Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2024 i Flying

Wright-Patt Flying Club Martha [Lunken], I enjoyed your article on the demise of the Wright-Patterson Aero Club [FLY-ING Issue 939]. I was support group commander and deputy support group commander (formerly called base commander) at two different bases. (McClellan AFB, Sacramento [California]; and Dover AFB, Delaware). Both had aero clubs when I was commander. I am a pilot and big fan of aero clubs. I was very sorry to hear that Wright-Patt closed [its] club. I think the Quantico Marine Corps base aero club was also closed. (I instructed there while at the Pentagon). It seems base commanders (often not pilots) now don’t want aero clubs on their bases. Lieutenant Colonel Dixie Sloan was nominated for the Distinguished Service Cross (the second-highest combat decoration) but never awarded. He was awarded…

The complexity of the instrument panel has served either to intrigue or intimidate potential pilots. Having been the former kind, I’ve had trouble putting myself in the latter’s point of view. But with ever-advancing avionics and capabilities, I admit it can be tough even for the seasoned ones among us to keep up. That’s why the fresh approach Cirrus took to its next model in the SR series makes a lot of sense. And for new pilots—and this pilot who flies Cirrus aircraft sporadically—as opposed to a seasoned owner or dedicated Cirrus instructor, the barrier to entry and re-entry has fallen significantly. Though it’s not as overtly revolutionary as the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) or Safe Return enabled by Garmin Autoland on Cirrus’ SF50 Vision Jet, the reimagined flight…

Over the last 25 years, I have been asked to speak on various aviation weather topics at dozens of aviation events and gatherings. During these events, it’s quite common for a pilot to walk up and ask me about how I handled my most challenging flight as it relates to weather. Maybe they were expecting to hear something juicy; I don’t know. While I don’t want to disappoint them about a harrowing recount of one of my prior flights, my response is usually the same. I don’t have such a story since I am always diligent about minimizing my exposure to adverse weather when I am the pilot in command (PIC). However, I do have one story that is worth telling. I was not PIC, nor acting as an authorized…

BY THE TIME you read this, the strange case of the Alaska Airlines jumpseating pilot who attempted to shut down the engines of a Horizon Air Embraer 175 midflight may have faded from the headlines, but I suspect the impact will last much longer. Most certainly you still remember it—particularly for the salacious detail that said pilot had partaken in psychedelic mushrooms 40-some hours before his ill-timed psychotic episode. Already, “Had any ’shrooms lately, cap’n?” has supplanted the long-standing “Been drinking lately, cap’n?” as moronic joke of choice among our more comedically impaired passengers. For much of our empathy-deficient, terminally online general public, a sad case of crumbling mental health that destroyed a family man’s life is little more than darkly humorous grist for the dank meme mills. To those of…

ONE OF THE MOST challenging parts of being a flight instructor is making the time for your own flying, such as when you need a flight review. It may seem odd that someone who flies for a living needs to demonstrate proficiency every two years, but those are the rules, with a few exceptions, such as completing a phase of the FAA Wings program or adding a new certificate or rating. Don’t just aim to satisfy the minimum requirements—make the time spent worth something. Anatomy of a Flight Review According to FAR 61.56, the flight review consists of a minimum of an hour of ground instruction, including a review of the current general operating and flight rules of Part 91, and one hour of flight with a “review of those…

THE CIRRUS SR series has seen quite a lot of evolution since we first flew it for features in FLYING, beginning in 1995 with the SR20 prototype. Then-editor-in-chief J. Mac McClellan flew the airplane just before EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh that summer, and he gave his first impressions. “The stability in all axes is good,” he wrote in his column, Left Seat, in the October 1995 issue. “Roll rates appear to be about 30 to 40 degrees per second, and it was easy to stop the bank on target with no tendency to overshoot.” Fast-forward to 2017, and EIC Stephen Pope flew the SR22 G6, enjoying the development of the airplane into a serious cross-country machine. “That’s what an airplane like the SR22 does best—offers up amazing experiences that enrich…

ON A WARM DAY in late spring, four professional helicopter pilots rented a Cirrus SR20 in North Las Vegas, Nevada, for a fishing trip to Bryce Canyon, Utah. Of the four, only one had an airplane rating. After taking off from North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT) and flying 60 miles, they landed at Mesquite, Nevada (67L), where they added 10 gallons of fuel. The pilot with the airplane rating, who had flown the first leg, now ceded the left front seat to one of his companions, evidently with the idea of giving him some flight instruction. He moved to the right seat, and they performed several touch-and-gos before continuing toward Bryce Canyon, 105 miles distant. The terrain rises from around 4,000 feet msl near Mesquite to around 7,800 feet at…

