Sam Weigel

It was a typical spring day in Minnesota, warm and clear at last, but with a brisk south wind blowing across the runway. I’d just driven 45 minutes to fly the Cub for the first time since November, and I thought that the wind was still within the plane’s capability. Once I broke ground and […]

We were bumping through the clouds at Flight Level 300, unable to escape the clutches of a low, winter jet stream thanks to 167 burly souls on board and 26,000 pounds of jet-A sloshing in the tanks. Under such conditions this McDonnell Douglas finds itself just a little short of wing, and the prudent pilot […]

It’s Saturday morning in small-town America, circa the early 1990s. My five younger siblings, flannel-clad in pastel jammies, are sprawled across the living room furniture watching Bugs Bunny gleefully thwart Elmer Fudd’s latest wabbit-hunting schemes. Mom is in the kitchen whipping up a batch of pancakes for her hungry brood. Dad and I are on […]

I’ve been an airplane nut and have longed to have one of my very own for nearly as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, I have also been an inveterate cheapskate since childhood. Aviation is a fine vocation for a tightwad; if not quite a job requirement to begin with, frugality is at least one […]

The maintenance delay in Baltimore, the frenetic jostle of Atlanta’s crowded ramps, the low drizzly ceiling in Minneapolis, the myriad little challenges and rewards of the day — all these things have faded with last light, and only the dusky shadows of the day remain. The flickering gas flares of the Bakken Oilfield fade astern […]

“Gentlemen, start your engines!” The crowd cheered as Mitchell Municipal Airport reverberated with the sound of 50 piston power plants rumbling to life. Dozens of slick homebuilt airplanes with flashy paint jobs and neatly applied race numbers taxied in a long line to the runway. “Race 38, cleared for takeoff,” boomed the loudspeaker, and a […]

It was late, the end of a long and trying day, and we hadn’t even left the state of Texas. I caught glimpses of muted scrubland far below as we flitted in and out of dusky cumulus. I shifted in the right seat and glanced over at Johnny in the dim red cockpit light. The […]

The Los Angeles basin stretches a hundred miles from the sparkling Pacific to the scrub-brush slopes of San Jacinto Peak. This sprawling plain of concrete and stucco is further bounded by the San Gabriel Mountains to the north and the Santa Anas to the south; these ramparts encompass 18 million souls and all the associated […]

The first time I saw Brackett Field it was late afternoon and the airport was draped in the warm, languid light of a Los Angeles sunset. Lengthening shadows creased the nearby San Gabriel Mountains, unusually verdant after the winter rains. The other peaks that ring the LA basin were hidden in smog — though when […]

(August 2014) Time is running short, so I’m going to get straight to the point: If you’re a pilot or aviation enthusiast and you’ve never been to Oshkosh for EAA’s annual fly-in and shindig, you need to go. It runs July 28 through Aug. 3 this year, so depending on when the postman delivers this […]