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In Flight USA Articles
Raymond D. Allen: Flying WWII Veteran Still in the Air Today
By Herb Foreman
Ray Allen with his group of 10.Not many pilots have more flying time from the San Carlos Airport in Northern California than Ray Allen. Born in San Francisco and a graduate from the prestigious Lowell High School, he was at the right age to participate in World War II. Initially, color blindness kept him out of the Air Corps Academy and he began his career as a mechanic at Stockton Field in San Joaquin County on Oct. 28, 1942. After pestering his officers and taking new tests, he was admitted to the “cadet program” as a bombardier and navigator. He attended gunnery school and learned how to strip a 50-caliber machine gun blindfolded. He learned both celestial and dead reckoning navigation and after 105 hours of instruction joined a B-17 crew bound for Europe.
Contrails
Remembering Orion
By Steve Weaver
Steve and the flying school Citabria in 1969. (Courtesy of Steve Weaver)He walked through the office door at the airport on a hot July afternoon in 1969, looking like a farmer in his late fifties that had climbed down off his tractor and come directly to the airport. All of this turned out to be good detecting on my part, because that was exactly what he was and what he had been doing before he took a ride to see us.
Orion as it turned out had something bothering him, and it had been eating at him for almost twenty five years. He had returned from the big war, gotten married, raised a family and become a successful farmer and business man, but this little piece of his past was always there and it still nibbled away at the little secret spot where a person lives, even after all those years. He confessed to me that afternoon, sitting in the big armchair in my office, that he had washed out of the Army Air Corps flight training. Even after a generation, I could still see the regret and the shame in the faded brown eyes.
Keeping the Spirit of Aviation Alive: The Kansas Aviation Museum
By Carl E. Chance
What gives an aviation museum spirit, a pervading animating principle? Is it the building, the aircraft displayed, or the artifacts that chronicle the past, telling the story of aviation pioneers and the craft they flew? The Kansas Aviation Museum believes that it’s much more than that.
An aviation museum needs dedicated and creative people who have the vision and the passion, giving rise to what can only be recognized as a profound spirit, evidenced by the daily work in maintaining and growing the historic collections. The difference magnifying the dimension of that spirit lies in the depth and commitment of the dedicated staff and volunteers in their quest to keep aviation history alive in the present and for future generations.
Spirit is difficult to communicate because it’s so intangible. You know that spirit itself can’t be touched, seen or heard, but when you’re in the midst of a museum that expresses the spirit of aviation, you can sense it. Spirit will manifest itself in various forms as people act on that spirit to do creative works.
Final Agenda for NTSB's General Aviation Search and Rescue Forum Announced
Aviation's Unsung Heroes
Skies to Stars - June 2012
By Ed Downs
This month’s edition of Skies to Stars diverts from the personal experience of astronomy and takes a quick trip into the wonders of astrophysics. The big guns at NASA are coming up with some pretty cool stuff that has been shaking up the scientific community. From almost the beginning of recorded time, our feeble species has wondered, “are there other ‘Earths’ out there?” Thanks to the Kepler, the Spitzer Space Telescopes and the U.S. portion of the European Space Agency’s Planck mission, that question is being answered.
The Kepler Space Telescope looks for Earth-size planets in the habitable zone, the region in a planetary system where liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet orbiting around sun-like stars in our galaxy. The Spitzer Space Telescope provides the astronomical community with unique infrared images. Among its many duties is probing the atmospheres of planets beyond our sun. The bottom line is that over 2,300 “planet candidates” have now been discovered. Some 400 of these planet candidates are presumed to be “Earth-like,” in that they are estimated to be similar to Earth size and in a favorable temperature zone that will support liquid water. One of these candidates, Kepler 22b, is of particular interest and is known to occupy a habitable zone. But the following information from a NASA press release is even more exciting because a planet, called 55 Cancri e, has been detected by the presence of its own light.
Talent, Ambition and Hard Work Spell Success For San Carlos Pilot Mark Schwartz
By Herb Foreman
Mark Schwartz stands by his Debonaire.I have known Mark Schwartz for a number of years now and I am still amazed at the talent in this one man! In a sketch I wrote several years ago, I called him the ultimate entrepreneur. He’s also a musician, mechanic, salesman, pilot, manager, businessman and more.
He bought the original Holland Motors from Bob Holland 35 years ago. It seemed a successful operation so he never changed the name to reflect his own glory. He figured he would just build on what Holland had begun and it worked out well. Building confidence in customers became all-important to him in the conduct of the business.
Contrails
Flying With the Newly Dead
By Steve Weaver
I don’t know, but when I look back at the almost 50 years I’ve spent in aviation, it seems to me that my career didn’t unfold as it really should have. Rather than the orderly, planned and supervised tempering of my peers, my progression into and through the various aviation endeavors always seemed to happen in spasmodic bursts that often left me with Alice in Wonderland-like bewilderment. Looking around at my next role, as a flight instructor, or a survey pilot or whatever new phase I found myself in, I found myself totally clueless about how to properly proceed.
