Features

Editor’s Note: In ATC parlance, a “FAM” isa familiarization ride in which an air traffic controller is permittedto ride jumpseat in an airline cockpit to observe what the ATCsystem looks like from the point of view of the cockpit crew. As I entered the cockpit of the Boeing 787, I couldn’t help butbe impressed. My […]

Two thousand miles in an open-cockpit biplane. Richard Bach did it. Steven Coonts did it. Clearly nothing that I can’t handle! Never mind that Bach and Coonts did their biplane treks in thesummertime and carefully picked their weather. My journey wouldbe in November…the only time I could find four free days ina row to make […]

Tehachapi, California: You Gotta Be Dedicated … or a Little Nuts It’s winter, late January. There’s snow on the ground atTehachapi, California. The wind is blowing like crazy. And thetwo of us were about to camp out in an unheated hangar. All ofthis to save money so we could fly sailplanes. The operator ofthe glider […]

We landed in Oshkosh in mid-afternoon five days before the official opening of the convention in what appeared to be a sleepy, under-utilized mid-western airport. The rains that had plagued the Midwest all spring and summer affected central Wisconsin as well. The grass taxiways used during the convention were soft and several of the traditional […]

Download all four filesas a ZIP-compressed archive(305K)

I just got back from a very enjoyable flying vacation trip toMexico with my wife and another couple. I flew my Cessna 210from Dallas to the beautiful city of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.After nearly a week in PV, we moved up the coast and over intoBaja. We departed on November 10, 1994 with the expectation ofspending […]

I think many of us in the Northeast are looking for relativelyshort trips that can be flown in three hours or less — and TangierIsland neatly fits that description. US Sprint’s TV commercials in spring of ’95 gave tons of freepublicity to Tangier Island, an isolated fishing community inthe middle of Chesapeake Bay. The commercial […]

On October 25, 1995, a preliminary settlement agreement was reachedin the federal class-action lawsuit filed against Mobil Corporationby Malvern Gross and Paul Jimison. As previously reportedin AVweb, the plaintiffs claim that Mobil AV-1 syntheticoil may have caused substantial damage to a large number of big-boreTeledyne-Continental engines, and that all potentially affectedengines should be inspected and, […]

I. Threshold Level of AV-1 Use/Engine History Protocol Teledyne-Continental IO-520, TSIO-520, GTSIO-520, IO-550, TSIO-550, GTSIO-550, O-470, IO-470, TSIO-470, O-360, IO-360 and TSIO-360 piston aircraft engines in which Mobil’s AV-1 oil was used for inore than 150 hours, and were not completelv rebuilt or completely overhauled since discontinuance of AV-1 use, qualify to be inspected pursuant […]