Formation LITE
Lauran Paine, Jr. writes for EAA's Sport Aviation with a distinctive voice. I don't always agree with him, but I always look forward to his articles.This month he wrote about formation flying, but the...
View ArticleManeuvers
The maneuvers in the syllabus build the pilot’s essence and finesse. Not part of daily flying, they are nonetheless part of daily flying. Two Taylors cut this cloth; F. W., the master of efficiency,...
View ArticleThe Club
Flying clubs have long been a good way for pilots to reduce expenses and foster fellowship. But:A few weeks ago one of our members, too cheap to take the airplane into a heated hangar for deicing,...
View ArticleFast
Sometimes in the air things happen very fast. Far from the ground there is much time to react, But what should a pilot do when the ground is near? Far from the ground, the old-timers recommend that the...
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A little IFR
I was in the middle of nowhere in a state that many would consider to be a flyover state. But we didn't fly over. We were departing the local municipal airport, which underlies a MOA. I looked in the...
View ArticleCertification Changes
John Ewing wrote about upcoming changes in the pilot certification process. You can read about them here.A couple of comments come to mind from a first reading:1. There is more emphasis on having...
View ArticleExperiencing Experience
There has been a lot of debate recently about pilot experience, with an FAA initiative to increase the amount of flight experience needed to be eligible for flying in an airline cockpit. Some recent...
View ArticleGravity
[Another product of my attempt to redefine the problems of flying in terms of essence and finesse.]Gravity varies in unexpected ways. How can this be so? Newton saw that a universal constant governs...
View ArticleAttractions
The compass points away from North, though sometimes it is close. Its pole is not the Pole; when between the two it points the other way.Magnetic spots on Earth attract its needle, too.By day in...
View ArticleDensity Altitude to the Max
I'm headed to Truckee, CA tomorrow and the forecast high temperature is 102F/39C. Since Truckee is at 5901MSL, the density altitude is effectively infinite.So how will I handle it?First, I had...
View ArticleSleep
Airport lounges everywhere are full of pilots sleeping.Cold logic tells us why.The pilot must prepare the craft.Alone, it takes an hour, sometimes more.With help perhaps a little less.Flight plan,...
View ArticleWhat? No Government?
For the record: I sent my medical recertification data to the FAA the first week of August. It was my usual obsessive-compulsive-A-student package with 27 glossy 8 by 10 photos with circles and arrows...
View ArticleDolphin Flight
In gliders it's called dolphin flight.In rising air the craft is slowed;it lingers in the lift.In sinking air the speed's increasedto exit from the sink.The craft arcs up then plunges down,a dolphin...
View ArticleA Disaster Waiting to Happen
As the proud owner of a new medical certificate it was time to spend a sunny Saturday at the airport hoping for a new student.The first thing I noticed, though, was a pressurized piston twin (let's...
View ArticleHabit
Readers know that I am a big believer in habits. When you're on fire your habits will take over; you're unlikely to invent a new technique.No, this is not about New Year's Resolutions.My first flight...
View ArticleOne Million Dollars
In the Austin Powers movies Dr. Evil, hopelessly behind the times, wants to hold the world at ransom for [pause] One Million Dollars. The joke is that that's not much, but for me and probably you that...
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Navigating Away
The automated observation at the airport where I fly gliders was insisting, repeatedly, that the ceiling was 6,000'AGL, but those of us who fly the ridge there knew it was below 3,000'. I was doing a...
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Doing Something About The Weather
I have long taught that the best and simplest pilot weather briefing is the "Standard Briefing." I admit that I haven't had a phone briefing in a loooong time, but the Standard Briefing option is...
View ArticleBut I had a job to do...
The experienced pilot was a successful businessman who had accumulated enough money to fill a hangar with beautiful classic airplanes, and he held a local aviation group in thrall discussing how he...
View ArticleIt just might be working...
Those two or three of you who are regular readers know that I have been working on the "Essence and Finesse" project for a long time. Put briefly, I have been exploring how the aerodynamic concepts of...
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