Learning Experiences

During my now well over 2000 hours in Cessna 206 Stationairs, Id never thought much about a little under-inflation or a tad of over-inflation in the nose strut. And then it happened: my wife and I came within inches of serious injury-or worse-just because I departed with an over-inflated nose gear. …

We never know when an in-flight emergency might occur, and if you are lucky you might fly your entire life without encountering one. Nevertheless, the three rules of handling an emergency-aviate, navigate, communicate-should always be at the forefront should things begin to go wrong. Recently, I had the unfortunate opportunity to put this mantra to the test. …

Selecting Fuel

When I earned my Private certificate, I thought I knew all I needed to know about flying. The following years taught me better. I learned something almost every flight and even from others experiences.

One Friday in July of 1950, I took possession of a three-year-old Cessna 120 I had just purchased. Eager to try it out, I planned a trip the next day from Buffalo Air Park to visit a friend at Cornell University.

The flight was uneventful and we had a nice visit. Sunday afternoon, after checking the airplane, I taxied up to the fuel pump to fill my tanks. I then proceeded down the taxiway toward the run-up area which, fortunately, was at the other end of the run…

Running Out Of Rudder

When I was a Flight Instructor, one of the pieces of trivia we dispensed to students was that Maximum Demonstrated Crosswind isnt necessarily the absolute maximum crosswind you can land in. It merely represents the crosswind the test pilot landed in safely during certification of the aircraft. (Hence the word demonstrated.) Its not necessarily an upper limit. But theres an important detail I recently learned.

[IMGCAP(1)]In my baby pilot days, I was terrified of crosswind landings because no one had taught me how to use rudder properly. (Its impractical, but everyone should learn to land in taildraggers first.) But one day it clicked. Now as an old p…

No Toys Allowed

It was my first solo cross-country flight, from the John Wayne-Orange County Airport (SNA) to Ramona, Calif. (RNM). The objective was to use pilotage and dead reckoning, so my instructor admonished, Remember: No toys like GPS allowed, before endorsing my logbook.

But, using my visual checkpoints and timing them, everything was going according to plan. On my third leg of the flight, the wind must have shifted, though, because I couldnt find my next checkpoint.

I knew better-even then-and should have executed a lost procedure. I thought it would take only a few more minutes of looking around before I find something familiar. But the next thing I knew, SoCa…

It was an August afternoon in 1980 and I had my wife and two business associates in the back of our Cessna 182. We had just spent a successful yet exhausting week at Chicagos McCormick Place for an annual trade show.

We were on our way back to Eugene, Ore., and I had a raging head cold. My wonderful wife had been flying the leg from Iowa to Wyoming, but she elbowed me as we approached Billings, Mon. She said it was IFR ahead and that I needed to take over.

I was sound asleep but rallied to her call. I filed with Salt Lake Center and entered the clouds near Billings.

Understand that we had been in the air for five hours and had emptied our bladders into the onboard containers. In th…

Im a 1000-hour Bonanza pilot with a fair amount of actual IMC experience. I was on my way to the Dekalb-Peachtree Airport outside of Atlanta, a route I fly fairly often. The last hour of the flight was IMC, with the PDK ATIS reporting 800 feet overcast in light rain. Piece of cake; Ill shoot the ILS approach to Runway 20L. Heck, I might even turn off the iPod and hand fly this one.

I was feeling on top of my 40-something game; I even remembered to check in with the ATIS letter when handed off to approach. Soon I was getting vectors to intercept the 20 Left localizer.

The controller: Bonanza 12345, you are three miles from Chamb, maintain 3000 until established, cleared to the…

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
It was an average Minnesota day in April, if there is such a thing. The temperature was in the fifties on the ground, with broken to overcast skies at 8000 to 10,000 feet. I was taking my King Air E90 down to Wichita at FL 210. In IMC at around 10,000 feet I first noticed the pilots airspeed drop off to about 40 knots lower than what I would normally expect to see in a 1000 lb.-under gross climb. Both pilot and copilot pitot heat systems were activated. The copilot airspeed was about 160 KIAS-about right-but the pilots was down around 120 KIAS. I had a trace of rime ice and assumed the pilot pitot tube had burned out.

Then the pilot-side VSI and altimet…

It was a fairly warm summer, and exasperation with my quest to add my multi-engine land (MEL) rating was starting to grow like beads of sweat. In turn, my ME instructor-whose patience and professionalism has long since earned him sainthood-had been a pretty good sport all through this process. But, we still had some practice ahead of us, since I wanted Commercial privileges from the rating as well as to be comfortable with this well-worn-but-reliable Seneca I on the gauges. It was during this training that I learned to think before touching anything in an airplane.

The days mission was designed to add more polish to my skills. I had gotten fairly comfortable in the Seneca, which was just…

It was a warm summer Saturday, the kind of day thats perfect for putting in some time on the airplane. This would also be a great chance to wash the bird, which had collected some dust from sitting and some bugs from flying. Besides, what could be a better way to cool off than spraying an airplane with someone elses water?

After an hour or so of scrubbing and rubbing, most of the bugs were off and all the dust had been washed away. I wiped down the windows, inside and out, and started securing the airplane and the hose I had used.

Thats when I noticed the chamois cloth I use on my cars to dry them after a wash job. Standing back and looking at the plane, I could see the beaded-up w…