Search Results for: wright

Early on, pilots are taught that safety of flight depends on, among other things, a consistent flow of air across the airfoil and a positive angle of attack to produce lift. AOA is the angular difference between the wing’s chord line and the relative wind. Increase back pressure on the controls and lift increases, up […]

Where’s My Magazine? I seem to have a lost subscription problem. The last issue of IFR I received was Volume 36 Number 9. As you can see, my subscription runs to February 2021. Can you fix this? Howard Congdon Mill Hall, PA As noted in the “Contact IFR” box on Page 4 or Page 5 […]

As I close my logbook on 2020, I’ve totaled up the hours and shown gratitude for every one of them. This year has changed us, and brought us the opportunity to reflect on our experiences, and use them to make 2021 an improvement over the past 366 days. The bar is low, I’d say. In […]

Imagine this scenario: You jump in your family airplane and depart into a clear blue sky. You’d have to stay aloft for 4.25 years to match the 37,200 hours in flight instructor Field Morey’s logbook. And you’d have to seek out the worst weather along the way to experience what Field has flown through in […]

Kemper Aviation, a now-defunct flight school in Lantana, FL, was once clogged with over 100 young students. Some showed a lack of selfcontrol extending from their youthfully turbulent private lives on the ground upward to the skies of South Florida. Youngsters may think they are invulnerable. Most had yet to learn that invulnerability is a […]

Cleared … How? Regarding “Cutting You Loose” in the July issue, I’ve never actually been cleared by ATC with “Proceed on course,” after an off-route vector. When faced with this situation, I either got cleared present position to next waypoint or a vector back to the airway I’d left. As you said, anything vague or […]

“Everything we do here has to meet five criteria,” Kermit says as he whisks me through a full-scale set of a B-17 bomber awaiting a pre-dawn departure for a raid over Germany. I step past a snowbank outside the wooden briefing shack, shivering in the dark and robustly air-conditioned display area as I strain to […]

With reference to Mike Hart’s article, “Landing On The Shore” in the October 2020 issue, I, too, have utilized many remote mountain airstrips, including many in his native Idaho. I, too, enjoy the adventure of new challenges, but have some questions about his tradeoffs between legal versus safe. In a sidebar, he documents the legality […]

First flown on December 17, 1935, the Douglas DC-3, an iteration of the DC-1 and DC-2, married reliability with performance and comfort in a way no other airplane had before. So much greater than the sum of its parts, an apt description for an airplane that has earned the right to be called “timeless” more […]

OK, picture some far-in-the-future archaeologist exploring an area that ancient maps call North America and stumbling on an odd-looking site—long strips of concrete radiating out from a once-paved, open area. Combing through the ruins of a nearby structure, he unearths a barely discernible, crumbling document covered with peculiar characters. If only there were accompanying hieroglyphics, […]