General Posts

It’s been too many years since I was last pilot in command of an airplane, and even longer since I’ve made a cross-country flight. The AOPA Air Safety Institute must have known that flying may well be part of my life in the near future b…

Did you know that March is Women’s History Month, and that Women of Aviation Worldwide Week started March 5?  I didn’t, until a friend shared  an e-mail from Penny Hamilton, a pilot with a Ph.D. who’s invested a lot of time studyi…

In an attempt to keep current with all aspects of aviation, I subscribe to all manner of e-mail updates. In this arena, the FAA is prolifically focused. My latest discovery is the InFO, short for Information For Operators.Produced by the FAA’…

If there’s a poster child for the public’s misunderstanding of the physics of flight, it has to be the stall. Every time some poor reporter in print or on TV, who hasn’t dug deep enough, relates it to the airplane’s powerplan…

A judge for “What’s Your Story,” the Wittman Regional Airport writing contest for those in grades 3-12 in Oshkosh-area schools, I feel compelled to share some observations gleaned from the entries I’ve just read. As our futur…

CLEAR!TV doctors bark this sharp-elbowed warning before they shock a restive heart back to a regular rhythm. It is also the warning pilots issue to bystanders before they energize an airplane’s air processer. Seemingly disassociated warnings,…

From aviation’s infancy, the US military has been a leading source of aerial innovations and educator of those who put those winged aviation innovations to work. With the end of each conflict, pilots, technicians, and engineers used  their tra…

An old-school reader, annually I must winnow my collected ink-on-paper titles to make shelf room for Christmas newcomers. As they have for decades, the works of Richard Bach survive every purge.Like many others, I met Richard through the pages of J…

Curiosity often costs me a lot of sleep. Tonight I saw that TV commercial about the guys who captured some cool, outer space video using a weather balloon. So Google and I went looking for them. I found JP Aerospace. I don’t know if they did t…

At the August meeting about the AOPA Student Retention Initiative, a CFI in the audience suggested replacing a real airplane, the most expensive line of the flight training bill, with a simulator. Not totally, mind you, but enough to get students st…

John Monnett has been dreaming about a homebuilt jet since the 1980s, so one can only imagine the barely controlled eagerness that filled him with the first flight of the SubSonex. And one can only imagine the internal debate between making that fli…

Photoguy73 over southeastern Minnesota in 2008.Here in Wisconsin the maples are beginning their fall fashion season. Their shimmering coats in shades of reds and yellows blaze in the afternoon’s low, saturated light. It is a quiet refuge o…

Lately there hasn’t been much good news about aviation, general or otherwise. Then I went to North Dakota for a story on a one-tech avionics shop halfway between Fargo and Bismarck. A flight school was setting up in the next hangar, an indicat…

Sometime next month, a few anniversaries begin jumping out at me. And no, my 20th wedding anniversary doesn’t pop up til next spring, but I’m told I can still choose between China and Platinum trinkets with my Happy Meals. I was actuall…

To appreciate what we have—and how far we’ve come, now is the time to celebrate the centennials of aviation’s many achievements. In the process, we might attract some new participants, which is surely aviation’s more pressing conce…

Throughout its life, now 75 years and counting, millions of words have been written about the iconic DC-3/C-47/R4D/Dakota. I’ve written some of them, and read most of them. So I cracked the cover on Together We Fly: Voices from the DC-3 with s…

Surprises are delightful, especially when they reveal innovative and economical ways aviation solves a problem in a unique way. The latest example is the maneuverable kite Paul Garber (yeah, that one, the father of the Smithsonian’s Air & …

At AirVenture a friend asked if I’d seen the new Air Facts. What new Air Facts? All I knew about were the Air Facts videos Richard Collins produced with Sporty’s Pilot Shop that grew out of the eponymous print publication Leighton Collin…

Sitting on the front porch with my battered feet bared to a healing breeze, I celebrated the end of my 34th EAA AirVenture Oshkosh marathon. Delivering my second round of rehydration elixir, my wife joined me. Having made the trek herself, she knows…

Performing missions no other aircraft can accomplish, helicopters are a vital part of the aviation industry. But they are a minority among flying machines, so their presence is often overshadowed by their fixed-wing peers, especially when they gathe…

Any pilot who says an air traffic controller hasn’t saved his or her butt at least once is either lying or stopped flying after solo. Air traffic controllers are my best friends, and you couldn’t pay me enough to attempt their job at any…

Having grown up with the US space program (which celebrated the golden anniversary of Alan Shepard’s fight on May 5, 2011) and come of age when Apollo 11 touched the moon, I’m not sure how I feel about the final flight of Atlantis, which…

This Saturday morning at 10 AM EST, the earth will move … or stop I guess, whichever is cooler I guess. For me, it means the first time that I’m going to visit the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian at Washington Dulles Airport.I̵…

After seeing its inaugural (public) flight at EAA AirVenture 2008, I’ve been following the the development of the Martin Jetpack. Beyond the sci fi coolness of the Kiwi project, a few questions came to mind, like what happens when the engine f…