Magazine

Most of our recent discussions on the process of designing an airplane were based on the assumption that the airplane has a generally conventional...

Plane and simple.

Never one to revel in the practical, recently I found myself expounding to a colleague on why the general aviation world moves at 2700 rpm.

A major part of any Experimental kit will be hundreds of products that the kit supplier didn’t manufacture or fabricate but simply sourced from the open market to supply with their custom kit components.

I was chopping firewood under a dead ash tree, whiffing deep, ax-head-shaped divots into my lawn, when I remembered the time, once upon a takeoff, that a living oak tree nearly got the best of me.

Forget about all those sharp corners, the quantity of fuel aboard and the fire extinguisher you threw in the baggage compartment without tying it down. It is always important to at least consider the fact that the most dangerous thing to have in the cockpit when things go wrong is the owner of the airplane.

Because few new products get announced at Sun ’n Fun, there’s often a dead zone between April and the big intros at AirVenture in July. But that doesn’t mean it’s total dullsville. A couple of new bits have caught my eye recently.

By now, the Apple iPad has established itself as a strong utility player in many aircraft, most often running as a so-called electronic flight bag (EFB) to display moving maps, charts, weather and traffic. But Falken Avionics’ Flight View system has a different take on putting Apple’s tablet to use—as a primary instrument. 

Plunge into drilling accurate holes for fasteners in mating parts.

A designer must make a large number of decisions in the process of designing an airplane. These range from top-level decisions, like the overall...