FlyingDecember 2018的目錄

Some blame former Flying editor Richard Collins for nearly killing the market for light piston twins by relentlessly proselytizing on the superiority of singles. He owned and flew a Cessna P210 and so it’s no surprise he was biased in favor of single-engine airplanes. But he also helped dispel the myth that twins were safer than singles merely by virtue of their extra engine. It wasn’t true, but convincing people of that fact was a challenge. Pilots returning from World War II after flying multiengine transports and bombers wanted to own twins, creating a ready-made market for decades to follow. How times have changed. Today, the market for new piston twins is practically nonexistent. Still, we’ve got to keep building new twin trainers. That’s because aspiring airline pilots are obligated…

The only IFR approach to Auburn, Washington (S50), is hardly a procedure anyone would consider straightforward, despite the airport’s 63-foot field elevation. Also known as Dick Scobee Field, named for the late Challenger shuttle commander, Auburn sits just a few miles southeast of the busy Sea-Tac Class B, while farther southeast the terrain rises to well over 14,000 feet approaching Mount Rainier. Be prepared for considerable GA traffic at Auburn, a known Sea-Tac reliever. A. APPROACH NOTES Notes are always important, and S50 has a pair of them. One warns pilots that the procedure is not authorized at night, while the other points to a steeper-than-normal 4-degree descent angle, steeper than the 3-degree rate most pilots expect during nonprecision approaches. This steeper descent angle demands a higher rate of descent…

The past few years have been the most exciting and dynamic stretch of time for me since I started flying 20 years ago. Much of it has been driven by the changes and benefits resulting from the implementation of the FAA’s NextGen plan, as the national airspace system transitions from 1950s-era ground-based radar and VHF radio technology to ADS-B surveillance and datalink communications. The two most useful benefits have been ADS-B datalink weather and a real-time traffic display in the cockpit, delivered by the network of ADS-B ground stations in the United States. These free services are available to pilots of all aircraft types (even drones) thanks to the widespread availability of inexpensive, portable ADS-B receivers and rapid developments in mobile app and panel-mount avionics technology. There is a lot…

The old man was seduced. There is no other way to put it. He was intrigued at first, then tempted, then smitten, and finally, all in. Against all rational thought, he was totally taken by the sexy 18-year-old. That old man was me. “She” was a 2000 Beechcraft Premier 1. In these days of carefulness about anything suggestive of inappropriate behavior, sensitivities about how men and women relate to each other and, God forbid, old-fashioned sex appeal, I am hesitant, no reluctant, actually, to use this metaphor. But it is the closest I can come to describing this past year of aviation adventure for me. There are a few lessons in this saga. I did not invent the term “high maintenance.” I was looking for a CitationJet, maybe a CJ1.…

THANKS, MARTHA As a schoolteacher-turned-aviator-turnedinstructor-turned-airline-guy, I have enjoyed reading many of your columns over the years, but for personal reasons, none more than Martha Lunken’s. Weaned on Fate Is the Hunter and Stick and Rudder, I grew up with Peter Garrison’s Melmoth exploits and Gordon Baxter’s fly-in exploits and Richard Collins’ instrument-flying exploits and Len Morgan’s airline exploits — and I’ve come to enjoy the younger crop of writers who now grace your pages — but I count myself lucky to have known Martha personally, if briefly. One gets to an age when one’s heroes become one’s contemporaries; on a breezy October 17 many years back, I flew a rental Beech from now-closed Blue Ash Airport down to “Sunken” Lunken for my CFI check ride (Lunken’s terminal, the building Ernest…

As an enthusiastic proponent of general aviation, I tell anyone who’ll listen just how much fun flying small airplanes can be. The flip side to this, which gets talked about a lot less, is that flying can also become surprisingly boring after a while. Nobody thinks so when it’s fresh and new and mildly terrifying, but the road from competence to comfort to boredom is a surprisingly straight, short and well-traveled path. Every lapsed GA pilot I’ve ever encountered has trod that sad road to its inevitable dead end. Many of my fellow airline pilots, meanwhile, consider aerial boredom to be a veritable hallmark of a professional pilot. Most enjoy their jobs, mind you, but they’ve flown variations on the same basic flight for the past 25 years and rightly…

