Eye of Experience

BetterJob? I become quite upset when I hear a youngflight instructor announce that he/she is just teaching until a “goodjob” or a “better job” in aviation comes along. I want you toknow – there is no higher calling for an aviator than to be a reallyfirst-class, professional flight instructor. There is no better job! And […]

Asis the case with many of my columns on AVweb, a reader who wrote andasked for an article on the Ercoupe inspired this one. Our reader had this tosay: You should do an article on the Ercoupe. What other plane can you buy for less than $15,000 that cruises at 110 mph, burns less than […]

Aletter from a reader who had an unpleasant experience at a non-towered airportprompted this column. He wrote the following account: I was recently making a straight-in final to a non-towered airport. Monitoring the Unicom frequency, I was aware of another airplane in the pattern flying touch-and-goes with a student. Since I was approaching from the […]

Whenthe United States was celebrating its 200th anniversary back in 1976, theChairperson of the Ninety-Nines asked Fay Gillis Wells, one of the originalorganizing founders of the Ninety-Nines,to come up with an idea to participate in the celebration. Fay’s answer was theInternational Forest of Friendship. Fay, who has outstanding skills at gettingpeople to do things, somehow […]

WhileI was at EAA AirVenture ’99 at Oshkosh this year, I ran into a friend of minenamed W. Roger Mullins, better known as Judge Mullins. For those of you who maynot remember or know, he’s the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) for the NationalTransportation Safety Board (NTSB) who restored Bob Hoover’s medical certificatewhen the FAA first […]

Basedon the title, if you thought this column would deal with locating a place to setan airplane down in the event you were to be confronted with an unscheduledoff-airport landing (a forced landing), you would be mistaken. However, if youreally want to know my opinions on that subject, stick around and I’ll tell you,but first […]

Sometime ago an AVweb subscriber, Ms. Annette Wright, requested a column onthe subject of night VFR. We here in the U.S. are fortunate in that there is nospecific rating required for a pilot to fly VFR at night. However, thissituation does not prevail throughout the rest of the world. In fact, in manycountries an instrument […]

In17 years as a designated pilot examiner, I administered over 4,000 flight testsfor a variety of certificates and ratings. During that time, I was witness to agreat many unusual performances by all kinds of applicants. Some were humorous,some tragic, but all were interesting. I wanted to take this opportunity to sharea few. “I’ll Take A […]

Everybodytakes checkrides. It simply goes with the territory – if you want to fly, anFAA Inspector (Fed) will examine you from time to time or you will be tested bya Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE). In a 17-year career as a DPE, andhaving administered over four thousand flight tests as a DPE, I believe I haveseen […]

When Isubmitted my original column on the subject of hazardous attitudes,AVweb‘s editor told me that it was my bestcolumn ever. That may or may not be an accurate statement, but in any event my reply wasthat I would be willing to wager that the column would draw less reader response thanothers I have written would. […]