We heard the unfortunate news today about adventurer Steve Fossett disappearing during what by accounts was a simple pleasure flight in good weather. He departed the Flying M Ranch southeast of Reno, NV in a Citabria Super Decathlon Monday morning on a local flight and did not return. The Flying M Ranch is owned by the Hilton Family of hotel fame. Finding the ranch on a map wasn’t easy - so we’ve created the simple map below showing the location of the Flying M. We suggest you view the map in Google Earth to get an appreciation for the mountainous terrain nearby.

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Flying M Ranch - Switch to Hybrid Mode or use the View in Google Earth Button for best results!

For best results when viewing Google Earth files, it’s best to always have the latest version. The easiest way to do this is to install Google Earth via the ‘Google Pack’ from Google. The Google Pack is free, and will keep all your Google applications up to date. To get Google Earth via the Google Pack, use the button below:

Help us find more great Airport / Airplane videos for our Google Earth Map!
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Update:We appreciate the wonderful response we’ve been getting about our Airport Videos Google Earth layer below! We’ve got an inbox full of corrections, deletions, and new videos to work through thanks to your help. If you’ve saved the Airport Video layer to your ‘My Places’ folder in Google Earth, it will update automatically each time you load it.

It’s been a long time coming, but yesterday’s release of Google Earth 4.2 covered widely on the internet it is now possible to embed flash videos, such as those on YouTube into the windows version of Google Earth.

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Bird strikes are an unescapable risk of aviation. Fortunately, most strikes result in only minor damage, but combine high speeds and large birds (or lots of them) and the outcomes deteriorate. We received a few pictures this week which show a close call between a Piper Arrow and turkey vulture which happily ended without human injury.
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We received a powerpoint slideshow presenting a plausible scenario for the Embraer Legacy / GOL 737 mid-air collision which occured over Brazil on September 29th, 2006. The presentation is in Portuguese, but the key points are well illustrated. While the author is anonymous, the first slide claims that the source is a ‘credentialed’ (certified) by CENIPA the Center for the Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents which is part of the Brasilian Ministry of Defense.
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We’ve posted a set of five videos showing the fun qualities of the Zenair CH-701 STOL aircraft. In this case, we are flying a kit-built CH-701 with Zenair 950 Amphibious Floats and the 80hp Rotax engine. We have since upgraded the engine to the 100hp Rotax 912S and performance is even more impressive. The videos demonstrate normal land takeoff, normal land landing, pilot’s eye view of a water landing, ‘hover’, and STOL takeoff and landing. Be sure to scroll down the page to see all 5 videos.

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One of the most distinctive jet fighters of all time, the F-14 Tomcat was officially retired in Navy ceremonies today. Its career spanned over 30 years since its inception in the mid-70’s. While not the 1st swing-wing US fighter, it outlived the Air Force F-111 (which at one time contented against the F-14 for Navy use) by quite a bit.

Distinctive bits of F-14 Lore:

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PlanePlaces.com Correspondant Larry Z filed the following report and photos on his attendance at MERFI 2006 held at the Marion Municipal Airport (KMRT) in central Ohio:

Wow, what a couple of years and a change of leadership can do. I just came back from the annual MERFI (Mid-Eastern Regional Fly-in) in Marion Ohio. In years past I’ve always been a little disappointed in the communications and services once you’re on the ground there. This year was just a wonderful experience.

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My dad pointed me to a very nice AirVenture photo essay posted at http://silvairehair2.home.comcast.net/072806/. Some very nice aerial imagery from their trip and around the grounds at Oshkosh AirVenture 2006.