Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2018 i Flying

It’s safe to say that on the other side of this expansive room inside the Beverly Hilton, the plight of general aviation barely registers on the radar of the airline cognoscenti. I was seated, in a rented tux, at a table next to Harrison Ford. He’d invited me to this gala event, the annual Living Legends of Aviation Awards in Beverly Hills, and asked me to join a steering committee to help him select the recipient of the Harrison Ford Legacy in Aviation Award, which recognizes the contributions of those in general aviation who are making a real difference to assist our segment of aviation. Harrison had already selected this year’s winner, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, who has done more than anyone in Congress on that score. When I met…

There’s something to be said for simplicity when teaching people to fly or merely checking out in a new aircraft. Simplicity was Cirrus’ motivation behind this month’s feature, the combined throttle and propeller control that’s standard on both the Cirrus SR20 and SR22. In complex aircraft, a throttle controls engine acceleration, while a separate blue propeller lever adjusts the pitch of the propeller through a propeller governor. Together, they create a given power setting, and that’s how, in the Cirrus, the old throttle control came to be known as a power lever. On their first glance into the cockpit of a Cirrus, some pilots might think the single black leather-wrapped handle on the throttle quadrant is connected to a turbine engine because there’s no blue propeller control knob nearby. The…

The sun is shining and the fish are calling, but it’s online catch-up day on Windbird. We spent the past week at beautiful, isolated Conception Island, Bahamas: No people, no internet — it was heaven on earth. The news headlines that greeted Dawn and me upon our return made us wish we’d stayed a little longer, but at least my current task of responding to reader email is a pleasant one. This often includes correspondence from prospective professional pilots, and today there are two such inquiries in my inbox. One is from a 42-year-old private pilot and potential career-changer, and the other from a young woman in her junior year at my alma mater, the University of North Dakota. They both want my take on the regional airline industry today,…

Last Thanksgiving, instead of wrestling with turkeys and relatives (not necessarily in that order or degree of difficulty), I fibbed and told my family I’d be out of town. Actually, I’d accepted an invitation from friends who always throw a splendid “do” with a large and eclectic collection of family, friends and assorted “homeless” souls like me. The feast is awesome, with all manner of libations, preprandial munchies, boned and roasted turkeys (Try talking your Kroger butcher into doing that!), both sweet and cured country hams, loads of sides and salads and far too many decadent desserts. My contribution? A “mess” of ham hocks and butter beans. OK, it’s a little off the wall, but the hostess told me her mother always said lima beans were a Thanksgiving essential and…

My mother, who fortified herself for any aerial voyage with either Miltown or Chivas Regal, would later revisit with perverse relish each “air pocket” the plane had encountered. I’m not sure what she believed an air pocket consisted of, but I suppose it was something like the “region of low pressure causing an aircraft to lose altitude suddenly” that you still find if you Google the phrase today. You would not suppose that awareness of air pockets could much precede the Wrights, but in fact, the earliest reference I have encountered is in a biography of the Roman general and statesman Titus Quinctius Flamininus, who in 197 B.C. liberated a number of Greek city-states from Macedonian control. Writing some 250 years after the event, the author, Plutarch, describes how a…

RELEVANT DISCUSSION: AC 20-140C, AC 90-117, AIM 4-5-10 1. Satcom Satellite communication system — Aeronautical mobile satellite service developed as a primary communications link for remote areas and oceanic airspace. Satcom supports voice and data transmissions but is sometimes prone to long transfer delays. 2. ACARS Airborne communications addressing and reporting system — Air/ground datalink is the standard for ACARS, which has been in use by the airlines for decades. ACARS is used to track aircraft and aircrew flight and block times, cockpit-to-dispatcher digital communications, weather, weight and balance, performance data and so on. ACARS is increasingly being replaced by satcom. 3. FANS 1/A (Future Air Navigation System 1/A) A NextGen component designed to reduce verbal communication between pilots and ATC because frequency congestion and heavy accents often hinder…

