Search Results for: Lockheed

In 1991, Bobby Bishop and his father were operating a skydiving operation out of Celina, Texas. They had a Cessna 182, a Pilatus PC-6 Porter, a DC-3 and a de Havilland Caribou. But they wanted something in between the Porter and the DC-3/Caribou size aircraft. A de Havilland Twin Otter didn’t seem cost-effective, and the […]

The wag who said he was “sure there was money in aviation because he put it there” might have been Ebby Lunken, who saw a sizable chunk of cash disappear into his beloved Midwest Airways. It was a grand idea and would have succeeded if the income from ticket sales had even approached the outgo […]

The Greeks would have had a name for it, I imagine. Not quite a full tragedy, because there were moments of greatness. But it’s a complex memory that I still can’t easily categorize. So when my friend Pat called and asked what should have been a couple of simple questions, I had no easy or […]

For no apparent reason, Martha fell in love with airplanes at age nine and she learned to fly an Ercoupe in the early 1960s while attending college in her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. Armed with a degree in English Literature, she became a flight instructor and operated a flying school at Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport for […]

On Aug. 6, 2009, I went to the Torrance Airport near Los Angeles to meet Mike Blyth and James Pitman, two guys from South Africa who were on their way around the world in what would be an LSA if this particular one had not been equipped with extra wing tanks. Holding 120 gallons, they […]

One evening in the late ’60s, probably after a few “ginskies” in the Sky Galley bar, Ebby and Walter Rye decided to buy a curious little antique airplane I’d seen advertised in the yellow rag (Trade-A-Plane) that arrived that day. I think they called the seller from the phone in the bar and closed the […]

Airplanes can live such extraordinary lives; it seems that many will never die. Martha Lunken reminds us frequently that 70-year-old DC-3s are still flying and working for a living. The B-52 bombers are often twice the age of their pilots but the old Boeing flies on. And 50-year-old Bonanzas are not exactly rare. The remarkable […]

The original Learjet Model 23 was certified 45 years ago and the airplane was a visual sensation in the aviation press and even the general news media. Part of the notoriety came from the flamboyant Bill Lear who promoted the airplane — and himself — to any and all that would listen. But the Learjet […]

(Image: AOPA) I spent much of last week on a short vacation. My wife, twin 7-year-old sons and I hiked from museum to museum under the veil of sterile airspace that hovers over our nation’s capital. It was a little depressing to visit my friend Mary Miller at Signature DCA only to compare the abandoned […]

The Fowler flap was invented around 1920 by one Harlan Davey Fowler, an engineer who was then in the employ of the U.S. Army. An internet search for his name turns up, in addition to various references to his accomplishments in aeronautical engineering, a volume on the use of camels — the two-humped variety — […]