Aviation Safety

One of the reasons pilots so frequently lose control in flight is they forget—or never were properly instructed—that an airplane’s published stall speed applies only when at gross weight, in a specified configuration and in level, 1G flight. Perhaps they believe that as long as their airspeed indicator shows a value above the bottom of […]

Personal aviation opens up a world of interesting and beautiful places to visit and recreate, places that reward us for the time, training and skill to get there. Some places would be inaccessible except by horse, foot or airstrip, like the canyons, rivers and vistas of the Mountain West. Some places beckon because they offer […]

A turboprop-conversion Beech Bonanza crashed during an attempted night approach in IMC, killing the pilot and two passengers. Forget for a moment that the NTSB’s investigation revealed the pilot was using unapproved medications and was not even instrument-rated. Lost in the details of the accident report is that even if the pilot was IFR-rated and current, […]

Unless you’re lucky enough to fly a turbine or an engine with an electronic ignition system, the internal combustion engines you fly behind or between likely operate using a simple system involving a magnet, coil, condenser and contact points. As the spinny thing in the accessory case turns the magneto drive shaft, the magnet rotates […]

Anyone who’s taken more than a couple of flying lessons has been exposed to simulated failure of a single-engine airplane’s powerplant. For ab initio students, the first engine-out drill often is a demonstration that the airplane won’t fall out of the sky and that the situation can be managed to successfully get on the ground […]

Following up on Robert Wright’s excellent article in September’s issue (“Are The ACS Working?”), yes, I agree that they are working except for one thing, something that I found out about by accident. But first, some background. During the summer, the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) offers National Flight Academies for CAP Cadets where they go […]

I do a lot of the regular (read: “preventive”) maintenance on my airplanes. For example, I’ve gotten oil changes down to a fine art and usually can perform all the related hands-on tasks in under 30 minutes, including safety-wiring the new filter. I typically drain the used oil overnight, though, and let each plastic bottle of […]

Retractable landing gear seems to have fallen out of favor among designers and manufacturers of new piston singles. Cessna hasn’t made a retractable single since the mid-1980s. Today’s most popular single-engine piston airplanes, the Cirrus SR20 and 22, have fixed gear. In fact, 2019 member-company data from the General Aviation Manufacturers Association show a grand […]

Poor weather has always topped my list of potential aviation hazards. But after earning the instrument rating, I was much more willing to go out and tackle low ceilings and visibility, which inevitably led to poking around thunderstorms and frontal activity. I quickly learned there were no iron-clad rules or procedures for safely penetrating them […]

By the end of July, Garmin’s online services for aviation and other markets had been restored after what the company acknowledged was a “cyber attack that encrypted some of our systems on July 23, 2020.” Although the company has not provided details at this writing, the outage was widely suspected to be a “ransomware” attack, […]