Eye of Experience

I‘m sure that I’m not alone. All of us, at one time or another, do something stupid. There are no doubt a great many dumb things that I’ve managed to do in my more than seven decades of life, but as an aviator, two particularly stupid and dangerous events stand out. Towing the Line Several […]

Eye of Experience#63:Confession Time – (Articles – Feb 12, 2003) Admit it: You’ve done some stupid things while flying, haven’t you? We all have, and it is always better to learn from someone else’s stupid mistakes than to make even more of our own. AVweb’s Howard Fried has told us about a lot of things […]

My two previous columns on the subject of attitude dealt with the hazardous attitudes within ourselves that have been identified by the friendly feds. This time we’ll be discussing the attitude of the flying machine itself as it makes its way through the air.What’s wrong with attitude instrument flying? In a word, nothing! That is, […]

What is this CRM stuff we’ve been hearing so much of lately? I can tell you some of the things it isn’t. Although air carriers may call it Company Resource Management, and the manufacturers of some air carrier aircraft in their manuals refer to Crew Resource Management, the FAA (Friendly Feds) mean Cockpit Resource Management […]

Not long ago an AWweb reader wrote explaining that, as long as he has been flying, he keeps hearing about “natural pilots,” sort of Supermen of the air, who can do absolutely fantastic things with an airplane. My correspondent, Rick Grant, wrote, “From the day I started flight training in 1965 through today, during military, […]

When I was first recruited by AVweb to write a column coming fresh off my FLYING magazine column dealing with flight testing called “The Eye of the Examiner,” I was given the freedom to write whatever strikes my fancy (so long as it is in reasonably good taste). At that time, I informed the readers […]

Several years ago here on AVweb I wrote an Eye of Experience column entitled “Eye of Experience #17: I Can’t Believe They Did That,” dealing with unusual events I witnessed over a 17-year career as a Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE). At that time, I promised more of these reflections of a DPE. Now it is […]

Please forgive me if I rant and rave here, but I simply can’t help it when I see what’s happening to that which I love dearly – aviation. Although I am solely responsible for the opinions expressed here, I am sure that thousands of GA pilots share these opinions. And although the subject of this […]

Nearly half the households in the United States include one or more animals, and many of these households also include a general aviation aircraft owner or pilot. Arrangements must be made for the care of their pets before the human members of the household can take a trip of more than one day’s duration. Do […]

The subject of this column was suggested by a reader, a former gofer at the flight school I operated. (We always had an ambitious young person who did “grunt work” on a trade deal in exchange for flight instruction.) Larry was one such, and now he is a graduate electrical engineer and part-time flight instructor. […]