What do you do with an airplane once it’s damaged beyond repair? If you’re the Air Force, you use it to study issues related to aging. That’s what’s happening at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base with a T-1A Jayhawk, a “”missionized”” Beech 400A that was used to train Air Force and Navy aviators to fly cargo […]
What’s next for the Global Flyer?
What’s next for the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer and its millionaire pilot Steve Fossett? Fossett, who flew solo, nonstop around the world in 67 hours, 1 minute and 46 seconds, was presented with the world record by David Hawksett from Guinness World Records a few days after the flight ended. During the presentation, Fossett noted […]
Tortoise on final
When the staff at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, Wash., was looking for names for the zoo’s Radiated Tortoises, they wanted something that referenced speed — which tortoises do not possess — as sort of a joke. Since the zoo is close to Seattle, birthplace of the Boeing Co., the zoo crew named the […]
Light and shadow
Our world and our lives are composed of light and shadow. That can be taken both literally and euphemistically, of course. Day and night, happiness and sorrow, good times and bad, the bright moments and the dark times as the years go by. These days, somehow, the light seems brighter and the shadow darker than […]
Velocity XL-5
With five years the generally accepted norm as to whether a company survives or goes out of business, it seems safe to say that Duane Swing, chairman and owner of Velocity Aircraft, has found the magic formula. Migrating from Ohio to Sebastian, Fla., in 1992, Swing had a dream: to purchase the assets of Velocity […]
Food that’s out of this world
What do you do when you have a passion for aviation and make your living in the food service industry? Turn a DC-3 mounted on a school bus frame into a café, of course. In the 1990s Phil and Becky Peterson of Oxnard, Calif., were toying with the idea of mating an airframe with a […]
Another kind of food drop
Do you find it challenging to get your dog to take a heartworm pill carefully hidden in a ball of hamburger? Imagine the challenge of dropping tons of oral rabies vaccine over Texas, hidden in dog food in hopes that gray foxes will eat it. The Texas Department of State Health Services did just that […]
You, too, can look like an airline pilot
Two Senators have concluded that it’s too easy to buy airline pilots’ uniforms. They want the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Transportation Security Administration “”to investigate why uniforms are so readily available.”” Senators Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Barack Obama (also D-Ill.) claim that airport security is lax for people who […]
Jury hits Lycoming with $96 million judgment
The $96 million verdict of a Texas jury against Textron Lycoming has left two Dallas lawyers crowing, Lycoming in dead silence, and much of the aviation industry wondering how 12 country folk came to know so much about engineering. The case concerned a back-and-forth legal battle between Lycoming and Interstate Southwest Ltd., supplier of the […]