Pilot Proficiency

It was cold. That isn’t always a bad thing. Engines have more power; wings produce greater lift (more or less). But there was also moisture. Quite a bit of it in fact. And that is just no fun when it’s below freezing. Throw in the fact that I was at the end of a long […]

If you’ve been flying for a while, you probably know of at least one person in your circle of friends who has made a very expensive mistake — starting up the engine with the towbar attached. It is a simple error but one that could cost you a new propeller and an engine overhaul. There […]

We tend to think of a sudden feeling of unease or apprehension as a bad thing, a foreboding sign that something is amiss. But as pilots, not only should we heed these uneasy feelings, we should consciously decide to welcome them as a way of eliminating risk and breaking potential links in the accident chain. […]

“I’m going to ask for 380 and another shortcut,” says Greg, sitting to my right and pointing to the CJ3’s MFD, which shows an arrival time of 16:19 Zulu. We are about three-quarters of the way down the East Coast en route from White Plains, New York, to Boca Raton, Florida, and we have a […]

Once in a while we hear of pilots making a mistake that has devastating consequences, such as forgetting to remove the control wheel lock prior to takeoff or landing with the landing gear retracted. It is easy to make a mistake and that’s why we use checklists. But in addition to using a printed or […]

When it comes to properly controlling airspeed and altitude there are a couple of schools of thought depending on which group of pilots you happen to be talking with. One subscribes to the idea that power management is all that’s really needed to control airspeed and altitude assuming the airplane is properly trimmed. The other […]

Like many, flying has always been my dream. By some miracle, I have been able to turn that dream into a successful career and hobby. As I passed midlife, suddenly realizing how valuable time is, I thought it time to fill that “bucket” that has loomed in the back of my head for so many […]

For many pilots, summer means fly-ins, more flying and searches for the best $100 hamburger. It also marks the end of powerful jet streams and large, organized weather systems that cross the United States from one end to the other. By the time June rolls around, all that stuff shifts north and becomes a problem for our Canadian friends. But, that also gives them four months of mild summer temperatures, so dont feel too bad for them.So what exactly do we have in the United States? We can distill it down to three main features. First theres the large Atlantic Bermuda high, covering the eastern half of the country. Second is the cool Pacific high, which maintains a tenacious foothold on the West Coast. Finally theres the broad thermal low located between the Sierra Nevadas and Rocky Mountains, strongest by far over Arizona. Its driven mostly by intense solar heating.

With the exception of a crazed pilot bent on suicide and/or mass murder, nobody wants their airplane to hit the ground at speed. Why, then, do we continue to pilot our aircraft under control all the way to the point of impact with Mother Earth? Pros and students alike are guilty, and perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this is that these oft-fatal accidents are all preventable.The answer begins with proper pre-flight planning to evaluate the risks and your performance. The rest is having the discipline to follow through. This may all seem obvious, but we keep crashing, so lets see what we can do about it.

There is no substitute for getting hands-on experience from the left seat of the cockpit when learning to fly. But, whether you are a budding pilot or an experienced one, you can learn a lot while sitting in the back seat observing how other pilots conduct their flight operations. As the saying goes, there are […]