Features

While working as a controller at Ellsworth Approach Control in the 80’s, I heard this exchange. ATC: Western 474, Ellsworth Approach Control is utilizing a certain phase of the radar called circular polarization, which allows us to depict only the most severe areas of weather on the radar display. [Long Pause…] Western 474: Approach, say […]

They found a box in the main terminal. The box didn’t seem to belong to anybody and when the Homeland Security team looked at it, it looked suspicious. Bomb or brownies?The contents of the box in question would be either a bomb in fact or simply a gut bomb, but either way it meant that […]

747 House So the FAA is worried people might think the home is a crash site and it has to be somehow marked to show it isn’t (NewsWire, Apr. 24)? Do they have the same concerns about the old airliners and collections of pipes used by airport firefighters for training? I’m sure what looks like […]

Oh, the years gone by… Many years ago when I was a student pilot flying a C-120, (if you can remember when flight schools used C-120s, you may be older than I am), I groundlooped in front of the tower at BFI. Here’s the exchange, as I remember it: Tower: Cessna triple 7, are you […]

This article originally appeared in IFR Refresher, September 2005. What if you knew the ceiling was at 700 feet and the visibility was four miles at your destination airport as you approached it on an IFR flight? It is likely that you would be less concerned about the approach than you would be had the […]

Whenever there is an accident in aviation, those of us in the business start thinking of all the things that might have gone wrong. We try not to speculate (at least not in public) as we wait for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to conduct their investigation and let us know what happened.Most of […]

Scud Runner I used to invest in towers. I remember the first tower I had built. It was completed in Sept. ’86 and just missed the Atlanta sectional revision date. It did not make the chart until the next cycle! Its construction did change a MOCA altitude so the IFR guys were alerted. I knew […]

I was in the Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport, a place normally for good friends, good conversation and some support when things were not going well. Yet, Old Hack’s voice was dripping with scorn as he addressed me from about three inches away: “You miserable excuse for a pilot. Now we truly know what […]