Pilot Proficiency

In 1945, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, precursor of NASA and source of much of our knowledge about practical aerodynamics, published a hefty compendium of airfoil data, NACA Technical Report 824, which later appeared in book form under the title Theory of Wing Sections. The names of the authors, Abbott and von Doenhoff, have […]

A few days ago I met a young man who had just been hired by my airline. He just turned 25 years old, which means he was born in 1994, the very same year I started flying. He’s pretty clearly sharp as a tack, strongly motivated and a hard worker, which accounts for how he […]

Thirty-some years ago, when the FAA was actually paying me to go to Griffin, Georgia, and fly Bob McSwiggan’s DC-3, I heard about this larger-than-life guy named Stan Brock. To hear people talk, he was Ernie Gann, Indiana Jones and Mother Teresa wrapped up into one. A famous, handsome, adventurous Brit living like a monk, […]

Maintenance techs aren’t required to be pilots or aerodynamicists.

The flight lasted all of 11 minutes. It is hard to imagine how such a short leg could be of such rapture, but it was. Credit must be given to the days that preceded the flight, because they hold the key to the distilled delight and might explain the hyperbole. Tampa, Florida, to Lakeland, Florida, […]

The threat from Axis submarines prowling the East Coast of the United States was scary and very real. Onshore shelling terrorized civilians, but the real low-hanging fruit for the submarines was on the seas. By as early as August 1942, Axis subs had caused the loss of thousands of lives, mainly merchant mariners, and sunk […]

I recently bumped into Jennifer Storm at Sun n’ Fun in Lakeland and I had to admit that after congratulating her on her new role as VP of the AOPA Foundation, I really knew next to nothing about the organization. She took a few minutes between meetings and the noise of the nearby airshow to […]

Tobias Smollett, though not a pilot, pulled off a couple of good things. He wrote novels and practiced medicine in Covent Garden in the 18th century. He pointed out that when one has given his life to a pursuit, his ideas and pronouncements might, in fact, sound arbitrary or inane to the unschooled. Mark Twain […]

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.