Search Results for: general aviation inc

| The five members of the National Transportation Safety Board seated at the semicircular dais are demanding answers. Inside the theater-style auditorium at 429 L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C., they grill safety experts and industry leaders for four long days. Their mission: to understand why the previous year was the deadliest ever for emergency medical […]

Helicopter pilots looking for guidelines for situations not covered by checklists, procedures or operating manuals can now get help from a new set of standards called the Helicopter Pilots Model Code of Conduct. The document was designed to help pilots interpret ambiguous regulations and to provide criteria for how to operate their helicopters while minimizing […]

Much has been said and written about the FAA’s plans to overhaul the decades-old regulations governing the certification of Part 23 airplanes. The new regulations, we are told, will cut certification costs in half. These savings will be passed along to consumers – that is, us pilots. Congress likes the idea so much that it […]

I’ve really only had one landing-gear-related situation in many years of flying retractables. In that event, a brand-new gear motor—installed at annual—failed to extend the gear while airborne after several successful tests on jacks. After an uneventful landing, the motor was repaired and there were no further issues with that airplane or its landing gear system. Between the failure and the uneventful landing, however, the cockpit was a bit busy. Fortunately, the right-seater was a rated pilot and mechanic.

Earlier this year, I passed the magical 1000 hours total time. I suspect I am safer. But whenever I read NTSB reports, they seem to cover the full range of pilot experience, so I have to question that assumption. Am I really safer or am I just likely to perform a different set of stupid pilot tricks to which pilots of my experience are prone? I certainly feel safer than I did at 100 hours, when I was still intimidated with how to enter the pattern at an unfamiliar airport. I also feel safer than I was at 500 hours, when my big concern was being able to fly an approach in actual IMC and how to properly enter a holding pattern using my fresh instrument rating. I know I can do these now, so I am a bit less intimidated.

As anyone who’s paid attention to Central U.S. weather the last few months knows, it’s been a particularly violent spring across “Tornado Alley.” Midwest storms made national news and reintroduced repeat targets—such as Moore, Okla. Well ahead of the storms and far in front of the inevitable miles of destruction images, Americans coast to coast shared ringside seats of the progressing destruction thanks to the coverage of storm chasers who shared real time some of the clearest videos and still images ever made of in-progress tornadoes. Most images came from a large contingent of ground-pounders but, more than ever before, much of the resulting imagery was captured through the efforts of people aboard aerial platforms, whether helicopter or fixed-wing.

Rudder coordination is vital to stall and spin avoidance, which is where most attention to rudder coordination training is focused today (with good reason). But when you develop a feel for proper rudder input, you’ll not only manage high angles of attack correctly, you’ll also get better aircraft performance all around. Yes, even in the latest airplanes, there is still a need to stress proper rudder use in all phases of flight. If you’re an experienced pilot, you probably recall an instructor in your early days endlessly hounding you to “step on the ball” to coordinate with the rudder.

“Whoa! Stop. You would not do that to your lawn mower.” I hear this over the din of the engine and next feel a firm left hand atop my sweating right hand. The left hand slowly pulls my tightly clenched right hand and the throttle on the Cessna 150 toward the idle position. As opposed […]

Piper Aircraft has made a series of test flights in a Lycoming-powered Archer running on 93-octane premium automotive gasoline as the Vero Beach, Florida, manufacturer seeks a more environmentally friendly alternative to 100LL fuel. For the tests Piper worked with Airworthy AutoGas of Phoenix to evaluate a new high-purity unleaded fuel due to go on […]

After our piece last week on the risky nature of airshow flying and the challenging process of improving safety given all the variables (“Airshow Crashes: The Cost of Doing Business? Going Direct, by Robert Goyer), we received a number of emails from our readers, one of whom is John Cudahy, the president of the International […]