What’s the deal with that prop? What´s the deal with that prop? You may remember when it took me forever to fly home I figured out the propeller was set to a climb setting, not a cruise setting. Most props are fixed pitch or constant speed. Either the blades are fixed and that’s what you…
Having fond memories of your own solo flight is one of the unique gifts of learning to fly. Like all pilots, it’s a seminal point in your journey. It’s akin to walking through a door into a new world. A world in which you alone control your destiny. You have crossed a threshold; you are…
I recently had an opportunity to go through a upset recovery course and while I learned a lot that I’ll be sharing, one of the the things that strikes me is how many folks don’t know the fundamental difference between a slip and a skid. I admit that my own perfunctory knowledge was just…
Author Jon Vitt had done an extraordinary thing. He has written a book that literally takes you through every step of his journey to becoming a Private Pilot. You might read a lot of very clinic explanations of how you learn to fly, but this account takes you inside the process in a step-by-step walk…
Ok we say we want to grow the industry, but do we really? I feel like there are plenty among us who could care less. Maybe if you stopped and asked them directly they wouldn’t be so callous, but their actions elucidate their mentality. If you are the ones among us that are active in…
Pilots don’t agree on much, but if you were to ask what are the scariest things that could potentially occur in an airplane you will almost universally get this answer: Fire, Structural Failure, and Midair (in no particular order). Not that we sit around trembling in fear of such things, but when the thought wafts…
When the group was deciding on a theme for this month’s Blogging in Formation series (#blogformation), we agreed to anchor it around July 4th (U.S. Independence Day). We settled on The Future of Aviation in the U.S., but we encouraged each other to explore the edges, good or bad, as we saw fit. We Are The…
The concept of Situational Awareness (SA), goes back as far as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, but where it really starts to show up in America is in the military, during WWI. For most of us, Situational Awareness was attached to human factors work being conducted in the 1990s, and it is still pervasive today…
If you frequent this website, you might have noticed that the cadence that I post articles has slowed over the last month or so. That is because I’m working on a couple of side projects. The first one I would like to tell you about is called FIXEDWINGBUDDHA.COM Unusual name right? The theme of the…
I penned an article for General Aviation News this week about a Human Factors condition known as Plan Continuation Bias, we know it as “get-there-itis.” I thought folks that come here would enjoy it as well. Without giving it away, I will say that this human condition is in all of us and I have…