Friday’s attendance at Golden West was small, only about 30% of last year’s Saturday attendance. But then I didn’t see last year’s Friday, so here’s hoping that it’s up today. Two Harriers and two F/A-18s gave a good show, as always, and you had to keep one eye on the sky for the frequent fly-by [...]
We’re working on an interview with some battery experts, and this is your chance to ask the tough questions. Have you wondered if dropping an aspirin in will help recover a dead battery (or was that chicken soup)? Then there’s the story that charging a battery with it on a concrete floor is a bad [...]
With instrument panels now being populated by flat screens, digital readouts and all manner of 21st century silicon wizardry, it seems odd to rely on 60-year-old technology to protect them from power spikes. Specifically, the mechanical circuit breaker. Have you ever seen one on a computer? Wondering what was new in the realm of electrical [...]
Twenty-four seaplanes were expected at the Mike Brown Splash-In on Memorial Day. However seaplane pilots prefer their water under the fuselage, not on the windshield, and only three local aircraft were able to make it to Obexer’s Boat Yard on the west coast of Lake Tahoe, California. It was interesting, though, to compare the takeoff [...]
In the May 2008 issue of KITPLANES I included a photo of a mystery wrench and asked folks to write in with identification. The response was a bit surprising in that this introduction-to-machining series of articles is being read by a lot of tool and die maker experts. I’m flattered! Some of the responses are [...]
The electric airplane: What’s the future hold, and how do we make it happen? That was the theme of the 2008 Electric Aircraft Symposium held on April 23 near the San Francisco Airport. KITPLANES was honored to be among the 60 participants from MIT, Stanford, NASA Langley, Boeing Phantom Works and as far away as [...]
Dave Parsons, one of our readers, wrote to compliment the aviation weather web site review in the May 2008 issue of KITPLANES. We left out his “personal favorite” so I thought I’d go check it out. Runway Finder is worth a look. Instead of being just another map, this is the entire USA displayed as [...]
Occasionally I receive a letter from a reader that offers an insight a bit beyond the expected. An especially well-informed source, Rawson M. (great first name!) recently wrote to relate his experience working for an unnamed aircraft company. The subject of his letter was a recent installment of “The Home Machinist” in which various methods [...]
