Search Results for: national museum us air force

The restoration process of the B-17 Memphis Belle recently reached a few notable milestones, bringing the famous warbird steps closer to returning to pristine condition. In addition to mating the wings, restoration crews at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force recently extended the landing gear of the airplane, well known as the first […]

While the name Daher-Socata is new, the roots of the company can be traced back to the beginnings of man’s adventure with the airplane, starting 100 years ago under the name Morane-Saulnier. Over the last century, the company has developed 94 models and produced more than 17,000 aircraft. It also participated in many aviation firsts: […]

(August 2011) Just after 11 o’clock on a chilly San Francisco morning, Jan. 18, 1911, a 24-year-old civilian demonstration pilot named Eugene Ely coaxed his 50 hp Curtiss pusher biplane into the sky, made a wide circle over San Francisco Bay and set down on the deck of the anchored U.S. Navy armored cruiser USS […]

JUNE 2010 — ON A COLD WINTER’S DAY, an elegant Boeing 737-700 painted a subdued gray flew low toward the east over a very rural portion of Delaware, arched its back and turned to the north, then reversed course to land on the just barely 5,000-foot runway at Georgetown (KGED). With a spirited roar of […]

“Holy Cow, it goes on forever!” exclaimed my friend’s 16-year-old son, Connor, who was experiencing his first Oshkosh. He stared wide-eyed at the endless field of planes as we moved along the flight line from the homebuilts to the classics, to the antiques, to the ultralights, to the amphibians — almost halfway to the seaplane […]

It never ceases to amaze me, the difference it makes when any event, fact or statistic hits close to home. You can know 50 people who’ve lost their parents, but you don’t understand how awful it is until it happens to you. All of us know, intellectually, that cancer is terrible. But not in the […]

My monthly check is similar to the process of writing. Initially, the schedule resembles more of a rough draft than a publishable piece of literature. Editing is part of the process. Some months involve more editing than others. In that regard, when I retrieved a voice mail message to call our lead flight standards coordinator, […]

I don’t often find myself in three-abreast seating on an airliner, but on a recent trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, it was unavoidable. So there I was in a window seat with a white-knuckled woman seated next to me and her macho husband on the aisle. As the airplane accelerated for takeoff, the wife clutched […]

The Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum welcomed the Boeing S-307 Stratoliner to its new home, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Originally built in the late 1930s, the four-engine Stratoliner was the world’s first pressurized passenger airplane, allowing it to fly at altitudes of 20,000 feet, which was unprecedented for that era. The sole survivor […]

Each year I donate a flight to Catalina Island to the fundraising silent auction at my daughter’s school. Each year somebody buys it for a few hundred dollars. I wish I could say that each year the purchaser is delighted with the trip, but in fact hardly anyone ever actually takes it. I suppose that […]