Search Results for: Lear 45

Any pilot who has used a personal airplane for regular transportation has had to negotiate bad weather. By the time you accumulate more than 4500 hours of flight time, it’s likely you have dealt with a cold front or three, plus night IMC and a variety of other challenges. With that kind of flight experience […]

If you’re not familiar with Alaskan aviation, an analogy might be to compare it to operations in the Lower 48, but with more weather and terrain, and fewer paved airports. Because general aviation often is literally the only transportation available, external pressures to complete a proposed flight can be much greater. Predictably, the accident rates […]

An adventurous pilot falls for his aircraft with fatal results.

Just like so many events and public spaces that have experienced closures and cancellations this year, the Experimental Aircraft Association was forced to pull the plug on the popular national tour of their beautiful restored B-17 bomber Aluminum Overcast earlier in 2020 because of health concerns arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, with new safety […]

Sunday mornings at the Waypoint Cafe at the Camarillo Airport (KCMA) in California are generally bustling with hungry visitors eagerly awaiting a seat while drooling over the delicious menu. But on the Sunday in early May when I met Doug King, Epic Aircraft’s CEO, outside the restaurant, it was deserted despite crystal-clear blue skies. The […]

A Daher TBM 700, N965DM, departed Manchester, New Hampshire (KMHT), on October 2 at approximately 19 minutes past 10 am bound for Buffalo, New York (KBUF), some 374 miles to the west. The pilot, a prominent New York attorney, held a private pilot certificate with an instrument rating and filed an appropriate IFR flight plan […]

Last month’s Clinic took us to western Kentucky where we wrangled a circling-only VOR-A approach. In September, we untangled an ILS/GPS hybrid in upstate New York. For another take on a ground-based approach using GPS, plus a circle-to-land, we head to Alpena, Michigan on the shore of Lake Huron. The lake’s a frequent source of […]

Aviation makes us mission-minded. The whole point of these flying machines is to go somewhere and do something, even if that’s just practice following little black lines on the iPad so we can make pretty pictures on FlightAware. That’s what makes practicing emergency returns so important and so frustrating. It’s not fair having something go […]

Simply fly long enough and you’ll eventually make a boneheaded or innocent mistake that gets in ATC’s way. Those may say a Pilot Deviation (PD) is where they “screwed up” or “ATC is blaming me for…” I’ve personally heard it put in many different—often creative—ways; I should keep a list.  Here is how the FAA […]

After a while, even brand-new pilots start racking up logbook entries in a series of different aircraft. At first, we may not care, grateful for the flight time, and not pay much attention to how each aircraft has its own character. Each one also has its own story, reflected in your pilot’s logbook and those […]