From Joe…Staton West is an Instructor Pilot, Instrument Flight Examiner, and Pilot-in-Command in the US Army in both fixed and rotary-wing aircraft, has been deployed to war zones more times than you have fingers, is a true aviation aficionado, and one of my best friends. I make every effort to publish just about anything he…
Here’s a link to the route with lots of pics…the written story is below… I’m always excited any time I get a call from Travis Holland for you just never know what adventure he might have in store. The owner of HollandAero, Travis is a bonafide Jetprop/Phenom nut who loves to fly internationally. He’s built…
I heard a common comment before each of my flights this week – “You sure are a brave guy! Are you sure you’re ready for this!” While at the MMOPA Convention, I was one of four instructors who had the priveledge of flying with some of the spouses of the PA-46 pilots. These are the…
For my first years of flying PA-46’s I “did it alone”…meaning that I pretty much read the manual, flew once with an instructor at annual recurrent, and flew the airplane as I saw fit. It worked well as long as thing “went well”, but as soon as things did not go well, I was on…
A few days ago a customer paid me in cash for 4 days of initial training (thousands of dollars). Normally, I don’t carry around large amounts of cash, but I had to on this occasion for the drive home. I put the cash into a pocket on my backpack and placed the backpack in the…
Launching a glider is normally accomplished through one of three methods: Aero-tow, Winch-tow, or Auto-tow. I’ve done all three, and all three have distinct advantages and disadvantages. I chose to launch at Casey Aviation via the Auto-tow method for several reasons, and have become one of only a few in the USA who are currently…
From Staton West: US Army PIC, Instructor Pilot, Instrument Flight Examiner, and good friend of anyone who loves aviation: I recall, not that long ago, a period in my life when all I could think about was how to get another hour of flight time – another rating – anything really that would make myself more…
I finally got to do something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time…fly the altitude chamber. My pilot class in the US Army flight training did not get to do the training, and I’ve been interested ever since. So, when the MMSTF scheduled an altitude chamber class around a MMSTF weekend seminar at…
For some reason the flight over to Italy on the airliner affected me physiologically much more than normal. The Jet-lag was quite intense, at least much more than normal. I never do sleep well sitting up straight on an airliner and didn’t sleep very much on this flight at all. My biggest complaint on the…
The Schwiezer glider has arrived and anticipation mounted as everyone at KJSO wondered how the auto-tow method of launching a glider was going to work. I was hopeful it would work, but was just not sure. I’d done the research and felt good about it, but it needed to be proven by someone driving the…