“Harrison Ford has taken flying the way it should be taken, in baby steps,” the article points out. “Starting with a Cessna Caravan and remaining a Cessna fan he now flies a Citation 680 Sovereign. But not as a single-piot aircraft. Nope, instead Harrison employs a full-time 20,000 hour experienced pilot to ride shotgun.”

To read the full story: http://all-things-aviation.com/people-in-aviation/actor-pilot-harrison-ford/

On the other hand, read on. All of us can stand to learn more than we already know – or think we know. The US News list follows.

The race included seven collegiate teams, two from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which was last year’s winner; two from the University of Oklahoma; and one team each from Purdue University, Kansas State University and ISU.

More than 30 teams completed the four-day race, which started June 23 and ended June 26 in Atlantic, Iowa. “There are good pilots in this, with three international pilots, so we were up against some pretty darn good ladies who know how to fly,” who flew back with Campbell and Dunbar.

Women’s air racing began in 1929, making this year’s race a celebration of 80 years of women’s racing. Early racing was initiated by The Ninety-Nines, an international organization of female pilots founded in 1929 by 99 licensed women for the mutual support and advancement of aviation. After World War II, the All Women’s Transcontinental Air Race, better known as The Powder Puff Derby, was held.

To read the full story: http://www.tribstar.com/local/local_story_180215012.html

The FAA has allocated $10.6 million for the runway project but is prevented by law from helping to fund relocation of the museum to another part of the airport.

Sen. Charles Schumer and Congressman Steve Israel are trying to get legislation passed that would allow the FAA to help pay for the museum’s move.

For information: www.americanairpowermuseum.com/

To read the full story: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny–museuminperil0629jun29,0,2515908.story

“Leonardo da Vinci famously said, ‘Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return,’” Fuller continued. “We need more people with their eyes turned skyward, because whether or not they ever return, they will better understand all that general aviation is and can do.”

General aviation pilots in the United States enjoy a freedom that is the envy of their fellow pilots almost everywhere else in the world, Fuller said. The U.S. makes up slightly more than 6% of the world’s land mass, but its airspace is home to three out of every four general aviation flights in the world, he pointed out.

Over the past several months, even as it worked on a number of thorny issues, AOPA has focused a great deal of attention on helping America’s opinion leaders and decision makers and, through them, the public at large, to understand the contributions and the complexities of general aviation and the value it adds to the nation as a whole.

“But talking about it is one thing. Demonstrating it is something else altogether,” Fuller said. “A change in elevation changes your perspective literally and figuratively. By taking friends or family, teachers or local leaders flying, America’s general aviation pilots can directly affect how GA is perceived. And who knows? They might just cause the pilot population to grow, one introductory flight at a time.

“But the program could be in jeopardy,” said KSPR reporter Joanna Small, who then told the story of Braiden Sullivan, whose grandmother is convinced there was an angel watching over her grandson the day a riding lawnmower backed over him. The boy’s legs were practically destroyed below the knees, but now he’s walking, “thanks to another angel, the kind with wings made of metal, and a propeller,” Small said.

Angel Flight pilots have flown Braiden half a dozen times from Springfield, Missouri, to Cincinnati for essential surgeries to repair his legs. Mark Carroll is one of them. “The whole idea behind Angel Flight is [that] the pilots are willing to donate their time and any expenses associated with the flights,” Carroll explained. He foots the expensive bill. This plane just in fuel alone can cost $80 to $100 an hour,” he told Small.

Now Carroll is concerned that user fees proposed by the Obama administration could price pilots like him right out of the program. “If I’ve got to pay a fee every time I talk to air traffic control, every time I get a weather briefing, or land and take off, that all adds up,” Carroll said, “and that may make going up a real challenge.”

Braiden and his grandmother are facing a challenge of their own: “He has no calf,” she said as she pointed to one of Braiden’s legs.

“They need the Angel to beat that challenge,” Caroll said.

To read the full story: http://www.kspr.com/news/local/49290802.html

Mrs. Lawrence was an early member of the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots. She was among the select group of women who served as Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, ferrying military aircraft throughout the country.

Once she had to make an emergency landing in a cabbage field in Oklahoma said her son, Eric Lawrence. “The farmer in the field she landed in was quite impressed because he had never seen a plane,” he said. The farmer took Mrs. Lawrence into town to buy parts to fix the airplane, which she promptly repaired and flew off in, her son said.

