Pilot Proficiency

Big piston radial engines from the 1940s, ‘50s—and through today—require careful
attention during startup.

Without a doubt, the western United States offers the best VFR flying in the nation. This is partly why the military has its air combat training centers in Arizona, Nevada, and California. Most likely you’ve also done some cross-country trips in those areas and had no problems. But this area is not without its hazards […]

The approach to KCHA holds a few less common things to watch out for.

Q: Is it possible to identify the typical sequence during which snow will fall in the Midwest versus an area prone to receiving lake effect snow? It seems snow pellets or sleet/ice pellets appear before flakes in some circumstances. A: Outside of large hailstones, the precipitation type that gets reported at the surface depends entirely […]

After a long pause, the author resumes work on tailwheel technique.

We clarify a common confusion regarding the logging of nighttime landings.

An aviation meteorologist explains why troughs are important enough to depict on prog charts.

‘The Skew-T log (p) and Me’ aims to make flight planning more effective.

Interactive webinar topics include ForeFlight, flight sims, and passing the FAA written exam.

The United States. “What a country!” as comedian Yakov Smirnoff once said. It’s equipped with first-class observation systems, sophisticated forecast models, and a lively research community. It has what is undoubtedly the most extensive weather infrastructure of any country in the world, and this is in part due to North America’s notoriously temperamental weather. It’s […]