It was the first thing that ran through my mind: “Talk to me, Goose.” But this wasn’t the Hollywood thriller I grew up with—Top Gun—this was a real-life tragedy. I’d just lost my father, and now I had an inflight emergency involving oil fumes in the cockpit and a vibrating engine. 

As we taxied out that morning, the tears started down my cheek. With a shaky voice, I asked for—and read back—my clearance. By the time the Piper Arrow reached rotation speed and lifted off the runway, my sobbing convulsions broke squelch and the tears in my eyes made it difficult for me to see. This was my departure from Leesburg International Airport (KLEE) in Florida after spending the last week of my father’s life by his side in the hospital and then in hospice.

We were flying home from central Florida to Virginia that Wednesday with the promise of a slight quartering tailwind. I felt an altitude of 11,500 feet might permit us to make it nonstop, but we’d have to eke out every efficiency possible, including “cutting the corner” off the coast of Georgia. I engaged the autopilot and contacted Orlando Approach. 

The next hour was a quiet and somber time. The metaphor of “slipping the surly bonds” and flying amongst the angels was not lost upon me. My mind was entranced thinking about the final days and the final words my father and I were able to exchange, replaying them over and over again as if to record them into my brain, never to be forgotten.

We were navigating direct to STARY, the intersection shortcut of choice for mid-Atlantic pilots making the trek to and from Florida. STARY is situated 13 miles off the coast of Georgia and permits an almost arrow-straight flight back to Virginia. I thought of STARY as a good, incidental omen.

We were just south of Jacksonville, about to go “feetwet,” when the faint odor of oil caught my attention. It’s not an unexpected aroma in a 42-year-old airplane, so I dismissed it and returned to reminisce vivid thoughts of my father. A few minutes later, my wife asked, “Do you smell that?” Snapping out of my stupor, I recognized the smell was getting a bit overwhelming, even for our trusty old bird. I confirmed to her that it was the smell of oil but having already convinced myself that it was normal,I said, “It’s OK, no big deal.”

As we approached STARY, I felt the first shudder. I looked over at my wife, and she was reading her book.About one minute later, it happened again. I looked at the engine monitor and then at her, and found her looking up at me. After the third time, the vibrations didn’t stop. “We might have to land in the water,” I told her. “Your job will be to prop the door open before touchdown.” 

I couldn’t believe I had spoken “those words” and—not ever one to be at a loss for them—her silence surprised me. She broke out the rosary beads from her purse and began praying.

I turned 30 degrees left and started making our way towards the angling Georgia coastline. As I looked ahead, I saw nothing but deserted beaches. It turns out, all of what lay ahead was wildlife refuge. Hilton Head was 65 miles beyond, and I thought for a brief moment that it might be nice to become stranded on Hilton Head—but the incessant vibration cut short my daydream.

I suddenly heard my first flight instructor, Jarl, preaching: “The closest airport might be behind you.” With the vast Atlantic Ocean off our right wing, I had only to look over my left shoulder and, as if on cue, there was St. Simons Island (KSSI), about 18 miles distant. It was then that I called JAX Center to report our engine problem. “Roger, 72T, say intentions and number of souls on board?” Wow! I couldn’t believe that I was being asked “that” question.

As I completed the turn towards KSSI, I began to think that this might have a happy ending after all. Descending into thicker air, the normally aspirated engine was able to make more power and consequently vibrated more intensely. I pulled the throttle and prop back in an effort to slow the engine and vibration, thinking that having less power for longer would be better than the engine’s sudden catastrophic loss. Between radio calls to JAX, I joined my wife in reciting the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Marys in alternating fashion. I also began to think of my father, wondering if I’d see him sooner than I had thought I would.

It felt like the next 20 minutes took an hour to pass. Approaching the non towered field, I began making my calls to St. Simon’s traffic 10 miles out. I wanted everyone/any-one to know that I was coming. Once comfortably within gliding distance, I began my circling descent. I continued my slow pull of power, knowing that I could not count on the assurance of adding any power back in. 

The landing on Runway 22 was uneventful. After pulling up to the ramp and shutting down, we didn’t know what to expect. Stepping off the wing, we found a puddle of oil already forming under the engine and a long streak of oil from the side of the cowl extending rearward all the way under the pilot’s storm window.

What was it? The No. 1 compression ring from the No.4 cylinder had decided to disintegrate. Miraculously, the ring remained within its channel on the piston. There would have been no telling our fate, had it come loose and been blown down into the crankcase. The ignored oil fumes was my first indication that the crank case was pressurizing and oil was being blown overboard. But I had missed it, too distracted with grief to take the early hint.

The lesson I learned from this incident is that grief can affect your flying skills just like some medicine can—perhaps more so—since it can cloud your judgment more insidiously than the obvious runny nose or sore throat. Flying while in such intense mourning led me to miss the cues that had been talking to me all along.

The post ‘Talk to Me Goose’ appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The question, “Are we there yet?” is asked so often by young children traveling with little concept of distance and time that it has become a joke for adults to ask it of each other when traveling as well. It’s not always a joke for adults. For pilots, it can be indicative of your passengers’ disconnect from the flying process, like children strapped into a plurality of seats with their sipper cups and board books for company.

Why do we fly people without explaining to them what we’re doing? Why do we shush inquisitiveness from adults and kids? Some of us make the effort to take passengers along through the walk around and explain what we’re looking for. Some passengers are delighted to learn this, and they should be kept involved in the entire flight, for they might end up in flight school. Others are bored by it and just want to get in and get somewhere: they should fly commercial. How many of us have significant others that fit the latter description? You have my condolences.

The Great Inquisition

A friend has a Van’s Aircraft RV-6 that he often travels in with his wife. When he bought an Aeronca 7AC Champ and he took her on a cross-country flight to a familiar destination, halfway through the flight she inquired, “Shouldn’t we be there by now?” It was no joke.

In the RV-6, she had been quite chatty sitting beside him with the panel before her, and she seemed to be involved in the flight. Stuck in the rear seat of the Aeronca with nothing to interact with but the back of his head, it became clear that she wasn’t the least bit involved in the flight, and it turns out she really hadn’t been that involved during the RV flight.

On the return flight, he had her sit in front and do most of the flying. He no longer shared flight plans with her—he discussed them with her, and let her decide what the best route would be. She caught the bug, took an online ground school, and hired a local CFI for the air work. Within a year, she’d passed the knowledge test, found a designated pilot examiner who could fit in the RV-6, and earned her private pilot certificate. Flying isn’t for everyone, but we won’t know if flying is for our “one” until we involve them.

When I carry passengers in rough conditions, I have to keep them fully engaged with navigating or flying the airplane, just to avoid motion sickness. In Flight of Passage, Rinker Buck memorialized his nausea in the back seat of the family Piper PA-11, begging his brother—while being slammed by Taconic turbulence—to let him fly so he could keep his breakfast down. We can learn from his experience.

Teaching Leads to Mastery

The best way to master a subject is to teach it. We’ll never possess all the answers, but we can learn humbly from the questions others ask. (If you’re a narcissist, fully aware of your incompetence, and can’t admit that you’re ignorant of or wrong about anything, go to a golf course instead of an airport.)

By sharing our experiences and imparting knowledge to our passengers, we exhibit our respect and caring for them. The airlines are required to conduct a passenger safety brief prior to every flight. How many of us do this in GA? The preflight brief is the minimum we should be teaching our passengers. If they appear disinterested, keep them involved anyway, at least until the aircraft is tied down or chocked at the destination.

There may be social obstacles to sharing our passion for flight with our passengers. I’ve been accused of mansplaining how to perform slips on final and how to time magnetos (it may have been my gesticulating with manly hands and my use of the expression, sparky-sparky that gave this impression).

Trying to connect with someone toting a cell phone is also a source of frustration. The “not my job” attitude can be exasperating, usually expressed with, “Why are you telling me this?” I typically respond with: “Because I’ll need your help.” Once their eyes stop rolling, I keep them busy with a finger on the chart and their eyes looking out, a vintage luxury that glass panels sorely lack.

