Pilot Proficiency

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 […]

Nearly every suburban parish in (heavily Catholic) Cincinnati has a Saturday afternoon or evening Mass but, for lots of reasons, I’ve just been going through the motions—never feeling too “connected.” But there’s a racetrack near Lunken Airport and, about a year ago, a friend introduced me to a small community of “backtrackers.” Because of their […]

Uncertainty makes for an accident waiting to happen.

I was providing flight instruction toward a commercial rating with a student whom I had recently helped obtain her instrument rating. We were flying my own Cessna Cardinal RG, and we had already flown together a great deal. In fact, she actually handled the airplane better than I did in most cases, especially landings. Because […]

PM: “Making power, power is even.” PM: “Airspeed alive.” PM: “80 knots.” PF: “My yoke.” PM: “Your yoke.” PM: “V₁.” PM: “V_R.” PM: “Positive rate on two.” PF: “Gear up.” PM: “Selecting gear up.” PM: “Gear is up.” PM: “Clean wing speed.” PF: “Clean the wing.” PM: “Cleaning the wing.” PM: “Wing is clean.” PM: […]