Recently decided to go for my private's license after all these years of waiting for time and money. But it seems like one has to just "hunt & peck" for a good instructor. True? How can you tell if an instructor has a good (or any) track record? Does the FAA keep track of instructors' success...

Just watched a new UPS/NASCAR commercial where Dale Jarret is lamenting the speed of UPS trucks being just 75 mph. He is being driven around the UPS airplanes on the airport ramp. His driver is telling him about UPS. Next shot shows a UPS truck with a pair of turbofans attached to the sides going...

I have a few questions about private piloting (the PPL license) that I havent seen answered anywhere. Maybe I'll learn about them during training, but whether or not I'll train depends on these answers: (1) Is there a central repository of rental locations other than the yellow pages? (2) After...

If an aircraft is operating IFR (part 91) with a current instr. rated private pilot acting as PIC, can a non instrument rated private pilot manipulate the controls? I don't see anything in the FARs that could explicitly prohibit this type of operation. For example if instrument rated pilot A...

We just returned from the 3rd Annual Cherokee Pilots Association Fly-In, held at Tan-Tar-A resort at Osage Beach, Missouri (in the Lake of the Ozarks area), and, wow -- this group just keeps getting better and better. What a great weekend! As the arrivals continued on Friday morning, a large...

After checking the Garmin site religiously for the past two years and not finding it, I finally asked one of the Garmin reps at AirVenture when they were going to post the opeating manual for the G-1000 to their websites. He informed me that they had posted it earlier in July. I finally got around...

A BT13 (apparently a BT13, it was described as a WWII trainer and the owner/pilot was reported to have been devoted to it's maintenance and history) went down just after takeoff from a small private grass field near Lyme NH. BT13's are so noisy when flying that the failure of the engine, or large...

When I totalled up the hours in my log book after the OSH trip Friday, they came to over 1,000. As I did when I turned 500 a little over three years ago, I stopped to reflect on what has changed about flying for me in the last 500 hours: * I used to do a lot of just flying around the local area,...

....regarding the airspace around DC. THE NATION Fighter Squadron Scours Washington's Busy Skies Almost daily intrusions turn a team of F-16 pilots into winged air traffic controllers. By Stephen Braun

I officially became a pilot today... My first post to these newsgroups was last November, after my introductory flight. Today, I took my private pilot flight test, and passed (with "flying" colours... I might add). Bit of a hitch at the start. Did my W&B, with some difficulty. I'm 200 lbs and...

There are two old Senecas at my airport with the Robertson STOL mod - full span flaps w/spoilers in place of conventional ailerons. I've seen one of them take off with a brutally short roll, and it went up as if on an escalator. My question is, how would one of these land in a stiff x-wind? Is the...

What are those pointy things hanging from the flaps called? And what do they do exactly? http://boeing.com/companyoffices/gallery/images/commercial/747400-14.html

Okay, here's an odd situation. 30-something pilot, been flying a few years, have had a couple of class III medical examinations; no problems. On a recent visit home, pilot's family remind him that as infant he had a heart murmur. There were checkups for a few years, but no restrictions, meds,...

Just saw an ad for Kiro News 4 at 11:00 It showed 2 light planes that had collided - looked bad. Anyone know anything? Tony -- Tony Roberts

YAWS (Yet another Weather Site) is accessible from WAP phones: http://activitae.com/wap PDA/Smartphones: http://activitae.com/pda Read about it: http://activitae.com/yaws At the risk of appearing to spam, kindly allow me to re-publicise this free site, bereft of both adverts and pop-ups, to help...

One of the problems with a 1 gig camera memory card is that it is possible to take virtually unlimited pictures at OSH. If you figure it takes a minimum of 1 minute per pic to look at, adjust, and save -- and I took 250 photos -- we're looking at a minimum of four hours just to save the pix...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/07/28/shuttle.plane/index.html Small plane enters shuttle no-fly zone Pilot disappears after being forced to land From Mike Mount CNN Washington Bureau Friday, July 29, 2005; Posted: 6:53 a.m. EDT (10:53 GMT) A small plane came within 20 miles of Discovery's...

Yesterday morning a Cessna 182 hit the 760 foot (AGL) tower of 50 kilowatt AM radio station KFI in La Mirada, Calif. The married couple aboard the 182 were killed, and the tower came down. KFI was off the air about an hour. According to media reports, the plane took off from El Monte and...

I hope this is not an inappropriate question for this usenet group, if so please direct me to the correct group. So here is the question: My boyfriend interviewed today for his first regional airline postion and will be starting ground school 8/8/5 in another state. I was hoping someone out there...

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/2005_oshkosh.htm Finally! Take a peek here to put faces with names of these rec.aviation regulars: - Montblack - Jack & Steve Allison (and plane) - Jim Weir & Gail Allinson (and plane) - Edwin & Jim (& plane) - Jim from NC