Well, it had to happen. Sooner or later, everyone who flies loses a friend to an accident. I’ve been lucky — since 1998 there hasn’t been a single person I can think of who’s been killed in an aircraft — but that changed recently when an odd mechanical failure claimed the life of Marta Meyer. I was in Las Vegas… Read more →
Category: Aviation
Jet Blue 292
Were the pilots of Jet Blue 292 heroes? The media seems to think so. I, on the other hand, make the case that they were not heroes, just aviators doing the exact thing they’d been trained year after year to do. Read more →
GPS: A VFR Requirement?
(Note: this is, to an extent, a continuation of my previous post on GPS dependency) Recently, a fellow pilot opined that all aviators should have a GPS receiver in the cockpit. He related the story of a low visibility day where several pilots had a hard time spotting the airport, even when they were nearly on top of it, and… Read more →
Lessons from Athens
The crew members of a Cypriot airliner that crashed Aug. 14 near Athens became confused by a series of alarms as the plane climbed, failing to recognize that the cabin was not pressurizing until they grew mentally disoriented because of lack of oxygen and passed out, according to several people connected with the investigation. Dan alterted me to this International… Read more →
C-130 Bird Strike
C-130 goes mano-a-mano against an Eagle. The result? See the photos for yourself. Read more →
Fuel for the Fire
Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one that sees the “big picture” the way I do. Recently, a fellow pilot in Arizona took the time to write about the escalating fuel prices and what this rise in energy costs is doing to the economy Groceries are already going up in price here, it’s in small increments but if you… Read more →
Dude, Where’s My GPS?
I’m not one of those ‘all technology sucks’ guys who look down my nose at a well equipped instrument panel. I fly the Cirrus SR20/22 and G1000-equipped DiamondStars all the time and really enjoy teaching glass panel stuff. Indeed, I’ll be the first to admit that GPS is the best thing to come along since sliced bread. But when I… Read more →
Extra, Extra!
This is my newest ride! What do you think? Sunrise needs another Extra instructor and I draw the lucky straw. I started getting familiar with this baby today. The cockpit checkout was interesting; it’s far more sparse than other Extras I’ve flown. This aircraft is one of the older 300 models (no -L or -S suffix, just a plain old… Read more →
Aviation Blogs
I’ve added some new aviation-related blogs to my links page. It’s about time, too. I periodically search for sites like these, but find them few and far between on the internet. Thankfully, I found a way to leech off the research of others! I simply looked up the Bloglines lists of some people who subscribe to the RSS feed here… Read more →
Victor Belenko
One of my first inspirations for getting into aviation was a Russian named Victor Belenko. In 1976, he defected to the U.S. from Russia in his MiG-25 Foxbat. At the time, the Foxbat was the most feared and super secret airplane in the world. It flew faster and higher than anything the U.S. had, and he flew one right into… Read more →