VH-PUL

Ferrying a 1946 Auster J2 through Australia

The aircraft ferry game is both interesting and where one always expects the unexpected. My card reads "Can Ferry, Will Travel." Flying an older aircraft cross country is more than just throwing your bag in the back and departing. To do the job properly means planning ahead.
Wing view

A student pilot learns an important lesson

Things began to get interesting. I was about to learn a valuable lesson about checkpoints—namely, don’t use railroads or high tension lines. From the air they look exactly alike and as luck would have it I chose the wrong one and begin to get off course.
G1000

Stepping down in automation—the real lesson for children of the magenta line

Van Vanderburgh and the American Airlines Training Department determined that pilots flying the new automated jets were becoming “Automation Dependent Pilots.” One of Van’s slides defines such a pilot as one who does not select the proper level of automation for the task and loses situational awareness.

Friday Photo: Puget Sound fun

Puget Sound in Washington is an ideal place for a general aviation airplane. The distances are short, but roads are few, so a quick flight can take you a world away from the busy streets of Seattle. In this picture from Kevin Knight, Mother Nature gets an assist, as the sun breaks through a broken layer of clouds, highlighting the water below.
Turning final

High energy approaches: student edition

Recently, a video of a Cessna 172 crash into a hangar after landing in Canada went viral. The student pilot got out of it with minor injuries, but the fact that he was just another one saved by Cessna's generous engineers underscores a critical point in training that might have been overlooked. It is a systemic issue across the industry, and it has to be mitigated, like any threat.
Chief on floats

A less-than-graceful arrival

I worked at the seaplane base while attending college and in 1964 I had acquired a 1939 Aeronca Chief seaplane project. I finally had it completed and flying by the summer of 1966. I planned to do the required long cross-country flight by taking a week at the end of the summer and heading north. My ultimate destination was Greenville, Maine, on Moosehead Lake.

Go or No Go: smoky San Carlos

The overall weather for your flight today from Scottsdale, Arizona (SDL), to San Carlos, California (SQL), looks excellent—no fronts, no storms, no ice, hardly any clouds—with one exception. Huge wildfires have covered much of Northern California with smoke. That means widespread IFR conditions near your destination. Can you make the trip?
172 on short final

Stop calling it the impossible turn

Pilots love a good debate, and some topics seem to come in and out of fashion like bell bottoms. Right now the wars over lean of peak and angle of attack indicators have cooled (thankfully), but the war over “the impossible turn” seems to be heating up. In the last few months I’ve seen multiple articles, videos, and forum threads on the subject. It’s fun to debate, but what problem are we trying to solve here?

Friday Photo: thunderstorm at sunset

Harvey Swift sums it up well: "As a captain on the 737, I get to see many great sights. I managed to get a good one here." His breathtaking photo is a reminder of how beautiful—and dangerous—Mother Nature can be.
Flight in L-39

How the Reno Air Races saved me

An early career change took me in an unplanned direction away from aviation. After 24 years in the industrial diamond business a customer from Hayward who knew of my aviation background invited me to join his “September family” in Reno for the air races. After so many years, I thought this would be a one-time visit. However, this courtesy visit blossomed into fourteen years of annual pilgrimages and a rekindling of my passion for aviation.
Kayla by airplane

Horses and airplanes: another rewarding Young Eagle flight

It started with a phone call from a fellow teacher at one our middle schools. She had a student, Kayla, who was interested in aviation, and since I taught aviation at one of our county high schools, could I arrange a flight for Kayla?
Goodyear blimp

Go Goodyear—mixing it up with the blimps

When flying in the Akron area in daylight, one would occasionally see one of the slow flying Goodyear blimps. Wingfoot Lake grass airport and hangar, a few miles south of Akron, was the location where Goodyear built the blimps and trained new crews. The blimps appear quite large to most people on the ground but when flying near them they do not seem as large.
Oceano County Airport

A great day of flying—solo to Santa Barbara

The way to win every time is to remember - What’s Important Now. When flying an airplane and something unusual happens, keep flying the airplane. The only chance you have to get the airplane flying normally again is to keep flying the airplane. Don’t become a passenger.

Friday Photo: safe from the storm

In tropical countries storms build up very fast; you must be aware of that and take care of you and your plane. That's what Santiago Arbelaez is doing in this week's Friday Photo. It shows his 1954 Piper Pacer tied down at Tolu, Colombia, in preparation for a nasty storm.

If we were all airplanes

If I were an airplane, I would be a Cessna 182. Because it “drinks” a bit, but it’s a trustworthy, sturdy airplane. If I were an airplane, I would be the Cessna 182 because it is simple and obvious but delivers what it promises and rarely lets you down. You can’t say it’s pretty, but it won’t scare you with its looks. It’s not nimble, but it climbs well and doesn’t need much runway to take off…
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.