Last Sunday I heard about a surprising incident at North Weald, one of my favourite airfields and the location where the Saratoga is currently parked and waiting for me to pay it some attention. It seems that this Aero AT-3 was coming into land when something went wrong. The main runway was closed for a…
Read more… 14 May 10
(Something from the archives: a 2008 post about Air Traffic Service Units in the UK and my native ability to talk too much. I’ll be back with fresh content next week.) Air/Ground Radio Airfields with A/G Radio offer an information service with a radio operator who are not licensed and not under close CAA supervision.…
Read more… 7 May 10
I’m not one to get excited by big planes but I love this video of Boeing building Southwest’s “Florida One”. From the Southwest Airlines website: Date unveiled: April 23, 2010 Process time: 8 days Number of People: 32 over 3 shifts Paint colors: 16 Total gallons: Approximately 46 Premask (stencil outline): 15 boxes or approximately…
Read more… 30 Apr 10
The ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland has had a very personal knock-on effect on our household. Connor, my son, was supposed to fly to England to return to school after his Easter break and his flights were one of the many cancelled. The Saratoga was parked in England so we couldn’t transport…
Read more… 23 Apr 10
The cross country navigation exercise is required to complete the JAR private pilot’s licence. It is effectively the first time the pilot is left alone with the plane, dependent on the new skills learned over the past few weeks. It is now not simply a case of handling the plane but also juggling the full…
Read more… 16 Apr 10
I saw this on xkcd and laughed out loud. Why did I never think of that?
Read more… 15 Apr 10
On the 12th of November 2022, a Bell P-63F Kingcobra fighter flew into a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress bomber during the Wings Over Dallas airshow. All six crew members in…
On Sunday, the 27th of November 2022, a single-engine aircraft made national US news when it crashed through power lines in Gaithersburg, Maryland, coming to rest on a lattice tower.…
There are a number of reasons why you might need to quickly point out the differences between a General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon and a Eurofighter EF2000 Typhoon. You might…
A few days ago (21st of May 2024), Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 encountered heavy turbulence on a passenger flight from London-Heathrow to Singapore. There were 229 on board, including eighteen…
This video of a mid-air wheel exchange goes viral once a year or so, but I never get tired of watching it. Last week, it showed up on Reddit and…
This week, we have a guest post by J.B. Rivard who wrote an article for the American Aviation Historical Society (AAHS) and used one of my articles as a reference.…
Mistakes were made. All of them were mine. Before I left for Dresden, I planned out my full itinerary. Berlin is a much busier airport than Tallinn, so I needed…
I’m in Dresden at the moment and I’m afraid I haven’t had a free moment to write you a new article. Luckily, lots of other people are on the internet…