Leading Edge

We all strive for precision and safety in our flying. If there is a recurring theme to smoothly lifting off into climb, maneuvering with a safe margin above stall, squeaking the tires onto the runway at our planned touchdown point, and maintaining control and precision even in emergencies, that theme is airspeed control.Airspeed is a […]

My first flight instructor introduced me to the touch and go: power off, flare, flare, flare, “chirp” go the mains, hold the nose (“If the nose touches, it’s not a touch and go,” he said), flaps up, power up, carb heat in, adjust the trim in there somewhere, and up we go. The touch and […]

A highly successful manufacturer of personal airplanes displayed a big banner at AirVenture last summer that read, “Life without flight delays or cancellations.” Obviously this company was marketing to people who fly for business or long-distance personal transportation. Since I travel frequently by airline to train pilots fortunate enough to own their own airplane, the […]

Fog shrouded the Northwest airport. A single-engine, retractable-gear airplane, with three aboard, was arriving from a routine, cross-country flight. The experienced pilot set up for a GPS approach. At the missed-approach point, the ground was still obscured so the pilot powered up and began a climb; but as the aircraft crossed directly over the airport, […]

Look at the Pilot’s Operating Handbook (POH) or installed placards on most airplanes and you’ll find a notation about “unusable fuel.” Unusable fuel is that fuel in the tank(s) that is not considered to be accessible for running the engine(s). Fuel tank design philosophy provides a sump area into which heavier-than-fuel water or other contamination […]

Imagine yourself in the captain’s seat of this DC-3 (see photo below), flying in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) and hard on the gauges. Which instrument on this airline-standard panel of the 1940s and ’50s is directly ahead of you? It’s the turn-and-bank indicator. This is a throwback to the earliest days of instrument flight, when […]

Aviation lore is full of stories of the pilot who soloed an Aeronca Champ or Piper Cub after only four or five hours of instruction. When I started flying in the late 1970s, it was unstated but understood that something was wrong if “first solo” didn’t come in under 10 hours. As airplanes and the […]

Flight instruction is considered to be one of the safest categories of general aviation. AOPA Air Safety Foundation’s 2006 Nall Report (3 MB Adobe PDF file) calls flight instruction “… relatively safe … result[ing] in just 13.2 percent of all [NTSB-reported] accidents and only 6.5 percent of fatal accidents.” AOPA attributes this to “… the […]

Want to practice a single maneuver that can teach volumes about safely flying airplanes? Consider the steep turn — perhaps the perfect training and proficiency maneuver.Steeps turns are a required Task for all airplane pilot certificates — Recreational, Sport, Private, Commercial and Airline Transport Pilot. The Practical Test Standards (PTS) for each certificate tell the […]

Many years ago I flew a turbocharged Beech Bonanza from Wichita, Kan., to Springfield, Mo., and return. The roughly one-hour flight to Springfield was uneventful above a building base of puffy cumulus clouds. I dropped off a passenger at his airplane, the mission for our flight, and took off again for home.On departure the skies […]