Flight Training

You can say a lot of things about light sport airplanes, but one of them isn’t that the sky has been darkened with 1320-pound wonders. Sales remain modest at best and a company selling 30 or 40 a year has a smash hit. Now comes new startup Vashon to reset that equation with a heretofore […]

As a student pilot I badly embarrassed myself by making about six go-arounds while trying to land at an airport in a gusting crosswind. My instructor had told me to land there, so I had then told myself that I had to land there—there was no alternative. I also had internalized that go-arounds were a […]

Build A Plane, the nonprofit that offers kids a chance to restore an airplane using donated aircraft, now is expanding into rocketry, and with help from a major unnamed donor, recently bought up the assets of XCOR, the bankrupt company that had been working to build the Lynx spaceplane, for $1.1 million. “Our donor heard […]

Vashon Aircraft wants to revolutionize light aircraft manufacture with the Vashon Ranger, an all-metal light sport aircraft intended to be both a sort of RV for outback flying and a trainer. In this AVweb video, Paul Bertorelli dives deep into the Vashon story, including an in-depth report on the factory. view on YouTube

Richard L. Collins, well-known author of books about aviation and longtime editor-in-chief at Flying magazine, died on Sunday at his home in Maryland. Collins began his journalism career working on Air Facts, a magazine founded by his father, Leighton Collins. He began writing for Flyingin 1968 and became editor-in-chief in 1977. He also worked at […]

Last week the FAA released a notice regarding changes in policy regarding testing applicants for a commercial pilot or flight instructor certificate. The notice states that it is no longer required for applicants for a “commercial pilot certificate with an airplane single-engine rating to provide a complex or turbine-powered airplane for the associated practical test […]

You’ve had your instrument rating for a couple of years by now. The first year you didn’t have any trouble keeping current to fly IFR—you were out there just about every week “flying in the system” as you called it. The new hadn’t worn off your rating; you knew that you were just a baby […]

Change and I have an uneasy relationship, the former claiming I’m slow to embrace technology, unwilling to “try something new.” Sheesh … Change can be so … you know … and so in your face, too. I submit that ADFs and VORs were working just fine—when you could receive them—and I saw no value to […]

I’ve amended the details a bit to preserve anonymity. The pilot and his family came to grief on a flight that was forecast to be VFR. There was a slow-moving warm front approaching, but it appeared the 150-nm trip could be completed before conditions worsened. Friends of the pilot indicated he had intended to launch […]