A Wake-Up Call To Promote GA

Recent advances in avionics have minimized pilot workloads to the point where boredom can be more of a safety issue than the complacency that accompanies our overconfidence in the sparky-sparky system. Years ago, most GA autopilots performed altitude and heading duties only. There is no more helpless a feeling than hearing the faint voice of someone on the frequency who, while flying on top to the coast, succumbed along with his passengers to the soporific drone of well-synchronized props, awaking almost two hours out over the ocean with only 40 minutes of fuel remaining. For some, the greatest compliment a passenger can give a pilot is to fall asleep during the flight, but the best compliment is actually to stay involved with the flight.

The next time we hear—“Are we there yet?”—let it be a wake-up call that we could be doing more to promote GA by engaging our passengers more in our flying.

This article was first published in the 2022 Southeast Adventure Guide of FLYING Magazine.

The post Are We There Yet? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Most pilots don’t need an excuse to go fly on a calm, sunny Saturday morning, but on this particular day, I had a good one. The plan was for my Cessna 172 to be part of a four-airplane formation, launching from St. Louis Downtown Airport (KCPS) at about 10 a.m. to fly over a parade in St. Louis, Illinois. The event was a peace march organized by the widow of David Dorn, a retired Black St. Louis police captain killed by looters on June 2, 2020,  while he was protecting a friend’s pawn shop during the unrest following the death of George Floyd.

My VFR flight started an hour earlier from Smartt Field (KSET) near St. Charles, Missouri, which is just a short 20-minute hop from the west. After landing at KCPS and meeting the other three pilots, we took off in quick succession, with permission and coordination from the tower.  Shortly after takeoff, the local controller handed us over to St. Louis Tracon, which then coordinated the flyover above the parade route.

Despite the haze, everything went perfectly well, and after the flyover, each of us split off to fly back to our home airports. I decided to fly back to the north over the scenic Mississippi River, and I coordinated with the KCPS controller again until my airplane was out of his airspace near Granite City, Illinois. From there, I skirted east of the St. Louis Class B airspace by staying over the Mississippi and tuned my radio to the unicom frequency, 122.7, for KSET traffic.

As I was flying in the haze over the confluence of the mighty Mississippi and the Missouri rivers at 2,000 feet msl, I saw a small cloud moving quickly toward me. Yikes—a large flock of snow geese over the Mississippi flyway! Who would have ever expected to see them in late August? For the uneducated, snow geese do not fly in a “V” formation typical of Canada geese but instead fly in what appears to be a small white cloud. After a quick bank to the right, I was out of their way and continued on.

Next, I transmitted on 122.7 to alert other pilots in the area of my position at 2,000 feet over Alton, Illinois, which is about 10 miles east of my home field. Seconds later, another pilot reported taking off from Runway 36 at my home airport, with the intentions of flying east. I assumed she heard me and would fly well below my westbound track. Remember the old saying about why you should never “assume” anything? This bears repeating.

Then it happened again—another large flock of snow geese suddenly appeared and another evasive maneuver was made. This distracted me so much, I forgot about the other airplane.

Within moments of banking out of the way of this second flock of snow geese, the ADS-B began yelling, “Traffic 12 o’clock, traffic 12 o’clock.” Drats, I could see nothing but the haze. Even though I had turned on the anti-collision lights, strobes and landing lights for an extra layer of protection in the reduced visibility, a Cessna 152 suddenly appeared head-on in my windshield. As I climbed to my right, the other airplane dived to the left. We were close enough that I could confirm it had the same tail number as the airplane taking off a few minutes earlier. Thankfully, the rest of the flight was uneventful.

There are plenty of lessons to be learned from this flight. First, always be vigilant when flying near a migratory-bird flyway, regardless of the season.

Second, exercise extreme caution while flying in haze. 

Third, never assume other pilots hear or understand what your position is—or what your intentions are. 

And finally, communicate. Initially, I was mad at the other pilot for nearly causing a catastrophe, but then remembered it was my responsibility to communicate effectively with others to make sure each of us knows where we are and where we are going.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the November 2021 edition of FLYING Magazine.

The post A Flock of Geese Triggers Another Hazard appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In fall 1967, I was a Marine second lieutenant and completed my first solo in a Navy T-34. After a couple of times around the pattern, the instructor got out, slapped me on the helmet, and told me to make three touch-and-goes and come back to pick him up.

In fall 2017, I completed my last solo, this time in a flight school’s Cessna 172. Between the two, a lot of gas went out the exhaust as I chased flying jobs.

After that first flight, I went through VT-2 at Whiting Field in Florida, flying the magnificent T-28C/B. Having requested jets, F-4s or A-6s, I found myself in North Carolina at New River Marine Corps Air Station, flying the CH-46 Sea Knight—a helicopter later called the “Phrog,” but in a loving, respectful way.

For me, flying Marine helicopters in Vietnam was the ultimate adventure. The job itself was simple enough: take care of the “grunts” on the ground, regardless of weather or the fact you were regularly being shot at. I loved it. I flew for a year, came home with a bunch of medals and, after a tour in the training command, was unleashed on an unsuspecting civilian world.

I ultimately wanted to fly for the airlines, but airline hiring has more ups and downs than a pork-bellies futures chart. I interviewed with the “spooks” but wanted an accompanied mission of some kind. I talked with Air America but found the same problem: no families included.

A few years later, I was on the Hawaiian island of Maui, still not flying, but I was bartending and having a lot of fun. I realized that I couldn’t do that forever—that I should go flying, which I could do forever. After sending out a batch of résumés to various companies in Hawaii, I was picked up by Aloha Island Air, flying de Havilland Twin Otters around the islands.

After three years with Aloha Island, and a lot of library time searching for operators in Africa, I was hired by Air Serv to fly Twin Otters out of Lokichogio (“Loki”), Kenya. Loki was on the border with Sudan, which was embroiled in its continuous civil war.

In many ways, the job was similar to the one in Vietnam: rough country, taking care of relief workers in a hostile area, but not shot at as much.

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After Sudan, I was working for a drilling company in Algeria, working a five-weeks-on, five-weeks-off schedule in the virtual center of the Sahara. Finally, through connections I had made in Loki, I was hired by Champion Airlines to fly the “big iron,” Boeing 727s. Later, I was in 737s and Twin Otters for Saudi Aramco in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. I was there on 9/11—an interesting time.

Returning to the US, I taught ground schools and got my CFI-I. I worked for flight schools in the Los Angeles area and enjoyed the interaction with the students until one porpoised on her first solo landing and tore up the airplane. So much for that job. Fortunately, she wasn’t hurt.

I was hired by a Cessna Caravan company in Hawaii, but things started to change. During training, I couldn’t remember simple procedures or checklist items, things that I had easily mastered in previous years. Consequently, ground school did not go well.

I returned to the mainland and worked for a flight school out of Santa Monica Municipal Airport (KSMO) in California, but the problems continued. I didn’t tie down an aircraft—twice. I wasn’t being lazy; I just forgot. That company moved their operation, and I moved to another flight school. The instruction seemed to be going better, but I often had to go through a long process to remember what I wanted to say to the student.

I was taking out a renter for an area-and-aircraft checkout, but I had left my iPad, filled with all the ForeFlight goodies, in the car. I didn’t even think about it, though I had been a dedicated “don’t leave home without it” user. Weather was marginal—low scud with some haze—but I still could see the ground. We went out and did the usual maneuvers and returned to the airport. Taxiing in, ground control called and gave me a number to call. Yeah, the FAA.

A week or so later, a student and I entered the downwind, and she landed normally, no big deal, but I once again received the call-the-feds message. A couple of weeks later, I was invited to visit the local FSDO for the dreaded 709 meeting—a check ride to reevaluate my skills.

In the FSDO office, I met with three examiners. The lead said they had two things to discuss. One, that I had neither acknowledged nor obeyed a tower instruction to “go around,” break off the landing and reenter the pattern. And two, that I had violated the nearby Class Bravo airspace. I had no memory of either incident and said so.

The second man at the meeting took out some papers and showed them to me. One was a radar track of our flight, showing it crossing the departure path from the Bravo airport. The first guy asked, “Didn’t it occur to you that you weren’t where you should be when you saw the airliners taking off under you?”

Read More: I Learned About Flying From That

I told him that we were above an undercast and had only occasional glimpses of the surface, but that everything was clear above and around us. The second guy brought out a cassette recorder, and I heard my voice calling for landing and the tower telling me to go around. I have no memory of either call.

