I totally lost control of my week! I had no idea it was Friday and now it’s the end of the day and I am out of time to write an interesting post for you. So I am giving you permission to play a game. Spend the time you would have wasted reading my ramblings…
Read more… 9 Oct 09
This week: A selection of aviation articles and images that I found intriguing. Bird strike! The moment 200 starlings were sucked into passenger jet engine on take-off | Mail Online ‘It was like a scene from the Hitchcock movie The Birds. One second all was clear, and the next thing you saw were these birds…
Read more… 2 Oct 09
I shouldn’t have hopped the fence. It was shut with a big padlock and surrounded by barbed wire so I can’t exactly claim that I hadn’t noticed it. But I’d walked such a long way – 5 miles! – just to take some photographs for my blog, it seemed such a shame to give up…
Read more… 25 Sep 09
The 13th of September was a Fly-In and Community Day at North Weald in Essex and I had the good fortune to be in the area. The airshow featured F16 Fighters of 132 Wing Royal Norwegian Air Force, who flew in from their base at Bodø, north of the Arctic Circle. They returned to the…
Read more… 18 Sep 09
Our route for Sunday was simple: Málaga to Shoreham with a stop to refuel in Périgueux-Bassillac in France. We’ve been using Périgueux as a refuelling stop for a while now: the people are friendly and there’s never a queue for the pumps and so we get a fast turnaround. I noted that I didn’t have…
Read more… 11 Sep 09
Summer is officially over: it’s time for Connor to go back to school. I hate September even more now than I did when I was a kid! We’ll be heading off in the Saratoga on Sunday morning, taking off from Málaga (IFR as it’s the weekend) and flying 3.5 hours to in France. Just a…
Read more… 4 Sep 09
Ferry Tank Failure: Successful SR22 Ditching in the Pacific
In 2015, I shared a video of an SR22 whose pilot successfully deployed his Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) off of the coast of Maui, Hawai’i. I wrote at the time…
The Man in the Right Seat at Prestwick
On the 23rd of April 2024, a Piper Archer II crashed in South Ayrshire, Scotland, after losing power. There were two on board. Both suffered serious injuries and the light…
Meowing on Guard (an attempt at an explanation)
Last week a video went viral and it’s been fun to see the mainstream media coverage try to cover two pilots who were heard making animal noises on the radio. …
Trump Threatens to Ground Canadian Aircraft Over Gulfstream Certification
The US President, Donald Trump, posted the following to Truth Social last night. Based on the fact that Canada has wrongfully, illegally, and steadfastly refused to certify the Gulfstream 500,…
The First Jet to Land on an Aircraft Carrier (Deliberately)
“The Vampire was the first jet to land on a moving aircraft carrier deliberately.” This quote from Airshow Luke, our MC at the Legacy of Liberty airshow, made me almost…
Four Point Two Stars Where You Only Stop If You Have To
I always look up airports when I’m writing about them, partly out of habit and partly because I’m afraid I’ll miss an important detail. When I was writing Any Landing…
Aviation Stories You Might Have Missed
I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season. This week, I’ve put together a compilation of interesting items in the press that you might have missed while enjoying…
Nathan Pyle Strange Worlds
Thank you so much for all the kind words. I don’t quite have the wherewithal to respond to each of you individually but I very much appreciate all of you…