Pilot Proficiency

Owning an airplane, somehow, is far different from owning a car, a house or any other high-ticket item. For many owners, the airplane becomes part of the family. And so it was for me. I found my Cessna 170 in the middle of Michigan and picked it up with my friend David. David had hundreds […]

Flying IFR into new environments can be a serious challenge, particularly in busy airspace where controllers are talking nonstop, and it’s more important than ever to listen up and follow their instructions precisely. For flight in congested areas, pre-published, low-level IFR routes make both pre-flight planning and the actual flying much more straightforward and enjoyable. […]

I’m not sure where it ranks on my list of life achievements, but I finally did something I’ve thought about doing for a long time. I joined a flying club. I took my club check ride this week with Jon Friedman, a former Navy F-4 pilot turned oral surgeon, who also serves as the club’s […]

Last Friday morning at 1130, three LSAs departed from Apopka, Florida’s X04 for a long weekend in Franklin, North Carolina. Another sport pilot and I flew the Remos while the SportCrusier (formally a PiperSport) and Gobash each had a sport pilot (one working on his private) and a CFI. Pilots and passengers of a Cessna […]

A fellow pilot recently recounted the harrowing tale of one of his early solo cross-country flights as a student pilot that inadvertently put him where no pilot wants to be: inside the bowels of a thunderstorm. According to the pilot, the summer haze along his route had cut the visibility to less than five miles, […]

Last week, I flew to McClellan-Palomar Airport, just north of San Diego, California. It reminded me of my long solo cross-country flight as a student pilot. Being all alone in the airplane, far away from home took me way out of my comfort zone, but the experience was priceless. Completing that flight without a hitch […]

(April 2011) AFTER DEPOSITING MY wallet, cell phone, parts of my uniform and various other sundries into the required plastic bins, I walked through the arch of the security magnetometer. I shuddered, fearing an activation of the chirping beep that would force me to succumb to a re-entry. I would then be required to remove […]

(April 2011) THE DESIRE FOR CERTAIN knowledge drives airplane designers to many decimal places, even though a whiff of wind can blow them all away. And so, when finally, after years of procrastinating, I got my homebuilt’s flaps working, I wanted to measure their effect as exactly as I could. No doubt if I had […]

(April 2011) Coincidentally (maybe) I’m writing this on the anniversary of the day Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. He was later declared a heretic by the Diet of Worms, a bunch of church guys who met in a German town with a really funny name. It’s possible that posting […]

The taxi run-in between an Air France A380, the largest passenger airplane in the world, and a regional jet at JFK the other night should remind us all how easy it is to bend some metal when all you’re trying to do is get to the departure end of the runway. These taxi surprises of […]