Recent Updates

As aptly summed up by air racing pioneer and three-time winner of the Thompson Trophy, Roscoe Turner: “There is no excuse for an airplane unless it will fly fast.” The SX300 does all that and then some. Heck, it looks blazingly fast just sitting on the ramp! Designed by Ed Swearingen, whose career and accomplishments […]

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) have released the names of the astronauts selected to crew the Artemis II mission to fly by the Moon. The team will include mission commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Hammock Koch from NASA and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen from CSA. The first crewed […]

Like a lot of kids, I dreamed of flying. I used to ask for a flying car for Christmas every year. As an adult, that dream didn’t fade away. Now I’m a 23-year-old private pilot with my own airplane—a Van’s RV-6. After a lot of work, I made my dream a reality. Growing up, it didn’t […]

Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky has announced plans to produce a fully autonomous hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) prototype. According to the company, its Hybrid-Electric Demonstrator (HEX) will be used to evaluate “large aircraft design, novel propulsion systems and control architectures for sustained hover, and ranges greater than 500 nautical miles.” The prototype is expected […]

You remember the bicycles hanging under the wing, right? You may not remember that the yellow-and-red high wing carrying those bikes was the Murphy Radical prototype, even though it was on our cover way back in the October 2017 issue of KITPLANES. But everyone seems to remember the bikes. Well, no bikes this time, but we’re taking another look […]

A multi-year project between the FAA and EAA has resulted in important changes being inserted into the latest advisory circular pertaining to Experimental/Amateur-Built flight testing. In the latest version of AC90-89 (the C suffix), it includes a task-based Phase I flight test option to the traditional 25- or 40-hour programs. In short, when the tasks are […]

I love visiting central Oregon, specifically Redmond and Bend. These are youthful towns full of ski bums and creative people selling handcrafted, home-brewed goodies. There are cute boutiques where you can find prints of mountains, coffee shops with fresh pastries, outdoor adventure stores selling the latest bikes and, of course, breweries. I also love visiting […]

Citing a ground systems issue, NASA and SpaceX scrubbed Monday’s planned launch of the Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). According to NASA, the decision was made in order to allow an investigation into “an issue preventing data from confirming a full load of the ignition source for the Falcon 9 first stage […]

NASA and SpaceX are targeting Monday, Feb. 27, for the launch of the Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). If all goes according to plan, the mission will depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center at 1:45 a.m. local time, carrying NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi […]

The mighty P-51 Mustang is unquestionably one of the most iconic and famousaircraft of World War II. Born out of necessity in the tumult of war, the Mustang was, if not an immediate success, then definitely an enduring one once it got the more powerful Merlin engine. It was unparalleled as an escort fighter—fast, agile, […]