Ownership

No aircraft is considered airworthy by the FAA until the weight of its paperwork exceeds its maximum certificated takeoff weight (or so goes the old joke). We in aviation are always complaining about the amount of paperwork that the FAA, in its infinite wisdom, makes us do. Any aircraft owner who has gone through the […]

I pulled my Cessna T310R out of the hangar, and performed the usual pre-flight walk-around. I climbed into the left seat, watched my two passengers take their seats and fasten their seat belts, and checked that the cabin door was properly secured. Pre-start checklist: flight controls free and correct, switches and dimmers off, circuit breakers […]

CS&A Aviation Insurance(This article originally appeared in Aviation Insurance & Risk Management, Summer 2005) Are you a professional pilot who provides paid pilot services as an independent contractor to an aircraft owner? If so, what kind of insurance protection is available to you? Many aircraft owners use contract pilots as primary flight crew members or […]

No doubt you’ve read plenty here and elsewhere about the 2005 edition of EAA’s AirVenture — something we who have to work it just call “Oshkosh” — and I’m happy to add to the coverage because, for fans of internal combustion, it was a pretty good show.Yes, it’s true that Honda’s nifty jet, the pair […]

As is the case with most of us here in the Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport, my involvement with state aeronautics commissions had, for years, been limited to paying a small annual fee and receiving a nice book that gave information on all of the public-use airports in the state, as well as an […]

Not long ago, I was chatting about piston aircraft engines with a group of aircraft owners when the longtime owner of a Cessna P210 asked me the following question:“What are the relative pros and cons of oil filter inspection vs. laboratory oil analysis? Do you recommend one over the other or do you recommend both?”The […]

As we head off to Oshkosh this week, the Garmin GPSMAP 396 appears likely to be the hottest product at the show. As you’ve probably heard, it combines GPS navigation, datalink weather and XM audio all in the same size package as the popular GPSMAP 296. Our sister publication, Aviation Consumer, recently evaluated the product […]

There’s an old joke among aircraft mechanics that “the most dangerous thing in aviation is an aircraft owner with a screwdriver.” (Or a wrench, or a toolbox, or a Swiss army knife …)For many mechanics, this is no laughing matter. I’ve been writing for many years (on these pages and elsewhere) advocating owner involvement and […]

A recent story in one of the big aviation glossies on the supposed advantages of piston-engine FADEC has sparked a storm of discussion among several user groups on my radar. The discussion, as it often does within these forums, eventually boiled down into an interesting philosophical debate about engine management. Are we, as pilots, too […]

Odyssey Aviation Publications Thirty-some-odd years ago when I started flying, general aviation had barely reached the age of DME, and RNAV was just beginning to allow some of us to fly straight lines between points. Today, DME is still useful in many applications; but for the most part the avionics we considered mainstream through the […]