The dates were set for an oral and a flight test. All would be to ATP standards. Great. It had been nearly 20 years since I had obtained my ATP, and I had been busy flying in distant places, far from the FAA, and not reviewing the books as I should have. Besides, remembering procedures, checklists and manuals had never been a problem—until the Caravan ground school.

I went home and studied but could not maintain my concentration or, upon review, remember what I read. I had years of teaching that exact material and couldn’t remember it 20 minutes later. A meeting with the FAA confirmed that maybe I had, as the representative said, “lost a step.”

A week later, we all met at the FSDO again, and I surrendered my certificates: an ATP and airplane-multiengine-land certifications, with B-737 and G-IV type ratings; as well as airplane-single-engine-land, rotorcraft-helicopter and instrument-helicopter certificates, with BV-107 and SK-58 type ratings. I asked for and received a 24-hour temporary certificate and drove back to the airport where I checked out a Cessna 172.

I flew out over the ocean and went through the various maneuvers, enjoying the ride and not really thinking that it would be my last as a PIC. I asked for the ILS under VFR conditions back in. At pattern altitude, I called for an overhead break and landed gently on the numbers, taxied in, and tied down the airplane. As I was walking back to the office, a couple was walking toward me, headed for their airplane. The woman said something to the man, who turned to me and said, “She said that you really look like a pilot.”

“I am a pilot,” I said.

It was a couple of hours later I realized that, after 10,000-plus hours across 50 years in all kinds of flying machines over all parts of the planet, I had lied to her.

This story appeared in the August 2021 issue of Flying Magazine

The post No More Happy Landings appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Many years ago, a friend landed and left his Cessna 172 in Louisville, Kentucky, because of weather, an hour and half away from our home-base airport in Madisonville. He was far too busy in his business to go back and fly it home anytime soon. As a newly minted 17-year-old private pilot, I jumped at the chance to be his volunteer ferry pilot.

My mentor and neighbor—an Eastern Airlines captain and the only airline pilot living within 30 miles of Madisonville—happened to be driving to Louisville to catch his deadhead to New York. He said I could ride with him to Louisville, and he would help me prepare for the flight. His offer lent my “rescue” mission an air of authority. My friend Catherine thought the plan was grand and volunteered to go on the adventure as well. What could possibly go wrong?

The muggy August air in Western Kentucky hung like kudzu on the oaks as we made our way east on the Western Kentucky Parkway. The high glare cut visibility to maybe 8 miles, my most generous estimate. We were slightly behind schedule, but I calculated we could still make it home before dusk.

When we arrived at the FBO desk in Louisville at 6 p.m., the lineman could barely remember the faded green-on-white 172. He located the airplane on the line board and recalled: “Since I really wasn’t sure on your friend’s plans, I put her back on ‘the Slope.’ I topped her off myself last Saturday evening after the storms cleared.”

My airline-pilot friend drove us out to the old Cessna. The preflight was uneventful. I clicked on the master switch and checked the fuel gauges—both read “full.” On the struts, I dipped a finger in each tank. Full as promised. Satisfied with the airplane and our flight planning, we gratefully sent my airline-pilot friend to catch his flight to New York.

The lineman wasn’t kidding when he called it “the Slope.” I had to set the parking brake once the chocks were removed. Catherine and I boarded, strapped in and fired up the old Lycoming. It ran beautifully. I taxied forward a few feet to sit upright as we copied Bowman Field ATIS and got our taxi clearance.

The weather for the 90-minute rescue mission was technically VFR, with “winds light and variable…visibility 10 miles with haze,” but haze was an understatement. On takeoff, my vision was surprisingly obscured. To be sure, I could see directly below, but I had only a faint horizon—if at all. Most of the time, I was following the compass and looking often at the attitude indicator for reassurance. Catherine, normally reserved, had a lot to say about the sensation but was all smiles. This new and lonely experience as PIC in reduced visibility was sobering. I hoped the visibility would improve.

Straight and level at 6,500 feet, I searched into the fish-gray, nearly featureless cone of visibility below us for the landmarks along our course. At last, Rough River Lake emerged—albeit slightly out of place. Hmm. A quick correction of about 20-plus degrees northward, and we continued on course.

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Soon, we neared the halfway mark on my sectional. Per training, it was time for a progress confirmation check. The aircraft was flying perfectly. Oil pressure was fine and—what? My fuel survey revealed an alarming fact. More than half of the fuel we had on takeoff was gone. A quick calculation: I was halfway to the destination and had used more than half of our fuel. That equaled a pretty big problem. Three things could have been happening: my gauges were wrong, the burn was far too great, or I was leaking fuel.

With each gentle bump of the air, the gauges seemed to dip just a little lower. Maintaining at least the appearance of competence for my passenger, I tried to think through the situation. On preflight, the tanks were topped by the lineman. I had personally inspected the tanks as well—full, to the brim. When I first switched on the master, the fuel gauges both read “F.” I had to have started with full tanks. My fuel burn must be too great. But how? At this rate, the burn must be way more than 14 gallons per hour. Impossible—but irrefutably true.

We droned on, now in the presence of considerable doubt. With declining visibility, dusk approaching and an apparently monstrous fuel burn, I had decisions to make. Press on or land safely where could we refuel, recalculate our course, or even reconsider the very wisdom of this trip. The current trajectory took me to about 8 miles short of my destination. Not good. My heart rate increased, and I could see the National Transportation Safety Board report already.

Could I make Bowling Green? Do they have fuel? I assumed so, but the hour was getting late. If we ended up stranded, where could I go with Catherine and no credit card? I struggled with my conscience and decided to land.

Read More: I Learned About Flying From That

We turned definitively southward and began a gentle descent. Twenty minutes later, we were in the pattern at KBWG. Never had the numbers been so inviting. The gauges taunted me with the idea that I could have made it to Madisonville, but I squelched that thought. The tarmac was a place where I could unravel this mystery and think.

The landing was a squeaker. On the ramp, we exited the airplane, and I explained our plight to the evening attendant. He topped the tanks with nearly 24 gallons. The gauges had been right.

Just as in life, reviewing a situation with another often illuminates the real problem. The lineman, Catherine and I discussed our predicament and looked back at the elderly but beautiful bird sitting up proudly on the ramp. Standing safely on terra firma, my thinking was now clear.

On level ground, with the airplane and tanks upright, we could see that there was no leak except in my attention to detail. Topping off the tanks and doing the preflight on the sloped ramp had been the issue. Replacing the 12 gallons burned—and adding the 12 gallons not filled or recognized in Louisville—reconciled all details. “The Slope” had gotten me.

I had been trained by three very different flight instructors: a teenager not much older than I was, a swashbuckler, and a brash retired US Navy captain. Though they approached flying very differently, they all taught me that when presented with a conundrum in the air, “land and sort it out” on the ground. If you eat crow, so be it. I followed their advice and was glad I did.

This story appeared in the June/July 2021 issue of Flying Magazine

The post Summer Haze and Low on Fuel appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The flight began normally. Little did I know how crazy and funny things would end up becoming. It was my student’s last flight before his first check ride in the private pilot portion of our Part 141 curriculum, which comes just before a student’s first solo. We were flying a Cessna 152.

We had a long taxi because the main runway nearest the flight school was closed, as it would be for the rest of the summer as it went through updates and repairs. Taking off just behind us was a SkyWest CRJ. Our takeoff was normal, and everything was going fine—until about 50 feet agl, when I saw something small fly off the dashboard and straight into my student’s lap. I ignored it at the time and continued talking to ATC, who then told us to begin our outbound turn to get us away from the departure end of the runway, to make way for the CRJ. I heard the tower telling the CRJ our position and asking for them to report us in sight.

“SkyWest (call sign) has the little bugger in sight,” the SkyWest pilot said, referring to us.

I responded on frequency: “Who you callin’ little bugger?”

Radio silence.

I then said, “But, seriously, jokes aside—thanks for bein’ here, guys.”

He responded: “Hey, we’re right here with you, man. No problem.”

I smiled. I had thanked them because the events of this story took place in June 2020, when aviation had come to a screeching halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And, at the time, it felt as though it was just us two up in the sky that day. Well, us, and a stowaway.

As we were climbing through about 2,000 feet, the unexpected happened. I glanced over at the thing that had flown into my student’s lap. Turns out, it was a wasp.

