Search Results for: maintaining your airplane

I was struck by what I believe was an omission in the commentary in “Real-World VFR into IMC” (February 2021). Prior to my instrument rating, the procedure upon entering IMC I had committed to memory was a variation of aviate, navigate and communicate: Trust instruments completely, turn 180 degrees while maintaining level flight to get […]

The angle of attack readout on the PFD wasn’t the first thing that caught my attention. No, that would be the unending cry of the audible stall warning as we just couldn’t catch a break. We began a steady descent, nose high, and slowed somewhere below 39 knots. We were flying rather well, all things […]

A lot of pixels and ink have been spilled over the last several decades discussing the ever-increasing automation in our cockpits and the challenges thereof. Some of those spills involve detailed directions on how to operate a specific piece of avionics equipment while others focus on the larger picture of how the equipment and the airframe/powerplant […]

I have something of a love-hate relationship with night flying. On one hand, I love the view of a city lit up at night, or the stars overhead, when away from ground lighting. There’s also the relatively low activity levels at airports and on ATC frequencies, the smoother air and how it’s easier to spot […]

There’s a school of thought that says no pilot should react to anything in the cockpit quickly. At least some of the thinking behind this philosophy is that humans make more mistakes when they are rushed to a decision or action than when they have time to consider what steps to take and then, you […]

Today’s pilots have many options when it comes to aviation headsets. But when pilots are looking to invest in an active noise cancelling headset, the Bose name usually comes to mind. And it’s not just because Bose was the company that pioneered active noise cancelling headsets for pilots. Bose aviation headsets are born out of […]

Readers of this publication are more intimate than most with the circumstances surrounding the tragedy of the Boeing 737 Max, but just as a review, the crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 five months later are all attributed to the malfunction of the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system. […]

Flying is a great joy. There is plenty of airspace on the planet for all of us to go our own way and still have miles between us and another aircraft. You could probably say the same thing about driving if we didn’t have to follow the roads. But similarly, a good portion of us […]

One pilot’s romantic ideal of flying might be the soft, sighing touchdown of a taildragger on freshly mowed grass at the end of a warm summer day. Another’s could involve a floatplane splashing down next to a favorite Alaskan fishing hole, or a sailplane working the thermals. No matter which of these might be your […]

Editor’s Note: NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) publishes a monthly newsletter, Callback, which highlights recent reports received by the organization. The newsletter can be of limited utility to typical general aviation operators, but not the December 2020 issue, which focused on GA pilots who inadvertently found themselves flying VFR into instrument conditions. These reports […]