In Part One, we flew to the greater Seattle area and toured the National Park Service (NPS) lands northeast and northwest of the Seattle metro area. That included North Cascades National Park (NCNP), Olympic National Park (ONP) and the various associated National Recreation Areas and NPS lands. In this section, we’ll continue our tour of…
Emerald or jade. Forest or hunter. Turquoise or teal. Whatever adjective one chooses to add to “green,” there is little question you’ll find it in Washington. As a state motto, it’s never been officially adopted, but Washington has long been called “The Evergreen State” for good reason. Seattle, the state’s largest city, is similarly referred…
Many aircraft owners are entrepreneurial by nature, looking for new opportunities, ideas and efficient ways to deploy capital and maximize their return. This mindset creates new and more affordable ways to fly the open sky without having 150 strangers sitting next to you. A common avenue to making aircraft ownership more affordable is to be…
When pilots Wayne Petrus and Philip Thomas flew missions for Angel Flight South Central in the early 2000s, they noticed the tremendous need for flights originating from their home state of Louisiana. Angel Flight was doing an admiral job, but with the organization based in the Dallas metro area, many of their pilots were also…
Five years ago, Ron Draper became president and chief executive officer of Textron Aviation at the age of 50. Earlier this year, Draper talked to King Air magazine about what he calls his “not normal” career path from farmer to the C-suite, the importance of faith and family in his life and his enthusiastic return…
There aren’t many King Air B100 aircraft in the world. I think it is one of the better King Air models, but others love the mighty 3XX, 2XX and the various 90 models. The little known B100 was designed and built in the mid-1970s when Beechcraft anticipated a Pratt & Whitney employee strike could impact…
In a perfect world, the seller or buyer of a used aircraft would hire an experienced aviation attorney to draft a purchase agreement. The other side then negotiates modest revisions and everyone signs. That perfect world rarely exists. I’m frequently asked by fellow owners to review purchase or sales contracts drafted by others, and I’m…
Surprised, pleased and honored were the feelings I had when I received a phone call from Garmin’s Senior Business and Commercial Aviation Sales Manager Scott Frye, inviting me to come to their headquarters in Olathe, Kansas. I’d meet with and get briefed about their new Autothrottle and Autoland systems by some of their flight test…
As the four-blade aluminum propellers of the Beechcraft King Air 350 spun to a stop at Alaska’s Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport’s North Terminal, freight handlers stared at the aircraft’s civil lettering and red maple leaf roundels. When the cabin door opened, three men in military flight suits stepped from C-GSYC. As they unloaded training…
Jim Kirvida proudly reached 25 years of ownership of N911CF, a 1980 Beechcraft King Air F90, earlier this year. The president of Custom Fire Apparatus, Inc. in Osceola, Wisconsin, has previously owned and operated a King Air 200 (BB-843) and a King Air C90A (LJ-1198) as well as two Cessna 425 Conquest twin turboprop aircraft.…