Mrs. Lawrence learned to repair machinery from her grandfather. He was a self-employed machinist who designed and built manufacturing equipment for assembly lines in the big mills in Atlanta. She was a beautiful woman, but a tomboyish one who preferred working with tools and being outdoors.

During the late 1940s and ’50s, Mrs. Lawrence made a business of repairing airplanes in Deland, Fla., where she repaired engines fabric-covered wings. She also taught aviation classes at Stetson University in Deland, and volunteered for more than 25 years as a pilot for the Civil Air Patrol in Fernandina Beach. She married a pilot, the late B.L. Lawrence, and had two sons, Eric and Eliot.

To read the full story: http://www.ajc.com/services/content/printedition/2009/06/29/lawrenceobit0629.html

Arnold Aviation employees wheel cardboard boxes into the hangar on dollies and stack them next to the plane: Bananas, eggs, canned fruit, flour, frozen fish fillets, oranges, ice cream, stripping wax for floors, an 18-pack of Coors and bright yellow mail bags, stuffed with everything from bills and letters to magazines and Netflix movies.

Deep in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, folks are waiting. For 34 years, Arnold has served this tiny segment of Americans who prefer isolation over convenience, the roar of a river over the bustle of traffic, a sky dusted with stars instead of the fog of city lights, Bonner wrote.

Every week, the Cessna 185 mail plane lands on river banks and grassy cliffs scattered across remote parts of the Salmon River country, a stretch of land bigger than Indiana.
In a place where time seems stuck in a bygone era of the West, the sound of the plane reminds the wilderness dwellers they are not forgotten, but on this blustery day, Arnold finds himself preparing good-byes. The U.S. Postal Service sent notice in March that his approximately $43,000-a-year contract was being canceled. The letter notified the Idaho backcountry residents the air route would be cut. If they made the trek to the mountain town of Cascade, a daylong affair for most of them, a mail box would be available at no cost.

A month later, U.S. Rep. Walt Minnick, D-Idaho, visited Arnold’s small hangar. The lawmaker remembered the pilot who flew him into the backcountry more than three decades earlier, Arnold says. He wondered if Minnick’s visit might bode a change in the postal service decision and in May the agency ditched the plan to sever the backcountry mail contract. “There was no other alternative” for mail delivery, said the agency’s DeSarro. Minnick hailed the decision as a victory.

Actually, the postal service is exploring alternatives, requesting quotes to find out if the service could be provided at a cheaper cost. Arnold is bidding for the first time since he took over the contract in the 1970s, but the postal service will have a hard time finding another pilot to deliver the mail for less money, said pilot George Dorris. They could probably find one who is more efficient, doesn’t stop to visit, he quipped. “But the people back there won’t bring them rhubarb and cookies.”

Arnold, who estimates he flies about 17,732 miles a year, has been paid $2.45 a mile for the past several years. He carries passengers and freight with the mail to break even. He asked the Postal Service for $2.95 per mile, a yearly contract worth $52,309. After weeks of negotiations, he says he and the agency have agreed on $2.85 a mile, for a $50,536 yearly contract. “I’ll give em’ the dime,” Arnold says.

He has not received an official contract for the next year, he says, nothing has been finalized. He’ll most likely deliver his first mail route in July on faith.

To read the full story: http://blog.taragana.com/e/2009/06/28/idaho-pilot-becomes-keeper-of-backcountry-lifestyle-carries-mail-tradition-since-the-1970s-12287/

According to newspaper reports, Reusser flew a total of 253 combat missions in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and was shot down in all three, five times in all. His 59 medals include two Navy Crosses (second only to the Medal of Honor), four Purple Hearts and two Legions of Merit.

In 1945, while based in Okinawa, he stripped down his F4U-4 Corsair and intercepted a Japanese observation plane at high altitude. When his guns froze, he flew his fighter into the observation plane, hacking off its tail with his propeller.

In 1950, in Korea, he led an attack on a North Korean tank-repair facility at Inchon, then destroyed an oil tanker, nearly blowing himself out of the sky.

In Vietnam he flew helicopters and was leading a rescue mission when his Huey was shot down. He needed skin grafts over 35% of his badly burned body.

Reusser, who lived near Milwaukee, Oregon, was born Jan. 27, 1920, the son of a minister. He raced motorcycles to help pay for college and flying lessons before WWII. After retiring from the Marine Corps he worked for Lockheed Aircraft and the Piasecki Helicopter Corp.