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July 30, 2010
Flight Guide Celebrates 50 Years
by Lane Wallace

I'm not sure who introduced me to the handy, square, brown-cover wonders known as Flight Guides, but over the course of my flying they have become an essential part of my flying equipment. They were compact enough that they could hold information pertaining to a third of the country's airports in a single volume, from FBOs to traffic patterns, frequencies, nearby hotels and runway/facilities orientation. There were other airport data guides, but none as well done as the Flight Guides.

July 28, 2010
Screwing up with ATC ... Painlessly 1
by Robert Goyer

One of the greatest fears for new pilots, John King observed at a press conference earlier this week, isn't crashing or getting lost or bouncing a landing. It's talking on the radio.

July 28, 2010
The Timeless Adventures of Youth 4
by Lane Wallace
Enlarge Photo
Photo: Lane Wallace

It's a tale right out of Richard Bach or Rinker Buck — or Mark Twain, for that matter, if only there'd been airplanes back in Twain's day. Two young men, eager for adventure, set out to fly cross country in a simple Piper Cub. And since young people and adventures need at least a semblance of a point or destination, they decide to time the trip to coincide with the EAA's big annual air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

July 28, 2010
Need a Vacation? Try the Dominican Republic 1
by Lane Wallace
Enlarge Photo

Ideally, one would market a tropical island get-away to pilots in the cold, dead of winter, when the thought of white sand beaches and a little sunshine has a lot more appeal than on a hot, humid day in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Nonetheless … summer in Wisconsin is when the biggest gathering of pilots in the U.S. takes place. So an enthusiastic group of pilots, aviation ministers and government officials from the Dominican Republic traveled to the EAA AirVenture show to make their case for why the island nation is now a great deal and a great place for pilots to visit.

July 27, 2010
HAL is NOT in Control of Your Airplane 2
by Robert Goyer
Enlarge Photo
Photo: Cirrus Design

At the risk of stating the extremely obvious, pilots like to be pilots because we like to fly airplanes. We take great pride in being the ones to command our craft, to tell them where we want them to go, how fast we want to them to go there and in what configuration to make that journey.

July 21, 2010
I Have Been One Lucky Guy 19
by J. Mac McClellan

Since 1976 I have been able to tell people that my job is to fly airplanes and write about them. And not just a few airplanes. I was lucky enough to get to fly just about every type that entered service in business and general aviation over those years from LSAs to top-end business jets. And hundreds of thousands of Flying magazine readers went along for the ride.

July 21, 2010
See you at Oshkosh!
by Lane Wallace

'Twas the week before Oshkosh
And for miles around
The hangars at airports
Were filled with the sound
Of pilots all working
Late into the night
On last-minute touches
Required for flight

July 20, 2010
What the iPad Ain't 7
by Robert Goyer
Enlarge Photo
Photo: by Robert Goyer

As my envious friends are aware, I’ve had an Apple iPad in my hot little hands for the past two weeks. They are right to be envious. To put it in a nutshell, it rocks. It’s a great music device, a fabulous web browser, a wonderful e-book and magazine reader, and a big bright and colorful photo slideshow viewer. I carry it around with me all the time now.

From an aviation point of view, the iPad is an interesting device: Interesting as in really great and interesting as in a bit troubling.

July 14, 2010
Breaking Through the Clouds
by Lane Wallace
Enlarge Photo

Twenty years ago, when I lived in Southern California, I went to an air show at the Cable airport in Upland, California. All the hangars were open for the day, and I wandered into one that looked more like a museum than a hangar. There were airplanes hanging from the ceiling, memorabilia on all of the walls, and big flip-type poster displays of black and white aviation photos that dated back to the 1920s and 1930s.

July 14, 2010
Occam's Razor and the Colgan Crash 4
by Robert Goyer
Enlarge Photo
Photo: NTSB

I almost never speculate on the cause of a crash early on, but in the case of the crash of Colgan Flight 3407, I weighed in earlier than I ever had before. Within a couple of days, when icing was still seen as a likely cause, it seemed to me that the cause was far simpler, the crew's failure to control the airplane. That is, in fact, what the NTSB, a year later, determined to be the probable cause of the crash.

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