Category: Rudy

Wine for the Soul

I’m thrilled to have another guest post by our very own Rudy Jakma! I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Wine for the Soul by Rudy Jakma You may have heard about the Beaujolais race? The fruity wine from the Beaujolais region in the south of France is sold after a few…

Read more… 1 May 20

More from the Lagos Flying Club, 1968

I’m pleased to share another post from Rudy and his early flying days during the Nigerian Civil War. All of the photographs were taken by Rudy at the time. It’s fascinating stuff; I hope you enjoy it as much as I have! -Sylvia More from the Lagos Flying Club, 1968 by Rudy Jakma When I…

Read more… 12 Apr 19

Part 2: Don’t Try This At Home (Rudy’s solo cross-country)

I’m so pleased to be able to share with you the second half of Rudy’s story of his first cross-country solo! In part one of my confessions of an old bold pilot, I wrote about my early flying. When you read the rest of the story, you might wonder how I ever became a commercial…

Read more… 1 Feb 19

Confessions of an Old Bold Pilot

Rudy Jakma was kind enough to share with me his story of how he got started in aviation, told in two parts. Rudy is known to regulars of the website for his fantastic and helpful comments and discussions on the posts. He never fails to add insight and explanations based on his long and varied…

Read more… 25 Jan 19

Rudy’s Operation Overlord

In response to popular demand, here is a guest post from Rudy Jakma. Rudy is a rare breed: an old, bold pilot who is still here to tell the tale. I asked him for some personal details to write a quick introduction and his response was too good to cut down. I’ve added it at…

Read more… 2 Mar 18

Accident Reports

A Lesson On Keeping The Aircraft in Trim

On the 28th of May 2019, a customer arrived at a flight school at Archerfield Airport, Queensland for their first flight experience. The aircraft that day was a Cessna 152,…

Explosive Decompression on the Ground

The Gulfstream G150, a twin-engine business jet, arrived at Kittilä airport in Lapland on a cold Tuesday afternoon on the 2nd of January 2018, carrying three crew and four passengers.…

Demystifying

How Many Successful Ditchings of Commercial Airliners?

When I was learning to fly, I remember someone in the pilots’ bar insisting that all that talk about life jackets under your seat was a waste of time; if…

Small Plane Gets Stoned

This photograph has been posted to aviation forums repeatedly, each time with a thread of pilots wondering what the hell could have happened to cause the light aircraft to be…

History

The History Listen

I was on the radio on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in a show called The History Listen. They asked me to tell them about a famous story in Australian and…

The Last Flight of B121-120

The Beagle B.121 Pup is a British, single-engine, all-metal aircraft produced in the 1960s. British Executive and General Aviation Limited, who traded as BEAGLE, designed the Beagle B.121 Pup as…

Fun Stuff

The Tetris Challenge

When the Kantonspolizei Zürich (the police department of the Swiss canton of Zurich) posted a photograph on Facebook showing the contents of a standard patrol car, they had no idea…

The History Listen

I was on the radio on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in a show called The History Listen. They asked me to tell them about a famous story in Australian and…