Pilot Proficiency

The NTSB is continuing to work toward increasing GA safety, a topic that has been on the agency’s most wanted list since 2011. One way the NTSB is bringing accident-prone topics to life this summer is by publishing five short videos, three to five minutes in length, each addressing common causes of accidents. The first […]

“Whoa! Stop. You would not do that to your lawn mower.” I hear this over the din of the engine and next feel a firm left hand atop my sweating right hand. The left hand slowly pulls my tightly clenched right hand and the throttle on the Cessna 150 toward the idle position. As opposed […]

A North Carolina pilot late last night successfully landed his single-engine Piper Cherokee between cars on Highway 321 a few miles short of Hickory Regional Airport after running out of fuel. The pilot, Eric Klein, told a reporter for WSOC that when he ran out of fuel he was too low to make the airport […]

We all know that the Nexrad weather graphics we see on our multifunction displays can be dangerously outdated, showing the location of storms not where they are now but where they were many minutes ago. But did you know that the precipitation data displayed on ARTCC radar scopes suffers from a similar lag? Maybe you […]

Plane spotters in England got the scare of their lives when a Eurofighter Typhoon came within feet of the perimeter fence at RAF Waddington while landing for an airshow earlier this month. Spectators scrambled for cover as the jet roared past, its wheels barely skimming over the large group of spotters. In photos taken of […]

Last summer, my wife and I wanted to visit the Brooks Range in August to hunt Dall sheep. For those not familiar with it, the Brooks Range is a mountain range stretching about 700 miles from western Alaska across the state east to Canada’s Yukon Territory. From where we live in South Central Alaska, it […]

Multitasking is accepted as a given in our modern technology-driven society. Anyone with a teenager has shaken his head at the sight of his child doing homework while listening to music at a loud volume through earphones, and at the same time carrying on multiple texting conversations and surfing the Internet. While a multicore computer […]

After questions arose during the Pilot Racing Seminar in June as to whether there would be a future for Unlimited racers at Reno, there is no longer any doubt. With the Unlimited racers the top draw, Reno needed a big name, and it got it, with one of the most storied racers to ply the […]

Everyone agrees that diesel makes a lot of sense for light GA, but so far there have only been lower- to mid-power options, including models from Thielert, Austro and SMA. One company, Engineered Propulsion Systems (EPS), of New Richmond, Wisconsin, is doing something about this state of affairs by developing an aero diesel, the Vision […]

The National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday revealed that the Asiana pilot at the controls of the Boeing 777 that crashed at San Francisco International Airport over the weekend has told investigators that he was temporarily blinded by a “bright light” on the approach while passing through 500 feet. NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said it […]