Features

Short Final: Soaring Not far from the USAF Academy was Black Forest Gliderport (now closed). One of my fondest aviation memories is a wave-soaring flight over Pikes Peak in the early ’80’s. Dressed in cold-weather gear and breathing from a diluter-demand oxygen mask, we released at 7,500 MSL and then soared the wave to 21,000 […]

Every single emergency procedure you can imagine should follow the basic outline of “aviate, navigate, communicate” on the pilot’s side of things, but what does ATC do? It’s actually kind of backwards. We communicate with you first to find out what you might need, then we navigate other conflicting airplanes out of your way so […]

Flooded airports are nothing new but volunteers are being sought to fix up a runway in a seemingly unlikely place to see flooding. Saline Valley Warm Springs Airfield, better known as the Chicken Strip, in California’s Death Valley National Park has been closed after flooding cut deep ruts in the gravel runway. In a three-hour […]

When it comes to piston singles, it’s not often that the words classic and speedster are used in the same sentence, but it’s true of the Meyers 200 series. A design dating back to 1953, the Meyers won speed records as bragging rights. There are plenty of reasons why owners love their Meyers 200s—speed being […]

My first piloting experience was as an Air Force Academy cadet, soaring at the Academy’s airfield (6576 feet MSL). This great summer program offered a checkout and 25 hours in Schweizer two‑ and single‑seat gliders. There were more winch tows than tow ships, so the opportunities to venture far for lift were limited. My big […]

The images above show the busy view outside of Garmin’s King Air somewhere around Memphis cruising northwest-bound, and how it looks on the GWX 70 Doppler weather radar. Plan your path through—we’ll come back to it later. ADS-B may pause an active radar upgrade decision for anything but twins and turbines, but radar is far […]

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 […]

Too Much Avionics? Avoid Sensory Overload Joe sixpack here. I spent a long time wondering if I should give up the six pack and finally did it. The installation has been repeatedly delayed because I need the airplane for work and haven’t had the time to take it off line. Next month will be the […]

A popular misconception is that the Wright brothers, in addition to all of their other achievements, invented the airfoil. They didn’t. Sir John Cayley, an English engineer who also first identified the four forces of flight—lift, drag, thrust and weight—developed the cambered airfoil through detailed experimentation. His three-part work, On Aerial Navigation, published in 1809 and 1810, […]

Recently overheard on Washington Center frequency on an afternoon with plenty of thunderstorms in the vicinity: Center: “All you guys going into Raleigh, there will be a short delay. They’ve evacuated the tower. I’ll keep you posted. … I’d rather be in an airplane than a tower today.” Reid Ashe Winston‑Salem, North Carolina