If you are lucky enough to have a spouse that is in love with aviation then you can skip this post entirely. Unfortunately, not all of us enjoy such pleasantries of life. Some of us may find ourselves wedded to someone who would rather stick pins in their eyes than go to the airport and…

I have taken a break from my monthly series of picking out an airplane based on a specific criteria of mission-capability and price. In fact one of the last airplanes I selected was actually in the same category as the one I’m discussing here, but older and less expensive (see my Bonanza article here). As…

Ok we say we want to grow the industry, but do we really? I feel like there are plenty among us who could care less. Maybe if you stopped and asked them directly they wouldn’t be so callous, but their actions elucidate their mentality. If you are the ones among us that are active in…

The question of what we can do personally to be better at our craft is something that I don’t feel we ask often enough. For me, it usually takes a couple of well placed screw-ups to rattle my cage and make me think introspectively about my flying. These weren’t metal-bending events, but rather instances where…

This is my humble contribution to the blogging in formation series. If you had one wish for aviation what would it be? Make it: safer, more mainstream, less expensive, more accessible, increasingly social, more desirable, etc.?   In a nutshell, my one wish would be to make it less expensive, of course many of your would…

I enjoyed the opportunity on Saturday evening to attend Youth Aviation Adventure’s annual Hangarfest fundraiser at my home airport of KCMH. This is the national headquarters for YAA and Spirit Avionics graciously opened up their facility to host the event. Rick Ochs and the guys at Spirit are very involved with YAA and it shows, they pulled…

Having flown some formation in my youth, I was familiar with the addictive nature of this kind of flying. Back then I was a mixture of self-trained (read: SCARY and NOT RECOMMENDED) and loosely instructed. My “training” was from a grizzled Vietnam-era F-4 jock. He was in a Pitts and I was in a 2/3rd scale composite…

Like many, I have been waiting patiently the last several months for the opening of Disney’s latest offering. This movie is a spin-off of the wildly successful animated movie Cars, but since the theme was airplanes, what self-respecting pilot could resist? The wife wasn’t over enthused about going, but my youngest daughter, who’s 8, couldn’t wait.  …

On the heels of the FAA’s certification of the first commercial drones, I’m compelled to take you down the rabbit hole with me regarding the implications of our skies littered with faceless, nameless machines. Like almost all powerful technology that has been developed in history, it can be used for good, and it can be…

This post is my contribution to the #blogformation series on the topic of “truth is stranger than fiction.” One of us among the group selected this topic to torment the other authors! The good news is, there is no shortage of incredible stories in aviation that defy logic and turn fiction onto its ear. This…