Search Results for: Cessna 172

In his seminal book Stick and Rudder, Wolfgang Langewiesche states the rudder “…causes the greatest difficulty for beginners,” and “….even the more experienced pilot often has trouble using it correctly.” Commenting on improper rudder use as a contributing factor in accidents, he states, “In the typical fatal accident, which involves a stall and a spin, misuse of the rudder is almost always partly to blame….”

The student pilot was on final approach for landing when he encountered a crosswind from the left. He corrected for the crosswind and proceeded to land. The airplane ballooned, touched down and pulled to the right. The student pilot applied full power in an attempt to abort the landing. The airplane went off the right side of the runway, became airborne and struck a large hay bale. Post-accident examination revealed the firewall was buckled, both wing leading edges were crushed, the nose landing gear was sheared off and the empennage was damaged.

Bob and I are flying back to Connecticut, IFR in his Cessna 182, after a fabulous experience with my first visit to Oshkosh. We depart with full tanks.

Nutjob. Thats what we all called him. He was one of my trainers at my first tower. Extreme skydiving and off-the-grid adventure travel earned him the title. His not-safe-for-work There I was… stories were legendary throughout our ATC community.

CNN owned the coverage of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 this past spring with its wall-to-wall commentary from experts like our own Contributing Editor Les Abend, a highly experienced Boeing 777 captain, and Editor-in-Chief Robert Goyer, but rival cable channel Fox News has a potent new weapon in its arsenal for covering aviation […]

Many of us fly, or have flown, some rather capable high-performance single-engine airplanes providing excellent long-distance transportation value and utility. Flying a Cirrus, Centurion, Bonanza or Mooney and cruising between 150-180 knots allows you to operate over the entire country on a practical basis. You can, however, achieve almost as much utility from simple fixed-gear airplanes, providing you know and account for their limitations, your “utility envelope” and certain associated risks.

One of the reasons many fly personal aircraft is to travel. Even simple, slow airplanes can be used for personal and business transportation, within limits, and they’re the preferred solution for many. And when trying to get from one location underserved by the airlines to another, there’s really no better solution.

As the holiday season gives way to the interminable darkness of winter, we pause in our discontent to honor, ridicule and learn from those pilots whove slipped the surly bonds of reason and, once again, slapped the face of God-knows-what foolishness.

The physical world is full of inverse proportions and one I’ve noticed is that when winter temperatures dip to, say, 20 degrees, my northern friends are four times more likely to bitterly complain that Florida, where I live, is nothing but a mosquito-infested fever swamp; God’s waiting room, if you will. But it’s something else, […]

In 1892, E.B. Garriott wrote for the fledgling U.S. Weather Bureau, Following a period of intense cold the Chinook wind is a welcome visitor in the Northwest. The icy clutch of winter is loosened. The earth throws off its winding sheet of snow. Humanity ventures forth to inhale the balmy, spring-like air. Animate nature rejoices.