features_old

Threat Level Orange A number of coinciding events transpired this past week, including the elevation of our nation’s threat level to the second highest level, “Orange.” Simultaneously, the Washington, D.C., airspace restrictions affecting GA aircraft expanded substantially. No sooner had the news commentator made these announcements, than a film clip showing a small Cessna poking […]

You’ve seen the news reports: Russian-made jammers may be used against U.S. GPS-based weapon systems in Iraq, and there have been warnings about this technology in the hands of terrorists. U.S. Representative Joseph R. Pitts (R-Penn.), a former Air Force officer, has a page on the topic on his Web site. How serious is the […]

I‘m sure that I’m not alone. All of us, at one time or another, do something stupid. There are no doubt a great many dumb things that I’ve managed to do in my more than seven decades of life, but as an aviator, two particularly stupid and dangerous events stand out. Towing the Line Several […]

Eye of Experience#63:Confession Time – (Articles – Feb 12, 2003) Admit it: You’ve done some stupid things while flying, haven’t you? We all have, and it is always better to learn from someone else’s stupid mistakes than to make even more of our own. AVweb’s Howard Fried has told us about a lot of things […]

Yes friends, it’s that time again. I just had another “tape talk” so now it’s your turn. I was less than pleased with mine, so I have some work to do. So do you.To bring a little order to the process I thought I’d make a “Top Ten” list of things we should do for […]

“It’s just something they seem to have in their blood; I think they’re born with it.” Spend time around people who love to fly and no doubt you will hear this conclusion voiced often by the people closest to them.It would seem almost unfitting for a young boy to not have an early interest in […]

Shuttle Columbia And Crew Lost Perhaps the loss of Columbia is most startling because of the years of uneventful Shuttle flights since Challenger; over 80 of them, resulting in a “ho-hum” public attitude toward the program. The stark reality is that nothing is without risk, and all of the fine people on board and on […]

This article originally appeared in the June 2002 issue of Light Plane Maintenance, and is reprinted here by permission. Oil temp running too high? Troubleshooting the problem isn’t very difficult to do. For example, there you are, cruising along on a nice sunny day, when suddenly you notice your oil temperature gauge has developed a […]

Shuttle Columbia And Crew Lost On a quiet Saturday morning, the very first day of February, 2003, a Texas weather radar scans the skies, looking for trouble but finding only clear and undisturbed atmosphere. Quite by chance, its probing rays chronicle the most alarming event of this young year, and etch into history what is […]

The genesis of E-Ox occurred several years ago when I stopped by the White Mountain Products Group booth at AOPA Expo in Atlantic City to look at a miniature emergency oxygen system they’d introduced. To be honest, my first reaction was skepticism. To begin with, I was a little put off by the melodramatic name […]