Pilot Proficiency

A fter a record winter where temperatures fell below -30 degrees F in some parts of the Midwest, its hard to believe summer is approaching again. That means a rapid increase in thunderstorm activity across the country. In this issue our goal is to help you not only understand the parts of a storm but also whats going on underneath the hood and what it means for the forecast. The information also might help save your bacon when things go downhill unexpectedly and all the data you have is whats out the window.

When we got BasicMed, something wed done for a long time was taken away. BasicMed applies to acting as pilot in command. But, with BasicMed youre not legal to act as a safety pilot for your buddy whos under the hood practicing approaches in VMC. So, you exercise the workaround of agreeing ahead of time that you, the safety pilot, are indeed the PIC for this flight (more on that in a moment), then youre once again good to go even with BasicMed … if, that is, the aircraft insurance agrees. Lets look more carefully at all this.

I haven’t been the same since I totaled my airplane in Telluride, Colorado, last May. Over the past months in these pages I’ve detailed the fears and anxieties that plague me as I try to get back to being the pilot I once was. Caution that exceeds reasonable risk assessment. Fear that grounds me in […]

I have been a motorcycle road racer for many years. Picture closed circuits and leather suits with knee sliders. The kind of gear that protects you when you lean over and press your knee into the asphalt at triple-digit speeds. I love road racing, and crashing is part of the game. I have done so […]

Like a good marriage, an abiding love for aviation grows and changes over the years. The emotion is always there, but the reason for the initial attraction isn’t always the same reason you stay committed. I was fortunate to fall in love with aviation as a kid while riding around in the back of my […]

My grandparents were Eastern European Jews, and I am the grandchild of immigrants. They came here with nothing. The civilization from which they came was destroyed by the Nazis, so, growing up in the 1950s, there were virtually no physical artifacts of my family’s long European existence. Most of the houses of my contemporaries (all […]

The FAA’s Chicago Aircraft Certification Branch posted an aviation maintenance update late Tuesday for both the Cirrus SR-20 and SR-22 resulting from the investigation into a near-fatal accident at Houston Executive Airport in Katy Texas in May of 2018. The pilot of the Cirrus SR-20 involved in the accident reported shortly after takeoff, that he […]

The answer given in question 2 of the quiz in your November 2018 issue (continue to fly straight through the storm) is incorrect. Fifty years ago I wrote and published the initial research papers on transmitting weather information into the cockpit after almost losing my life due to a thunderstorm. As a nationally recognized aviation radar/weather spokesperson, I continue to educate and update pilots around the country as the program progresses. The history of the Datalink program is best presented by AOPAs video on YouTube. Search for datalink concept to cockpit.

While stability and instability dont always cause weather, they leave a mark on even VFR forecasts in many subtle ways, and they influence everything from wind gusts to cloud layers. Even in forecast models, there are always complex equations that factor in stability. Stability is important enough that an entire chapter is dedicated to it in the FAAs Aviation Meteorology circular. For meteorologists, a chart known as the Skew-T diagram is used every day at forecast centers. Its literally a worksheet that helps forecasters visualize the days stability and make calculations on it.

It’s sunny and 83 degrees with a light breeze in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, as I write this; the only sign that Christmas is fast approaching are the multicolored lights strung in Windbird’s rigging and occasional faint notes of familiar holiday tunes drifting across the water. I wish I could report that Dawn and […]