Plane and Pilot Magazine
  • Sign-In
  • |
  • Register
  • Follow Us
  • Find Us on Facebook
  • Follow Us on Twitter
Sign Up for Plane & Pilot Newsletter
  • Sign-In
  • |
  • Register
  • Follow Us
  • Find Us on Facebook
  • Follow Us on Twitter
Newsletter Sign Up »
  • Aircraft
    • Specifications
    • Pilot Reports
    • Best Buys
    • LSA
    • Modifications
    • Maintenance
    • Aircraft Ownership
    • Photo Downloads
    • International Aircraft Directory
  • Proficiency
    • Pilot Skills
    • Aviation Weather Safety
  • Products
    • What’s New?
    • Accessories
    • Pilot Supplies
    • Books & Videos
  • Pilot Talk
    • Cross-Country Flying Stories
    • A Flight I’ll Never Forget
    • Grassroots
    • Let It Roll
    • After The Accident
    • Guest Speaker
    • More Pilot Talk
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
  • Travel
    • Journeys
  • Aviation Careers
    • Aviation Guide To Education & Training
    • General Aviation Careers
    • Flight Training
  • Contests
    • Your Flying World Photo Contest
  • News/Blog
    • News
    • Isabel Goyer
    • Patty Wagstaff
  • Subscribe
    • Subscribe Now
    • Customer Service
    • eNewsletter

Pilot Skills

Hone your pilot skills with the articles and advice below. Our sport-pilot articles cover topics of interest to novice and advanced general aviation pilots. Trust our ongoing training articles to improve your piloting skills.

April 7, 2017

Think Like A Dispatcher

Airline tips for GA pilots

Unexpected circumstances will always be part of flying. From minor inconveniences to full blown emergencies, there is absolutely no way to plan everything well enough to keep out of trouble forever. That said, back when I began flying I had no idea how many complications could be avoided with a more comprehensive approach to flight more »

March 6, 2017

Crisis: Your Brain On Overload

How to keep task saturation from turning into disaster

If you’re a pilot, you’ve probably been there. A busy flight suddenly gets too busy for you to keep up with. At first it’s annoying, but at some point it can become a crisis, or worse. Task saturation happens in many arenas. By definition, it’s the mental bind we find ourselves in when we have more »

March 5, 2017

Flight Training Tip: Four Little Words Can Save You Thousands of Dollars

Sponsored: Training Tip From MySkyForce

Do you want to save hundreds or even thousands of dollars on your flight training? Listen to these four simple words: Look out the window. That is all there is to it. By simply keeping your eyes outside a majority of the time, you will fly better, perfect maneuvers and landings in less time, and more »

February 21, 2017

To Go, Or Not To Go?

That's the (wrong) question.

From airfactsjournal.com. At its most basic, flying an airplane is a never-ending series of decisions. Is the airplane airworthy? What’s the weather like? Where’s that other airplane going? When should I turn base? Failing to ask these questions and make timely decisions is a serious mistake—one that will earn you a place in an NTSB more »

December 20, 2016

Why Flying Gliders Makes Safer Pilots

Soaring gets more people involved in flying and turns out pilots with outstanding stick-and-rudder skills.

Hands on, or hands off? That’s a looming question facing general aviation. The NTSB and the FAA are taking increasing notice of the category of stupid pilot tricks called departure from controlled flight, or loss of control, a type of accident that more often than not has fatal results. While the safety of light aircraft more »

December 12, 2016

Fly More This Winter

Don’t automatically lock your airplane in its hangar this winter. The cold months can be some of the best times to fly.

Defining winter by the severity of cold weather on the North American continent can be a difficult task. In most years, anything south of a line through Atlanta, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Santa Fe and Los Angeles has a good chance of a modest winter. Any location above 35 degrees north latitude can reasonably expect more »

November 22, 2016

Flying High Unpressurized

If you fly above 10,000 feet, be aware of the warning signs of hypoxemia. Learn how to avoid it and what steps to take if it happens to you.

Climbing through 16,000 for 23,000 feet, it dawned on me that I was feeling weird. It wasn’t sudden or severe, but once it had my attention, hypoxemia was my first thought. Hypo is low or below. A hypodermic needle goes below the dermis, the skin. Ox is oxygen, of course, and emia refers to blood. more »

October 31, 2016

Altered Attitudes: Upset Recovery Training

Loss of control is the number-one cause of aircraft accidents, even in jets, but Upset Prevention and Recovery Training can help prevent you from becoming a statistic

It can be upsetting, but the attitude of most people, even smart ones (maybe especially smart ones), is that we’re stubbornly resistant to alteration, by the evidence. So here’s a fact about aircraft accidents that’s upsetting and that alters not only some cherished attitudes, but also airman certification standards, some aircraft airworthiness certification standards and more »

October 11, 2016

Mind-Controlled Airplanes?

The future is not only coming, it might be here already

Pulleys. Pushrods. Electrical connectors swabbed with stabilant goo. Aircraft have untold connecting points that translate an input to an action. And, as those long-ago games of elementary school “telephone” demonstrated, every time a command moves from one node to the next, there’s potential for corruption or failure. Of all these connection types, one holds an more »

October 6, 2016

Drone Revolution

How (and why) the game has changed

In August the FAA broadly liberalized the rules governing the operation of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) in the National Airspace System (NAS). The changes are fundamental ones, representing an about-face for the agency, which has abruptly dropped both the requirements for small drones to be certificated and for their operators to be licensed pilots. How more »

September 27, 2016

Why Can’t We All Just Go-Around?

