Search Results for: Lockheed

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 — […]

Easter Sunday had begun as just another holiday to spend relaxing. Connecticut was finally beginning to show consistent signs that spring would actually occur. With the encouragement of more pleasant weather, Kari Sorenson started the Model A. He and his girlfriend, Ashley, climbed into the antique car and went for a drive. Neither one of […]

Even though I fly a Technologically Challenged Airplane, I do have a Garmin 396 with datalinked XM Weather. My trip to Oshkosh last Friday would not have worked without it. I filed IFR from home base, Somerset Airport in New Jersey, to my fuel stop at Sandusky, Ohio. With the headwinds forecast by fltplan.com, I […]

After I wrote (Technicalities, April) that BR in the metars stands for brume, which is French for mist or fog, a reader, Bob Bartch, with whom I was exchanging e-mails on another topic, commented that he had learned that word from a lyric by an American-French singer, Joe Dassin, who covered Gordon Lightfoot’s profoundly morose […]

It’s funny, the things that stick. Every day, people make comments to me. Whole conversations ensue. Years and years of words, sentences, stories and dissertations pile up in the mental “in” box. Yet out of all those words, only a few lines, jokes, pieces of advice or phrases actually imprint clearly enough on the internal […]