Airplane engine and prop

It’s annual time! Here’s what you should know

Are you ready for your plane’s annual inspection? If you are a relatively new aircraft owner you may not be anticipating your upcoming (and, hopefully not too expensive) mandatory trip to the airplane doctor. Here are a few steps.
Phillips with father

A daughter teaches her dad how to fly

The lights on the dome of the state capitol rose higher out the window of the Cessna 150, as we settled over the city just north of the airport. We seemed to hover for a moment, like we were in a helicopter. I loved flying at night, but this lesson was not going as planned. I was a new flight instructor, and the student pilot flying from the left seat, nervously watching this unfold, was my father.
Cascade lake

Youthful exuberance

After landing at McCall (about 80nm north of the Boise area), we walked across the street to a nice little Mexican place (still there, I think) for a leisurely lunch. As we walked back to the Dawg, Mark noticed several large, smooth “river biscuit” rocks at the edge of the tiedown area. He said, “Hey, let’s grab one of those and we’ll drop it over Lake Cascade on the way home!”

Friday Photo: sunrise over Georgia

In the summer months here I love sunrise flights. It's cooler and you beat the heat, humidity, afternoon thunderstorms, and convective turbulence. It's also pretty quiet up there with little air traffic. But it requires waking up around 0500 to get to the airport early enough to catch the sunrise airborne.
Low clouds

Adding to the judgment bucket—a flight that never should have happened

To illustrate the advantages of learning risk management over the time-honored method of letting fate take its course, I offer the following episode. It happened on a soggy, overcast, and misty day in 1967 in southern Louisiana. I was in my dangerous phase.
CFI with student in Cessna

Student pilot nerves and the fear of flying

Most flying instructors will be familiar with the sight of student pilot nerves and most pilots can remember experiencing them. Learning to fly presents the student with all kinds of challenges. How each person reacts to these depends upon their individual strengths and weaknesses.  For some, they must overcome a fear of flying itself.
Boeing taxi simulator

The strangest 45 minutes in my logbook

While searching my old photo archives, I stumbled upon these images of an unusual device in which I logged about 45 minutes. Thankfully it didn’t fly at all but it did taxi quite nicely. The machinery was created by The Boeing Company and was used in early 1994 to simulate the geometry of the new (at the time) B-777.
Gulfstream takeoff

What’s different about flying jets

Pilots of piston airplanes wonder what it’s like to fly a jet. Do I need different pilot skills? What are the sensations? Just what is it that makes jet flying different from piston powered airplanes? Here are some answers.

Friday Photo: a busy rain cloud

I was flying up to our family cottage in Gravenhurst, Ontario. The visibility was excellent and there were lots of fluffy white cumuliform clouds starting to tower up all around. This one caught my eye because it was pretty much on its own and it was producing a strong column of rain.
Lear on ramp

From Learjet to Cessna 150 in the same day

We were in a hurry to get to Moab, Canyonlands Airport (CNY) to get the Lear fixed and ready before the passengers showed up. My concern: I was planning to fly myself back to Long Beach in my Cessna 150 if we weren’t too late getting back to Sacramento. Hopefully the weather would hold and Long Beach (LGB) would not go IFR with the marine layer before I arrived. I was keeping my fingers crossed.
Quan Loi

Scud running in Vietnam

One day, quite a few of us were tasked with missions to resupply Quan Loi in our C-123 Providers. The weather was not too bad as we broke out on top at approximately 1500 feet. I flew on top to the general location of Quan Loi, but could not see a thing except the clouds that we were flying over. I contacted the Army controller and found out that the runway was overcast, with the cloud height above the ground at 50 feet.

Go or No Go: another summer day in the Southeast

Another summer afternoon, another radar splattered with red and yellow cells. After many years of flying in the Southeast, you're used to this picture but that doesn't mean you ignore it—thunderstorms are a serious threat for any airplane. The goal today is to fly from Sarasota, Florida, to Atlanta, Georgia, in your Cirrus SR22. Will the weather allow it?
787 cockpit

On automation and airmanship

The original intent of contemporary cockpit automation arose from the capabilities view of technology, in particular the capability to optimize aerodynamic efficiency while also optimizing airspace utilization. This was, and still is, clearly a machine in the service of man. The intent of automation began to migrate toward the cybernetics view with the notion that we could automate human error out of the equation.

Friday Photo: Indonesian island off the wing

Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world, with over 17,000 total islands. Emiliano Beltramone captured a picturesque one from the right seat of a Cessna Caravan in this week's Friday Photo. The remote island with tree-covered hills and a lagoon looks right out of a postcard.
Wing

The clean wing—not just a concern in winter

The vast majority of GA pilots will no doubt have a firm understanding of the clean wing policy when it comes to winter operations. The question we have to ask ourselves though, is do we realise that the same aerodynamic risk exists all year round?
first flight with dad

One plane and one girl’s dream

It was a calm evening and the sun was setting behind the Blue Ridge Mountains as the familiar smell of leather and avgas instantly brought me to my happy place. I smoothly advanced the throttle, my heels on the floor as I guided the Cessna 172 down the centerline of the runway. Once airborne, my face broke into a wide smile as I turned to my dad and our eyes met. Words were not needed in that magical moment.
Leonardo sketches

The famous quote that da Vinci never said

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” This Leonardo da Vinci quote is everywhere — aviation books, magazines, websites, Instagram posts, coffee mugs, tee shirts, several science textbooks and some Smithsonian publications. Yet Leonardo da Vinci never said it; and it’s nowhere close to 500 years old.
Rough River

Are pilots rediscovering how to travel by light airplane?

By long standing tradition, baseball players never talk to a pitcher in the middle of a perfect game—if everything is going well, why jinx it? The same mindset applies to pilots, who are often hesitant to acknowledge good news for fear of chasing it away. I’m going to violate that unwritten rule because I think it’s worth exploring an interesting development: general aviation is doing surprisingly well during the coronavirus pandemic.

Friday Photo: an advancing storm

I was on the first leg of my long solo cross-country, where the route was FMY-OBE-PGD-FMY. The storm was forecast to stay west of OBE, and this picture was taken as the storm cut off my path to OBE. I had clear skies to my right, so I executed a 180-degree turn to the right and returned to FMY from the southwest while remaining clear of clouds. I repeated the flight the following day to completion.
On final

Unstable approaches in a pandemic world

Who would have guessed? Most pilots—notably airline ones—are flying less than ever since March, and the number of unstable approaches has skyrocketed. According to a recent report from the International Air Transport Association, the rate of unstable approaches per thousand flights jumped from around ten to fifteen monthly in the last two years to 28 in April and 37 one month later.