Pilot Proficiency

A lot has changed with my training since my last blog. I had a successful Lesson 8, which was inspiring after the Lesson 7 letdown, and I was eager for the next flight. But my subsequent lessons kept getting canceled due to weather or last-minute work-related issues and the weeks between flights just kept ticking […]

Three aviation-oriented colleges — the University of North Dakota (UND), the University of Alaska and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) — are co-opting on a research project aimed at clarifying pilots’ needs for in-cockpit weather. The study also hopes to gain insight into how best to educate pilots in using the available weather data. Dubbed […]

May 2010 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: What are the instruments that the FAA requires for VFR day flight in a two-seat (pilot, passenger) homebuilt […]

As I write this, the mercury here in New Jersey is inching into the 90s. It seems like just a few weeks ago the trees were still budding. But summer has arrived, and with it, all the new flight planning considerations of the season. Most often, we think of summer as the time for thunderstorms […]

The debate over whether or not to reintroduce spins to primary flight training has proponents on both sides, but most pilots agree that strapping on a parachute (required by FARs) and experiencing flight around all axes is a worthwhile exercise, if you can find the time and place. A cottage industry has built up around […]

During the most intense of the Vietnam War years, I had a strong sense that I was the luckiest young sailor in the Navy, as I luxuriated in a serendipitous assignment as an air rescue swimmer and H-34 crew chief stationed in Hawaii. Operating workhorse Sikorsky S-58 helicopters out of Pearl Harbor and Barbers Point […]

As of April 20, a computer has been generating digital notices to airmen (NOTAMs) for Atlantic City (NJ) International Airport (KACY). The technical innovation, set to expand to several other airports soon, is said to offer numerous advantages over human-generated notams, according to FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt. For example, notams may now be transmitted to […]

The e-mail we received here at Flying from Col. Sid “Scroll” Mayeux, chief of aviation safety at the United States Air Force Safety Center, was a little hard to believe. “Last year (Fiscal Year 2009),” Mayeux’s e-mail read, “was the USAF’s safest year in aviation safety, with 17 Class A Aviation Flight Mishaps for a […]

I sometimes chuckle when I think about the complexity of the electrical systems in new airplanes, particularly single-engine airplanes. Most current production singles have multiple electrical buses, more than one electrical power source and, often, emergency backup batteries. And that’s great. But there is still only one engine, and if it quits, the airplane is […]