You live in the South, so icing isn’t a problem, right? Wrong, as this winter’s Arctic blasts demonstrate. Wing icing has been in the news a lot, lately, and pilots should be paying attention regardless of where they live. On Dec. 29, the National Transportation Safety Board issued an Alert to Pilots concerning ice accumulation […]
Snail mail becomes air mail
If you are an aircraft buff and a stamp collector, the United States Postal Service is about to deliver for you in a big way. This summer the post office will make available 10 stamp designs titled “”American Advances in Aviation.”” The designs, painted by William S. Phillips, an award-winning historical aviation artist, are models […]
The newest jet jockeys
University of Florida scientists have grown rat brain cells in a petri dish and taught them to fly a fighter plane, according to school officials. The “”brain,”” grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a single embryo, has been taught to fly an F-22 jet simulator, they claim. “”When we first hooked it up, the […]
Now that’s whale watching!
One of the best shows on earth is getting underway off the coast of California as the gray whales make their annual migration north. Biplane, Air Combat & Warbird Adventures in Carlsbad, Calif., offers you a chance to watch the show from a vantage point 1,500 feet in the air, from the cockpit of a […]
Why security agencies fear GA
“We don’t know who you are.” That was the short answer from Greg Mayes, chief of aviation security at the Secret Service, when asked what possible threat his agency sees from general aviation. “With the airlines, we’ve vetted all the pilots, we vet all the passengers, we know everything that goes on board right down […]
Let’s Talk: What we have here is a failure to communicate
Aviation must learn to speak with one voice, writes Steve Bill Hanshew elsewhere in this issue of General Aviation News. It is a theme which we have tried to nurture in the past, with little to show for it. We still think it a good — indeed a vital — idea. Hanshew cites the National […]
There goes lunch…
Can you imagine 200 hours of somersaults? Unusual attitudes are one thing, but how would you like to perform nose-over-tail somersaults in the Space Shuttle? The return to flight rehearsals for the Space Shuttle now include that maneuver. The idea is that the flip will expose the underside of the shuttle for tile inspection. A […]
Fly a different plane each day
Can’t get enough flying? How about flying every day? You can — at least at your desk — with the 365 Tiny Paper Airplanes Page-A-Day Calendar from Workman Publishing. The calendar, designed by paper airplane world record holder Ken Blackburn and engineer Jeff Lammers, features a year of paper airplanes small enough to fit in […]
80-year-old woman sets record as oldest to experience zero gravity
Neither age nor gravity stopped 80-year-old Dorothy Simpson from flying into the record books. According to Guinness World Records, she recently became the world’s oldest woman to experience weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight with Space Adventures, Ltd. “”I didn’t set out to break any records,”” says Simpson. “”But experiencing weightlessness on my Zero-G flight was […]