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.
The sound is unmistakable. Today, I’d recognize that sound in the first two seconds, but 50 years ago, it was totally alien to me. It was high pitched and guttural at the same time, the smooth, even roar of a gasoline-powered monster, a 1650 hp supernova on a leash. The first time I heard it, more »
Mountains have always represented the ultimate nemesis to some pilots. Though I understand the apprehension, I grew up in Alaska and California, so I accepted vertical terrain as normal, perhaps the ultimate and most spectacular manifestation of Earth’s variety. Learning to fly in Anchorage and Long Beach, I dealt with mountains during practically every flight, more »
I wouldn’t want to be riding out on the wing tonight. The wind is roaring down out of the northwest like polar bear’s breath, a vicious torrent of air frozen by winter and twisted by the Rocky Mountains. Somewhere below, far down in a blanket of clouds and black sky one to three miles deep, more »
I’m not much on book reviews, but recently, I came across a new, coffee-table book I couldn’t put down. In fact, it was more likely a book I couldn’t pick up. “The Complete Book of the SR-71” is a massive, 10” x 13”, 260-page work by Colonel Richard H. Graham, USAF (retired). Following 210 combat more »
The Navajo Chieftain seems to grumble at flying so early in the morning.
As one who has been trying to figure out this concept called flying for longer than I can remember, I’ve always been a little mystified as to why the same accidents seem to keep happening for the same reasons.
If speed is aviation’s ultimate excess, altitude is its great equalizer.
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.