Charts & Plates

While some readers probably welcome a refresher on turbulence, shear, and thunderstorm dangers, others might see it as beating a dead horse. But Wx Smarts is that intersection between my 30 years of forecasting and your thousands of hours of instrument time. Within these articles I guarantee theres always something that wasnt fully covered in flight school or the FAA circulars. Whether its more detail or just an unusual situation, the goal is to keep you interested, thinking outside the box, and having more insight into aviation meteorology than the average pilot.

Which came first: the chicken or the Federal Egg Administration? Impossible to say. Physics teaches us that when Bernoulli found lift, his nemesis, Newton, said there must be an opposing reaction. So, when the Wright brothers flew, government pondered how to keep them from impacting all those other aeronauts. Little happened because of Newtons Law of Administrative Inertia: An agency at rest remains at rest until acted upon by an un-ignorable force. …

If you live west of the Mississippi, out where most of the military airspace and where most of the testing is done, youre well familiar with those pesky NOTAMs announcing interference testing of GPS or outright loss of the GPS signals. Most of us ignore them.

The Paris Air Show opened in June with the usual displays of military hardware and the latest passenger jets, but new and emerging technologies also attracted a lot of attention. Volocopter, a German company that has been developing a two-seat electric VTOL, announced it will work with the government of Dubai to test fly semi-autonomous air taxis by the end of this year. Boom unveiled the final design for a subscale prototype of its supersonic airliner, and said it will fly next year, with three GE engines. Airbus said its working on a new helicopter with a box-wing design that will cruise at 215 knots while maximizing efficiency. The Racer demonstrator will fly in 2020, Airbus said.

In April Killer Quiz, The Prof and the Pilot, I dont think that the answer to the last question is correct. With tailwind, one should reduce the airspeed below best glide speed, which in turn reduces the sink rate. Gliders pilots are very familiar with these concepts.Unfortunately, Cessna doesnt publish sink rates at various speeds to compute that accurately, so we are left to back-of-the-envelope calculations. We know that at best-glide speed (65 knots.

Maybe were too busy focusing on the forest and the trees that the dirt making up the foundation of the arbors is ignored. Or perhaps its the elephant in the room no one discusses. Instructors dont teach it because they dont understand the opaque system themselves-cant teach something you dont know. Whatever the cause, many pilots have a poor understanding of how aeronautical information travels through the system and how charts are updated.

On occasion I have a flight across the pond. No, its not an ocean crossing, although it sometimes feels like it. These flights cross Lake Michigan, and require a bit more planning than flights over land. When you fly around the Great Lakes, its taken for granted that if youre in a single-engine piston aircraft, you have to carefully examine the risks and mitigations. Dont want to cross the lake at all? Fly around it and spend that extra time to stay over land. Not good weather for a crossing? Same deal.

The whole thing started when a reader asked about an approach to a Runway 26 that had the note, Rwy 26 Straight-in and Circling minimums NA at night. Why doesnt it just say the approach is NA at night? the reader asked. We agreed thats what it seemed to say, but we also wondered why it was said in so awkward a manner. So, we investigated and the answer we found surprised all of us.

Did you know that even piston airplanes can occasionally leave a contrail? Sure, its unusual, but it can happen. Many of us often wonder why some airplanes leave contrails that can last seemingly forever, while others leave a contrail that doesnt last but a few seconds. Plus, of course, sometimes theres no contrail at all. Contrails are an interesting phenomenon. So, lets have some fun examining the science behind contrails. Along the way we can use that as a basis to learn a bit more about how the atmosphere behaves.

I loved The MTA Song as a kid. You know it: Charlie gets caught a nickel short and left to ride the rails of the Boston subway forever because the fare went up during his morning commute. I loved its joyful ridiculousness, and I loved that my dad would belt it out for us on his old Martin. (He was a beatnik-a hippy before it was cool.) Charlies wife handing him a sandwich always bugged me though. Why didnt she just hand him a nickel so he could get off the train?

Last month, Handling Windshear, described how to recognize, avoid and, handle an encounter with windshear. The focus of that article was the practical side of piloting but we necessarily touched on the basics of the weather behind thunderstorms, microbursts and windshear. Now its time to dig deeper into that meteorology.

Regulations prevent collisions through right-of-way rules. These codified decencies apply to the road, sea and air. For aviation, 14 CFR 91.113 warns that regardless of whether an operation is conducted under instrument flight rules or visual flight rules, vigilance shall be maintained by each person operating an aircraft so as to see and avoid other aircraft. Sage advice, that, especially with our butts in the hot seat.