features_old

Every pilot out there is going to hate mefor this, but I cannot help but tell this story. To brag. To flaunt my pleasureshamelessly. Please, cut me a little slack, for this has been one of the most wonderfulachievements of my flying career. I cannot stop grinning, every time I think of it. Adream has […]

The July 1999 issue of AOPA Pilot magazine featured an article by Editor-at-Large Thomas A. Horne titled, “In-Flight Emergencies – Ditching – Putting wings in the water.” According to AVweb‘s Special Projects editor Doug Ritter, who is also publisher and editor of the Equipped to Survive Web site, Horne’s article includes much valuable information on […]

NASAGives Students A Taste Of Space Flight — 30 Seconds At A Time The engines are screaming at full power as I pullmyself up off the floor against the 1.8 Gs and manage to look out the sidewindow. What I see is not the typical view from a four-engine transport categoryaircraft: the starboard wing with […]

It’slate at night in the pilot’s lounge. Outside the windows, the pilot-activatedrunway and taxi lights are dark, silently awaiting the next airplane – althougha propeller hasn’t turned in several hours. Everyone left quite a while ago;some inquired as to whether I was going, and accepted my “a bit later”before becoming receding taillights. There is but […]

Sometime ago an AVweb subscriber, Ms. Annette Wright, requested a column onthe subject of night VFR. We here in the U.S. are fortunate in that there is nospecific rating required for a pilot to fly VFR at night. However, thissituation does not prevail throughout the rest of the world. In fact, in manycountries an instrument […]

I had just returned from my second tour in Vietnam flyingfighters and was spring-loaded to the “go” mode. Now here I was, a “staffweenie” in a fighter wing at Kadena, getting checked out in the base flight T-39Sabreliner. Although I’d had a lot of quality flying experience in a short time period, Iwas at the […]

Bose wasted no time introducing their eagerly-awaited Aviation Headset X at 1998’s EAA AirVenture Oskhosh. It was the first product demo on the first morning of the event. You got the feeling they were just chomping at the bit to unleash their “LightSPEED Slayer.” Since August 1998, Bose has had to slay their own dragons. […]

On a blustery winter day near the ocean inKitty Hawk, North Carolina, the first aviation accident investigation of a poweredfixed-wing aircraft took place. It happened right after the first powered flight. ButWilbur and Orville Wright had a plan. With that plan they investigated and they learnedand their second flight was a little longer. And the […]

While I was at EAA AirVenture ’99 in Oshkosh, I had thehonor of interviewing Paul Poberezny, whotold me, “Flying on the airlines isn’t flying, it’s transportation.” At thetime, I didn’t appreciate the significance of Paul’s remark quite as fully as I do now. My trip to Oshkosh was flying. I flew there in Mike Busch’s […]

Under atranslucent blue bowl of desert sky, the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park sprawls over600,000 acres of mountains, desert, and oasis canyons. Located near the California-Mexicoborder, approximately 50 nm northeast of San Diego and 40 nm north of Mexico, this is thelargest State Park in the contiguous U.S. Although a desert now, from the air the […]