Flight Safety

I wanted to make this month’s column another in the series of “courses” I’ve written over the last few years. The VFR season is upon us at Atlanta Center and the VFR traffic is climbing in direct relation to the mercury in the thermometer. As the summer progresses and the sky gets hazier, there will […]

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 […]

Computers have made aviation so much easier. A mere decade ago, flight engineers were trained to compute weight and balance figures on something called “a piece of paper.” These figures were then used in the operation of the aircraft.Then a major breakthrough happened and the airlines came up with a radio dispatch system that was […]

Trying to guess what Mother Nature is going to do is risky business. I had to wait three weeks to get my yard aerated because it wouldn’t stop raining. I finally got it done, threw down a bunch of grass seed and I bet it hasn’t rained an inch in the month since.Mother Nature will […]

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 […]

Ask any aircraft owner what the TBO is for the engine(s) on his aircraft and you’ll almost always get the correct answer without hesitation: “My engine has a 1,700-hour TBO.” But ask that owner to explain the significance of that TBO figure and you’ll get all sorts of answers, most of them flat wrong. Here […]

I am having trouble believing that the 727 is ancient history, I said to my tennis-club bartender.”What is a 727 and why are you sitting at my bar if all you are going to drink is Diet Coke?” asked Fred. Fred has been the bartender at my tennis club for over 10 years, and this […]

Once again it’s time for me to take a trip down the road to unpopularity and write an article about a subject we’d rather not talk about. I never have been able to leave well enough alone. It’s probably the reason I don’t get invited to dinner more often than I do. I like to […]

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 […]