Cross-country flying stories from Bill Cox offer fantastic insight into what pilots face on long distance flights. Dig into our X-Country Log today.
Just as East Coast pilots count the Bahamas as something of an ultimate getaway, Left Coast aviators consider Alaska to be the destination of choice.
Like so many kids who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, I was fascinated by space travel. Most of the kids I knew in Alaska had the same fascination.
Flying down from Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, your course line slowly merges with Australia’s east coast as you sneak in from the left.
My wife worked for Douglas Aircraft at the time, and she’d usually file for whatever vacation time she needed to turn what was nearly a nine- or 10-day holiday into two full weeks.
One of the nice things about growing up in Alaska was the opportunity to fly a variety of airplanes.
Head south from the U.S. toward Antarctica, and you’ll wind up paralleling a chain of mountains longer and taller than anything else in the Western Hemisphere.
Airplanes are different animals
The whole concept of flying with nothing more than electric power seems somehow anathema to aviation.
If you fly IFR long enough, you’ll probably have the unpleasant experience of knowing someone who’ll die in an IFR accident.
Like the vast majority of pilots, I learned to fly in a relatively innocent two-seater.
I was cleaning the belly of my Mooney a while back following an annual inspection, and not enjoying the task.
Rod Machado is at the leading edge of the latter group, and his instruction books on the various aspects of learning to fly are some of the most readable and entertaining you’ll ever encounter.
Mooneys have always had a charismatic appeal that seems to transcend their talents.
As one who has struggled across a few oceans in a variety of single- and twin-engine piston and turbine airplanes, I’ve been subjecting my ears to a long-term deluge of noise pollution.
With no form of motive power on the nose or wings, you might expect gliders to have limited altitude capability, but I quickly learned that’s not the case.
Like many pilots who often consort with non-aviators, I’m frequently asked the same questions regarding general aviation, especially when people know I deliver airplanes internationally.
I bought my first airplane, a Globe Swift, from a retired petroleum engineer and A&P mechanic who had lavished hundreds of hours on his airplane.
It was 1998, and my ride was one of the last of the Mooney MSEs, better known as the 201.