Friday Photo: Arizona canyons

We were heading from the mountains of Show Low, Arizona to the desert of Phoenix, Arizona for the day so Krista and I could spend the day with her son Casey. The trip would normally be a six plus hours round trip by car.  However, being blessed and fortunate enough to fly, it is a 90-minute round trip allowing us to spend more time with Casey and still be home in time for dinner.
Bahamas

The relaxed life as a charter pilot in the Bahamas

It really is "Better-In-the-Bahamas" and I tell those people I like, those who live in Florida and have not visited the Out Islands, not to visit would be like living one mile from the rim of the Grand Canyon and never looking in. I felt lucky living and flying in the islands. I slowly became an “island pilot.”

An airline pilot gets his general aviation fix

My good friend Jason arrived in Cape Town on an overnight with his airline and very large twin-engine jet. He normally comes to stay and we catch up over a steak, talking rugby and fishing. This time was to be slightly different in that I mentioned to Jay that there was a club outing to Saldanha and would he like to go. He was very excited and hence we awoke early the next morning to pre-flight the Yak.

Back to basics: flying 727 LaGuardia shuttles

Flying 727 shuttles out of New York’s La Guardia Airport to Boston and Washington in the 1980s and 90s was a hands-on, back-to-basics operation: steam gauges, hand-tuned VHF navs, one or two low freq ADF, no FMS and an autopilot that had to be tended to get you where you were going.

Friday Photo: sunset in the rain

Dale Walton was flying his 1967 Cessna 150G at historic Minter field in Shafter, CA (MIT), an old World War II training base when he took this photo. As he says, "My first landing in the rain! No wind to speak of, but what a thrill it was watching the rain speed by my landing light in the wing Cessna. One of many more adventures to come. Shot with my iPhone 7+."

Go or No Go: finding a gap

You've just passed 500 hours in your Cessna 182RG, and it has proven to be a very reliable traveling machine over the last four years. Today's mission is to get you home from Columbus, Ohio (TZR), to South Bend, Indiana (SBN). The flight will take just under 1.5 hours, compared to over four hours driving, but as always weather is a potential factor.

Flying a Pitts Special over the Amazon

I am sitting in this brightly colored red, two seat, Pitts Special S2B stunt plane alone over the Atlantic Ocean at 9,500 feet. I have been flying out of sight from land for quite some time and occasionally the magnitude of the adventure I am undertaking sinks in and I have to mentally remind myself to take this trip one small step at a time.

Silent night over the Appalachian Mountains

We all have occasion to read accident reports, now and then, and hope to learn something for our effort. When we step into the cockpit, these thoughts are set aside in order to focus on the tasks of flying. It is only in the rarest circumstances when mortality infiltrates the cockpit and stubbornly takes hold.

Friday Photo: Chicago fly-by

I had been in Chicago on business the day before. It was a beautiful morning. Skies were mostly clear. Visibility was unlimited. Air was calm. Temperature was cool (it was late-September). Great day to fly. I had just departed O6C (Schaumburg Regional), about to head home. I decided to take a tour of downtown Chicago, from out over Lake Michigan.

Putting on a good show in Chile with F-15s

In 1990, I was privileged to take a team of U. S. Air Force jets and airmen to The International Space Fair, aka, FIDAE, the largest air show and exhibition held in Latin America. It was also the first time an official contingent of American military visited Chile since the Pinochet affair of the 1970s. We had three F-15s, a KC-10 and a B-52 for display and flight demonstrations.
First solo

That magical age: a pilot’s 40-year journey from Cessna to Airbus

My Dad turned 65 recently, and as with so many of his peers, this year means mandatory retirement from 26-year airline career. While for him it's a singularly pivotal and more-bitter-than-sweet event, his retirement also represents a journey that began with a Cessna and ended with an Airbus, in what has become a massive wave of his peers with remarkably similar stories.

Friday Photo: Richard Collins with Concorde

There were many important airplanes in Richard Collins's life, including his Cessna P210, N40RC, which he flew for almost 9,000 hours. Close behind that special airplane was Concorde, the groundbreaking supersonic airliner. He rode on it 14 times, flew the simulator, and became good friends with John Cook, a British Airways captain on the graceful bird.
Richard Collins' Cessna P210

Learning from the master

I first met Dick in the Park Avenue offices of FLYING Magazine, but I got to know Dick – and learned to fly – in Dick’s real office, the cockpit of 40RC, his Cessna P210. During my years at FLYING as a staffer and then as a freelance columnist, I made about 110 flights in over 500 hours in 40RC.

The best in the world, and a truly good man

Memories are stored like snapshots in a shoebox. Moments frozen in time. Dick Collins was hunched over his typewriter tapping away that day in the fall of 1964 when I first saw him. He politely said hello, but kept working against a deadline as his father, Leighton Collins, showed me around the Air Facts office in Princeton, New Jersey.

Meeting him was like meeting God

To a neophyte pilot and aviation journalist in the 1970s, meeting Richard L. Collins for the first time was like meeting God. It was at the 1978 Reading Show in Pennsylvania, and I was in my fourth year as an editor and writer with the British weekly Flight International. As a pilot, I devoured FLYING magazine from cover to cover each month; as a writer, I regarded it with awe.
Cessna P210

Personal flying’s greatest champion

I was so lucky to work for and with Richard for more than 40 years. Richard refused to be called an aviation journalist. What he did, and I did, at FLYING magazine, and for him at AOPA Pilot, and then for Air Facts Journal on the web, is personal aviation promotion. Richard championed the cause of using our own airplanes for personal travel on our own schedule with a maximum of schedule reliability and safety.
Richard Collins

Working with an icon for over 40 years

The thing with Richard is that I knew him as a coworker and colleague and friend and sometimes forgot his icon status. Once, in Oshkosh, he and I were walking to our table for dinner in a local restaurant and I became aware that people were whispering and nodding in our direction. It made me uncomfortable, until I heard someone say, “That’s Richard Collins,” and I felt like a celebrity.

Aviation’s everyman hero

Dick wouldn’t have wanted a long tribute. While nobody ever accused him of lacking confidence, Richard Collins was a surprisingly quiet and private man. His idea of a memorial would be a tall glass of whiskey and a nod. But I hope you’ll forgive me if I ignore his wishes and remember the life of a legend - and my aviation hero.

Friday Photo: commuting home at sunrise

After a nearly 30 year break, I finally had a mission: visiting and tending to my two oldest children who began attending a boarding school in Dillard, Georgia. My wife and two youngest children have now relocated to the area and I commute there on the weekends to be with them. I'm now treated to amazing views like this one, and a warm homecoming, nearly every weekend.
Cessna 150 panel

My first flight in actual IMC as an instrument student

At one point, I was so tensed up, worn out from fighting the wind and trying to get needles centered, that I thought, “I just can’t do this. I should just give up and let Jack fly it in. This is so hard. Maybe I should just give up flying altogether.” Those thoughts lasted for just a brief moment when I heard Jack’s encouragement again, and I said to myself, “I can do this. I want to do this. Just do it.”