Pilot Proficiency

Here’s a time-saving trick for IFR pilots who want to depart their home airport VFR and then have the option of easily picking up an IFR routing midflight. To do it, simply fill out an IFR flight plan form as you normally would, but input a VFR cruising altitude (for example, 8,500 feet) in the […]

It was late January 1962 and my sister Mary and I had been taking flying lessons for about a month, but I don’t think either of us had soloed yet. The Ercoupe — loaned to us by an incredibly generous friend — had sat forlornly in the weeds for some time, so there were issues: […]

To the traveling public, I suspect that airline pilots are all essentially one and the same. We roam the terminals in the same weathered polyester uniforms, towing the same beat-up flight kits festooned with the airplane stickers of our pasts. We’re all pretty clean-shaven and tend to sport the same close-cropped haircut — only some […]

On a recent flight over the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range I spotted a prominent landmark — Half Dome — a massive rock formation at the end of the valley at Yosemite National Park. While I had an idea of where it may be located from looking at the Sectional Chart, I didn’t know exactly where […]

The Pilot’s Bill of Rights championed by Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe and passed into law two years ago has been so successful that a summer 2014 sequel is in the works. Inhofe’s Pilot’s Bill of Rights 2 is being crafted to address continuing “unfair practices and regulations toward the aviation industry” by the FAA. Looking […]

Chances are you’ve come across descriptions of how constant-speed propellers work, oh, about a thousand times since your piloting days began. Instead of rehashing how they operate, let’s talk about tips you can use to get the most out of your constant-speed prop. The first tip is offered with safety in mind: After you push […]

From the early days of aviation, hangars have been used to protect airplanes and the people who fly and work on them. The Wright brothers, who have been recognized as the first to fly a powered airplane, used two wooden sheds — one as a workshop and the other as a hangar — to protect […]

In the summer of 1967 I was a 16-year-old student pilot flying out of Cornelia Fort Airpark in Nashville, Tennessee. This historic airport had been around since 1944 and was still surrounded by farmland. I had been flying since I was 14 with the local Civil Air Patrol unit. By the time I decided to […]

The pilot in the left seat of the Piper Arrow was a 33,000-hour ATP; his right-seat companion had a private ticket and less than 200 hours. The two took off from Racine, Wisconsin, on a midsummer afternoon and headed northward, just off the western shore of Lake Michigan. There were scattered clouds at 3,400 feet […]

You’ve never seen anything like this. Extremely strong winds at the USAF Academy Airfield in Colorado Springs, Colorado, caused a dangerous emergency situation for pilots of four tow planes sitting on the tarmac as a 55-knot spring gust front swept across the airport recently. Two of the four pilots were forced to take to the […]