Search Results for: Cessna 172

My best friend, Mike,­ and I woke to the subtle muttering of raindrops and realized that beyond the curtains of our Ketchikan, Alaska, motel room there was only gray, dismal sky. Damn. At that moment a scenario began that could have ended up as an NTSB accident report, starting with unquantifiable indicators and an irrational […]

The Tecnam P2010 is one of those airplanes that you can’t help but stop to look at when you see it on the ramp. Mainly because you’ll be wondering why that Cessna Skyhawk looks so good. Until you realize it’s not a Skyhawk. It’s something different. Something silky smooth. With flowing lines. My goodness, it’s […]

One sunny July afternoon, a private pilot was returning to his home base from a lunch run to a nearby airport. He was flying a 1946 Luscombe, a well-worn classic but a new airplane to him. As he descended along the mountains skirting a populated area, the unthinkable happened — the engine quit. At his […]

We explain the popularity of seaplanes in New England’s most inaccessible state.

Thankfully midair collisions are rare, but when they do occur they’re usually fatal. As you probably know already, see-and-avoid techniques remain the foundation of avoiding midair collisions when flying VFR, but there are other precautions you as pilot in command can take to reduce your risk of tangling with other traffic inflight. A rash of […]

If there is any one thing guaranteed to frustrate an airplane owner-there actually are several, but work with us here-its the emergency locator transmitter, or ELT. The ELT, which was mandated by Congress in the early 1970s, got off to a bad start. Relatively short deadlines meant there werent enough of the devices available to meet the mandated demand. And they failed to activate in a crash more than 75 percent of the time. When they did activate, a whopping 97 percent were false alarms, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), resulting from something like a hard landing.

One of the side benefits of having some spare airframes, a test facility and a bunch of motivated engineers is the other kinds of testing you can do. According to Chad Stimson, NASAs project manager for the ongoing ELT testing, other data also is being collected, mostly as a supplement to earlier studies.

A tragic accident happened on Sunday morning as a result of a midair collision northeast of Brown Field Municipal Airport located in the suburb of Otay Mesa 13 miles southeast of San Diego, California. Five people were killed when the two airplanes, which were both approaching the airport to land, plummeted to the ground in […]

All those colorful runway markings, lights, and signs dont mean a thing to members of the animal kingdom other than humans. When our furry, scaled, and feathered friends make their way onto an active runway, the results can be…unpredictable.

It only takes a cursory look at an ICAO flight plan form to get cranial blood-vessel spasms and the resultant migraine. Who starts a form at item seven? Yes, you really have to look up aircraft type codes in ICAO DOC 8643. Can equipment codes really use the whole alphabet, indecipherable by humans? Do they really have only one remarks box that serves as an explanation for nearly every other box on the whole form?Despite the forms flaws and seemingly unfathomable complexities, the FAA is committed to drag U.S. pilots to the ICAO flight plan. Since the ICAO form is already required for flights utilizing performance based navigation (PBN), flying in RVSM airspace, utilizing ADS-B services, and flights outside the U.S., everybody else might as well share the pain.