I met Bill Harrelson at the 2009 Copperstate Fly-In. Bill, an efficiency expert, sent me an email detailing the nearly non-stop flight home (Arizona to Virginia) in N5ZQ, a Lancair 320. That was more than three years and one N-number ago. In Thursday afternoon’s EAA e-Hotline I see that Bill is back at it. He […]
Touch & Go
A five, or seven, year ‘loophole’… some context
President Obama has called for changing the depreciation schedule for newly aquired non-commercial aircraft from five to seven years. Jay Carney, the president’s press secretary calls the current two-year schedule difference a special tax loophole. As you might imagine, this has pushed the aviation alphabet groups into damage control mode. Being of limited ability to comprehend “Washington speak” […]
Context is hard to find when the numbers are this big
We are all encouraged to “Write Congress” to support [fill in the cause here] from time to time. Often, the intention of the person seeking help is honorable. A post I just read on the Facebook page of Kyle Franklin from Franklin’s Flying Circus is a good example. It is a plea with the best […]
Lessons from the NFL
A few days before the Seattle Seahawks played the Washington Redskins in the Wild Card round of the National Football League playoffs, General Aviation News columnist, and nearly Washington D.C. resident Charles Spence emailed me to poke a little fun about the upcoming game. I took the comments to Facebook for broader discussion and we […]
Props for the prop
This time of year I find myself doing a lot of intro flights. The first question people ask is, “is it safe?” I reply that I’m more concerned about my safety driving to the airport than I am in the airplane. Over the years I’ve learned that there is a fine line between making sure […]
Time and talent
The church my family attends makes available to all comers a time and talent sign-up form. Our church, like most churches, has far more needs, and desires, than the paid staff can, or should, reasonably accomplish. As a result, we’ve created this sign-up form to tap the collective knowledge and labor base that is the […]
The other side of Summit
Picture this: 80 airplanes, more than 400 booths, and hours of seminars in beautiful Palm Springs, Calif. That pretty much sums up this year’s Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Aviation Summit. In the more than 10 years I have been working at General Aviation News, I have been to the annual event many times as […]
By the numbers
We all have a lot of numbers thrown at us every day. A few numbers I’ve heard in the last few weeks are worrying, but I’ve also heard some numbers that give me hope. From Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association President Craig Fuller at the Southeast Aviation Expo in Greenville, S.C., last month: Over the […]
Join the club
The subject of flying clubs and their relative merit has taken up space in this column before. I’m a believer. The idea of spreading the cost of ownership across eight or 10 or 12 partners in a flying club makes sense. And that’s to say nothing of the social aspects that can be so beneficial […]