Pilot Proficiency

The title of a short Associated Press article in a USA Today dated Nov. 30, 2009, said, “Pilots flying on empty baffle NTSB.” Tom Haueter, director of the NTSB’s Office of Aviation Safety, was quoted as saying, “It’s surprising to me that there’s a group of pilots who will knowingly push it, thinking, ‘I can […]

As I think back over my life, I can come up with only one day I remember. Really remember. Oh, I remember graduating from high school, but I don’t remember anything else about the day. I remember watching the birth of my daughter, but I have no idea what I had for breakfast on that […]

Deciding to break from my normal schedule of one flight lesson per week (or sometimes only every two weeks), usually on a Saturday or Sunday, I headed over to Vero/FlightSafety for three days last week. I ended the last of my three flights, let’s say, deflated. Really deflated. I had hit a wall (figuratively, of […]

The snow level in the Oakland hills dropped to about 1,500 feet the other day, a description that makes sense only in mountainous areas at the edges of winter, or in California pretty much all of the time. Since it’s almost never cold enough for snow to survive at sea level, snow in California is […]

You hear it all the time. “If you have any doubts at all, you shouldn’t go!” I’m here to confess, if I took that completely literally, not only would I never fly, I’d never leave the house. A measure of controlled fear is not unhealthy, especially when it comes to flying an airplane, and the […]

This was a day of contrasts. It started with my lesson in the P28. Weather looked ok at the time of briefing but had changed somewhat after we got through the preflight. A wind change meant a different runway and the direction we planned to depart toward had become “dark”. A new plan. So instead […]

I would hope that every one of us learned early on in our training the proper control positions when taxiing whenever there was some wind present. I’m sure we all remember the diagram showing in which quadrant the wind was and how the controls should be positioned to ensure that the wind didn’t get the […]

I thought of it as a “fam” flight — a flight to familiarize someone with why general aviation engenders such passion. A week or so earlier, during a physical, my doctor expressed an interest in going for an airplane ride. Since I try to never postpone joy, I invited her. Lauren was hesitant to take […]

Today I had the chance to sneak out of the office (we’re shipping the April issue and there’s not a lot of leeway for me to be out if we’re going to be on time) to attend the Women in Aviation International Conference at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort and Convention Center through Saturday, Feb. 27. […]

It’s starting to come together for me. At least for slow flight and power on and off stalls. With Lesson 5, I accomplished these under my “own power.” I even successfully radioed in each of the maneuvers so others in Charlie South practice area, located to the west of KRVB, would know where we were […]