Pilot Proficiency

I submitted a PIREP yesterday that didnt get disseminated properly. Not only did it not show up during the 1.7 hours left in the flight, it wasnt listed when I checked after landing on the aviationweather.gov/adds web site for PIREPs in the previous eight hours. However, after submitting an inquiry about this to Lockheed Martin, it showed up the next morning (about 20 hours after the flight).

In the April issue of IFR, Fred Simonds wrote an article that did an excellent job of explaining how the FAAs Compliance Philosophy program, started in 2015, seeks to encourage pilot compliance with the regulations through guidance rather than punishment. He also provided data that strongly indicated it has had the effect of reducing the number of pilot deviation events (potential violations) that turned into violation actions seeking punishment of pilots to nearly zero.But, youll still want to be careful.

Our coverage of the FAAs Compliance Philosophy (April 2016 and April 2017 and in this issue) begs the question of how generally well-intentioned and experienced pilots fall out of compliance in the first place. A little research shows that falling onto the dark side can be slow and insidious with undesired side effects, eventually capable of triggering an incident or accident. …

My guardian angel has a perverse sense of humor. I cant count the number of times Ive done the wrong thing for the right reasons and had it turn out better than if I had seen it clearly from the start.

The end of summer is near, which means a gradual decrease in thunderstorm activity in the northern hemisphere. But with the return of autumn, we will regularly see the jet stream over the United States. This means more opportunities for precipitation to organize into severe storms. Its a good time to get up close with radar again and pick up on some things you might have missed in previous training.

A few years after the big red Do Not Enter circle was drawn over Washington, DC, I needed to attend a meeting in Silver Spring, Maryland. In spite of advice against it, I decided to fly my 182 into College Park Airport (KCGS), which would, of course, take me directly into the forbidden zones around DC (ADIZ and Flight Restricted Zone). A couple days before departing my southern Illinois home I called ATC and got the detailed entry instructions.

Assuming you own an airplane or fly the same one all the time, consider joining the type club supporting that aircraft. Okay, thats your takeaway. Let me explain why I recommend that. Ive owned three airplanes. My first was a mighty Cessna 150 and I was too young and too ignorant for aircraft ownership, so that one doesnt count. Next was a Mooney, a 1968 M20F Executive. Older and wiser then, I had previously joined the…

I was flying with a particularly weak student doing off-airport operations. We were combining high-altitude ops with a pinnacle approach to Pleasants Peak, at 4007 MSL. I wanted this student to call SoCal Approach for a brief bit of flight following to the mountain. I told my student exactly what to say to SoCal. SoCal Approach, this is helicopter 8490D, 5 south of Pleasants Peak for flight following at 4000 feet.

In an era of satellite-based precision approaches, a pilot’s understanding of how to find the destination airport using a nondirectional beacon might seem a waste of time. But in the United States, hundreds of NDBs remain in service, according to the FAA. Alaska alone has 70. Flying an NDB approach requires considerably more pilot attention because […]

The first GPS I used in the air was a Garmin 95 portable. Brick-shaped and nearly brick-sized, its etch-a-sketch screen was a still a revelation. We could go direct to airway fixes and watch the little black pixels approach just as the CDI needles swung to center. This was back when we taught instrument students how to eyeball a course direct to a fix defined by two VOR radials.