“Eighteen years, $18 million-$19 million dollars invested, and we haven’t delivered a single plane… yet.” Sherpa Aircraft founder Glen Gordon is ready to ship some product. In fact, they are currently assembling components for the first three customer-built Sherpa K650T’s. The Sherpa got its start in the early 1990s as a Super Cub on steroids. […]
Touch & Go
A few moments with Jack Pelton
Bonus depreciation and research and development tax credits. Those were two pieces of legislation Cessna’s Jack Pelton, president and CEO mentioned in response to my query, following his June 21 speech to the Aero Club of Washington. He spoke of the myriad challenges we in aviation face. FAA reauthorization (long-term, not patchwork); cancellation of aircraft […]
A trip back in time
I’ve been working on a book about my newspaper career. A major portion of my time in the business — more than 50 years in total — has been spent in the world of aviation. As I ventured into different aspects of my life in aviation, I tried to recall what airplanes I had flown […]
The Perfect Pilot
Does the perfect pilot exist? If you ask most pilots, they’ll jokingly reply, “Sure, you’re looking at him.” But it’s no joke to Bill Rhodes, who is heading up the Airmanship Education Research Initiative (AERI). A retired Air Force officer, he specializes in professional ethics, having served as head of the philosophy department at the […]
Kirk would be proud
Icon Aircraft’s Kirk Hawkins would be proud. While in a Tacoma-area Apple Store this past weekend to buy a graduation gift, I struck up a conversation with one of the store employees. When I told him I published General Aviation News, in response to his asking what I did for a living, he immediately asked, “Have […]
Flying in Alaska
I regularly attend aviation events all over the country and have been doing so for around 40 years. I always enjoy seeing the numbers and variety of aircraft at these events, whether the event is primarily for sport aviation enthusiasts or features high-end business aircraft. Oshkosh and Sun ‘n Fun always amaze me by the […]
Sporty’s course update impressive
I just watched the Advanced IFR DVD from the Sporty’s Instrument Rating Course. The quality of the video and interactivity made me wish this series had been around, in this format, when I was in flight training back in the, gulp, late 1980s. This isn’t a typical “ground school” video. Its use of high-end graphics […]
Commemorating 1,000 hours
One of the more frustrating aspects of being a flight instructor is that you get stood up sometimes. People don’t show because they oversleep, they forget, or they would really rather not be there. I remarked to a coworker that I was getting stood up so much I ought to start coming to work in […]
LSAs bring back memories of 1980s ultralight craze
Reading issues of The Pulse of General Aviation and Dan Johnson’s SPLOG column on Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) in the latest issue of General Aviation News put my memory on overload the other day. It also sent me digging into my files of far too many unfiled and poorly organized slides. Do you remember slides? […]