Photos

After I wrote (Technicalities, April) that BR in the metars stands for brume, which is French for mist or fog, a reader, Bob Bartch, with whom I was exchanging e-mails on another topic, commented that he had learned that word from a lyric by an American-French singer, Joe Dassin, who covered Gordon Lightfoot’s profoundly morose […]

Oklahoma City FSDO needed a DC-3 “specialist” for certification flight checks with Cascade Airlines, a Part 125 operator who, curiously, didn’t actually operate in Oklahoma … nobody seemed to know exactly who they were and where they did fly. But for right now the airplane and pilots were in Guymon, Oklahoma. Having spent a considerable […]

“Whoosh!” Blustered the gust from the Amtrak Metroliner as it roared past the railroad crossing in my dream. I’d managed to incorporate the sound into my dream but then when Rueben, our geriatric Aussie mix, barked to go out in the middle of the night, I realized it wasn’t the Amtrak train; it was the […]

The Beech Premier IA is the fastest business jet that you can fly by yourself so it’s no surprise that Jack Roush, who owns five Sprint Cup NASCAR race teams, owns a Premier to fly to and from his many business locations, and to race tracks spread across the country. Roush is like most pilots […]

Looks like you guys will just have to put those type rating dreams on hold for a while. My “sure-thing” deal to buy the DC-3 from a museum imploding with internal conflicts, unpayable bills and looming bankruptcy kind of evaporated. Maybe they found an angel to pay off the loan or maybe somebody made a […]

Newark is not my favorite airport. The drive from my home in Connecticut is long and can be fraught with the horrors of standstill traffic. The scenery on the New Jersey turnpike has all the appeal of a trip to the local landfill. The airport itself is famous for its “blue sky” departure and arrival […]

What is there left to say about the Cessna Skylane? You’d think not much. After all, it’s an airplane that’s been in production (with one decade-long break in production from the mid-80s to the mid-90s) since 1956. During that time Cessna has built more than 20,000 Skylanes, making it one of the most popular models […]

It was one of those things that I knew I’d remember. I was a guest of Robinson Helicopter at a reception for customers and the press in a large, immaculate hangar at the company’s factory in Torrance, California, when we all heard it, the unmistakable sound of a turbine helicopter approaching. It was, of course, […]