Lane Wallace

“Everything we do here has to meet five criteria,” Kermit says as he whisks me through a full-scale set of a B-17 bomber awaiting a pre-dawn departure for a raid over Germany. I step past a snowbank outside the wooden briefing shack, shivering in the dark and robustly air-conditioned display area as I strain to […]

(March 2011) WRITING ABOUT ADVENTURE – whether the adventure is climbing a mountain, fighting a war or flying a small airplane across the country – is something of a challenge. Not because the source material is lacking. To the contrary. But there’s a reason explorers and generals who cared about recording their battles for history […]

(January 2011) — The envelope had been forwarded twice by the time it got to me. I tore open the top seal and pulled out a worn 8½- by 11-inch color brochure, its binding coming apart, with a cryptic note paper-clipped to its top edge, asking for the brochure to be forwarded on to me. […]

I didn’t think it was such a crazy idea. My boyfriend’s 17-year-old son, Connor, had been expressing an interest in flying for the past couple of years. I’d promised him I’d take him up one day so he could get a better idea of what it was like, but Connor and his dad lived in […]

Donna F. Wilt, Ph.D., is an ATP, a Master CFI and an associate professor of aviation at Hampton University. She says: “The FAA states that an applicant for a student-pilot certificate must be at least 14 years old for the operation of a glider or balloon and 16 years old for other categories of aircraft. […]

I’m not sure who first came up with the term “spam can” to designate a basic, fixed-tricycle-gear, aluminum airplane. Spam itself originated in the late 1930s, and Hormel, the manufacturer of the soon-to-be-ubiquitous pork shoulder/ham product, actually started calling it “Spam” to make it sound jazzier. It needn’t have bothered. One of the defining characteristics […]

Matthew McDaniel is a four-time Master Flight Instructor who’s logged over 11,000 hours in more than 70 aircraft types. He’s owned and operated Progressive Aviation Services LLC (progaviation.com), specializing in technically advanced aircraft and glass cockpit training, since 2002. He says: “Being a truly good pilot is a multifaceted skill: airmanship, knowledge and judgment. One […]

Once upon a time, the campfire story goes, when aviation was young and fliers were adventurers on the edge, pilots wanting to make a living in this new field couldn’t just sit around and wait for passengers and students to find them. They had to go to where the people were. And so they got […]

Harry Kraemer is an ATP, CFI-I, MEI, Master Flight Instructor and president of Kraemer Aviation Services (flymall.org) He says: “There is an old aviation saying: ‘Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.’ And another that goes: ‘A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid those situations which require the use […]

David St. George is a Part 141 chief instructor at East Hill Flying Club (ehfc.net) in upstate New York and a designated pilot examiner (fearlessflighttest.com). David has flown more than 10,000 hours of dual instruction and given more than 1,500 flight evaluations in 40 years of flying. David says: “The easy answer is: ‘when you […]