Touch & Go

Several years ago we asked a number of individuals prominent in the aviation world to give us their thoughts on the most important events in the history of aviation. I ran across those lists recently and it got me to thinking that a great deal has happened in the world of flight in the last […]

As I write this, Seattle is in the midst of a record-breaking rain spell. It has rained for 28 days straight. The record is 33 days. Some Pacific Northwest residents have a perverse desire to break that record. I’d just as soon see the sun again. The cold and gray weather is tedious. I think […]

Until recent times, pilots often wondered – and discussed at length – how flies land on ceilings. Do they do a half-roll first? A reversed split-s? Half of an inside loop? A few years ago, high-speed cameras finally taught us how the maneuver is done: Flies approach the ceiling in a shallow climb, contact it […]

Why is it that some people love amusement park rides that produce a physical force that mimics flying but are afraid to fly in a small airplane? One of my closest friends is a roller coaster fanatic, but he refuses to ride in a small airplane. And it’s not just because I am the PIC. […]

In 1997 I suffered an angina attack and subsequently underwent a four-way heart bypass operation. My recovery was normal and I regained my third-class medical certificate in less than a year. Over the years I’ve written about my medical problem several times because I wanted others facing a similar situation to recognize that their flying […]

In olden times – that’s 60 to 70 years ago – wrist watches with glow-in-the-dark radium numbers were popular. Whether we wore a Timex or a Rolex, that’s what we wanted. In those days, many aircraft instruments glowed in the dark. That, too, was accomplished with minute amounts of radium-226. Thousands of World War II […]

Amidst the rubble of a fatal King Air crash, accident investigator Greg Feith found something strange: A Velcro strip on the panel. When he asked the pilot’s wife what it was for, she told him that her husband would put an alarm clock there, set for 15-minute intervals. During his regular flights from Oklahoma to […]

In Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat,” he explains that there is a segment of the world’s population that seems to be continually striving to bring everyone else down to its very low level. Fortunately, he explains, the vast majority of people look around and see how great other people are living and notice […]

Landmarks make a city. Can you imagine Seattle without the Space Needle or St. Louis without the arch? Aviation and history buffs in the Silicon Valley are pondering the idea of a landscape without Hangar One, the dirigible hangar that dominates the grounds of Ames Research Center at Moffett Field. The grand old building, which […]