Say Again?

Recently, while conducting yet another tour of Atlanta Center, I noticed a pilot’s fascination with the D-side. He just couldn’t quite figure out what the D-side was doing. We had walked over to a different Area than mine to take a look at his home airport. It just happened to be quite busy.As a matter […]

You know it’s bad when you walk into the control room and hear a controller yell, “I want a tracker!” It really wasn’t what he said so much as how he said it. The high side was trying to work all the East Coast traffic around Tropical Storm Gaston and it was getting ugly. A […]

A couple of recent events have compelled me to write this article. It’s going to be a little different than my standard fare. You may need to shift into a different gear, so be forewarned.As most of you are aware, I’m getting to be a short-timer. I’ve got just a little over two years left […]

Welcome back class. I don’t think there is any other subject that I’ve tried to cover that has created as much confusion as this subject. I know there isn’t another that has been misconstrued as much. It’s been a real eye-opener to see some of the interpretations springing from my articles. Let’s take another whack […]

About that VFR “course” I wanted to write last month: Would you like to guess why I wanted to write it? That’s right — because I’ve been working a sector full of them lately.I’ve aimed my previous columns about VFRs (mostly) at the low time pilots. This time, I want to talk to the rest […]

I wanted to make this month’s column another in the series of “courses” I’ve written over the last few years. The VFR season is upon us at Atlanta Center and the VFR traffic is climbing in direct relation to the mercury in the thermometer. As the summer progresses and the sky gets hazier, there will […]

Trying to guess what Mother Nature is going to do is risky business. I had to wait three weeks to get my yard aerated because it wouldn’t stop raining. I finally got it done, threw down a bunch of grass seed and I bet it hasn’t rained an inch in the month since.Mother Nature will […]

Once again it’s time for me to take a trip down the road to unpopularity and write an article about a subject we’d rather not talk about. I never have been able to leave well enough alone. It’s probably the reason I don’t get invited to dinner more often than I do. I like to […]

I had a incident the other night that really bothered me, so (of course) I started looking for a way to work it into a column. When I see something like this incident, I’m ashamed to admit my first reaction is usually somewhat uncharitable. The thought pops into my head that some people are just […]

The whole point of getting an IFR ticket is (of course) to be able to go somewhere when the weather is less than VFR. So why don’t we do that? Let’s take a trip.Let’s say you want to fly from HKY (Hickory, N.C.), pick up your buddy at MRN (Morganton, N.C.), and then head for […]