Photos

Last April, an instrument-rated private pilot took off from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport in his SR22 bound for Palm Beach International. It was solid IFR, 400 overcast. The pilot was experienced in Cirrus airplanes-he was a founder of the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association-he regularly flew such IFR flights, and he knew his airplane well. […]

I knew the trip West after AirVenture from Green Bay, Wisconsin, to North Big Horn County Airport (U68) in Cowley, Wyoming, would bring this flat-land pilot closer to mountain peaks than I’d been for a while and require some changes in my normal operating procedures. With MEAs (minimum en route altitudes) over the Black Hills […]

I’m not given to the $100 hamburger. This euphemism for a flight designed to get the pilot and the airplane out of the house, into the air, and over to a nearby airport that features a restaurant of uncertain quality has never held me in its grasp. I’m more inclined to flights that take me […]

“We’ll just cut through the Gotthard Pass, there, and head down to Locarno on the other side,” Theddy says. I look ahead. All I see is a flat, towering wall of mountain, every bit as steep and high as the dramatic, jagged slopes edging the narrow valley we’re navigating our way through at the moment. […]

One reader castigated me for not paying enough attention to Thielert diesels. Another inquired whether the just-certified Diamond TwinStar would have superior climb performance because of the great torque of its Thielert diesel engines. A critical mass of Thielert interest has evidently been reached. Thielert GmbH is located at the small town of Lichtenstein in […]

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 […]

The future of sport aviation has arrived, but what does it mean to you? After more than a decade of work on them, the FAA has finally published the Sport Pilot and Light Sport Aircraft rules. It’s great news for the EAA and other organizations that have championed the new rules. But, what now? By […]

Francis Melvin Rogallo is now known for the eponymous double-conical hang-glider wings that he developed for NASA in the 1960s. Long before that, and before NASA even came into being, he worked for the sainted National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics-NACA-and in the late 1930s conducted a wind-tunnel study of inlet and outlet designs. From this […]

Taxpayers pick up the tab for the FSS briefer to read you forecasts and weather reports prepared by the government’s weather bureau. It’s a great service that pilots have enjoyed for decades, but if you are willing to invest a few bucks a month, you can buy better weather, or at least better weather information, […]