Features

I have flown Lears for many years for a company whose callsign is Coyote. One day when we had been vectored towards the airport and then handed off to Tower: Tower: “Coyote 123, cleared for the visual Runway xx.” Me: “Cleared visual Runway xx. Coyote 123.” Second aircraft: “Tower, N12345 has runway in sight.” Tower: […]

There is a fundamental reason we perform preflight run-ups and engine checks before takeoff: It is a whole lot better to find problems at 1G, 0 feet AGL and 0 knots airspeed than it is while airborne. Making sure a powerplant will work as we intend before taking off is just good airmanship. A good […]

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 […]

Air Force Looking At Semi-Autonomous Hercs Early elevators in buildings required elevator operators using multiple levers to ‘drive’ the elevator car to the correct floor, match the floor height, and open doors in the right sequence. Later, pushbutton elevators were invented that did all those functions automatically. But the general public was distrustful of this […]

Unless your flying is limited to local sightseeing in good weather, chances are you’ve used winds aloft charts at some point. For many commercial and military pilots, they’re a staple of the preflight weather briefing, and they’re easily found on sites like aviationweather.gov. These charts are constructed by weather centers at a series of designated heights, […]

Back in the early 1980s when they had one of the best flight-training programs in the nation, I was working on the admissions staff of Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire. I somehow convinced the administration that we should recruit a few students and fly out to the big Oshkosh airshow now known as […]

As we’ve reported, thanks to space-saving, small-supply oxygen systems from Aerox and Aithre, more pilots and their passengers may be using O2 in the cabin who otherwise wouldn’t. But we’re also hearing about the challenges of getting these little cylinders filled. Some FBOs and maintenance shops unfamiliar with these new bottles (some as small as […]

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 […]

Is It Better To Be Lucky Or Good? Yes I learned to fly out of Elmendorf AFB in the early 70s, and many of our “sorties” in the 150s were to Fort Richardson’s then towered single airstrip. In fact, that’s where I solo’d. I remember early on my instructor warning me to beware of two […]

While generally round and black in color, that’s almost all the characteristics aircraft tires have in common with their automotive siblings. In fact, a major difference is the construction and materials used in their manufacture. Aircraft tires and tubes primarily incorporate natural rubber while automotive tires use synthetic compounds extensively. Aircraft tires are designed for […]