Later this week I’ll be flying from Lakeland, Florida to Lowcountry Regional Airport in South Carolina. I’m flying there in a shiny, nearly new, totally rebuilt Cessna 152. As hard as it may be to believe, I’ll be meeting a new friend who will be flying an almost identical airplane in from the frozen north. […]
Opinion
Baby, it’s cold outside
If you live in the eastern half of the United States, you may have noticed that nature has turned a bit nippy lately. Even in the deep south they’ve felt the brisk embrace of winter’s furious freeze. There’s no getting around it. It’s some kind of cold out there, and frankly, I don’t care for […]
Good intentions
Before I could qualify for my helicopter private pilot license in the Robinson R-22, I had to watch an R-22 fall out of the sky. It was part of Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR 73) training. The training also involved viewing a video of the wreckage close-up. In it, I could plainly see a pair […]
Some big questions about RPAs, including the big one: Insurance
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In 2014 there were 2,294 national airspace violations. That would be an average of more than six every day. In most of these incidents the persons involved were licensed pilots. What do these abstract figures mean? Perhaps very little unless you were involved in one of the incidents. Or, unless you are […]
Riding out of town on a rail
The plan was simple: I was going to hop into the trusty Cessna 152, point it to the north, and fly for just shy of 1,000 miles into the wintery wonderland known as Maryland. That was what I said I was going to do anyway. What I actually did was drive less than two miles to […]
Half empty or half full? Part 2
Saturday at the U.S. Sport Aviation Expo in Sebing, Florida, dawned sunny and warmer. The show itself seemed sunnier with a weekend crowd. I can’t understand why organizers scheduled so many weekdays and omitted the Sunday of a three-day holiday weekend. The trade show element (industry meetings, et. al.) can surely be done on Thursday […]
Is the glass half empty or half full?
I finally got to the U.S. Sport Aviation Expo in Sebring, Florida, this year. I had two distinct impressions of the event — known by most as the Sebring LSA Expo — and, by extension, the state of the LSA industry. Perhaps it was because I hung out with two very different friends over two […]
Lure them with pancakes, hook them with adventure
EAA Chapter 1067 is based in Naples, Florida. There are worse places to be in February, I can tell you. But there are few better. What attracted me is what attracts so many to the back corner of the T-hangars at Naples, directly across from the shade hangars, right along the fence line where EAA […]
1,000 pilots x $20 = 3 new pilots
We don’t need to attract every kid, just the next kid… or three. Seventeen-year-old Ella, 16-year-old Jonathan and 15-year-old Benjamin Robbins are passionate about aviation. The homeschooled trio from Ferndale, Wash., have been designing and building their own radio-controlled aircraft for several years. A family friend took each of the kids for a ride in […]