Spoiler Alert: The final paragraph of The Wright Brothers is my favorite. “They took off, soaring over Huffman Prairie at about 350 feet for a good six minutes, during which the Bishop’s only words were, “Higher, Orville, higher!” “They” were Orville Wright and his father Bishop Milton Wright. The Bishop was eighty-two years old at the […]
Opinion
A bucket full of luck
By IVY McIVER. They say that pilots start out with an empty experience bucket and a bucket full of luck. The trick is to fill the experience bucket before your luck bucket is emptied. Though one can make deposits into the experience account without making a withdrawal from the luck account, it would be foolish […]
You can change the future, one hour at a time
A friend recently made a comment that has really gotten me thinking. His concept was simple enough. There are a lot of people in the world. Some are well along in their career and doing pretty good. Some are looking at the future with eyes the size of pie-plates wondering, “How am I ever going […]
Should I pull the cylinders in my Pitts?
Q: I just bought back my original Pitts Special after 41 years. It now has a narrow deck O-360 that hasn’t been run in four years. I’m getting the PS-5C overhauled, but wonder what you think about pulling cylinders to inspect the camshaft before running it. We borescoped the cylinder walls and there appeared to be a honey-colored film on […]
Fast moving dragons
By JEB BURNSIDE. It’s way too early to know what happened to cause early July’s mid-air collision between a Cessna 150 and a U.S. Air Force F-16C near Moncks Corner, S.C. The accident is being investigated by the NTSB, but it’s likely the pilots involved were where they were supposed to be, doing nothing unusual. […]
English pilot becomes aviation sensation
Claude Grahame-White, a notable English pilot, took first place at the international air meet held at Boston during September 1910. Flying against notable American pilots such as Glenn Curtiss, Walter Brookins, and Ralph Johnson, he won the major prize for an overwater race to the Boston Lighthouse and placed first in other events to become […]
Around the field at AirVenture Oshkosh
I’ve often found that AirVenture is like drinking from the proverbial firehose. Until I look back through my notebook, the show is a bit of a blur. We’ve reported many of the storylines from the show, but I found a few nuggets in my notebook I think are worth sharing: Epic Aircraft is fully on […]
Stereotypically atypical
Everybody knows that people who are into aviation are rich. They’re spoiled, self-absorbed, 1%-ers who have no regard for what it takes to get by in the real world. Heck, airplanes cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that’s just for the small ones. Yep, pilots and aircraft owners are filthy rich scum who do nothing […]
FAA hiring: Fly the diversity-friendly skies
By WILLIAM HAMILTON Satire: Just as your aircraft reaches, say, 30,000 feet on your airline flight, say, from Denver to Chicago, the Captain says, “Hello. This is your Captain speaking. Welcome aboard Olympic Mountain General Airlines. Okay, I know some of you call us: OMG! But, seriously, passengers who studied urban sociology in college may […]