Technique

Pilots retiring from professional flying and downsizing into personal aircraft often want to fly something thats capable, yet simple and efficient. Thats understandable, as they want to use their extensive experience. Theyre also flying for themselves (and paying for it), so an airplane that economically delivers practicality and enjoyment is the goal. The following examples reflect the common downsizing profiles Ive seen.

A number of years ago a friend called to tell me his chilling tale of a low-IFR departure in his turboprop. Shortly after takeoff, the controller warned him of an impending collision with a mountain range two miles ahead.

Somebody, somewhere, has to come up with the procedures in which we entrust our lives and that of our passengers when were penetrating the muck, following some ethereal radio signal hoping theres sufficient clearance from the myriad obstacles that can exist. An awesome responsibility, that. Who does it?

I read your editorial The Drones Are Here with interest. You asked the question When was the last time you flew below 400 feet away from an airport? My answer is: yesterday.As a seaplane pilot, I do this all the time over bodies of water. So do thousands of other seaplane and helicopter pilots. There is no way on earth that we would ever be able to see and avoid these tiny toy aircraft-at least not in time for the avoid part-and for sure, their untrained operators would not be likely to anticipate and avoid us. It is not a matter of if, but when someone will be killed by these dangerous drone operations. I guess our lives are less important than the interests of hundreds of thousands of drone hobbyists.

When I made my living flying airliners, someone from the non-flying world would occasionally ask me, Doesnt it bother you to have to make all of those decisions?My answer was always the same. I never have to make any decisions. All of the decisions have already been made and are written down in a book. Well, that wasnt completely true. I got to decide what I wanted to eat (once I got to be a Captain) and when I wanted to eat.

One of the best things about an ILS is that you know what youre going to get. The boundaries of TERPS criteria mean they all work pretty much the same: You fly a published altitude to intercept a glideslope, ease down through the amorphous ether toward terra firma and either land or miss.Except for when that is so, so not the case. Take a look at the ILS Runway 16R into Reno/Tahoe (KRNO). On first glance, this is a simple ILS with the primary complication being some obvious terrain in the area. Terrain like that always warrants a close reading of the chart and its notes, usually to find the non-standard climb required if you must fly the missed. Thats not an issue in this case, but there are four other oddities to contend with-one of which is an outright error on the chart.

Uh oh! Halfway through an IFR cross country flight, it appears your instrument panel has suffered a couple deaths in the family: the attitude indicator, and the heading indicator. A glance at the suction gauge shows none. To top it off, you left your handheld GPS back in the car. Youre in VMC right now, but theres instrument weather down the road to your destination. A look at your charts shows a decent-sized airport about twenty miles off your right wing that probably has an A&P mechanic. Better to put it down now than get into some clouds without knowing which ways up. Unfortunately, a scattered cloud deck below is making it hard to pick out any landmarks. Not a good day.

Air traffic controllers have quite a few options for saying one simple thing: Turn your airplane. Each vectoring method, like a hammer or a pair of pliers, is a specialized tool designed to fit a particular situation. As you fly, you may hear a variety of vectoring radio phraseology on a daily basis. Like many real-world tools, they may appear simple and familiar on the surface. However, using them requires proper technique and foresight on the part of both controllers and pilots.

Most legacy aircraft came out of the factory with little round clocks in the panel, although these days theyre largely ignored in favor of the more convenient digital timers. Recall that a way of keeping time is listed among the required equipment for IFR operations-see 14 CFR 91.205(d). Technically, the clock displaying hours, minutes, and seconds with a sweep-second pointer or digital presentation is supposed to be certified, installed equipment, meaning it has to be the original clock or an approved replacement, and it has to be operational for legal IFR flight.

Rick Durdens December 2014 complex article about tailplane icing was well researched and well written. It also proved prophetic.At Cincinnati Municipal while my L-39 was being fueled, Bill Rieke, an icing researcher, came over to chat. He said that he thought the L-39 would be particularly susceptible to tailplane icing and stall because of the smallness of tailplane, the thinness of the airfoil and the need for ventral VGs.

There are three ways to arrive at an airport when operating under IFR: a standard instrument approach procedure (IAP), a visual approach and a contact approach. A great way to bring hangar flying to a screeching halt is to ask about a contact approach. A lot of IFR pilots know that it is some sort of visually-flown maneuver, but when asked how it differs from a visual approach, blank stares often ensue. Lets fix that.

Its a signature moment in the classic 80s beach-volleyball documentary Top Gun. Two Naval aviators swagger past a parked line of Grumman F-14 Tomcats. I feel the need, Tom Cruises Maverick character declares to his buddy Goose, who joins in the chorus. The need… for speed! Mav and Goose were bragging about the sound-barrier-busting velocity only a few pilots get to experience. Still, whether your winged rides top speed is Mach two or 100 knots, there is one universal truth: if youre firing up an airplane, youve probably got somewhere to go or a mission to accomplish.