Ask Mr. Pilot

This informative little column answers questions from non-pilots, and helps them understand the strange world of the “aileron,” the “empennage,” NOTAMs and even the word “niner.”
gear up landing

Do Crash Videos Make Us Safer Pilots?

Do you really need a YouTube expert to remind you of the dangers of flying into known icing conditions? How about thunderstorms? Flying at night over mountainous terrain in hard IMC? Yeah, I didn’t think so. In fact, if you read the comments section of a lot of these videos (please don’t read the comments section), you’ll find that there are more non-pilots than real ones. They either found the video out of morbid curiosity, or they just got lost (hey, it happens).

Anticipation

There are many riddles to the human brain, and they are mostly borne from experience. It is more the Lamarckian trait rather than the Darwinian trait. Nothing is baked in except when it is through experience. We address life through the lens of our living. We catalogue our experiences inside the small molecules of proteins in our brain. Some from our childhood stick permanently, albeit with embellishments.

I Learned About Flying from Him

Whenever someone asks me about learning to fly, I always tell them this. Find a small country airport with no tower. Find an old taildragger to train in, a Cub or a Champ. But more importantly, find an old instructor, preferably one who wears a checked shirt and a trucker hat (suspenders optional), who has most likely forgotten more about how to fly an airplane than most of us will ever know.

How and Why I Became a Military Writer

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I was consumed with an overwhelming desire to tell the story of the men who gave so much of themselves in the Vietnam War, the most unpopular war in American history. I wrote because I wanted these men to live in more than the minds of their loved ones or their comrades, I wanted them to live in the minds of the next generation and to inspire those who are considering joining the aviation community.

Don’t Get Stuck—Avoiding Breakdowns and Delays

Running the battery down by leaving the battery or master switch on is, arguably, the most common reason for a departure delay.  I use a “Parking” or “Shutdown Checklist” before deplaning to avoid this.  Some pilots leave the rotating beacon on after shut down as a clue that the battery switch was left on.  Full service FBOs will have external power available to get you going quickly if the battery is dead.

Another reason to fly—Young Eagles

Shortly after earning my Private pilot certificate, I had a pilot friend who invited me to a local EAA chapter meeting. The group is primarily focused on aircraft building. I had no interest in building an aircraft but I was, however, very interested in taking kids for the first airplane ride.  I was then introduced to the chapter's Young Eagle flight coordinator. 

The Fine Art of the Debrief

Like many of you, my debrief has evolved over my flying career. Now, what I like to do is organize my thoughts into, “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly,” or more formally, what I did well, what I thought I could do better, and what I might have done differently. And not necessarily in that order depending on how the flight went.

Freedom to the Form

I’ve given a lot of people their first flight. Seeing things as they are, from the air, is fundamentally optimistic. People tell me it’s transcendent because it allows them to see the day-to-day rat race in a different way. The transcendence of seeing your neighborhood or your city from six thousand feet is the spiritual opposite of living in forms.
Corsair V8

The Corsair C172-V8 Experiment Update #3—Reader’s Suggestions

Unfortunately, it became clear that FAA leadership had no interest in supporting such a solution—whether as an experimental conversion for certified airframes or via a STC (a certification that would allow owners to replace their original engine with ours on certified aircraft)—regardless of the potential benefits.
atlas air b767

Panic, and How To Not

Reading the accident reports where pilots panic and make fatal mistakes is helpful.  But—the most helpful thing to do—for me, anyway—to ward off panic and build flying confidence is train, train, train.  Drill, baby, drill.  Flashcards and chair-flying and flying are my friends.

The Flying Sport

What’s not obvious to a lot of non-pilot folk is that flying is one of the few passions you absolutely must do regularly just to safely do it. Think about that for a second:  unlike other modes of transportation, you can stop driving for several months, even years, and still be able to get back into a vehicle with little to no training. Flying isn’t like that.

What NTSB Reports Say About Impossible Turns and AOA (Part II)

Because successful impossible turns are not accidents and not reportable to the NTSB, none showed up in the NTSB data. However, the very embarrassing rhetorical question is, how did all those past impossible turns succeed when none of those aircraft had a visual AOA indicator? Given the rarity of visual AOA indicators in recent years, it’s a safe bet that visual AOA indicators would not have been installed in any, or hardly any, of those airplanes.

What NTSB Reports Say About Impossible Turns and AOA (Part I)

There is an impressive surge of AOA rhetoric—“lifesaving,” “correct,” “optimum”—but such language can be misleading. “Correct” and “optimum” may fit the context of the speaker but not necessarily apply to the situations of the listener, who may be considering other flight operations, or having to deal with real world scenarios. While the decision on where to expend safety resources will vary from pilot to pilot, the NTSB reports of this study do not support visual AOA indicators for impossible turns as a silver bullet to address overall safety issues.
cruise flight

Cruise Checklist, Complete?

Monitoring your engine gauges is sort of a systems-level skill which is part of every primary curriculum. But most of the focus is on takeoff; hopefully, you’ve been taught to stare at the gauges when you line up on the runway in case you must abort because one of them doesn’t look right. Yet just because your engine is acting normally on takeoff doesn’t guarantee it will in flight, right?
New Cessna 172

So maybe there was a real purpose in flying that day

After I was current again and reasonably proficient, the 16-year-old son of some friends asked if he could go up with me.  I said he could, but only if his parents were very clear as to my experience, the record of the flying club, the kind of plane we’d be flying, Vx, Vy, everything.  They gave an enthusiastic thumbs up and we had a great flight.
Windsock

Wind is More than a Number

Those little hills made for fiendish turbulence down low. The lower I got, the worse it became. I’m stubborn and I kept thinking it’s just 20 knots, and I’m a CFI (beating chest). Until I was porpoising down the runway like a first-time student. I went around the pattern a few times but finally got a clue and decided to go elsewhere.
V-tail Bonanza

Burning Man for Builders

Society will always tell us there’s no such thing as safe enough. We will add more and more sensors, cameras and lidar to things that drive themselves, while news headlines rage of man failing machine, machine failing man. We put in airbags and then a switch to deactivate them.
Airplane off runway

Survival gear after the crash…hmm

Or might it be the case that the pilot–you, for example—has mental and cognitive skills degraded by pain after the crash? And maybe all those survival tools and toys that were so appealing and easy to evaluate on a bright Saturday morning are in the moment hard to use, hard to get open from the packaging, or even forgotten?

Our Overton Window

ROP leads to higher intra-cylinder pressures (ICPs) and higher heat production. ROP also uses extra fuel, hence more unburned gasses and metals, given the minor imperfection in the state of metallurgy and the myriad of moving parts soaked in that heat which, over time, might not handle this hot onslaught leading to deformation. Conversely, as you go LOP, the CHTs come down due to more complete combustion.