Search Results for: Cessna 172

On the morning of a late fall day in 2000, a Utah rancher took up two passengers in his Cessna 175 to search for stray cattle. It was part of the fall roundup, an “annual event looked upon with anticipation by many.” After spotting a few head, they flew toward a bluff where several cowboys […]

I thought I would send you a note of something that really could have ruined my day.

I had asked a friend to go flying with me one evening. The sunsets here in North Dakota are fantastic and I thought she might really enjoy seeing them from a different perspective. I had already pre-flighted the airplane when she called and said she would be late. I told her I would take-off and do some landing drills while I awaited her arrival.

We have a small non-towered airport and I explained that when she arrived that she should park next to my vehicle on the ramp and keep her headlights on and I would then taxi to her and pick her up.

When she arrived I landed and taxied to her, facing the…

While it may not have the sex appeal of politics or religion, oil analysis will spark some lively debate if you put together a group of pilots or mechanics. Some people shrug it off as an expensive exercise in futility that tells little about the inner secrets of engine wear. Others swear to their engines health if they get good sample results and get ready to shoot it if they dont.

In fact, the true value of analysis is somewhere in the middle. It cant tell you how long your engine is going to live and its far from a sure-fire way to predict catastrophic failure. On the other hand, experienced eyes can spot wear trends that can catch minor problems before they turn into big ones. Whe…

Something about flying a twin grabs your attention. Sitting up high, a fistful of throttles, clear one, turning one – it all adds up to a feeling of power and control.

Thats appropriate, of course, because power and control are the big issues in learning to fly a light twin. Its not a matter of having power and control, its that you can lose them very quickly when something goes wrong. Flying a light twin isnt for everyone, and its not a panacea that takes all the risk out of flying. But with proper instruction, flying a twin is, in some ways, as good as it gets.

Are Two Better Than One?
The biggest myth of light twins is that they are inherently safer than singles…

Thanks for the usual informative issue of Aviation Safety.

No-Fly Zones [April, Weather Tactics] was of special interest, as I fly in and about the Sierra Nevada Mountains most of the time, with home base at Reno Stead Airport.

There is one small addition that I would like to make to Ms. Lambs article. We should spend some time talking to our friends without engines, as they must pay attention to the air movements over the mountains.

At least some reading of the good books on that subject would be of benefit.

The accident over Independence Pass Lamb mentioned could have been avoided by using ridge lift to help.

A couple of years ago I stopped at Aspen for fuel in my old…

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…