Features

At my home airport, apparently the controllers know my voice. But this day I was flying a friend’s airplane back to our home airport from maintenance, and the weather was characteristically benign with smooth air and clear skies with unlimited visibility. Me: “Tower, Twin Cessna 9287A, 15 south. Landing with Whiskey.” There was a long […]

Icing affects flight operations in many ways. Accordingly, we offer some thought-provoking reports from pilots who’ve been there. Little has been said about instrument malfunctions due to icing, and we discuss those in particular. Chilly Carburetors An instrument-rated Commercial pilot operating VFR experienced a sudden power interruption in his Cessna 150, followed by a surge […]

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 […]

Ground Control Energy management is not well taught in GA, if not well managed in the air, it will probably be less well managed on deck…brake fade/fires are the result. That extra throttle energy is getting dumped into brakes sized for aborted takeoffs not your morning commute. Rudder is your friend, use it up before […]

Edge Performance of Notodden, Norway, has been around for little more than a decade, but their EFI and Rotax upgrades have quickly become popular, setting a high bar with race-quality components. I’ll be putting the EP912sti in the SR-1 race plane—not only does it have exceptional power to weight (important given the 661-pound weight limit for […]

Sister publications KITPLANES, Aviation Consumer and AVweb are conducting a short survey on aircraft batteries for an upcoming battery buyer’s guide. We want to know what kind of aircraft you fly (experimental and certified aircraft) and what brand, model and type of battery you’ve been using. Tell us all about it at www.surveymonkey.com/r/battery23-avweb.

I basically live at an airport, and taxi to and from the airpark’s runway over what are residential streets the rest of the time. My normal taxi route includes a stand of bamboo, decades-old oak trees, mailboxes, a power pole and assorted fences. Tuesday is trash-collection day, and it can be a deal if your […]

That aviation is a highly regulated activity should come as no surprise to readers. Many other applicable rules are unwritten, developed by pilots after a mishap or mistake, which not necessarily resulted in an accident or incident. How we tackle becoming comfortable with new avionics aboard a familiar airplane is a question FAA regulations don’t […]

Apollo 8 Remembered Yes, 1968 was memorable in mixed ways, but this moment replayed for us here was so thrilling that it raised the hair on the back of my then nearly 20-year-old neck. The perspective of Apollo 8 taking that required first “giant leap” enabling Apollo 11 Neil Armstrong’s first “one small step” is […]

Remember when you were a student pilot prepping for the cross-country flights with a sectional chart, using your plotter to calculate the true course to the destination? Then using magnetic variation (east is least, west is best) to get magnetic course. GPS navigation and all our apps have changed that, but the basics remain. You […]