By DEREK ROBERTS. If the best way to learn something is to teach it, then one would be wise to look towards Dr. Amy Hoover for flying advice. As a long-time professor and twice elected chair (2007-2015) of the Aviation Department at Central Washington University, Hoover’s 30-year career in aviation includes more than 6,000 hours […]
Opinion
Alaska aircraft registration proposal is a tangled web in the making
“Oh, what a tangle web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” To be honest, I have no idea if this line from Walter Scott’s poem “Marmion” is apropos to the proposed aircraft registration discussion currently taking place in Alaska. But it was the first thing that popped into my head after reading through […]
Something’s happening
Over the course of my life I’ve had three major obsessions. In chronological order they are motorcycles, guitars, and airplanes. My dad was an avid motorcyclist, owning a Harley Davidson 125cc machine when he was but a young lad in St. Petersburg, Florida, in the late 1940s. By the time I was born, he owned […]
In appreciation of the 1%
Current estimates of the population of the United States clock in somewhere around 323 million men, women, and children. If we assume a quarter of those people are under the age of 18, as the US Census Bureau suggests, that cuts the number of adults down to fewer than 250 million men and women. Now, […]
Why is my new engine running so much hotter than my old engine?
Q: I fly a Cessna 182S registered HP1401. It has a Lycoming IO-540-AB1A5, 3 blade prop. Sea level OAT is 90°F or so year round. It had a single probe analog CHT display connected to cylinder #1, which always remained around 320°F. I then installed a digital engine monitor, which showed the rest of the […]
Enjoy your freedom to fly in 2018
American pilots are extraordinarily fortunate. We have a freedom to fly that many around the world can barely comprehend, much less enjoy as we do. Yes, I’m well aware many American aviators don’t pay much attention to flying outside U.S. borders. Indeed, around 80% of all general aviation airplanes are located in the USA, also […]
No more zero days
New year, new calendar, clean slate. Turning over a calendar seems to create in many of us the desire to do — and be — better. Sadly, all too soon, we fall back into our regular ruts and habits. But this year will be different, I hope. A friend of mine sent me a link […]
A century’s passion lost and found
Because I’m a bit weird, I found myself reading through a stack of newspapers from the early 20th Century recently. In those pages I found something that I hadn’t seen in a while, something almost foreign to the American public in our current time. It was this: Absolute wonder and unrestrained excitement at the idea […]
No pilot? No problem!
An age-old component of aviation has been the pilot-in-the-loop. A pilot brings sophisticated human faculties to bear in solving problems of flight and making judgments on proper actions. But sometimes, the presence of a pilot can be detrimental — to the pilot. If an aircraft is to be subjected to dangers ranging from gun and […]