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VCTS
My student sent a text: "TAF says VTCS what shd we do?" I replied "VCTS usually means to the East." As if you can actually know anything about the weather!At the airport, we had the above view....
View ArticleUnlikely Squared
Unlikely is not never, nor even is unlikely squared.Ask the pilot whose vacuum and electrical systems failed all at once.Serial improbabilities confuse us even more. An instructor watches a student fly...
View ArticleMartial Arts and Lift
Regular readers (if there be any) know of my long term project trying to analyze all of the problems of flying in terms of two less-common parameters, finesse (essentially, glide ratio) and essence...
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RNP and SAAAR, VFR?
One of the great innovations in navigation is the concept of RNP, or Required Navigation Performance. With enough redundancy, computing power, training, and, of course, money, IFR airplanes are...
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Ecnamrofrep
That's 'performance,' backwards. Every certificate or rating requires the candidate to do performance calculations, and 14CFR91.103 requires preflight performance calculations. Still, few pilots that...
View ArticleRope Break
One of the standard maneuvers for new glider pilots is the Premature Termination To Tow (as the bureaucrats have it), more commonly known as the rope break. (I wrote a little about what a rush it is...
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Airborne Protocol
Now it's happened.Like me, you've completely converted to electronic charts on some tablet device the mention of whose name would trigger a massive influx of spam. I try to keep a WAC chart handy but...
View ArticleDistractions
My friend Nick loves gadgets, and flying with him is like a trip through Den Den City. We had two tablets going, one running SkyCharts, the other running ForeFlight, plus a fistful of smart phones and...
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Be Careful What You Wish For
Summer in southeast Idaho means gentle weather. Take that with a grain of salt, or even a salt tablet or two. Gentle means no IFR, but with field elevations at or above 4,500MSL and temperatures over...
View ArticleZiggety-Zaggety
Air traffic is usually pretty light in my corner of the world, but usually is not the same thing as always. At one point today I was number four for departure, not a record, but unusual by local...
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Holes
An article (Weather Aware) in the September 3, 2012 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology (try to read it here, but I suspect it's behind paywall) highlights new research on automating radar use...
View ArticleCognitive Dissonance
Aviation Week's Business and Commercial Aviation focuses on business flying, mostly, with articles about the performance of light and medium jets, regulations, and the like. It's usually technically...
View ArticleSeats
Jokers mock an airplane’s speed by noting the comfort of its seats. When the craft is fast the seats need not be nice, but slower craft demand a nicer seat, since occupied for so long.Yet many slow...
View ArticleFuel
Where does fuel come from? Formerly, fossils, but now from algae, sugar, corn. Drilled, shipped, distilled, shipped, filled. Simple words hiding a tower of complexity. Where does ‘fuel’ come from? A...
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Changing Speeds
Even a simple flight can present challenges. Now they're fun, but I remember being a student and thinking that challenges were, well, challenging!Friday's challenges actually started on Wednesday with...
View ArticleDrag
Like lift, drag comes in two forms.Pilots think it evil, holding the craft back, reducing finesse. They discuss drag over a pint of ale, dragged from the basement, drag lifting draught. Drag can taste...
View ArticleDucks
It has been a tough winter and flying opportunities are scarce. Once the semester ended I no longer had my weekly commute to our other campus. Then came exams, which tie up the professor longer than...
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Duck
Here's an interesting story from Skybrary about a Boeing 737 that was given an altitude below the Minimum Vectoring Altitude. I fly in mountainous terrain, so this is a particularly important topic....
View ArticleAsteroid DA14 and Diamond DA20s
As I write, the asteroid DA14 is passing its perigee, its closet approach to Earth. I am not afraid of it hitting me, nor am I afraid of it actually hitting a GPS or other navigational satellite...
View ArticleFlying the Prius
I've been driving a Toyota Prius for a little over a year. Being a hybrid, it is a quirky car. And, no, it doesn't fly, although the salesman tried to impress me by talking about its coefficient of...
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