Search Results for: vfr

Many of life’s distractions are enjoyable, but cockpit distractions can have tragic consequences. For years, the NTSB has made “Eliminate Distractions” one of their Ten Most Wanted safety improvements.  In Ernest Gann’s Fate is the Hunter, he describes a night approach as a DC-2 First Officer while Captain Ross lit matches in front of Gann’s nose […]

Back in the early 1980s when they had one of the best flight-training programs in the nation, I was working on the admissions staff of Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire. I somehow convinced the administration that we should recruit a few students and fly out to the big Oshkosh airshow now known as […]

Thanks to Boston-based private aviation solutions provider Magellan Jets and the Red Sox Foundation, a lucky Boston Red Sox fan and a guest will be flying to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, with David “Big Papi” Ortiz for his HOF induction ceremony. Magellan Jets partnered with the Red Sox on the […]

The Avionics Market Was There For The Taking. So Garmin Did For a VFR flyer, Garmin’s competition in avionics is the device I’m posting from. Installed avionics are one of the few things that make an Apple product look like a bargain. Steam gages and a recent iProduct for SA (or droid if so inclined) […]

It used to be easy. Slap in a couple of King KX155 navcomm radios and you’re good to go for VFR, IFR and everything in between. These days, the buying decision is muddied by WAAS GPS, the concerns of signal outages and whether a ground-based nav receiver makes sense for a backup. But there is […]

Seeing The Invisible Operating a commercial hot air balloon operation for two decades, your wind summary is spot on. Wind is the engine, directional control or brake for a lighter-than-air (LTA) aircraft and its through understanding critical to safe operations. We use all the elements mentioned in maneuvering a LTA and its understanding critical when […]

New Research Suggests There’s Still A Lot To Learn From Birds Or… pilots could learn best landing techniques and practice accordingly, enhancing safety in that manner rather than adding complexity to the hardware. Though I do agree, there is a lot to be learned from birds, such as how to stay up all afternoon making […]

Believe it or not, air traffic controllers don’t issue radar vectors for amusement. I know it might seem like it when you’re getting strung out for a sequence or for traffic, watching the time-equals-money clock ticking away, increasing the costs of your flight. My goal as a controller is to get you on your own […]

My Fleeting But Memorable Fling With The AN-225 My then-young son Peter and I were attending the Paris Air Show in 1989. We were walking down a fence line in the parking lot abutting runway 03. It was a plane spotter’s paradise. Everything on short final was passing overhead and touching down a few dozen […]

Radar, whether we’re talking air traffic control, thunderstorm detection, navigation, or even air combat, is a technology that has shaped the history of flight in countless ways. The word “radar” is an acronym (RAdio Detection And Ranging) and was coined in 1939 by the United States Army Signal Corps as it worked on these systems […]