“Oh, my…” I said quietly into my mic. My student, focused on flying, didn’t say anything. I continued: “OK, I don’t want you to worry, but there’s a wasp on your crotch. I’m going to reach over and try to kill it, OK?” He said: “Oh… Sure… OK.”

I then proceeded to awkwardly try to smush the thing with my checklist—trying not to get fresh in the process—when it moved and started hiding right under the seam of his pants.

Realizing things were getting a little too personal, I took the airplane from him and let him try to find it and kill it. At this point though, the wasp had disappeared. We assumed it was dead. We were wrong.

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I should mention that these communications with the tower and the SkyWest jet were happening at the same time as my student and I were trying to vanquish the wasp, but what I’ve related so far gives a good rough timing of how it all went down.

Then tower gets in on the joke from before: “Little bug—I mean, Cessna (N-number), contact departure. Safe flight, talk to you in a bit.”

Little did he and the SkyWest pilot know, we were dealing with a literal little bug in the cockpit, making the irony palpable.

So, the flight continued normally for a while. I had my student practice some steep turns and stalls, then it was time to head back in for some touch-and-goes. We were entering the pattern and doing a forward slip to a go-around when I saw something fly at me this time. My student turned to me in shock and, with a look of horror on his face, said, “Oh…”

“What? What is it?” I asked. “Is it on my face, my shoulder—what?” (I had trouble seeing or feeling anything; we both had masks on because of COVID-19 policies, and I was wearing sunglasses.) Then, before he could answer, the wasp jumped off me and onto my student. I quickly took the controls again, and he struggled to get it off of himself.

Read More: I Learned About Flying From That

Finally, I grabbed the checklist and whacked it off his shoulder and onto the floor. “He’s on the floor,” I yelled. “Stomp him out! Get him!” My student stepped on the wasp, finally extinguishing it. Once ready, my student took back the flight controls, and we finished our landings, successfully completing the flight.

I should note that at no point during the flight did either of us completely ignore the airplane or fight over controls, and we both used clear communication when transferring use of them between us. Once we were on the ground, we both had a good laugh about the whole thing, and I apologized profusely for grazing his thigh and having lost my cool a little over a wasp. He wasn’t the slightest bit bothered and laughed it off.

I wish I had a better moral to this story, but I’ll leave it with this: Don’t be one of those pilots who takes everything too seriously. There’ll be times in either your training or your career when you’re stuck in a small space with another person and the most unexpected stuff happens—it’s a place where many good and bad memories are made. In those moments, emergency or not, you have the choice to make it a good memory or a bad one. A lot of us always say, “Well, I would’ve done X, Y and Z,” but until you’re actually in that situation, you really don’t know what you’d do. Remember that there’s no one simple fix to any situation, so just make the best of it, and don’t forget to enjoy the ride and laugh about it in the end.

This story appeared in the April/May 2021 issue of Flying Magazine

The post A Bug Interrupts a Flight Lesson appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In 1948, living in New Jersey, I wanted very much to get into flying. My inquiries led me to Secaucus (now a metropolis in its own right, 10 minutes from New York City), where I found the Dawn Patrol seaplane base located on the Hackensack River. The owner-operator was a veteran Navy pilot, who just a few years earlier had engaged in combat flying a torpedo bomber. His name was Cliff Umschied, and the fleet consisted of two Luscombes on floats. I was a kid and didn’t have much money at the time, but it was the beginning of a long and wonderful love affair with aviation. The lessons that my own flight training taught me stayed with me over the years until I eventually became an instructor and a designated pilot examiner.

Fast-forward to the Korean conflict that erupted in 1950. The following year, I found myself at Naval Air Station Barber’s Point on Oahu, Hawaii—about 15 air miles from Pearl Harbor—having completed several rounds of technical training, though I still wanted to fly. One day, I took a bus that made a stop at Honolulu International Airport (KHNL), now David K. Inouye International Airport, and there discovered the Hawaiian School of Aeronautics, owned and operated by a very pleasant woman whose husband at the time was a colonel fighting in Korea. Her name was Marguerite Gambo Wood, chief flight instructor and DPE. The fleet, as I recall, consisted of four Aeronca 7AC Champs, two Ercoupes and a Seabee. My instructor was June W. Johnson, a young lady probably not more than six or seven years older than I was.

June told me that her husband was a pilot for Hawaiian Airlines, then a freight carrier for the islands. We did air work over the pineapple fields—the same ones flown over by the attacking Japanese planes 10 years earlier—and pattern work mostly at Bellows Field, an abandoned World War II base on the east side of the island, not far from Kaneohe. We got by in a Champ with no electrical system at an international airport with 10,000-foot runways and four-engine traffic going on all day by using the light-gun system. We taxied out to a pad that was monitored by the tower, and when he flashed his light, we acknowledged by wagging the ailerons and elevator. Returning to the field, it was a right downwind with the ocean on our left. We watched the tower for their signal and rocked our wings to acknowledge. After just a few hours, I was signed off for solo and encouraged to go up and do stalls and spins at will.

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But by far the most challenging and memorable period for me was fulfilling the cross-country requirements. That’s what the Ercoupes were for—flying to the other islands. They had electric starters, greater fuel capacity, 75-horsepower engines and not-so-great condenser-tuned radios.

I flew the cross-country once with June and a second time alone. The flight took us from KHNL to Diamond Head at the southeastern tip of Oahu, then across the channel to Lauu Point at the western tip of Molokai, landing for a pit stop and verification signature at Molokai Airport.

Sounds simple enough, but it entails flying over what is serious open water for about 30 nautical miles in an Ercoupe with a questionable radio. Then it was off to the north coast of Molokai, a route that took us to the second required landing at Kahului Airport on Maui. The route ended with flying south to the coast of Maui, then back west to Lauu Point and home.

In the ’60s, we moved to Westchester County, New York. On weekends, I freelanced as a CFI at a small field in Duchess County (I taught my youngest son to fly on those weekends) and used nearby Westchester County Airport (KHPN) every chance I could. At 57, I left the business world and began 10 years at KHPN as a flight instructor, chief flight instructor and, for several years, designated pilot examiner for the local FSDO. I never forgot the skills I acquired over the pineapple fields on Oahu in the little Champs.

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On one of the last flight tests sent my way, a fellow instructor referred a young gentleman who had completed the private pilot training requirements. After the preliminary logbook check and oral exam, we went through the preflight and then did a couple of landings—they met the standards. We then left the pattern, and I directed my applicant to a work area nearby, telling him that we were going to do some stalls and steep turns. Now, many applicants for a flight test exhibit some nervousness, and I’ve always believed that a reasonable examiner makes allowances for that, but his reaction was quite visible.

We cleared the area, and I told him to do a gentle no-flaps stall and recover at the first sign of a break. By that time, judging by his demeanor, I’m sure he was in a sweat. I had him do a couple more clearing turns to help settle him down and then told him to do a full-flaps stall with a full break and recovery with minimum altitude loss. The result: left wing well down, controls crossed, and we were in an incipient spin. Had he been alone, he would have died. I recovered (shades of my early training in Oahu), suggested that he relax, and headed back to base.

In our discussion afterward, he told me that he hated stalls. I asked him how many stalls he had done in his training. His response: “Three.” (Mental note: Mention to the instructor the importance of completing requirements before recommending a flight test.) To the applicant’s credit, he retrained with his instructor, overcame his fear and came back to me for a retest, leaving happily with his private ticket.

When unpacking our things after the move to Westchester County, I came across a box of some old records, and sure enough, among the items was the 1951 Hawaii sectional, the very chart I used for the cross-country flights—course lines and all. Given the layout of the islands, it’s a very big sectional—a good 5 feet long and about 18 inches high. It has been framed and hangs on the wall of my “cave” over my desk. Every day, it brings back the joy I had flying in beautiful, pristine Hawaii. I was a fledging at the time, but the challenges it presented and the education it provided lasted a pilot’s lifetime.

This story appeared in the March 2021 issue of Flying Magazine

The post Hawaii Lessons in an Ercoupe appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was my first flying job—the one you dreamed about having all your life. The one for which you strove, saved and worked so hard, and it was finally real. I had to leave my native New Zealand and move to the Australian Outback to get it, but that just made it all the more exciting, away from the familiar and out into the vastness of that huge sunburned country.

