Search Results for: Ercoupe

My flying has recently come full circle. My first flight was in a Piper J-3 Cub back in the 1950s. I worked line service as a teenager in the 1960s to pay for my flying lessons, and in the early 1970s I earned my fixed-wing ­single-engine and glider commercial and instructor ratings so I could […]

If you don’t venture on sullen skies, You never come to sunkissed valleys. If your palms have never been moist, Your heart has never thrilled. If you have never been afraid, You have never been courageous. Gill Robb Wilson, The Airman’s World When my sister Mary and I started flying, we learned to check aviation […]

(March 2011) AS MANY OF YOU MIGHT BE aware, Sport Pilot students and certified sport pilots can solo and fly only light-sport aircraft, commonly referred to as LSA. You also might know that these aircraft must meet requirements and limitations, with the big one being a maximum gross weight of 1,320 pounds for land airplanes. […]

(February 2011) — When we shoved open the door of the disreputable little shack, six, maybe seven, pairs of eyes swung in our direction and their expressions read, “Either these two are lost or they just arrived from another planet.” In our pastel wool winter coats, white gloves, pumps and those little lace veils women […]

During checkouts of rated pilots, I usually ask them to explain why the rudder is on the airplane. More than half of rated pilots will tell me the rudder helps turn the aircraft, which is not only wrong but is a very dangerous belief. Less than half of pilots will correctly identify the main purpose of the rudder, to correct for adverse yaw. By failing to correctly understanding the rudders purpose, these pilots exhibit a failure in our training system. Moreover, by misusing the airplanes primary controls, they arent flying it properly or efficiently. This realization has many implications-an indictment of our training systems among them-but the dangers of misusing the rudder also must be acknowledged. Lets discuss the rudders proper role, plus the effects and dangers of misusing primary controls.

Last Saturday, I headed out mid-morning to stop in at two aviation events. Little did I know how awesome the day would turn out. The first stop was at a monthly BBQ at Orlando-Apopka (X04) hosted by First Landings Aviation, the flight school where I’m taking sport pilot lessons. The idea behind the BBQ is […]

Matthew McDaniel is a four-time Master Flight Instructor who’s logged over 11,000 hours in more than 70 aircraft types. He’s owned and operated Progressive Aviation Services LLC (progaviation.com), specializing in technically advanced aircraft and glass cockpit training, since 2002. He says: “Being a truly good pilot is a multifaceted skill: airmanship, knowledge and judgment. One […]

After he “aced” the ground (oral) portion of a private check ride I gave last week, this young man pointed the airplane in approximately the right direction, found a couple of checkpoints and made a reasonable guess about our time to the next one listed on his flight log sheet. This with benefit of a […]

Its inevitable. Youll be standing on the ramp, clutching an avgas receipt rivaling Greeces national debt. Your chest throbs. You cant breathe, and ripping off your bolo tie, you scream, “Enough! I cant take this anymore!” Heart attack? Time to kiss 30 years of flying good-bye? Perhaps, but in this scenario, no. Instead, as you wander off toward your car, its first-love rekindled as you spot an old flame lounging in the grass across the field: a 1946 Aeronca Champ. And as your six-place Twin Turbo-Moneysucker is tugged off to its hangar, you stumble zombie-like toward the little taildragger and stammer to its owner, “I learned to fly in one of these….” She, then, takes your hand, guides you into the front seat and whispers, “Its time. Weve been waiting for you.” When she swings the prop by hand the 65-hp engine barks like a puppy on Christmas morning, and off you fly back to your aviation roots. Your flying life isnt over. Its merely come full circle, thanks to old airplanes that qualify as Light Sport Aircraft (LSA).

When a private-pilot applicant around here can’t scare up another examiner and is desperate enough to call me for a practical test, I tell him (for me, that means male, female or unknown) to plan a flight any place he wants to go … well, someplace that’s at least a couple of hundred miles away. […]