Ownership

Myintroduction to the high cost of replacement parts came shortly after I first bought mytwin Cessna in 1987. I hadn’t yet started doing my own maintenance at that time, and Iinnocently asked my A&P to check the deicing boots and find out why they weren’tinflating. A week later, I got the plane back with a […]

NBC’s two-hour made-for-TV movie Blackout Effect stars EricStoltz as a dedicated young NTSB investigator, and costars veteran character actor CharlesMartin Smith as an eccentric and emotional air traffic controller. The show starts out very promisingly with lots ofquick sequences intercut between airline cockpits and an ARTCC dubbed “MidwestCenter” located in Illinois. (Can you spell ZAU?) […]

It was a cool, not quitecold, day for my flight from Champaign, Illinois to Chicago’s Midway airport. Theperformance charts indicated that I would be airborne in about 2,200 feet at close togross weight. With the passenger load I was carrying, I had enough fuel to fly to MDW,then on to Milwaukee (the alternate) and then […]

Although nowadays I usually fly with my BoseANR headset, I still have the first aviation headset I ever bought: a venerable DavidClark H10-40 that I bought back in the 1970s, now covered with scratches earned duringmany years of faithful service in the cockpit. It has new gel ear seals, but has beenrelegated to back-up and […]

It’s only human nature. There you are, looking through the Bonanza or Cessna 210 or Mooneyads in Trade-A-Plane to check out how much your retractable single has appreciated-or maybe to find out what it would cost to trade up from your fixed-gear bird. Suddenly,without warning, your eyes are drawn down the page by a mysterious […]

In the search for your dream plane, one of the foremost considerations is value!If you’re like most of us, you don’t mind paying a fair price for anything you purchase.But in the case of an aircraft, it’s often difficult to determine exactly what that fairprice might be. Is the Skyhawk advertised above really worth $33,500? […]

Start looking at the airport closest to your home, because you have a chance to see theaircraft without incurring any expense. This works well if you’re looking for a Cessna 150or other small common aircraft. But by the time you’re stepping up to a four placeaircraft, you should begin to look farther afield. The best […]

Buyinga first airplane is every bit as much of a thrill for most people as buying a first car.Unfortunately, most first-time airplane buyers approach their purchase very much the sameway as they do when shopping for an automobile. Typically, they first decide how much theycan afford to spend on an airplane – it might be […]

Nobody’s ever accused me ofbeing an early-adopter when it comes to aviation. I’m unabashedly skeptical aboutaeronautical innovations until they’ve been proven in the field for years. When Mobil AV-1was being touted as the greatest thing since sliced bread, I stuck with my Aeroshell W100.When Cermicrome cylinders were all the rage, I stuck with nitrided steel […]

Here’s the concept: Some terrorists have a gripe with the UnitedStates. Terrorists are in the business of hijacking airliners, and as any terrorist worthhis Semtex knows, there is one airliner without equal: Air Force One. And as long as youare going to hijack Air Force One, you may as well do it while the president […]