Maintenance
10 Easy-To-Own Airplanes
 It’s one of the most common myths among nonpilots and new pilots alike: “Owning an airplane is ridiculously expensive, certainly not within the financial province of a typical, upper-middle-class American.”
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Airplanes, Cars—What’s the Difference?
 What’s the difference between car (or motorcycle) engines and aircraft engines? It’s a perennial question with a series of stock answers, none of which is sufficient. |
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An Advanced Course In Engine Management
| Today, bookstores have shelves of self-help and how-to books targeted at people just like me. You know, books like Brain Surgery For Dummies, Taxes For Dummies or The Idiot’s Guide To Juggling. Th |
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Catastrophic Structural Failure
The overwhelming majority of airplanes have the potential to keep flying until it’s no longer economically viable to keep them in the air, provided that they’re operated within established parameters, receive regular inspections to detect problems and
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Devastating Details
One consequence of the nation’s economic downturn and the accompanying slump in general aviation was that some ma
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Known And Unknown Deficiencies
While the FAA makes the pilot responsible for determining whether or not an aircraft that he or she is about to fly is airworthy, the pilot must rely to a great extent on what others have determined
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Money-Saving Maintenance
 Those pilots who have ever found themselves paying huge chunks of money on maintenance bills know that they can get quite expensive. What most people don’t realize, however, is that there are other s |
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The Derelicts
I’ve mentioned them before—those long-dead, thoroughly baked carcasses I taxi past each day that at some time in the past, were airplanes. Now they’re aeronautically shaped mound
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Understanding RPM
 It was just after 6 p.m. when I turned final for runway 4R at Honolulu International Airport. My 2,160 nm crossing from Santa Barbara, Calif., into the wind had required 13 hours and 15 minutes, yielding an average speed of 163 knots. I’d maintained 8,0 |
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Wing Dings
It’s a problem most of us with metal airplanes face at one time or another—dings, those small dents that seem to go hand in hand with owning an aluminum flying machine. Unless you own a wood-
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