"The Cirrus SR22 has to be one of the easier high-performance airplanes to fly out there," says Associate Editor Julie K. Boatman (see " Cirrus SR22: Clear Vision," starting on page 70). During an open house at Cirrus Design in July, media representatives from various publications paired off to fly the new SR22 outfitted with the Avidyne Entegra avionics suite. Boatman sat in the back while an editor from another aviation association took the SR22 through its paces. "With just a little prompting, this commercial pilot — who professed not to have flown at all in many moons — flew a very smart profile, from takeoff to landing using the new PFD and the new-to-him sidestick. I think the SR22 proves that high performance doesn't have to equal high stress for pilots transitioning to these aircraft."
At AOPA Pilot, we see some pretty nice airplanes, but the 1962 Comanche 250 in this issue has got to be among the fairest of them all (see " Comanche 250: Tribal Chief," page 84). "It looks like it's been in a sealed vault for 40 years," says Editor at Large Thomas A. Horne. "The cargo straps in the baggage compartment are still rolled up and in their little bags, just the way Comanches came from the factory." After flying the photo shoot for the article, Horne flew the airplane through a rain shower and discovered something else that's special about the airplane: It had never been in rain. After landing, owner Kirby Totty immediately whipped out a huge squeegee and wiped away the offending H 2O. The Comanche was dry once more, but Totty lost his rain-free bragging rights.
Writer Phil Scott explores the wonderful world of aviation speak in " The Name Game," which begins on page 92. "A college friend, Peter Engelman, turned me on to linguistics. His girlfriend used to fly him to dinner in her Piper Cub, and Pete, who's very tall and broad, barely fit into the cockpit. The airsick Pete gave up flying after they stopped dating, but he's a big fan of John Ciardi's A Browser's Dictionary. I began reading it before bed and in no time I had a collection of dictionaries — Webster's Unabridged, The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, and even Johnson's Dictionary. Today I own more dictionaries than airplanes, but I rent more airplanes than dictionaries."
"Aerial banners were as common as clouds in South Florida where I grew up," says author James Wynbrandt (see " Ban, or Banner," page 97). "Seeing the tow operations up close was like returning to an age of innocence — my own and aviation's." Wynbrandt researched and wrote the article in the summer of 2001. Then the events of September 11 and subsequent airspace restrictions threatened the survival of many towing businesses, which the article needed to address. He went back to the writing table. "Now the homage I intended to write to banner towing may turn out to be an elegy," he says. Andy Werking, AOPA associate director of regulatory and certification policy, discusses AOPA efforts to preserve the right to fly in "Who's in Charge of Airspace?" accompanying Wynbrandt's story, page 100.
