AOPA Pilot Magazine - Turbine Edition

By J. Mac McClellan

In 50 years of flying and well more than 12,000 flight hours I have never been ramp checked by the FAA. That is, until just a couple months ago.

By Roger A. Giuliani

When I was a child, every now and then my mom would bring home a balsawood airplane from the grocery store. They had a red propeller, rubber band, about four parts, and cost about $1.

By Sheila Harris

The passports of Stephen and Heather Rider’s children, all three under 10 years old, are filled with names of destinations most people will never see in a lifetime. In a family with a foot in two worlds, it’s not unexpected.

By Chris Powers

It was middle of July 2015. My wife and I had just moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, and I had taken a job flying a fleet of Beechcraft King Airs for a small charter company. On this occasion I was flying an older model King Air 200 on a one-hour Part 135 charter flight from Jackson, Mississippi, to Little Rock.

By Bruce Williams

The electronic horizontal situation indicators (EHSI) in today’s primary flight displays (PFD) include a navigation indicator that can instantly improve your situational awareness and help you quickly comply with ATC clearances, which otherwise might require editing the current flight plan or switching the GPS to OBS mode.

By Daniel Hassing 

BasicMed is one of AOPA and general aviation’s greatest achievements in the past several decades. BasicMed has freed many pilots from the cumbersome medical certification process. But despite its potential, BasicMed is still poorly understood.

Ah, winter flying during the holidays! The skies shimmer with silvery hues, and airfields sparkle under a blanket of white.

Born and raised in Bentonville, Arkansas, Louise McPhetridge Thaden lived a full life as an air race champion, pioneering aviatrix, and friend and rival of such legends as Amelia Earhart and Pancho Barnes.

Ah, the gift-giving season. The myriad people in your life deserve your attention to their passion, and if their passion is aviation, the AOPA Pilot Gear store is a one-stop North Pole.

“We were just two boys, 17 and 15, flying to California in an airplane built before either of us was born. That summer a reporter would make us briefly famous by writing that we were the youngest aviators ever to fly America coast to coast, but it wasn’t records or fame we were after. What we were really doing was proving ourselves to my father.”

By Don Peterson

Up until about the age of 6, my neighborhood was bound by how far I could stray and still hear my father’s whistle announcing dinner.

By Tim Wright

Former NASA scientist Mark Moore doesn’t want to build and sell a new generation airplane. But he does want to sell you on a new propulsion technology that your new generation airplane could have: electric jet engines embedded in your wing.

The Empire of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, propelled the United States into a conflict that would finally end nearly four years later with the beginning of the atomic age. Now, the site of the surprise attack is a national memorial to the lives lost that day and still an active home to modern warships.

Every year NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, helps raise excitement and anticipation for Christmas morning when it puts its considerable resources to work tracking Santa’s journey for excited kids around the world. The impressive operation began as a fluke.

By Laurel Johnson

It was a clear spring day. The weather was perfect, and my family was waiting for me to make the cross-country flight down the coast and through the mountain range from Seattle to central Oregon.

A successful surgeon put his Beechcraft Baron 58 in an Arkansas shop for a makeover. He wanted both engines overhauled, new paint and interior, and the steam gauges replaced with a modern glass panel.

Leaving the hospital with my newborn son years ago is a moment seared in my memory. As I cradled Jack in my arms, the automatic doors swished open, and I felt the warmth of the sun for the first time in three days.

By Bruce Williams

The instrument panels in typical light aircraft today include at least some “glass”: perhaps a pair of Garmin G5s or an Aspen attitude indicator/horizontal situation indicator combination, plus, in an IFR aircraft, a GPS navigator with a moving map.