Pilot Proficiency

By the fall of 1978 I’d worked for Piper Aircraft in Lakeland, Florida, for three years. I was the assistant chief engineer-technical, which meant I had the people in the structures, aerodynamics, power plants, systems, electrical/avionics and flight-test groups all working for me. At the time, we were working extremely hard to certify the new […]

Do you believe the Earth is warming? I do. Do you believe that man contributes to this warming trend? I do, but I don’t know how much. Do you believe that the Earth’s supply of fossil fuels is finite? I do. Do you believe that aviation contributes to climate change? I do—but not as much […]

Before GPS, when Rand McNally’s paper maps ruled the day, pulling over on a country road in a small town to ask for directions never felt like failure to me. I saw it as a chance to meet someone new, maybe find out where to get lunch. Likewise, when flying, I am not a man […]

If you are anything like me, an abrupt and bouncy touchdown on a gusty day leaves a lingering frustration. I can do better. I’ve found that I’m not alone in the realm of self-criticism: Most pilots have a healthy relationship to judging one’s own performance—and boasting about it to boot. Are we always ahead of […]

Almost 50 years ago, Nancy and I and a couple other would-be hippies, brother and sister, flew to Baja California, Mexico, in a Beech Musketeer, N298M. Whatever happens to obliterate airplanes must have happened to that Musketeer, because N298M is now a Cessna. My philosophy of travel is to leave as much as possible to […]

December is the cruelest month in the Culebra Range of southern Colorado. This chain of lofty mountains is rugged terrain, where the raging winds of winter have caught several airplanes in downdrafts. in my Navion, I have sniffed out the range’s updrafts and downflows, trying to identify weather conditions leading to airplane disasters and to […]

It turns out that aircraft owners who upgrade their cockpits with the latest glass-panel avionics share some interesting similarities with shoppers for smartphones, flat-screen TVs, laptops or just about any other broadly adopted consumer electronics product.When the first smartphones hit the market several years ago they were cumbersome to use, lacked capabilities and cost a […]

Whether you’re flying to the Maine coastline to add your name to the list of the 3 million annual visitors to Acacia National Park or to try to decide which restaurants really are the 10 best for lobster in the region, you might come face to face with the RNAV (GPS) Runway 22 for an […]

I wasn’t looking for nice. I was a 14-year-old, eagerly flipping through a vintage Playboy magazine I found in a thrift store in upstate New York while my parents looked at an old rug in the next room. But still, the illustration—a carefree blonde, a man in uniform, both astride a Honda motorcycle carrying them […]

“Hey, Dick. Just so you know, the airport is closed.” It’s Max calling from the FBO in Lebanon, New Hampshire, about an hour before our proposed takeoff time. “There’s ice on the runway; they are scraping it now. If we can just get a little more sun, it won’t take long before they’ll open 18/36.” […]