Yellowstone spring

Smoke on the water: a long, summer cross country

Flying is fun, right? Yes, under the right circumstances. It can also be a challenge, as this story illustrates. Long cross-country trips in a small airplane can be a breeze, but only if that breeze is a healthy tailwind and the sky is clear. We had about twenty knots of headwind both going out and coming back.

70 years ago: a first lesson and a first article

I am not much for commemorations, preferring a windshield over a rear view mirror view. But, hey, maybe I have set a record: 70 years and still going so I’ll offer that up for contemplation and as well as a challenge to the younger folks in this business today. It would make me proud if someone did it for longer.

Caption contest #9

Welcome to our latest Caption Contest at Air Facts, where we post a photo and call on our very talented readers to provide a caption for that photo. Check out our most recent one below and if an amusing or clever caption comes to mind, just post it as a comment. In two weeks, we’ll cut off this contest and the staff of Air Facts will choose their favorite caption.
Sunset from Cessna

The dream that is personal aviation

About a year after my girlfriend first bought me an introductory lesson, I recall hoping that such passion for flight would never subside. Still the novice, I had enough journeys in mind to fill at least my first logbook’s worth of entries. On a spring day in Morristown, New Jersey, I endeavored to strike one off the list with a flight down the coast.

Friday Photo: Capitol emerges from the fog

Flying as a helicopter air ambulance pilot in Washington, DC, can be a stressful job. But as this week's Friday Photo shows, it can also offer some unique views. While most pilots will never get this close to the US Capitol, pilot John Guazzo got to see it covered in fog from 900 feet.
Air Canada 727

15 minutes to disaster – and I never knew it

Feeling good about our decision, we continued with the number three engine just above idle keeping all the a/c systems running normally. We had no trouble maintaining FL330 with only a slight reduction of airspeed. For weeks, I wore a smug smile on my face as I told my colleagues what a wonderful job I had done. Then one day I opened my company mailbox to find an envelope containing a curt note from the manager of the company Pratt & Whitney overhaul department.
SR-71 on runway

An SR-71 Blackbird goes AOG – now what?

The Blackbird moved on to the active, lined up, stroked the burners on those two Pratt & Whitney J-58s and started a slow, but steady acceleration down runway center. But, now the "Aw, Sh*t!" The Blackbird veered sharply and quickly to the right side of the runway. Everyone in the tower sat up straight, and then the bird departed the runway and came to an abrupt, ugly stop.
Cessna on final

Basic math for pilots: does it still matter?

Most of the new-hires came completely unglued when forced to execute visual approaches – especially when cleared for such approaches while still quite high and many miles from the field. He said his flights were often forced to miss the first attempts at visual approaches and go around because of the airplanes being much too high on their profiles; I wondered to myself how such a systemic problem could exist in this computerized age.

Friday Photo: rough country

The southwest United States is a wonderful place for flying, says Barrie Strachan. The weather is often clear and the scenery is often striking, as this week's Friday Photo shows. This picture, taken from Barrie's SingSport LSA, shows Coyote Gulch in southern Utah. It's makes for a great view, but it's "a hell of a place for an engine out."
Airplane out side window

Keep your eyes outside

When I began my flight training several years ago, my first instructor told me something that I thought was common sense and that he didn’t need to tell me: Keep your eyes outside. I remember asking myself where else I would keep my eyes if not outside and wondering why he thought it necessary to give me that little piece of advice.
Lear Jet 24

From the archives: Leighton Collins flies a Lear 24

In this trip into the Air Facts archives, ride along with Leighton Collins as he gets a familiarization flight in a Lear Jet 24 in 1967. With a variety of small jets hitting the market in recent years, from the Cirrus Jet to the Eclipse, many of Collins’s reactions to flying a powerful jet 50 years ago might sound familiar. Collins concludes, "they’ve really got themselves a show horse in the Model 24."

The disappearance of two Congressmen in Alaska

Anniversaries of important events are times for remembering and other things good and bad, including reminding oneself of the dangers of misplaced trust and overconfidence. Forty-five years ago, October 16, 1972, two Congressmen on the campaign trail were lost somewhere in Alaska. They had trusted their pilot to get them from Anchorage to Juneau.

Friday Photo: beach campfire by a seaplane

With seaplanes, it's not just about the journey - sometimes the destination is pretty good too. This Friday Photo from Scott Magie will have you wishing you could jump into the picture. A campfire on the beach in front of a Beaver. What's not to like?
Autogyro on ramp

Whirlygig: the troubled life of the J-2 autogyro

By the mid-1960s general aviation was booming, but airplanes and pilots were still regularly coming to grief in stall-spin accidents. Robert McCulloch sought to revitalize the autogyro concept for the mass GA market. Surely there must be demand for a stall-proof, slow-speed-capable flying machine that was both easier to fly and less complex than a helicopter.
RV-7 in flight

What’s wrong with experimental pilots?

The higher incidence of accidents in E-AB aircraft is just as logical as the fact that the fatal accident rate in private (general) aviation is almost infinitely higher than it is in airline flying. When more freedom is granted by reducing regulations and eliminating stifling procedures then the risk goes up.
Super Cub

One chance to get it right: inadvertent IFR flying

I immediately knew that my current situation was extremely serious. I was currently flying at 4000 feet and was trapped between two layers of cloud in a wide band of clear air. This “meat in the sandwich” scenario at the end of the day, in a low speed, basically instrumented aircraft with a relatively low-time pilot was about as bad as it could get.

Friday Photo: putting the plane away

Great aviation pictures don't always happen in the air. This week's Friday Photo shares the simple pleasure of a family flight, and the joy of introducing young people to flying. Reuben Keim captured this memorable shot of his son Luke and his two cousins as they pushed the airplane back in the hangar after a flight. Airplanes and family - a perfect combination.
ADS-B radar

How to interpret radar in the cockpit

Radar seems so simple at first: red is bad, green is good. What else is there to know? As any pilot with more than a few cross countries in the logbook knows, quite a lot. While a lot of the problems with radar operation have been solved by datalink weather, few of the problems with radar interpretation have been solved.

Video tip: avoiding turbulence

Nobody likes a bumpy flight, but forecasting turbulence isn't as easy as forecasting IFR conditions or thunderstorms. In this video tip from Sporty's Takeoff App, explore common causes of turbulence, plus tips for avoiding the worst rides.
Thunderstorms

I was a “weather coward,” and I made the right decision

"Hey jerk face!" my conscience screamed. "What about PILOT IN COMMAND don't you understand? Who makes the decisions around here? The line boy? Is this a good idea or not? If it's not, grow a pair and do what you know to do!”