Search Results for: vfr

The Pilot’s Lounge #103: The FAA As Customer — Good Business? – (Aug. 13, 2006)Somebody has to rent planes to FAA personnel so they can maintain currency. And with the government backing them up, you shouldn’t have to worry about collecting the fees, right? AVweb’s Rick Durden has a cautionary tale from the Pilot’s Lounge […]

This article originally appeared in Aviation Safety, April 2004. While many pilots fly only for recreation, the utility of airplanes is what drives the quest toward aircraft ownership and continued flying for most.But it is also the utility that motivates pilots to make the kinds of errors that lead to tragedy. They push into circumstances […]

The natural assumption is that two engines must be better than one in terms of safety and performance but reality often gets in the way of such broad notions. Sure, the cushion of an extra engine is comforting on an IFR flight over the mountains but keeping two props spinning comes at a premium, not […]

Kollsman Commercial Aviation Systems arrived at Oshkosh with a forward-looking infra red (FLIR) camera poking out the top of a C-Model Mooney. The GAViS (General Aviation Vision System) lets pilots see through haze, smoke, light fog, mist, and night by seeing differential heat. This is a simpler version of their million-dollar, enhanced-vision system used on […]

This article originally appeared in IFR Refresher, February 2005. In the past we have studied accidents that were the result of the pilot’s lack of weather flying experience. In some of those reports we discovered that the lack of overall flying experience also contributed to the outcome.This month we are going to look at an […]

Aviation news tends to be made in the press area, a long way from the tie-down area at the west end of Wittman Regional Airport, but a couple of German pilots may have quietly made history when they touched down in a DA42 TwinStar (serial number 16) on Friday. Aircraft owner Wolfgang Daiser and his […]

The only production four-seat or side-by-side taildragger still being built in the U.S., the Maule is a one-of-a-kind airplane. Its fans can verge on the cultish. 288 Its easy and forgiving to fly, they say, despite its rap as a groundlooper. Its simple to fix, good at going slow yet capable of respectable cruise speeds. […]

This is the problem with being a safety rep: After a while, your perspective changes on things. Sometimes, it seems like every thing. Take this story from a recent edition of AVweb, for instance: NTSB Finding Reassessed — Case To Reopen, Decades After … When a Piedmont Airlines 727 and a Cessna 310 collided over […]

The first conforming prototype of the Seawind amphibian is complete and ready to start flight tests, the company announced on Monday. Testing should be complete and a certified Seawind amphibian ready for market by this winter, company spokesman Bill Poirier told AVweb yesterday. “A lot of the certification testing is already done,” he said. All […]

This article originally appeared in Aviation Safety, April 2004. Probable Cause Lots of pilots like to take to the air and find solitude and thereby freedom. For others, however, there’s something strangely comforting about operating under the watchful eyes of an air traffic controller. If you routinely fly in congested airspace — such as around […]