Paul Dye
Paul Dye, KITPLANES® Editor at Large, retired as a Lead Flight Director for NASA’s Human Space Flight program, with 50 years of aerospace experience on everything from Cubs to the Space Shuttle. An avid homebuilder, he began flying and working on airplanes as a teen and has experience with a wide range of construction techniques and materials. He flies an RV-8 and SubSonex jet that he built, an RV-3 that he built with his pilot wife, as well as a Dream Tundra and an electric Xenos motorglider they completed. Currently, they are building an F1 Rocket. A commercially licensed pilot, he has logged over 6000 hours in many different types of aircraft and is an A&P, FAA DAR, EAA Tech Counselor and Flight Advisor; he was formerly a member of the Homebuilder’s Council. He consults and collaborates in aerospace operations and flight-testing projects across the country.
Mounting On a Curve
A long time ago, when homebuilders began installing Garmin 430s—the most popular IFR GPS/nav/com of the day—we were mostly left on our own to...
Nutsert Notes
Let me say right up front that I hate nutserts. Also called rivet nuts, threaded inserts or rivnuts. (I’m sure there’s a formal product...
A Great Day to Burn Jet A
About the only good thing that you can say about these times of angst and social distancing is that flying a single-seat airplane puts...
In-Flight Weather: Practice for Survival
This was going to get ugly.
Crossing southern Louisiana in the middle of the afternoon in late May is never pretty. Today was going to...
The Virtual Fly-In
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, and in these days of social isolation from COVID-19, aviators who still want to congregate for community support...
Ride the Wave!
Oh, for a sailplane on a day like today! I took off on a short after-breakfast flight to do a little post-maintenance test hop....
Statistics, Lies and Damn Lies…
Aviation is a numbers game. We fly the airplane by the numbers, we use numbers to navigate and we have to deal with numbers...
Flying in the Age of COVID-19
My wife and I just returned from a week-long trip to Colorado’s ski country and experienced the current airline travel system first-hand. (No, we...
In Case You Missed It
The Dawn Patrol
Bent landing gear on a Kolb Twinstar MK-II? This is a job for the Flabtrolic press—or maybe not.
What’s New
Among the news items this month are the announcement of extended-range fuel tanks for the Arion Aircraft Lightning, a flight bag thats customized for RV aircraft, a light-aircraft jack and a new transceiver from Microair Avionics of Australia.