Features

Preflighting Propellers I had a customer call on a Sunday morning saying his “dawn patrol” flight was canceled because his wooden prop was leaking oil! It was the crankshaft seal of course. Also, the back side of the prop is the curved side, not the flat side. At least that’s the way I learned it […]

I love visiting central Oregon, specifically Redmond and Bend. These are youthful towns full of ski bums and creative people selling handcrafted, home-brewed goodies. There are cute boutiques where you can find prints of mountains, coffee shops with fresh pastries, outdoor adventure stores selling the latest bikes and, of course, breweries. I also love visiting […]

I was flying into David Wayne Hooks Airport, north of Houston. Hooks is a busy airport with business jets and constant flight training, both initial and advanced. Thus, the controllers there must be sharp and keep their sense of humor as they deal with both students and experienced pros in Gulfstreams. I was on approach […]

One way to tell if a pilot is serious about his responsibility to conduct a thorough preflight is if he looks at a propeller, notes that it’s still attached and walks right by it to the other wing’s fuel drains. Even if it’s a relatively simple all-metal, one-piece, fixed-pitch affair, things can go wrong with […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause on the NTSB’s website at www.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after the […]

Changing Of The Guard I started flying in 1966 out of Zamperini Field (KTOA) in Torrance, CA, at a time when general aviation began to flourish in Southern California. The airport tallied approximately 348,000 operations annually, making it a busy airport within what is now the SOCAL domain – an excellent area to learn radio […]

You’re flying along, listening to a controller issue instructions to many aircraft. From one second to the next, you suddenly start hearing a different controller’s voice. You haven’t changed frequencies. They’re seemingly picking up where the first one left off. Controllers are used to hearing voice changes from an aircraft. Many times a day, I’ll […]

We were new to the area and flying out of Arcata, California, KACV (which, by the way, may have the longest name of any GA airport in the U.S.: “California Redwood Coast‑Humboldt County Airport”). A few miles up the coast we contacted Seattle Center. After radar contact was confirmed, the controller asked, “Do you have […]

In a connected world with everyone wearing earbuds, it’s logical to consider an in-ear headset for the cockpit. Although they aren’t for everyone, if you haven’t tried them, you should. While flagship ANR models from Bose and Lightspeed deliver big on comfort and performance, we’ve long appreciated the freedom and decent audio quality from a […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause on the NTSB’s website at www.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after the […]