Search Results for: Lockheed

The FAA is turning over its Flight Service Station network to a private company. Whats the plan, and how will this impact safety?

Driven To Distraction
We have all heard stories of little things leading to big tragedies. Consider Challenger, a terrible tragedy caused by a defective O-ring. Then there was Eastern Airlines Flight 401, a Lockheed L-1011 that crashed in the Florida Everglades on December 29, 1972, because someone nudged the autopilot disconnect but didnt notice it while working on a failed nosegear indicator light. There are many-too many-other examples The point is, accidents and incidents can start from very simple events that simply snowball out of control. Heres the reason I began thinking about the chain of events.

A few months ago, I flew a 160-nm VFR trip in my Cherokee 140; not…

Francis Melvin Rogallo is now known for the eponymous double-conical hang-glider wings that he developed for NASA in the 1960s. Long before that, and before NASA even came into being, he worked for the sainted National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics-NACA-and in the late 1930s conducted a wind-tunnel study of inlet and outlet designs. From this […]

Taxpayers pick up the tab for the FSS briefer to read you forecasts and weather reports prepared by the government’s weather bureau. It’s a great service that pilots have enjoyed for decades, but if you are willing to invest a few bucks a month, you can buy better weather, or at least better weather information, […]

I don’t remember where the two men came from. I don’t even really remember what they looked like. But I remember the question. The three of us were sitting on barstools at a Key West, Florida, watering hole, making our way through a couple of requisite local margaritas and telling tales of flying and adventure. […]

When flying beyond the pattern, you have two choices: Fast or far; you cant have both. Heres how to plan and fly maximum range flights.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the prototypical business turboprop, the Beech King Air. The airplane, to our knowledge, is the longest continuously produced civilian turbine aircraft. (The Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules is the only turbine aircraft that has been continuously produced for longer.) It was in August of 1963 that Beech Aircraft announced […]

Selected recent general aviation and airline accidents

On several occasions after the breakup of the Space Shuttle Columbia on February 1st, I found myself in conversations about the safety of the space program. Actually, my knowledge is limited to much lower altitudes and speeds and much more prosaic equipment. On a few occasions, nevertheless, I felt obliged to put in my two […]

When governments buy airplanes, they face many of the same constraints that we do. If it is a new airplane, it takes a long time to develop. And, the fewer engines the airplane has, the more affordable it can be. The next generation fighters, the F-22 and the F-35 (Joint Strike Fighter) are perfect examples […]