This summer marked my 13th AirVenture. After a few years of going to the big show, I noticed that whenever I encountered someone with a particularly unusual or well-kept airplane, the names Bel Air Estates and Poplar Grove Airport (C77) in Illinois were attached to them. The privately-owned, public use airport came first, says Steve […]
Vectors for Hope
If you are in the Houston area on Sept. 28 and looking for a way to spend the day, head over to David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH) in Spring, Texas, for “Vectors for Hope,” a fundraiser to benefit Angel Flight. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association charitable foundation is behind the event. Vectors for Hope will benefit […]
Luxury living with your airplane
The mantra “if you build it, they will come” may have worked to attract baseball fans in the movie “Field of Dreams,” but it take more than a runway to attract homeowners to an airpark. For the developers of SilverWing at Sandpoint Airpark located in Sandpoint, Idaho, there were three important attributes in mind when […]
A personal starship
The paint scheme an aircraft builder choses for his or her ride speaks volumes about that person. When I set eyes on the tail of the Glastar owned by Carlos Emmons of Villa Rica, Georgia, I knew I’d met a kindred spirit. Emmons’ Glastar sports the symbol from the television series, “Star Trek, The Next Generation.” It’s […]
Love at first sight, before first flight
Retiring often means down-sizing your life. You move out of the four-bedroom house into a two-bedroom condo because now that the kids are grown and gone, you no longer need all that room. Down-sizing also applies to airplane ownership. Karen Smith of Bancroft, Ontario, Canada, who recently retired after 34 years in the aerial photography […]
Trim the cost of learning to fly
It has been said that copper wire was invented when two pilots found the same penny. We are a notoriously frugal bunch, due in part, no doubt, to the cost of our passion. But it is possible to cut costs when learning how to fly. Accelerated learning programs Stretching out the training process tends to […]
Fractional ownership: Getting a piece of a high-end aircraft
Would you like to fly a well-maintained, newer airplane, but can’t afford to buy one just yet? Rather than back-burner this dream, you might want to consider fractional ownership. One of the first fractional programs available to the single-engine piston driving crowd was PlaneSmart!, which began operations in 2003, “as a means to give pilots […]
Access Aviation Project: Creating new pilots
The first step in helping someone get a pilot certificate is getting that person into an airplane. That’s the mission of the Aviation Access Project, an asset management company geared toward Light-Sport Aircraft (LSA). According to CEO Rick Matthews, to attract wanna-be pilots to the “culture of aviation, we have to make aviation friendlier.” “It […]
SMX taxiway redesignation sparks controversy
Pilots at Santa Maria Airport (SMX) on California’s central coast are learning their way around new taxiway designations — but they aren’t happy about it. Neither are the controllers who man the tower at the airport, who claim they were not consulted on the changes. According to Airport Manager Chris Hastert, a runway extension project […]