Military Posts

Memorial Day here in the United States is one of the days we remember all the men and women who served and perished in armed conflicts around the world since our own Civil War in the mid-1800s. The stories emerging about how poorly we treat these me…

Like moths seeking illuminated warmth, pilots are genetically drawn to aviation accident reports. Most say they pore over them to perhaps discern details that might keep them from ending up as the subject of their own accident report. As they read, …

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…

The refueling probe on this Learjet isn’t the latest option available from the venerable business jet manufacturer. It’s not connected to the airframe’s plumbing, but it is an integral part of a flight test program at Navy Pax Riv…

Bowing to pressure from military and veterans groups who clearly don’t understand the rigors of combat at the controls of armed drones, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has replaced the proposed Distinguished Warfare Medal with a device that w…

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.…

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…

One of the first things I learned as a graduate student at Northwestern’s Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) program 20 years ago and years later as a teacher in that same program was the value of a brand. Managing a brand is so import…

Bird strikes have been one of my passing interests ever since I watched the head-on confrontation between a seagull and A landing A-6 during a wheels’ watch at NAS Alameda in the early 1970s. (The seagull lost, by the way.) Somewhere over the …

Last week, the middle school where I am a substitute teacher held its annual career and hobby day, where students sign up for presentations  that interest them. I was on duty as a student wrangler, not a speaker, and it was happenstance that I ended…

As a Vietnam-Era veteran myself and someone who used the G.I. Bill to cover the cost of some of my early flight training, I was more than a little interested when June Olsen approached me about writing a story about today’s G.I. Bill (Actually…

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…

First thing last Monday morning I read that US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was scheduled to hold an hour-long meeting with aviation officials from Boeing, Honeywell, and United Airlines later that day at Boeing HQ. The announced …

Wandering through a Google collection of aviation news, Combat Aviation Brigade Welcomes a New Unit, New Aircraft, grabbed my attention. I’m a dedicated rotorhead, helicopters comprise the majority of the US Army’s fleet, and I was hopin…

Serving the military in Afghanistan According to the The Daily Planet, the blog of Air & Space Smithsonian, in November troops in Afghanistan will likely be resupplied by the K-Max, an automated cargo helicopter. The video is from a test earl…

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 & …

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…

Department of Transportation Washington, DC Really nice to hear from you again and yes, the family are all doing fine, thanks for asking. I forgot to ask you in my last letter how that new government job is working out. DOT Secretary … prett…

Earlier this month President Barack Obama signed the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Improvements Act of 2010 into law. For the first time since Vietnam, it will cover flight training under non-degree educational programs. Depending on the…

That title is what we call a grabber, intended only to make you read the rest of this short post. Without this disclaimer, some might believe that I think landing at any of these airports is a piece of cake … and I surely do not. My thanks to…

It seems that the capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles will soon be complete. On July 1, DARPA announced a $33 million dollar contract for Northrop Grumman to demonstrate autonomous aerial refueling using two NASA Global Hawks. The company wil…

One joy of small town living is our ability to watch the annual Independence Day fireworks from our deck when we don’t feel like joining the crowd counted in the thousands. Staged at a riverside park just a bit more than a quarter-mile away, …

Last weekend I had the honor of being a guest on Airplane Geeks, thanks to my JetWhine.com co-conspirator Rob Mark, who is one of the quartet of regulars. It was my inaugural podcast (Episode 101), and I greatly enjoyed the wide ranging aviation con…