General Posts

Pinned against the hangar wall by a floor-filling mass of airplanes from a B-25 to a Pietenpol, The Mid-Atlantic Air Museum’s P-61 Black Widow restoration project seems unchanged from my last visit in 2014. Wearing its cowled but propless Prat…

Jumping from any elevation, even a knee-high footstool, has never been something I have eagerly anticipated, which makes my lifelong fascination with parachutes hard to explain.It all started in the early 1960s, I think, with my godparents, who fed…

Economically, Piper Aircraft’s recent announcement that that it has gone totally made-to-order, makes sense. Unsold aircraft, commonly called “white tails” (a term that first described unsold airliners, identified by vertical stabi…

After reading almost every word written about the National Air & Space Museum “s Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the last emotion I expected when walking through the door was overwhelming surprise. But taking in the second-floor panorama of …

If the recently released Part 23 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking survives the comment and review period and makes it to a final rule, old, new, and prospective pilots will have to learn a new airplane lexicon. But don’t hyperventilate, like the …

The U.S. Air Force opened the doors on its new, and as yet unnamed, long-range strike bomber, the B-21. The contract pasted in the cockpit window said each bomber would cost $500 million and the total program cost for a fleet of 100 B-21s would be $…

Maybe it’s a pilot thing, but I find the insides of airplanes just as interesting, and often more interesting, than their outsides. Cockpits and crew stations is where humans interface with the machine that carries them aloft, and I’m al…

Promoting aviation to ensure its future viability and growth is something important to most of us who are involved with it personally or professionally. Individuals and organizations have promoted and pursued programs dedicated to inviting newcomers…

With the approach of December 17, which every airplane geek holds dear as Kitty Hawk Day, the birthday of powered flight, a brief quiz to probe your aviation knowledge beyond this momentous event.The questions come from Aviation Trail, a member of…

The men who united as a crew in the vertical war over Europe after Pearl Harbor have all since surrendered, as we all must one day, to time. Its last living member, radio operator Robert Hanson, passed into history in 2005 at age 85. But their spir…

Gathering with my aeronautical peers, I rarely participate in conversations in which they compare their cumulative and recent aviation rewards in terms of certificates and ratings earned, total hours logged, or most recent aircraft flown. While I sh…

On my inaugural visit to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, I expected nothing more than the opportunity to meet many of the airplanes I’ve read about in their tactile, three-dimensional magnificence. The museum, part of the N…

When the National Aviation Heritage Alliance, a coalition formed by the leaders of the 19 sites that comprise the National Aviation Heritage Area (both served by the NAHA acronym), invited me to its inaugural Aviation Writers Summit in Dayton, Ohio,…

Trailer for Above and Beyond.Wandering through the recently added titles to Netflix’s “watch now” films the other night, I came across Above and Beyond, a documentary about the birth of what became the Israeli Air Force during…

When John Slemp came to the JetWhine.com lunch at EAA AirVenture 2015, he carried with him a large flat package that was maybe 20 by 24 inches by an inch deep and wrapped in brown paper. At such gatherings, most people just show up with their appeti…

Frederick Payne, America’s oldest surviving combat fighter ace, died August 6 at age 104. According to his obituary in The New York Times, the retired U.S. Marine Corps brigadier general earned this singular achievement at the controls of a Gr…

Like pilots everywhere, I never surrender an opportunity to go flying. And then there are days like today. Thunder rumbles closer, rain beats on the windows, and online radar reveals the crawling approach of a large green blob with an enlarged blood…

Framed by the diagonal street that connects the main gate of EAA AirVenture to the forums area is a triangle of land that over the years has proven to be a prism that spotlights a newest member of the aviation community before it mixes invisibly int…

Airbus recently flew the first production version of its Voltair E-Fan 2.0, a two-seat electric airplane. The realization of this aviation technology is something we should all celebrate because it is another important step toward aviation’s f…

Needing an airplane fix on the Saturday before Father’s Day I wandered over to Brennand Airport (79C), 10 miles north of Oshkosh and 4 miles west of Neenah. It is today what small, nontowered airports used to be, fence free and focused on fun …

To learn more about commercial drone operations, I recently attended a 4-hour introductory course for pilots conducted by Vortex UAS. The thorough presentation covered everything from history to the current legal landscape. What I did  not expect wa…

Most Americans today have but two connections with those who serve and have served in the military, and especially those who have perished in that service. The first is the hollow seconds it takes to utter “Thank you for your service,” a…

As aviators, the sky is where we’d rather be. While many factors conspire against the fulfillment of this desire, being attuned to and looking up at the inhabitants in the ocean of air above us sustains our connection to it, which is why sprin…

In less than a month in late 1911, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and the United States each made their inaugural air mail flights. All of them were short distance experiments that led to regular delivery schedules along established routes. The…