Yesterday morning, an experimental Velocity 173 RG crashed into a Las Vegas home, killing the pilot and two people in the building. We hate to hear about accidents like this and express our sympathy to those affected by this tragedy.

In the wake of this incident, some news agencies such as:Las Vegas Channel 8 and the Las Vegas Review Journal seem to be attacking experimental aviation, or even general aviation altogether.

I know many of us, in our initial training, were introduced to the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), but in the intervening two to twenty years, some of us may have forgotten exactly how powerful a resource the Aviation Safety program is.

The 2007 Collier Trophy, awarded by the National Aeronautics Association (NAA) for "the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year (Wikipedia)," has been awarded to the ADS-B technology that is scheduled to revolutionize air traffic control in the United States. (see our May 22nd article here for more information on ADS-B)

I recently wrote about a couple of incidents where civilian aviators decided to fly unannounced through military airspace and were somehow surprised when the ended up in close proximity to military aircraft.

There are websites that try to show when MOAs are active, but they can change with only a couple hours' notice. If a pilot asks his or her enroute controller, they can usually find out if the airspace is active. However, It's not an ideal system and a lot of the time the military aircraft aren't using an entire MOA.

Thankfully, as reported by the AOPA, the USAF is working with the FAA fix the problem.

You probably noticed the announcement that Eclipse Aviation would be pursuing their single engine jet concept late last week. While it's probably no real surprise since folks like Cirrus and Piper are already moving into the market, what peaked my interest was the reaction that the controller and airline pilots union's were having. Both are voicing concerns about congestion, presumably caused by "swarms" of VLJ's clogging the airway system. They cite slower cruise and climb numbers as there source, but neither interviewee had seen any issues to date.

Recently I took a flight in a 1981 Piper Cherokee, one of the Piper aircraft that populates the flying club I appease my flying addition with. On my first flight in this particular airplane as I was going through the flight checklist my passenger, also a private pilot, and I checked our brakes and I noticed the brakes felt soft, but were effective. I had been flying Piper Cherokees with the club for a number of months and the brakes in all the planes were usually a little mushy so we proceeded on the flight. We took off from Columbus, GA to Auburn, AL where we landed and back taxied for a departure to Eufaula, AL. I used the brakes to hold for inbound traffic and they felt softer and still effective so we continued on.

The most popular aviation magazine from the largest pilot's association, AOPA, has been providing information and lobbying power to the flying public for quite a while now. While I haven't been reading it nearly that long, past issues are stacked up everywhere in my house. I've got to say my favorite column is usually Rod Machado, his humorous approach to getting his point across always seems to make sense to me. Anyways... if you're a pilot or just interested in aviation you should definitely take a look, it's always worth the read, and you can even read the 50 year anniversary issue online here.