Search Results for: skunk works

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in Twin & Turbine, May 2005, and is reprinted here by permission. Pilots are generally pretty savvy about the weather. We can decode METARs and TAFs, get satellite weather pictures, and understand NEXRAD radar images. Most of us even remember how to read winds aloft, constant pressure analysis, and […]

And while supersonic travel for the masses (relatively speaking) is getting a fresh look, Mach 1 or better for the privileged few is looking increasingly viable. Reno-based Aerion says there are enough deep-pocketed (and time-short) customers for its Mach 1.6 (over the ocean) bizjet that it can move forward with the project and potentially have […]

This article appeared in the January 2003 edition of Aviation Consumer and is reprinted here by permission. Call us cynical, but we’re spring-loaded to be skeptical about aircraft engine modifications in general but specifically those that claim “more” of something. More power, more speed, more climb rate, more economy.While it’s true that some of these […]

Pretty neat image, huh? I actually got to fly missions in that thing. Yes, it’s a U-2 spyplane; we referred to it as the “Dragonlady.” The saying went, you had to learn to fight with the dragon before you could dance with the lady. It was a joy to fly, but more so than any […]

If you ask anyone who has done it what the overwhelming challenge of developing a new airplane is, it won’t have to do with weight, a suitable powerplant or lift and drag, but where the money is coming from to pay for it. That’s the first thing I thought of when I saw Toyota’s proposed […]

It was one of those absolutely clear days in central Montana where the sky seems to go on forever and the blue has a uniform deepness from horizon to horizon. I think it was in 1968 and my father finished knotting his tie and adjusted his hat and headed for the car with the briefcase […]

In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines. –George Dyson, historian The other night I was watching an amusing program called James May: Our Man […]

These days, I seem to be associated mostly with metal airplanes, RVs in particular. Just take a look at that byline down there—I have been flying my RV-8 since 2005, the RV-3 was finished late in 2011, and it doesn’t even mention the RV-6 my wife brought to the marriage. (We fly together on trips […]

The theme for this year’s NBAA-BACE convention was the future of aviation and a lot of the companies attending embraced that theme. There were lots of virtual reality gizmos in the displays and an overall sense that profound change, from technology through hardware to environmental realities, is all around us. Please, I know some of […]

Aerion Corporation says it will fly its AS2 supersonic business jet in 2023 and will do its first trans-Atlantic flight with the aircraft on Oct. 24 of that year, the 20th anniversary of the last commercial flight of the Concorde supersonic airliner. At a news conference at NBAA in Orlando, CEO Tom Vice said that […]