I Learned About Flying From That Archives | Page 15 of 15

I Learned About Flying From That: Maintain Control

When I became a first lieutenant aircraft commander in the B-47 Strato-Jet, the most beautiful airplane ever built, I had many lessons to be learned. As to emergency situations, our instructors always advised us to maintain control of the airplane and then handle the emergency. I, however, had another type of control to learn. In […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Lessons Learned

The simple logbook entry read “installed rectifier in alternator test circuit, flight tested OK.” We’d had a problem with our alternator-out light that was corrected on a Monday prior to a flight planned for Saturday. The briefer was right; we arrived at our hangar at Lee Gilmer Memorial (GVL) in Gainesville, Georgia, with less than […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Hands-Off Spin Recovery

JUNE 2010 — THE SKY WAS CLOUDLESS and the air crisp as I drove to the Ann Arbor, Michigan, airport on a glorious spring morning. I’d flown almost 30 hours as a student pilot and had no idea I was about to experience my first spin while flying alone in my flight school’s aged Cessna […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Lucky Drop

During the most intense of the Vietnam War years, I had a strong sense that I was the luckiest young sailor in the Navy, as I luxuriated in a serendipitous assignment as an air rescue swimmer and H-34 crew chief stationed in Hawaii. Operating workhorse Sikorsky S-58 helicopters out of Pearl Harbor and Barbers Point […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Ignorance Is Bliss

In the mid-1980s, I was working on the line at a small Minnesota FBO/flight school and flying when my meager income would allow. Early on in my training, my instructor was fortunate enough to find a second job flying right-seat in a North American Sabreliner Series 60. The chief pilot for this small corporate flight […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Day of the Daffodils

As I think back over my life, I can come up with only one day I remember. Really remember. Oh, I remember graduating from high school, but I don’t remember anything else about the day. I remember watching the birth of my daughter, but I have no idea what I had for breakfast on that […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Engine Failure With an “Eye in the Sky”

This engine failure did not occur in my airplane, and I wasn’t the pilot. Nevertheless, I was personally and embarrassingly involved in the process that led to the incident. It all started when I, as an aviation journalist, embarked on a series titled “Careers in Aviation” and arranged to write about a day in the […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Snatched by a Vortex

I was at the tail end of three months of training for my CFI reinstatement check ride. My instructor Kevin and I were flying into a deepening Pacific Northwest twilight as we descended westbound over Lake Washington toward Boeing Field/King County International Airport (BFI). We began maneuvering to enter right traffic for Runway 31R in […]