Aircraft

Cirrus Aircraft has introduced its lineup for 2009, and the new airplanes come with some very impressive available features. The big news is a known ice protection system, but there’s a raft of other recently announced upgrades, too, with a whole host of advanced acronyms available, EVS, SVT and FIKI, among many others, making the […]

It wasn’t much of an afternoon to go flying. The weather was less-than-great VFR, though any VFR at all was a good thing because the airplane we were flying, the Remos GX, is a light sport aircraft, or LSA. And LSAs, as you probably know, are by regulation and without exception VFR-only machines. The Remos […]

No one at the Lockheed Skunk Works would ever have envisioned the U-2 still being the cutting-edge platform for Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions more than half a century after its first flight. But over the years, the Air Force has invested close to $2 billion on enhancements to both the airplane […]

In a web conference late last year, Cirrus Design announced some key performance figures and weights for its Cirrus Vision jet, and it laid out a series of changes it has made to the jet as development has progressed. The four- to six-seat jet is slated for certification and first deliveries in late 2011 or […]

It was a cruddy day to go mountain flying. A ragged gray overcast stretched over Western Washington State, high enough to make for good VFR under the deck near Spokane, but it promised to be a more complicated journey to the east, where the spine of the Bitterroots juts out, rising to 10,000 feet at […]

The 2009 edition of Heli Expo, the Helicopter Association International’s annual industry tradeshow, was held in Anaheim, California, in late February. It was one of the busiest HAI conventions in terms of attendees (15,728 on the first day alone) and exhibitors — a total of 584 with more than 70 helicopters on the show floor. […]

Walking into the softly lit hangar for dinner this night was to enter a pilot’s dream house. In one corner was a 1932 Staggerwing 17R serial number one, the very first Beechcraft manufactured, standing proudly in her elegant wheel fairings; in another was a 1938 S18D Twin Beech serial number 178, the 11th Model 18 […]

Hartzell announced it has earned FAA approval to install its new high-performance scimitar three-blade “Top Props” on all naturally aspirated models of the Beech Baron 58s. Previously the new propellers had been approved only for Barons with electrothermal prop ice protection, but now airplanes with fluid anti-ice, or those with no ice protection, are included. […]

The newly certified Quest Kodiak is built in the company’s factory in Sand Point, Idaho, a quiet northern Idaho resort community nestled in the mountains. With a modestly sized single runway airport, the location initially seemed unlikely to me. But after I flew the airplane, I reconsidered. Forget the runway, you could operate it out […]

Three years ago I wrote about an accident involving a pilot who became impatient waiting for a stratus layer to lift, and went out looking for a break (or its ambiguous cousin, a “thin spot”) through which he could climb to VFR on top. That accident took place in Los Angeles, and I described the […]