As I glanced down the parallel taxiway of JFK’s Runway 31L, the idea that this would be the very last time began to resonate in my psyche. The thought wasn’t debilitating by any means, but the concept hadn’t really taken hold until that moment. No more 777. No more trips to Heathrow. No more Cat III approaches. No more copilots to shoulder the burden. No more in-flight espresso. During idle moments flying across the North Atlantic, I had spent the past five years contemplating this particular day. I pondered trivial items, such as the destination of my last trip, my copilot selection and the ensuing celebration. Now that the day had come, my trepidation was more about how emotions would affect the trip rather than regrets about retiring early. Many…

Who ever thought a pilot’s watch would do all this? Garmin’s latest D2 Delta PX pilot’s watch incorporates a GPS moving map, wrist-based pulse oximeter that tracks blood oxygen saturation in flight, Nexrad color weather radar imagery, airport data, automatic flight logging, connectivity with compatible avionics and more. The D2 Delta PX also includes several fitness functions, such as heart-rate monitor, activity profiles and fitness tracking. It can store and play up to 500 songs and connect with an audio panel or headset using Bluetooth technology. The Garmin Pay feature built into the watch lets you link it to your credit card to make purchases so you can leave your cash and cards at home. One of the features we like best is that the battery lasts 20 days in…

With winter nearly in full swing north of the equator, it’s only a matter of time before instrument-rated pilots will need to make decisions about how to escape from icing situations, whether that be before takeoff or while en route. Ice adds weight and acts as a lift spoiler across wings and tail surfaces. Ice can also affect engine operations for all aircraft. Ice protection is broadly categorized as either anti- or deicing, depending on the equipment installed and the certification of the aircraft. When it comes to protecting an aircraft from icing, there are few absolutes, only guidelines about when to expect ice. In visible moisture when the outside air temperature is below 37 degrees, pilots should expect to see the white stuff begin to stick. While icing equipment…

On a November night in 1995, a Beech Baron 58 departed from Runway 24 at Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront Airport (KBKL), on the south shore of Lake Erie. It was bound for Raleigh, North Carolina, with five aboard. The Baron climbed to 200 feet above the end of the runway and began a right turn. The tower controller, who had been watching the airplane, turned away. A couple of minutes later, he had a call from a city operations office asking whether he could see smoke out on the lake. The Baron had hit the water about 6 miles from the airport. The Coast Guard rescued two surviving passengers; the 1,000-hour instrument-rated pilot, 47, and two other passengers perished. The surviving passengers recalled no problem with the airplane or the pilot…

In my first column I promised unmitigated honesty, so let’s begin there. Since last writing, a buried detail from the accident has unearthed itself from my memory. The way I told it last month, once I recovered from the near stall-spin there was so little runway left, I simply had to put the airplane down even though the gear wasn’t extended. There might be a bit more to it than that. The memory recovered is that I stood on the brakes as the airplane slid along the runway. This means I might not have made an active decision to land with the gear up. Yes, it’s possible the braking was just reflexive — or did I think the gear was down and I was trying to slow the airplane? I…

Someone once suggested that if you want to know how you would feel crossing an ocean in a single-engine airplane, you should just fly out to sea for a couple of hours and then turn around and come back. There’s something about being out of sight of land that, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson’s remark about the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight, “concentrates the mind wonderfully.” It also gives new meaning to random engine sounds. My erstwhile flying companion Nancy — she has now changed her mind and sworn off flying in anything smaller than an A320 — had a strict rule that all flying in which she participated had to have a clear purpose. It couldn’t just be frivolous, like going up on a beautiful afternoon to enjoy…