The Pilot’s Lounge

One of the contentions among those who show up here in the Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport is that those who are attracted to aviation have a significantly greater sense of adventure than those who merely exist on the surface of the planet. Perhaps it is because we desire to move in the third […]

I was in the pilot’s lounge, here at the virtual airport, doing my shallow breathing exercises, when I found myself eavesdropping on some training one of the instructors was giving to a primary student. The instructor was going on and on about the importance of the preflight inspection as well as all of the possible […]

To the delight of the multitudes, spring has arrived in the higher latitudes. Here in the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport, Old Hack showed up and growled proudly to the assemblage that he had survived another winter and only fired up the furnace seven times. He then made scurrilous comments about some of our […]

Over the years, I’ve found that the Pilot’s Lounge here at the virtual airport is one of the better places to sit and read aviation books, particularly of an evening, after things have quieted down. Sitting in the big, fat, old recliners, there are times that I read something about flight that strikes me, and […]

I’m pleased to announce that — after decades of prodding — I have written a book. It is a compendium of some of my writings on Compuserve’s AVSIG Forum for well over 20 years, some of the AVweb tales in my columns, and others, old and new (see sidebar to the right).There is a second […]

I don’t know how many times the subject of the conversations in the Pilot’s Lounge here at the virtual airport have lingered on issues of aircraft maintenance. If there is one thing that concerns a pilot nearly as much as flying weather or the cost of flying, it is the mechanical condition of the aircraft […]

I was sitting in the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport, quietly minding my own business and practicing new hand gestures in case I had to go to Brazil, when Mark — one of the local pilots –caromed off the door frame and boomed into the lounge trailed by scraps of yellow paper emitted from […]

Just recently, one of the regulars here at the pilot’s lounge of the virtual airport, Ed Williams, who in the real world is a plasma physicist, took a break in studying for the ATP written, stopped by and showed us one of the published questions on that written. It said: “Who should be advised if […]

The 100th anniversary of powered flight was the date for our annual holiday gathering in the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport. It meant braving blowing snow and icy streets, but the goal was worth the effort. Everyone brought some food and some pretty good booze or wine and after an hour or so the […]

It had been a lousy afternoon. Dealing with a case involving someone from the dregs of aviation always depresses me, but this one had been worse than usual. When everything was over for the day, the only thing I could think to do was to retreat to the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport. With […]