Pilot Proficiency

One of my personal goals this year is to follow one of the directives issued at the recent Women in Aviation International Conference and promote general aviation in my local community. Lo and behold, as often happens when you put goals out into the universe, opportunities seem to appear. Last night I attended my first […]

It’s a part of the airport experience. When spring starts to thaw the air and buds begin to sprout on the trees and flowers, the birds begin their annual mating ritual. You can see them flitting around the hangars and pairing off. Of course, for aircraft owners — especially those of us who moor to […]

I have no history with hot air balloons, but plenty with Wacos since my father was an avid restorer of the antique airplanes. And I even had hopes of learning to fly my dad’s mainstay, Big Red. That was before he and two others in the airplane went down into Lake Apopka (I have yet […]

My last day at Sun ‘n Fun was Saturday. And what a day it was. It might be that my colleagues here at Flying, who, between them, have thousands of hours logged in fancier airplanes, many type ratings under there belts and incredible wealth of knowledge about flying — heights, granted, that I will never […]

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 […]

My morning began with a smile. Bonnier Staff Photographer Jon Whittle and I headed out to Fantasy of Flight (fantasyofflight.com) to get some shots of the Splash In for the Sun n Fun 2010 photo gallery we’ve been posting at flyingmag.com this week. We had been shooting the first two days of Sun ‘n Fun […]

There will be times in your IFR flying (or VFR with flight following) when you’re expecting some love from your controller, but you wind up feeling like a neglected child. Sometimes the frequency is busy; sometimes the controller is on another frequency or the land line setting up a handoff. Either way, you want to […]

Next week’s Sun ‘n Fun event unofficially kicks off the 2010 fly-in season, and Lakeland Linder Regional Airport (KLAL) will be buzzing. For many pilots, it’s just too intimidating to even consider flying in to such a hornets’ nest. Maybe most of their flying is in rural areas where they seldom see another airplane in […]

Some people are naturally well organized and others — just aren’t. I place myself mostly in the ‘aren’t’ category, and over the years, I’ve adjusted my flying style to accommodate that element of my personal style. In the late 1980s, my friend and former colleague at Flying Eric Weiner (now the author of a bestseller […]

Blending a mix of aircraft into a traffic pattern can sometimes be a real trick — especially at busy non-tower airports. The key is to be considerate of the other aircraft around you and to try and blend in with them — speed being the usual issue. There are really two scenarios here — slow […]