For one thing, I had no real mentors, other than the odd instructors that popped up at vital times, and then were gone. I was a restless student pilot with my own airplane, and by keeping it at small, out of the way strips I managed to stay under the radar for about 300 hours of dangerous wandering before settling down enough to get my private license. Adding the commercial license seemed like a natural thing to do since my logbook was fat with hours, and when the examiner told me I flew well enough to pass the flight instructor’s exam I decided to get that rating too.
Reid-Hillview Seeks Pilots for Airport Day
AD affecting Great Lakes aircraft produced during 1970’s and 1980’s
General Aviation in China Growing
By Alan Smith
The 2010 General Aviation Forum held in Beijing.When looking at change and economic growth in China, one first has to understand what kind of nation one is looking at. Start with the sheer size of China – in fifty years, its population has increased from a bit more than 500 million to more than one billion 328 million people. This has occurred despite government laws prohibiting marriage before the age of 29 and then limiting the number of children brought into the new family to one. As one can easily figure out, those regulations were almost impossible to enforce.
NATA Summit to Raise Funds for Combat Wounded
First Ever Public Ground Tours of World's Largest Zeppelin Memorial Day Weekend in Long Beach
Tickets for 49th annual National Championship Air Races Now on Sale
NTSB Provides Investigative Update and Issues Recommendations to Increase Safety at Air Races
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) provided an investigative update on April 10, 2012, on last year’s crash of a highly modified P-51D airplane at the National Championship Air Races in Reno, Nev. On Sept. 16, 2011, the pilot of the Galloping Ghost experienced an upset while turning between pylons 8 and 9 on the racecourse. The airplane crashed on the ramp in the box seat spectator area. The pilot and 10 spectators were killed and more than 60 others were injured.
In addition to the investigative update, NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman announced that the agency was issuing a total of seven safety recommendations to make the National Championship Air Races a safer event for pilots and spectators alike.
“We are not here to put a stop to air racing,” said Chairman Hersman. “We are here to make it safer.”
The Story of Aviation Pioneer James Herman Banning
By Louisa Jaggar and Pat Smith
Have you ever heard of James Herman Banning? If you have, you are unusual. Most people know Lindbergh and Earhart, but Banning, for the most part, has escaped the history books. Why? Because he was African American and in the 1920s the mainstream press didn’t write about African American aviators. He was the first African American to fly across the continental United States, and many believe he was the first to receive a United States issued pilot’s license.
Almost 70 years from the time of Banning’s death, Pat Smith was researching aviation heroes from Oklahoma for National Geographic’s Celebration of 100 Years of Flight. She found an aviation history file and pulled out a short news clip that mentioned Banning. She saved it because it peaked her interest and she wanted to know more about him. About two years later, she mentioned him to me. Together, we decided to write the story of his life for young adults.
Editorial: It Would Have Been a Good One
By Ed Downs
A funny thing happened on the way to this month’s editorial view. The topic was going to be a treaties on words buried in the text of Title 49 of the United States Code of Federal Law. Title 49 deals with transportation in the U.S. and defines the fundamental responsibilities of the FAA. Within Title 49 is the Code of Federal Regulations Title 14, known by us aviators as the Federal Aviation Regulations. Title 49 contains five basic mandates with which the FAA must comply, including the need to “protect the right to navigable airspace.” Yes, flying in the U.S. is a right, not a privilege. Not all “rights” in this country are contained in the Constitution’s “Bill of Rights.” Many are buried deep within millions of legislative legal words, often lost and alone. The danger to aviators, and many others, is that these rights can be quickly, almost secretly, taken away by amendments added to almost any legislation working its way through congressional committees. This month’s rant was going to warn readers of just how important it is to actively support and understand this “right to fly,” remembering that the United States is the only country in the world that views their airspace in this manner. Then this writer’s cell phone lit up.
US Aviation Sponsors Travelling Forums
Bush Pilots: Where did they come from? And, where are they now?
By Alan Smith
A Curtiss JN-3 in military colors. These were among the earliest bush aircraft. (Courtesy of the San Diego Air & Space Museum Archive) When mot people think of “Bush Pilots” most of them think of Alaska and northern Canada. In fact there are bush pilots around the world, carrying things like food, fuel, medical supplies and (courageous) passengers. The term basically means a pilot that may depart from an airport but has no airport, runway, or landing strip at his destination. They fly airplanes equipped with larger tires suitable for landing on rough ground, floats for landing on lakes or rivers and sometimes with amphibious floats that make landing on the ground or on the water possible.
Where did this aviation specialty come from? It is generally thought that this kind of flying began shortly after the end of World War I in South Africa. The African “Bush” simply described any wilderness outside the then growing cities of the region. Some highly valued mining had begun in parts of the African countryside (Diamonds and precious metals) and those operators were in constant need of supplies. Strings of burros proved to be far too slow, and the recently developed airplane was much faster and therefore more attractive (though more expensive) than the plod of hooves through the bush country to various growing industrial projects. Some of the earliest bush planes were Curtiss JN-3 and JN-4 “Jennys.” More than 5,000 of these were built after 1917 for various nations. Most were for the United States military, but many went to nations of the world and to the early bush pilots of South Africa.