Pilot Proficiency

OK, picture some far-in-the-future archaeologist exploring an area that ancient maps call North America and stumbling on an odd-looking site—long strips of concrete radiating out from a once-paved, open area. Combing through the ruins of a nearby structure, he unearths a barely discernible, crumbling document covered with peculiar characters. If only there were accompanying hieroglyphics, […]

Single-pilot IFR is the hardest thing most people will ever do. If you’re a heart surgeon, you might disagree, but for almost everyone else, there’s nothing that compares. The combination of high stakes and an unrelenting workload makes for a unique challenge, and there’s no undo button. Instrument training should embrace that challenge, with a […]

Recent data from the National Transportation Safety Board says, over the past decade, the trend in general aviation accidents has been headed in a positive direction—down. In 2012, the board recorded 1,471 GA accidents, 273 of which were fatal. Those accidents claimed the lives of 440 people. The NTSB data available from 2017 lists 1,233 […]

I live in the Deep South, and I emerge from summer begging for a massive cold front to clear the Florida/Georgia state line and bring some ­much-needed relief from the blistering heat and stifling humidity. Come the end of September, I am aching for sight of high cirrus, introducing a phalanx of low cumulus, chased […]

Dark gray clouds scudded low overhead, pewter waves slapped Windbird’s hull as it heeled in a gust, and a fine, cold mist obscured the low black line on the horizon that defined our island destination, now 7 miles away. Given the sullen weather, you wouldn’t know it was July 5 if not for the steady stream […]

We’ve all done it—accidentally pressed a wrong button on a computer. It happens. Well, the US Marine Corps CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter has a lot of buttons and switches, and it’s really important to get them right. Aboard the USS Saipan, off the coast of Sicily, I was on the flight schedule. Easy mission: Fly […]

A Champion 7ECA Citabria was my first taildragger as well as my first airplane. The first few hours of tailwheel instruction chronicled in my logbook made the score pretty clear—Citabria: 2, me: 0. My instructor always managed to add colorful comments to my logbook to illustrate the at-times-agonizing progress—”Crash and Dash,” he called many of […]

Strange times we are living in. When writing my last column, I wondered aloud if things could get any worse. (I turn in my column two months prior to publication.) As it turns out, they could—and for entirely different reasons than I imagined. In January, I moved to New Mexico to shoot a television show. […]

For 20 years, airplanes—big ones—have set a daily cadence. Early departures roar overhead crowing the daybreak as reliably as a rooster. The departure procedure from one runway involves a heading change to avoid flying low over homes, but some airplanes are moving so fast that they thunder over my sleeping neighbors before heading over the […]

In summer 1954, I was 10 going on 11; the “going on” part is important when you’re 10. My father was in New York for some reason or another, and my mother and I were to join him there for a month. It was the first great travel adventure of my life. Born and living […]