Search Results for: Cessna 172

There comes a time in every pilots career when they get ready to launch on a flight they really shouldnt make.

The warning signs are there. Maybe the pilot isnt feeling up to snuff. Maybe the mechanical health of the airplane is suspect. Maybe the weather is either threatening to go bad or already is below the pilots or legal minimums.

This is the stuff of flying. Forget about stick and rudder. Forget about IFR radio technique. Forget about navigation. Think instead about the C that comes with being PIC. Command. It implies the skill to measure the likelihood of a favorable outcome and the wisdom to know if the risk is worth the outcome. In short, its the competition between judgm…

Id heard it numerous times from all my flight instructors: Never fly fatigued. I had prided myself in always following all of the flying rules from A to Z. However, on this particular night all reason left me as I prepared to fly a 250-mile solo night flight from Albert Lea, Minn., to Fargo, N.D.

I had just finished driving from my home in Chicago to Albert Lea, a six-hour drive, which had started at 1 oclock that afternoon. I was tired as I rolled into Albert Lea to check in with my commercial instructor. He mentioned that I needed a 250-mile cross-country trip and five hours of night solo flight and said it was a beautiful night to accomplish both.

He asked if I was tired, but as a…

I have two questions regarding the article Landing at the Max [Airmanship, March] You state: … with a 46 KCAS stall speed. Enter the flare in a 172 at 65 knots instead of 60 and you have 2.25 times as much kinetic energy to dissipate before the airplane will stop flying.

My first question is: How did you compute the factor of 2.25? Here is how I analyze this problem. Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of ground speed. For simplicity Ill assume that CAS is equal to GS. The airplane stops flying at its stall speed of 46 knots, therefore the KE (kinetic energy) that must be dissipated before the airplane will stop flying is the difference between the KE at entry and the KE…

The following information is derived from the FAAs Service Difficulty Reports and Aviation Maintenance Alerts. Click here to view “Cessna Gear Fatigue.”

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The FAA has recently been advised that engine fuel strainers are failing at an increasing rate in new-production Cessna singles.

The manufacturer recommends maintenance personnel exhibit care when reassembling the threaded gascolator/fuel strainer standpipe into the fuel strainer housing after internal inspections of these components. The standpipe should be replaced if the standpipe threads are damaged or there is an insufficient number of threads. The current configurations…

The year was 1998 and it had been 14 years since I had last been in an airplane as a pilot. When I stopped flying in 1984, I held commercial, multiengine and instrument ratings and had approximately 1,000 hours of flying rented complex singles and light twins.

The time was finally right to get back into flying. After I got a medical certificate, I signed up for flight instruction from a highly qualified, mature CFI. The flying came back quickly, but the communications and instrument proficiency required more effort. Putting them all together was both frustrating and more demanding than Id anticipated.

After more than 50 hours of instruction, I convinced myself I could do it. The ne…

Elaine, my 21-year-old-daughter, was a senior in college and was to get married in less than two months. She and I have shared that special close bond that is unique to dads and daughters, so we planned one more father-daughter adventure before she tied the knot.

She had one day open on her busy pre-wedding summer schedule, so I cleared my schedule too. I just hoped the weather would be VFR for our planned flight to Ocean City, N.J., a place that holds many great memories for my wife and Elaine.

The evening before the flight I checked the weather forecasts on the AOPA website and filed a flight plan as well. We planned to lift off at 5:45 a.m. to arrive at Ocean City by 7 a.m. Breakfa…

Lake effect is a term Im going to get to know a lot about, now that I have a son at RIT.

I first visited Rochester some years ago when my oldest son was screening colleges. I wasnt an active pilot in those days, and we flew up commercially in mid-November. Arrival was delayed somewhat and the captain said something about lake effect snow. We picked up our rental car after dark, and no sooner had we entered the ramp to the interstate when my son asked, Why are there so many parked cars at strange angles?

Turned out there had been a minor ice storm, but more than enough to cause disruption. It had ended, but the highway surface was still glazed. We were able to proceed, but only a…

Advancing your ratings makes you a better/safer pilot. Weve probably all heard that statement more times than we can count, and most pilots probably accept it as an empirical truth. However, others feel that their lack of advanced ratings does not make them any less safe or competent to fly the planes they do, the way they do.

At the risk of sounding like a lawyer, the truth, I think, is that whether advanced ratings makes you a better/safer pilot depends a lot on what you mean by better and safer. Many folks equate the type of flying a pilot does or the certificates/ratings he holds with some sort of rank ordering of pilot skill/safety/proficiency.

Few people would argue that…

Everyone knows finding the right flight instructor is a crap shoot, so whats that say about the state of the industry?

||| |—|—| | | | The title of this column is “Gear Up” because I like the symbolism of takeoff and flight. It means to me the moment just after positive rate has been established when, with a short upward pull by the pilot, the airplane is reconfigured, while accelerating, to assume the shape it […]