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Aerotoxic Syndrome I am a flight attendant and have experienced that odor on the B-747-100, B-727 and also on G-IVs (NewsWire, Jan. 20). I don’t believe I have suffered any illness from it. I remember numerous times telling the pilots it smells like dirty feet. I thought I must be the only one smelling it. […]

No one wants to fail when taking an exam, least of all a checkride for a pilot certificate. But there are some easy-to-learn ways of making sure that you pass your test on the first try, including how you train, what you study, whether your paperwork is in order and finally whether you can actually […]

Picture of the Week and Digital Edits In response to J.T. McDuffie (AVmail, Jan. 17):Yes, Ansel Adams made the most of his photographs in the darkroom. But he didn’t “move mountains,” he enhanced them. His photos represent an actual vantage point, a real moment in time.Remember the uproar in 1982 when National Geographic “moved” the […]

A couple of months ago we got into an extended discussion of emergencies here in the Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport as a result of a gear-up landing gone seriously wrong. The column that evolved generated a fair amount of comment, including one from Dr. Alex Aimette, who has taught surgery for some years […]

AVweb’s Rick Durden recently corresponded with a surgery instructor who described one of the methods he used to teach new surgeons: He had them write down everything that could go wrong during an upcoming operation and then set out what should be done to deal with each anomaly. When he became a pilot, Dr. Aimette […]

I recently had my engine rebuilt and had a new baffle kit installed,” a Cessna T210 owner recently emailed me. “The CHTs for cylinders #5 and #6 are always 20F to 30F hotter than the rest. During climb the difference gets even bigger. Cylinder #5 and #6 CHTs are very difficult to keep below 400F […]

Flat Spin A navy pilot (retired) with 6,000 hours in jets, props, multi engine, test pilot, combat, and trained pilots had a flat spin in a jet fighter. He came out of it by cutting the power, dropping the flaps and pushing the nose down. I’ve been told that you can’t get out of a […]

Dodging airborne 737s is one thing, but dodging airborne Chevy Trailblazers is a totally different situation. As usual, the drive to the airport proved to be much more dangerous than the flying trip. I had avoided a major roadway boning on the way to work and was still a little shook up about it as […]

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), in coordinationwith the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Air Force RapidCapabilities Office, is conducting a series of tests through Jan. 20of a ground-based low-intensity Visual Warning System in the NationalCapital Region. The system being tested is intended to warn pilots who are violatingthe Air Defense Identification Zone […]

This is the sixth in a series of excerpts that began with Chapter One. Chapter Ten: Notes on Lesson Seven — Introduction to Circuits I wasn’t terribly eager as I was doing the preflight checks. The wind was gusting worse than I had seen it before and I knew that controlling the aircraft was going […]