IFR Magazine

I am pretty much all in with all the latest wizbangs-syn vis, AOA, MFD, ADS-B In etc. in my V-35B, plus of course the great PFD. All this works perfectly with my legacy autopilot and it will take me wherever I want.I too discovered that I was really getting sloppy with my hand flying in challenging conditions and resolved to make letting George fly the exception. Sometimes we split the route where I fly out George flies back. I like flying the airplane and becoming more aware of all that I have on display in front of me, but it does take more effort and concentration.

Each year I pore through between 1500 and 2000 NTSB accident/incident reports searching for bonehead pilots who heed the sirens call of stupidity and invent creative means of destroying a variety of aircraft without killing anyone. To walk the Stupid Pilot Tricks red carpet requires a willingness to ignore good airmanship and, frankly, dance with fools.

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite. The American psyche was troubled by the potential of this technological second place. This planted the seeds of one of Americas greatest military and technological innovations-GPS.

About the only thing I personally know about Lincoln, Nebraska is a Dennys off Interstate 80. In my moderately delinquent youth, I helped a friend who couldnt afford a move from Connecticut to Colorado by renting a truck for local use one Thursday afternoon, disconnecting the odometer, round tripping across two time zones, and reconnecting it in time to log 30 miles before returning the truck Monday morning.

In our last issue, we talked about the building blocks of weather radar-how it was developed, the basics of radio waves, problems with radar sampling, and the important differences between composite and base reflectivity. If you havent read that, I highly recommend you do so to get a good grounding in radar fundamentals. In this issue well take that knowledge and teach you a bit about interpretation.

This August, just before the solar eclipse passed through the U.S., pilots from all over Utah flocked to southern Idaho into the zone of totality. The tower at Ogden Airport was busy, with a single controller handling tower and ground frequencies. As I taxied to the departure runway, several pilots called for clearances.

His destination airport had a runway closed. The advertised approach that he was supposed to be flying was an approach to the closed runway, with a circle to the active runway. Thats how Id been clearing him. The way things were going, I was taking no chances. I verified on-frequency that he was aware of the runway closure and that he was supposed to circle to the other runway. It seemed to get across, although I cant say for certain if he knew about it before I spoke up.

From reading Hadfields autobiography An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earthand listening to various interviews online, its clear Hadfield is no stranger to unexpected problems. From a seagull strike in an F/A-18 Hornet fighter at 500 knots a mere 50 feet above the water, to temporarily going blind during his first spacewalk because of contamination in his helmet, he has faced some unique situations.

Even after a couple hundred hours behind my Garmin GTN 650, there are still things I struggle to do properly. Chief among those is flying multiple approaches. Sure, we mostly have to do that in practice, but if you miss at a busy airport or the winds change after youve set up, you might find yourself needing to plug in that second approach, or third. If you were like me, youd get things hopelessly bollixed up before you just cleared the flight plan and started over.

Flight Design, based in Germany, has long held a top spot in deliveries of light sport airplanes in the U.S., but it has been in receivership in Germany since February 2016. The company announced in July it now has new owners, Lift Air, from Eisenach, Germany. I am glad that we are able to maintain the know-how of one of the worlds market leaders in the light aircraft sector and to secure it with a well-funded investor, said Knut Rebholz, insolvency administrator. The company will now be called Flight Design General Aviation GmbH. Tom Peghiny, president of Flight Design USA, told AVweb hes thrilled with the news.