I was based on Elcho Island, off the north coast of Arnhem Land, about 200 miles to the east of Darwin. To say it is remote is an understatement. No roads, no shops, one radio station and one TV channel. At least we had a paved runway. Most of the airstrips I would be flying to were red dirt, which meant, in the wet season, red mud.

We had a ragtag fleet of Cessnas, mostly 206s, 207s and 402s—all old and high-time but well-maintained. These were working bush airplanes, carpets long gone and replaced by painted plywood floors and high-density vinyl seats. It was worth getting out of bed early because the last person in had to fly the 207 for the day—and on short-strip work in the tropics, this was to be avoided. It was not so affectionately known as the “Lead Sled” or “Ground Gripper.” Ours had started life ferrying coffins around with an undertaker in Arkansas.

The first year passed without incident. I was, as the chief pilot put it, “greener than pea-and-frog pie,” and I knew it. I was cautious and careful.

The closest strip to home was Marparu, 16 miles away on the mainland. We went there almost daily, supplying the aboriginal community with pretty much everything. Food, doctors’ visits, teachers in and out, and medevac. If it could fit in the Cessna, we flew it.

A fellow Kiwi, Ian, was building a new schoolhouse there. It was a large job for one man, but he worked tirelessly, and slowly over the months, the school took shape. I flew food and supplies into him every few days, and every two weeks, I flew him out so he could catch up with his wife who lived in the local mining town an hour or so to the east.

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At last, the school was completed, and Ian asked me to do a couple of flights to get his tools and leftover building supplies. One of the things he needed to get was a set of plank stands about 10 feet long, so it was going to be a job for the 207.

The runway at Marparu is about 2,800 feet long, literally cut out of 50-foot-tall trees. There’s a clearing at each end, another 1,000 feet or so of felled-but-not-cleared trees. The surrounding terrain is dead flat. To prepare for the trip, I removed all the seats except for the one behind the pilot’s seat, so we could have as much cargo space as possible.

The day was typical for the wet season: high humidity, low QNH (airport pressure setting), high temperature at around 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and not a breath of wind. I was sweating just thinking about loading the airplane. Upon landing, I was confronted with a mountain of gear next to the strip. There were tins of paint, lengths of wood, jerrycans of diesel, a concrete mixer complete with single-cylinder diesel engine, nails, three large truck batteries, and all manner of other things dear to a builder’s heart.

I did some calculations and figured we could lift about 1,000 pounds. I only had some bathroom scales to weigh all his stuff, so a fair bit of guesstimating went on. A lot of the stuff was “dangerous goods” and shouldn’t have been put on at all, but with some serious complete-the-mission focus and wanting to please my friend, a lot of warning signs were ignored.

The 207 looked a little saggy on its undercarriage, but the strip was long, and I’d flown out of there many times at max weight, so I wasn’t overly concerned. I made sure to use every inch of the runway and swung the tail around over the clearing to get maximum length. About halfway down, there was a painted-white fuel drum. I figured that if I didn’t have two-thirds the speed I needed by the time I passed the drum, I’d abort and offload some gear.

The 207 jumped forward with a reassuring eagerness. Sixty knots came up as we passed the drum, and I was lulled into thinking this was all going to go to plan. At about 65 knots, though, it just stopped accelerating. It took me a couple of seconds to notice this, but what I did notice was that the end of the runway was approaching. Quickly.

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For a fleeting second, I thought about aborting anyway, but we were too far in for that now. As the end of the runway arrived, I rotated, and with the stall-warning horn wailing, we staggered into the air. We were far from out of trouble. Though airborne, we were over the clearing and still had 50-foot-tall trees to clear. Those trees seemed a very long way above where I was sitting. Half my brain was screaming at me to push forward because we were on the verge of the stall, while the other half was yelling to pull back to avoid the trees. All of my brain was telling me that this wasn’t really happening.

All that flammable cargo would shortly turn us both into a flaming crash site, miles away from any help. I braced for the impact, but it didn’t happen. How we got over those trees I’ll never know. A breath of wind, the hand of God—I have no idea. We skimmed along in the tree tops for what seemed like minutes and then ever so slowly climbed into the sky. I milked the flaps up in 1-degree increments. I kept in full power for a full five minutes. It took more than five minutes to climb to 1,500 feet.

During the whole one-hour flight, we never got above 3,500 feet or 105 knots. The magnitude of my foolishness had begun to sink in. How had all that training and all that carefulness been thrown aside so easily? I’d let wanting to get the job done and look capable and fearless in front of my friend cloud my judgment very badly.

When we landed, I had trouble getting out of the airplane because my legs felt like jelly. Ian looked at me with a strange expression on his face. “Was that as close as it looked?” he asked. “I thought the wheels were going to start turning in the treetops.” I gently put my arm around his shoulder and made a tiny gap between my thumb and forefinger. “This close to dying,” I said. He laughed. I don’t think he believed me. We unloaded the supplies onto several trollies. Luckily, it had started to rain, so no one came out to help us. The boss would have probably fired me on the spot if he’d seen it all.

That was 25 years ago, and I’ve never forgotten the lesson I learned that day. Work within the limits, be careful, and if it feels like a bad idea, then it probably is.

This story appeared in the January-February 2021 issue of Flying Magazine

The post Overloaded Takeoff in the Outback appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

A lot has been written over the past few years about pilots relying on the automation to fly the airplane to the detriment of actual hands-on-the-stick piloting skills. I have long been baffled by pilots’ reliance on the autopilot. But perhaps this attitude comes from my Air Force training early on and particularly from a black, black night at low altitude over the Atlantic Ocean. In October 1973, the war in Vietnam was winding to a close. For the previous three years or so, I had been flying the Lockheed C-141 Starlifter to Southeast Asia and all over the Pacific Ocean, supporting the US missions in that part of the world. Then, a new crisis: Israel had once again been attacked by Egypt, and the Air Force was tasked with supplying arms to Israel.

From its birth as a modern nation in 1948, Israel has fought its neighbors for its survival. In 1967, in the famous Six-Day War, Israel had defeated the adjacent countries (Syria, Jordan and Egypt) in one week. Six years later, on the holy celebration of Yom Kippur, it was happening again. But this time, it was against a slightly different background. The oil-rich countries of the Middle East announced that they would cut off all oil shipments to any country that supported Israel in the conflict. This included any nation that aided in the resupply of any materiel. That meant that if the United States wanted to support Israel, it would have to do it without the air bases outside of its own borders.

The Lockheed C-141 was the Air Force’s second-largest cargo aircraft. Its four jet engines allowed it to cruise at just under Mach 0.8 with a range of 5,000 miles. It weighed about 70.5 tons empty and more than twice that fully loaded. It was the perfect aircraft for the mission. So here was the plan.

The US Air Force Military Air Command would pick up bombs and small arms ammunition from supply depots in the States, fly to Lajes Field air base in the Portuguese Azores (where we still had landing rights), and then to Tel Aviv, Israel. Aircrews would rest at Lajes; the airplanes would keep moving. This was a normal operation, but there would be two new wrinkles that nearly put me and my crew into the Atlantic. First, we were not allowed to fly over any other country’s airspace or land in any other country en route. Second, under no circumstances would we leave an airplane on the ground at Tel Aviv. The Air Force did not want to see a burning US aircraft at Tel Aviv on the evening news.

My logbook entries from that time show that my crew and I picked up loads in Indiana and Arkansas, then flew eight hours or so to Lajes to rest, then picked up an incoming airplane and flew it for seven to eight hours to Tel Aviv, and then the same distance back to Lajes for a beer and bed. We flew two uneventful trips from Lajes to Tel Aviv and back. We flew past the Rock of Gibraltar and then straddled various airspace boundaries as we made our way east across the Mediterranean Sea. About 150 miles west of Israel, a pair of Israeli F-4 Phantoms showed up off our wingtip and escorted us nearly to touchdown.

As we taxied in, we opened the cargo doors so we could begin offloading as soon as we came to a stop. The refueling truck slid in next to us as we stopped, and while we sat with the engines running, we received a weather briefing, filed our flight plan for the leg back west, unloaded our cargo, and filled with fuel. Then, it was time to call for taxi and head back west for another eight hours. Not one extra minute was spent on the ground.

The third trip, on October 28, was different. The first four hours of our flight east were uneventful. Then, the master warning light illuminated, along with the small warning light that indicated that the elevator artificial-feel system had failed.

