Education Posts

I wonder if you remember what you were doing back in November 2006? Here’s a quick refresher of some of the top stories. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were getting hitched. The first hearings were taking place on The Hill to find a replacement for Se…

When we record episodes of the Airplane Geeks the format is usually the same. We introduce our guest, when we have one, and then run through the four or five major aviation stories of the past week. Max and Micah and David and I offer up our opinio…

I enjoyed Pam Leblanc’s story when I read it in another magazine. I asked, and she graciously allowed us to reprint it here. Enjoy – RM______________________________By Pam LeBlancThey had to cinch up the waistbands of their oversized,…

Capt. BeattyA disinformation campaign falsely links “DEI” to airline accidents – let’s check the facts.By Capt. Jenny BeattyThere is no extant literature examining this question, so I accessed various sources to compile available data. I research…

In the BeginningIt was the afternoon of November 2, 1929, when a group of women pilots first gathered at Curtiss Field in Valley Stream, Long Island, New York. That meeting became the impetus for what became known as the Ninety-Nines, Inc., the Int…

Bell 47Do you remember your first flight? I know I do. That image of a 12-year-old me climbing into the right seat of an old Bell 47 helicopter at Greater Rockford Airport in 1963 is indelibly etched into my brain. I even remember the pi…

When it was revealed in a BBC interview, The Fighter Pilots Hunting Houthi Drones Over the Red Sea, that Marine Captain Earl Ehrhart, an AV-8B Harrier pilot aboard the USS Bataan, had downed seven drones, subsequent stories on this action hailed him…

Each year for as long as I can remember, Sporty’s Pilot Shop has sent its annual crystal airplane ornament with the Christmas card it sends to members of the aviation media. We hung our growing collection of them each year until our boys moved…

Guided by triangles and French curves, pencil applied to paper is how ideas made the transition to all things aviation. Mechanical drawing was its moniker and the artists who precisely lined each part of some aeronautical creation so hands-on crafts…

If you keep reading the Aviation Weather Handbook, FAA-H-8083-28, you’ll learn that space weather reports are officially known at the Space Weather Advisory in chapter 26.7. It is a newcomer to the universe of meteorology. The International Ci…

Every seven years, Thanksgiving and my birthday get together on the same day. My oldest boy and his family made the 10-hour drive from Missouri to deliver themselves as the best present I could have ever hoped for, and that included Boomer, their 2-…

When I returned home from the EAA Aviation Museum to start writing this I discovered that today, October 13, 2022, is Ernest K. Gann’s 112th birthday. This is significant because he owned the subject of my photo session, an Olivetti Lettra 22 …

ADM—Aeronautical Decision Making—is a system of thinking that benefits all aspects of life on the ground as well as in the air because it is a reflective way of processing situations composed of often uncertain variables. These situations prepare us…

Reprinted courtesy AOPA Turbine Pilot – illustration by John HolmBy Rob MarkIf you’ve yet to endure the two or three solid weeks of grueling classroom and simulator training known as initial, you will, if you decide to call the cockpi…

Illuminating the spectrum of science, technology, and engineering opportunities embodies for people of all ages is one of the premeditated objectives of the Air Zoo Aerospace & Science Experience in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Its many hands-on youth a…

Meeting at U.S. Air Force survival school in 2007 and reflecting on the unexpected opportunities that introduced them to aviation, Liz Greene and Kristen Franke conceived an idea that became the nonprofit PreFlight Camp whose mission is to make girl…

Tipped off by the movie being made about its story of Jesse Brown and Medal of Honor recipient Tom Hudner (see “Devotion: Bearcats, Corsairs, and Real Moviemaking Oh My!“), I found the book in our local library system. In Devotion: An Ep…

As a word merchant, dictionaries are my favorite books whether they are online or old school paper, and not because I am a less than stellar speller. The most fascinating are historical dictionaries, like the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), that tr…

Aviators live and die by their acronyms, so reading one unfamiliar motivates a frenzy of catch-up research. A short news item about changes ICAO recently made to special procedures for in-flight contingencies in oceanic airspace focused on something…

General Aviation Thrives on Kettle Moraine GrassSituated along the Scuppermong River in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, the Village of Palmyra is, says the welcoming sign across the street from the Palmyra Municipal Airport (88C), “The Heart of …

Semantically, Students and Learners Are Not SynonymousThe 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…

NASAAs 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 preparat…

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 ful…

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…