FLYING Magazine

For many pilots, the only time we’ll ever encounter a DME arc is during instrument training or on a check ride. Still, it’s a good idea to know how to fly one. The good news is that a DME arc is simple once you understand how to execute it. One common misconception many pilots have […]

Ferrying light single- and twin-engine airplanes around the world is not a job for the inexperienced or the bold. I am reminded of this fact several times a year on flights in remote parts of the globe. We all have read stories of pilots who push their luck and lose. Some don’t bother with getting […]

The RNAV approach is a type of GPS-based procedure that is becoming ubiquitous in general aviation as the FAA continues to roll it out at thousands of airports around the United States. If you’re adept at flying an ILS approach, RNAV LPV procedures (offering “localizer performance with vertical guidance”) should be very familiar to you, […]

My wife was loading the Freedom Machine with luggage and our three young sons as I entered the Greater Cincinnati FBO to file IFR for the flight back to Cleveland. A TV with the Bengals-Browns game caught my attention. It was the close-up of a Browns lineman with a wet jersey filling the screen that […]

When the airplane entered the clouds, there was no turning back.

The late afternoon sky was clear and the air crisp. Light spread itself evenly across the landscape in the absence of clouds, and colorful fugitive leaves danced across the runway ahead of a mild, quartering crosswind. The relative calm outside the cockpit of my Cessna trainer dueled in graphic opposition to the inner excitement I […]

Standing on the ramp, glancing at Runway 17/35 at North Houston Airport (9X1), I took a deep breath as I ticked off items on the preflight checklist for N9271U, the 1976 Cessna 150M that had been my primary trainer so far. The brutal heat and humidity of the Houston-area summer had not yet set in, […]

It was a sunny Friday afternoon as I gathered my friends at our usual meeting point, the local airport coffee shop. We were off for a weekend of fun and leisure after a long week at the office. We departed San Fernando International Airport in the city of ­Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a 1980 Baron B55 and […]

After spending $20 on a Discovery flight, I knew without a doubt this is what I wanted to do with my life — fly! The only flight school in town paired me with George, the best flight instructor ever, in my opinion. My first flight with George was July 6, 1978, and it was evident […]

I now have thousands of hours in my logbooks, but despite my best efforts, none represent a perfect flight. Many come close, but there was always something I could have done just a little bit better. So I reflected on the opposite type of flight entry: Which one represented my worst flight? That would be […]