Search Results for: wright

Hartzell Propeller plans to celebrate 100 years of hard work at this year’s AirVenture in Oshkosh. The company has manufactured and currently supports more than 500,000 props, and began with a neighborly back porch conversation between Orville Wright and Robert Hartzell a century ago for the wooden blades used on the Wright flyer. TRW bought […]

Pilots have been complaining about FAA regulations (and those of its predecessor agencies) since the first aviation rules were issued in the 1920s. A lot of that complaining stems from the aviation media constantly bombarding us with horror stories of over-regulation and how its killing general aviation. The reality is very different, at least for pilot certification under FAR Part 61 and flight operations under Part 91.

The first years and hours I spent aloft werent really loggable toward an FAA pilot certificate. Thats because I was doing it from a hang glider, jumping off the side of a mountain, wearing a helmet and strapped to a wing. I was the landing gear. It was more of a sport than a form of transportation, but that early exposure to flight taught some lessons that were easily transferred to powered airplanes. I went on to earn my private and an instrument rating, and have flown some interesting airplanes along the way.

I hadn’t seen Jerry Kemp in a while, but an email from him recently brought a flood of memories and a delightful (in retrospect) reminiscence about this hero and friend, an FAA safety meeting and a place called Bristol Village in rural southeastern Ohio. By the late 1980s, I’d swapped my job as principal operations […]

If 2017 is remembered for anything in the aviation industry, it could very well be as the Year of the Flying Car. Now more than ever, tech companies and Silicon Valley billionaires are competing to make The Jetsons a reality, to the point that the race for commercial space flight and the race for Mars […]

As a pilot who spent the majority of his time landing on the kind of runways described by Mike Hart in his article, Off The Beaten Path, in June 2015s issue of Aviation Safety, I will testify to the fun of landing at such places. Most pilots will spend their time on surfaces free of undulations, slope and aircraft damaging debris, so it was good to be reminded of how the surface interacts with my flying.

Aircraft range has been a problem since the Wright Brothers, usually meaning too much mission for the fuel aboard. But after last week’s first flight of the sunlight-powered SolarStratos, range problems just might be headed for a permanent solution. The Swiss two-seat electric aircraft, originally created to mimic the mythical flight of Icarus, uses electricity […]

In 1909, the French experimenter Louis Bleriot made the first crossing of the English Channel by airplane. The aircraft he used, his Model XI, was similar in its general configuration to what we consider conventional today: engine in front, pilot close behind a monoplane wing, horizontal stabilizer and rudder at the tail end of an […]

At one time or another, weve all passed an FAA knowledge test requiring us to calculate aircraft performance for various phases of flight, such as takeoff, cruise and landing. Even though weve been trained and tested on our ability to interpolate the answer down to the foot, mile, minute or gallon, these calculations alone dont ensure were always operating the aircraft prudently. For one thing, they dont account for poor technique, worn equipment or errors.

Over the last few months, weve run a series of articles to guide you towards your own personal SOP. The final article of that series is in this issue. But, youd be wise to ask if you really need an SOP for general aviation flying. After all, do you really want to further complicate the process of flying a small plane in IFR? Do you really want to fly, Just like the airline pilots? Part 91 doesnt have that thick book of requirements that impedes (guides?) the pros. Do you really want to trade the liberation and fun of GA flying for that kind of strict regimentation?