Tailwheel Endorsement: What It Takes to Fly a Taildragger
Share this story Most pilots today learn on aeroplanes with a nosewheel. They taxi like a shopping trolley that wants to go straight. Then one day they climb into a Piper Cub, a Super Decathlon or a P-51 Mustang, and discover that the little wheel at the back changes...
How a Helicopter Flies: Collective, Cyclic and the Tail Rotor
Share this story An aeroplane has it easy. Point it down a runway, let the wings do the work, and a few simple controls take care of the rest. A helicopter has to make its own wind. Its wings are the rotor blades, whirling overhead at a few hundred revolutions per...
Alpha Jet: The Franco-German Trainer That Went to War
Share this story Ask a Patrouille de France pilot about the jet they fly, and you may get an unexpectedly modest answer. They all come from the Rafale or the Mirage 2000, one of them told British forces broadcaster BFBS this year, and by comparison the little red,...
FAA Controller Pay Raise: NATCA Deal Unlocks 2.8% After Months
Share this story America’s air traffic controllers are finally getting the raise Congress approved for them in April. On Friday, 16 October, the US Department of Transportation and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) announced a deal that...
Austrian Eurofighters Deploy to Klagenfurt for the 20th Time
Share this story At lunchtime on Friday, 16 October, a flight of Austrian Air Force Eurofighters touched down at Klagenfurt, the civil airport of the southern state of Carinthia. Until Monday they will not train, not fly displays and not do circuits. They will sit on...
GA Telesis Parts Out Its First Boeing 737 MAX 8 for Spares
Share this story Airliners are usually broken up for parts when they are old, tired and worth more as spares than as aeroplanes. The Boeing 737 MAX 8 is none of those things. It is one of the two most in-demand narrowbodies on the planet, with airlines waiting years...
Gripen Flight Control Computer: Saab Wins SEK 1.3 Billion Order
Share this story Every second a Saab Gripen is in the air, a computer is quietly stopping it from tumbling out of the sky. The Gripen was designed to be aerodynamically unstable, because an unstable jet turns harder and faster, and it only flies straight because its...
E-130J Phoenix II: Navy Takes Delivery of Its First TACAMO C-130J
Share this story It does not look like a doomsday aircraft yet. Tail number 510 is a plain grey Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Super Hercules, four propellers and a long fuselage, sitting on the ramp at Marietta, Georgia. But on 15 October the US Navy accepted it as the...
Tesla’s Flying Roadster: SpaceX Thrusters, a Flip and an FAA Puzzle
Share this story The car drove up a ramp that curled over until it was hanging upside down, stuck to the concrete by its own suction. Then it ran off the end into thin air, fired its thrusters, flipped itself upright and settled onto its wheels. That was the opening...
F-22 Commands a YFQ-44A Fury Drone in Flight for the First Time
Share this story Somewhere over the Mojave Desert, in the first week of October, a Raptor pilot did something no fighter pilot had done before: sending a new mission plan to a combat drone flying alongside, and letting the drone take it from there. The US Air Force...
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