Search Results for: Ercoupe

For no apparent reason, Martha fell in love with airplanes at age nine and she learned to fly an Ercoupe in the early 1960s while attending college in her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. Armed with a degree in English Literature, she became a flight instructor and operated a flying school at Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport for […]

Piper Cub (Photo: EAA / Jim Koepnick) Each month, Flying answers questions about the new sport pilot/light sport aircraft rule with assistance from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), the authority on the opportunities available within the category commonly known as “Sport Pilot”: Q: I’ve heard about all the new airplanes that sport pilots can fly. […]

Every spring the Greater Cincinnati Airmen’s Club held a spot landing contest at Montgomery County (now Dayton Wright Brothers) Airport in Southern Ohio. It’s a non-towered field about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati with a long paved runway pointing southwest into the prevailing wind. I’m sure some wise soul realized that challenging rusty, winter-weary aviators […]

One of the more unpleasant realities of personally flown aircraft is that ones exposure to the risk of coming to a stop in a fashion other than intended is higher than we care to admit. While many of us fly our entire careers without so much as a scratched airplane or an engine hiccup, others are not so fortunate. Those of us with an IQ above room temperature accept there is a true risk of being involved in a crash. Once the premise is accepted, the question becomes what to do about it. One answer is to think about it beforehand and act accordingly, especially when it comes to considering occupant protection, developing a personal checklist and preparing for when something ugly happens. Years of research and feedback from the school of hard knocks has shown time and time again that the single most important thing we can do to protect ourselves in the event of a quick stop is to wear all of the available restraining systems in whatever seat we occupy. There has been full-scale human impact research going on since World War II, and it is absolutely consistent in its results: An unrestrained occupant has a lousy chance of surviving any kind of crash impact. Even low-speed collisions generate G loads in the double digits, and no human being in the world is strong enough to “brace” for those loads (nor prescient enough to predict their precise direction even if it were possible). A seatbelt is the first line of defense; it keeps the occupant more or less in the seat and stops a major killer in accidents-that of being thrown out of the vehicle. (And, as comedian Bill Cosby once noted, it helps the ambulance driver find you.) While folklore is full of anecdotes about people who survived because they were “thrown clear,” inquiry into those stories has shown that virtually every one is a myth. A human isnt designed to hit the ground, a tree or wall going 30 miles per hour, much less whistling along at 70. The degree of pulverization of bones, soft tissue and internal organs when that occurs is the stuff of which pathology textbooks is made.

I soloed Andrew Loewenstein last week. He’s a good-looking kid with black curly hair, the 16-year-old son of a corporate pilot friend. Drew had only three hours of “dual received” in his logbook but that doesn’t reflect years of flying little airplanes with his dad. So I sat in the grass while he took a […]

That year winter arrived on the heels of a cold front that marked the end of an interminably long and hot Ohio Valley summer, one that lasted nearly to Thanksgiving. Arriving at the ‘drome for a flight check I got a brutal reminder that airports are the coldest places on the planet. Back to the […]

From an NTSB preliminary report on an accident involving a Piper PA-46-500TP (Meridian turboprop single): “An eyewitness, a retired Navy instructor pilot, located about one half-mile northwest of the accident site, reported observing the accident airplane descending through the overcast about 1227. The airplane leveled off about 300 feet above ground level (agl) and turned […]

My first “actual” instrument flight after earning the rating was a 27-nm hop from Sedalia to Boonville, Mo., in a Cessna 172. The entire flight was flown below radar coverage. Navigation was by ADF-an outbound bearing from Sedalia to intercept an inbound to Boonvilles Jessie Vertiel Memorial Airport. With my clearance received I climbed into juicy clouds at about 800 feet agl and cruised to the “far” NDB, thence flying the full-procedure approach. I had a strong crosswind on the inbound course; it was too low for VOR cross-bearings, so my navigation was by the lone, waggling ADF needle, my watch and a rough guess at my probable groundspeed. I juggled the approach plate, my charts and kneeboard, and the flight controls as I fought light turbulence while hoping to hold my wind-corrected bearing to avoid towers growing up into the murk. I broke out about two miles from the runway, lucky to pick out and avoid a Cessna scud-running just beneath the cloud deck, then scooted the rest of the way in at MDA until intercepting the VASI and landing in a stiff wind.

I Shivered a little that September morning at Nashua Airport, on a ladder with my finger in the left tank of the Cessna 180 taildragger. Good, the 100LL was puddling over the flaps. Topping these tanks was kind of funky because the airplane had rubber bladders and stiffly hinged flappers under the caps … new […]

Illustrated by Chris Gall It was the summer of 1989, and the Midwest was sweating through an endless stretch of hot and humid days, cloudless but wrapped in a thick layer of haze. Weather forecasts were so boringly predictable that calling for a VFR briefing was pointless; the vis would come up to three miles […]