IFR Magazine

After nearly 10 years of lobbying by general aviation advocacy groups, the FAA in March released a draft proposal aiming to overhaul light aircraft certification. Proponents say the changes would cut costs to certify new models and also bring new, safer technologies to the market faster. This proposal would benefit manufacturers, pilots, and the general aviation community as a whole, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. The proposal affects airplanes with up to 19 seats and a maximum takeoff weight of 19,000 pounds. Comments were accepted for 60 days; the FAA will consider all input before issuing a final rule, perhaps by the end of this year.

Reader feedback and questions from past issues of IFR. We read em all and try to answer most e-mail, but it can take a month or more. Please be sure to include your full name and location. Contact us at IFR@BelvoirPubs.com.

I havent flown in a year. There, I admitted the embarrassing truth. Shame on me. Its time to rejoin GA, which Im starting through some recurrent training. In March I wrote here in strong support of cockpit-specific training-something I also needed. You see, my airplane has a lot of cool toys Ive yet to really master. Garmin kindly offered to train me on the primary combination and it was an eye opener.

Visions of the future are the domain of science fiction-imagine a world where some fantastic thing is possible. The FAA presents its own vision in the Performance Based Navigation Roadmap, which is produced about every five years. The third edition is expected around the time you get this. In it the current status of performance-based navigation, PBN, a generalized term for RNAV and RNP (required navigation performance), is analyzed and goals are set for the near, intermediate and long term-each roughly five years apart.

Gyroscopes are an essential component of any instrument rig used for attitude, heading, turning, and navigation. Technological inventions created gyroscopes that work using a variety of theories. Each type of gyro is best suited for particular situations based on the type of information needed and the effect of drift. Three types of gyros are common in aviation. …

Its odd, considering how closely pilots and air traffic controllers must work together, that each tends to be unfamiliar with the others working conditions. At times it may feel like a marriage in distress, neglecting each others needs while trying to run the household of aviation. peaking from personal experience, two major keys to a good marriage are communication and empathy. Whats likely to happen if both parties express their needs, limits, and concerns effectively? A smoother operation with fewer surprise twists will hopefully result.

They almost made it. The aircraft was on a very short final when the nose started down. The flight crew pushed the thrust levers for both wing engines up to stop the sink but the left engine spooled up faster than the right engine and the aircraft started a turn to the right, from which there was no time to recover.

She thought that I was text messaging her from my soon-to-crash plane. Her panic wasnt helped by recalling an incident a few years ago when we took off with a fully loaded airplane into low IMC and lost our turbo controller. Of course we didnt know what was causing the power loss until we were on the ground, but the manifold pressure did stabilize at exactly 15 inches.

Entrepreneur Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said in February he was close to starting work on a vertical-takeoff-and-landing electric jet as a practical alternative to conventional aircraft. In January, the U.S. Sport Aviation Expo hosted its 12th annual event in Sebring, Florida, and ran into some weather problems. Mooney unveiled the M20V Acclaim Ultra, a significant redesign of the companys best-selling Acclaim, at its Texas headquarters in February. General aviation sales declined 4.6 percent worldwide in 2015 compared to the year before, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association reported in February. The Singapore Airshow, held in February, featured the debut of the 400S Seaplane, by Viking, a Canadian company that has been building Twin Otters for several years.