756 search results for: things i know about flying

Coming down with the aviation bug: why me?

Looking to my right, there is my regular flying companion, my late father, or my sense of him. I talk to him now and then, but he seldom answers. Today, I want to ask him why aviation came to be such a central part of my thinking and my life, despite my never having made a dime with an airplane, or been an especially skilled pilot, or having grown up in a flying family.

Thanks for the landing

Former RAAF pilot John Laming remembers one of his first flight instructors, a unique and thoughtful man he would encounter many times throughout his career. Reconnecting after 40 years, the two pilots made a memorable final flight that shows the special bond two pilots share.

What it takes to be one sharp pilot – start with awareness

Here is a list of the things that I think define a sharp pilot. This is based on well over 50 years of studying general aviation accidents, the theory being that sharp pilots don’t crash. I put "aware" first.

New year’s adventure: clearing a runway with one snowshoe

I had decided early on during the morning of January 1, New Year’s Day, to take a short flight and look over the Russian River Rendezvous lodge property at Lower Russian Lake down on the Kenai Peninsula. Just another still and tranquil New Year’s Day in the Alaska outback...

From the archives: to Hong Kong in a 707

Once again the Air Facts archives offer a mesmerizing flying story from record-setting airline captain Bob Buck. In this article, from the March 1969 edition, Buck takes us from New York to all kinds of exotic places in his Boeing 707: Frankfurt, Athens, Tel Aviv, India and finally Hong Kong.

10 questions for AOPA’s George Perry

The new leader of AOPA's Air Safety Institute, George Perry, comes to the job with a diverse aviation background, including 20 years as a US Navy fighter pilot. He's no stranger to general aviation though, from learning to fly as a teenager to owning a Mooney. We spoke to Perry about his approach to safety and his hopes for general aviation's future.

Those photo missions – smile!

Having a photo mission go as planned and result in a formation flight with another airplane (or two or three) as the sun rose or set put the participants in a place of serene beauty and it was rewarding to share that with our readers and viewers. It was a thought that I often had, but on some of those flights I knew I had the best job in the world.

Is the ADS-B glass half full?

Over the past 25 years, pilots have complained about three different transponder rules: Mode C, then Mode S and now ADS-B. Is the FAA really this incompetent or do pilots just like to gripe? As usual, the answer is a little bit of both. I say the ADS-B glass is half full.

Four Merlins to Momote

In this current era of over-regulation, it may seem, understandably to anyone reading this story now, that we were a bunch of over-enthusiastic young men with little sense of professional responsibility. But it was another time and things were different then. For this ancient airman, they were the good old days and I mourn their passing.

Why I bought a Pig!

In my last article I told you what it took to get my wife in the air. As much as that short flight over La Jolla (San Diego) was fun, the goal was always, and forever will be, to use the airplane for family flying. So after years of airport hopping, $100 burger runs (by myself I might add), and oh so many touch and goes, it was time to take the family on a real trip.

Those pilot reports – of the magazine variety

Over my 50 years in the print magazine business I would estimate that I wrote at least 300 pilot report features plus a lot of other airplane coverage in columns. I started to go back and count exactly how many there were but decided that wouldn’t be any fun. Instead, I’ll tell you about some that were different enough for me to vividly remember.

No time for prayer: surviving catastrophic engine failure

Before the engine blew, it was making a repetitive cyclical type noise; it wasn’t high pitched, it was kind of like the sound of a card flapping on a set of bicycle spokes, going fairly rapidly, getting painfully louder and louder to the point it seemed like my headset was not muffling the noise at all as the big end of the number 2 rod broke and the piston was beaten against the crank case.

Sticky fingers

As soon as I lifted off, the engine started coughing and sputtering! Something was not right… obviously. I set the ship back down (it most likely settled itself back down due to the lack of power and diminishing rotor RPM), and the engine sprang back to life. What?

It sure is quiet at my airport

There may come a time when our joystick and keyboard kids can load up, type in a destination, and sit back to let advanced technology avionics do most of the work. Until then we are likely to remain a pretty select group, airplane pilots--not airplane drivers--and our airports are likely to remain...quiet.

Retractable singles: the good, the fad and the ugly

Over the years a number of airplanes impressed me as being “good” airplanes. I thought of many airplanes as “fads” because they burst on the scene and fizzled. A few were “ugly,” maybe because of their looks or maybe because of other things such as flight characteristics or poor performance. Rest assured that these are all opinions.

Profiling works in solving airplane problems–usually

Profiling is, in this discussion, a procedure to narrow down the possible causes of a problem based on its location in the airplane and timing in the order of events in a flight, and then with evaluation of the potential causes, select appropriate solutions to try. The case I'm going to describe occurred with the Cessna T-37 twin jet trainer.

It was a dark and stormy night when I took my old Aeronca Chief to West Virginia

The relationship with my 1946 Aeronca Chief often segues into a world of strangeness. Owning and maintaining and flying an old fabric-covered taildragger is analogous to using a 1951 MG-TD as your personal car. But one learns to take things as they come, and most of all, to keep a sense of humor.
Sextant in airplane

Navigating in the old days

Flying in my little single-engine Cessna, my yoke mounted GPS unit gives me my exact position anywhere on the face of the earth, as well as a host of other valuable information and is a marvel of modern technology. It wasn't always so. I was a crewman on a Navy land-based long-range patrol plane (P2V Neptune) back in the early 1960s and I'll tell you all what it was like.

The most fun I have ever had in an airplane

A Piper Cub is the essence of seat of the pants flying, with a stick, a throttle, and practically nothing else (OK, there is a tach, altimeter, magnetic compass, and airspeed indicator if you can see them through your instructor). It’s as close to being a 1920s barnstormer as I’ll ever get!

Logbooks: a long and wonderful flight, with beginning turbulence…

In flying this one airplane so much I learned a lot of things about every element of light airplane operation. Weather, mechanical considerations, insurance, flying technique, malfunctions, the pitfalls of building a new type based on an old certification and having fun dealing with all of it were part of my trip in N40RC.