Aviation technology analysis with Vector. Electric aircraft, avionics advances, eVTOL certification, satellite connectivity, and the engineering innovations shaping the future of flight.
Joby's S4 eVTOL is a real, flying aircraft - but battery physics, FAA certification, and pilot economics will decide if air taxis survive the real world.
Why airplane Wi-Fi was bad for 20 years and how Starlink's low-Earth-orbit satellites and phased-array antennas finally fixed it.
Radio Hangar explores V NAV, the Autopilot Mode That Flies the Descent, and Why Coming Down Is the Hardest Thing in the Cockpit to Automate.
Why Beta Technologies built electric aircraft chargers before its ALIA airplanes were even certified - and why that bet may define electric aviation.
How Dynon's 2016 SkyView STC and the FAA's Part 23 rewrite opened certified cockpits to affordable experimental-grade glass panels.
NASA's X-57 Maxwell never flew, but its 14-motor electric design retired the hard risks that today's electric aircraft industry builds on.
Pathfinder One is LTA Research's 400-foot electric rigid airship - here's what it can actually do and where it makes sense.
How Stratolaunch's Roc, the world's largest airplane, pivoted from orbital rockets to launching America's fastest hypersonic test vehicles.
Radio Hangar explores TCAS, the Resolution Advisory, and the Automated Voice That Overrules Air Traffic Control When Two Airplanes Are Thirty Seconds From Hitting.
Why the U.S. built ADS-B on two frequencies - 978 MHz and 1090 MHz - and what every pilot must know about traffic coverage.
NASA's X-59 aims to soften the sonic boom into a quiet 'thump' and overturn the 1973 ban on overland supersonic flight.
How Aireon's ADS-B receivers on Iridium satellites finally gave controllers real-time surveillance over the oceans that ground radar never covered.
Radio Hangar explores Don Bateman, the Ground Proximity Warning System, and the Automated Voice That Taught Airplanes to Say 'Pull Up'.
How EFVS uses an infrared camera and head-up display to let crews legally fly an approach to touchdown in weather their own eyes can't penetrate.
CFM's RISE open fan engine promises 20% better fuel burn and could power the next single-aisle jet around 2035.
The FAA's Space Data Integrator feeds live rocket telemetry to air traffic control, shrinking hours-long airspace closures to minutes.
How the Garmin GFC 500 retrofit autopilot brought envelope protection and a level button to legacy aircraft - and why certification mattered as much as the hardware.
Radio Hangar explores The Open Fan, CFM's RISE Program, and the Engine With No Cowling That Wants to Cut Airline Fuel Burn by Twenty Percent.
How WAAS augments GPS to enable LPV precision approaches down to 200 feet at airports that could never afford an ILS.
Dawn Aerospace's Mark Two Aurora took off from a runway and broke the sound barrier - a rocket plane built to fly, land, and fly again the same day.