Charts & Plates

For the 14th year, the U.S. Sport Aviation Expo welcomed visitors to Sebring, Florida, in January, providing respite from the cold for northerners and a chance for prospective buyers to take a demo flight in a Light Sport Aircraft. The show hosted about 100 exhibitors, more than last year, and organizers told AVweb ticket sales also were up. About 60 forums were held, and more than 1,000 youngsters took part in the shows youth education programs. The date for next years event is January 23 to 26.

When asking air traffic controllers about their jobs, you might occasionally get the answer, Best job in the world. Its a demanding, technical career thats both very rewarding and-while not glamorous-carries a certain mystique with the general public.

With each new budget impasse, it seems theres a concerted effort to pass a law divesting ATC from the FAA to turn it over to a private Congressionally-chartered nonprofit corporation. Congressman Bill Shuster (D-PA), the powerful chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee offered two bills, HR 4441 in 2016 and HR 2997 in 2017. Fortunately, neither bill came to a vote because there was insufficient support.

You are planning an IFR flight. Its a route you have flown many times before. You always file direct and most of the time the cooperative controllers give it to you. So you again file direct, toss in a nearby Class B or C as an alternate, and calculate your fuel requirements for a flight to the alternate. Youve met your obligations under 14 CFR 91.167 and 91.169. Or have you?

The first sign of trouble came when the pilots yoke-mounted GPS announced External power lost. Switching to battery. Before the pilot could wrap his head around that, the instrument panel went as dark as the inky night outside. Central Florida is thinly inhabited, offering few ground references. Fighting vertigo but keeping his cool, he knew that his Bonanza was trimmed for straight and level cruise. Using his GPS, he gingerly turned east toward the ocean with well-lit towns and cities hugging the shore, aiming at his home base, Boca Raton airport, KBCT. The engine droned along as if all was right with the world.

Perhaps its a bias from learning to fly in Colorado, but I never think of Pennsylvania as particularly mountainous. Yet mountain-dodging is what jumped to mind looking at the RNAV (GPS) Rwy 12 into Williamsport, PA (KIPT). Approach designers dont toss in a 26-degree turn at the final approach fix for no reason, nor do they allow another 16-degree turn from the final approach course to the runway-unless they have to.

Models like the NAM, RAP, and HRRR are often considered the cutting edge of weather forecasting on supercomputers. Indeed, these are some of the best forecasting innovations of the past 15 years. They are a class of tools called dynamical models, designed to solve conditions in the entire atmosphere across a large forecast zone. Typically a three-dimensional grid is built with a granularity of several miles, and the equations of motion are solved at each gridpoint to provide us with temperature, pressure, moisture, and wind.

In Valdez, Alaska for the annual fly-in and STOL competition, a Lake amphibian (not known for its STOL capability), in town for the fly-in, departed early to beat the weather just before the last round of the competition. Heard on the temporary tower frequency as the competition continued and the Lake departed:

Having been very happily married for a long time, my wife and I partially attribute our success to recognizing each others pet peeves. Examples? She hates it when kitchen cabinets are left half-open or dining chairs arent pushed in, so I ensure that doesnt happen. My home office may appear, well, unkempt, but I know where everything is, so she knows to leave her organizational tendencies at the door. These minor actions and expectations help maintain a healthy, happy household.

General aviation pilots take grief for their spoiled-rich-kid activities. In some cases thats appropriate, but in others it isnt. Last month I briefly mentioned an extended trip my wife and I took in our gratuitously excessive Cessna 340. (Read last months Remarks for context.) I didnt mention that the series of legs we undertook probably couldnt have been accomplished as readily via the airlines.

The Mayo Clinic is now offering a free online BasicMed course for pilots. The course takes about 90 minutes to complete and is followed by an online test. Pilots must submit evidence of having passed a physical exam prior to beginning the course. Once the course is completed, pilots can print a certificate to keep in their logbooks. Certification information is then transmitted to the FAA. The clinic is the second organization, after AOPA, to offer an online BasicMed course. Pilots who choose to fly under the BasicMed rules must take an online course every two years.

Well, I guess you and the FAA will have to spank me. The stabilized approach is just a technique. Some pilots do not believe in this concept and fly decelerating final approaches for a specific reason-better energy available.