AVweb Insider

When I interviewed Randy Schlitter of RANS aircraft last month, I knew going in that his factory is sort of a poster child for serial production automation. As he explained in the interview, computer numerical control equipment is getting more affordable with each new generation and now additive manufacturing—3D printing—is also making inroads. But I […]

In an earlier column I mentioned Aldous Huxley’s “doors of perception”—which he ripped off from William Blake—and how it influenced millions of teenagers like me in the late 1960s to buy Jim Morrison albums. Except I missed the point; often do. I’m not a big fan of doors—The Doors, yes—but doors exist to limit access, […]

While our gaze was momentarily distracted by the aviation party out in Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago, we missed the biggest aerospace story in history. In fact, it was the biggest anything in history, short of the emergence of life on earth. It was, of course, a credible witness telling the U.S. Congress that […]

Early in the week at AirVenture, GAMA’s Pete Bunce declared that the market would determine which of multiple unleaded avgas products would ultimately prevail. What he failed to mention is that GAMA, the other alphabets and the EAGLE industry consortium have been hell bent on keeping their thumb on the invisible hand’s scale. And they’re […]

If there was anything in particular that characterized this year’s AirVenture for me it was the emergence of a more positive outlook. Much of last year’s uncertainty about the supply chain and pandemic recovery efforts has faded and people were once again talking enthusiastically about the future of aviation rather than how to salvage what […]

Somewhere, in a hangar equipped with SolidWorks, an enterprising airplane designer is dreaming of finally putting a stake through the heart of the sclerotic Cessna 172. Fueling the fever dream is the just-announced results of the FAA’s MOSAIC project to modernize the Light Sport Aircraft rule. We don’t have the final rules details yet, but […]

When I was a budding juvenile delinquent growing up in the Texas oil patch, I was at least smart enough to get myself an aircraft identification book. I can’t remember the title, but I’d bet it was something like The Golden Book of Modern Airplanes. I had a lot of those Golden Books and I […]

Sigh. They’re back. The modern resurrection of the pattern wars. As an inveterate FAA jailhouse lawyer, I already know the arguments. “Discouraged doesn’t mean prohibited.” “Advisory circulars aren’t regulatory, that’s why they’re called advisory.” “The FAA has no clue what’s really going on in traffic patterns.” And so on and on and on. The occasion […]

Given how much information hurls at us through our phones, our tablets and computers, not to mention the odorous miasma of cable news, you have to have either a heightened appreciation for the absurd or some kind of low dB auto filter just to make it to lunch. It’s not often that the deafening dissonance […]

An elusive key to the skeleton closet of successful flight life is to do less, much less. “Straighten up and fly right” made for a catchy Nat King Cole lyric in 1943, but is it good advice for today’s pilots? Having been one for a half-century I can unequivocally state, “I don’t know.” That’s also […]