Features

As I write this, it is August 31, 2020, which wouldn’t normally mean anything to anybody, especially me. Except for this particular day is my official termination (retirement) date as a pilot for Southwest Airlines. Because of accrued vacation, I flew my last official trip a few weeks ago and I turned in my airline […]

Holding short of Runway 27 at Eastern Iowa Airport in Cedar Rapids, for an hour’s flight to the “Third Thursday” fly‑in at Mason City (KMCW), we heard a Cirrus SR‑22 cleared for takeoff on 27, cleared direct to Mason City. Neither my airplane partner nor I could see any Cirrus on the taxiway, but we […]

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 […]

Going to the Moon Was Easy Compared To 100UL Car engines routinely have compression ratios (CR) of 10:1 or higher and run fine on mogas. In significant part, it’s because of far-better engine management systems (EMS) which are totally lacking on traditional aircraft engines. But fundamentally, it’s possible only because their small cylinder volume automatically […]

Throughout the 1980s, tandem two-seat homebuilt designs were firmly in the mainstream. Burt Rutan’s VariEze and Long-EZ were popular, and examples of Dick VanGrunsven’s RV-4 were showing up at Oshkosh in rapidly increasing numbers. Then came the RV-6, a side-by-side airplane that was destined to become the most successful kit airplane of all time. Everything […]

By Ron Wanttaja This story originally appeared in KITPLANES. Flying any aircraft—homebuilt or not—requires the pilot to be alert. The person at the stick has to have their brain firing on all cylinders. But occasionally they don’t. Sometimes the pilot is flying on the wrong medicine, legal or not. Sometimes the pilot’s body has unknown […]

At the end of a five‑hour final leg of a cross‑country trip from the West Coast to Michigan, I was very much ready to stop and stretch my legs. I was descending from 17,000 over Lake Michigan towards Traverse City. I broke out of clouds at the edge of Wisconsin and could see the other […]

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 […]

Report Calls For Multi-Pathway Approach To Mitigating Aviation Lead As a former FBO operator, airport manager, current E series powered Bonanza owner, A&P, drag racer, biker, and lover of all kinds of high-performance vehicles, myths die hard. Local dirt track racers would come over to the airport on Friday and Saturday night to buy 5 […]

We have all come to fear and respect thunderstorms. Probably the one element that visibly strikes fear in pilots and passengers alike is the lightning associated with thunderstorms. When not in IMC, it’s easy to see where the lightning is emanating from, and if you are a safe distance away. However, once in the clouds, […]