Stearman Red Baron

Vipers at 12 o’clock

It has been said that the last fighter pilot has been born. While time will answer that projection, this story is about the human element in dogfighting: the desire that pilots with skill and confidence have to test themselves against others with the same. In this epic experience, two of the latest fighters of the day meet relics of a bygone era.

Friday Photo: overhead Amsterdam airport

Passing through the CTR of Schiphol, one of the busiest airports in Europe, is a granted privilege for private pilots who are familiair with the CTR of EHAM. Preparation is key - knowing which runways are in use, wind direction, etc. - so that controllers can give direct commands which are followed promptly.

Go or no go: Thanksgiving trip across Florida

It's two days before Thanksgiving, which means it's time for the annual pilgrimage from your home in Jacksonville, Florida, to the home of your 91-year old mother in Naples. It's a 6-hour drive or a 1:45 minute flight in your Cessna 182, so it's easy to guess which method you would prefer. Will the weather cooperate? Read the weather briefing below and then tell us if you would go or cancel.
Aeronca

The loss of an old friend

I just lost an old aviation friend. The news came in unusual fashion, as an email with graphic photographs of the body, but no note about what happened. The damaged nose, the broken limbs— one separated from the body— it was hard to take. She had been pretty, perky, always ready for a good time. But now it was over.

Friday Photo: Ayers Rock, Australia

Ayers Rock is a famous sandstone monolith in the remote Northern Territory of Australia. It's a popular tourist destination, but it's difficult to reach by car. In an airplane, however, it is a scenic and unforgettable flight, as Bob Main shows in this week's Friday Photo. He calls it, "the trip of a lifetime."
Lower Russian Lake

Making an air drop from a Champ on floats – only in Alaska

The weather couldn’t have been better, though it would be a bit breezy in the mountains. I’d be supplying our proposed sheep camp with an air drop from a float-equipped, 65-hp Aeronca Champ. My flight log at the time showed that I had less than a meager 82 hours as a pilot. Confident I was; experienced I certainly was not.
Smiles in cockpit

Flying with a young child – is it possible?

One of the things I used to dream about before getting my license was to fly my wife and two-year old daughter around, sharing the experience of flying together. I would daydream about flying off to a fun destination, grab lunch (and coffee) and then enjoy a nice flight back to the home field. I often questioned if having an enjoyable flight was doable with a two-year old.
Night flying

Spooked about night flying in singles?

There will be a debate about flying at night in single-engine airplanes for as long as there are single-engine airplanes and it gets dark every night. That is a given. Recently the son of an old friend emailed and asked me what I thought about flying singles at night. My stock answer to pilots who express concern about this is simple: If you are not comfortable with it, don’t do it.

Friday Photo: Manhattan over the nose

New York has one of the most famous skylines in the world, and there's no better way to see it than from the cockpit of an airplane. Jody Kochansky was lucky enough to get a view of Manhattan from his Cirrus SR-20 on a perfectly clear day, and he shares it in this week's Friday Photo.
172 landing

Don’t turn a practice emergency into a real emergency

I was out at my local airport one recent afternoon, watching planes beat up (or should I say pulverize), the traffic pattern, and I saw something that really made me wonder what folks were thinking. I observed one locally-based Cessna 172 try to execute a simulated engine-out emergency landing on our 5,000 ft-long runway.
Washington airspace

Death, taxes, and airspace

Pilots and aviation lobby groups are up in arms right now about the potential privatization of Air Traffic Control, and rightly so. Unfortunately, these same groups have been much quieter about another government-led aviation disaster, one that has happened right under our noses: the relentless expansion of restricted and controlled airspace.
Cirrus jet

Video tip: Instrument approaches

Single pilot IFR is hard, says well-known flight instructor Jason Miller, and the biggest challenge is to stay ahead of the airplane. In this practical video, he offers three tips for managing a flight, from airspeed control to autopilot usage. The goal is for your mind to arrive at the next waypoint before the airplane does.
Piper on runway

The runway behind you…

This is a story about two words - “unfortunately” and “fortunately” - and has been de-identified in order to protect the embarrassed. However much can be learnt from the following incident. The pilot knew the aircraft well, having operated in and out of some quite restricted spaces over quite a long period. No need to taxi back right to the end of the strip – half way up will do! Unfortunately, a bad decision in retrospect.

Friday Photo: Wichita sunset

It was a silky-smooth IFR flight from KIXD to 1K1 for Dianne White. She was treated to this beautiful sunset, a view those on the ground didn’t have the benefit of enjoying that winter evening. As she says, "We pilots get to enjoy so many breathtaking sights those on terra firma never get to see."
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.