AVweb Insider

Consolidation of the commercial airliner business has been happening since the first passenger-carrying biplanes rattled across the landscape. In the middle of the last century, there were dozens of viable manufacturers innovating and doing their best to cater to a rapidly evolving industry. But being the best has never been a guarantee of business success […]

Our Stearman, otherwise known as the Queen, has been around awhile. An open-cockpit biplane built in 1941, there’s quite a bit of anachronistic hardware on her that I find every once in a while. The latest bits that required urgent replacement were all the old pre-World War II fuel line fittings. Someone in the past […]

The other day, when PBS announced they will air a Nova special about Solar Impulse on January 31, I typed “Solar Impulse” into AVweb‘s search engine to see how we’ve covered it. I found 73 hits, dating back to 2003. We covered the project pretty thoroughly, from inception to completion, yet the goal of the […]

Last week, just as I was girding to launch into the savage hinterlands of central Florida where Sebring is situated, I got a note from Sebastien Heintz, of Zenith Aircraft. At the Sport Aviation Expo, he wanted me to build a rudder from one of the company’s new match-hole kits because he wished to make […]

In the world of economics, there’s a concept called tragedy of the commons or sometimes freedom of the commons. The underlying principle is that in an economy of shared resources, individual members act against the good of all by consuming more than their share or acting to spoil the resource. The classic example is a […]

As the U.S. girds for another budget showdown that threatens to shut down the government, aviation, deemed an essential service in most respects, will soldier on. The thousands of FAA, DOT and other government workers who keep it going will go through an annoying and deflatingly disrespectful round of claiming retroactive wages and living without […]

“Why do you get so mad?” It was my wife, Val, asking the question in that incandescently irritating tone that only long-term spouses can summon because they absolutely already know the answer. We had been stuck in stop-and-go traffic on I-75 for seven hours (really 15 minutes) north of Tampa. The cause of it, when […]

Some financial analysts predict that the tax reform recently enacted will see corporate earnings grow in the 8 to 12 percent range in 2018. As all of us in the general aviation industry know, this projected growth could have a positive trickle-down effect for our market. In my segment of the industry – avionics manufacturing, […]

If there’s anything certain about second-guessing another pilot’s judgment after an accident, it’s this: The wreckage is Exhibit A if you insisted before the fact—or even after—that he shouldn’t have done whatever he did. If he pulls off what he shouldn’t have done without incident, he’s just crazy. But if he doesn’t, he’s crazy and […]

With pilot friends like this, who needs Comedy Central? The pilot of an experimental RV-6 in Michigan told a friend to get to the beach and watch for his flyby. As promised the sleek two-seater buzzed at 100 feet, made three passes—one is never enough—pulled up in a steep turn, stalled and hit the water, […]