FBOs

Reader Jerry McKissack sent me an email requestingthat I do a column on the subject of carb ice. He wrote, “Couldyou do an article on carburetor ice and when to use the carburetorheat. What planes are more susceptible and why? I’ve heard the150 is notorious for carb ice-why? Can you do anything to reduceit or […]

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I like to use a provocative “headline” to grab your attention, and sucker you into clicking that button to read my column. The headline will generally be related to the content, but in ways you might not expect. If you’re reading this, you fell for it! Seriously, […]

To be or not to be? William Shakespeare, 1636 To spin or not to spin? Howard Fried, 1998 Ever since spin training was deleted from the primary trainingrequirements way back in 1957 there has been a raging controversyin the aviation education community over whether it was a mistake todrop spin training and whether or not […]

Several years ago our local sheriff tried to check out in a Cessna L-19 Bird Dog he had obtained for the county following some major thefts at local farms. It did not go well. OK, that’s an understatement. He set some sort of record for groundloops on landing. He went through two instructors trying to […]

Anyone who likes checkrides has to be nuts. One of the toughest things about being a DE (FAA Designated Examiner) is knowing that no one really wants to be in the airplane with me, and even when a successful checkride is done,the checkee is probably going to say bad things about me in the bar, […]

Welcome to the pilots lounge at our virtual airport, a place where anyone who likes flying is welcome. It is not a big place, only two runways, one paved, one grass. It has a couple non-precision instrument approaches, some gliders on the grass, ski planes in the winter, a fair sized office and pilot’s lounge […]

Much has been written about the fact that judgement is very difficult,if not impossible, to teach. We have all seen examples of flightstudents exercising poor judgement, and even on fairly rare occasionsflight instructors demonstrating faulty judgement, but when botha student and an instructor exercise poor judgement in a singleepisode it is bound to lead to […]

At a party I attended awhile back, a lady was extolling the virtues of her latest macro-biotic diet, and how she wouldn’t drink coffee because it’s bad, wouldn’t touch salt, just on and on about her rather complex feeding routine. All the while smoking one cigarette after another! What is wrong with this picture? So […]

Many of us who hold airman certificates of one kind or anotherspend a lifetime without ever having contact with the Flight StandardsBranch of the FAA (knock on wood), but many others are not sofortunate. If you have never had the misfortune to experiencean enforcement action, listen up, because it can happen at anytime, and it […]

If you’ve been reading any of this stuff, you might have figured out by now that the headlines are written to grab some attention, in the hopes you’ll read on. These “leaders” or “teasers” are written by someone else, I’m too lazy. They may or may not resemble the actual gist of the article, if […]