Features

With holidays and winter looming, activities in the northern half of the country are more scarce than usual this week, but SocialFlight still can help adventure-seeking pilots find plenty of places to go. In Niagara Falls, New York, the Niagara Aerospace Museum invites visitors to enjoy vintage Curtiss airplanes, Bell helicopters, and vintage artifacts from […]

Few general aviation aircraft are as iconic as Cessna’s 310. Whether because of its aggressive ramp presence, its supporting role in an old television adventure series or its suitability for a wide range of missions, the 310 is what many non-pilots recall when piston twins come up in conversation. It’s arguably the first “modern” light […]

Batteries are often crippled from the outset-that may be a bit of hyperbole, but it may be other causes than the battery maker responsible for problems with short lived or early failed batteries, especially with flooded cells. Look at the battery maker requirements for activation of a dry-charged battery as well as elements that an […]

I was on my way back to Chicago Midway after delivering some freight out east. “It was a dark and stormy night” with scattered thunderstorms and few airplanes. I was with Cleveland approach when this call came through. Something Something Yankee:“Cleveland, this is Something Something Yankee. How do you hear?” Cleveland:“Loud and clear. How me?” […]

Heavier-than-air Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) flight has been around since not long after the Wrights began wowing the world with airplanes. The first (horribly unstable) quadcopters flew in 1907-however, the desire for a device to lift humans straight up into the sky and whisk them elsewhere is probably as old as conscious thought […]

This weekend offers a variety of late-autumn excursions on SocialFlight. For those looking to take in traditional pancake fare, EAA Chapter 237’s breakfast promises plenty of food for a reasonable price. The chapter’s famous pancake breakfast takes place on Saturday at the Anoka County-Blaine Airport in the Minneapolis area. Included in the breakfast are scrambled […]

Overheard this exchange in Houston Center the week before Halloween 2014: Aircraft N1Q:“Houston, N1Q. 390. Good evening.” Houston Center:“Good evening, N1Q. That sure is a long N-number you got there.” Aircraft N1Q:“Yes. And it’s hard to remember, too.” Doug Fields

At the risk of getting the metaphorical “hook” for expressing the thought, we are about to engage in herding CATs. Most instrument pilots are lucky and only have to deal with one category of ILS approach during their lives. The Category I, or “CAT I”is usually the only kind of instrument landing system approach minima […]

In Brainteaser Quiz #200, we asked readers to forecast where aviation will be when Quiz #400 appears. Doing the math, with a new quiz every month, it works out to roughly a bunch of years from now, but well before Downtown Abbey wraps. A few suggested topics included: Will the FAA finally reform its arcane, […]

Buying or selling a used general aviation airplane is not fun. A root canal is probably more pleasant. Pilot training does not include education on airplane selection and evaluation, there are no regs on sales standards and no consumer watchdog agency to go after unscrupulous sellers. Sellers often spend hours answering telephone calls from tire […]