Indice dei contenuti per March 2020 in Flying

When I was working as a flight instructor, I got my flying itch scratched while earning my keep. Through a bit of luck and some good strategy, I also made this happen while employed in other parts of the aviation industry—as a training developer, a flight training manager and, yes, an aviation journalist. Not that this has always been the case for me; I’ve had my fair share of scraping together the funds to keep flying. And it takes a healthy percentage of any pilot’s budget to maintain flight—even as our wallets expand, our aircraft dreams tend to expand with them. We hear every day from readers who struggle to put hours in their logbooks each year, though the desire never wanes. When flying on a weekly or even monthly…

With approximately one-third of its annual 128,200 operations traffic count consumed by airline operations and the rest split between air taxi, general aviation and military operations, Boise, Idaho (BOI), demands pilots be on their toes for traffic of all shapes and sizes when visiting. This month’s ILS Y 10 Right approach comes equipped with a number of potential step-down fixes along the way to SITSE, the FAF, as well as the potential for a little maneuvering to the landing runway near the end of the approach and a couple of noted items that might trip up a pilot not paying close attention to the plate. A. SIDESTEP MINIMUMS While they don’t appear all that often in IFR flying, sidestep minimums do exist, and they offer a switch from the primary…

My instructor was in the seat behind me. He was always yelling at me. This time, he was yelling that I needed more rudder when I used aileron. I was a teenager. I thought he was mad at me. I know now he was just trying to be heard over the ambient airplane noise. The airplane was an Aeronca 7AC Champion. It had no electrical or intercom systems, and we had no headsets. I didn’t think of the airplane as missing anything. The other airplanes on the field were similar. I just thought that was the way airplanes were made. I had no idea of the march of avionics technology I was to witness in my flying future. Of course, we also had no electronic navigation. We used pilotage, comparing…

After a weekend with friends at Kentucky’s Lake Cumberland, my niece and her husband were packing up for the drive home. Somebody tossing garbage bags into a dumpster spied a bundle of discarded Playboy magazines in pristine condition all from the 1980s. “Any of you guys interested in old Playboy magazines?” My psychologist nephew-in-law, Jim, took one, as did most of the guys. A week or so later, Jim gave me his copy because he knows David Mamet and I are friends, and this issue (August 1989) included an essay by the famous author, playwright and former Flying columnist. Nothing to do with sex, voluptuous pinups or airplanes (and written long before David began flying), it’s about his love affair with amusement parks. He compares the rough-and-tumble but magical park…

MORE ON THE MAX Peter Garrison [“Trouble to the Max,” Jan./Feb.], along with William Langewiesche [“What Really Brought Down the Boeing 727 Max?” The New York Times, September 2019], appear to be the only voices of reason when it comes to the Boeing 737 Max. One has to wonder why so little has been mentioned—in the press or the congressional and senatorial hearings—of the role the two airlines played in the crashes. Is political correctness more important than unearthing the truth? Needless to say, Boeing certainly is culpable in many respects, but to place all the blame on them is irresponsible. For openers, very little has been said about the low time of the copilot of the Ethiopian [Airlines] crash or the fact neither crew ever reduced thrust on the…

Once every year or two, I have a peculiar and memorable dream while I sleep. I am quite sure I’m not alone among pilots—and likely among mere mortals as well—in occasionally dreaming that I’m flying. I don’t mean flying in an aircraft or manipulating the controls—although I have those dreams too. I mean bird dreams, minus the molting and the worm diet—just pure, joyful, unadulterated flight, wheeling over the earth with absolute freedom, borne on unseen wings. I’ve had these dreams since early childhood, well before I knew what flying actually felt and looked like, which leads me to believe that man has dreamed of flight as long as man has dreamed, and these dreams likely helped to inspire the eventual realization of their subject. So far as I can…

I have been hearing about the $100 hamburger since long before I had a pilot certificate. The phrase itself is meant to conjure up the absurdity/passion surrounding aviation, but it always made perfect sense to me. The dream of becoming a pilot was not about access to remote and exotic locations, but rather to visit places I already knew—only to approach them from the air. Even precertificated, I knew that adding aviation to the familiar only sweetens the pot. Let’s start with food. There’s a reason that overpriced burger is an aviation milestone. My theory is that having a “mission” makes a flight seem more urgent, more necessary and ultimately more defensible. Every pilot I know is just begging for an excuse to head to the airport. And eating is…

