Learn to Fly

This week’s AVweb video by Rick Durden offers a design overview of the Icon A5, a light sport amphibian with key safety features such as strong spin and stall resistance and an built-in angle of attack indicator. view on YouTube

Remember films like The Blue Max, The Red Baron or Flyboys? They all depicted WWI aerial warfare, in machines invented some 15 years earlier. Instead of defined runways, pilots of that era landed and took off from large, broad fields, which always allowed them to fly into the prevailing wind. One of the reasons those […]

I’ve covered this budding electric aviation thing just enough to understand this: The idea that an electric motor has so few moving parts that all you do is keep feeding it power and it will run smoothly forever is just wrong. The minimal parts count is right, but the simplicity isn’t. But it’s nice to […]

Last week, when AVweb Editor-in-Chief Russ Niles phoned me about Icon’s breaking announcement of its retrenchment, he happened to mention he had been reading Walter Isaacson’s bio of Steve Jobs and … “Stop right there,” I said, “I know where you’re going and I already have that blog written.” And so I did, displaced by […]

If there was any surprise in Wednesday’s announcement about production delays for the Icon A5, it’s that the company was so forthright in admitting what many have suspected for months. There’s a reason Icon isn’t delivering and for a company that has been obsessive about its image and marketing with a close-to-the-vest press policy, it […]

I got a note from a reader commenting on Friday’s blog on pilot starts and populations. His view was that everything is more or less about the Benjamins and more people would fly if it were cheaper. We’ve reduced that dead horse to molecular slurry so I won’t argue the case for or against. It […]

Piper Aircraft announced several price rollbacks and a large trainer order from the University of North Dakota on the opening days of theAero exposition in Friedrichshafen, Germany, on Wednesday morning. Piper CEO Simon Caldecott told the press that some 100 aircraft have been ordered by UND, one of the largest single trainer orders during the […]

The FAA today published a final rule that allows student pilots to log up to 20 hours in flight simulators, finally reaching the end of a long and twisted regulatory path. The current rules allow only 10 hours to be logged, although many flight schools had permission from the FAA to log up to 20. […]

It’s convenient for the media narrative to look at events like Sun ‘n Fun as barometers for the overall health of GA. If that were ever accurate, I’m not sure it still is. Attendance and exhibitor numbers spike up and sag down from year to year, seemingly not connected to anything to do with the […]

New flying clubs in the U.S. could get their first airplane for free under a new programfrom AOPA. President Mark Baker said AOPA will provide the winning club with a “Reimagined” Cessna 150 that it has built by Aviat Aircraft. “Flying clubs and Reimagined aircraft are great options to bring down costs and get pilots […]