Pilot Proficiency

Category I ILS approaches, long our low-weather mainstay, offer us minimums as low as 200 feet above the touchdown zone with RVR 1800 feet or higher. That’s low, but as it develops, not as low as you can go. CAT II approach approval opens about 160 public CAT II approaches to GA, easing access to […]

Twenty-five years ago, a Seattle-area pilot tried to do his mother a favor. He would take her to visit a friend on the other side of the Cascades. Their route would go through the Snoqualmie Pass, which, on the day of the trip, was unfortunately beset by fog and low-lying clouds. The pilot was instrument-rated, […]

I learned to surf in 1996. A friend taught me the basics at Pacific Beach in San Diego. Enthralled by the sport, I would go out every moment I got the opportunity. I did not care what the conditions were like. I’d paddle out in 2-foot chop just as eagerly as 5-foot glass. Snow on […]

Olive Branch—in Mississippi— might not be a city that easily rolls off the tongue of pilots everywhere, but as the crow flies, Olive Branch Airport (KOLV) is just 26 miles from Memphis International (KMEM), home base to package-delivery giant FedEx. That airline alone adds some 450 daily operations to KMEM. But KMEM’s nearly 230,000 annual operations include plenty of […]

My relationship with the mountains began on hikes with my family, camping trips up into the farthest corners of Glacier National Park that could be reached with a 7-year-old (me) and a toddling 4-year-old (my little brother) in close formation. We took what we could carry in our little packs—supplemented heavily with the resources my […]

Gallipolis is a town in extreme southeastern Ohio—not to be confused with the World War I battle site on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey. This one got its name in 1790, when some Frenchmen (“Gallia”) established a village or city (“polis”) across from where West Virginia’s Kanawha River joins the mighty Ohio. They’d been discovered […]

By the fall of 1978 I’d worked for Piper Aircraft in Lakeland, Florida, for three years. I was the assistant chief engineer-technical, which meant I had the people in the structures, aerodynamics, power plants, systems, electrical/avionics and flight-test groups all working for me. At the time, we were working extremely hard to certify the new […]

When the jet age arrived in 1959, little was known about wind shear. Aviation was focused on thunderstorm avoidance. In Joseph George’s compilation of Eastern Air Line’s forecasting techniques from that era, we find thunderstorms described in terms of turbulence, icing, and hail hazards. As jet aircraft were equipped with radar, it was assumed that […]

Do you believe the Earth is warming? I do. Do you believe that man contributes to this warming trend? I do, but I don’t know how much. Do you believe that the Earth’s supply of fossil fuels is finite? I do. Do you believe that aviation contributes to climate change? I do—but not as much […]

Before GPS, when Rand McNally’s paper maps ruled the day, pulling over on a country road in a small town to ask for directions never felt like failure to me. I saw it as a chance to meet someone new, maybe find out where to get lunch. Likewise, when flying, I am not a man […]