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Although the design is more than four decades old, the Cessna 177 Cardinal—with its racy sloped windshield, wide doors and strutless wings—looks more modern than the newest Skyhawks coming out of Cessna’s Independence, Kansas, plant. Yet, sadly, the Cardinal is a poster child for why innovation and audacity in general aviation development has often met […]

As part of AVweb’s series on aviation innovators, we spoke with Craig Barnett, who created the company, Scheme Designers. For nearly 20 years, Craig and Scheme Designers, have been creating unique paint schemes (and, more recently, vinyl designs) for aircraft. There are now more than 11,500 airplanes flying throughout the world with paint and vinyl […]

A reader recently questioned the wisdom of flying IFR in “old” aircraft with traditional flight displays that lack modern accouterments—GPS in particular. It’s a fair question and one that deserves some thought. I have to admit that growing up in an earlier age, and having flown IFR for almost a decade before I had the […]

Letter of the Week:Frequent Reporting Best Anyone who flies on VFR weekends knows that CTAFs are awash in squealing verbal garbage, making it often impossible to announce a position or identify the cluck who’s announcing every stinkin’ leg of the traffic pattern or that he’s taxiing to the runway at your airport so you can […]

Structural failure accidents, often from getting too friendly with thunderstorms, kill both people and what little good press GA is able to garner. In the last decade, 50 accidents—about 10 per cent of all accidents—were due to in-flight structural failure. Worse, even with better weather data in flight, these accidents aren’t going away. Turbulence, Not […]

The Experimental Aircraft Association’s Kermit Weeks Hangar is just down the road from the EAA AirVenture Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. While the museum is the public face of EAA, the Weeks Hangar is where the action is. In the most basic sense, it’s a maintenance and restoration facility. But that’s a bit like calling the […]

An integral part of the various jobs I’ve held for the last 37 years has involved reviewing aircraft accident reports and looking at data generated from them. During that time, what the NTSB euphemistically refers to as “maneuvering,” has remained in the top three causes of fatal accidents with usually about 40 percent of general […]

As we have reported in previous used aircraft articles, used piston twins are generally good deals in the current sales market. The Beech Baron, Travel Air, Piper Aztec and even the Beech Duke are all examples. On the other hand, for various reasons, the market for new piston twins remains relatively flat, and there are […]

Short-field landings are all about using excellent technique to get your airplane into a tight spot. That same technique, however, can put you in an even tighter spot when it’s time to leave. Most general aviation aircraft land shorter than they leave. This performance disparity can be subtle at sea level, where the two numbers […]

Within the cavernous FAA warehouses in Oklahoma City molders jetsam once vital to National Airspace System (NAS), such as NDBs, Terminal Control Areas, Flight Service Stations (FSS), GADO (General Aviation District Office) and, now, Flight Watch. Time was when you were cruising in your ’47 Navion with the canopy slid back, and the ADF pointing […]