AirVenture

I try not to get my pants snagged writing over-romanticized paeans to the intoxicating magic of flight. For as soon as I allow self-restraint to slip for even a moment, the editorial equivalent of a piston through the crankcase will surely reveal itself. Thus, when AirVenture looms on the horizon every year, we gingerly gird […]

The long-awaited Third Class medical exemption finally passed and was signed into law by the president last week. However, as you’ll learn in this podcast with senior Aviation Medical Examiner Ian Blair Fries, for pilots with special issuances, there are still many more questions to be resolved before we know how the new law will […]

The Aircraft Electronics Association said this week they will award five aircraft owners $1,000 each, from a random drawing, to be used toward an ADS-B upgrade. The drawings will be held next week during EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh. By offering the incentives, AEA President Paula Derks said, “AEA hopes to send a message to owners […]

Every year it’s the same same questions. “You’re going back?” “Why?” “Haven’t you seen everything?” “Isn’t it just the same airplanes over and over?” I sometimes can’t help but wonder if the questioners believe that I’m living out the definition of insanity when it comes to Oshkosh; doing the same thing over and over, expecting […]

Fly-in procedures for this year’s EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, are now available, along with additional resources. The FAA’s Notice to Airmen for EAA’s 64th annual convention, July 25-31, includes a list of changes from 2015 including radio frequencies and runway markings. Pilots planning to fly to Oshkosh are urged to study the Notam […]

The Martin Mars water bomber, the largest airplane of its kind and the last in its line, will make its first-ever appearance at EAA AirVenture in July, EAA has announced. The bomber will be based at the EAA Seaplane Base, on Lake Winnebago. With a wingspan of about 200 feet, and measuring 120 feet nose […]

I was browsing the local paper this week and noticed a letter from a resident calling out my local airport at Venice for having installed a very expensive EMAS runway overrun system. You’re familiar with these, I’m sure. EMAS is engineered material arresting system and in this context, it refers to sophisticated foam concrete blocks […]

The government would cover the costs of air traffic control and related safety services at aviation events, under an amendment (PDF) to the FAA reauthorization bill that was approved by a Senate committee this week. If approved as part of the bill, the amendment would turn back the FAA’s practice in recent years to bill […]

Kitplanes magazine editor Paul Dye is a former NASA flight director, but he’s also a passionate homebuilder, currently working on a Dream Tundra. At AirVenture 2015, he gave us his six top reasons for joining the homebuilt community. view on YouTube

NASA – which always has a cool setup at Oshkosh, space suits and all – quietly conducted research last month under the radar of the world’s biggest airshow. In the basement of EAA’s Air Academy Lodge, a team of NASA staffers had pilots fly an X-Plane sim to test a cellphone app designed to avoid […]