Flight Safety

Wehave a December tradition here in the Pilot’s Lounge that some would regard asoverly maudlin or sentimental, but it is our way, and we like it. A significantnumber of the folks who fly from our little, virtual airport celebrate thewinter holidays. As a result, we always set aside one evening for folks to bringin food […]

Whenthe United States was celebrating its 200th anniversary back in 1976, theChairperson of the Ninety-Nines asked Fay Gillis Wells, one of the originalorganizing founders of the Ninety-Nines,to come up with an idea to participate in the celebration. Fay’s answer was theInternational Forest of Friendship. Fay, who has outstanding skills at gettingpeople to do things, somehow […]

Henry Haigh was born in 1924 inAnn Arbor, Mich. It wasn’t long before he was flying aerobatic competitionsusing gas-powered RCs. Uncle Sam taught him how to fly real airplanes, but WWIIended before Henry could get into it. After some time off to raise his familyand start a business, Henry bought a Ryan PT-22 and resumed […]

I Made It to Sixty! Well friends, the idiotic “Age Sixty” rule finally hit home in a verypersonal way a couple of weeks ago, when the calendar rolled around to my own 60th. I knewit was coming, and I’m really delighted to have survived to this point, but I guess I wasable to somehow make […]

N47BA, the ill-fated Lear 35. A ghost ship flying across country with a crew evidently disabledor dead — sounds like a script for a bad Hollywood disaster movie. Sadly, however, recentevents have left us wondering how this actually happened. What happened to the Lear 35carrying Payne Stewart and five others? We may never know for […]

The FAA and I don’t agree on something — well, more than one something — but I think this one thing is rather important. It’s the way they wrote the Practical Test Standards. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I agree with the idea of the PTS and overall, it’s a good thing. It lets everyone […]

“Afirst solo is like the birth of a baby.” The usual suspects were sitting in the Lounge discussing the fact that we areseeing more students at the airport when old Hack dropped that line on us. Itdid stop conversation for a moment. We generally enjoy the process ofchallenging oddball analogies, so we wanted to toss […]

Paul Howard Poberezny was born on September14, 1921, in Leavenworth County, Kan. The family soon relocated to the south side ofMilwaukee in a house under an airmail route. Paul grew up watching a stream of biplanesflying low and slow in all kinds of weather. As he got older, he could tell from thesounds overhead that […]

Marion Cole was born in 1924 near Peoria,Ill. He was one of nine brothers and a sister. Dad didn’t fly, but most of the brothersgot avgas in their blood early. Marion wasted no time getting his private, commercial andinstructor’s ratings, then joined his older brothers in the airshow business. Promoterswanted their money’s worth, so Marion […]

Bob Norris was born on March 20, 1955 inGermany, where his father Bill (a test pilot for the Air Force), was stationed. He learnedhow to fly in the Navy and spent the next 19 years flying fighter jets. In January of 1996he went from one doctor to another trying to find out why he was […]