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It’s wintertime again; the third winter since I started on this little adventure in airplane building. The fourth year on the Pietenpol project rolled around in late November. As I’ve said before, trying to predict when a project like this will be finished, or even when a component will be done, is a dangerous thing. […]

Brave New World Yesterday, while flying near the Washington ADIZ, Com radio 1 on the local CTAF and 2 on 121.5, I heard the following, in a clearly synthesized voice with an oddly foreign accent: “Aircraft approaching Washington Air Defense Identification Zone! Turn away! Shiply(sic)!” Ah, brave new world! Richard Matlick Airline Training Academy Your […]

Who was John Boyd? Ask any pilot and you will probably get a shoulder shrug or just a blank stare. Hang around with some fighter pilots and ask, “Anyone ever heard of ’40-Second Boyd’?” and the response will likely be the same, a shrug. Follow up with a second question, “What do you know about […]

I was working the early morning shift at the Air Ambulance Shopwhen I happened to read one of the many articles written aboutcollisions between aircraft on what controllers call movementareas but what pilots know as runways and taxiways. One of those articles mentioned the well-publicized collisionbetween a USAir 737 and Skywest Metroliner in position for […]

This article appeared in the March 2002 issue of IFR Refresher magazine, and is reprinted here by permission. You probably haven’t been called on lately to define the segments along an approach course, but you might remember a time when it would have been handy to know why the designer created such an obstacle course […]

With Spring just around the corner I thought we should spend some time talking about VFR operations. I know it’s been a while since we’ve covered the real basic stuff in ATC so if you’d like to review what I’ve already written, you can find everything here, including ATC 101 and ATC 102.Speaking of review, […]

Cirrus Launches Safety Study I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the results of the upcomming Cirrus study will be inconclusive.Having said that, I’ll make the same bet again by stating that the real cause of most if not all of those accidents, is over-confidence caused by color moving map displays and other modern electronic […]

Airline Woes It is often claimed that the airline industry can rightly boast of its safety record. As someone who has worked in this industry for over 20 years, I have seen and have been a part of the system, the procedures and processes that have been responsible for assuring the safety of air travel, […]

Unless you’re looking at one of Paul Bowen’s beautiful and instructive photographs, wake turbulence is an invisible enemy. We’ve all heard about it in ground school and we’ve all read the news reports about wake turbulence encounters — proven or suspected — but what is it that makes this hazard so hard to track and […]

First, the usual “housekeeping.” One alert reader pointed out that I had referred to the in-flight mag check, but never explained it. Let me do that in my next column. Some of the excellent “reader responses” (by e-mail and a couple of forums) deserve mention here. Those Skydiving Airplanes First, I don’t think I’ve ever […]