Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2025 i Flying

WHY DO we fly? It’s a question that never gets old and has so many compelling answers. Some of us fly for the sheer beauty and unique perspective from above. We truly enjoy just being in the air. Others earned our pilot certificates for the sense of accomplishment that comes with mastering a complex skill. We fly to travel efficiently from Point A to Point B, to experience new destinations, and to visit friends and family. We love the aviation community, embracing the camaraderie of those with a shared passion. For many, flying is a rewarding job with a paycheck. Most of us fly because we can’t imagine not flying. We fly simply because we can. My own pilot journey began with an irresistible pull. I just wanted to fly.…

TWO GENERAL aviation pilots get into an airplane… It sounds like the opening to a joke, but it’s not—and you shouldn’t treat it like one. Sharing time in an aircraft with another pilot is much more complicated than jumping in the car for a short hop. The first time you exercise your pilot-in-command (PIC) privileges flying with a pilot who is not your flight instructor or a Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) it can be an eye-opener—especially when the person you are flying with is a certificated pilot of equal or more experience. This may be your first experience with that crew structure. Are you comfortable asking the other pilot to do things like return a radio call or challenge and respond with a checklist? Would you be comfortable with them…

PILOTS KNOW well the emphasis on checklists, procedures, and best practices. These are things that deliver positive results to keep us working safely and efficiently. But sometimes the most critical lessons come from understanding what actions to avoid. In aviation, a single poor decision can cascade into a dangerous situation with great speed. So we’re going to flip the script and explore some things not to do in regard to aviation weather—those habits, misconceptions, and mistakes that lead down a long path that could end with a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report. I hope that by covering these negative aspects of aviation meteorology we can all build a more comprehensive safety net for ourselves and learn some interesting concepts in the process. Overconfidence I used to be a storm…

48.2766° N, 116.5535° W LOCATED JUST 60 MILES FROM the Canadian border, Sandpoint, Idaho, is a destination worthy of aviators’ praise. No matter the time of year that you visit the lakeside mountain town of less than 10,000 residents, there is something noteworthy to do outdoors. The town’s most acclaimed feature is the nearly 150-square-mile body of water, Lake Pend Oreille, which is in view of three mountain ranges. The lake bottoms out at 1,158 feet, and a handful of its surrounding peaks rise as high as 7,000 feet. These varied geographic formations are the reason why the area is so highly regarded for hiking, boating, fishing, skiing, and more. The biggest commercial draw to the area is Schweitzer Mountain Resort, which boasts 2,900 acres of skiable area and hosts…

THE OLD FAA Practical Test Standards (PTS)—now superseded by the Airman Certification Standards (ACS)—included a statement in its notes to examiners that was the guiding philosophy of whether a candidate performed well enough to pass a practical test: The candidate for a pilot certificate or rating “must demonstrate mastery of the aircraft, with the successful outcome of each task never seriously in doubt.” It’s a subjective judgment applied to an objective evaluation. Not only did the pilot fly a task within the “pass” criteria, they did so in a way that showed the examiner it was not a fluke, and the candidate could do it again and again. I’ve taken the pursuit of mastery as my lifelong goal for flying and teaching in airplanes. The ACS were designed to remove…

THIS IS not the kind of column I enjoy writing, but it’s important information, so struggle through it with me. Life was ever so much simpler in the old days. Recently, I fished out an early logbook and found my CFI check ride signed off in 1966 by a wonderful guy—an inspector in the Cincinnati General Aviation District Office named Fred Martin. And we did it in 1.3 hours including the landing or two you always offered to the inspector at the end of the ride. That check ride with “Red Fred” was actually a lot of fun. The oral portion had been accomplished the day before by another inspector who simply handed me a sheet of questions and said we’d meet after lunch to discuss my answers. After we…

THE INCIDENT occurred in November 2023 during Florida’s hurricane season, a time known for storms and heavy rain that can last days or even weeks. After a week of rain, our flight school resumed operations. As a Part 141 school, we follow comprehensive safety practices and procedures manual for how pilots must conduct preflight checks. These emphasize the importance of following checklists and carefully reviewing the aircraft’s POH. As the assistant chief instructor with around 1,500 hours of dual instruction and several years of experience, I was well aware not just of our school’s specific procedures but also of general Part 91 operations in GA. Following the rains, a flight instructor candidate and I had an early morning flight scheduled at around 7 a.m. in a Cessna 152. The weather…

A TYPICAL aircraft spark-ignition engine isn’t at all like the one powering the vehicle you drove to the airport. Unless, maybe, you drove a vintage tractor or motorcycle. There are so many differences, listing them here would take up lots of space, and we only want to focus on what pilots can do and learn about their magnetos from the cockpit. As we should know from ground school, the magnetos use energy from the operating engine to create electricity. By rotating an armature near a magnet and then sending the resulting energy into a secondary coil, high-voltage electricity is created. The mags, in turn, are connected by a wiring harness to the spark plugs, usually two of which are in each cylinder. One reason we have two magnetos and two…

IN 2011, I glimpsed the future, when I first saw an electric airplane fly at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Fourteen years later, I’ve finally flown an electric airplane for the first time. It’s the Bristell B23 Energic, which is now touring in the U.S. giving demonstration flights. The airplane that flew at AirVenture was a twin-engine, experimental Lazair ultralight designed by Dale Kramer. Kramer removed the two gas engines and replaced them with electric motors. He opened the wings to show me that he had loaded them with perhaps a hundred or more lithium polymer (LiPo) batteries that were connected together to power the two electric motors. I was surprised to learn that the batteries were the same ones sold to power remote-control airplanes. Total capacity of the batteries was…