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While small aircraft have cables running from the control yoke to the elevator, large aircraft do not. Movement of the yoke on large aircraft causes hydraulic valves to open and close, which, in turn, moves the elevator. The pilot gets no sensory feedback from this movement of hydraulic fluid. So, to give the pilot the sense of aerodynamic feel that we are all accustomed to, the good engineers at Lockheed included the elevator artificial-feel system. This was a system of springs that sensed the aircraft airspeed from the central air-data computer and adjusted the amount of pressure that the pilot would feel from movement on the yoke. Just as in smaller aircraft, the greater the airspeed, the harder it was to pull back on the yoke. Great system, and it worked almost all the time.

When the system failed, it generally failed in the mode that required more back pressure on the yoke than expected. There was an in-flight reset procedure, but if that did not work, the system had to be reset on the ground by the maintenance folks. So in our case, the system failed, and when we disengaged the autopilot, the nose of the plane dropped immediately—and hard. The copilot and I regained control of the airplane, reengaged the autopilot, and had a long chat with the flight engineer and the books about our approach and landing. The plan we devised was that we would fly an ILS approach with the autopilot engaged, and then we would disengage just as we needed to flare. At that time, the copilot and I would jointly haul back on the yoke and get the nosewheel up just high enough to land, and that worked ok.

We had no maintenance support at Tel Aviv, and the flight engineer was not able to reset the system. On another day, we would have left the airplane for the maintenance folks, but that was not an option. I knew that I could have refused to fly the airplane, but I also knew that it was going to be moved by somebody, immediately. I felt that it was not fair to put someone else into this situation, not knowing how to react. At least we knew what to expect and how to handle it. Our takeoff briefing was normal, with one addition: At rotation speed, both the copilot and I would pull back on the yoke, and as soon as we got the aircraft into the climb-out pitch position, we would engage the autopilot.

Another eight hours back, and we had time for a lot of conversation. The aircraft was certified for Category III landing operations, meaning that if we had the proper ground equipment, we could let the autopilot capture the localizer and glideslope, engage the autothrottle system to hold the airspeed, and allow the autoland system bring up the nose at 50 feet agl and set the airplane on the centerline. What could go wrong?

It was nearly midnight on a moonless night. The only lights to be seen were those on the island, about 20 miles away. We descended to about 2,000 feet, rechecked all frequencies and switch settings, and prepared to watch the autopilot do its thing. Though I had never done this before in an aircraft, I had done it over and over in the simulator.

Flaps were set at the approach setting, landing gear was down, and airspeed was established for the approach. We were on a 45-degree intercept to the final approach course for Runway 15, about 15 miles out. The localizer needle started to move off the edge of the case, and the aircraft began a left turn to intercept the final approach course to Runway 15. As the airplane began to roll out of the turn, we realized that there was a problem with our plan. We just did not know what.

We were all set for some type of downward runaway pitch excursion. Both the copilot and I were set to pull back on the yoke if necessary. However, as the airplane started to roll out of the turn, it began a smooth but rapid nose-up movement. Simultaneously, the airspeed began decreasing toward the stall speed. We already had gear and flaps deployed, exactly the worst position to be in with the airplane moving toward a stall. This was where training just kicked in.

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I don’t remember what I said, but I remember simultaneously disengaging the autopilot and autothrottles, rolling into a steep turn to the left and smoothly shoving all four throttles forward, and staring hard at the attitude indicator as I did so. As soon as the nose moved up, the lights of the island went out of sight—there was no horizon to be seen. To the left as we turned, there was nothing but black. No ocean, no sky—just black. Aircraft attitude and airspeed were all that mattered.

The copilot and I performed a steep turn on instruments, not much different from the ones that instrument students still practice. All that training kicked in without thinking. Fly the airplane. Attitude, airspeed, altitude, roll out on a heading of 150. Re-intercept the localizer. The autopilot worked on the earlier approach into Tel Aviv—try it again—carefully. The only thing we did differently this time from our earlier approach into Tel Aviv was using the autothrottle. So, skip the autothrottle, and see if that solves the problem. We would fly this approach exactly like the approach we flew eight hours before. Except it was night, and we had the lack of visual cues that nighttime brings on landing. This entire event, from pitch-up to rollout back on final, took less than two minutes—the time it takes to make a 360-degree steep turn.

Landing was otherwise uneventful, except that our adrenalin levels were sky high. It all went quickly. The rest of the crew did not know how close we came to putting the airplane into the ocean. It was just us two pilots that were shaking.

We were met, as was normal, by the maintenance crew. We pilots and the flight engineer described what had happened as best we could. The maintenance crew said, “Hmm,” and we all went to bed.

It was quite some time before I realized what had happened. I was so focused on the malfunction of the elevator artificial-feel system that I did not realize that the aircraft was making the same rookie error that every student pilot makes. When we roll an aircraft into a bank, we need to increase our lift, because our lift perpendicular to the horizon has decreased. We do this by increasing the angle of attack, and the only way we can increase the angle of attack and hold altitude and airspeed is to increase power. The airplane did this and added the correct amount of nose-up trim to hold the level turn. However, it was slow to add power to hold the airspeed—just like a student pilot.

A failure to increase power will result in either a loss of airspeed or altitude. This is true in Cessna 172 or in a Boeing 777. Or in the Starlifter. In our case, the aircraft was calling for more power because the altitude was fixed and the turn to final was causing the airspeed to dissipate. But just like a beginning student learning steep turns, the autothrottle system was behind. It was trying to add power, but it came in late. When the airplane rolled out on final, the plane was low on airspeed, and the only thing it knew to do was to increase the pitch to hold altitude, which just caused the airspeed to drop more. Bad cycle. The solution for any impending stall is to decrease the angle of attack, while following up with increased power. I have always thanked Lockheed for giving us an aircraft with an abundance of power—because we had enough to make the runway.

This story appeared in the December 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

The post Final Turn in the Azores appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I’ve been flying for 30 years and never experienced a hiccup from an airplane engine while airborne. That changed a few minutes into a recent flight. This story can’t rival a sudden engine stoppage and forced landing—it’s a story of an engine that seemed on its way to quitting—but I hope it provides some useful lessons.

It was unseasonably warm on February 23 in the Upper Midwest, with a bell-clear, blue-sky day beckoning for some flying. I never have to worry about finding something to do in an airplane because I have an ongoing project of landing at every airport in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin, the four states neighboring Minnesota, where I’d already landed at all 135 airports.

If there’s flyable weather at my home base of St. Cloud Regional Airport (KSTC) in Minnesota, there’s a good chance there’s good weather in one of the other states. So a friend and I headed out to northern Iowa in my Mooney, starting out in the northwest part of the state and heading east toward Decorah (KDEH), landing at all airports along the way. We ended up at Decorah an hour before sunset and fueled up for the return home.

We took off uneventfully in fine weather on an instrument flight plan to Anoka County-Blaine Airport (KANE) in Minnesota, climbed to 6,000 feet, settled into cruise and leaned the engine to rich of peak. After about two minutes of conversation, I began to feel a vibration. It felt exactly like the roughness you feel when going lean of peak and beyond, to the point where the first cylinder or cylinders begin to lose power—that is, “leaning to roughness.” However, the vibration continued to get worse, and the engine seemed to be on its way to destruction, peaking in about 10 seconds, so I knew I needed to land as soon as possible. I hoped for an airport because I still had power, though Iowa farm fields would be an option if necessary.

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I started a left turn toward the nearest airport, holding altitude in order to maximize my glide range. During that turn, I considered specifically where I wanted to go. I could make a 180-degree turn back toward Decorah, where I knew they had an FBO with repair facilities. Or I could do a 90-degree turn back toward the nearest airport at the time, Cresco, Iowa (KCJJ), where we had been earlier. I decided to go to Cresco; I learned quickly that when your life is on the line, all other inconveniences are secondary.

This is where I confirmed that an iPad running a big moving map—the ForeFlight app in my case—can be a lifesaver. When making that turn, I knew generally where Cresco was because I was just there but not a specific heading. I simply turned the airplane in that direction by pointing the symbolic airplane using the moving map. I identified the town visually, and I adjusted my heading to maintain a ground track straight to where I knew the airport was. If I had used the nearest-airport feature on the GPS, it would have taken longer.

