Training

At first glance the main changes in the new Cessna Recreational/Private Pilot Training Course appear to be the fact that it’s now an online course and that the course includes specific videos and graphics pertaining to the new Cessna SkyCatcher. But while those features are significant, they are not the biggest or most significant improvements […]

In anticipation of a flurry of training activity surrounding the introduction of the Cessna 162 SkyCatcher, Cessna has launched its Cessna Sport Pilot/Private Pilot Course, which recently won Part 141 approval from the FAA. The Web-based course gives customers, Cessna Pilot Centers (CPCs) and instructors access to materials anywhere there’s an Internet connection. The scenario-based […]

Most pilots know Sporty’s for its famous “Pilot Shop” mail-order pilot supply business. But for more than 20 years, Sporty’s has been not only a place where you can buy “Learn to Fly Here!” signs, but also a place where aspiring pilots can learn to fly. Sporty’s founder and chairman, Hal Shevers, was a flight […]

Accidents during cruise are almost unheard of in turbine airplanes where the risk is concentrated in the departure and arrival phases of flight. General aviation pilots also come to grief most frequently in the airport vicinity, but an alarming number of accidents happen during cruise, which should be a benign part of any trip. Most […]

My July 16 Flying Tip discussed vertigo and how insidious a hazard it can be. Dennis Doyle of Tahoe Turbines in California responded with his own tip — a sort of ‘poor-man’s synthetic vision’ that uses your imagination instead of a computer database. Doyle wrote that he has been flying since 1965 and developed his […]

There’s plenty of information on the operating limitations of an airplane. A VG diagram (in some applications called a VN diagram) shows many things including stalling speed, maneuvering speed, maximum allowable speed, maximum indicated airspeed in rough air and maximum allowable G loading, both positive and negative. Operate within the parameters of the VG diagram […]

Whenever new pilots ask me to suggest a first airplane to learn to travel in, the Cessna 182 Skylane is always at the top of my list. My recommendation of the Skylane is especially strong for a pilot new to IFR flying. Part of the reason I believe so firmly in the value of the […]

Les Abend is a well-trained airline pilot who gets comprehensive recurrent training, who is bound by extensive government and company regulations, and who never flies his Boeing without a well-qualified second pilot and without concurrence of a dispatch system. It goes without saying that the capabilities of his airplane outstrip what most of us fly […]

In the history of aviation there have been a number of aircraft that were considered dangerous, including the Learjet 20 series, the Aerostar and the Twin Comanche. More recently the airplane some people seem to love to hate is the Mitsubishi MU-2. There are numerous websites that detail what the authors consider to be the […]

From the NTSB: “The controller asked the pilot if he had weather radar on board, and he reported he did and it gave him weather every five minutes. “At 0930, the controller reported to the pilot that the ‘lightest weather’ was ‘about a one nine five heading for seven miles and then it looks like […]