Search Results for: vfr

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 […]

A VFR Saturday morning this past December was a good time to exercise my Mooney 201. I decided to visit York, Pennsylvania, (KTHV) since it was close to my home base and I never had the pleasure of visiting there before. About 10 miles out I made my first call. Me: “York, Mooney 10 miles […]

Updated Airport Design Guidance Includes Turf Ops I have 31″ Alaskan Bushwheels on my Maule MX-7-180 so I land on grass whenever possible. They cost $1,800 each and wear out faster when operated on pavement. Many GA airports have a grass strip beside the hard surfaced runway but the condition varies widely. Some have obstacles […]

Sequences don’t come much easier. A VFR Mooney and a VFR Cherokee both requested a practice RNAV approach. They were the same distance from the same initial approach fix (IAF), and the Mooney was 50 knots faster than the Cherokee. I gave the Mooney direct to the IAF. The slower Cherokee got a few vectors […]

Alsim announced on Thursday that its AL40 simulator has been approved by the FAA as an Advanced Aviation Training Device (AATD). Designed as an exact replica of the Diamond DA40 NG, the AL40 comes equipped with G1000 NXi avionics and a GFC 700 autopilot. It uses Alsim’s in-house VFR image generator and visual system with […]

One sunny afternoon in late Fall, several flight school Skyhawks and a Piper Seminole trainer were making the most of the beautiful VFR day by practicing maneuvers in the “Northeast Practice Area.” All these aircraft were self‑reporting their position and intentions on 122.75 MHz. Heard on frequency: Seminole (Student): “Northeast Practice, Seminole 123 over Carnation, […]

One of my fondest memories in aviation was the first flight I took in a Skyhawk. Even though my parents kept a kindergarten assignment where I said my goal in life was to be a pilot (after my career as an astronaut and a monster truck driver), I did not pursue aviation until after my […]

They have a cool factor that entices and can utterly disable the ability to make a rational purchase decision. More than a few pilots you hang with claim that you’re not a real pilot until you fly tailwheel. Plus, watching one slip down final to a deliciously soft touchdown on a grass runway just plain […]