Peter Garrison

Melmoth 2 inherited its engine mount brackets and isolators-the rubber pads the engine is actually bolted to-from Melmoth 1, which had in turn acquired them, in 1971, from a Cessna Skymaster that was already far from new. It’s surprising that any rubber compound can retain a whiff of elasticity after 35 years or more in […]

In the past 10 years, the National Transportation Safety Board has used the phrase “inadequate preflight inspection” in the probable causes of 15 fatal accidents. The most common direct cause is fuel contamination, usually with water, which typically leads to power loss after takeoff and a subsequent stall-spin. Other oversights include improperly latched baggage doors; […]

There was a long list of things that needed to be done to Melmoth 2 before leaving for Oshkosh. One was to get a coat of paint onto the airplane. This I barely managed to accomplish in time, using roller, brush and a marine paint formulated for sailboats being finished, I suppose, at the ends […]

There are certain things we have always with us; the Bible mentions the poor, but believers in the ultimate superiority of flying wings are another, and almost equally persistent, category. Like devout knights bent upon finding the chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper, they keep their eyes unblinking on the prize. Their Grail […]

On several occasions after the breakup of the Space Shuttle Columbia on February 1st, I found myself in conversations about the safety of the space program. Actually, my knowledge is limited to much lower altitudes and speeds and much more prosaic equipment. On a few occasions, nevertheless, I felt obliged to put in my two […]

“Ten seconds.” This is it: the end of a 21-year countdown. The 9,600-foot Mojave runway stretches out in front of me, the chase plane is coming up from behind. It’s clear and calm this November 1st-the day when, as I heard someone explain yesterday on NPR, “the barrier between the living and the dead is […]

In random reading about matters aeronautical I have twice come across essays in defense of rectangular wings. Not coincidentally, perhaps, both were by men who had taken part in the design of the Piper Cherokee, the airplane whose thick rectangular wing gave a new application to the name “Hershey Bar.” The first essay was by […]

Some time ago I wrote about the relationship between thrust and horsepower, and the question of why one is used to describe the output of pure reaction engines and the other that of engines driving propellers. I argued that the reason was historical. The great majority of engines-steam, gasoline or what have you-have been designed […]

On the morning of a late fall day in 2000, a Utah rancher took up two passengers in his Cessna 175 to search for stray cattle. It was part of the fall roundup, an “annual event looked upon with anticipation by many.” After spotting a few head, they flew toward a bluff where several cowboys […]

A 337 breaks up and rains down from 27,000 feet. Amazingly, the right seat passenger lives to tell how it happened.