Pilot Proficiency

(April 2011) IT WAS NOT A BIG MISTAKE. I ended up with damage only to my pride and my reputation. But, I took a shortcut, and I learned about flying from that. I grew up on World War I flying books left in my bedroom bookcase by previous generations. I listened to Dad tell of […]

(April 2011) WEIGHT MATTERS. EVEN in the light-sport aircraft world. As I wrote in last month’s column about the LSA categories, the maximum gross weight is one of the key factors in determining whether or not an aircraft meets the FAA’s LSA definition. How did the FAA come to that final 1,320-pound figure? Well, it […]

Peter Thiel, the hedge fund manager and PayPal co-founder, correctly foresaw the dot-com and subprime busts, so when he makes a prediction about the next big bubble that’s likely about to burst, people would be wise to at least listen to what the man has to say. So where does Thiel think the next spectacular […]

My flight in Fat Albert at the recent Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In ranks up there as one of the most bizarre flying experiences I’ve had in my more than decade long aviation career. Strapped to a couch in the cockpit of a highly modified C-130 next to another aviation journalist, I watched crewmembers become airborne […]

(March 2011) — I’M ONE OF THOSE people you might have heard about who’ve made their first certificate a Sport Pilot certificate. I wasn’t new to flying either. I had taken a break from the beginnings of a passion that, as a teenager, I thought would blossom soon enough. The day of my first solo […]

(March 2011) — THERE WERE TWO HUDSON River accidents in 2009. In January, Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and copilot Jeff Skiles did an excellent job of ditching US Airways Flight 1549. There was also a tragic event in August, when a sightseeing helicopter and a Piper Lance collided and nine people perished. For me, these […]

_(__April 2011)_ BY NOW I HOPE YOU’VE heard of the plan by a company called LightSquared to install as many as 40,000 stations across the continental United States that would transmit on the frequency band directly adjacent to the one used by GPS. LightSquared’s plan is to create, using this quiet little corner of the […]

(April 2011) REMEMBER THE RIDE BOARDS at school? Students with cars would post notices of where they were headed during school breaks and invite other students to ride along. At the same time students looking for rides would post their trip requests. The system, with the notices thumbtacked to a bulletin board, worked well, and […]

We’ve all seen the images from last week’s Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In. Broken wings, crunched elevators and rudders, and crushed windshields resulted from an EF-1 tornado that hit the Lakeland Linder Airport on Thursday, March 31. Nothing can prevent an airplane from being damaged from the force of a tornado, but there are ways to […]

Like a lot of people with a love for aviation, I’d definitely say I’m an adventure seeker. Mind you, that doesn’t mean I fit the daredevil mold. For instance, while I’d be the first person to join a group traveling to see the Inca ruins in Machu Picchu, I’d probably be one of the last […]