Search Results for: Ercoupe

Each year we pause in the quest for aviation excellence to examine those whove boldly gone where others with a mere dram of sense wouldnt. This review covers 2012, the most recent year for which the NTSB offers probable cause to improbable silliness. Only non-fatal events are covered because we assume its bad form to ridicule the dead. Contestants are limited to the USA, because, hell, we invented flight, even though France claims the naming rights. Plus, few other countries offer our freedom to fail.

This months accident easily could have resulted from perhaps the most insidious preflight challenges: interruptions. Being interrupted in the middle of, say, refueling or checking the engine oil can have severe consequences. The trick for me always has been to start over after the interruption is resolved. If this means leaving passengers in the FBO lobby until Im ready, or missing a clearance void time, so be it. If it means answers to a passengers questions must be postponed, thats okay, too. Interruptions during a preflight inspection are insidious because they allow us to consider a task complete when it isnt. Well never know if an interruption during the preflight inspection helped cause this months accident, but its as good an explanation as any.

I’m front-page news. The lead story in my state’s big daily newspaper. On Page 1, above the fold. Where the Albuquerque Journal announced that my plane and I have “earned a spot in aviation history.” How did I do that? Simple. I set a world speed record. And you can too. WHAT DO YOU NEED […]

It was a typical spring day in Minnesota, warm and clear at last, but with a brisk south wind blowing across the runway. I’d just driven 45 minutes to fly the Cub for the first time since November, and I thought that the wind was still within the plane’s capability. Once I broke ground and […]

The service was at a Presbyterian church in a small town east of Cincinnati — about a 30-minute flight in the Cessna 180. I had planned to fly there and commandeer the airport’s retired police car, but my airplane wouldn’t start. When I jumped in and “cranked,” it wouldn’t fire — odd, because it was […]

As a child, Jessica Cox wasn’t allowed to climb the slide at the playground. Born without arms, she was limited — not by her own abilities, but by protective grown-ups who told her, “Oh, you can’t do that.” “I wanted to be up high,” Cox said, but because she had no way of holding onto […]

I was introduced to the art of buying and selling flying machines on a spring afternoon in 1965, standing next to an airplane salesman who’d just closed a deal on an AT-6 at Lunken Airport. The sound from that round engine as the buyer departed Runway 21R was glorious, but when it passed almost directly […]

A few weeks ago I flew the Cessna 180 to a nearby grass strip to give a sport pilot practical in a man’s ­Pietenpol Air Camper. Coincidentally, somebody else had just sent me an old Antique Airplane Association magazine. The “Our Lady Antiquer” section in this January-February 1968 issue featured “brand new AAA Member 9010, […]

Well, I did it again. No, not crash, just piss somebody off. An old flatbed trailer parked behind a fence and piled with remnants of a pranged flying machine caught my eye as I drove down Airport Road to pull ’72B out of the hangar and go flying. I’d seen the trailer before and assumed […]

We were flying from Oakland down to San Luis Obispo for lunch. On Oakland Center frequency, the controller was quizzing a Skylane every minute or so: Oakland Center: Cessna Two Three Quebec, thats a 78 182?