Search Results for: wright

There have been millions of pilots and a few hundred really great ones, those whose achievements pushed the boundaries of flight. Names like Neil Armstrong, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Manfred von Richtofen, and Amelia Earhart are familiar to aviators and non-fliers alike. Others, like those featured here, are known to aviation […]

The January day was crisp and cold with just wisps of high clouds painting the Texas sky as we, my two Air Force cadet student pilots and I, began our IFR cross-country. Before starting back to our base in west Texas, I checked the weather and was gratified to see the forecast we had received […]

Am I ready for this flight? Thats the question I found myself asking when I decided to resume flying in a rental aircraft after a six-month lapse. This was after selling the V35B Bonanza Id owned for eight years. Since I was due for a flight review anyway, I engaged an instructor and got checked out to fly a Cessna 172 from a local flight school. I was comfortable flying the Skyhawk after only an hour and three landings, despite not having flown in six months. That certainly wouldnt be the case for all the aircraft Im rated in: The last time I flew a jet was more than seven years ago.

A scaled down version of the Fantasy of Flight museum in Polk City, Florida, has opened while work continues on a major expansion that owner Kermit Weeks has named “Act III.” “We want to allow the aircraft-loving public the opportunity to reconnect while we continue to create and design the next iteration, Act III, of […]

Solar Impulse, the one-of-a-kind solar-powered aircraft designed to fly around the world, is now in Dubai, where it will launch in March. The aircraft was built and tested in Switzerland. It was then disassembled and flown to Dubai aboard a cargo airplane. Andr Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, who have led the effort, said they are confident in the aircrafts capability and their own training, and they will take turns as pilot. The expedition is expected to take 25 days of flying, and will be completed in stages over four or five months. Some legs above the Atlantic and Pacific will require five to six days of nonstop solo flight. The aircrafts wings measure about 236 feet across, and carry more than 17,000 solar cells.

The National Aviation Hall of Fame has selected four notable figures into its 2015 class, who will be formally enshrined next October at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. The inductees include Robert N. Hartzell, Abe Silverstein, Eugene “Gene” Kranz, and U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert L. Cardenas […]

Perhaps you are the type of person who likes to go on road trips while traveling within the protective confines of a car. Or maybe you prefer to experience the trip with all of your senses, on a motorcycle, where you can feel the speed, touch the elements of nature, and hear and smell the […]

General aviation flight operations in Europe often are radically different from those in the United States, yet GA pilots across the pond face some of the same safety issues confronting pilots in the U.S. Meanwhile, European GA pilots and operators also must battle safety issues unique to Europe, including uneven infrastructure and high operating costs, which can limit training and proficiency flying. As a result, comparing GA in Europe to its counterpart in the U.S. offers some risk management lessons for pilots who are increasingly facing similar challenges, no matter their geographic location.

OK, here’s an admission: I rarely look at other aviation publications unless there’s an article about somebody who intrigues me, like Bill Lear Jr. or “Fish” Salmon, or something in the “I think I’m supposed to know this but I don’t” category, like the difference between Fowler, Krueger, Gouge, Fairey-Youngman and Gurney flaps. But I […]

If youve been with us a while, youll recognize our yearly foray into the bent and bizarre culled from a years worth of NTSB accident summaries (all non-fatal, of course). Not all are actually stupid. Some are just plain, er, strange. But all, we think, are worthy of note. Each year offers up those who think too much, those who think too little and those who dont think at all.