Exploring

As I write this, we have been home from AirVenture 2019 exactly one week, and I am feeling much better than when I wrote last month’s column. Why? Because within 1 hour of landing back at home base last week, my son, neighbor, and I headed to the airport to hang the new engine on […]

You are a rare person, participating in a unique hobby. You’ve seen the reactions when you tell people at Friday night pickleball tournaments that...

Perhaps like me, you missed the big show this year. That is, they ran AirVenture without me, and I’m not sure anyone really noticed. A bit sobering, that, but confirmation none of us is indispensable and that airplanes will go on until Google releases e-Flight goggles, where you soar virtually just by stretching out your […]

No surprise that my first trip back to Oshkosh in years was a funny combination of beginner’s excitement and jaded journalist’s déjà vu. So...

In this Avionics Bootcamp video series, we put the David Clark Pro-X2 on the evaluation bench and took them flying for this field report.

For those of you who read my column last month on keeping the fires lit, I find it ironic that I find myself telling you about another engine failure that happened since then. Perhaps I shouldn’t write about engine failures? But it did happen, and my thoughts are to share the experience and decision-making with […]

Most homebuilders—and just I’m spit-balling here—have waited a long time to justify the cost of building an airplane.

You look down at the instruments, and instantly energy drains down your body as if bomb bay doors on the soles of your feet had opened and the concrete floor were a sponge.

The dark interior of a hangar comes into focus as an announcer says, “Building Time Theater presents, ‘The Usual Suspect, Part Two: The Missing Power.’” It’s a bright, warm morning. The first in months for a landscape that has finally kicked off a grey blanket of snow. Two men become silhouettes against the morning’s diffused […]

One of the big reasons that people build their own airplane is the flexibility afforded by the FAA when it comes to maintenance and inspections. If you are the builder of an experimental aircraft, you can be issued the repairman’s certificate that allows you to sign off the annual condition inspection—thereby making you the builder, […]