Don’t wait on your dreams! Recently I got a disturbing call from a good friend of mine. He was diagnosed with a disease that will forever clip his wings. This is a life-long aviator in his late 40s. This really punctuates the need to not wait on your dreams. My friend has had a fantastic…
This is a fictious story of an average middle-aged guy with a family that also has an affliction – it’s called flying. NOTE: This could be anyone. Jack is a loving family man. His wife and two kids mean everything to him. But now in his 40s, life is starting to provide more opportunities to…
Last week I decided that a free ebook on how to be a pilot was something I wanted to tackle. I realized that we often lament on the many barriers to becoming a pilot, but we ignore one of the most fundamental challenges – just figuring out how to get started. The ebook, which I…
You’ve lost your engine, now what? What to do in the case of an engine failure? As aviators we know our airplanes are very capable of flying with an engine failure. You will obviously be descending, some airplanes faster than others, but it still flies just fine. What will you do if this fateful day…
Teaching myself aerobatics: Don’t try this at home! Disclaimer: this post is for entertainment only. I do not recommend anyone using the concepts or techniques employed here by the author. Dateline 1992. I was a starving flight instructor flogging my way to a logbook full of flight time in hopes of moving on to the…
Airshow Performer Duane Cole When I was growing up, one of the best known aerobatic pilots was Duane Cole. It wasn’t because Duane flew a fire-breathing monoplane or did countless snap-rolls on his down lines; Duane was popular because he was an entertainer. He campaigned a modified Taylorcraft for most of his career, which spanned…
Reckless Flying With all the emphasis on GA’s accident record, especially the experimental segment, I wanted to discuss “reckless” flying – I put reckless in quotes because it means different things to different people. Merriam-Webster defines reckless as: marked by a lack of proper caution : careless of consequences. In my opinion, that definition appropriately…
Lean times I have been trying to come to grips with proper leaning of my Lycoming IO-360-A1A. It has the stock Bendix injection system and 10:1 pistons so it’s not a standard setup (due to the high compressions pistons). Unlike many of you, I have only recently learned that I should be aggressively leaning on…
Risk vs Reward: GO/NO GO decision-making Every single flight you take is laden with decisions. Most of them are accounted for in regulatory guidance, operating procedures, training, or just common sense. One decision that makes the rest of these decisions go away and stops the error chain is one of the hardest to make –…
Getting an Instrument Rating: Perspective One of the guys asked about getting his instrument rating recently, so I provided some guidance that I thought I would share with the rest of you. This is not an all-encompassing treatise on getting your instrument ticket, but it does include some things to think about before embarking on…