Combat Over The Trenches Oswald Watt, Aviation Pioneer by Chris Clark Published by Pen & Sword Aviation, ISBN 978 1 52671 501 2 Originally published in Australia as The High Life of Oswald Watt; Australia’s First Military Pilot (Big Sky Publishing Pty Ltd) this Pen & Sword reprint brings a hugely important Australian aviator to the world stage. And, while the new title Combat Over … Continue reading Oswald Watt
World Leader It’s a question that’s easily answered for celebrities, business leaders and heads of state, but how do you get between engagements when you’re a pre-eminent trophy…? Okay, you may not have devoted that much brain space to the issue before now. And I know that not everyone is obsessed with soccer. But with 209 participating countries, an expected TV audience of over 1 … Continue reading Passing The Cup
‘Smart flight training’ doesn’t just mean glass cockpits and electric airplanes. With ‘Skynotes’, career educator and CFI Amy Labus-Olson is re-casting instruction as an up-to-date education service. From the ground up There’s an old saw that says you’re not ready to fly until the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the aircraft. Okay, so the rise of digital devices has made that problem … Continue reading Smarter Learning
Aviation culture If you’ve been following airscape for a while, you’ll know that January is hardly the most productive time of year. A combination of having kids home for the holidays and Adelaide’s furnace-fierce summer weather makes writing difficult, to say the least. Happily things are returning to normal now. And one way or another, I’m planning to make 2018 a pivotal year. For now, … Continue reading Firing up
How to make the most of flight training A few weeks back (okay, several weeks now) I received the best kind of email – a query about flight schools from a reader contemplating starting in for her pilot’s licence. I love the idea of people wanting to become pilots. The magic, the self-discipline, the sensation and the satisfaction are all hard to beat. It’s no … Continue reading Spread your wings
When the Empire of Japan swept across the western Pacific with re-imagined mobility, the nearest safe territory was literally an ocean away from America’s arsenal of democracy. And getting from the US West Coast to Northern Australia by air would be a 12,446-kilometre-long life-or-death game of join-the-dots across the Pacific. In December 1941 only four men had ever made the flight in a land plane … Continue reading Southern Cross Airways
Birth of the bomber Long before Curtis Le May billed airborne devastation as a weapon of peace, or Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris promised Winston Churchill that the unrestricted bombing of Germany would cost Britain ‘400 to 500 aircraft…[but] cost Germany the war’, the full power of air attack had been clearly seen by its inventor and first advocate. No, not Billy Mitchell or Hugh Trenchard, but … Continue reading First strike
Wondering how we got here? Click to catch up with Heavenly Bodies – Part I and – Part II Flight without wings On June 4th, 1982, a Kosmos-3M launcher shot BOR-4 serial number 404 out of the atmosphere for the first time. Once in space the vehicle deployed itself into orbit, eight micro-thrusters orienting the tiny craft as it flew. The wings, which had been … Continue reading Heavenly Bodies – Part III
America invaded! From this distance, Flying Cadet magazine could look like a cynical attempt to profit from World War 2 – specifically a whole generation of patriotic teens who dreamed of proving themselves in the air before the whole thing was over. On the other hand, at 10¢ per month the short-lived magazine probably did perform a valuable service for US recruiters and their training … Continue reading Gee-whiz
Gold fever Even today, New Guinea is a hell of a place to commit aviation. The entire island (now bisected into Indonesian West Papua and Papua New Guinea) is literally bigger than Texas – by about 100,000 km2 – and steep mountains soar over 14,000 feet into the hot, equatorial air, creating a deadly home for the term ‘clouds with rocks in them’. Huge rivers … Continue reading On aviation’s frontier
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