General Posts

(Reposted by request) Each time I stand near my desk, my eyes naturally focus on the framed cover of the August 1983 Flying magazine. Below it is page 100, the “I Learned About Flying from That” (ILAFFT), where my first column appeared. On i…

Making a pragmatic go/no-go decision is the goal of preflight preparation. Regardless the destination or activity one must weigh all the participating variables. These can change because life is dynamic and our goals, priorities, and individual capa…

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…

If you keep up with current events, 2024 has the potential for global grimness. All that’s needed is for China to make a move on Taiwan to fan conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East into World War III, and the US political polarization to de…

Wandering among the flying machines that carpet the Oshkosh acreage during EAA AirVenture 2023, nothing of interest caught my eye until it spied an immaculate blue P-51C Mustang. On its flawless flanks, in sunshine-yellow letters was its name, Thund…

In decades past, back when its moniker matched its location, one of Oshkosh’s primary draws was learning about new products and programs that their creators debuted on aviation’s primary stage, where an eager audience hungrily consumed e…

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 …

Published in 1997, Rinker Buck let the memories of his cross-country flight from New Jersey to California in a 1946 Piper PA-11 age for 30 years before sharing them in Flight of Passage. Like a fine single-malt whisky, time has refined the raw spiri…

President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948. It mandated the desegregation of the US military. Truman stood firm in the face of pushback from politicians and military officers of all ranks from all branches who opposed an int…

Much has been made of the actors portraying naval aviators in Top Gun: Maverick being filmed in the aft seat of an F-18 Super Hornet to capture the sagging distortion of real-life g-forces. Compare that to the challenges faced by Charles “Budd…

Attracted to unusual and unknown aircraft, I walked past the record-setting Airbus Perlan 2 stretching its 84-foot wingspan across AirVenture’s Boeing Plaza to find out what the large, white turboprop was and why its fuselage was a series of l…

In between airplane spoon scoopfuls of his Runway Sundae at Kelley’s Country Creamery, the group’s pilots explained what attracted 15 aviators and their backcountry capable airplanes to an alfalfa field in Eden, which is just south of Fo…

As one crawling into the final third of life, I’m in no hurry to write my final chapters. That said, May 27—when Top Gun: Maverick is due in our local movie house—cannot get here soon enough. To accelerate the passage of time, I’ve been …

Few veterans that fought in World War II are still with us today, and that’s as true for aircraft as well as the pilots who flew them. It is especially true for the veterans who were recalled for Korea, America’s forgotten war, which con…

The pandemic has reordered the routines of life in many ways, and that includes the almost annual National Aeronautic Association announcement of the previous year’s aviation records. But Covid-19 restrictions waylaid the submission of aviatio…

Like many history-obsessed aviation geeks, I had a passing knowledge of Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown defined by the most common bullet points that most often summarized his life. He was (he passed in 2016 at age 97) a Royal Navy aviator a…

Admiring historic airplanes from a museum floor is a big-picture perspective of their contributions, whatever they may be, to aviation. Regardless the aeronautical era or the scope of the story, the viewer’s mind readily puts the winged artifa…

Air Zoo Aerospace & Science Experience CEO Troy Thrash said the Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless on display in the World War II exhibit was the team’s first Lake Michigan restoration project. The eight-year effort took place years ago in a building…

Over the decades, the Young Eagles program has given millions of youngsters what, in many cases, were their inaugural flights in an aircraft smaller than a transport category airliner. This includes my kids and my grandchildren, which gives you an i…

After we all took a year off in 2020, I hit the road this morning for Wittman Regional Airport with a tick of trepidation nibbling at my soul. It’s Zero Day, the Sunday before the show starts and all the exhibitors are scurrying about trying t…

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…

Nothing ruins the enjoyment of a good aviation film more thoroughly than computer-generated images. Real moviemaking, filming real airplanes is what makes movies like “12 O’Clock High” and “Top Gun” so memorable. That&#…

Photography is an activity pursued by many interested in aviation. For photographers who started before the digital age, storing slides, negatives, and prints was not only an out of space problem but also spacious signal that might suggest a hoardin…