Features

Arriving at 3B0 – Southbridge for breakfast at the new diner, I discovered the crosswind was gusting a touch more that I had hoped. Ready to go to my alternate, I managed to get down without making a complete klutz of it and kept the little wheel at the back while VERY slowly taxying in […]

The mighty P-51 Mustang is unquestionably one of the most iconic and famousaircraft of World War II. Born out of necessity in the tumult of war, the Mustang was, if not an immediate success, then definitely an enduring one once it got the more powerful Merlin engine. It was unparalleled as an escort fighter—fast, agile, […]

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

FAA Calls On Laser Manufacturers To Add Warning Labels When I was flying for an airline several years ago (I’m now retired) we were hit with a green laser. Not fun. Luckily we were not hit in the eyes, but it could have been very harmful. Rik C. Last year I was on short final […]

Yes, we’ve heard all of the disparaging remarks: Magnetos have been around since there was dirt; they’re the trailing edge of technology and general aviation would proceed into broad, sunlit uplands if mags were to be consigned to the scrap heap and replaced with electronic ignition.  Nevertheless, while we think that electronic ignition is great […]

I was departing ATL 10 or so years ago. As you get to the end of the ramp, you contact north or south (as appropriate) ground control giving call sign, ramp (there are 9) and ATIS information. It was late evening after most of the flights had departed, a time when maintenance crews often tow […]

Back in the bad old days of VOR navigation you could find your position by tuning in two different VORs. Each radial from a VOR was a “line of position” from that VOR. Your position could be anywhere on that line. Where the two lines from two different VORs intersected was your location. For accuracy […]

Even before I started taking flying lessons, I was exposed to aviation. Without a formal frame of reference, I absorbed what little I could from other pilots’ stories, reading about flying in books and magazines like this one and, tragically, learning how some of them came to grief. That usually involved poor weather. It took […]

Last Boeing 747 Delivered My first flight in a 747 was in ’73 that started at Frankfurt while coming home from Germany on leave from my Army unit in Germany. The Pan Am bird had so few passengers that they allowed me to sleep laying out across seats in the center of the aircraft and […]

Who else noticed not one…or two…or three…but four unusual, slab-sided, negative-staggered cabin biplanes outside the International Aerobatic Club (IAC) headquarters at AirVenture 2021? The well-known comedian Steven Wright once punned, “You can’t have everything, where would you put it?” As pilots it seems we all want everything in an airplane, right? Ideally we would have […]