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The professional pilot shortage is real.

It is even more than that, because the flight isn't just a pleasure cruise. It is tactics, threat and detection system use, weapons employment, and the mental work of "doing the job" that is hardest. Flying the airplane is necessarily an unconscious act, because your mental horsepower is in...

Here's my "credible voice" apple for the "apples to apples comparison". Wood wings, fabric covered, no electrical system (and thus no radio) taildragger, just about to enter the pattern at a small GA airport. Using just my eyeballs to clear my flight path and not be a conflict for other...

Every USAF pilot training base has a runway that the T-6 undergrad pilots use and which primarily uses procedural deconfliction to separate up to 12-ish aircraft...all flying overhead patterns of every variation. It is "controlled" by a pilot who is in a mini-tower and is on a discrete...

What he really means is from the "perch point" -- the point on the downwind leg that is 45-degrees off from the runway threshold -- it is a 180-degree constant-bank descending turn which continues through base leg and rolls out on short final.

The interesting (and frustrating) thing about nearly all of the civilian formation accords is that they are a strange blend of USAF and USN/USMC formation terminology, visual signals, and comm. Just enough of each to ensure that no pilot of either background can rely exclusively on their...

Our term for that is "Tac initial".

Of more relevance to this discussion -- since we're referencing GA pilots and GA aircraft -- is that the FAA-approved sanctioning bodies for teaching formation flying (FAST/NATA, FFI, RPA, etc) all use the term "break" for the first turn in the overhead pattern, and "pitchout" when that takes...

The more technically correct term is "Anal Naviator".

Maybe so, sad to say.

The New Shepard is not Blue Origin's only project underway.

The real difference is that Blue Origin is quite secretive about what it is doing, while Space X chooses to promote and PR everything it does. My college roommate was formerly an engineer with Kistler Aerospace before it went under and now works at Blue Origin. He was quite free to talk about...

In my experience in the military training pipeline, most re-tread backseaters fare very well in pilot training because of the SA and judgment they already have from the previous air under their ass. One former WSO I flew fighters with said, "it is amazing what you can learn in pilot training...

Aviation was expensive at the beginning, too. Air travel wasn't available to the WalMart crowd when it started. It always takes someone (or some organization) with a lot of $$ to spend before actual operational costs go down. IMHO, private space is the inevitable future of all non-military...

Certainly true...and and apt description for the vast majority of individual aviators' experiences in the world in the entire history of aviation. We all really only know our little slices of a vast and varied aviation community, and unfortunately it is rare for someone to have much experience...

No, but the tall bros I know in the Viper complain about nuggets hitting the canopy with the funky sitting position where they have to kind of hunch forward with their shoulders off the back of the seat. Guys with long legs have also complained about their shins hitting the bottom of the panel...

It is important that folks remember that there are two separate but interwoven halves of airmanship -- one is the basic stick-and-rudder capability to manually make the aircraft do what you want it to do ("monkey skills"), and the other is the judgment and decisionmaking capability that resides...

As with all things in the fighter community, "it depends", and I'm not sure I agree with the blanket statement here. I had a SQ/CC in the F-15E who was 6'7" with a normal athletic build and he fit in the Strike Eagle fine (despite looking like a circus bear riding a tricycle). Should also do...

Wait, who owns the seat again?

Good luck, fellas!