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Pandemic Opportunity for a Safety Stand Down
When things go chronically wrong in aviation, a safety stand down is an efficient and effective treatment because you stop all operations and dissect what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been doing it...
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Aviation’s Covid Consequences
Concentrating on a short-term goal is natural when facing unpleasant restrictions, but these inconveniences pale in comparison to the long-term consequences. What unites both timeframes is the...
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With No AirVenture, What’s Next?
S.M. Spangler Humans hate uncertainty, so after reading EAA’s early morning email on May 1 that confirmed what many expected, uncounted thousands of aviation-oriented minds posed, in one form or...
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ADS-B Turbulence Reports: How Do They Work?
Weather.gov The FAA recently posted a fascinating story on Medium, Taking the Turbulence Out of Flight that said ADS-B turbulence reports offer the possibility of more accurate reports on the bumps in...
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Book Review: Empires of the Sky
A Concise Look at Human Flight with an Unexpected Focus With my knowledge bank bereft all but the most rudimentary information about Zeppelins (aka rigid airships), my curious eye immediately focused...
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How I Spent My AirVenture Vacation
An excavator dismembers OSH’s terminal, making way for its replacement. SM Spangler Like several hundred thousand others who normally spend the summer preparing for their annual pilgrimage to Oshkosh,...
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Staying Dry & Distant at the EAA Museum
With thunderstorms lined in assaulting waves on radar and pathfinding drops splattering themselves against my office window, changing my Saturday morning plans for a two-wheel ride to Rio, Wisconsin,...
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Barnstorming Rio, Wisconsin
Instead of Ghostly Nostalgia, a Living Connection to What Was Pandemic stir-craziness manifested itself on a glorious mid-August Sunday afternoon. From my second-floor window, I watched scattered...
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Where Does General Aviation Go From Here?
Nothing in the world seems to make sense anymore. On Monday (September 14), GAMA published its aircraft shipping and billings report for the second quarter, and it’s not good. Every category took a...
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Aviation Ancestry
Discovering the Logbooks of a Life Rarely Discussed Covid sequestration is, it turns out, an inescapable cloister (especially now, with Wisconsin’s record-setting infections), perfect for undertaking...
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Defensive Pessimism & Aviation Experience
Pursing my eclectic interests, the library emailed a curbside pickup notice for David Rakoff’s Half Empty, as in the pessimist’s assessment of a glass vessel whose volume is divided between some...
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How Many Aircraft did Chuck Yeager Fly?
Living with an editor’s mindset is no easy thing, especially when faced with inconsistent “facts” in stories presented by different sources on a common topic. In this case it was the death of Chuck...
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Searching for Navy WASPs
Among the six naval aviators recommended for command of an aircraft carrier was Captain Amy Bauernschmidt, a 1994 Naval Academy grad and helo pilot who ticked an essential box on the carrier command...
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Aviation Photographers, Are You a Hoarder or Archivist?
Photography is an activity pursued by many interested in aviation. For photographers who started before the digital age, storing slides, negatives, and prints was not only an out of space problem but...
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Devotion: Bearcats, Corsairs, & Real Moviemaking Oh My!
Nothing ruins the enjoyment of a good aviation film more thoroughly than computer-generated images. Real moviemaking, filming real airplanes is what makes movies like “12 O’Clock High” and “Top Gun” so...
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Review: Devotion, a Unique Look at the Korean War
Tipped off by the movie being made about its story of Jesse Brown and Medal of Honor recipient Tom Hudner (see “Devotion: Bearcats, Corsairs, and Real Moviemaking Oh My!”), I found the book in our...
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Day Zero: Resetting an AirVenture Attitude
After we all took a year off in 2020, I hit the road this morning for Wittman Regional Airport with a tick of trepidation nibbling at my soul. It’s Zero Day, the Sunday before the show starts and all...
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Promote Aviation With Inclusive Participation
Over the decades, the Young Eagles program has given millions of youngsters what, in many cases, were their inaugural flights in an aircraft smaller than a transport category airliner. This includes my...
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Dauntless Dedication to Air Zoo Aircraft Reincarnation
Air Zoo Aerospace & Science Experience CEO Troy Thrash said the Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless on display in the World War II exhibit was the team’s first Lake Michigan restoration project. The eight-year...
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Open Cockpits, Stepping into History at the Air Zoo
Admiring historic airplanes from a museum floor is a big-picture perspective of their contributions, whatever they may be, to aviation. Regardless the aeronautical era or the scope of the story, the...
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