Flight Training

In his influential book, Stick and Rudder, Wolfgang Langewiesche states the rudder “. . . causes the greatest difficulty for beginners,” and “. . . even the more experienced pilot often has trouble using it correctly.” Commenting on improper rudder use as a contributing factor in accidents, he states, “In the typical fatal accident, which […]

Women in Aviation International has disbursed more than $10 million in scholarships to help more than 1,300 women advance in aviation careers, and this year they have $662,625 to give away to contenders who apply by Nov. 14. To qualify, applicants must be a WAI member by Nov. 1, so there’s still time, but the […]

As a variation of the old and bold pilots clich, there’s an old Sicilian saying: You can be arrogant; you can be ignorant, but you can’t be both at the same time. It’s appropriate for flying in Alaska, where I live. Every year we revisit the world of midair collisions and year after year, they […]

Last week, I attended a briefing at the local town hall where airport officials briefed a new arrival at the airport, a skydiving operation. As I figured it would, that ignited a minor freakout among the local pilot community, but they listened politely and asked good questions of the operator, who intends to start selling […]

What makes training good? What makes it stick so that when you really need it, you can make the right decision and execute accordingly? Anyone who has earned a flight instructor certificate will remember the Six Laws of Learning as elucidated in the FAA’s dreary Aviation Instructor’s Handbook. My friend John Deakin once told me […]

Compared to landing, taking off is relatively simple. Our instructor lets us make the first takeoff of our very first flying lesson—or at least makes us think we made the takeoff. If everything goes right, it’s easy. But how do you know everything is going right? And how do you know what to do in […]

Back by popular demand is AVweb’s penetrating review of why pilots fly patterns that are just insanely, infuriatingly too large. Extra stripes available by request. view on YouTube

Further apropos of our slow flight yammering of last week, I put the skill to use on Thursday. After 119 days or so of not flying as I recover from an injury, I took the Cub up to knock off the rust. I flew down to a nice little county grass strip south of Venice […]

You have to hand it to the FAA. This is a government agency that’s gifted in its ability to tweak the rules in a way that makes we, the regulated, twist, dance, squirm and shimmy in the most creative ways. The latest example came last week when the FAA revised its standards for teaching that […]

The FAA has issued a Safety Alert reminding instructors, students and other general aviation pilots that the advised procedure for practicing slow-flight maneuvers has changed. The FAA’s new advice intends to correct “inconsistencies” in the previous standard for maneuvering during slow flight, as outlined in the Airplane Flying Handbook published in 2004, and the latest […]