Search Results for: vfr

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 […]

Editor’s Note: This column should be printed out and posted on airport bulletin boards everywhere now and again next July. After getting back from Oshkosh I unpacked the airplane, put it away and walked into the pilot’s lounge here at the virtual airport to see what had happened while I was gone. One of the […]

When I was an aspiring young aviation cadet in the old Army Air Corps during World War II, we were told that anybody can learn to fly – some just take longer than others. It was probably true then, because that group was carefully selected for aptitude, but I have since learned that it is […]

How frustrating this could be, my mind kept musing. Not three hours earlier the magnificent Three Sisters mountain peaks reached upward through clear skies toward the window seat of a Southwest 737 flying me to Portland International (PDX). No overcast blocked my view until we flew to about 40 miles south of PDX. But the […]

Originations Jiggs Landing Fishing Camp, Braden River, Manatee County, Florida Last summer, I took one of the most fascinating, challenging and rewarding trips of my lifetime: a round-trip flight from Florida to Vermont and back in my 1973 Cessna 172M. “So what?” you ask; people do that all the time. Well, the difference is that […]

I was scheduled for my private pilot checkride and everything was set. The paperwork was in order, my instructor had signed everything he needed to sign and the cleanest plane on the line had been reserved. I got myself to the airport two hours early just in case, via the most circuitous means imaginable, beginning […]

Trends, Sun ‘N Fun 2001 The Dawn Of A New Age … ? The perception of homebuilders and certainly homebuilt aircraft has evolved from the “crazy outsider” stages to the corporate giant phase and now we all stand to reap the benefits, hard won by an adventurous minority – minority, that is, until you step […]

March teases us nearly every year here where I live in Kansas, tempting us with a sampling of spring weather, then pulling us back in to winter once or twice as surely as sunrise and sunset. But March’s teasing seldom frustrates me as much as my non-aviating friends and neighbors. What these folks don’t know […]

I guess I’m mean, but this is one of my favorite ways to trigger “go-around mode” in training and on checkrides. Not for me the old saw of “fire truck on the runway” or the like … much too mundane. I usually wait until the power is all the way off, flare is complete, and […]

It’s Thursday, May 18, 2000. My wife Donna and I get up with the alarm at 5:30 a.m. Today we are going to fly from Clarksburg, W.V., home base of our airplane, to St. Louis. The AFSS briefer relates how there is a strong low over Kansas City with a frontal system extending from there […]