Pilot Proficiency

One of the things I love about living and cruising aboard Windbird is the way it drastically simplifies and slows the frenetic pace of modern life. Where most of my flights are of a few hours’ duration, passages under sail are measured in days and weeks. Three hours on watch, three hours off, ad infinitum […]

There was nobody to marshal us in as we wheeled into the parking spot. After we shut the old Navajo down and started looking around to see where to go after we got out, a man ran up to the pilot side of the airplane. I opened the little side window and expectantly bent an […]

The visual of large blue and green aluminum fragments floating in the ice-laden Potomac River as we descended on our approach into Washington National Airport is still vivid enough to remain locked in my memory. The evening prior, Air Florida Flight 90, a Boeing 737-200, had crashed into the 14th Street Bridge just after takeoff […]

No matter how rewarding and clean and bright it feels to say, “I’m going for it,” there is always a nagging doubt that maybe, just maybe, this is nuts. So it has been for me since my wife and I bought the airplane of my 50 years of flying dreams, a Beech Premier 1. Fast […]

Before the advent of GPS approaches, most civilian approach control facilities provided Airport Surveillance Radar (ASR) approaches, usually as a back-up to pilot-nav approaches. Many are now gone but some airports still have them. In Florida, only two civilian airports have ASR approaches: Key West and Tallahassee, at opposite ends of the state. However, there are seven military airports with ASR approaches.

Its the end of a long day filled of uncooperative weather, ground stops, and a diversion tossed in to make it interesting. Youre shooting the non-precision (of course) GPS approach, and upon reaching minimums, you look up and see … nothing. Wait a minute! Isnt that a PAPI glowing out of the left side of your window? Is that your runway? If so, whats it doing all the way over there?

For some, the shoulder seasons mean ideal flying weather – crisp spring and fall mornings with great visibility, often under a stable ceiling. These conditions offer fantastic climb performance, and the lack of bugs splattered all over the windshield is a plus. Morning fog, too, is pretty to look at, although it sure puts a damper on early-bird departures.

From time to time we look at weather accidents, reviewing the factors that might have led to poor decision making or perhaps even weather that could not be anticipated. In this edition well take a look at the crash of a Pitts biplane in IMC conditions in California, and a Beechcraft Baron that went down in bad weather in Kentucky. Both of these incidents took place in April, so they should give you some food for thought this time of year.

On the way out of Florida for Hurricane Irma, it was very, very busy on frequency with everyone trying to get out of the state. ATC was doing a great job of handling very heavy traffic loads, and still managing to provide flight following to the greatest extent possible, when I happened to overhear the following exchange:

An aircraft auxiliary power unit serves as an additional energy source normally used to start one of the main engines on an airliner or business jet. The APU is equipped with an extra electrical generator to create enough power to operate onboard lighting, galley electrics and cockpit avionics, usually while the aircraft is parked at […]