Aviation Safety

The sputtering sound of your airplanes power plant, followed by a sudden silence, and the realization that you are now the pilot of a heavy glider, can certainly get your immediate attention.

Cold weather brings with it the potential for ice – and not just ice of the airframe variety. Induction system icing brings down more than a few unsuspecting pilots every year. Even those who valiantly give wide berth to known icing conditions can be struck by the power loss that comes from ice in the engine compartment.

Induction System Icing
Induction system icing takes several forms – including impact ice, throttle ice and fuel vaporization ice. Any or all of these can play troubl…

Last month we looked at the philosophy of being your own CFI and emphasized how you could maintain your knowledge, skills and bankroll by approaching your flying as though you were both instructor and student.

This part continues the explanation of by using the tips, techniques and fundamentals from FAAs Advisory Circular 60-14, the Aviation Instructors Handbook. Application of these time-tested tips will help your flying to be more cost-efficient and much more enjoyable.

Learning has a few rules of the road. Learning is change in behavior, improvement in expertise or capability – getting better at what you do. But sometimes you hit learning plateaus or you cant seem to get somet…

I am a Part 141 commercial student in Southern California. The one person in the world I never would have suspected of unnecessarily risking my life was my flight instructor. I was wrong.

Early in my Commercial training, the syllabus called for a 250 nm solo night flight. (We later found out it was a misprint in the syllabus.) Having very limited night flying experience, I was uncomfortable with a long night solo cross-country. My instructor agreed to accompany me on the flight, as much for moral support as instruction.

Since it was mid-summer and the daylight hours were long, I had to wait until 9 p.m. to take off, after a full days work. My instructor had been on duty since early…

With about 125 hours in my log book, I decided to fly with my wife to Tulsa, Okla., for a short summer vacation.

On the way we had many new and exciting experiences: smooth as glass 50 knot tailwinds, cheap fuel and scenery the likes of which we had never seen before. Flying is easy, right?

About 125 miles west of Tulsa, flying at 9,500 ft. we came upon cloud cover unlike anything Id ever seen. The solid deck extended as far as the eye could see north and south, with tops at 6,500 ft.. Not knowing how far east this condition existed, we started to do 360s to think about it.

I called Flight Service and was told the cloud deck extended past our destination. Then I decided to land…

It was my second cross-country in the RV-6 since getting my private license and tailwheel endorsement. I had about 100 hours total time and about 25 in the RV.

I picked up a friend at a nearby airport, where I also filled the tanks. On takeoff, I was surprised and a little concerned with the reduction in climb rate caused by full fuel tanks and a 180-pound passenger. Fortunately I had been warned about it, which is why I didnt fly out of the 2,700-foot grass strip with 50-foot trees on both ends where the RV makes its home.

The 1:40 trip went smoothly to Montpelier, Vt. Flying VFR with a GPS for navigation took most of the guesswork out of the flight. I even remembered to switch fuel…

I rented a Cessna 182RG from a local flight school in Houston to fly a couple of buddies down to Scholes Field in Galveston one night. The weather was perfect, with no wind to speak of and the visibility was about 3,000 miles. Temperature was about 55 degrees. There was not a cloud in the sky and no moon. In short, they were the kind of flight conditions every pilot would love to fly in – especially to view the skyline of a large city like Houston.

I departed David Wayne Hooks about 9:30 p.m. for the 20 or 25 minute flight. The flight down was really terrific with all the city lights. We passed just north of the large downtown buildings through what is known as the I-10 corridor (an are…

Apilot friend of mine is one of the most knowledgeable people I know when it comes to IFR flight and regulations. He has the FARs cold and knows the information in the AIM better than some people know their birth certificate. He flies VFR whenever he can.

Another pilot I know has to look things up occasionally. He admits to a certain befuddlement about some of the rules and, deep down, I suspect hes a little leery of shooting approaches when the weather is at minimums. He files an IFR flight plan in the clearest weather and accepts non-direct routings as the price he must pay to be solidly in the system.

Both guys are good pilots. They both have good stick and rudder skills, use the…

Unless youre really behind in your reading, the clock should still be ticking down to Y2K. Even if the new year has already begun, its not too late to make some resolutions about how youll approach flying, your airplane and your peers in the coming year.

Resolutions, of course, are only worthwhile if you plan on keeping them, so think about the kind of flying you do and the ways you think you can improve. Any pilot, from student to veteran ATP, should be able to come up with a few. If not, theyre not nearly as good as they think they are.

For my part, here are an even dozen flying resolutions Im planning to observe in the new millennium. I have a few others, but I dont think they…

The discussion started out being is a twin better than a single. But soon it was branching into the philosophical questions of how much more does it take to make something better, when is more less, and can you really afford more anyway?

Die-hard twin pilots smugly point to the capabilities of their machines and say its no contest. The pilots of singles like to say that the second engine does little but lift its own fuel and fall back on old jokes about the second engine only being there to take you to the scene of the crash.

But twins do cost more to operate than a roughly comparable single, and since most general aviation pilots vote with their checkbooks, the popularity conte…

The following information is derived from the FAAs Service Difficulty Reports and Aviation Maintenance Alerts. Click here to view “Airworthiness Directives.”

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Virtually any aircraft may be subject to fuel contamination following the discovery that certain filters used in fuel farms and fuel trucks may deteriorate.

Velcon Filters Inc., maker of Aquacon and CDF cartridges, has determined that some of its filters would, under some circumstances, allow some of the gelatinous water-absorbing media to pass with the fuel.

As water is absorbed by the water-absorbing media, similar to whats used in baby diapers, the differential press…