AVweb Insider

Along with the solar constant, Hubble’s constant and Planck’s constant, there’s one more universal truth: All aviation journalists are idiots. Or, at the very least, they’re smug and self-satisfied malcontents. I’m bringing this up now because about a year ago, when Piper announced its new Matrix six-place cabin class airplane, a few of us sat […]

As I sort through the e-mail from Monday’s blog about hurricane preparedness in Florida-or lack of it-another storm is careening around the Caribbean and two or three more tropical waves are queued up east of Leewards. This season is shaping up like a do over of 2004.For those who don’t live along the Gulf coast, […]

When you live in Florida, you tend to become obsessive about weather radar. On a normal summer day, I check into WeatherTap a half-dozen times a day just to see what’s popping. (Usually, that’s a lot.) For the past week, I’ve been watching Tropical Storm Fay slog slowly across the state and I’ll concede some […]

So, it’s probably not on anyone’s speed dial but there are a few aviation companies who might consider dropping a dime on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to round out their business plans. They’ll have to excuse her if she doesn’t get back to them right away since she’s trying to keep Russia and the […]

I’ve had this longstanding theory that when people get around airplanes, their brains turn to the consistency of my dear departed mother’s much-loved polenta. (That’s corn meal mush for those of you deprived of upbringing in an Italian-American household.) And if there’s a computer spreadsheet nearby, so much as a shard of ability to think […]

EAA’s AirVenture 2008 offers much to all who are interested in aviation. However, after a few days of wandering the grounds, this reporter is beginning to get a sense of what might be missing, and it is significant.Although EAA has made a laudable effort during these financially challenging times to demonstrate that the point of […]

“Now that,” said my friend Walter Atkinson, “is something you just don’t see at an AOPA party.” The “that” he was referring to was an attractive young woman dancing atop the wing of Herpa’s DC-3 with a day-glo, internally lighted hula hoop with auto-sequenced flashers and synchronized color shift. Dan Gryder, the DC-3’s owner and […]

The axe fell swiftly and hard on Monday as Eclipse’s voluble CEO, Vern Raburn, was shown the door by the company’s board of directors. Despite the fact that Eclipse’s arc has been defined by one stumble and delay after another as the company burned through hundreds of millions in funding, Raburn seems to have been […]

Pity the poor instrument pilot on a low approach. After slogging through rain, bumps and too many clouds, he or she slides toward a runway from the final approach fix, straining to see what’s ahead. Needed is something within the runway environment: approach lights, centerline lighting, the runway edge lights. Using precious milliseconds of attention […]

As we in the aviation journalism field prepare to slouch aboard crowded, pay-extra-for-the-checked-bags airliners (hoping against hope that we’ll actually get there the day we intend to) aimed generally toward Oshkosh, we do so knowing that fireworks could be in our future-and I don’t mean the kind associated with the aerial exhibitions.Just two weeks before […]