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Published: 16 December 2021

  Greetings, About a year ago, I found myself thinking out loud that at least 2020 was almost over! The craziness and chaos that surrounded nearly every facet of life last year would be coming to an end. A big sigh of relief, and then January came along. 2021 has turned out to be equally challenging, but in entirely different ways. The supply chain issues last year

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Published: 15 December 2021

    Winter weather is here, and the days are really becoming shorter. The Saturday morning fly outs for breakfast are having to start out at dawn to get to breakfast on time. It won’t be long before we will have to start at official sunrise and probably still be a bit late, unless you are authorized to fly at night, and take off before sunrise. Anyway, it sure is

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Published: 16 November 2021

  Pilots often bristle when hearing that the government wants to “get involved” in aviation. We think more red tape, more obtuse regulations, and additional financial burden will be coming along shortly. Bucking that stereotype is the Buckeye Mayor, Eric Orsborn. He is not only a staunch advocate for aviation, but he’s also looking at how to increase the general aviation

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Published: 16 November 2021

  Greetings, It's that time of year when the skies are once again filled with the sound of Lycomings and Continentals. Yes, the occasional lovely radial drowns out the others with a welcome roar, and the turbines blow by quickly. It's winter flying season. While the rest of the country is hunkering down, pickling engines, and getting the shovels and snow blowers out

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Published: 15 November 2021

    Fall weather is finally here, and although some of the days have been a little warmer than normal, the flying weather has been great. I hope all of you have been enjoying it, also. It’s been good going on the weekend morning breakfast flights, and enjoying them with friends, and not getting banged around on the way home. This is the time of the year that we

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Published: 16 October 2021

  Greetings, In last month's column, I debated with myself whether to upgrade the hodge-podge steam gauge panel in my Comanche to a glass/partial-glass solution, or to keep the steam gauges going. The math was (seemingly) a no brainer; glass can run upwards of $130k, while keeping the legacy gear running can be a couple thousand per year. It's obviously far less

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Published: 15 October 2021

    The fall weather is supposed to be on us, and fortunately the temperatures have come down a bit and the mornings have produced some really great cool flying. I certainly hope we are through with the really strong damaging monsoon winds that we had this year that blew in hangar doors and upset airplanes that were outside. Here is hoping that we can put this

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Published: 16 September 2021

  Greetings, The recent massive advances in avionics technology in just the last five to ten years is astounding. My steam gauge Comanche has been considered modern only a couple times in its life. In 1960 when new and outfitted with a complete IFR package, and again in 1989 when we took ownership of it and installed a civilian radio package and updated IFR gear after

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Published: 15 September 2021

    The monsoon weather has been interesting to say the least. It’s taken down trees around the various airports, and caused other minor, and in some cases, major damage because in some cases it’s done in some airplanes also. Apparently, it wasn’t always because the airplanes weren’t properly secured. I was told, in one case, the tie down rings were torn out of the

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Published: 16 August 2021

  Greetings, In my career in the defense industry, I’ve traveled to some pretty incredible places around the world. I’ve been able to take in bucket list items around the globe and still grab any chance to travel that I can. I’ve taken some epic trips in our Comanche that I’d love to do again. Alaska to Florida, the Bahamas, Oshkosh (when it was still Oshkosh), Sun ‘n’