Touring Machine Company

When reading about aircraft in publications like Aviation Consumer, I tend to focus on the accident causes and it seems that across all aircraft, around 12% of accidents are caused by fuel exhastion and another 2-4% by fuel contamination. This usually puts fuel mismanagement in third or fourth place among accident causes. Inexplicably, fuel exhaustion [...]

Certification of Aircraft is covered by PART 23–AIRWORTHINESS STANDARDS: NORMAL, UTILITY, ACROBATIC, AND COMMUTER CATEGORY AIRPLANES Among other things it sets out the four types of aircraft that are normally flown in Part 91 operations.
FAR §23.3 Airplane categories.
(a) The normal category is limited to airplanes that have a seating configuration, excluding pilot seats, of nine or [...]

Roll over the planes to see parts labelled. Beginning students should name and roll until the names become second nature. Use the Next and Previous button to see more planes. The Show/Hide button lots you see all of the items on the page. If two labels are close together, roll over each of them and [...]

Click on the picture for more pictures of the same plane.

 Swift

 T38 Trainer

 Stearman PT-17 Trainer

 Quickie (More Photos)

 Longer Long-EZ

 Coast-to-coast Air Mail Bi-Planes

 Avanti

Inspections of the entire aircraft and parts of it are required and 1 or 2 year intervals. In addition, ADs, service buletins, or manufacturers specifications may require inspection or replacement of parts at certain intervals. This article covers life limited parts.
The following list is not necessarily complete.
Annual Inspection
FAR §91.409 requires an inspection every 12 [...]

One thing that I thought odd when I first started flying was the propensity or pilots to tell stories about how they really messed up and lived to tell about it. As I listened to more and more of these hanger flying stories I came to the realization that almost all of them involved the [...]

Annual inspections are required by § 91.409. The portions relevant to most pilots are shown below. Note that inspections must be made “by a person authorized to perform an annual inspection” which in most cases means someone certified under § 65.91 Inspection authorization. and generally referred to as an IA or AI. Note that in [...]

It’s annual time again and this is the first annual on our Cessna 210. The plane had been stored for 12 years and flown for the last 3 years by a person with, let’s say, a creative approach to maintenance. We’ve been addressing things as we go, so the obvious things have been fixed in [...]

There are all kinds of cool airplanes out there and sometimes when I see one I want to ask someone what it is. That’s not always possible but you can always find out if you know the N number. Go to the FAA registry and type in the N number. Suppose you put in N7290J [...]

As an airplane moves through the air it also can rotate about its center of gravity in three axes. Rotation along the lateral axis (found by drawing a from one wing-tip to the other through the body of the plane) is called pitch and is controlled by the elevator. Rotation along the longitudinal axis (found [...]