FBOs

Can’t do it? Rubbish! Yeah, I know, the handheld is notFAA-Approved, or TSO-129 compliant. Well, neither is a #2 pencil,but that doesn’t mean you need an FAA-approved pencil (yet) towrite down a clearance, and you don’t need an IFR-approved GPSto use one while IFR, either. I wouldn’t be so hot on this subject,except for the […]

Following a driving vacation with the husband and kids last summer, Judy scheduled flying lessons. She has been aggressively going after her private pilot certificate. After one of her lessons, someone in the lounge asked her what caused her sudden desire to learn to fly. What Judy said reminded me of how very clearly new […]

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 […]