Flying Staff

I admit it, I’m spoiled. For a 33-year-old airplane my Cessna Cardinal RG is very well equipped. Fitted with a Garmin (née UPS) GNS 480 navigator, a Garmin GMX 200 multifunction display and an S-Tec System 30 autopilot with a Pitch Stabilization System, my airplane doesn’t give up a whole lot to the new kids […]

The Fowler flap was invented around 1920 by one Harlan Davey Fowler, an engineer who was then in the employ of the U.S. Army. An internet search for his name turns up, in addition to various references to his accomplishments in aeronautical engineering, a volume on the use of camels — the two-humped variety — […]

Easter Sunday had begun as just another holiday to spend relaxing. Connecticut was finally beginning to show consistent signs that spring would actually occur. With the encouragement of more pleasant weather, Kari Sorenson started the Model A. He and his girlfriend, Ashley, climbed into the antique car and went for a drive. Neither one of […]

It never ceases to amaze me, the difference it makes when any event, fact or statistic hits close to home. You can know 50 people who’ve lost their parents, but you don’t understand how awful it is until it happens to you. All of us know, intellectually, that cancer is terrible. But not in the […]

There’s no question the future of general aviation is at a waypoint. Parasitic drag resulting from new and inconvenient — if not onerous — regulations from the TSA is hampering its growth. And then there are the turbulence from the current economy; the climbing costs of fuel, maintenance and new airplanes; and the tailspin in […]

After I wrote (Technicalities, April) that BR in the metars stands for brume, which is French for mist or fog, a reader, Bob Bartch, with whom I was exchanging e-mails on another topic, commented that he had learned that word from a lyric by an American-French singer, Joe Dassin, who covered Gordon Lightfoot’s profoundly morose […]

Oklahoma City FSDO needed a DC-3 “specialist” for certification flight checks with Cascade Airlines, a Part 125 operator who, curiously, didn’t actually operate in Oklahoma … nobody seemed to know exactly who they were and where they did fly. But for right now the airplane and pilots were in Guymon, Oklahoma. Having spent a considerable […]

“Whoosh!” Blustered the gust from the Amtrak Metroliner as it roared past the railroad crossing in my dream. I’d managed to incorporate the sound into my dream but then when Rueben, our geriatric Aussie mix, barked to go out in the middle of the night, I realized it wasn’t the Amtrak train; it was the […]