Bob McDaniel grew up hanging over the airport fence. His dream of flying began as a child in a sandbox and propelled him into the clouds. This true story chronicles his journey from a Cessna 150 to supersonic flight and back, covering military operations in war zones and peaceful flights at thirty miles per hour in a powered parachute. His civilian career is covered from his early days working as a lineboy to pay for his flying lessons, to his current position as director of one of the bus...

A simple step-by-step tutorial for pilots operating non-traditional aircraft (ultralights, powered parachutes and other slow-moving sport aircraft) at busy airports. It covers your rights to access the various kinds of airports, the requirements you must meet to be legal, and what a pilot needs to do to operate safely. More importantly, it will cover the things a pilot should do to be welcome.

Vietnam and Back, is the first hand account of a helicopter gunship pilot who served in Vietnam during 1969. It is an accurate and realistic portrayal of one average guy engaged in helicopter warfare in Vietnam.Flying helicopters can be challenging, and flying in a combat zone can be quite harrowing. The book is full of stories of being shot at, hit by enemy gunfire, and of mechanical operational failures, that created many near miss events.His experiences in Vietn...

I decided to write my memoirs so my grandkids and friends might enjoy some of the adventures I had while I was in the Air Force. I not only did something interesting, I did something very exciting. I had a great life growing up. I had wonderful parents and I was allowed do a lot of things most kids did not get to do. I always wanted to be a pilot, so one day while I was in college I stopped by the Air Force recruiter, to see what I would have to do to become a pilot for them. The recruiter...

"In 1963…there was no way I could have known, sitting in a classroom on that beautiful campus in Ohio, that by raising my hand I would be going to war in Vietnam and that I would see things, hear things and do things that most people cannot imagine."--James Joyce. The author was drawn into the United States Army through ROTC, and went through training to fly helicopters in combat over Vietnam. His experiences are notable because he flew both Huey "Slicks" and Huey "Gunships": the former on...

In 1945 Second Lieutenant Jack Broughton graduated from West Point with the silver pilot wings of a newly commissioned member of the Army Air Corps. Nearly thirty years later, he retired as a full colonel in the United States Air Force, an entity that didn't even exist when he first learned to fly. Along the way Colonel Broughton saw duty in virtually every fighter aircraft the Air Corps and then Air Force had to offer. He experienced the birth and coming of age of the U.S. Air Force and i...

Novella - Four stories, one poem, and Background on CTF-117 taken from the author's personal experiences during his tour of duty as a River Rat with the Mobile Riverine Force in the Mekong Delta, Republic of Vietnam. Plus, four other stories that reflect the trials and tribulations of those of us who served during this contentious time in history.It has been 37 years and he still cannot forget. You would think after all this time he could put these thoughts and emotions aside and g...

Follow an unlikely candidate from high school dropout to a highly successful flying career. Commendation from Lockheed's Clarence "Kelly" Johnson (SR71) as a High Caliber Flight Instructor tops the list.

Air travel is one of the safest modes of travel when we take into account the distances and freedom that it allows us. And yet, we still remain obsessed with aviation disasters. What caused these accidents? Whose fault was it? In her series of books, Why Planes Crash, Sylvia Wrigley investigates the worst aviation disasters of the twenty first century.Why Planes Crash: 2001 is the first of the series. Wrigley has put together eleven of the most interesting inciden...

The F-117 Stealth Nighthawk was a truly groundbreaking aircraft when introduced in the early 1980s. The strange shape of the jet, all flat panels and angles, rendered the aircraft nearly invisible to radar. This highly classified program wasn’t acknowledged publicly by the U.S. Air Force until 1988. The Nighthawk was retired in 2008 after twenty-five years of service, including bombing missions over Panama, Iraq during both Gulf Wars, andYugoslavia during the Kosovo war.Brad O’Conn...

The former launch commentator "offers a personal—and sometimes painful—look back at one of the darkest chapters in US human spaceflight" (Space.com).On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Seventy-three seconds after launch, the fiery breach of a solid motor joint caused a rupture of the propellant tanks, and a stunned nation watched as flames engulfed the craft, killing all seven crew members on ...

This is my storythe story of a pilot who flew airplanes for some thirty-seven years: ten years in the United States Air Force, primarily in jet fighters, and then twenty-seven years flying commercial jet airliners. I was inspired to write this story after reading the autobiography, a few years ago, of Gen. Chuck Yeagerhe being the world-renowned test pilot, World War II fighter ace, and first man to break the sound barrier in the Bell X-1. My story is the story of an average pilot, an aver...