Experimentals

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, the biggest story here at Sun ‘n Fun this week was one we didn’t even expect: EAA’s announcement that it has partnered with Dynon Avionics to bring less expensive, non-certified avionics to the cockpits of certified aircraft. The first AML-STC list is modest: Cessna 172s and Piper’s PA-28 and […]

The CEO of the world’s biggest iron ore company was killed, along with his family and a hired pilot, in the crash of his kit-built aircraft in Sao Paolo, Brazil, on Saturday. Roger Agnelli, his wife, two grown children and their spouses died when their Comp Air 9 turboprop, which is a homebuilt aircraft in […]

The Experimental Aircraft Association’s Kermit Weeks Hangar is just down the road from the EAA AirVenture Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. While the museum is the public face of EAA, the Weeks Hangar is where the action is. In the most basic sense, it’s a maintenance and restoration facility. But that’s a bit like calling the […]

If there’s a great untapped resource in general aviation—other than unsold airplanes—it must be empty seats. Four-place airplanes rarely fly with more than two people and if we had data on it, I suspect most piston aircraft flights have one body aboard. And once this autonomy thing comes together, we can dispense with him/her and […]

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said last week it will develop a new X-Plane to pursue “radical improvements” in aircraft that can take off and land vertically, then shift to horizontal flight mode and reach speeds up to 400 knots. “The design envisions an aircraft that could fly fast and far, hover when […]

A few spots remain open for aviation professionals and researchers to attend a joint NASA-FAA On-Demand Mobility/Emerging Technology Workshop to be held March 8 and 9 in Arlington, Virginia. The roster of speakers includes researchers from NASA, DARPA and MIT, as well as industry experts from E-Volo, AeroVironment and BRS, and many more, in a […]

The name of Eric “Winkle” Brown may not be familiar to U.S. readers, but to the British, he was celebrated as the Royal Navy’s most decorated pilot. He held world records for having flown more different types of aircraft than anyone — a total of 487 — and the most carrier landings — 2,407. During […]

In rural Holden, Missouri, roughly 50 miles southeast of Kansas City, is a 10-acre island of recreational aviation in a vast ocean of corn and soybeans. The pole barns adjacent to its 1000-foot grass strip look like those on neighboring farms, until you look inside. The hulking gray lathe, milling machine, and drill press don’t […]

The CAFE Foundation this week announced the dates for their 10th annual Electric Aircraft Symposium, May 19 and 20, at the Marriott Waterfront in San Francisco. “CAFE Foundation believes that collaborative efforts are key in order to push forward electric flight,” the group said in a news release. “EAS 2016 will bring together the people […]

Better batteries for electric aircraft are in the works, but it may be five years before we see significant improvements in energy density, according to a leading battery researcher at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Jeff Chamberlain, who heads the lab’s Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Research Science, told AVweb in an exclusive interview […]