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In their sleevies. Ron Wanttaja

Let's meet tomorrow for lunch. Ron Wanttaja

They quack up. Ron Wanttaja

Only to persons with small drones. :-) Ron Wanttaja

And...how did they determine 20 feet? Was it a 20-foot drone a mile away, or a 2-foot drone 200 feet away? Why a 20-foot drone? More people likely to see it taking off or landing. Harder to hide once landed (have to disassemble it quicker), no need for a large payload capacity (don't need...

Most likely explanation, I think. East coast event happened almost a year ago, and some similar events are reported at other locations. Seems like the military would have totally freaked out after the first event, unless they had a hand on it. Testing the vulnerability of our systems, testing...

Undergoing conversion for another mission. Ron "Look out London!" Wanttaja

I question how well the F-22 could acquire and track such small, low-speed targets flying close to the surface. Especially if the drone operator knows they're coming. Maybe they'll have fake cockpits painted on their bellies, like my Fly Baby. Geezer's suggestion of marines in helicopters...

I've seen a lot of reports on Facebook of folks saying FB deleted their pages due to "Community Standards." The "offenders" are like discussions of Wordle, or knitting or movies. I suspect FB changed their algorithm lately, and it's running amok. Ron Wanttaja

Yeah, but at least when there's a tornado in North Dakota, the hang glider pilots aren't running around yelling, "Dirt's up!" :) Ron Wanttaja

The media cycle, regarding FEMA. 1. Disaster occurs 2. Media accuses FEMA of being too bureaucratic, hindering aid. 3. FEMA reduces red tape 4. Media highlights the scam artists taking advantage of FEMA 5. FEMA tightens requirements 6. Go to Step 2. Ron Wanttaja

As a kid, I remember watching an episode of the original "The Fugitive" supposedly set in my home town. Showed snow-capped mountains in the background. In Fargo, North Dakota. Ron Wanttaja

As others have stated, the high washout rate contributed to weeding out the chaff so just decent pilots remained. There's a video of a movie published in WWII..."How to Fly the P-51 Mustang." Really sounds pretty simple. Even so, you had pilots like Robert Standford Tuck that almost washed...

Friend of mine lives at the extreme western tip of North Carolina, the hurricane passed by just 30 miles from him (fortunately, he was on the "clean" side where the winds were less...also his home in Tampa came through as well). He says a major part of the problem is that the local...

Odd that the NTSB has not issued a Preliminary report on this (ERA24LA346). The high-profile nature of this accident may be making them careful. Oddly enough, there was a near-identical accident in 2008 (WPR09CA002). "The pilot stated that the tailwheel equipped airplane suddenly veered to...

Yup. Sometimes when there are two persons aboard, the PIC flag may indicate the person with the less experience, but in this case, he was alone.... 53 hours in the past 30 days. With just a Student certificate, he (probably) wasn't flying professionally (and his medical was just a Class 3)...

There's a lot of tricks one could try, but the problem lies in how reliable the data is and all the other factors that might affect things. I tried subtracting the aircraft's time from the pilot's total time, but obviously that doesn't work if the airplane has been on the rental line...and...

Pilots involved in Cirrus accidents tend to be less experienced than those in other high-performance aircraft. My database of production aircraft is spotty, but my Cirrus one covers 1998 through 2021, and it shows the pilots involved had a median of 730 hours total time. I have a Bonanza 36...

The sad thing was, it fit better that way… Ron Wanttaja

Total EAB aircraft involved in midairs from 1998 through 2022 is 51. That's about 1% of all EAB accidents. Nineteen of the 51 aircraft were RVs, it's 2.7% of their total accidents. However, Cessna 172 midairs were 3.6% of their total accidents. Few formation accidents, though. Eighteen of...