Training & Sims

Every pilot is inspired to fly for different reasons—personal and technical challenge, freedom and new perspectives, civilian or military professional career paths.My flight school...

The successful completion of an Instrument Proficiency Check (IPC) combines the knowledge and personality traits of both the instructor and pilot.As we intercepted the...

A flying friend of mine likes to say that you know you're into something interesting when you have to sign a waiver beforehand. In...

Concerns about pilot aging are just as important for the younger pilot as for the more silver-haired among us. The US population is getting...

When we think of GPS-based instrument approaches, we usually lump all the approach minima into a single "GPS approach" bucket. We tend to mentally...

Most of us learned to fly when the most advanced thing on our panels was a NAV/COM. Perhaps you entered the scene a bit...

Contributing editor Joe Shelton recently wrote about his use of the "turn 10, twist 10" method of flying a DME arc. But with a...

Youre 30 miles out from a night LPV (GPS) approach to Runway 36, with a DA of 250 feet AGL. Winds are 180 at five on the surface with 200 variable 600 ceiling and two miles visibility. Your alternate is an ILS 35 minutes of flying away with 1000 overcast and 10 miles visibility. Youve got 1:20 of fuel.

When I took my first flying lesson at age 18, I knew…nothing. I even thought a stall was killing the engine, like when I let the clutch out too fast in my car. But I learned, and after only a few hours I was performing aerodynamic stalls with aplomb, if not expertise. Years later, still a private pilot, a friend introduced me to a prolonged stall where you didnt recover and just keep the wings level with rudder. We called that the falling leaf after the swaying back and forth that occurred.

Technically advanced aircraft (TAA)-those with a primary flight display (PFD), multi-function display (MFD), and GPS-are sexy. Pilots are drawn to them like Pooh Bear to honey. Besides being eye-catching, TAA attempt to address some of the biggest problems in aviation by providing pilots with a lot of supplementary safety information. Moving maps designed to improve situational awareness make it almost impossible to get lost. Databases store more information at the touch of a button than…

Why do holiday newsletters begin with, "It's hard to believe another year has passed"? Have we not yet accepted the earth's orbit around the...

Three interesting news items came through my e-mail today. The first was the NTSBs findings that, while there were some contributing factors, the pilots of Asiana 214 simply screwed up, particularly in their use of the automation in their aircraft.