This past weekend I had the chance to use my shiny new VFR/IFR checkout in the new Diamond DA40XL on an overnight cross country flight to Iowa with my family (minus the dogs). Get the details of the flight including lessons learned after the jump.
Today I had my first flight and VFR portion of my checkout in N793US, a 2007 Diamond DA40 XL. I plan to post an in-depth review of the airplane after I complete my IFR checkout and do a XC flight back to Iowa next weekend. In advance of a more detailed write-up, I want to [...]
Was so excited yesterday when I was looking around on the Diamond Aircraft site and discovered a local FBO (KCAC) had recently been selected as a Diamond distributor — Okay, so I was only moderately intrigued at this point; give me a second I’ll get to the good part…the rest of the story after the [...]
I want to thank Student Helicopter Pilot Jason of for the heads up on this story. A few days ago, on the heals of the ENG helicopter crash in Phoenix, there was amazing video of an apparent engine failure on Bell 206 Jet Ranger Helicopter for the FOX station in Dallas-Fort Worth. The video shows [...]
Last month, AOPA had a great article (AOPA members only) by Steven W. Ells about Robinson Helicopters and their manufacturing facility in Torrance, CA. It just so happened that I was out in the Los Angeles area for a training conference with 10,000 other network engineers and I realized how close to the factory we [...]
Last spring when I visited the Cessna Plant in Independence Kansas, they told us that 2006 was the last year could order standard round instrument gauges (commonly referred in the Cessna world as Nav I and Nav II avionics packages); being replaced by the new Garmin G1000 system (called Nav III). I was a little [...]
