Search Results for: main turbo systems

With the coming age of very light jets (or whatever you want to call them) just around the corner, the question has been repeatedly raised but never really answered: How will pilots fare when transitioning from piston-powered airplanes to this new breed of little jets? It’s a much more complicated question than it at first […]

I have written that it is madness to certify light airplanes for flight in icing conditions. Some have misinterpreted that to mean that I don’t think light airplanes should be equipped with ice-protection gear. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think the ice protection systems that are available today, and that are not […]

I told our son on the phone that I was going to fly a new 206. He asked if that wasn’t the airplane we flew to Alabama on his first birthday. It was. He will be 41 in August. The 206 has been around for a long time. The biggest change over time, up until […]

It’s tempting to say that before the September 11 terrorist attacks we had nearly total freedom to fly as we pleased in our national airspace. But that would be a delusion. Access to much of our airspace has not been unfettered for decades, and the right to fly in very large portions of airspace has […]

A few things in this life are so fundamentally compelling that despite months of planning and anticipation the event itself is so overwhelming, so captivating, that memories become a blended blur of the real and the imagined. Having a child is such an experience. So is taking off in a brand new Boeing 737-700. Last […]

When a manufacturer can successfully meld form and function in a product’s design the results are invariably aesthetically and economically satisfying. In the mid-1980s, when MBB (Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm) began development of its BO 108, it had no idea how successfully the helicopter’s form would let it perform many missions. Initially, the BO 108 was intended as […]

In the reception area at Burt Rutan’s Mojave, California, skunk works, Scaled Composites, there sits on a corner table a small black tripod with a cup-shaped receptacle on top. Built by composites engineer Stan Stawski, who works at Scaled, it supported two tons before failing. It weighs less than four ounces. Getting the most strength […]

I don’t like the term “used” or “preowned” applied to airplanes. Those are standards of the automotive industry, and airplanes and cars have next to nothing in common. The best way to describe an airplane that isn’t brand new is “existing.” That’s the term typically applied to buildings. They are either new or existing. You […]

Every pilot wants more useful load, and Piper provides 242 more pounds of it in its new Piper Meridian single-engine turboprop, thanks to an increase in maximum takeoff weight. And the company also switched to the new Meggitt Magic 1500 autopilot that offers the performance and features a pilot expects in a turbine airplane. When […]

In February’s Flying I described the first flight of Melmoth 2 on November 1, 2002. To tell the truth, however, that wasn’t really the first flight. It was the first up-and-away flight. The airplane had actually lifted off the ground for the first time the day before. Blustery winds blew through Mojave for three days […]