Search Results for: DC-3

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 […]

Unless youre trained for it, we dont think its a good idea. But if you must-a photo mission, for example-here are some safety tips.

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 […]

This final maneuver of every flight can reveal the smallest flaws. But a little planning and lots of practice can make every landing a greaser.

Thats what a taildragger is like. Yet anyone can learn the deft use of rudder and brakes to keep it on the runway. Heres how.

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 […]

Medications – whether over-the-counter, prescription or recreational – have found their place in the aviation accident record

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 […]