The past week’s thunderstorms chased pilots from the skies.
Technology is a big part of the piloting experience today. My good friend, fellow pilot and Boonville native Ben Trout, likes to say we used to get to our destination in spite of our technology. Today, we get there because of it.
As the pilot examiner, there is a good chance I have never seen the applicant before test day. I know nothing about them except what is in their logbook. The performance I am about to judge is just going to be a snapshot of their skills.
One thing you can get pilots to agree on is: a successful flight is conducted only with the assent of Mother Nature. Thunderstorms, fog, ice, turbulence, and this past week, volcanic ash, keep even the biggest and most sophisticated aircraft on the ground.
Publicly, pilots praise the time-saving virtues of flying. But in private, they have a saying: “If you have time to spare, go by air.” That was certainly the dilemma I found myself in last week.
Randy Babbittt, Federal Aviation Administration administrator, has announced a landmark change in pilot medical certification rules: The FAA will now allow pilots to take one of four antidepressant drugs and keep their medical certificate.
New Franklin senior Melanie Wilmsmeyer inked a national letter of intent Thursday afternoon in softball with Central Methodist University in Fayette.
Columnist David Bradley, the longtime manager at Boonville's Jesse P. Viertel Memorial Airport, recalls a harrowing experience with a student pilot.
At its last meeting, the Boonville City Council awarded a contract for the installation of a new automated weather observing system at Jesse P. Viertel Memorial Airport.
Quantity or quality? That is the title of the argument occurring in the aviation industry today.
On Tuesday, City Council held its second monthly meeting. In this meeting the council approved the Jesse P. Viertel Airport Master Plan.
The Airplane Owners and Pilots Association has announced its new lineup of safety seminars. One such seminar coming to Missouri has me interested. “Ten Things Other Pilots Do Wrong” is the title, and it will be presented in St. Louis and Springfield in April.
I was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, just home from Vietnam, in March of 1970.
On the second Sunday of each month, the Daniel Boone Flying Club assembles for some sort of aviation activity. It might be a ground school, flying refreshers or a field trip.
Start early and stay late. That is necessary to do any flight instruction in the weather we have experienced this past week. During the snowstorm, and the high winds on the backside of the low, the airport was a ghost town. The winds whistled through the planes parked on the ramp. Blowing snow reduced visibility to a quarter-mile.
It is a new year. 2009 and the decade of the “aughts” are gone.
It is Friday afternoon, the end of the work week — time for my commute from Columbia to Boonville. Time to turn on some music in the car and shake off the pressures of the office. Time to take off the mask of smiles and pleasantries I must wear in my professional life. Time to go home, where I can be myself, grouchy and irascible.
Winter has come to mid-Missouri.
Janice Bradshaw has done it again. On Monday night at Thespian Hall, she engineered the annual community Christmas concert, and it was a rousing success.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has changed its winter forecast.
