Search Results for: wright

We pilots love engines and with good reason. We rely on their continued trouble-free operation to keep us flying safely. Perhaps more to the point, without engines, flight would never have gone far, and it can be argued that every noteworthy advance in aircraft performance was preceded by a noteworthy advance in power-plant design. There […]

The other week when we published our latest Flying list, 50 Amazing Aircraft Engines, we knew we’d get some heat for engines we left off the list, and we were right. There were, in fact, a few engines that we considered but ultimately left off the list that readers took us to task for. So, […]

As pilots, we spend a lot of time focusing on obvious hazards to our flight operations: convective activity, icing, low ceilings and other conditions. Pilots who fail to manage such risks constitute a disproportionate share of fatal accidents. These flight conditions, however, are not the only potential hazards that we should consider for the purposes of managing risk. Tasks and procedures required on every flight are also potential hazard sources and should be viewed through the risk management lens. These include such routine and necessary tasks as takeoffs and landings, even under benign conditions, as well as operations under calm skies in VMC conditions when there is still other traffic to avoid.

Flying behind air-cooled powerplants, free of radiators or coolant tanks, it’s easy to forget most aircraft still need liquids of some type to operate safely and reliably. When those fluids are put under pressure to actuate a mechanism, we’ve created a hydraulic system, sometimes defined as something “using pressurized fluid to drive machinery or move mechanical components.” It also can be defined as transferring “energy by pressurizing fluid to force movement of a slave to produce the action sought.”

Some intriguing names are on the short list for the 2013 Robert J. Collier Trophy after the National Aeronautic Association this week announced a field of nine contenders for the coveted prize. The nominees include Pratt & Whitney’s PurePower geared turbofan engine, the P-8A Poseidon airplane in development by Boeing for the U.S. Navy, the […]

The volunteers in Wichita, Kansas, have been hard at work restoring Doc, a B-29 Superfortress, since the project resumed nearly one year ago. “We have made significant progress recently hanging the first engine on the airplane,” said Jeff Turner, chairman of the board of Doc’s Friends, the non-profit organization set up to restore the Superfortress. […]

On the 110th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight, owner-pilot John Magoffin pushed the throttle lever forward on his rare 1933 Lockheed Vega, the aircraft of choice of pioneer aviators, including Amelia Earhart (who flew one on her solo transatlantic record flight) and Wiley Post, who flew a Vega around the world twice. Magoffin’s […]

Alan and Dale Klapmeier, the brothers who co-founded Cirrus Design in the mid-1980s, are among six people who will be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio, next year. The other individuals honored by the Hall of Fame include Emily Warner, who flew for Frontier Airlines in the 1970s; the late […]

In the first two parts of this series (Aviation Safety, September 2013 and November 2013), I related how I used practical risk management techniques to meet the challenges of using my Beech Bonanza on a typical (for me) multi-stop, multi-week business trip that took place in June 2013. Having been trained in an era before risk management was emphasized (which is still the case, although change is coming), I now recognize I was fortunate to have successfully addressed these hazards without incident. I’d like to say it was my superior piloting skill, but I’m afraid that chance also played a big role. I emphasize this background because, like much of the present general aviation community, I was trained in another era.

I had a birthday recently, and somebody gave me a book called The World’s Worst Aircraft. There are, it turns out, at least three books with that name, though you would suppose that one, or possibly even none, would have been enough. The project of identifying a distinct group of “worst” aircraft labors under the […]