Exploring

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, […]

Let’s see. Where was I? When we last spoke, I was headed back into the motorcycle realm, where I eventually got to be editor in...

Do’s and Don’ts of Aircraft Building, Part 2

Air. Fuel. Spark. Right?

In a parallel life of mine—auto journalism—shop talk occasionally got around to just how few cars the average person probably drives in their lifetime. Who knows what the average is, 20 perhaps, for a person who may not travel much and thus doesn’t rent too many of Hertz’s finest. But for an old-school journalist who […]