AOPA's monthly magazine offers aviation articles on technique, aircraft, avionics, advocacy efforts, and more for veteran pilots and aviation enthusiasts alike.
A tiger elicits thoughts of a powerful, menacing feline poised to pounce upon an unsuspecting victim’s slightest wrong move. While the AOPA Sweepstakes Grumman Tiger exudes power and purpose, the pilot who will soon win the completely restored airplane need not fear. They will fly away in a fast, sophisticated, and beautiful cat.
Sucker holes. Deceptively good weather spots that lure pilots into bad decisions. They usually trap pilots anxious for a VFR gap in marginal conditions, but IFR pilots anxious for a flyable approach can be lured into bad decisions by an IFR sucker hole.
For many, the past few years have been as tumultuous as any period in their lifetimes. Given the major challenges the world has faced with health, security, and financial stability, general aviation has fared remarkably well. More pilots are active now than at any point in nearly 40 years; student starts are up; and the airplane market is strong. And at the center of it all has been AOPA, protecting your freedom to fly.
You have to sweat the right small stuff to achieve big performance. That’s my retort to the popular slogan, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” Grasping little advantages is an approach I adopted early in my U.S. Air Force career and ported over to my general aviation flying. Small items may not make for outstanding performance, but they can sure play a spoiler role.
Years ago, a young man contacted me about giving him lessons in his Cessna 172. When we met for the first time, I asked to review the aircraft documents and maintenance records. He handed them over with a big grin.
Every field of endeavor is plagued by myth, and general aviation is no exception. One persistent myth involves the operation of normally aspirated engines with constant-speed propellers.
During my tenure at AOPA, general aviation has faced significant and complex challenges. Each time, our team answered the call to beat them back and even opened up some opportunities.
Watching seaplanes land in the East River from her advertising office in Manhattan, Sarah Tamar had an epiphany: Flying was the answer to destressing her life.
Civil War historians and big cat lovers will want to land at Roscoe Turner Airport in Corinth, Mississippi. It’s a Deep South airport named for a local aviator, in a town named for an ancient Greek city.
Judy Reynolds is helping keep general aviation alive with the monthly fly-ins she hosts, May through October, at Turkey Mountain Airport (MO00), near Shell Knob, Missouri.
As I write these words, it’s early fall 2021 on the central coast of California. Thanks to a stationary high-pressure system, we have been rewarded with two weeks of the most beautiful weather I can remember, for any time of year.
Piston aircraft engines have a lot of moving parts. Way too many, if you ask me. The thought of thousands of separate metal parts reciprocating, rotating, wiggling, wobbling, and rubbing against one another thousands of times a minute ought to make you nervous—it sure does me. It’s something I try hard not to think about while airborne, mainly because I fly a lot better when not distracted.
I often get a sinking feeling during checkrides. Both private and commercial pilot airmen certification standards require candidates to demonstrate a short-field takeoff and, for many aircraft types, that means flaps are extended prior to departure.
The NTSB is frustrated. Year after year, they’ve had to investigate the same airplane crash. It’s a morbid version of Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day. Each time the cause is the same, only the tail number is different.