![The alternative to bending down as the propeller is pulled through the compression stroke is to keep the back straight and bend the knees slightly, stepping away in a crouch. [Credit: LeRoy Cook]](https://www.kitplanes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/IMG_1519-scaled.jpg?w=534&h=462&crop=1 "Manual Starting Methods")
![The newly-restored F-24 enjoying the morning sun. [All Images Credited to Mike Davenport]](https://www.kitplanes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/DSC_0001.jpg?w=265&h=198&crop=1 "Golden Age Revival")
![[Credit: AdobeStock]](https://www.kitplanes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/AdobeStock_176619176.jpg?w=265&h=198&crop=1 "Instructional Inflexibility")
![sideview shows the Better Half with the full VW case. [Credit: Legal Eagle Airplane]](https://www.kitplanes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Milholland-V-Twin_Side-View.jpg?w=265&h=198&crop=1 "Better Half VW")
Fed Stories
By just about every measure, the aeronautical industry in the United States—including the number of pilots, manufacturing and federal oversight—is by far the largest...
Time Machine
This month’s cover story, another in our Buying Used installments—this time covering the Pulsar homebuilt—took me back. It was, of course, my awakening into...
IRAN
It is sometimes easy to remember that we do annual condition inspections to find things that might be wrong with the airplane. I know...
Unfit for Flight
Our culture’s version of schadenfreude often distills down to something called the Darwin Award, where hapless individuals appear to be disproving Charles Darwin’s theory...
The Repairman Certificate
Those of us who have built or are building Experimental/Amateur-Built aircraft know that one of the rewards besides the airworthiness certificate is another document...
Dispassionate Pursuits
At the very moment I was on final for Oshkosh’s Runway 9 in pursuit of a tailwheel endorsement, my flight instructor’s son was rising...
Two Years On
Habitual readers of this column know I’m not a fan of ADS-B, if only because I see such tracking technology as primarily the apparatus...
Avgas Next Steps
It had to happen. Ever since leaded automotive fuel was phased out in the 1970s, there’s been talk about getting the lead out of...
See Fit
Recently, a former airline colleague was killed when his Experimental aircraft impacted rapidly rising terrain while in level flight. It is easy to know...
Metallic Puce and Other Considerations
Airplane people tend to be drawn to all Machines That Move Us. Cars, motorcycles, boats. (Trains, too, but it’s cumbersome, as an individual, to...
In Case You Missed It
Ask the DAR
What are the lighting requirements for homebuilt aircraft that will fly at night, and do you need a wet compass if you have an EFIS in your panel?
Bleeder Coupling
Bleeding hydraulic brakes of trapped air is something everyone who builds or works on...