small amount of irony in the fact that Rockwell Collins announced it’s new “One Touch Safe Mode,” button at the Paris Air Show this week … at least it was ironic to me. The button, integrated into the avionics giant’s popular Pro Line Fu…

This Saturday morning at 10 AM EST, the earth will move … or stop I guess, whichever is cooler I guess. For me, it means the first time that I’m going to visit the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian at Washington Dulles Airport. I’ve been meaning …

The Department of Transportation’s recent notice that it will dismantle most the Block Aircraft Registration Request (BARR) program, which hides corporate aircraft activity from online flight-tracking programs, has caused quite a stir. Aviation’s al…