Learn to Fly

Letter of the Week:Correcting the Imbalance Regarding Paul Bertorelli’s blog about gender imbalance: Aviation, as a profession, seems to have set the modern standard on “imbalance,” an ironic fact given the physical principles on which it is based. Does it make sense to address the subject of gender imbalance without including wage imbalance, race imbalance, […]

Watching the progress of this week’s Question of the Week, I was reminded that my attitude toward women in the workplace was pretty much crystalized all at once at 5:30 a.m. on February 10th,1969. Standing in the induction line at Fort Holabird, it occurred to me that if women were eligible for the then draft, […]

The 88Charlies, an organization named after its home airport in Palmyra, Wisconsin, shows how a grassroots approach to teaching kids about airplanes can grow into an organization that makes aviation fun for all. view on YouTube

In my lofty role as editorial director here at AVweb, I am also self-appointed Chief of Word Police. We all have our little foibles and sacred cows, no? I actually have only two. I sweep the copy for two things; one is a word, the other a phrase. The word is “upbeat,” the phrase is […]

On my office wall is a print of a photograph any pilot will—or should—know. Its title is The First Twelve Seconds of the Age of Powered Flight. It’s a riveting photograph snapped by Tom Daniels, a Kill Devil Hills surfman, the moment Orville Wright lifted off from the sands of Kitty Hawk on December 17, […]

EAA’s Give Flight program has five sets of kit wings under assembly on the AirVenture grounds this week. Ron Wagner explains that they will go to five EAA chapters across North America with the goal of launching flying clubs. view on YouTube

As the industry continues to push back against the high price of new aircraft, another company has joined the emerging trend in remanufactured aircraft. In conjunction with AOPA, Wichita-based Yingling Aviation announced Monday at AirVenture the Ascend 172, a ground-up remanufacture of the popular Cessna Skyhawk. As are several other shops, Yingling is restoring older […]

Tuesday is the sixth annual Teachers’ Day, in which teachers from all over the U.S. attend sessions on how to integrate aviation topics into their curriculum. AVweb intern Ashley Anglisano spoke with organizer Lyn Freeman of Build-A-Plane to find out what’s on tap for 2015. Duration: 4:19 File Size: 8.1 MB download here

Of all the major components of a conventional airplane, the tail—empennage, if you prefer—may be the least understood. Yes, we generally know it’s there to help balance and stabilize the airplane’s attitude in flight, and to help control yaw and pitch, but that’s often the extent to which we paid attention in ground school. If […]

When Louis Bleriot hopped across the English Channel from France in 1909, the Channel still represented a formidable, historic geographic and cultural divide that exists today only in the imagination; cross it on a ferry in a few hours or on commercial flight without even looking out the window. Or in an electric airplane with […]