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My wife worked for Douglas Aircraft at the time, and she’d usually file for whatever vacation time she needed to turn what was nearly a nine- or 10-day holiday into two full weeks.
The other day, as I was pushing my trusty mount out of the hangar, a pilot was having trouble getting a rental Cirrus back in the hangar next door, so I stopped and gave him a hand.
The answer has a lot to do with the way the avionics industry has developed in the last century.
As part of its effort to reduce the number of general aviation accidents, the NTSB from time to time issues Safety Alerts aimed at general aviation pilots.
For a pilot, South Florida is just a stepping stone and a 60-mile hop across the water to the Caribbean.
One of the nice things about growing up in Alaska was the opportunity to fly a variety of airplanes.
Flying to an exotic destination like the Bahamas may seem like a daunting, out-of-reach pipe dream.
The voice had a very indignant tone to it. As if the tower should pay special attention to everything he said.
A pilot using a cell phone in flight, especially during a high work-load segment of a flight, may find the price that might be paid for giving too much attention to the phone is a lot higher than when on the ground.
That’s just one symptom of a larger problem—modern avionics simply can’t be expected to last as long as old radio stacks.
There are many exciting ways to fine-tune your flying skills and learn new techniques while adding a new rating to your pilot certificate.
Head south from the U.S. toward Antarctica, and you’ll wind up paralleling a chain of mountains longer and taller than anything else in the Western Hemisphere.
Over the past few years, I had become increasingly dependent on my annoying prescription glasses.
Okay, I know that airliners spend a lot of their time being tracked on someone’s radar scope and talking to ATC, so the assumption is that someone, somewhere knows exactly where they are at all times.
After all, there are now dozens of portable ADS-B gizmos out there, all much cheaper than panel-mount, and VFR pilots can get by with portable GPS. So, why not portable ADS-B?
It’s kind of a joke that most pilots don’t know how to use their feet, especially jet jocks whose feet are flat on the floor most of the time they’re flying.
If you pay even moderate attention to NTSB accident reports, you’re likely to become a safer pilot by osmosis as you absorb the mistakes made by other pilots.
Editor’s note: From the first instant we have our hands on the controls, moving an airborne craft through an initially startling number of dimensions, we are pilots. The pilot we were at that moment is alive in all of us still, but as we fly we learn to experience flight in new ways, and that more »