Search Results for: maintaining your airplane

You are flying a well-appointed, 180-hp Cessna 172 and with a friend have just taken off from Aspen, Colo., on a trip back to Wichita. You make a right climbing turn over the hills north of the airport and, at 80 knots, continue climbing to the southeast. The air has a gentle texture, not even light turbulence.

As you gain altitude in the valley of the Roaring Fork River you are below the tops of the mountains. The September gold of the aspens is phenomenal. Theres a cloudless, blue sky. You are feeling good because you flew in and out of Aspen successfully and didnt foul up in the busy mix of aircraft types and opposite direction traffic on runway 15-33.

Your airplane rises steadil…

You may see it coming, a boiling black cloud looming in your windshield. Others will have pinned you in on either side, making penetration likely.

More likely you will not. Youll be in the clouds and pick up a little turbulence. Then a little more. Then the rain starts. It may be torrential, but you hang on, thinking itll soon be over. The sudden flash of lightning and instant crack of thunder suddenly slam you with the reality that youve gone and done something stupid.

Youve flown into a thunderstorm. Hang on, the ride is going to get wild.Tales of airplanes being ripped apart by thunderstorms are held up time and again by instructors warning the unwary against thunderstorm penet…

General aviation airplanes are great business tools that improve our efficiency by allowing us to do more work that is productive in the same total time. However, a self-piloted businessperson – primarily an instrument-rated private or commercial pilot who flies him/herself in a high performance single or light twin on business trips – can end up in trouble if they dont use that tool correctly.

Perhaps the most common problem experienced by the self-piloted business flier is fatigue. The flexibility of the GA airplane tempts them into scheduling themselves into situations in which they cannot get adequate rest before flying.

How About This…
Lets say you have a 10:00 a….

In 1991, my need for an airplane larger than my Cessna 150 led to a search that ended with a 1959 Cessna 172 my A&P father located near his home in Texas.

The plane obviously needed some cosmetic work, but it fit my meager budget and I was promised it would be sold with a fresh annual inspection. The annual inspection sealed the deal. I figured it would at least be safe to fly in spite of its dowdy appearance, which Id deal with as resources allowed.

My father took care of completing the sale and flew the 172 the 15 or so minutes to his home airport. On landing, he got the first of a whole string of surprises the airplane would reveal in the coming months.

At touchdown on the shor…

Since purchasing our plane, my partner and I have been doing a great deal of flying together. We live in Minnesota, which means that for a significant part of the year, the days are very short. As a consequence, this winter we did a lot of night flying.

On one of our first trips – Minneapolis to Ely, Minn., on a lovely clear winter night – my non-instrument rated partner was at the controls. As we approached Ely from the southeast, we realized that we would be a bit high for the approach. Since we had the place to ourselves, we decided to simply execute a right 360-degree standard-rate turn to give him time to descend to a more comfortable altitude.

As we turned away from the airport,…

As two owner groups demonstrated at Oshkosh, it takes planning, training and discipline to pull off group flights

I was planning a flight in a Cessna 172 to maintain night flight currency. Another pilot, who also held a commercial certificate and claimed 900 hours total time (to my 377) agreed to split the cost of the rental and we would each do three landings.

I got a standard weather briefing and filed a VFR flight plan. I asked my companion if he wanted to make the flight out or the flight back. He said he hadnt flown in a while and just wanted to get familiar with the airplane.

I said I would be PIC for the flight to a nearby airport, and he could be PIC on the trip back if he so desired. He didnt respond.

We took off from Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego at about 1910 and m…

Maybe a gusty crosswind forced you off the runway. Perhaps a mechanical glitch led you to lose control at precisely the wrong moment. Or, gasp, a momentary lapse of judgment might have led your airplane in the wrong direction.

Now your pride and joy is a little worse for wear. The landing gear is collapsed and the prop is bent. Or maybe a wing ripped off and a passenger is injured. What now?

Just how you handle the first moments after an accident may have a profound bearing on the rest of your flying career. There are things you must do, things you should do and things you should avoid.

The governments definition of what constitutes an accident covers a broad range from minor di…

With about 125 hours in my log book, I decided to fly with my wife to Tulsa, Okla., for a short summer vacation.

On the way we had many new and exciting experiences: smooth as glass 50 knot tailwinds, cheap fuel and scenery the likes of which we had never seen before. Flying is easy, right?

About 125 miles west of Tulsa, flying at 9,500 ft. we came upon cloud cover unlike anything Id ever seen. The solid deck extended as far as the eye could see north and south, with tops at 6,500 ft.. Not knowing how far east this condition existed, we started to do 360s to think about it.

I called Flight Service and was told the cloud deck extended past our destination. Then I decided to land…

With all too chilling regularity, pilots who fly close to the ground wind up on the losing side of the battle against wires, towers and other obstructions.

There are many reasons pilots fly too close to obstructions, and some of them are legitimate. Forced landings are what they are. Approaches to and takeoffs from small airports carry risks that may be unavoidable. Buzzing, enjoying the scenery down low and pressing on into lowering ceilings, however, open the aircraft to extraordinary risk from stationary objects.

Agricultural pilots, by the very nature of their jobs, operate in an airspace filled with obstacles of every description. Avoiding electric transmission cables, towers of v…