Pilot Proficiency

I graduated from college in 1965. The Vietnam War was in full swing, and any able-bodied male who was not being educated was being drafted. I could have gone to graduate school, but instead decided to take my chances. I moved in with a couple of old friends in Palo Alto, California. Having a fancy […]

Walking into the FBO in Charlottesville, Virginia, I hear, “I don’t like your stuff. I used to like you, but I don’t anymore. You are drinking way too much Kool-Aid.” I am a little taken aback by this tirade. I look up to see a NetJets captain. “You make this sound way better than it is,” […]

On a cold night in ­early spring, I took off from Lunken Airport in 72B, my beloved (I think) Cessna 180. I came back to climb power at 500 feet agl and the engine began running rough, missing and losing power — which sort of caught my attention. So, I pulled on the carburetor heat […]

I don’t know about you, but I sure love being proved right. Lord knows it happens rarely enough at home, so I have to look for small victories elsewhere. As it so happens, writing a ­monthly column for a widely read ­aviation magazine makes for a potentially rich vein of retrospective sagacity. Thus I was […]

The investigator concluded that the probable cause of the accident was improper soft-field-takeoff technique.

“Making power … airspeed alive … 80 knots … V1 … rotate … positive rate.” Martha, as pilot monitoring, was making the call-outs for my first takeoff in our old Falcon 10 in more than a year. And the takeoff wasn’t pretty. When it’s lightly loaded, the Falcon 10 takes off like a scalded cat. […]

(Read part one here.) VLOF — Liftoff speed. Speed at which the aircraft becomes airborne. Back pressure is applied at VR (rotate) — a somewhat lower speed — so that liftoff actually happens at VLOF. VMCA or VMC — More commonly known as VMC (although VMCA is more correct). Minimum control speed with the critical […]

I discovered aviation years ago after winning a free hour in a United Airlines DC-10 simulator. It wasn’t long before I started taking flying lessons at Centennial Airport in Colorado, where I trained in the high-density- altitude days of summer. If nothing else, the anemic aircraft performance taught me discipline as it related to airspeed: […]

The RNAV GPS Z approach to Runway 3 at Santa Monica is so new (April 2017), many pilots might not yet even be aware of its existence. (Two additional approaches to SMO were commissioned at the same time.) This new approach comes with a handful of restrictions, many of which are significant enough to demand […]

Thump. Thump. Thump. The steady sound of the wheels ­hitting the expansion joints in the tarmac at the Reno-Stead Airport outside Reno, Nevada, only intensifies the butterflies flitting in my stomach as I taxi out to Runway 26 for my first solo run in a Lancair Legacy. This is no standard first solo, of course. The […]