News

Over the weekend my wife and I experienced the magical power of a light piston airplane to add hours to the day. At least that is how it felt. On Sunday morning our college-age son’s rowing team was competing close to home in New Jersey where it was easy for us to watch and spend […]

FRIEDRICHSTEFAN, GERMANY— You know the expression: “What goes up, must…” What goes up must come down and after it does, something needs to stop it. Here’s where one company has staked its claim. France’s Beringer left the high-speed action of motorcycles for even faster aerial machines …yet slowing them to a gentle stop is a matter the […]

OK, I admit it. I’m a huge fan of Aero Friedrichshafen. This show packs a lot of delight into four days and 12 gymnasium-sized exhibit halls. In 2023, many of the aircraft on display are known to Americans. However, Europe tends to produce more proof-of-concept projects than we see in America. This is partly as European […]

Short of an erroneous forecast or calibration issue with your immersion thermometer, if you can remain below the lowest freezing level during your entire flight, there’s typically no chance for an encounter with airframe ice. Induction ice is certainly possible, but not airframe ice. If you plan an altitude where the temperature aloft is zero […]

A new FAA program should reduce the difficulty of finding spare parts needed to keep vintage aircraft flying, according to the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). The Vintage Aircraft Replacement and Modification Article, or VARMA program, allows maintenance personnel to validate that “low-risk,” off-the-shelf replacement parts are suitable for use in type-certificated aircraft without requiring a […]

Don’t let someone pressure you into doing something foolish. You probably heard this sentiment (or some form of it) as a child—as a pilot, foolish mistakes can be deadly, and sometimes very public. You may know someone who did something foolish with an airplane and ended up on the local or national news. This isn’t […]

Sun n’ Fun’s Paradise City is home to Lakeland-Linder International Airport’s grass strip where homebuilts, ultralights, gyrocopters, LSAs, and the like make their base camp during the week of the Sun ‘n Fun Aerospace Expo’s displays, demos, and flying. It is also the home of the STOL Corral, which this year was open to the […]

Regular readers know I have closely followed the Merlin developments. I use plural because developer Chip Erwin has steadily built this single seat flying machine into a whole fleet of its own. At Sun ‘n Fun we saw a display of three airplanes in different variations. Let’s begin with a focus on the modest cost of Merlin. […]

Picking out a gift for a pilot can always be a challenge, especially when they already have a great headset and flight bag. With graduation season approaching, and Mother’s and Father’s days around the corner, there will be plenty of gifting opportunities for pilots this spring.  Aeroswag, an aviation website that specializes in print on-demand […]

CubCrafters has never made an aircraft powered by a Rotax engine. Images accompanying this article portray their very first example using the 9-series engine in a model intended for production. Most of their factory pilots or dealers have never flown behind a Rotax. Yet Carbon Cub UL is also the first aircraft in the world […]