Seeking a smoother ride, we had descended out of our lofty cruising altitude before crossing the northern border of Arkansas. To increase arrival options, I’d canceled our instrument flight plan in favor of VFR flexibility. The first smooth altitude we found was relatively low. Thus, 10 miles northeast of Hot Springs, Arkansas, the airport was…
From flying and managing one Beechcraft King Air in 2005 to directing a fleet of 23 aircraft and the operations of the flourishing Hawthorne (California) Municipal Airport, Levi Stockton is skillfully navigating his career and the growth of a company he convinced four real estate investors to support when he was 23 years old. The…
With the help of Beechcraft King Air operators, Textron Aviation hopes to form the largest peacetime airlift with at least 200 aircraft flying to Orlando Executive Airport on June 4, 2022. That would mean a Textron Aviation aircraft taking off or landing every two minutes, taking Special Olympics athletes and coaches from their home bases…
When you think about what a Green Beret does in his free time, you likely don’t envision him sewing in his garage. But that’s exactly where you’d find Ross Johnson in the evenings when he was on active duty as a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces. While serving three tours in Afghanistan, Johnson…
After working several years at Beech Aircraft, I had heard the Raisbeck name in relation to the King Air, but I didn’t realize the impact that James Raisbeck had on the ever-popular turboprop until I became editor of the King Air magazine. I interviewed James shortly after the magazine was launched in 2007. That conversation…
James D. Raisbeck’s innovative modifications to the Beechcraft King Air product line provide owners and operators with a series of upgrades that improve the airplane’s capability, utility and overall value. “Mr. Raisbeck has made our aircraft faster, given the owners of our airplanes the usage of more airports through lowered calculated landing speeds, and provided…
The King Air Gathering (KAG) scheduled for Sept. 23-26, 2021 has been postponed due to the uncertainty associated with the Delta variant of COVID and the challenges it may pose for travel and safety. The new dates for the KAG are May 12-15, 2022 and have been coordinated and confirmed with the event sponsors and…
The roll-up door retracted upward as sunlight beamed through the opening. Beacon steady; green. Go, go, go! Thousands of feet of air; around a minute of free fall followed by a graceful drifting back to reality. Another takeoff in an aircraft followed by a biped landing. Jumping out of “perfectly good airplanes” is something that…
In Part I of this series, we explored two of Colorado’s amazing national parks and the airports that serve them – Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), northwest of Denver, and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (BCGNP), just east of Montrose. Colorado has two other national parks worthy of your exploration. However, if you…
An old joke among pilots is that flying to anywhere in eastern Colorado is basically just a flight into western Kansas. Indeed, the eastern one-third of Colorado has more in common with Kansas and Nebraska than it does with the mountainous terrain that Colorado is famous for. What is easy to miss is the steady…