Search Results for: DC-3

“I always use flaps for climb. I get more lift that way.” Some would call this statement perfectly logical, because flaps do increase lift and increased lift certainly ought to make an airplane climb faster. Others would say that the reasoning is fallacious, and that flaps, by increasing drag, reduce rate of climb rather than […]

It wasn’t until one of the very last stops and the very last day of my visit at Oshkosh that I really understood that I still lead a sheltered airline life. The revelation didn’t sink in until my jaw went slack after catching a surprised glimpse of Larry Neal’s flying motorcycle exhibited in the Ultralight […]

It has been 50 years since Safe Flight Instrument Company developed the first practical autothrottle system but only a small minority of pilots have been able to fly this most useful and safety enhancing equipment. But that is starting to change. Safe Flight is now offering its AutoPower system in midsize business jets, when before […]

I know nothing about art or photography. Nothing. Can’t tell a Rauschenberg from a Rosenquist; a Diane Arbus from an Airbus. I do, though, have some favorite images that I store in my mind and, when I have the money and the wall space, in my home or office. Of course, most of these images […]

Looking through the aviation catalogs you can quickly be overwhelmed by the choices of pilot equipment and gear. In Sporty’s Pilot Shop catalog, for example, there are two pages of logbook options and half a page of logbook covers and cases. What’s a pilot to do? When I first started taking flying lessons, I gobbled […]

I have written that it is madness to certify light airplanes for flight in icing conditions. Some have misinterpreted that to mean that I don’t think light airplanes should be equipped with ice-protection gear. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think the ice protection systems that are available today, and that are not […]

Japan has been a marginal, but potentially formidable, presence in American aviation since the late 1960s. Fuji Heavy Industries, which had previously manufactured both two- and four-seat versions of the Beech T-34 Mentor for domestic military forces, produced almost 300 of the FA200 Aero Subaru, which looked the way a 172 would if you replaced […]

Our fine friend and colleague Len Morgan died on March 11 after a long illness. He was 82. In his late teens, Len went off to Canada and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. The United States had not yet entered World War II and Len and 11 other Americans earned their RCAF wings on […]

We came from all corners of the country at our own expense to Galveston, Texas, for a 15-minute ride in an ancient airplane. Nobody came away disappointed. The money spent and the vacation days taken meant nothing, you see, because the airplane was a B-17, the Flying Fortress. This one is in the careful custody […]

The late September rain is pounding on the fuselage above me and coursing across the narrow, rectangular windscreen that sits less than a foot in front of my face. The frigid Alaskan ocean lies only 400 feet beneath us, but if we went any higher, we’d be in the clouds-clouds that are obscuring a line […]