Pilot Proficiency

The month of May was my first full schedule as the new kid on the 777. Priorities dictated that I have specific days off. My wife and I would be celebrating our anniversary. The seniority cards dealt a five-day trip to São Paulo, Brazil. I’ve never been overjoyed with the idea of flying all night […]

IT HAPPENED LAST MAY, DURING an air race in South Africa. An airplane was descending toward a turn point in a valley when the pilot of a following airplane saw what appeared to be paper scattering behind it. An instant later, a shattered wing separated from the fuselage, falling to earth a hundred yards from […]

There are some A-B-Cs of radio procedure and technique that might have gotten lost in the cobwebs of your memory. It could be that you’ve picked up some bad habits; or lost touch with some of your better ones. If a little brush-up is in order, try whipping out the Aeronautical Information Manual — aka […]

You’ve given us a litany of accidents in which the pilots did something stupid,” pointed out one of the pilots of the Glens Falls Pilots and Owners Association to which I had just presented a program I call “Good Accidents.” “Why do pilots do something stupid?” he asked. “Not stupid,” someone else suggested, “but certainly […]

Pipeline-patrol pilot Corey Hines, who flies out of Beaumont, Texas, sure got it right. He took off one evening for a flight with a girlfriend; and landed with a fiancé. The accompanying picture of his proposal written in sand along the beach should explain. He said: “Jolyn thought we were just flying down to Galveston […]

I downloaded WingX’s product (www.hiltonsoftware.com) onto my iPod Touch just before EAA AirVenture, but hadn’t had the chance to explore many of the program’s offerings until my family road trip this week. Wow. What an exciting array of information and features. I used it to keep track of the nasty storms that overflew Cape Cod […]

Each month, Flying answers questions about the new Sport Pilot/Light Sport Aircraft rule with assistance from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), the authority on the opportunities available within the category commonly known as “Sport Pilot”: Q: I have two questions regarding light-sport aircraft: Is a 1976 Cessna 150 with a 100 hp engine eligible as […]

As you’ve doubtless heard, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B, long spoken of as the surveillance system of the future, is officially here. In late May the FAA published the final rule, though, fortunately, it will be years before you need to do anything about it. If you think of ADS-B as being like a transponder, […]

Until last weekend, the last time I’d had a mettwurst was 1987. What, you might ask, is a mettwurst? Ah. It’s a spicy, little-known relative of the bratwurst that’s only available, as far as I’ve ever determined, in a small radius around southern Ohio. I mention the mettwurst only because sometimes, like the smell of […]

The bright, very bright, sunlight flickered through the Mercury Tracer’s side window making a strobe light effect. The snow was piled high on the sides of the road and the sunlight on the snow was overwhelming my sunglasses. As I drove down the 19-degree hill, in the 19-degree weather, the combination of frost on the […]