Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2018 i Flying

When we polled readers on social media about which of five nominees they thought should win this year’s Flying Innovation Award, the response was nearly unanimous. In fact, not only did our audience predict we would bestow this year’s award on Cirrus for the SF50 Vision Jet, readers told us we’d be crazy if we gave it to anyone else. So much for feigned suspense. Congratulations, Cirrus, for taking home the Innovation Award trophy in late July. We announced the selection at the annual Flying party at Oshkosh, where it must have seemed like a bit of a fait accompli even to those who were there. The prize is but one in a long list of accolades for the little jet that could, and I was personally honored to be…

The phrase “armed and dangerous” is an idiom I apply to a pilot with hazardous attitudes such as anti-authority (“don’t tell me”), invulnerability (“it won’t happen to me”) and macho (“I can do it”). These individuals fly by their rules in unpredictable and potentially dangerous ways, disregard established flight-safety practices, seem unconcerned for their own safety and that of others and appear a step away from an accident. The following flight involved such a pilot whose airplane nearly collided with the airplane I was flying as a flight instructor in the traffic pattern at a nontowered airport. Before the near midair collision, I did not fully consider a series of red flags from the pilot and assumed he would fly a normal traffic pattern. My flight student and I performed…

There was a lot of blood in the water as we flew over the bowhead whale being harvested for the sustenance of the native Inupiat community of Barrow, Alaska. It was a thought-provoking and broadening experience of the type we found we were having regularly after we began flying our own airplane for transportation. Personal flying means different things to different people. But for nearly everyone, flying represents a profound expression of freedom. It gives us the ability to leave the earth, take command of the third dimension and explore our world from above for experiences like we had in Barrow. For Martha and me, using our airplanes as our vehicles for personal transportation has allowed us to extend that freedom even further. With our own airplane we have the…

I have been thinking about some fascinating but challenging situations — events you hope never to encounter that involve decisions and require reactions to life-or-death consequences. “When to give up,” a decision not naturally part of most pilots’ DNA, has been rattling around in my brain for a long time, so here goes. Two events that occurred years ago — takeoff accidents — had a profound impact on me, although the first happened to my (then) future husband when I was 6 years old. The second involved an acquaintance, an older man I knew when I had a flying school at Lunken Airport, and while I didn’t actually witness the crash, I was close — too close — to the scene. After Ebby had nearly finalized the sale of his…

It wasn’t long after takeoff that I noticed that my ammeter showed a steady discharge of 3 or 4 amps. The ammeter reads charging current going to the battery, and so it ought to show 10 or 15 amps at first, gradually diminishing as the battery regains the energy it expended during start-up and taxi. The system voltage was steady at 24 — not the 28 it should have been. Maybe a voltage regulator problem? I tried switching the hydraulic pump, which draws a lot of power, on and off, and then toggled the master switch, hoping to jolt the system back to life. Nothing. Luckily, this did not happen at night in IMC, although that would have made a better story. It was a cloudless June day, and I…

ANOTHER DAY I was struck by June’s ILAFFT, in which an instructor allows a low-time pilot to mush into a New Jersey grass strip saturated with winter snow melt and then decides to take over and fly the airplane out of the short airstrip to keep from getting stuck. I have made some decisions with students over the years that, on second thought, probably should have been done differently. In this case, an experienced CFI demonstrated an initial failure in his decision process and continued in a failed chain to an outcome that certainly left both pilots shaken and probably caused the pilot receiving instruction to question whether to fly with this instructor again. It is tempting for CFIs to sometimes push the envelope for their students in hopes of…

The pilot, flying solo in a T-28A Trojan — a 1950s Air Force trainer with a gross weight of 8,500 pounds and a 1,425 hp radial engine — took off on a July afternoon from Runway 31 at Hector International (FAR) at Fargo, North Dakota. He was bound for Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, about 35 miles to the southeast. The T-28 turned to a left crosswind, climbed to 900 feet agl and accelerated to 160 knots. According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s report, the pilot then told Fargo Departure Control that he was going to land at Moorhead Municipal (JKJ), which is about 9 miles southeast of FAR. Perhaps there was something in his tone of voice that suggested a problem; the controller asked whether he needed any assistance. The…

