Search Results for: vfr

City officials and pilots at Watsonville Municipal Airport (KWVI) are at odds on the future of the airport’s crosswind runway. After unanimously approving the airport’s first Master Plan update in 20 years, city officials are entertaining options to shorten the crosswind runway or close it entirely in favor of development.  According to Airport Director Rayvon Williams, the FAA […]

Sound. It’s what lured some of us unsuspecting into aviation. As a kid I reacted to the sound of an airplane engine ticking unseen among cicadas ghost-riding in the sky above my Wonder Bread and mayonnaise New Jersey neighborhood. The sound made me look up to glimpse what shining messenger called and prompted a nun […]

Pilots have a general sense of who is on the other end of the radio, but controllers have a different internal name for the position they are working. While hearing but one or occasionally two voices on frequency, who else is standing there and watching what’s going on? There is more than one voice behind […]

With the training market still booming, Cirrus has in the wings a new trainer model, the SR10. Slightly smaller than the entry-level SR20, the airplane has three seats and is powered by the Rotax 915 iS, according to the type certificate approved by the FAA in April of this year. But it may not be […]

So what can you do with a multi-engine seaplane rating? You can fly firefighting aircraft that scoop water from lakes and dump it on big fires. You can fly an air taxi at a couple of small operations in Florida or Washington. You can fly PBYs with the Commemorative Air Force. Or, perhaps best of […]

One of general aviation’s most time-honored practices involves two or more pilots being aboard the same airplane at the same time. The purposes vary—from training and proficiency, to boring holes in the sky, to chasing down a $100 hamburger, and everything in between—but it’s not at all rare to find more than one pilot seated […]

Congrats on your new instrument rating! You’ve spent a lot of time, money and energy accomplishing something only a very small portion of the overall population ever will. With your well-earned privilege comes great responsibility and flexibility in your flying, and possibly a rung in the ladder to some additional certificates. The thing is, though—perhaps […]

By now we’ve all seen the video of the airline pilot beating the snot out of a rubbery airport parking lot gate with an axe. If you haven’t seen it, you probably have a real job. But once seen, it’s difficult to unsee this medieval quest for chivalric justice unravel on the marge of the […]

Nav Canada says it has implemented a grace period for aircraft operators who enter Class A airspace in Canada (above 18,000 feet, IFR only) without the ADS-B equipment that meets the newly activated mandate. The not-for-profit air traffic management company said operators who mistakenly enter Class A without antennas that send signals both up to […]

When you present yourself to a designated pilot examiner (DPE) or an FAA employee for a checkride to add a new certificate or rating, both you and the aircraft are subject to closer inspection than you may be accustomed. Pilots aren’t expected to know the dry torque specification for an engine’s cylinder studs, but they […]