Principia, Inc.

Steve Demy flies a Columbia 300 based near Vancouver BC, and relishes the challenges of long flights. He watches the wind aloft and meticulously plans ideal altitudes as well as fuel and prop settings. He has regularly made non-stop Vancouver-Toronto trips, a distance of about 1800 nm.
Today I departed Bend OR in a new Columbia [...]

Use of combustion in transportation began by burning fuels like wood and coal in the open to boil water to make steam to drive pistons to crank a shaft. Later combustible petroleum-derived fuels were burned directly over the piston heads. Pistons have been mostly replaced now in favor of turbines, with continuous combustion around the [...]

About 1900Z on Saturday December 6, 2008, the pilot of Cessna 206 N6053B about 10 miles north of Traverse City requested a clearance for the ILS 28 instrument approach to land at Cherry Capital Airport (KTVC). The approach plate is provided in the links section at the end of this article.
His communications with Minneapolis Center [...]

I made a sort of living for a brief time in the 60s rebuilding air-cooled normally-aspirated engines that powered the thousands of VW beatles and vans on the road then.

So when engine monitors like the JPI began to appear in the cockpit, I had a basic understanding of what I was looking at, and [...]

We are investigating which of the three single-engine turboprops would be best suited for the 600 nm trip my dad often made for Lily Tulip Paper Cup Co., from White Plains NY (KHPN) to Augusta GA (KAGS), with three coworkers, and two pilots, for a total payload of 1200 lbs, at a realistic average weight [...]

Let’s suppose you are involved in a business that involved frequent trips to locations less than 1000 nm apart, typically by yourself, but sometimes with up to three colleagues. Let’s also say those destinations are often closer to smaller airports that do not have scheduled service.
You might benefit by setting up an air service for [...]

I recommended that a client sell his airplane last week, but he has not taken that advice.
A green private pilot with an instrument rating that is barely wet, I had agreed to work with him on a transition into a single turboprop. He had already selected not only the model he wanted, but the exact [...]

Tim Slifkin hit a bird at 6000 feet, over the Hudson River. It was night, and he was on his way back to Morristown NJ from Nantucket MA in a Mooney cruising at about 140 knots, The windscreen cracked on the right side but held together. The first-time passenger sitting on the right was startled, [...]

Beginning May 25 and ending May 31, 1999, I transported a lovely old green and white Cessna 180 K, N180BB, with a big Continental O-520 engine from Hayward Air Terminal near Oakland California to Dublin, Ireland. Enjoyed it immensely, and managed to avoid ground looping. There are said to be two kinds of taildragger pilots: [...]

Pilots of pressurized aircraft like the Piper Meridian practice switching smoothly to emergency oxygen in case cabin pressure is lost.
Captain Daniel (Boone) Gibson and his crew in the 79th Physiological Training Flight at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland do a bang-up job educating civilian pilots on this topic. Ordinarily, they work with military pilots. But [...]

Garden Principia mission is an approach to design that focuses key principles of plant suitability in mid Atlantic region, environmentally sound practice, full season interest, low maintenance.

One of the many talented journalists in my neighborhood, Theresa Burns, wrote this about my garden in South Orange for “The Local” NY Times: Garden State: Shaking Up Griselda
http://maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/garden-state-shaking-up-griselda/#more-11787

Sustainable lawn care. Weeds, good, bad, in between. Some beneficial, some harmful. What to control, what not to worry about.

Sustainable, organic lawn care is not as hard as you think. Benefits extend way beyond lawn.

Garden catalogs are arriving, the days are getting longer. My gardening neurons are beginning to fire.
I have been spending a good deal of time reading about soil. My experience has shown me, that the better one cares for soil, the more it will reward you with plant and lawn performance and reduced need for maintenance, [...]

I started a discussion group to generate ideas, assess feasibility and approach to urban farm in South Orange on this site and on http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1252707
Inspiration come from both near and far.

Glass houses of Amsterdam.
City Brick Urban Farm in our neighbor city of Newark, NJ, [...]

Genetically modified food has caused so much concern. Much of that concern is justified.
Organic producers have responded to this and gone out of their way to avoid it.
However in order to address an emerging and apparently urgent need to produce adequate food in environment of constrained resources such as water and arable and, and the [...]

South Orange is a wonderful town. Our trees are are part of our identity. Our trees provide many benefits, however there is one considerable downside; the annual leaf clean up.
South Orange spends a whopping 480K collecting and disposing of leaves. New environmental regulations are expected to cause costs to triple starting in 2010.
Leaves are really [...]

Synergy between data center heat waste and agriculture.