Search Results for: wright

It’s the calmness with which they tell the tales that’s most striking. “One time I flew unconscious for an hour and a half. I lost my oxygen from shrapnel and passed out. I came to out of gas, with the engine dead, and in a spin.” “When I got shot down the second time, I […]

I Shivered a little that September morning at Nashua Airport, on a ladder with my finger in the left tank of the Cessna 180 taildragger. Good, the 100LL was puddling over the flaps. Topping these tanks was kind of funky because the airplane had rubber bladders and stiffly hinged flappers under the caps … new […]

From almost our very first flying lesson, pilots are taught what to do in the event a single-engine airplanes lone powerplant fails. As with too many concepts at that early stage of our training, we basically accept what were taught without many questions. Later, as we gain experience, we begin to think more about those early lessons and try to apply to them what our experience has taught us. In turn, many questions can arise. If your airplane ever becomes a glider, you would suddenly become very interested in its new aerodynamics. How promptly and accurately you can remember to make the most of the variables at your disposal would play a large part in determining where and how softly you land. Lets take a look at those variables and how they can affect your emergency glide.

In many ways, my AirVenture experience at Oshkosh this year was one of my best. On the day before the official opening of the show, I won a Garmin 496. It was during Garmin’s press conference where the new top-of-the-line GPSMAP was introduced. The contest was to guess closest to the number of handheld aviation […]

The photos were tucked in the back of the gallery, almost hidden behind the colorful nautical scenes and seaside landscapes that typifies most of the commercial paintings sold in town. The photos also featured local landmarks of the harbor, the town and the North Shore coastline-but they stood out from the other artwork in two […]

“I always use flaps for climb. I get more lift that way.” Some would call this statement perfectly logical, because flaps do increase lift and increased lift certainly ought to make an airplane climb faster. Others would say that the reasoning is fallacious, and that flaps, by increasing drag, reduce rate of climb rather than […]

What do the Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, the Bell X-1 and the Apollo 11 Lunar Module have in common? Somehow, each of these flying machines managed to attain an honored place in aerospace history despite having small landing gear tires or none at all. This is a paradox of sorts, considering the […]

We came from all corners of the country at our own expense to Galveston, Texas, for a 15-minute ride in an ancient airplane. Nobody came away disappointed. The money spent and the vacation days taken meant nothing, you see, because the airplane was a B-17, the Flying Fortress. This one is in the careful custody […]

You often hear pilots discussing whether a plane is a good IFR platform. Heres what theyre discussing and how to decide if your airplane measures up.

In the reception area at Burt Rutan’s Mojave, California, skunk works, Scaled Composites, there sits on a corner table a small black tripod with a cup-shaped receptacle on top. Built by composites engineer Stan Stawski, who works at Scaled, it supported two tons before failing. It weighs less than four ounces. Getting the most strength […]