Search Results for: sun aviation

When newly formed Tiger Aircraft announced a few years back that it was going to reintroduce the four-seat AG-5B Tiger, last produced back in 1993, it seemed like a natural. Unlike a number of more forgettable and more obscure airplanes that have been returned to production (sometimes successfully, more often not) since the bust of […]

The FAA has got it right this time with publication of its sport pilot and light-sport aircraft rules. These new rules finally recognize the crucial differences in the type of general aviation airplanes people want to fly, and how they want to use them. Categorizing airplanes and pilots by intended use is actually an old, […]

||| |—|—| | | | A man approached me in the Flying tent at the EAA’s AirVenture airshow last summer and thanked me for, as he put it, “working a miracle in my life.” He explained that his wife, who in 20 years of marriage had never been willing to go flying with him, had […]

||| |—|—| | | | It seemed such an innocuous decision at the time. Life had gotten a bit much, I was behind schedule, the late August weather patterns looked bad, and I needed to get home to California for some meetings. “Well,” I thought. “I’ll just leave the airplane in New York for now […]

||| |—|—| | | | I’m not in my airplane. I’m sitting in my office. The sun is shining and there’s a gentle breeze caressing the leaves outside my window. Now. It didn’t start out to be a good day. The plan was to fly Judith to Ithaca, New York, to spend a weekend with […]

||| |—|—| | | | At first, I was decidedly bummed at the timing. I’d agreed to fly my Cheetah to Peterborough, Canada, east of Toronto, to give a talk there on the 7th of July. It seemed a good excuse to take the Cheetah on an adventure and see parts of the country, and […]

||| |—|—| | | | Last Sunday night, after the houseguests had gone to bed, my wife said, “That was the worst landing you’ve ever made.” My first thought was, “Little do you know! I’ve made some real mini crashes in my day.” The more I thought about it, though, the more I thought, “It […]

||| |—|—| | | | At first glance, I don’t even recognize him. Nine years ago, Hank Potter was a vibrant, jolly soul, full of laughter, fire and stories of being Jimmy Doolittle’s navigator on the famous B-25 raid of Tokyo in 1942. Today, he and the 11 other “Doolittle Raiders” who were able to […]

There is no question that avionics systems like the Garmin GNS 530 have captured the fancy of many pilots. I have flown some of the other systems and found them quite capable, but the 530 is what resides in my avionics stack, so it is the most familiar. Other systems can be used in the […]

I’m sick of the term “pilot error.” A true pilot error is a rare event. But what is so often labeled a pilot error is actually a pilot decision that didn’t result in the outcome expected by the pilot, the regulators or the public. Real pilot errors can only occur in transport-category airplanes that are […]