We Fly

This diesel-powered gem has undergone so many design enhancements and improvements it should be called ‘Diamond DA40 NG 2.0.’

The bitter cold of a February day in Minnesota in 1999 etched itself in my memory like frost on the windshield of an old Subaru hatchback. As an assistant editor in Jeppesen’s aviation-courseware department, I’d been thinking through the mechanics of flight training every day, working to translate abstract concepts into print and onto the […]

What aviation aficionado hasn’t watched the iconic 1986 hit movie Top Gun, the story of Maverick, a US Navy F-14 pilot portrayed by actor Tom Cruise? In an early scene with co-star Anthony Edwards, the pair is walking among a bevy of parked F-14s when Maverick’s overcome with the need to yell, “I feel the […]

Let’s get this straight from the beginning: The Van’s Aircraft RV-14A is not an off-the-shelf airplane. Every one of them out in the wild is custom-built. Even its recommended 210 hp Lycoming Thunderbolt XIO-390 engine is hand-assembled, polished and ported by a select team of Lycoming employees. And the “A” denotes a nosewheel version, with […]

The angle of attack readout on the PFD wasn’t the first thing that caught my attention. No, that would be the unending cry of the audible stall warning as we just couldn’t catch a break. We began a steady descent, nose high, and slowed somewhere below 39 knots. We were flying rather well, all things […]

Sunday mornings at the Waypoint Cafe at the Camarillo Airport (KCMA) in California are generally bustling with hungry visitors eagerly awaiting a seat while drooling over the delicious menu. But on the Sunday in early May when I met Doug King, Epic Aircraft’s CEO, outside the restaurant, it was deserted despite crystal-clear blue skies. The […]

The Brazilian OEM celebrated its golden anniversary in 2020 by giving its popular business jet some impressive enhancements.

Turning to Bart Jones, who was sitting beside me in the cockpit as we flew over the Florida coast, I told him the battery wasn’t working in my headset. The whomp that active noise reduction creates when the power’s going made for quite a distraction. After a beat, and with a nonchalant shrug, he took […]

What should an aircraft manufacturer do with a talented engineering team that just wrapped up the successful certification test program for a jet that would go on to win the Collier Trophy and Flying Innovation Award in the same year? One option would be to put them straight back to work developing the next iteration […]

Dan Johnson told me, “The first light-sport airplane arrived in the U.S. in April 2005. The first two FAA-accepted special light-sport aircraft were announced…almost exactly 15 years ago.” Johnson reviews recreational aircraft and posts those reports on his site, bydanjohnson.com. A flight school needs to use an S-LSA in order to operate a light-sport aircraft […]