Learning Experiences

Long ago and far away, I rented a 182 from my FBO in Tennessee and flew off to visit friends in Florida. As often happens, the friends wanted to fly somewhere, so one morning we piled in and launched for Key West. The flight down was unremarkable, even though I probably was a few pounds […]

There’s an old saying: “Landings are mandatory; takeoffs are optional.” Like so many other phrases we hear in the pilot lounge, it’s cute while trying to be educational. Although I’ve had to abort a takeoff before, and demonstrated them many times when transitioning to various multi-engine airplanes, I’d never really understood the truth of the […]

The shop changed the oil in my retractable single and replaced the brake pads. The logbook entry stated they had changed the oil and filter, installed a “quick-drain” oil plug, changed the brake pads, etc. After any kind of maintenance, I’m pretty leery of flying the airplane, so I did a very thorough walk-around: oil […]

Every military pilot who has flown in combat has experienced frightening and stressful situations. It happened to me one night in 1969, over Vietnam, but it was of my own creation. During the Firefly Missions, my unit provided two UH-1 gunships and a Huey with a bright spotlight array every night to patrol the river […]

Long ago and far, far away from where I am now, I was a relatively fresh private pilot attending college in a town sufficiently distant from my family’s home that impromptu visits were impractical. As a nationwide election approached, I realized the deadline for requesting an absentee ballot had come and gone, and I wouldn’t […]

The nighttime arrival at a familiar airport had gone smoothly. The runway I used was 5000-plus feet long, way more than my Debonair needed, so I let it roll a bit to save the brakes. I must have gotten distracted during the rollout because the next thing I noticed was the end of the runway […]

If there’s anything I wish I could do for aspiring pilots or those struggling through their basic training, it would be to teach them to fly an airplane before learning to drive a car. The two-dimensional thinking employed when operating a surface vehicle becomes dominant—probably because we spend more time in a car than in […]

My little Cessna 140 had just gotten out of a four-month top-end overhaul and it was time to stretch its legs, with a 786-sm flight to Des Moines, Iowa, my hometown. It would replicate my late Dad’s flight in the opposite direction with a few more fuel stops. After watching the weather for 10 days, […]

It was a moonless night in the valley, with a strong wind behind us from the north. I usually fly single-pilot, but that night I had a new hire, an old friend, with me. He was getting to know a new-to-him airplane. We talked about the terrain and the wind and the runway length, and […]

You would think pilots would have learned their lesson about messing with thunderstorms, especially landing in or near them. I mean, we’re almost 40 years beyond the defining moment in understanding wind shear and microbursts, the August 1985 crash of Delta Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011, in Dallas, Texas. Add to that, many aircraft now […]