Video of the Week

AirVenture 2023 opens tomorrow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. AVweb’s Kate O’Connor and Aviation Consumer’s Larry Anglisano take a look around the grounds on setup day to get a feel for the state of the supply chain, flight training and the refurb market.

How busy is the Oshkosh arrival? Ride along for a portion of columnist Ariana Rayment’s first flight into the big show with KITPLANES EIC Marc Cook. Airplanes everywhere, plans that change quickly and always the possibility you won’t get in on the first try (or even the second).

Veteran aircraft builder Randy Schlitter will concede there may be as many as 150 small aircraft manufacturers around the world, but not many are as prolific or creative as he has been in 50 years of running a company and 40 building airplanes. In this interview with AVweb’s Paul Bertorelli, Randy explains how the company […]

Given modern materials, tools and techniques, you would think it would be a sure thing to scale up the standard rubber-band-powered airplane we all flew as kids and have something with a truly awesome wingspan. As this video from the Think Flight channel shows, it’s not easy at all. And finding a rubber band large […]

Blakesburg, Iowa, is not just the center of U.S. it’s also the center of the universe for antique airplanes of all stripes. And every August—after AirVenture—they hold a fly-in to commemorate interesting airplanes you’ll see nowhere else. In this short video, our own Paul Berge introduces the Antique Airplane Association and the Airpower Museum. This […]

If you do your own airplane maintenance, cutting open and inspecting an oil filter is an important step. In this video, KITPLANES Editor-at-Large Paul Dye explains how to do it. Having a purpose-made tool for the job speeds things along and, pro tip, that’s not a hacksaw.

We’re a fan of physicist Scott Manley’s spaceflight-focused YouTube channel. Now that he’s working on his private certificate he has discovered certain … umm … anomalies in the way instructors explain things. This includes the deadly blackhole of why wings generate lift. Even he punts on this one, referring to channels with aerodynamicists who don’t […]

In this brief video, AOPA Air Safety Institute’s Richard McSpadden runs through the likely scenarios that resulted in the June 4, 2023, crash of a Citation in Virginia southwest of Washington, D.C. The pilot became unresponsive and F-16s dispatched to intercept the flight observed him slumped in the pilot seat. Two scenarios seem likely: The […]

Basic Med went into effect in May 2017 with high hopes. A recent FAA analysis of the program reveals that some 40,000 pilots have taken advantage of it. But the report also shows that Basic Med hasn’t really revitalized aviation in ways that some of hoped for. Veteran Aviation Medical Examiner Bill Blank wrote a […]

Pilots are often nervous about flying into or around airports with skydiving operations. There’s really no need to be, as Paul Bertorelli explains in this AVweb video. Just avoid the airport by three or four miles on the downwind side when transitioning and don’t overfly a dropzone airport if you’re landing there. Just fly a […]