Search Results for: DC-3

A Buffalo Airways Lockheed Electra featured in the reality TV series “Ice Pilots NWT” made a successful belly landing at Yellowknife Airport in Canada on Monday after its right landing gear became stuck in the up position. The 50-year-old Electra skidded to a halt off the runway after its pilots spent more than an hour […]

After a decade-long hiatus, Santa Monica Airport’s Museum of Flying, which was originally founded in 1974, opened its doors last weekend. Located on the south side of the runway adjacent to a large DC-3 monument maintained by the City of Santa Monica, the exhibit area houses a theater, several interactive displays and about two-dozen airplanes […]

(March 2012) Weighing five pounds fewer than I had three days before we began training in the steamy heat of south Florida, I finally breathed a huge sigh of relief. Bill Conrad had just told me I’d passed the type rating and multi-ATP check ride in the Lockheed 18 Lodestar. As we took the runway […]

Boneyards – the graveyards of worn out airplanes – are generally depressing collections of airplanes whose useful life has come and gone. But art aficionado and gallery owner Eric Firestone saw these airplanes as an opportunity to create something beautiful. Along with curator Carlo McCormick, Firestone conceived The Boneyard Project, which put retired historical airplanes […]

Carol and I met Nick after accidentally parking our Cherokee Six in his spot. The spot was reserved for Key West Seaplane’s amphibian Cessna 206. It was Christmas Day. Because the FBO was closed, the ramp had become a semichaotic aluminum mess. After we adjusted a few airplane positions, Nick and I exchanged business cards […]

If you don’t venture on sullen skies, You never come to sunkissed valleys. If your palms have never been moist, Your heart has never thrilled. If you have never been afraid, You have never been courageous. Gill Robb Wilson, The Airman’s World When my sister Mary and I started flying, we learned to check aviation […]

(November 2011) I remember from my college classes about slippery slope arguments, the idea being that they unfairly presume that one undesirable outcome of a new policy invariably would lead to another even more undesirable outcome, which would then lead to even worse ones until the momentum was unstoppable and all hell would break loose. […]

(October 2011) Signature Engines president Bill Schmidt and the company’s chief security officer, Boo Radley, strolled across the ramp to my hangar last week as I was debugging the 180. Boo is actually a spoiled but lovable mutt rescued by Bill and named for the lonely character in To Kill a Mockingbird. Summer flying in […]

(August 2011) When the Brouhaha erupted over air traffic controllers dozing off on duty I couldn’t help wondering if it’s really important to have humans manning control towers at all hours of the day and night, even at places like Reno and Dulles. Do people have any idea how many airports routinely and safely accommodate […]

(August 2011) Just after 11 o’clock on a chilly San Francisco morning, Jan. 18, 1911, a 24-year-old civilian demonstration pilot named Eugene Ely coaxed his 50 hp Curtiss pusher biplane into the sky, made a wide circle over San Francisco Bay and set down on the deck of the anchored U.S. Navy armored cruiser USS […]