THE LAST five years have been a wild ride in the airline industry. We went from a healthy job market in 2019 to the apparent cataclysm of COVID-19—coming within a hair’s breadth of mass layoffs—to the abrupt recovery of 2021, the airlines’ belated realization that they had trimmed too much, and a veritable blowout of pilot hiring in 2022-24. For three years the major airlines grabbed up new hires at staggering rates, regional and low cost carriers struggled to fill classes and retain first officers, and both corporate flight departments and the military struggled with attrition as the word got out about that greener grass just over the fence. The ripples traveled far and wide. Pay went up for most everybody, hiring requirements plummeted, and a fair number of lucky…

DOES THAT APR, or approach mode key, on your autopilot somehow activate a GPS receiver so it can fly an approach? The answer is no, it doesn’t. And if you’re confused about that, you’re not alone. And is there something in a GPS receiver that must be “activated” at some point before one can fly an approach? Again, the answer is no. You can fly any instrument approach, either via pilot navigation or vectors and never have to “activate the approach.” Yet, I often hear pilots say, “Now I have to activate the approach,” when in fact their GPS is already set up correctly for the approach. What they often do at that point, in a glass cockpit aircraft with Garmin avionics, is push the “PROC” key and choose “ACTIVATE…

ELECTRIC AIRCRAFT offer a simple proposition: decarbonization, a goal for airlines and operators large and small worldwide. Given the energy density limitations of today’s aviation batteries, zero-emission flight is expected to come at the expense of range and capacity. But according to Daniel Rosen Jacobson, cofounder, co-CEO, and chief business officer of Elysian Aviation, it doesn’t have to be that way. “Because of the weight of the battery and the low energy density of batteries, what you need to do is actually build a bigger plane,” Jacobson told FLYING at the Paris Air Show in June. Most electric models are destined for short-hop flights and a handful of passengers. Think electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxis like Archer Aviation’s Midnight or Joby Aviation’s S4, both intended for a…

I LEARNED to fly helicopters long ago, in a Bell 47, the little bugheaded two-seater familiar to viewers of M*A*S*H. Once I had the rating I seldom flew them again. I did visit the nearby Robinson Helicopters factory from time to time, however, and the amiable Frank Robinson would send one of his pilots up with me to scuff some of the thick rust off my skills. On one occasion Robinson himself flew with me in an R22, and I remember his telling me that fixed-wing pilots transitioning into helicopters faced a special hazard because their instinctive reaction in certain circumstances, like suddenly noticing traffic on a collision course, was to pitch down. Pitching down was fine in an airplane but could have disastrous effects in a helicopter. When my…

“I remember when the ramp was covered with them.” These wistful words were spoken by an elderly gentleman as he sat on his motorized scooter in front of a P-51 on display at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The year was 2004. The man was in his 80s and was accompanied by his adult children and grandchildren who wanted to see the airplane “Pop-Pop” flew when he was 19 years old and a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps. Thousands of aircraft were built for World War II, designed for combat and transport, and simply not created to last 80-plus years, which is part of the reason they are so rare. The other reason is that when the war ended, the majority of the aircraft were destroyed and the…

THE AVIATION CONSUMER IN THE world of general aviation, not many light aircraft can claim to have a genuine military pedigree, although a few have been spiffed up to look like warbirds. One of the few non-pretenders is the Navion, introduced by North American Aviation in 1946 and intended to capitalize on what everyone assumed would be a postwar flying boom. With its rakish sliding turtle-shell canopy, tall stalky gear, and P-51-style tail, the four-seat retractable came from the same stable as the Mustang, whose production ended at the close of World War II. True to its heritage, the Navion (pronounced NAVY-on) did find a niche in military aviation as a liaison ride, and many are still painted in military livery. Although it came from the same company as the…

THE MAJORITY of musings in this column involve experiences and airline-relatable topics. Not often are specific products discussed. But when Green Taxi Solutions appeared on the radar, it was hard to resist a system that has the potential to be a game changer. When the installations begin, airline pilots will have to adjust not only their aircraft operation but their mindset. The system is designed to taxi the airplane without use of engine power. The APU will electrically employ a motor connected to one wheel hub of the main gear. A control box, ergonomically located most likely in the center pedestal of the cockpit, will be operated by a pilot. Steering and braking will be controlled in the same manner as is currently performed via a tiller, rudder pedals, and…

FALL 1903 was a fateful season. Its closing days would anoint a pair of obscure bicycle shop owners named Wright kings of flight, and would reduce Samuel Pierpont Langley, the head of the Smithsonian Institution and an esteemed physicist and astronomer, to a status somewhat below that of court jester. Today, no account of comically mis-guided attempts at manned flight omits the ignominious plunge of Langley’s Great Aerodrome into the Potomac. Unfortunately immortalized on film, it is invariably sandwiched among short clips of inept ornithopters, venetian-blind wings, and people setting their pants on fire while attempting to fly on rocket-propelled bicycles. By his own account, Langley had already been thinking about flight for a long time before 1889, when he began performing practical experiments to determine how much power was required…