Search Results for: maintaining your airplane

After the fractional jet company ceased operations, its owners are now responsible for maintaining the airplanes.

While the Pilot’s Operating Handbook shows VMC for the aircraft, the VMC in flight varies depending on many conditions. It’s similar to the published stall speed vs. the stall speed for your current load factor. Remember, you can stall the aircraft at any airspeed but only at one angle of attack. The same is true […]

Smoke from Canadian wildfires can affect flight training. Here’s what you should know.

Almost any assessment of the Accident Briefs section of this magazine’s issues reveals that engine failures, followed by the inevitable arrival back to Mother Earth, pose a significant contribution to the accident record and the NTSB’s workload. What happens after the engine fails isn’t the topic of this article, but what causes the failure—and preventing […]

I’m a big believer in “chair flying.” The best chair is the pilot’s seat of the aircraft you’re learning, with the engine or engines stopped and external electrical power. As a helicopter student, I spent many happy hours sitting in the hangared Robinson, practicing autorotations, a maneuver I found really difficult. Hold your hand like […]

While flight instructing is not for everyone, there are major advantages while on the journey to becoming a professional pilot.

Before beginning an aircraft upgrade, there are a few parameters to address before laying wrenches on bolt heads.

Female pilots who fly vintage aircraft are few and far between.

Broad-scale weather patterns impact the Eastern U.S. in the colder months.

In a perfect aviation world, skies would always be clear, our engines would merely sip cheap fuel by the pint instead of guzzle it by the gallon, and the winds always would be right down the runway. That world, of course, doesn’t exist, so we’re forced to get an instrument rating, plan fuel stops and […]