As a newly minted flight instructor in 2002, I thought I knew it all. I could recite regulations from Part 61 and 91 from memory and anticipate my students’ mistakes before they happened. I felt like my stick-and-rudder skills were at their peak, having just wrapped up the maneuvers training for the commercial pilot certificate a month earlier. At that time, a pilot needed 3,500-plus hours to be considered for a first officer position at a regional airline, so that was out of the question. Fortunately, an opportunity arose to fly right seat in a Piper Cheyenne II turboprop with an experienced corporate pilot for a few trips each month. Finally! I was ready for some real flying while also gaining multiengine experience. After a few hours of basic ground…

In July 1999, we departed Norfolk, Virginia (KORF) and headed northeast out over the Chesapeake Bay. It was a hazy day. The sky and the water were the same washed-out blue gray; there was no discernible horizon. I was flying our Cessna 340, my first twin. I’m guessing by that time I had about 2,500 hours of flying experience. The weather surprised me. I fought hard to trust the instruments. I had not been prepared for IFR flight. It was just hazy, that’s all. My thoughts immediately turned to the recent crash of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s airplane. He must have had the same feeling, but he had less experience and it was dark. And he was a Kennedy. Fifteen years later, I was headed to Pittsburgh (KPIT) in the…

LIMITED-EDITION 99MG Designed with aviators firmly in mind, Alpina’s Startimer Pilot Automatic wristwatch offers a simple, elegant package that also serves to recognize a famous pilot. The analog-style watch includes hour, minute and second hands and a date window at the 3 o’clock position. The dark-blue dial includes applied silver indexes and white luminous indexes. The automatic movement provides a 38-hour power reserve, and the scratch-resistant sapphire crystal offers water resistance to 330 feet. The Swiss watchmaker is offering its limited-edition Startimer Pilot honoring Alpina’s brand ambassador, Red Bull Air Race and airshow pilot Michael Goulian. The 99MG Startimer Pilot Michael Goulian Team Special is named for Goulian’s initials and race number, 99. Along with the 99MG name, Goulian’s signature is engraved on the back of the titanium-colored stainless-steel case.…

Sitting just a few miles north of the Tennessee-Georgia state line, Chattanooga’s Lovell Field (CHA) saw nearly 60,000 takeoffs and landings last year, with the Tracon workload hovering near 90,000 aircraft, nearly 50,000 of which operated into the airport on an IFR flight plan. Chattanooga’s airport elevation is less than 1,000 feet, but a glance at the minimum sector altitude within 25 nm of the Choo Choo VOR (cue the music, Chattanooga choo choo …) hovers at an eye-opening 5,400 feet when approaching from the east. That means you’d better be on the lookout for some rather tall obstacles out east, as in radio and TV towers. A few mountain peaks within the Nantahala National Forest rise to nearly 6,000 feet. While the Chattanooga ILS or LOC Runway 2 approach…

PRESUMABLY BECAUSE OF ITS CONVENIENT LOCATION, IT WAS TO BUSY WILLIAM P. HOBBY, OF THE 15 AIRPORTS IN THE HOUSTON AREA, THAT A CIRRUS SR20 FLEW FROM NORMAN, OKLAHOMA, ON A JUNE DAY in 2016. The private pilot, 46, her husband and her brother-in-law were going to visit a relative who was receiving cancer treatment at a Houston hospital. They arrived early in the afternoon. The wind was out of the east at 12 to 15 knots. The airport was busy, with a string of jets, mostly Southwest 737s, on the approach to Runway 4. Approach control sequenced the Cirrus for a left base entry to the Runway 4 pattern, following a 737 on a 4-mile final, and issued the customary warning about wake turbulence. Handed off to the local controller,…

A QUALITY HEADSET IS ONE OF THE MOST important pieces of gear any pilot will own. And in the confines of a noisy piston, turboprop or helicopter cockpit, there’s really no excuse for skimping by choosing a headset lacking active noise-cancellation technology. Many of the top ANR headsets also have built-in Bluetooth capability, allowing users to pair the headset with a phone or their favorite audio. And of course, not all headsets are created equal in the all-important categories of durability and comfort, but these are all solid choices in those areas as well. It’s not surprising that our three favorite headset brands — Bose, David Clark and Lightspeed — are also the industry’s best selling. Headsets from these manufacturers tend to be on the higher end of the pricing…