Features

The pre-private, 16-year-old, 12-hour total time solo glider student called the TFR-fire base temporary tower staff. Glider Student: “Santa Ynez Tower, Glider 28 Tango, 45 entry to right traffic, Runway 26, Santa Ynez.” This was followed by a deep baritone, “Santa Ynez, Skycrane 2C, inbound three miles from the southeast.” Tower: “Glider 28 Tango , […]

Nutjob. That’s what we all called him. He was one of my trainers at my first tower. Extreme skydiving and off-the-grid adventure travel earned him the title. His not-safe-for-work “There I was…” stories were legendary throughout our ATC community. Despite his off-campus reputation, he didn’t screw around in the control tower. He confidently ran his […]

The Weekender’s headed to all four corners of the country with festivals, air tours and airshows to choose from on SocialFlight.com.Head to the “Hop Capital of the World,” Independence, Oregon, for the Hop & Heritage Festival Friday and Saturday. Fly into theIndependence Airporton Saturday morning for the Flap Jack Feed, a fundraiser for a local […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages or our sister publication,Aviation Safety magazine and is published twice a month. All the reports listed here are preliminaries and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause in the NTSB’s website at www.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear […]

I am an instructor in Germany and was with a student flying to his first towered airport. The aircraft has no GPS installed and visibility was around 4-5 km in mist. We were given the entry into the control zone via VFR reporting point “November.” Tower (in a kind, investigative voice): “D-HR you are a […]

You’re in the airplane, strapped in and about to start the checklist when it hits you—filling the right half of the windshield is The Hangar. The one in the famous picture. The picture showing a Maule M-4 blasting out the hangar’s open door in full and fearless flight. Right there is where the legendary B. […]

My brother slipped me a piece of paper on which he’d jotted three numbers: 260, 240 and 180. If you haven’t guessed, they’re weights. Add me and the load is 860 pounds well-marbled (not 170-pound), above-average Americans. Add full tanks, 56 gallons of fuel and we would approach gross weight. I had yet to add […]

The Weekender’s off for another mini-vacation, this time to take in pilot-friendly events found on SocialFlight.com.The 10th Annual Triple Tree Aerodrome Fly-In in South Carolina kicks off Wednesday with arrivals throughout the day for a long weekend of workshops and seminars for GA pilots. EAA Chairman/CEO Jack Pelton will speak on a variety of topics […]

Family and friends were watching the first takeoff of an experimental home built.As he came down the runway he over pitched then pushed the nose down hitting the runway causing a ground loop off the runway with dirt flying. He then taxied back on the runway. Tower: “What are your intentions?” He said there was […]

Every primary student who’s at least been ready to solo has experienced a few stalls and recoveries. If they’re lucky, they also are introduced to different kinds of stalls, and how the ways we enter them can help determine their characteristics. Along the way, we learn ways to recover from them. We learn these maneuvers […]