Ray Andrews, my flight instructor, turned to me and asked, “So, you think you’re ready to solo in front of your friends?” After my half-hour flight lesson of three takeoffs and landings, with my childhood friends Larry Leonard and Michael Rafferty...
Last March, a Beechcraft Bonanza A36TC was in cruise flight at 15,000 feet on the way to the annual aviation celebration known as Sun ’n Fun in Lakeland, Florida, when the pilot noticed the engine power had dropped and the airplane...
It is rumored that the town of Telluride, Colorado, got its name in the 1800s from the phrase “to hell you ride,” alluding to the treacherous journey required to reach the remote mountain destination by horseback. When flying into this high-altitude...
By the summer of 1983, I had finished my junior year of ROTC, and our old neighborhood gang was reunited again. Larry Leonard and I roomed together our college freshman year at the Castilian dorm, where I met my future wife,...
By Wayne Pinger I dipped the fuel tanks with my home-calibrated doweling, a dipstick gas gauge I made and strategically notched at 9 and 18 gallons, or average one and two hours of flight. I cross-drilled it and glued a smaller...
