Search Results for: DC-3

John Mugavin is made of rare stuff. This stocky, hugely talented, successful and gutsy guy is also as friendly and “old shoe” as they come. Mugavin is a familiar name around here for both the primo auto-body shop he owns and operates, and his fame as a dirt-track driver. Twenty-five years after building his first […]

There are airplanes out there, and I know it because they’re all stepping on each other over the radio. The CTAF is a cacophony of squeaks, squawks and indecipherable gibberish clearly announcing that everyone and their brother is flying today. And why not? It’s a gorgeous Saturday in coastal California. It would be nice to […]

I could smell the pine trees below as I turned base and the nose of the little taildragger I was piloting pointed toward a sheer rock wall. When I turned final, the runway was still invisible. It was at the end of a narrow gorge that followed down the mountainside. Tracking that line, I continued […]

We call it flying in a black hole — no stars or ground lighting to guide you. You are flying a TP-3, a heavy, lumbering beast of an airplane, and you are just 350 feet above the ground, accelerating toward 150 knots. The cockpit glows an eerie Halloween green. Your captain indicates it’s time, and […]

Both spherics and NEXRAD have blind spots and neither is infallible. Spherics devices can have false negatives because they dont see those static discharges until they happen. While most cells with dangerous opposing currents also produce significant static, nature is inherently unpredictable and the static discharges can lag. Of course, the delays in getting NEXRAD images to the cockpit can lead to significant errors. Plus, radar only seeing precipitation, not turbulence, can cause difficulty interpreting the image.

As part of the opening session at the European Business Aviation Convention and Expo on Tuesday, the business aviation environment in Africa was brought into light. Former French minister of foreign affairs and cofounder of Doctors Without Borders Bernard Kouchner recounted several stories during his remarks. “The jeep of the sky,” was what Kouchner called […]

Drivers, motorcyclists, bikers and pedestrians craned their heads to the skies as military trainers, combat fighters, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft made their way over the city in a series of formations, commemorating the 70th anniversary of V-E Day (victory in Europe). World War II was a special era in the history of aviation, the likes […]

After my purgatory in West Chicago and three mostly great years in the Indianapolis FSDO, the FAA offered a transfer to Cincinnati. It was a bittersweet decision, and my boss, Jay Peterson, rather obliquely suggested I might want to stay put. He understood I was anxious to get back home, but he also knew the […]

Another historic airplane model has flown its final leg as the last flying Boeing 247 landed this week at King County International Airport/Boeing Field in Seattle, the same airport where it was built more than eight decades ago. The Boeing airplane will become a part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Flight. As […]

A story we posted recently about a pilot taking his dog flying with him generated a lot of discussion on our Facebook page, and a lot of our readers had their own photos and fond memories to share. As you might expect, we couldn’t get enough. Here are some of our favorite photos of readers […]