General

I made a list of the people I had to call. There were 10 people on the list ranging from Bonnie, who was scheduled to house-sit for our Aussie shepherds, Rueben and Whoopi, to my mother, who watches the weather and knows-even before I do-where bad things are happening. One of the names on the […]

I have had the opportunity to watch many, many start-up companies try to build their first aircraft, and the record of success is dismal. But I was pleasantly surprised when I visited Adam Aircraft’s operation in Denver. I think this company has a good chance to make it. The new airplane is named the CarbonAero […]

The FAA has got it right this time with publication of its sport pilot and light-sport aircraft rules. These new rules finally recognize the crucial differences in the type of general aviation airplanes people want to fly, and how they want to use them. Categorizing airplanes and pilots by intended use is actually an old, […]

When the poet Robert Burns wrote, “the best laid schemes o’ mice and men, gang aft a-gley,” what he meant was that things often don’t work out the way we intend. The well laid plan was for Robert Goyer to fly up to Columbia County to take some pictures of me with my Cardinal. That […]

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: […]

What is it with pilots and fuel? The most obvious requirement for continued powered flight-fuel in the tanks-seems to confound pilots more than P-factor. It’s impossible to know for sure how many pilots run out of fuel each year, because many power-loss events do not result in an accident if there is no serious personal […]

||| |—|—| | | | In my pursuit of various ratings and certificates over the past decade, I’ve watched countless pilot training video- tapes and I’ve used a number of computer-aided instructional programs. Such materials, while a far cry better than the hit-or-miss do-it-yourself approach of years past, had obvious shortcomings. Tapes are great, but […]

||| |—|—| | | | A man approached me in the Flying tent at the EAA’s AirVenture airshow last summer and thanked me for, as he put it, “working a miracle in my life.” He explained that his wife, who in 20 years of marriage had never been willing to go flying with him, had […]

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 […]

||| |—|—| | | | The notes are cryptic; scattered snapshots of a life that would mean very little to anyone except me. Two words-“By myself”-are all that denote the cascade of emotions, experience, fear, excitement and joy that accompanied my first solo in my Cessna 120 taildragger. “Familiarization,” reads another stoic entry explaining 15 […]