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One of the cool things about my new position with the airline is that the job is rarely routine. The trips are different. The people I fly with are different. The qualification requirements for each pilot are different. The side of the cockpit that I fly from is different. But what I hadn’t anticipated was […]

In September Piper had an open house at its Vero Beach factory for customers, dealers, prospects and members of the press, to show off and discuss its emerging PiperJet turbofan single. There was no milestone or big update to prompt the event. It was just a way for Piper to get folks down to Florida […]

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Mustangs dive in strafing runs, explosions erupt and smoke billows and drifts across the airport, a formation of T-28s clouds the sky, a machine gun mounted on an Army jeep chatters as uniformed soldiers fire their carbines. Nope, it’s not war … it’s the afternoon Warbird Airshow at AirVenture. For pilots, the inherent problem of […]

Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, the Country Inn and Suites, 6 p.m., July 27th. In the hotel pool, a lone six-year-old blonde boy cavorts under the watchful eye of his father. The dad and I get to talking. He’s Greg Brandes, here with his son, John. This is Greg’s 35th consecutive Oshkosh; he’s been bringing John […]

Self-service avgas at my home airport is now $5.65 a gallon. And it promises to go higher with the next delivery from the fuel supplier. Suddenly, the cost of fuel is a much larger portion of my operating costs. I’ve been running lean of peak so the Lycoming IO-360 in my Cessna Cardinal runs at […]

“This turn’s going to be tricky,” Luke says as he surveys the 90-degree angle onto Runway 18/36 at Oshkosh. I glance around the Mustang speedster convertible we’ve borrowed from Roush Racing for this particular job. There is a roll bar, but it’s also still a convertible. “Just don’t roll it,” I say. Luke shoots me […]

Four of us were invited to a friend’s house in Northern California, a 10-hour drive from Los Angeles. “Could we all go up in your plane?” Carl asked. Two hours and 15 minutes sounded a lot better. I had to say no. What was the problem? My homebuilt, Melmoth 2, is a four-seater. It was […]