General Posts

Because it’s usually informative and entertaining, I’m addicted to the bonus material that accompanies DVD movies. When Netflix delivered Disney’s Planes, I devoured the main course and couldn’t wait for the credits to end be…

The outrage over the FAA’s recently announced medical certification policy to require pilots with a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or more to be examined for obstructive sleep apnea has been consistent across all channels. (And is it coincidence …

High as in altitude. Wandering through the science section of the New York Times in the dying days of October, “A Quiet Trip to the Ozone Hole” caught my attention. It’s about the Perlan Project, which is building a pressurized gli…

Time will ultimately confirm or deny the recent rumors that the Chinese will become the controlling investor in another venerable American manufacturer of general aviation aircraft. Looking at this possibility from another vantage point … is t…

Drowning in the destructive rhetoric spewing unabated from self-important politicians, I turned to the sky to relieve the oppressive shroud of despair their words have woven around me. A beautiful autumn day here in Wisconsin, the Sunday afternoon s…

Most of my friends and acquaintances are, in some way or another, involved with aviation. Talking with them over the past months, the future of aviation seems to be the discourse destination of choice. On the whole, their outlook on aviation’s…

Two Turkish airline pilots have gone missing. The aircraft they flew to Beirut on August 9 is just fine, as is their cabin crew, but these two men simply vanished into thin air … and almost no one is talking about them.Captain Murat Akpınar …

A solo trans-Atlantic flight to Paris is the signature event in the iconic life of Charles Lindbergh, but it was, perhaps, not the most challenging or arduous. A visit to his boyhood home on the bank of the Mississippi River in Little Falls, Minneso…

Catching up on the news after a two-week vacation that was, like my last two week respite in 1975, totally disconnected from the wider world, on May 5 The New York Times reported that there are new aircraft designs in the works because “Jet Ma…

Wandering around Addison Airport, a busy Dallas-area reliever, one Monday morning in late April, I dropped in, unannounced, at the airport’s four flight schools. Given the day and hour, I assumed they wouldn’t be busy and would have time…

The recent announcement that the American Bonanza Society and its ABS Air Safety Foundation had established the ABS Flight Instructor Academy was not only good news, it was a surprise. For some reason I’d thought that it had been around as lon…

Like many aviators I appreciate anything that flies whether it’s a manmade machine or product of natural selection. Among insect aeronauts the dragonfly is my favorite. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t envy its ability to rapidly fly fr…

Since the FAA issued the list of contract towers it will close to satisfy the self-inflicted sequester, I’ve been reading a lot of wailing and gnashing and incredulous screeds of how could they? Common to everything I’ve read so far is t…

Most pilots know that the test of an airplane’s dynamic stability is to trim for a specific hands-off speed, increase or decrease pitch to a faster or slower speed, then let go of the stick and measure the time it takes to resume the hands-off…

As the official keeper of US aviation world records, the National Aeronautic Association each year lists the previous year’s most memorable records ratified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). Most years the most memorable …

As Baby Boomers march into retirement in increasing numbers, there’s an opportunity for general aviation and its surviving participants to recalibrate their desires and define the future of personal flight. It all hinges on flying clubs, which…

Ray Bethell choreographs three kites’ ballet on an azure stage.Kites were our first form of flight, and they played a crucial role in the Wright brothers’ quest for powered flight. Since then, the relentless pursuit of pragmatic prog…

The 1.8 gigapixel looks at 20 square miles at once.Comments on last week’s post on UAVs focused on safety and privacy, and rightly so. Most offered valid examples of why UAVs won’t work today, and I won’t argue because I agree.…

Sometimes the best action is to take none, which is precisely the route I chose last week when many people were falling over themselves to tell outgoing Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood how much they appreciated his past four years on the job.…

Many would not expect a prediction of aviation’s future on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but there it was on January 23. The guest, Missy Cummings, one of the Navy’s first female F-18 drivers and now an association professor of aerona…

There’s no denying that flying clubs make aviation affordable by sharing the fixed costs of airplane operation among a number of people. Active pilots are the obvious benefactors, as are lapsed pilots looking for a way to resume flying. In foc…

The day after Thanksgiving, Sporty’s Academy shared news of a week that any flight school would love to have, four first solos, two new private pilots, two new commercial pilots, and a new flight instructor. The cooperation of Mother Nature ma…

Beyond the kids, one of the pleasures of substitute teaching at Omro High School is talking with its principal, Brett Steffen. Infected in adulthood, he’s got a chronic case of aviation passion. I like it when he stops by during my student-fre…

When a single trip to the bargain matinee equals my monthly Netflix subscription, for most movies my frugality partners with patience and we add the title to our queue. On a 1997 date night, my wife and I saw Air Force One, and she didn’t real…