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For homebuilts, 38% of the midair collisions involve formation flying. These two airplanes weren't homebuilts, of course, but it illustrates the risk.... Ron Wanttaja

Interesting bit of WWII trivia: Most of you are probably aware about Disney drawing mascots/patches for any soldier or sailor who asked for one during WWII. There's a lot of airplane and squadron logos featuring famous Disney characters. One woman in 1943 heard about the program. Her...

I don't record the recency of experience. I do have the total time in the type of aircraft, but from what I can tell, the NTSB only records the last 90 days/last 30 days data regarding total time, not just in the accident aircraft. Also have no convenient way to identify how long they'd owned...

While we're telling bomber-ride stories.... Flew in EAA's B-17 a few years back. Put this together to share with friends. Ron Wanttaja

In the 19th century, the NCO's clubs were better than the Officer's clubs. The NCOs were career men, more interested in comfortable existence, while the O-clubs had a bunch or rowdy 2nd. Lieutenants who wanted cheap booze and consumed it quickly. Ron Wanttaja

I do track starvation (fuel still in aircraft, not configured to feed the engine) differently from exhaustion (no gas left). 2.2% of the RV-6 accidents were starvation, vs. 3.8 for the Cherokees and 0.8% for Cessna 172s. However, this does depend on the wording of the NTSB report, so there...

Well, I think a 10-year-old RV would probably have fewer problems than a 50-year-old Cherokee. I looked at the Vans's accident record a couple of years ago: https://www.kitplanes.com/homebuilt-accidents-focus-on-vans/ Coincidentally, a Cherokee owner's group had me compile the same sort of...

Check your PMs. Ron Wanttaja

Should point out that one of the mods here (Jesse Anglin) bought a Fly Baby a while back for some inexpensive taildragger time. Ron Wanttaja

Bob Steven's take.... Ron Wanttaja

Too bad it wasn't Continental Airlines.... Ron Wanttaja

Except as several of us have pointed out, the saying dates from well before the invention of aircraft, much less WWII. To quote Wikipedia, "Its first usage was the punch line of an 1855 Indiana comedic short story titled "The Judge's Big Shirt"." But the lengths are actually pretty close...

Check the Wikipedia entry. It traces the saying to 1855. Ron Wanttaja

"Cool your jets." I haven't heard "Wilco" for a while. Ron Wanttaja

Based on homebuilt accident data, but it should be about the same. https://www.kitplanes.com/aging-aviators-and-safety/ Ron Wanttaja

The problem is, we don't know how many pilots at a given experience level are still active. Maybe the accident rate decreases for pilots with more than 20,000 hours, but if most of those people are not flying any more, it skews the results. I did attempt to look at the accident causes for...

From my data, there were 12 US accidents (through 2022), with two incurring fatalities. That's a ~16% fatality rate; pretty typical. It's less than the Cessna 210, it's more than the Cessna 172. NTSB found that both the fatal Kodiak accidents were due to spatial disorientation. Both pilots...

Certainly; of the 11 US Kodiak accidents that listed a landing gear type, five were either floats or amphibious floats. Accidents didn't necessarily happen in the water, but it's an indication of the use of the aircraft. Keep in mind, too, that there are also more-experienced pilots involved...

Microair now has a small version of their miniature transponder that has an altitude encoder and ADS-B built in. https://www.microair.aero/product/t2000adsb-transponder/ It's listed as $3,500. You'll also need a transponder antenna installed. I'd count on ten or so hours of installation...

Not really enough accidents to come to any conclusions. I usually require 50 US accidents in the NTSB database; there's only 12, and several of them are foreign accidents for which detailed information and probable cause is not recorded. The ASN list includes incidents, which are not included...