I declared a mayday call to the Rochester, Minnesota, approach controller with whom I was already in contact, and she provided information on direction and distance along the way.

Once established toward the airport, the glide-range circle shown on ForeFlight told me I was not yet within gliding range, and for that reason, I maintained altitude. All of the above took place in 20 seconds. At that point, I turned my attention to the engine, and at once, I found that the engine monitor flashed that cylinder No. 3 in my Lycoming IO-360 was running at something like 450 degrees F. I left the throttle wide open and pushed the mixture in full rich. A few seconds later, the engine started to become smoother and restored to normal after no more than 10 seconds. The cylinder-head temperature dropped rapidly. I waited until I was within gliding range, stayed high for a couple of miles beyond that, began a descent into a tight traffic pattern suitable for a possible dead-stick landing, and landed uneventfully.

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We taxied to the ramp and were quickly greeted by the local police and the airport manager who had been called by Rochester. Cursory inspection of the engine revealed nothing unusual. The airport manager, Clair Pecinovsky, put me in touch with Mike Connell, an airplane mechanic at Decorah, and he graciously offered to come to Cresco to look over the engine, including the fuel injectors, spark plugs and borescope. In the meantime, we returned home via a rental car.

The inspection revealed no damage to the engine, but one spark plug on the misbehaving cylinder No. 3 had a cracked insulator. After conferring with Connell, my own airplane mechanic and some more research, the best theory was that the No. 3 fuel injector experienced a partial obstruction leading to a leaner mixture, demonstrated by the resulting higher exhaust-gas temperature—as shown in the data dump from the JP Instruments EDM 700 engine analyzer—which led to a detonation or preignition event perhaps instigated by the cracked plug (most likely detonation).

The spark plug was replaced, and the next week I hitched a ride in a friend’s airplane, circled the airport to confirm all was well, and flew home uneventfully with a deliberately rich mixture. At a safe altitude over my airport, I put the engine through its paces of various mixtures, RPMs and power but could not cause any anomalies.

I’ve been a Monday morning quarterback and came up with the following suggestions for others:

• Don’t have regrets about calling mayday. I received a benign call from the FSDO afterward, and that was it.
• Don’t wait—reflexively push that mixture in full rich as you start your turn to see if that helps. It apparently did in this case.
• The engine went back to normal so promptly, I briefly considered proceeding home. Resist the temptation. Make the precautionary landing.
• Go to the nearest airport. All other considerations are secondary when it comes to threatened power loss.
• If you don’t have an engine monitor, get one. I’m considering getting an audio alert for temperature alarms because I still can’t believe I didn’t see that flashing cylinder-head temperature. I’ll be checking more frequently, at least for that flashing warning.
• Invest in a panel or yoke mount for your iPad or other moving-map display; it provides a wealth of safety information.

This story appeared in the November 2020, Buyers Guide issue of Flying Magazine

The post Detonation Grounds a Mooney appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Love Flying’s “I Learned About Flying From That” series? Tune in for the rest of the story—with exclusive interviews with pilots who have shared their emergencies, crises, and mistakes over 950-plus installments of the iconic I.L.A.F.F.T. series. Host Rob Reider relates a tale from our archives—as told by the author—then catches up with that pilot to ask the questions we know have been on your mind. We’ve gone into the archives to find the most compelling stories from recent years—and the lessons learned can be useful to all pilots. Those lessons might even save your life.

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In an airplane, surely cheap thrills are better than costly thrills—but, frankly, a safer atmosphere in the cockpit may be boring thrills. Boredom in an airplane is good.

I begin to sound cynical here when, in truth, I feel that our best experiences in airplanes can fall somewhere between serenity and a luminous exaltation. Here I want to tell you about yet another kind of airborne thrill I once suffered.

When I was a wet young pup back in the 1970s, I flew for a dirtbag commuter airline I’ll call “Moonglow Airways.” I was a copilot on the Douglas DC-3 and the Martin 404 at a time when both of these airplanes were already perceived by many as geriatric refugees from the old airliners’ graveyard. I was a copilot on the DC-3 for the first year and was then given a very abbreviated checkout on the Martin. I was so new to the airplane, I could work the checklists only in a rather halting manner.

It was Friday morning on December 22, 1978, sometime before most airlines began to practice the enlightened model of crew resource management that finally got all the pilots talking with each other freely so as to engage the minds of everybody on the flight deck.

In those days, we operated on the “captain as God” model of crew interaction. The captain dictated his instructions to the underlings (and yes, the boss was almost invariably male). The subordinate officers were then expected to reconfigure the airplane on command, talk with ATC and otherwise sit quietly on their hands.

A stream of horrific accidents occurred during these years before crew resource management appeared throughout the industry. Many of these tragic accidents could have been prevented if the lower-ranking pilots had felt free to speak up with appropriate assertiveness when threats to safety arose.

Now, this trip I’m describing was to be a ferry flight down to the Bahamas, where Moonglow Airways was providing a Martin under subcontract to Bahamasair after one of their pilots sank an F-27 off the end of the runway at Chub Cay. Martins are about the same size as the F-27, so it was a good fit for their trips, shuttling between Freeport, Nassau, the other islands, and then to Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

I arrived at Operations in our Sarasota, Florida, headquarters before dawn and met the captain, whom I shall call “Wild Willy Neely.” We’d often flown together on the DC-3, so I knew him to be a highly skilled pilot. Willy was one of our many World War II guys in their 50s. In 1942, Willy had rolled down a hill in North Carolina to become a pilot of a PBY patrol bomber out in the Pacific. He had recently put his life on the straight-and-narrow by finding God and giving up cigarettes, womanizing and whiskey.

By reputation, nothing ever slowed Willy down and certainly neither would my inexperience in the Martin that day.

Willy greeted me warmly, his blue eyes bright below a white crew cut. Deep and steady, he said: “Nice to see you again. Preflight’s done. We’re ready to go, so just stow your bags, and let’s get going.”

I settled myself into my new office and found the receiving aircraft checklist.

Willy’s hands danced around the overhead panel and the throttle quadrant. Then he jockeyed the ignition, fuel and injectors just so until those Pratt & Whitney radial engines—big as battleship anchors—rumbled and galumphed to life, belching clouds of oil smoke in stumbling dance rhythms as they herded all 18 cylinders into their proper cadence.

Read More: I Learned About Flying From That

By then, I made my way almost to the end of the receiving aircraft checklist, reading and responding to each item without comment from Willy. Nothing was going to slow him down. Sarasota Tower was closed because it was before 0600 hours, so this didn’t slow him down either.

While we were rolling down the parallel taxiway, Willy did the engine run-ups, checking magnetos and cycling the propellers from low to high pitch and back.

We were at the western end of Runway 13 where I was just turning to the before-start checklist.

In his basso Southern drawl, Willy smiled at me and said, “Son, do you think you can find your way down to Freeport?”

I was feeling uncomfortable and hurried, but it was 1978, so you didn’t question the captain unless you were sure he was going to kill you. I nudged the flight controls—not a full-throw check, but they felt loose enough—and I went through the little mantra I always run before takeoff: CIFTGER (controls, instruments, flaps, trim, gas, engines, radios). Yup. All good.

In the pre-dawn blackness, I said, “OK, I got it.” I eased up the throttles to takeoff power and focused way down the runway centerline. Accelerating through 60 knots, Willy released the nosewheel steering tiller and said, “You got the airplane.”

We were almost fast enough to pull the airplane off the ground, but as we reached rotation speed, I realized that I did not have control; I was hauling back on the control yoke, but it wouldn’t move.

I saw the control lock still latched across the captain’s yoke, and I yelled: “Willy! Unlock the controls!”

I was doing a bad job of keeping the airplane tracking down the centerline. I was distracted by Willy as he was fumbling the latch free. Finally, I hauled the beast off the ground just as we were headed toward the runway-edge lights.

“Gear up,” I called out. Willy reached over and lifted up the gear handle.

The hydraulic accumulator broke into a screeching song, but the landing gear didn’t budge.

Willy put the gear lever down again, slapped his hand over his forehead and said: “Aw, man, I forgot to pull the gear pins. About every 10 years, I do this to remind myself that it works better with the gear pins pulled out.”

Great. I was thinking that in just this one year, I had five engine shutdowns at Moonglow Airways, and I was nervous because I knew the airplane wouldn’t hold altitude with an engine out and the gear down.

