Shortly after the Concorde sighting, Charlie signed me off for my checkride. My flying had become crisp, precise, and confident. He hadn’t said much during our recent flights; I hadn’t heard a WDYDT in a couple of weeks. He’d sit back and observe, silently nodding in approval as ...
The other propeller airplane configuration that always tantalized, and even could be proven in wind tunnels, was mounting the engines on the rear as pushers. A pusher prop produces more thrust on the same power, and because the props are aft of the cabin, the passengers experience jet-like s...
Well, of course, we did have the Concorde and discovered that development along those lines bumped up against a little thing called physics and a thing called opinion among citizens of heavily populated areas. Otherwise we would be flying from New York to LA in less than three hours. It m...