Search Results for: maintaining your airplane

To most pilots, the airplanes propeller is something routinely taken for granted. Oh sure, preflight may include running a hand over the blades in some pretended attempt to look for something. But many people dont have much of a clue as to what theyre looking for – maybe nicks or leading edge surface roughness from sand or water erosion.

Controllable-pitch props generally have some kind of flight time or calendar TBO, such as requiring an overhaul after 1,200 hours or five years, whichever comes first. Check the logbooks of most older airplanes, and you may find this to be the most commonly ignored manufacturer recommendation for Part 91 airplanes.

Some misguided owners, in an eff…

Aspen, Telluride, Hayden, Jackson, Sun Valley, Missoula, Ketchikan, Juneau.

These beautiful locations have some of the most treacherous instrument approaches found anywhere in the United States for one simple reason: big mountains. It will be many months before the NTSB issues its final report on the fatal accident of the Gulfstream that crashed during its final approach into Aspen on March 29, and the preliminary report it issued shortly after the crash contained less information than the local newspaper.

To state that the instrument approaches into these locations are tricky is an understatement. As a former EMS and fire-fighting pilot operating into all of these airports, I can te…

Tucked away in labs around the country, engineers are hard at work designing the next steps in a plan that would revolutionize transportation. The goal is one any aviation buff would admire: Substantially shift personal transportation between cities from being based on personal automobiles on highways to small aircraft.

The Small Aircraft Transportation System ties together the work of other NASA and industry programs that have aimed to improve the powerplants, weather capabilities and navigation complexities of small aircraft. The visionary goal is lofty – to create a way to reduce the cost of a new jet to a point comparable to a high-end luxury vehicle in order to reduce average door-…

Troubling words from a pilots mouth: Uh, where were we?

[IMGCAP(1)]The first time a pilot on an ILS approach sneaks under the glide-slope is almost always a situation where he is on an ILS final, approaching minimums. Hes close to decision height and suddenly there are patches of ground appearing intermittently below. An instant later, the strobes are visible. He drops below the glide path and the runway is straight ahead. The pilot later realizes that remaining on glide slope at decision height would have meant executing a missed approach and possibly a trip to the alternate airport.

On the next gamble, he descends a little bit more below the glideslope path – and it works again. In fact it may work a number of times. The best estimates i…

Theres a classic childrens story in which a little train says I think I can, I think I can – and lo and behold, it can. The power of mind over body is ably summed up in the tale, as it is in cliches such as when theres a will, theres a way.

But whos fooling whom?

Sure, there are times when you can suck it up and get through whatever it is you have to get through. Who hasnt had to work through a deadline or clear a fallen tree before dawn or pull an all-nighter through college? Sometimes you just have to do it.

But for every time you manage to endure the agony, there are countless times when you punt. With your exhaustion swaddling you like a Los Angeles smog, you wearily…

[IMGCAP(1)]The pilot-in-command is in control of the safety of the passengers and care of the airplane. His judgment is the deciding factor in whether the flight should go or not go. His decisions are based on his evaluation of the conditions existing for a safe flight. He doesnt give in to the demands or influences of the passengers.

He also knows he cant always rely on the FAA weather minimums as guidelines for the safety of his flight. FAA minimums for flight – both VFR and IFR – are the absolute minimum weather conditions to legally fly. They are not – nor were they ever intended to be – the standard every pilot can use to determine the level of safe operating procedures.

Not e…

VFR pilots who stumble into IMC have a chance if they can resist the urge to overcontrol the airplane.

Last week I was scheduled for my second solo flight, and I arrived at the airport (a controlled, class D field) ready and willing. It had been a rainy day up until that point, but the weather had broken, and it was now clear VFR with 10 miles of visibility and a scattered layer at about 6,500.

It was 4:00 pm, and I figured that I could get in at least a good hour before sunset. My first solo the day before had gone splendidly and I was feeling confident in my abilities to go up and do it again. I got my weather briefing, preflighted the aircraft, a 1998 Cessna 172R, and was all ready to start her up when I was interrupted.

My instructor, who had been in the pattern with another studen…

ELTs are there to aid rescuers, but false alarms are compounded by the fact that ELTs usually dont work when they should.