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…
The question of what we can do personally to be better at our craft is something that I don’t feel we ask often enough. For me, it usually takes a couple of well placed screw-ups to rattle my cage and make me think introspectively about my flying. These weren’t metal-bending events, but rather instances where…
Having flown some formation in my youth, I was familiar with the addictive nature of this kind of flying. Back then I was a mixture of self-trained (read: SCARY and NOT RECOMMENDED) and loosely instructed. My “training” was from a grizzled Vietnam-era F-4 jock. He was in a Pitts and I was in a 2/3rd scale composite…
This post may sound like it is targeted at folks in training, but it really applies to all of us. It assumes that we are all “students” in some form or fashion. Let me explain. You see it doesn’t matter if you are a 787 driver with decades of experience and you flew F-15s prior…
I wrote a recent article for AirFactsJournal.com that highlights what I feel is the larger issue around light aircraft safety. It has very little to do with inadequate training or marginal equipment or antiquated regulations. I think the current training programs are fine (could always be better), the equipment very safe, and our FARs exist…
One of the cooler things about flying is the ability to seek out and accomplish tangible goals. I don’t know about you, but I like having goals that I can strive for. I think that’s why sports are so popular, because you always have something to shoot for. As adults, many of our hobbies take…
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…
We are going to explore a few commonsense ways to stay out of trouble out there. The headline is a bit of a “grabber”, the point remains that flying is unforgiving. It can be extremely safe, but we can’t take that for granted. Keep flying the airplane. This is a huge issue. Flying in this…
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…
Flying As Art I sometimes like to refer to flying as a form of art. In fact, I’m not alone in the sentiment; many have written beautifully about our craft. Frankly I love the analogy. It allows your imagination to take over. You might visualize the sky as a canvas and your airplane as the…