Search Results for: maintaining your airplane

Certificated, experimental, and homebuilt aircraft each have their own sets of rules and regulations for maintenance. Here’s what you need to know.

Assume you want to buy an airplane. You wouldn’t just go with your buddy’s suggestion to get a Cloudpuncher simply because he said it’s a good one, would you? No, the prudent buyer will first carefully outline the typical mission, the purpose for the craft. Then, you’d select what you think best meets that mission. […]

Often called the Achilles heel of the Lycoming engine, here’s how to keep that camshaft doing what it should.

A ‘colossal screwup’ leaves our rookie reeling, and wondering if there’s more to come.

Flying has rarely been cheap, especially for individuals operating personal aircraft. However, taking to the sky as pilot in command is such a singular experience that most recreational aviators have no difficulty justifying the expense. Indeed, it seems that the more hours we log, the less we may feel obligated to justify it at all. […]

Excessive heat “kills” integrated electrical circuits, the kind found in modern avionics. Unlike many other electronic devices, avionics also may be exposed to sunlight filtered only slightly by a transparency. Combining the two sources—as when on the ground on a hot, sunny day, engine running and with all the electrical equipment active—is fairly common. While […]

The event perhaps most demonstrative of what can happen as an aircraft ages occurred on April 28, 1988, over Hawaii. Thats when an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-200 operating in scheduled passenger service as Flight 243 between Hilo and Honolulu lost part of its cabin roof while in cruise at FL240. The crew successfully landed the airplane after diverting to Maui. Of the 89 passengers and six crewmembers aboard, there was one fatality-a flight attendant who was swept overboard during the decompression event.

The primary cause of a bounced landing is flaring too high above the runway, perhaps with too much speed. In our ideal, perfect landing, the airplane will quit flying just inches above the runway. Instead, a bounce results when the flare occurs a few feet above it, and the airplane has the energy-resulting from excess altitude, excess airspeed or both-to rebound back into the air. In any event, a bounce results when the airplane isnt finished flying.

“November 12345 is cleared for the visual approach to Runway One Left, traffic is a Boeing 737 on a seven-mile final behind you, maintain best speed, contact the tower….Fly into a Class C or Class B primary airport and youll eventually be asked to keep your speed up because of inbound traffic behind you. Do it IFR, even at some Class D facilities, and youd best be very ready to mix with the heavy iron, which easily could be approaching 100 knots faster than your flivver can manage.

There was nobody to marshal us in as we wheeled into the parking spot. After we shut the old Navajo down and started looking around to see where to go after we got out, a man ran up to the pilot side of the airplane. I opened the little side window and expectantly bent an […]