I recently read about a study involving dogs in homes, dogs in shelters, and wolves. The researchers rounded up 10 animals from each category and gave them each a puzzle box containing a food reward. The catch was that the box could only be opened with some persistence. Eight of the 10 wolves successfully opened […]
Opinion
Change is in the air
Human beings are, by nature, a somewhat dull and pedestrian crowd. They tend to like the status quo and abhor change. If you know any human beings, you’ve no doubt noticed this characteristic of their personalities. Perhaps nothing illustrates this resistance to change the way the global cooling/global warming/climate change argument has. Had the earth’s […]
Flying Icon’s A5 LSA seaplane
The Light-Sport Aircraft (LSA) sector is aviation’s newest and most prolific with numerous outstanding aircraft available from Europe and the United States. Europeans seemed to own the category at first because regulations on the other side of the Atlantic permitted companies to fully build very similar aircraft. When the FAA caught up by releasing the […]
Logbooks catalog more than hours
By JEB BURNSIDE. I’m in the middle of what’s shaping up to be a long-term project: Organizing my logbooks and other flight records. I have varying details on literally decades of personal flying spread across four bound logbooks, a roll-my-own database on a hard drive, and my airplane’s tach sheets. Very little is duplicated in […]
Aeronca C-2: Small plane, big records
Introduced in February 1930 at the St. Louis Air Show, the Aeronca C-2 was the first lightweight aircraft to be type certificated for production. Coming as it did during a time of economic distress that affected everyone in aviation, the low-cost, low-upkeep Aeronca C-2 put flying within the reach of many. It was available for […]
Don’t fix what ain’t broke
Often, I hear from readers who wish to share insights and advice based on their perception of the state of the general aviation marketplace. Many of the suggestions they offer are good. They have merit. I suspect if implemented, they might actually work. Ideas are one thing. Gaining actual traction, though, that’s the rub. Fortunately, […]
I choose to fly
Over the course of my life I’ve had the opportunity to make a few million choices. There’s nothing unusual about that. We all make choices. Should we have red wine with dinner, or white? Should we have wine at all? Fish or chicken? You know the drill. Of those many choices I’ve made over the […]
What to do about a lean mixture setting
Q: I have a PA-25-260 ag plane. When I let it idle 640 rpm, it makes a popping noise, however after takeoff, when I reduce power (slowly), the loader says he can hear a popping noise. Both mags check good and I recently replaced the spark plugs due to a drop in one mag. This fixed the […]
Knowing when to step in
Two guys I never knew once flew for my first airline. One was a training captain, the other a freshly minted first officer. They were best of friends for as long as anyone could remember, so it was natural that the training captain would successfully lobby to get his best friend hired. It also didn’t surprise […]