Search Results for: DC-3

I swear it happens at every fly-in I attend. I’m approaching the airfield at the recommended airspeed and altitude, following a ground track that was clearly delineated in an airshow-issued notice (sometimes an FAA Notam at larger gatherings) and I’m listening—not talking—on the designated frequency for the show, when a random pilot pops up and announces that he’s “a-comin’ in!” This guy (or gal—I’ve heard them both) knows nothing of any special procedures for the show. He may not even know there is a show going on. He just wants to land, perhaps for a bite at the terminal café, and be on his way.

Flying behind air-cooled powerplants, free of radiators or coolant tanks, it’s easy to forget most aircraft still need liquids of some type to operate safely and reliably. When those fluids are put under pressure to actuate a mechanism, we’ve created a hydraulic system, sometimes defined as something “using pressurized fluid to drive machinery or move mechanical components.” It also can be defined as transferring “energy by pressurizing fluid to force movement of a slave to produce the action sought.”

It is very likely — I hope — that this slightly edited version of a 709 re-examination letter is the only one you’ll ever see. The FAA can legally demand a retest of your qualifications any time it chooses, but in practice, this happens only on the heels of some event — an accident or […]

Flying Magazine proudly introduces Top 100 Airplanes: Platinum Edition, which celebrates our Flying book, entitled Flight: 100 Greatest Aircraft. In creating the book, we decided to include some airplanes that should not have been left off the original Top 100 Airplanes list; the hard part was kicking out 20 great airplanes to make way for […]

Here are some of the distinctive airplanes that made Flying’s Top 100. For the full list, see the gallery at the bottom of the page. Flying Magazine is proud to introduce Flying‘s Top 100 Airplanes, a web-based compendium that names the 100 best, most significant and most compelling aircraft designs of all time. The list […]

You may recall a story from last year where a 16-year-old student pilot soloed three different types of aircraft on his birthday. Yesterday, for his 17th birthday, Drew Gryder decided to up the ante. Gryder managed to complete the checkrides for his single- and multi-engine private ratings and second-in-command type ratings for the Douglas DC-3 […]

A two-man team from Oklahoma City was in town last month with the “live” portion of the FAA’s designated pilot examiner renewal seminar. Half of the mandatory training happens online, but we still get eight hours in one of those hotel meeting rooms; if the air conditioning is cold enough and the coffee strong and […]

A lawyer called recently and asked for some help with an aviation-related case. I think he probably inherited it, being the most junior associate in his law firm. When it became apparent that this was a pretty complex issue, and knowing what it costs to consult with a lawyer for longer than two nanoseconds, I […]

A roundup of some of the coolest photos we captured at this year’s AirVenture in Oshkosh.

A whole new airshow concept made its debut this weekend with the inaugural Gathering of Warbirds and Legends in Topeka, Kansas. Sixty-one airplanes of various types and sizes were on display and flew over Forbes Field. But none of these flights included what airshow attendees have become accustomed to: aerobatics, inverted flight or wingwalkers. “This […]