Search Results for: Lockheed

For all the fuss made about California’s huge population, almost two-thirds of its 36.5 million people are squeezed into just 8 percent of the land. That leaves an awful lot of open spaces in between, as anyone who’s ever flown — or driven — between San Francisco and Los Angeles can attest. But my friend […]

Everyone knows that there is less flying going on, but Lockheed Martin is using the reduced numbers to justify cutting back on Flight Service Station facilities. The company announced last week that five satellite stations will close in February. Facilities due to shut their doors include those in Oakland, San Diego, Denver, Albuquerque and Macon, […]

I thought I had covered the whole subject of the controller/pilot interface pretty thoroughly. In the January 2008 issue (“The Controller Failed to Inform…”), I used two accidents to illustrate the perils of depending on the controller to keep out of weather and away from high terrain. In the July issue (“Saved by the Controller”) […]

Lockheed Martin, which operates the flight service briefings under contract to the government, has introduced a program designed to save time on phone briefings and when filing flight plans. Pilots can set up a personal profile that, based on the telephone number called from, will automatically populate the briefer’s screen with boilerplate information such as […]

Bill Warlick has had an interesting career. He began flying at 14, graduated from NC State in Aerospace Engineering, joined the Navy, instructed in T-28s, and flew several tours in the P-3 Orion – the Navy’s patrol version of the Lockheed Electra – before spending three winters flying ski-equipped C-130s in Antarctica. He did stints […]

I received a letter from a reader after our story on the Cessna Mustang ran in the May issue asking me to compare the Mustang to the original Lear Jet 23, to measure 40 years of progress in light business jets. Interesting idea, and there is a valid comparison, but it’s not the Lear and […]

Rich Stowells articles on unusual attitude recoveries (Unusual Recoveries, June 2007; Unusual Recoveries II, July 2007) should be required reading for all CFIs. His analysis of the different spin recovery techniques was very well done. I have been instructing in aviation for 30+ years, both civilian and military, and it always amazes me how very experienced aviators know little about the dynamics of spins. One of my USAF students in T-37s had over 4000 hours and held both an ATP and CFII. He did very well until we got to spins. He didnt understand them and was terrified of them. It wasnt until the end of his T-37 training that he was finally able to master a spin recovery. The key was stopping what caused the spin in the first place: the yaw and stall. Thats what the NASA standard recovery does.

Anyone who’s picked up the phone to obtain a weather briefing from an FAA Flight Service Station (FSS) in recent weeks has discovered the ongoing consolidation by federal contractor Lockheed Martin (LockMart) isn’t going so well.

For years, Flight Service Stations have been the “Rodney Dangerfields” of general aviation: they got no respect, no respect at all. Some of that began to change in 2005, when Lockheed Martin took over operation of 58 Automated Flight Service Stations from the FAA. Slowly, things began to get better: Wait times shortened, briefers tried harder, fewer flight plans got lost. In recent months, I noticed what I consider substantial improvement at the Leesburg (Va.) facility and others.

A full page ad in the morning paper invited readers to a showing and reception for one of the new small jets (VLJs) at Million Air Cincinnati on the following Tuesday evening. It sounded like fun so I called the 800 number for an invitation. The young salesman was cordial but seemed intent on establishing […]