Well, yes, I had left my phone on the Virgin Atlantic flight to London. So, yes, I was out of touch for the six days it took me to get it back from “Missing X” somewhere in the ductwork of Heathrow Airport. So, yes, there was a delay in receiving your voicemail. When I did call our longtime aviation-insurance broker, Wenk Insurance, I was rewarded with some somber news regarding the insurance on our 2000 Cessna Citation CJ1—my pride and joy. When I say longtime broker, I am not kidding. I have had completely satisfying relationships with its founder, his daughter and now her son, named Tucker. That’s 40 years’ worth of trust. The news was not just somber; it felt catastrophic. Our previous insurance for the CJ1 clocked in…

This past year at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, we announced that Gulfstream’s G500 business jet secured the award, not just for the aircraft itself—which exemplifies style and performance—but also for the layers of innovation within Gulfstream’s development program, setting the bar high for aerospace manufacturers. For 2019, we applied the same criteria to the host of aircraft, products and enterprises around our industry: An innovation had to be certified, if applicable, and available as of the year’s end. Our choices reflect three new aircraft and two new products that each made an important mark in 2019. Which will score the ultimate prize? We’ll make the announcement at AirVenture 2020. Let us know what you think should win, and long may the innovative spirit continue to grow general aviation. EPIC…

On a Saturday morning in April 2017, a swarm of airplanes—40 pilots attended the preflight briefing—took off from Spruce Creek Airport in Florida for a flight to nearby Titusville to attend an EAA pancake breakfast. The Saturday morning breakfast flight to various destinations is a tradition at the private airstrip, the centerpiece of a gated community with a population of several thousand residents and hundreds of airplanes. According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s report, one group of five airplanes made up a “wide, loose” V-formation, which one pilot said “was normal for en route.” In the lead was a Great Lakes biplane. Behind it to the right was a Cessna 170, and behind the Cessna was a Grumman Lynx, originally the Bede-designed two-seat American Yankee. On the left side…

Despite an industry inhabited with thousands of gigantic egos, most aviation folk will probably admit, some secretly, that they wish they had a mentor, a guide to prevent them from falling into any of the thousands of professional pits waiting for the unsuspecting or poorly educated. Who wouldn’t like advice from someone who has been there before and knows the answers to important questions such as the best initial education, job-search tips or even how to hang on to the position they already have? Imagine too learning just how to safely move an airplane and its cargo of passengers from engine start to shutdown? When it comes to aviation safety—whether the topic is fatigue, cockpit and cabin operations, or the late-night replacement of an APU in time for an 0600…

As the Diamond DA42 Twin Star climbed northeast over Florida’s coastline after departing Daytona Beach’s Runway 7L, I grinned empathetically as Will Romualdo’s multiengine CFI student dealt with the process of correctly managing a simulated engine failure from the right seat. How many years had it been since I recited, “Dead foot, dead engine, mixture, props, throttle, identify, verify, feather”? The years that had passed weren’t nearly as significant as the fact I was trusting my rear end to a man who wasn’t born until after I had been hired by the airline from which I am now retired. Even more ironic, the combined flight time logged for the pilots seated directly in front of me was less than one-quarter of my career total. But I was still relatively comfortable.…

As I taxi out, a crisp shadow follows on the taxiway beside me. I give a little burst of power, then pull the throttle lever back to idle. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the shadow of the prop stop. “Uh-oh,” I think. “The engine quit.” But no. The airplane is a pod-and-boom single-seat ultralight converted by Mark Beierle and Gabriel DeVault to electric power using components from a Zero electric motorcycle. This is the first electric airplane I’ve been in, and I’m learning its peculiarities. One of them is, on the ground, if you pull the throttle—well, power lever—all the way back, the prop stops. You have to be careful of people standing around because when the master switch (or “kill switch”) is on, the motor…