Summer, glorious summer! It snuck right up on me. Sailing the relentlessly sunny Caribbean for seven months aboard Windbird, the pageantry of northern seasons played out distantly across the flickering screens of muted beach-bar TVs: Halloween horror flicks, cable news Snowmageddons, Yankees-Red Sox at Fenway Park. So when Dawn and I hurricane-prepped and hauled Windbird at a Puerto Rican boatyard in June and flew home to Minnesota, our abrupt return to the land of seasons caught me a little flat-footed. Having survived the long winter we elected to skip, friends and family were excitedly shaking off their winter doldrums and basking in the golden euphoria of a freshly blossomed summer. The enthusiasm was infectious, and I quickly established my summer agenda. To wit, in ascending order of importance: return to…

STOP by your favorite general aviation airport and you are likely to find pilots in a spirited discussion, defending the merits of low-wing versus high-wing airplanes, or north-up versus track-up on a moving-map display. It didn’t take long after the Wright brothers’ first flight for pilots to form strong opinions in aviation, and today you won’t find a more hotly debated topic than which iPad app is best for pilots: ForeFlight Mobile or Garmin Pilot. Aviation-app developers have come and gone since the iPad was released in 2010, and there are just a handful of single-solution apps used by pilots today, with ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot at the top of that list. The mission of both apps has also grown from electronic chart display to full flight planning and substituting…

As we taxied in, Roland, whom I’ve known for 35 years, marshaled us slowly, almost solemnly, with a look of anguish on his countenance. It was immediately clear that things were worse than I thought. He pointed his orange wand at the right wing and shook his head. I knew we had hit a bird. I knew it hit the right wing. I had hoped (dopey hope, in retrospect) that there would be some entrails to clean off the leading edge and maybe a small dent that would require repair. I shut the engines down and we clambered out of the Premier, all six of us. “I just got a call from the Audubon Society,” joked Roland. I was not disposed toward laughter. It was worse than I thought. There…

ForeFlight’s Sentry portable ADS-B receiver was the talk of Oshkosh after the product, developed in partnership with uAvionix, made its debut at AirVenture in July. A sister product to the Scout portable, Sentry adds a whole slew of additional features that can be accessed through the ForeFlight Mobile iPad app while also upping the price. For $499, buyers get quite a lot for their money. The Sentry is a 2.2-inch-by-3.3-inch-by-1.4-inch receiver that weighs 119 grams and includes dual ADS-B antennas optimized for 978 MHz and 1090 MHz frequencies and WAAS GPS receiver. It gives pilots access to FIS-B weather, flight information, traffic and a backup attitude display. In addition, Sentry provides a carbon monoxide monitor and alarm, offers a 12-hour battery life and comes equipped with a high-capacity data card…

Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL) now holds the title of “that fantastic little airport by the lake,” a slogan once reserved for the now-defunct Chicago Meigs Field (CGX). BKL gets lots of use by corporate and private aircraft by offering easy access to downtown Cleveland, the football stadium, the aquarium and, of course, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Sitting downwind from Lake Erie, BKL is a regular target for fog and lake-effect snow, weather that demands an instrument approach. While BKL is equipped with parallel runways, the airport offers only two approaches, an ILS and an RNAV GPS, both to Runway 24. With that knowledge, here are a few key points to note when considering the use of the RNAV GPS approach to Runway 24R. A. CIRCLE TO…

While the layout and user interface of these apps couldn’t be more different, you’ll quickly find after spending some time with both apps that they offer the same core capabilities. Trip planning Airport/FBO data, preflight weather briefing, aircraft performance profiles, electronic nav log, Flight Service weather briefing, weather imagery, ICAO flight-plan support Charts FAA VFR sectionals and TACs, IFR high- and low-altitude en route charts, terminal procedures, worldwide Jeppesen VFR/IFR en route and terminal procedures In-flight navigation Digital flight instruments, synthetic vision, GPS-driven moving maps with geo-referenced charts and terrain awareness Connectivity ADS-B weather, SiriusXM satellite weather and entertainment, integration with Garmin panel-mount avionics Digital assistant Weight and balance, logbook, aircraft checklists, track logging and scratchpad What you’ll find after using either app is that they really are a one-stop…

The focus of my 34-year career with the airlines has always been passenger safety and comfort. But on this particular flight to London, the focus went to the dogs. My copilot, Steve, and I were the links in a safety chain that prevented the early demise of one beloved collie. Unbeknownst to its owner, the animal became very expensive to the airline, but not quite as expensive had it become a statistic. All of us in the business of professional flying understand the safety chain. Breaking or weakening even one link can define the outcome of a flight. For an airline pilot, or any safety-conscious aviator, maintaining the strength of the links begins before the flight leaves the ground. In that regard, the FAA mandates air carriers develop a defined…