Features

On arrival at Key West I pulled my TBM 700 past the Taxi way hold short line and keyed the mic to say hello to ground… Me: Ground, we’re going to stop here to clean up a bit. Ground: Why? It looked like a great landing from here…

Metal possesses lots of properties that we find very useful in building airplanes. It’s strong, hard, and tough. It’s easy to form, work and machine. It’s fireproof and can stand up to high temperatures. All in all, metal is neat stuff.But metal isn’t unique in having these properties. Metal is strong, but ordinary cotton fiber […]

FedEx Crash I am a resident of Charlottetown and have known Nancy Chase Allen for about two years (NewsWire, Oct. 10). I have seen this pilot in action and she was a pilot and one half. This lady always spends about one hour checking the aircraft inside and out before she starts on a flight […]

My 17-year-old nephew Kermit asked me to go with him out to the local airport to have a gander at some WWII bombers that were visiting the aviation museum. It was a good excuse to avoid mowing the lawn and gave him the chance to scare the bejesus out of me with his driving.I was […]

Winds 300 at 26… On a particularly windy day, I was in a skyhawk on right base for 35. Me: Wind check. Controller: Winds 300 at 26(pause)… We’ve got the trucks on standby.

(Be careful what you say, someone might be listening.) Several months ago, whilst assigned to the Tracon, an incident occurred which still causes great laughter throughout our community. It was a busy arrival session, the controller was working four VHF frequencies — including approaches into a satellite airport and two UHF frequencies. After sending numerous […]

Stand on the spectator line at the Reno Air Races and the sense of “calm before the storm” permeates the atmosphere. A few minutes before, we spectators watched the Sport-class aircraft line up, start engines, taxi way down to the east end and then take off to the west, making beautiful airplane noise and flying […]