I’ve introduced a lot of pilots to a lot of different types of autopilots in over 30 years teaching in high-performance aircraft. What began for me as a building-block teaching technique has evolved into the way I use autopilots myself: beginning with the basics and adding complexity. It puts the aircraft in simple automated control […]

 I saw it again on social media: someone posted that he/she is scheduled for a flight review and asked, “What should I study to prepare?” Generally well-meaning responses run the gamut from recommendations for classes or online courses, to a list of the available FAA manuals and advisory circulars (ACs), to statements like, “You can’t […]

At about 1600 local time, the transient Cherokee 180 pilot requested that his airplane be fueled. The line staff was unable to do so at that time due to heavy rain and lightning nearby. Meanwhile, FBO personnel discussed his plan to take off in poor weather at night. The recently certificated private pilot, heading home […]

If somehow you’ve not already heard, General Aviation Modifications, Inc. (GAMI) completed its decade-plus-long effort to earn FAA approval of its G100UL unleaded 100 octane aviation gasoline. But it will be a long time before most of us will see G100UL at our favorite FBO. That’s because GAMI says it’s focusing initial distribution efforts on […]

It’s happened to me three times. The first time happened about a year after I earned my Private Pilot certificate. About a week before my Practical Test I accepted delivery of NC89954, a 1946 Cessna 120. The 120 is a side-by-side two-seat tailwheel airplane with fabric-covered wings and an 85 horsepower engine. It’s the airplane […]

As long as we fly aircraft with retractable landing gear, there will be gear-up landings, a phenomenon not unique to any one make or model of airplane. Read the daily FAA aircraft incident reports—the vast majority of which do not meet NTSB reporting criteria and so will not be investigated further or included in official […]

We all saw the recent image of a Mooney 201 suspended 100 feet above the ground and tangled in an electrical transmission tower on a dark and gloomy night. Without knowing the details, we all probably asked ourselves, “How did that happen?”  The NTSB’s preliminary report on this accident is out, and tells us that, […]

Like many pilots, I vividly remember being handed my temporary private pilot certificate with my examiner’s congratulations and his admonishment that it was a “license to learn.” Through the years after, I heard then taught and later often wrote about how the FAA practical test standards (PTS), now the airmen certification standards (ACS), represent a […]

Look at an airspeed indicator or vertical speed tape, as below, in a piston-powered airplane and you’ll see a yellow range of indicated speeds. This is called the “caution range.” Since typical piston airplanes can’t cruise in this speed range under most circumstances, we often don’t spend a lot of time learning how very different […]

A Cessna 340, apparently making a low-altitude, high-speed pass over the runway at Watsonville, Calif., catches up to and collides with a Cessna 152 on final approach, killing four. A Piper Meridian overshoots the turn to final for Runway 30L at North Las Vegas and flies into a Cessna 172 on final for 30R, also killing […]