Air Force One is perhaps the most recognizable Boeing in the sky, providing lift for the president of the United States and their entourage—and it’s due for replacement. There have been multiple delays, and the aircraft that were supposed to be ready in 2024 are likely several years away. REPLACING A VC-25A In 2015 the Air Force announced plans to replace the pair of Boeing 747-200Bs that have served the president of the United States since 1990 with two Boeing 747-8s. The Air Force designation for the 747-200B is VC-25A, with the “V” denoting a VIP/executive configuration and the “C” standing for cargo. Government officials noted the cost of maintaining the systems on the aging airplanes, coupled with less efficient and environmentally friendly GE-CF6 engines, made their replacement necessary. The…

“Can you accept the visual?” It is not uncommon for air traffic control to pose this question to pilots on IFR flight plans approaching certain airports when the weather is VFR. In daylight, when the visibility is good, the winds calm, and the pilot familiar with the airport—and the approach is a straight in—the visual is no big deal. But throw in weather, fatigue, low light, pilot unfamiliarity, and a circle to land, and it’s a different event. Honeywell Aerospace is trying to mitigate these risks, expanding its navigation database to offer flight management system (FMS) guided visual procedures as a stand-alone option. According to Jim Johnson, senior manager of flight technical services at Honeywell, the visual approaches are created in collaboration with Jeppesen. The instructions for the guided visuals…

FOR MY BIRTHDAY this year my buddies transported my bike down to Alabama for a race weekend at Barber Motorsports Park. That’s Brooklyn to Birmingham. Pulling a trailer, it takes more than 17 hours. I know, as I’ve made the trip more than a few times myself. Drinking interstate coffee, eating caloric garbage, filling the tanks every 300 miles, sleeping fitfully at truck stops when fatigue finally overwhelms you. I chipped in for gas, but they did all the heavy lifting. So, how did I get down there? I’m sure you can guess. New York to Birmingham is about the limit for my Beech Bonanza as far as nonstop flights go. At more than four hours, it’s also the limit for me. At that point, my brain and bladder are…

ON OCTOBER 23, 2023, Horizon Air Flight 2059, departing from Everett, Washington, en route to San Francisco, diverted to Portland, Oregon, because of a bizarre and alarming in-flight emergency. An authorized jumpseat rider, Alaska Airlines captain Joseph Emerson, had reached up to the overhead panel in an attempt to pull both of the Embraer 175’s fire handles. Among other functions, activation of the handles would have resulted in the fuel being cut off from the engines. The Horizon Air pilots’ immediate response to Emerson’s shocking act averted a serious emergency situation. They are to be commended. Conducting a dual engine failure checklist for real is not a walk in the park. The remaining circumstances of Emerson’s exit from the cockpit and into the cabin were a head-scratcher. He admitted to…

ONE OF THE GREATEST values of having a home flight simulator is being able to use it when you only have an hour—or less—of free time. Since you can easily select any two airports within a reasonably short flying distance of one another, sometimes the near-unlimited choice results in decision paralysis, especially after a busy day in the real world. To mitigate that, I chose two short flights that can be accomplished in a normal evening’s flight sim session. My selection criteria was to fly my first flight in New England, between two airports that I flew out of when I was training to complete my private pilot certificate. The second flight was a departure and destination in a part of the world where I had zero experience and no…

IN LIFE AND in the air, things can change in a hurry. Cruising westbound at FL 430 with just more than an hour to the destination, we’re chatting about our groundspeed, which is just tickling 400 knots, the headwinds, and, despite constant rearrangement of the sun visors, the annoying persistence of sun in both our faces. Suddenly, BAM! Stunned, I can’t make out what has happened, but whatever it is, it is catastrophic. The master warning is blaring, and I think I see some flashing lights, but the air is filled with condensation and junk. Sudden catastrophic decompression. We wordlessly execute our memory items. Don oxygen mask, switch to mic oxy mask. With communication established, we go to the emergency descent memory items. Throttles to idle, speed brakes deployed, start…

LET ME TELL you about Michael…at least, I’ll try… but he nearly defies description. Michael was Huck Finn, Mr. Wizard, an Irishman tattooed with a four-leaf clover and Peter Pan to my Wendy. Understand that most of these adventures and shenanigans took place in simpler times when general aviation was free of ADS-B, camera surveillance, complex airspace restrictions, and overzealous FAA inspectors. I’m not sure if GA is really safer these days, but it sure isn’t as much fun. When I was learning to fly during winter 1961-62, there were several ratty-looking AT-6s and Beech 18s tied down in the grass outside the flying school shack. A guy named Michael who owned one of the AT-6s was, I thought, an interesting-looking guy. I’d see him at Mass at Christ the…

IT’S LONG AGO NOW—more than four decades back, during a time when I would fly to Mojave every week in Melmoth to have lunch with Burt Rutan and his then tiny group of employees. From a dilapidated barracks there, RAF, the Rutan Aircraft Factory, sold plans of the novel canard VariEze to amateur builders. RAF started in the pre-digital age, when the tools of the aeronautical engineer were still slide rule and drafting paper. Around 1980, however, Rutan bought an Apple 2 computer. When the salesman asked him whether he would like a second 160 kilobyte floppy disk in addition to the one supplied with the computer, he declined it, saying that he would certainly never fill even the first disk. Some time later he proudly showed me a Corvus…