Peter Garrison

The late Ed Heinemann was a designer at Douglas Aircraft. He was responsible for the A-4 Skyhawk, a single-seater with an empty weight of less than 10,000 pounds that served for a long time as the smallest carrier-based attack aircraft in the Navy’s arsenal. It embodied the now-famous design philosophy emblazoned on Heinemann’s office wall: […]

The wind was blowing out of the south, 23 knots gusting to 27, when the 172 touched down on Runway 14. The crosswind was about 40 degrees. A pilot on the ground, using a handheld radio, was at the approach end of the runway giving wind advisories to a group of airplanes returning from a […]

||| |—|—| | | | Since it consists of little more than a stick at one end and a couple of ailerons at the other, I thought that hooking up the roll control system of my homebuilt would not have been much of a problem. But then you wouldn’t think anything would be much of […]

Each year I donate a flight to Catalina Island to the fundraising silent auction at my daughter’s school. Each year somebody buys it for a few hundred dollars. I wish I could say that each year the purchaser is delighted with the trip, but in fact hardly anyone ever actually takes it. I suppose that […]

Each year I donate a flight to Catalina Island to the fundraising silent auction at my daughter’s school. Each year somebody buys it for a few hundred dollars. I wish I could say that each year the purchaser is delighted with the trip, but in fact hardly anyone ever actually takes it. I suppose that […]

The wreckage of a Grob G115D, a German-built, all-composite, aerobatic two-seat trainer, was spread out over an area nearly half a mile long and 400 feet wide-this despite the fact the airplane was sighted shortly before the accident by a witness on the ground who estimated its height, in level flight, as only 500 feet. […]

It was a Saturday in June, in the middle of the afternoon, a clear day, in open country-a most perilous time and place. Three sport airplanes-a Pitts S-1, an Acro Sport and an RV-6-were on their way from an airshow at the Longmont Airport, on the north side of Denver, to Centennial Airport at Englewood, […]

A private pilot and his father-in-law made a 300-mile trip to visit a friend. It was winter. They arrived in late morning. They reported that they had encountered instrument conditions but had been able to drop down below the overcast and continue to the destination, an uncontrolled airport. This must have required some fairly low […]