It’s easy to fix a bad approach; it’s a lot harder to salvage one

The concept of a stabilized approach has been around since powered flight began, and likewise, the concept of a non-stabilized approach, as well. The term “stabilized approach” has been common in the airline and commuter worlds, and has eased its way into general aviation language. Once we have a label, we naturally spend two or more »

September 26, 2016

Anxiety And Pilots

While it’s uncommon in pilots, anxiety is an affliction that doesn’t have to ground you. There are a variety of treatments that can keep you in the cockpit.

On a typically clear New England October day in 2006, my friend, Fred, who’s a wonderful pilot but at that point didn’t own an airplane, asked if I could fly his wife to Teterboro from the suburban Boston area where we all live. He would join us. I was a relatively new pilot, and beyond more »

September 22, 2016

Choosing VFR Cruise Altitude

How’s the ride up there? Follow these 5 simple steps for smoother flying

They say the three most useless things to a pilot are runway behind you, fuel not in your tanks, and altitude above you. So when you’re choosing your VFR cruise altitude for your next cross-country, is higher really better? It could be, but you have a lot to consider. Here are five things to think more »

September 13, 2016

(Learning) Teaching From My Mistakes

How sharing real-world experiences in the cockpit can engage student pilots

As I stood in front of 15 excited and anxious student pilots in the first meeting of my private pilot ground school class  last fall, I started to lose their attention as I kicked off a discussion on navigation tips, tools and techniques. The majority of them didn’t have one hour of flight instruction in more »

August 1, 2016

More Than Just A Gadget

How The iPad Is Making Flying Safer

Pilots typically wear their skepticism like a badge of honor. Diesel engines are more fuel efficient? I’ll believe it when I see it… Airplane parachutes? It’s a fad! That’s what makes the iPad revolution so surprising. For all their cynicism, pilots have adopted tablets and apps like eager teenagers. Just five years ago, no one more »

February 1, 2016

Aviation Risk Management, Again, Really?

We’ve been talking about how to survive our addiction to flying for a long time now, since the beginning of aviation, in fact. We’ve called it Airsense, Headwork, Judgment, Threat and Error Management, and other names not fit to print, but now we have a relatively new label for it: Risk Management. As the FAA more »

January 8, 2016

Thinking Pilot’s Guide To Fuel Management

Your instructor was right. There really is no excuse for running out of fuel.

Currently, there are two ways to fly without fuel: electric flight, still in its infancy; and soaring, an aeronautical prerogative that requires no fuel at all. The rest of general aviation must learn to manage fuel. By definition, this means some pilots are bound to contribute to the statistic that one in every 20 aviation more »

December 14, 2015

What’s All The Flap About?

Flaps are so much more than simply those large surfaces hanging from the wing trailing edges

We watched the accident unfold before us from the tall grass, 9,000 feet up in the jagged crest of the Sierra Nevadas.

Posts navigation

Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next

Most Popular Articles

  • 10 Sexiest Airplanes
  • Choosing A Six-Seat Single
  • Top 20 Tips For Buying An Airplane
  • The Cessna Buyer's Guide
  • 10 Cheapest Birds In The Sky

Most Recent Articles

  • This Airplane Teeter-Totter Is The Perfect Gift For Kids
  • Garmin Gets Green Light For Piper Autopilot STCs
  • NBAA 2019: Avidyne Atlas FMS Hits A Suite Spot
  • Cool Products For Aviation Enthusiasts
  • Aviation Treasures… Found! (You Simply Won’t Believe Number 4!)
  • Insta360 ONE X Takes Air-to-Air Video Of Your Plane Without A Camera Plane
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Plane & Pilot Magazine
Find Us On Facebook!
Follow Us On Twitter!
  • Home
  • Subscribe
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Submissions
  • Pilot Journal Past Issues
  • Manage Your Consent
Check out our other sites:
  • Digital Photo Magazine
  • Digital Photo Pro Magazine
  • Outdoor Photographer Magazine
  • HD Video Pro Magazine
  • Golf Tips
Plane & Pilot and Pilot Journal Magazines are published by Madavor Media
25 Braintree Hill Office Park, Suite 404 Braintree, MA
Copyright ©2019 Madavor Media
ACCEPT RejectPrivacy Policy We use cookies on our site to personalize content and ads, provide social media features, and analyze our traffic.
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.

Necessary Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

PLANE & PILOT MENU
  • Aircraft
    ▼
    • Specifications
    • Pilot Reports
    • Best Buys
    • LSA
    • Modifications
    • Maintenance
    • Aircraft Ownership
    • Photo Downloads
    • International Aircraft Directory
  • Proficiency
    ▲
    • Pilot Skills
    • Aviation Weather Safety
  • Products
    ▼
    • What’s New?
    • Accessories
    • Pilot Supplies
    • Books & Videos
  • Pilot Talk
    ▼
    • Cross-Country Flying Stories
    • A Flight I’ll Never Forget
    • Grassroots
    • Let It Roll
    • After The Accident
    • Guest Speaker
    • More Pilot Talk
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
  • Travel
    ▼
    • Journeys
  • Aviation Careers
    ▼
    • Aviation Guide To Education & Training
    • General Aviation Careers
    • Flight Training
  • Contests
    ▼
    • Your Flying World Photo Contest
  • News/Blog
    ▼
    • News
    • Isabel Goyer
    • Patty Wagstaff
  • Subscribe
    ▼
    • Subscribe Now
    • Customer Service
    • eNewsletter