Another Look

From the military to his long tenure at the AOPA Air Safety Institute, Bruce Landsberg has a long and respected career in aviation safety, years of experience that will serve him well at the NTSB, said AOPA President Mark Baker. We thank the White House for nominating him and the Senate for its confirmation vote. General aviation is safer than ever, and we look forward to working with him and the NTSB to keep improving and giving pilots the resources and training they need to fly safer.

When the aircraft is equipped with VR-1010-24-1A regulators allowed by Service Instruction 0766-354, Rev II, the overvoltage testing procedure is not achievable. The solid-state voltage regulators are not adjustable to a range (over 31.5v) that will adequately test the overvoltage relays. During a ground run and adjustment of the new voltage regulators, one failed and caused an overvoltage condition. It is this technicians opinion that the test procedure for the overvoltage relay should be changed to include removing and bench testing the overvoltage relays.

I was flying my Cessna T210R Turbo Centurion from the Westchester County Airport (KHPN) in White Plains, N.Y., to the Dekalb-Peachtree Airport (KPDK) in Atlanta, Ga., on a dark night. I departed KHPN IFR but encountered unlimited visibility over North Carolina and cancelled. Before takeoff, I observed line personnel fill both fuel tanks. I had planned to have an hours fuel reserve on landing at PDK, and there hadnt been any unforecast headwinds. However, as I passed over Greenville, S.C., at 12,500 feet, both fuel gauges showed the tanks nearly empty.

If there were some way I could make a series of trips back in time to change things, one of the stops on my itinerary would be to somehow infiltrate the small cadre of early pilots and airplane designers to convince them to use a word other than stall to describe what happens when a wing exceeds its critical angle of attack. The word obviously has numerous other applications, and using it for this purpose has confounded student pilots and television news anchors ever since. That said, Im not sure what should replace it, and remain open to suggestions.

True, it wont tell you how far youll have to go to find good barbecue, or even whether theres a courtesy car. It will, however, give you the hours at which someone should be there, the kinds of fuel available and whether theres 24-hour self-service, phone numbers for the airport manager or to request after-hours services (if available), the dimensions and pattern orientations of all runways…plus latitude and longitude, bearings and distances to the nearest navaids, frequencies for approach control, weather, and the CTAF or tower and descriptions of possible conflicts such as banner tows or skydiving. It even details what repair services are available, though you might have to look up the codes. (S4 means major airframe and powerplant.) Thats a lot of information for seven bucks-and the batteries never run down.

We were in IMC at 4000 feet, on a vector for the VOR-A approach at the Wichita, Kan., Colonel James Jabara Airport. The airplane was an A36 Bonanza and I was in the instructors seat on the last approach of a day-long training session. This was in the era before GPS, long before iPads and moving-map handhelds, and the owner of this then-well-equipped 36 had ignored the short-lived Loran phase. So we were eastbound on a long downwind, and crabbing into a northerly wind before intercepting the westbound final approach course before circling to Jabaras north/south runway.

Many of todays workplaces seek to create a formalized safety culture, an environment where employees practice behaviors that minimize accidents, look out for their co-workers and where reporting unsafe conditions is encouraged, not subject to retaliation, and frequently rewarded. It can be a great goal, but it often creates an exaggerated sense of safety where people need safety training to use a power strip and posters about how to get out of a car without tripping. The goal of creating a safety culture often ends up a corporate farce, since the best safety cultures are not created by artifice, but happen naturally because people really care.

The landing was normal, and I took a close look at the left landing gear after shutting down but couldnt find anything amiss. The tire and wheel looked good, and there was no hydraulic fluid seeping from the strut. The brake was secure and had tested fine on the landing, and when taxiing in. There was no damage to the wing, the landing gear door or any other part of the airplane. Not finding anything wrong with the airplane I forgot about it, wondering if I had imagined it. Ultimately, I figured Id hit a dog with the landing gear and, sadly, someone had lost their pet.

My Debonair had to go to the avionics shop recently for its 24-month pitot/static and transponder checks, and to diagnose an autopilot that wouldnt. As I feared, autopilot system components had to go out for factory attention, and the removal work would take longer than my schedule allowed. So I left the airplane and Uberd home. Before I had the free time to retrieve the airplane, my part of Florida was seeing a constant flow of moisture and showers coming in from the Gulf of Mexico.

1) A Piper PA-32R-300 Lance attempted to take off from a 3200-foot-long grass runway on a June morning with flaps retracted. It lifted off at the end of the runway, then descended into a shallow valley, touched down and lifted off a second time, before settling back to the ground and colliding with a barbed-wire fence. It was later determined to have been 188 pounds over its maximum gross weight with its center of gravity 0.15 inches aft of limits. Density altitude was about 1800 feet above field elevation.