I'm going to a gathering in Pittsburg, at: Comfort Inn Pitsburgh EAST 699 Rodi Road Pittsburgh Pa. The woman at the hotel said the closest airport was 30 mins away, in West Mifflin, PA. No amount of web searching will turn up an identifier for it, and I'm not familiar with the area.

There is one among us who has repeatedly said he does not drink alcoholic beverages. This will explain everything. Ben Franklin said; in wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria. In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if...

I understand how positive dihedral helps dynamic stability in airplanes, but some big ones, like the Russian An 124 Condor, has a pronounced negative dihedral -- the wings have a noticeable downward slope. Q1: Do those airplanes need active fly by wire controls to maintain stability, or is...

The Mooney 201 has a ram air port, a half a foot under the prop spinner. The POH tells us it can be opened at altitude for a very modest increase in MP and we find maybe a half inch increase in pressure. The idea of the thing is, if the port is looking right at the air being thrust toward it by the...

The quality of insults on this site has really gone down (you sinners know who you are). Someone made a collection of higher quality insults, and I'm including them here for your inspiration. Do try to do better in the future. Here's a warning for the more literate among you: don't drink...

It used to be that when we were assigned an en route altitude we held it, plus or minus a needle width or so -- husbands trained as engineers are apt to be a little compulsive about things like that. Well, we had a long discussion with another pilot who had different advice. He suggested, since we...

Here's something most of you already know. http://www.newsobserver.com/news/growth/traffic/gas/story/1037551.html GA flying is way down in the southeast.

The state cops could file all kinds of charges -- no plate, no inspection sticker, blocking traffic, the list goes on and on. All charges are of course optional. The real issue is, what actions will the FAA take. If the fuel exhaustion was an unforced error on the part of the PIC, it should...

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Surrender" and "Collaborate." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralysing the...

This amounts to a sales piece for a remarkable airplane - it's 4 minutes long, but it's worth watching to the end. http://www.f22-raptor.com/media/video_gallery/videos/F22_AirShow_Langley.wmv If you wach closely in full screen mode, you can see the differential flipper action: there is some...

Interesting story documenting how much pilotless airplanes are being used in combat. The article says about 500,000 hours have been used so far. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080102/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/unmanned_killers_11 It's interesting to speculate what this might mean for high risk

On Nov 25, 12:12 pm, "Panic" wrote: Some thought to ponder when someone asks you if you miss flying. A Subject: Pilots, Navs and good old aircrew You won't have all of these memories, but enough of them to make you smile . . . . . Some may be hard to understand...

The following text is from Brian Shul's Sled Driver, his memoir of flying the SR-71. It's a great read, and most of us has seen parts of it before. If and when you read it, I'd appreciate your thoughts about this. how is it such an airplane had been resticted to recon? Had any been configured as a...

OK, so the center of gravity (except for some airplanes with really smart computers) is going to be forward of the center of lift for stall recovery reasons -- that makes sense. The question I have is, for a typical GA flying machine -- take a complex single for example -- what really is the...

As best I can tell, it seems for a given configuration air speed for best glide angle (I will define best as most shallow angle) changes with weight, but the angle itself doesn't change much. Hi performance gliders carry water to increase penetration into headwinds, dump it to increase time aloft,...

Now this is not a very ladylike posting, but this story is something the readers of this newsgroup will enjoy. This is from a colorful writer from the 3rd Marine Air Wing based at MCAS Miramar: There I was at six thousand feet over central Iraq , two hundred eighty knots and we're dropping...

We had a vacuum pump failure a month ago, and husband did something I think is worth mentioning. He keeps a number of Post It notes stuck to the notepad he uses for flight plans and notes, and stuck one on the face of every vacuum driven instrument. He said he's so used to scanning everything to...

Yes, it's a part 135 joke, not a part 91 one, sent to me by a Jewish friend. THE FLIGHT It was mealtime during a flight on El-Al. "Would you like dinner?" the flight attendant asked Moishe, seated in front. ''What are my choices?" Moishe asked

Can anyone recommend a flight instructor for my private certificate in the Lincoln Nebraska area? Thanks!

Giuliani has made some emphatic statements proposing $100 dollar bills be eliminated to combat drug dealers. Perhaps all cash will be next. ] * On November 11, 1993, apparently tipped off by a friendly bank clerk who * thought Alvarez's redeposits looked like "structuring", the...