I can now honestly say, “I was on the grassy knoll.” I visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas when I was in the Lone Star State attending the 16th annual Women in Aviation International Conference. I was not born when President Kennedy was assassinated, but I have seen the film of the motorcade and the black […]
Opinion
Great BBQ and Garth Brooks
I believe the best BBQ in the South is a place called Swadley’s Bar-B-Que in Bethany, Okla. Swadley’s is a mile or two south of Wiley Post (PWA) Airport in Bethany. Wiley Post is 6 nm north of Will Rogers World Airport and offers the best alternative services for GA pilots in the OKC metro. […]
An impossible task
Name the best BBQ in the country (The Best of the South, Our readers weigh in on the best eating, including the best BBQ, March issue)? C’mon gang, that is an impossible task. I know, every, and I mean every, establishment and person in the world has to have one superlative claim to fame. But […]
Camping under the wing
Winter’s end found me suffering from a very Victorian condition — a maudlin mood. Had I lived in that grand age, my condition would have been more grandiose, more pronounced, more eloquent, with tomes of Edgar Allen Poe and pots of tea lying about to help sustain me. Instead, the only indication of my condition […]
What’s wrong with GA
The letter to the editor in the March 2005 edition of The Southern Aviator (The two don’t add up) in which Bill Howard objects to Joel Elman’s article in a previous edition and calls it “irresponsible” was, to me, indicative of what is wrong with general aviation today.Yes, there are high fuel prices, insurance, tie-down/hangar […]
‘An American Trilogy’
I enjoyed your article in the March issue (To save the South). In 1972, my friend and mentor, the late songwriter Mickey Newbury, recorded a song that he called “An American Trilogy.” He had taken a few lines from “Dixie,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and an old Stephen Foster song “All My Trials” […]
Light and shadow
Our world and our lives are composed of light and shadow. That can be taken both literally and euphemistically, of course. Day and night, happiness and sorrow, good times and bad, the bright moments and the dark times as the years go by. These days, somehow, the light seems brighter and the shadow darker than […]
Better weather on the horizon, thanks for NASA
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Thanks to NASA and a regional airline, pilots soon will have better weather information. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has teamed with Mesaba Airlines to equip dozens of Mesaba aircraft with the Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Report (TAMDAR) instrument. According to NASA, the TAMDAR sensor allows aircraft flying below 25,000 feet […]
Alaska’s unsung heroes
I read the subject article in the Jan. 28 issue with interest. Attached is a photograph I took of one row of C-46s at K-2 Air Base in Korea while stationed there as part of the 1973 AACS Squadron in 1956. I was not a pilot then, but I rode in several of them around […]

