Features

Hot Fun In The Summertime? It has been a pretty good month in thePilot’s Lounge. Summer is here and the airplanes are beautiful. For the secondyear in a row we have had great weather, so the old saw, “what comes aftertwo days of rain in Michigan? Monday” is not holding up. As one of thepilots […]

Now that previous columns have littered the runway with theory and attempted to explain manifold pressure, propeller RPM, and mixture, I’d like to present some suggestions for in-flight techniques to extract better performance from these engines. Some of it will be a little repetitive from prior columns in an attempt to make this column more […]

Everybodytakes checkrides. It simply goes with the territory – if you want to fly, anFAA Inspector (Fed) will examine you from time to time or you will be tested bya Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE). In a 17-year career as a DPE, andhaving administered over four thousand flight tests as a DPE, I believe I haveseen […]

There are few things in airplanes as misunderstood and misused as the mixture control. Old Wives’ Tales (OWTs) abound, many of them spread by POHs, the FAA, and even the engine manufacturers! Not much of what you’ve read and heard about mixture management makes sense – much of it is out of context, and most […]

Things have started to quietdown here in the Pilot’s Lounge since the FAA came out with its nutty interpretive rule stating that pilots are perse negligent if they do not hear an air traffic control clearance accurately. There isa deep-seated anger at some portions of the FAA among pilots, but the shouting andarm-waving has stopped […]

When Isubmitted my original column on the subject of hazardous attitudes,AVweb‘s editor told me that it was my bestcolumn ever. That may or may not be an accurate statement, but in any event my reply wasthat I would be willing to wager that the column would draw less reader response thanothers I have written would. […]

OnWednesday of this week, Miami International’s ASR-9 approach control radar took a directlightning strike and was out of service for more than three hours. Most of the agenciesand people involved in moving airplanes rolled up their sleeves and went to work.Everyone, that is, except the U.S. Customs Service. The approach controllers, crippled without their own […]

“Hey,Mike! Looks like there may be a problem with Continental crankshafts.” I looked up from my Makita, with which I’d been reinstalling inspection plates at theend of a grueling month-long annual on my Cessna 310. It was Monday April 5th, if memoryserves, and the voice from the open door at the top of the stairs […]

April 12 | April 19 | April26 | May 3 | May 10 | May17 Monday, April 12, 1999 Crankshaft Problems Plague Teledyne Continental Motors New TCM Crankshafts Breaking In 520/550 Engines… At least six new and factory-rebuilt Teledyne Continental Motors (TCM) 520- and550-series engines produced by TCM during a three-month period have suffered brokencrankshafts. […]