If you read Part 1 you’ll know I was reveling in my successful freight run from Ohio down to the panhandle of Florida. The cargo happened to be my 18 year old son who was heading down to the Spring Break ravaged town of Panama City and a week of frolicking among other like-minded, hormone-encrusted,…
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…
This is my humble contribution to the blogging in formation series. For this month’s #blogformation post, Cap ‘n Aux astutely chose “my most instructional moment” as the theme. I had to think about this one for a few minutes. As a former instructor I feel like I could choose between either side of the coin –…
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…
This is my humble contribution to the blogging in formation series. If you had one wish for aviation what would it be? Make it: safer, more mainstream, less expensive, more accessible, increasingly social, more desirable, etc.? In a nutshell, my one wish would be to make it less expensive, of course many of your would…
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…
In this environment of security theatre, many folks are very attune to all of the surveillance we are under, but you might need to consider the equipment you have on the airplane you fly that is also watching you. All of the popular glass cockpit EFIS systems that I’m familiar with keep data on all…
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…