Charts & Plates

A good friend of mine is a physician and a pilot. (No, there isnt a Bonanza in his hangar; he happily flies a Mooney Ovation.) Ive always found him to be a very safety-conscious pilot. He gets an IPC every six months and does other periodic training. When he wanted to do something different, I suggested he get an airline transport pilot certificate with an airplane single-engine land rating. (ATP-SEL) Why? was his first reaction. I dont need it for the kind of flying I do.

Recently, as is customary when I give an instrument proficiency check (IPC), before the flight I review en route and approach charts with the pilot. While randomly going through the Florida approach book, we saw the North Bay Visual RWY 18L charted visual flight procedure (CVFP) at the St Pete-Clearwater airport (KPIE) and a couple questions came up.

Some things are inevitable. Sunrises and sunsets. A character in every Star Wars movie saying, Ive got a bad feeling about this. Also… at some point during your instrument flying career, youre going to get your first of many reroutes.

It had to happen one of these times. Today youll fly the approach that makes NetJets pilots wish theyd taken that cargo job over the Great Lakes: the infamous LOC/DME-E into Aspen, CO. Its 3500 feet of localizer stepdowns to a MAP thats still 2.6 miles from the runway. The missed is a climb on dedicated backcourse past hills so dramatic one Citation pilot friend puts it: When we fly into Aspen, I dont look out the window until were about to land. And even then, I dont look up. Many companies require special training to fly paying passengers into Aspen, Eagle, and similar mountain airports.

After about eight months, as of early November, according to AOPA, approximately 25,000 pilots had taken advantage of BasicMed since the official roll-out on May 1, 2017. Since the FAA does not track this, we dont know the exact percentage of pilots who did not have a current medical after a multi-year hiatus from flying and decided to get back into flying with BasicMed, as opposed to pilots with medicals who renewed expiring medicals with BasicMed. AOPA estimates about 50% for each group. It will probably take at least two years for the BasicMed numbers to stabilize as pilots with current medicals decide to renew with BasicMed, but at this time it seems to be working.

Pilots around Lake Michigan know theres a popular route down the lakeshore with the Chicago skyline just off the wingtip. This offers fantastic views of downtown Chicago and is a practical way to transit from eastern Wisconsin to anywhere southeast of Windy City. You might even have a reason to stop at Chicago Midway and get a really close look at that famous skyline.

February and March bring the peak season of the squall line. They are perhaps the most formidable of all the mid-latitude weather systems. Most of us at one time or another have witnessed the alarming black mass spanning almost the entire western horizon, followed by the fury of raw wind, small hail, and torrential rains. Indeed these storms were recognized by early Scandinavian fishermen and traders for the sheer amount of rain they produced. In the 17th century the Norwegians gave us the word skval, meaning a sudden rush of water, anglicized to squall by the sailors of Britain.

Recently I had lunch with my friend and colleague Jeff Van West, Jenny Van West, a talented musician and Jeffs delightful wife, and 14-year-old Baxter, their youngest son. Baxter is an uncommonly bright and interesting young man with the not-uncommon black-and-white simplistic view of the world that is the purview of youth.

Textron Reveals New TwinTextron plans to build an all-new, clean-sheet-design, large-utility twin turboprop, and start deliveries by 2020, the company said in November. The new airplane was developed with launch customer FedEx Express in mind, offering almost twice the interior space of the Caravan 208 plus a large cargo door to support container operations. The Cessna SkyCourier 408 will improve fuel efficiency, reliability and operating costs over the current fleet, according to FedEx Express. It will be powered by two Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-65SC turbines, with a cruise speed of up to 200 knots and a 900-NM range. The cockpit will be equipped with Garmin G1000 avionics. The company has signed on for 50 of the $5.5 million turboprops, with options for up to 50 more.

I agree with your November Remarks that we should not give up on a drivers license medical, and you agree that for many of us, especially those with special issuances, BasicMed is a real improvement.My biggest bellyache is the safety pilot issue. AOPAs lobbyist, with whom Ive discussed it, says that even the FAA realizes how silly it is to say you need a third class medical to be second in command, but not to be PIC. Its possible the FAA will decide they can loosen that rule and still be within the law.

Every January we get to snicker up our flight jacket sleeves at the antics of easily distracted pilots with wings, rotors or other means of defying gravity-and logic. While this custom of mocking those whove slipped the surly bonds of sanity and touched the face of chagrin goes back many years, we cling to hope that we will learn from our mistakes. Alas...These exploits are gleaned from NTSB reports from 2014, excluding fatal accidents. So, if you rose from the ashes of what should have killed you that year, youre fair game.

I was southbound on a solo cross country flight before getting my license, returning to Miami Executive Airport (KTMB). The ceilings and visibility were dropping and I was down to about 1500 feet over the Everglades swamplands. I navigated using roads and other VFR checkpoints, which were getting harder to see out the Cessna 172s windshield.