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I went into the sky

By Dave English

I pass right by Walden Woods on my way to work at Boston’s Logan Airport. I hear Thoreau’s words in my head mostly as he wrote them in 1854. The exact quote from his book Walden; or, Life in the Woods is: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” For me, flying is learning to live deliberately. Seeing the New England fall foliage … Continue reading I went into the sky

Robin Olds on Flying

By Dave English

Fighter pilot legend. Triple Ace. Multiple combat victories against Messerschmitts and MiGs. Married to a Hollywood actress. Son of a General, who became a General himself. College football star. Best Wing Commander in Vietnam. Hard-drinking mustached maverick, who eventually was Commandant of the Air Force Academy. Robin Olds had an amazing career. But let’s look here at some of his (almost sensitive) writing on flying. He first flew at the age of eight, in an open cockpit biplane with his father, a former WWI instructor pilot who became an accomplished aviator and Major General in the United States Army Air Force. In … Continue reading Robin Olds on Flying

The Disciples of Flight movie review

By Dave English

At the end of 2019 I downloaded a new aviation documentary— and it’s gorgeous. Beautifully shot crisp HD images of general aviation flying paired with insightful interviews from a bunch of pilots, including Patty Wagstaff, Rod Machado and NASA’s Dr. Dismukes. You can download it from Disciples of Flight directly for $15, or use Amazon Prime Video. Well worth the price for the visuals alone. The movie’s 93-minutes are all about personal dedication to aviation, about really loving and living flying. There’s no narrator, just lots of hangar interviews cut with super cool flying video. Both feel personal, close, real. … Continue reading The Disciples of Flight movie review