Lessons learned This was going to be the post about how I’d finished sandblasting my rusty pilot’s licence, completed my RA-Aus (Recreational Aviation Australia) endorsement checkride, and been cleared to fly solo pretty much whenever I wanted. (Which is pretty much all the time.) As it happens, that’s not quite how things turned out. Go? No go. Flight training has a frustrating capacity to teach … Continue reading Out and back
3, 2, 1, Breathe How long can you hold your breath? For 30 seconds…? A minute…? Actually, it’s longer than you think. For me, it was a little over 12 years. To be precise, it’s been 13 years since I flew anything with a throttle, and about 11-½ years since I flew a glider. After a while, the numbers don’t matter. Twelve years seems about … Continue reading Tell the sky to rejoice
The two at the front There was something curiously logical about a movie star who made his name riding horses lending a small wooden ship to a pair of corporate heavyweights, so they could change the course of aviation. The afternoon that Boeing’s Bill Allen and Pan American’s Juan Trippe spent cruising Puget Sound aboard John Wayne’s Wild Goose in 1965 has become part of … Continue reading If you build it…
‘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
Oilman, industrialist, investor, visionary… William T Piper has as much right to claim the title ‘Father of General Aviation’ as anyone. His long insistence on making aircraft that were cheap to buy and easy to fly brought thousands of people into flying. What’s more, his insightful strategy of making learning to fly as cheap as possible is a lesson in GA promotion that’s as instructive … Continue reading The way a pilot feels
Feature image: © Ivan Cholakov | Dreamstime.com Like so many ‘first times’, my initial encounter with the lift equation was a fairly short and messy affair. My flying instructor wasn’t given to long preflight briefings in any case – and, to be fair, we’d agreed I would mostly do my own theory study. A wave of panic So imagine my surprise when I found myself facing … Continue reading the Lift Equation
The Curtiss Jenny hardly needs an introduction. Designed for Glenn Curtiss by Benjamin Thomas, who had worked at Sopwith Aviation, the original JN1 was a heavy, underwhelming performer. The subsequent JN2 and JN3 improvements weren’t much better. However, Curtiss hit gold with the JN4. Mild-mannered, manoeuvrable and robust, the definitive JN-4D variant made up the bulk of a 6,813 airframe production run. An estimated 95% of … Continue reading Jenny lessons
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