Features

Hunters Threatening Parachute Pilots I just read about hunters threatening parachute/ultralight pilots with a gun at Smartt Field in St Louis, Mo. (NewsWire, Dec. 26). If this were an airline passenger plane, the [person] with the gun would probably be spending the rest of his life behind bars, or possibly shot himself by the Sky […]

Disaster, exultation, milestones, conflict, celebration, tragedy, and remembrance … in 2005, the world of general aviation saw all that and more. Here’s our year-end review of the news, with links to AVweb’s original coverage for more details. Oshkosh Shows Us The Future If it seemed that after 100 years the world of flight would have […]

When congestion isn’t the real problem… Here is my recollection of a conversation heard on 128.25 last Saturday: Aircraft on Approach: Get off the runway I am landing. Aircraft on Runway: Maybe you should go around if I am not fast enough for you. Aircraft on Approach: I can’t, I have a terrible crosswind, I […]

V.P. Restricted Airspace The FAA must have the dumbest people in the world working for them. All the bad guys have to do is look where the restricted airspace is.Who in the world would have known where in the world is the Vice President’s new home?We do now thanks to the FAA and the new […]

Slow day at the FSS? I’m a student at Daniel Webster College, and one particularly nasty winter morning last year I was calling the briefer before my 7AM flight… Me: Good morning this is N—DW, I’d like a standard VFR brief for the Nashua area and … Briefer (cutting me off): You’re not going anywhere […]

While in the Pilot’s Lounge here at the virtual airport, I got to checking my email and found one that took me to task for asserting that the Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) created as a result of Hurricane Katrina were ill-conceived and poorly planned. I had complained because of the difficulties reported by some pilots […]

This is a bit embarrassing, but I might as well come clean: Up until a few years ago, I was still flying my Cessna T310R with only the primitive engine instrumentation installed by the factory in 1979. Shame on me!I’d long since upgraded my avionics stack with conspicuous quantities of glass, including a Garmin GNS-530 […]

Eastbound and down, loaded up and truckin’, we’re going to do something that they said couldn’t be done — arrive on time in Newark on Christmas Eve.This feat is harder during the Christmas season than almost any other. In addition to unusually high passenger loads, icy weather and high winds, we airline crews are dealing […]