Cardinal pilots are justly proud of their airplanes, as Associate Editor Julie K. Boatman found out while researching the cover story, " Budget Buys: Cardinal Flier," beginning on page 82. "I had been using the Cardinal Flyers Online Web site for research, and we needed to find a couple of sharp Cardinals to fly for the photo missions," says Boatman. "I contacted Paul Millner, and he sent out a message on the group's e-mail digest for me. The response was tremendous. I received photos and letters from Cardinal owners across the country testifying to the restoration and care of their airplanes. I wish I could have met with everyone." Millner and his CFO partners, Keith and Debbie Petersen, were invaluable help to Boatman during the process, as was Brian Corliss, AOPA Northeast regional representative.
There aren't many pilots who haven't seen and been inspired by Jimmy Stewart's tour de force, The Spirit of St. Louis. When the film was released in 1957, author Barry Schiff was working his way through college as a 19-year-old flight instructor. The movie impelled him to visit the National Air and Space Museum for an up-close and personal look at the Lone Eagle's silver monoplane. "It was an awesome experience," Schiff says, and he has daydreamed ever since about what it would be like to fly that airplane across a hostile ocean. Flying a replica of the Spirit over Wisconsin was next-best, he reports. Schiff says that during his flights in NX211 he tried to imagine that it was 1927 and he was in the cockpit of the genuine article — an experience he tried to convey in " 75th Anniversary: The Spirit Flies On," which begins on page 92.
"Aircraft performance must have been a guessing game for early pilots," says Associate Editor Nathan A. Ferguson. "With modern pilot's operating handbooks (POHs) at least we know where to form a baseline. I learned to fly in the mountains out West, so leaning the mixture before takeoff and launching with half tanks was simply a way of life up in thin air. Climb-pitched props seemed to make a big difference. One of the airplanes I trained in was a Cessna 152 that had been the victim of a hail storm. Its dimpled topside looked more like a golf ball. Amazingly, it didn't seem to affect performance. But I don't know if, like a Titleist, the dimples made that Cessna fly straighter." Ferguson details the importance of the POH in his story " Out of the Pattern: Into the POH," which begins on page 115.
Andrew Werking, associate director of regulatory and certification policy for AOPA, works with industry research and standards groups to develop a replacement for leaded avgas (see " More Than a Decade of Advocacy," page 104). "Because of continued decline in worldwide demand, the future of 100LL is uncertain. AOPA continues to participate in the search for a replacement fuel that requires little or no modification to the existing GA fleet," says Werking. AOPA has been involved in the search for a replacement fuel for more than a decade.
