Search Results for: general aviation inc

When I wrote “Hazardous Duty” (Flying, May 2005), I was learning about missionary aviation but had never actually been to the mission field. Everything I wrote came from descriptions and accident reports written by others. That has all changed. Last month I had a chance to travel to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Papua, Indonesia, […]

In early February, the FAA released its proposed budget for fiscal year 2008, which begins October 1, 2007. To no ones great surprise, it calls for creating a new system of user fees in place of the existing excise tax levies to fund the agency and its programs for enhancing ATC and expanding airports.

It seems that since Leonardo de Vinci first placed his mental concept of a flying machine on paper we aviators have had a hard time separating fact from fiction. Aviation, not unlike most other human endeavors, has its share of commonly stated “truths” the scientific data doesnt support. Lets call them aviation myths. Why then, do they continue? One reality is that we are all busy in our daily lives and digging through reams of material to verify what someone else says is just too time consuming not to mention boring.

Routine flight operations typically occur in steady or quasi-steady flight: the traffic pattern, normal climbs and descents, cruise flight, even turns. Yet for all its complexities, skillfully piloting an airplane requires that we strike a balance between just three pairs of performance-defining parameters. Two of these are the force pairs lift and weight, and thrust and drag. Its a never-ending struggle to balance the weight of the airplane with lift, to balance the drag penalty resulting from that lift with thrust.

In November 2006, Alan Klapmeier, CEO of Cirrus Design, sent an almost-unprecedented letter to all owners of Cirrus SR20 and SR22 aircraft. The letter came on the heels of a string of fatal accidents in Cirrus aircraft in adverse weather conditions.

At 7:30 a.m. on Thursday, October 12, 2006, I steered my parents’ Subaru Outback into the parking garage beneath the Belaire building on 71st Street in New York City, right by the East River. The traffic was bad, with police blockades still in effect and looky-loos and camera crews still clogging the sidewalks. But we […]

An insurance company executive mentioned to me the other day that the pilot who worries him most is the one who buys a general aviation piston airplane with the idea he can use it to replace his airline travel. I knew immediately what he meant. The accident record shows thatpiston airplane pilots have very few […]

I recently signed up for Social Security and had to dig out my DD214, the military service record that summed up my two years in uniform. Reading through the form, I was reminded that I’d actually earned the Good Conduct Medal. No big deal, really, it just meant that I’d toed the line and curbed […]

Axioms about landing abound in aviation. Sayings such as “flying is the second greatest thrill known to man; landing is the first” and “any landing you can walk away from is a good landing” are among the most popular. You also hear colorful language applied to the landing process: A greaser is good; crow-hopping, porpoising, groundlooping are bad.

Why do reciprocating aircraft engines have independent dual ignition systems? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: for a safety backup. Most pilots will agree that if one system fails, the other will provide enough spark to keep the engine running. Keeping the combustion going is only one reason for the dual-magneto system.