General Posts

Not a day goes by, it seems, when the aviation e-news organizations don’t report that another general aviation airframe manufacturer has reduced its work force and cut or ceased production to get through the globally self-inflicted economic meltdown…

Airframe manufacturers are dealing with the financial fires spawned by the global economic meltdown in many ways, including reorganization, furloughs, and layoffs. American Champion Aircraft is pursuing a different tact, introducing a new airplane…

Airports come and go these days, but some closings become more personal than others. Living in Chicago, we had our own sad, yes even depressing moments when Mayor Daley hacked Meigs Field to death just to prove who was really in charge. Personally, …

After the last plane took off for home in August, EAA announced it was starting work on a 10-year plan to improve its AirVenture grounds on Wittman Regional Airport. The news release spoke about moving the main gate, new thoroughfares, and improved …

When the urge to fly strikes me, but inadequate weather or funds make the satisfaction of this desire impractical, I often turn to the AOPA Air Safety Foundation Interactive Safety Courses. Spending an hour online isn’t the same as one in the air, …

Cleaning out an old flight bag, in a long unvisited pocket I found a NASA form that must be more than a decade old. I was flying more than I do now, and I always carried the form in case I needed to submit the details of some inadvertent stupid pil…

In no uncertain terms, Toby Kamark and Jeff Gentz see light-sport aircraft as the future of general aviation. It’s time for a new generation to succeed the old, and this change is happening now, they said. Sport pilot is the key to getting people …

When I traveled recently to rural eastern Kansas to write and shoot a profile for Aviation for Women, the magazine of Women In Aviation International, holding the last surviving part of a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 was the last thing I expected to do. But h…

Like most pilots, I dreamed of one day owning an airplane. With the cost of groceries and gas, one son in college and his brother  starting next year, I’d put the dream to bed. Given all the costs, I couldn’t justify it to myself, because I fly for …

If my homebuilding buddies are a typical sample of the amateur-built airplane community, there’s a lot of confusion about what led to the new policy the FAA has proposed. (See Homebuilt Aircraft: How Much is More than Half?) My friends are solid, h…

To most pilots who fly over it, Liberty Landing Airport (4MO4) isn’t anything special. On the sectional chart it’s just another private airport, an empty circle around an R that stands for restricted about 20 nm east, southeast of Kansas City Intern…

It’s always bugged me that I need two sectional charts–Green Bay and Chicago–to get from my home in OSH to my family growing-up grounds west of the commercial Class B airspace plug stuck in the ground at ORD. It’s more than the cost: $8.60 each. In…

During the late 1990s I participated in the FAA Pilot Proficiency Award Program. Each year, in return for attending one safety seminar and logging three hours with an instructor (one each for airwork, patternwork, and hoodwork) I met the biennial fl…

If time is short, never ask Dick and Sharon Starks what they’ve been up to lately. Both pilots, these retired schoolteachers have a full flying life that any pilot would envy.  Anxious to see Sharon’s new airplane, a Morane Model L parasol, I learn…

It seems fitting that my fourth decade of EAA AirVenture attendance starts like the first, meeting those who made the history I read about as a kid. On my first trip to Oshkosh in 1978 I met Pappy Boyington and George Gay (see EAA AirVenture Forums…

From AirVenture 2008 – Van’s Aircraft is a small company that’s put a big smile on faces who’ve taken to the sky in the company’s line of RVs. The handful of employees also wear big smiles, even after standing in the hot Oshkosh sun all day, because…

From AirVenture 2008 – As promised in a recent post (Backyard Flying: Fun & Cheap), I ambled down to the lightplane area at the south end of the EAA AirVenture site to try on Valley Engineering’s Backyard Flyer. It fit! To most people that may not …

Six months out of the Navy I attended my first trip to Oshkosh in 1978. I went for the airplanes. Not one of them now stands out in memory. Not so with the people I met. Sitting in side-by-side booths in the old exhibit shed were Pappy Boyington of…

Am I the last airman in America to totally ignore the free and invaluable gift that is FAAST, the FAA Safety Team at www.FAASafety.gov? Sometime during the past two years I gave the FAA my email address. When and how doesn’t matter. What’s importa…

Talking to friends, flight schools, and FBOs it is clear that I’m not the only one who isn’t flying as much as I used to. With avgas going for roughly $6 a gallon or more, depending where you live, direct operating costs are climbing faster than th…

It’s been awhile since I’ve attended an FAA safety seminar. With good intentions I read all e-mail invitations FAASafety.gov sends, but other weekend responsibilities too often take precedence. A tailwheel clinic, on the other hand, is more importan…

Stand with me brothers and sisters of the air and remember June 11, 2008. On this day upstart Icon Aircraft left the cloistered alcove where the choir of aviators sings. It took the public pulpit, inhaled deeply, and sang in pure notes to the congre…

Given the world’s sorry state and aviation’s place in it, hope for the future is at the coffin corner. To help maintain that delicate balance it is natural to withdraw into–and protect–our little corner of aviation’s diverse world, sacrificing the o…

Reversing the decline of the pilot population “is the most important thing we are addressing,” says Cessna Pilot Center Manager Julie Boatman. “We have several things in development that I’m not quite ready to talk about yet,” but as part of those…