Search Results for: electric

I have to admit to a fondness for the colors of autumn. I find that I look for excuses to go flying when the trees put on their all-too-brief displays before the iron of winter clamps down. I find that I’m not alone in my compulsion, as the virtual airport has been busy the last […]

Diamond’s New Star, the DA40: More than a Katana AllGrown Up Is it safe? That’s generally a good question to ask before any flight in the first of anything: The newer the program, the more daring the design, the more important the question. But rolling the prototype DA40 from base to final at the Plant […]

Be sure to check out AVweb‘s image galleries from NBAA 2000! Big winds blew mists of water over the flood wall separating Lake Ponchatrainfrom New Orleans Lakefront Airport (NEW) and cold, gray skies had the localscomplaining about the early onset of winter as the throngs flooded into theFrench Quarter for the 53rd convention of the […]

Not long ago, I was in the office of the Chief Flight Instructor at an FAA Part 141 approved flight school when a young man came in fresh from passing his Private Pilot certification check ride. Amid all the congratulations, one of the things the chief instructor told him was that he should start his […]

We’ve now beaten the technical issues to death, let’s go fly! If you haven’t read any of the prior material on this, please don’t fail to see “Those Fire-Breathing Turbos (Part 3).” This column is highly specific to the “turbonormalizer” systems as installed on Teledyne Continental Motors (TCM) “big bore” engines like the IO-520 and […]

Immediately after Air France’s Concorde crash, graphic photographs and video of the disaster were broadcast to millions of television viewers. So-called industry experts appeared on various networks soon after and speculated about the cause of the crash. One pundit, who has authored a book on aging aircraft, raised the specter of the inherent danger to […]

HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer is used as a kind of divining rod to locate expensive parts not far from the object we are trying to hit. ELECTRIC DRILL: Normally used for spinning rivets in their holes until you die of old age, but it also works well for drilling […]

When I decided I wanted to fly, I did it in a hurry. I passedby Private checkride on November 3, 1995, and purchased a 1982Mooney 231 less than three weeks later. By early December, I hadlogged enough dual that the insurance company would let me flymy new high-performance turbocharged retractable without an instructorin the right […]

Over the years, my flying in the Florida has included introductions to dozens of ultralight and light experimental-amateur built designs … and the odd encounter with alligators. Now, imagine yourself in a big, open-cabin experimental airplane, cruising languidly about 500 feet above a mirror-still, algae-green lake outside Sebring, Fla., one known for yielding some awesome […]

Airline passengers often complain about the debilitating effects of the dry atmosphere in aircraft cabins. Some also express concern that reduced airflow and increased recirculation of cabin air can increase the likelihood that infectious diseases are transmitted. And the same is true for flight and cabin crews. In fact, maintaining a dry atmosphere in the […]