We made it safely round the patch, removed the pins and headed back down to Freeport.

How in the name of sweet saints Wilbur and Orville did I put myself in this position?

I was getting a lesson in how human beings can act like sheep. Unless we think for ourselves and respect our own judgment—even in the face of another’s greater experience and authority—we are no smarter than sheep being led to slaughter.

We have no one but ourselves to blame when we surrender our own judgment to woolly headed passivity and thereby attract some sheep thrills.

This story appeared in the October 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

The post Leaving the Controls Locked on Takeoff appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

A solar eclipse seemed like the perfect excuse for a cross-country flight to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from San Diego with friends in our recently acquired Cirrus SR22T. My close friend Howard was just as excited for the trip as I was. Our less adventurous wives, not so much. My wife protested, “I don’t get it, why all the travel? It gets completely dark right here in our backyard every single night.” Five years and 2,000 hours later and she is still anxious about flying, but with prodding she agreed to go.

It was only two months before the eclipse, but good luck on the internet landed us two acceptable, albeit exorbitantly priced, hotel rooms, the last the town had to offer. I bought a bunch of cheap eclipse glasses on Amazon, along with a few books on the subject so that by the time we departed I was an eclipse expert.

The weather looked benign, with just the usual midsummer threat of afternoon thunderstorms. My biggest flight planning challenge was sorting through the weight and balance because it was the first time I would pack this airplane to its limits. I’ve known Howard for three decades, and over the years he has expanded in both depth of personality and bodily size. My flight plan said three hours and 44 minutes, which I thought we might want to do without stopping. I realized we could comfortably make it if I filled the tanks a couple of gallons shy of a top-off, dialed back the throttle to 70 percent power and cleared all excess weight from the baggage compartment. It would increase our flight time to four hours, but eliminate the need for a stop if we all had the stamina.

Two weeks before departure, Howard’s primary care doctor suggested his age, weight and adult-onset diabetes necessitated a stress test. The test was abnormal, leading to a cardiac procedure. The procedure had a good outcome, but there was a minor glitch when his heart stopped beating and he had to be shocked to restart it while still wide awake. This sudden electrical blow to the chest feels exactly how it sounds — quite shocking — and Howard was understandably on edge ever since. I happened to be the cardiologist who shocked him and then implanted his coronary stent, and I deemed him good to go. Besides, the near-death experience had begun to motivate him, and he was now 5 pounds lighter, meaning I could add nearly one more gallon of avgas.

I’ve learned how distracting anxious passengers can be during the boarding process, so the night before departure I visited the aircraft. I did a preflight, fueled it to the perfect level, checked the oil and removed every nonessential fragment from the baggage compartment to make room for all the luggage and still keep within our weight limits. The next morning, after demanding everyone use the restroom, we boarded and lifted off. The ceiling was 800 feet overcast, so it started as an instrument flight. Since we were headed to mountainous terrain, we stayed IFR despite gorgeous weather en route. I had selected several potential stopping points, but each time we approached a rest stop, the unanimous vote was to press on.

I had planned the trip at 9,000 feet to keep the passengers comfortable, and the ride was mostly smooth, with short diversions to avoid a few pop-up summer storms. Our last potential stop was just north of Salt Lake City, but with 50 minutes to go, there were no takers. Everyone wanted to keep going.

As we approached the mountains, ATC moved us up to 10,000 feet, and then 11,000. It started to get a little bumpy. Howard and I were playing with the two oxygen saturation meters we had on our fingers, one reading 86 percent and the other 89 percent. We noticed if we took deeper breaths we could get them barely to 90 percent.

Then it happened. ATC moved us to 12,000 feet. I felt the slight lightheadedness and headache I usually note at that altitude. Howard did not like it at all. He started squirming in his seat, saying, “I don’t feel right.” He became more anxious, repeating, “I don’t like this.”

Now, his back was hurting and he kept saying, “I can’t breathe up here.” He said he needed a men’s room and reminded me of his lumbar disc problem that was now in acute spasm. Below us, the weather was perfectly clear, and we were well above the Teton mountains, so I asked ATC for lower. The controller responded, “I can’t give you lower over that terrain due to the [minimum en route altitude], but I can give you higher.” Howard exploded. “Higher? What is he crazy? He wants us to go higher? Doesn’t he know there is no oxygen up here?” Howard had a good point, and I realized while we did not legally need oxygen at 12,000 feet, the Cirrus was equipped with an oxygen tank, so why not use it? I asked Howard’s wife to reach in the back for the bag with all the oxygen flow meters and cannulas, but while she was rummaging around, it dawned on me I had removed all the necessary tubing and paraphernalia along with everything else — to make room for the luggage!

Howard’s wife was now trying to calm him down, but the situation was escalating, with complaints of headaches, dizziness, air hunger, back pain and a full bladder. Dealing with an anxious passenger was something I had read about during my flight training, but until that moment I had not appreciated the full impact of the distraction and serious danger of the situation. If things kept going the way they were, I would soon be declaring an emergency.

I canceled IFR, kept my beacon code for flight following and rapidly descended into a valley just west of our position. When I got down to 8,500 feet, Howard felt better, so I stayed low for about 10 minutes and then slowly climbed, reaching 11,500 feet but only briefly as I weaved my way through the mountain passes until entering the Jackson Hole valley for landing.

Jackson Hole is gorgeous, and that Monday was perfect for an eclipse. We realized the optimal viewing spot was right in front of our hotel, so we pulled up some lawn chairs, put on our eclipse glasses and looked at the sky.

And then it happened. Instantly, the sun turned jet black. There was a communal gasp as everyone’s jaw dropped at once. The sun was the blackest shiniest black that black can be. The corona backlit the distant horizon. It was eerie and beautiful. For exactly two minutes and twenty seconds, we stared in disbelief. And then, bam — a circle of blinding white light suddenly appeared to another simultaneous gasp from across the valley. Despite all my preparation, I had no clue it would feel that profound.

We made it back to the airport by mid­afternoon. For our return flight, I had learned my lesson and planned a stop a little more than halfway home. I chose Cedar City, Utah, because it was at 5,000 feet so it would be cooler in August than most other options. I made the flight VFR, stayed below 12,000 feet over the mountains and then dropped to 10,500 for cruise. Isolated storm cells began popping up around us as we approached our rest stop, but otherwise, it was clear and so smooth that we had to wake the girls for landing.

I called Flight Service and learned that our intended tour of the Grand Canyon was in jeopardy due to a nidus of storm-cell activity directly over the rim. In fact, we could see a large cell about 50 miles south closing in on the runway. We decided now would be a good time to make our break.

We loaded up, and I cranked the engine after configuring for the most reliable of my hot-start procedures. No luck. I waited 20 seconds and tried again. The engine turned over but wouldn’t start. My iPhone has a file called “Hot Starts” containing no less than seven hot-start procedures provided by friends, books and instructors. Nothing worked. As the storm got closer, I tried calming everyone down, explaining this was all normal and did not suggest a malfunctioning engine, but their protests grew louder and louder. Howard was directing the show again. He spoke slowly and evenly. “Paul, why don’t we just go inside for a couple of hours and wait for the storm to pass.” One by one, we watched other aircraft take off. I kept cranking the engine while Howard kept talking. I finally lost my cool and told Howard everything would be fine if I could just hear myself think. Finally, my “flooded start” procedure worked. We scooted to the runway, did a quick preflight and took off, keeping an eye on the approaching storm out the left window. Nexrad confirmed very significant cell activity to the east of Las Vegas. We would have to put off our planned tour of the Canyon. It had been a long day and a phenomenal weekend, and we all agreed — we had enjoyed as much of this as we could stand.

What I learned from the eclipse:

• Flying with nonpilot passengers requires additional planning. Preflight weight and balance and safety instructions are a given, but remember, your passengers are having a very different experience from yours.
• With nonpilot passengers, it’s much better to embrace the adventure and not focus on the destination. If there is any consideration about stopping, take a break.
• If you are flying higher than about 10,000 feet with passengers, at a minimum bring an inexpensive, light spray oxygen canister for a quick, intermittent pick-me-up. Everyone experiences higher altitudes differently.
• Brief your passengers on things like problematic hot starts that might cause a delay well before departure so they can be mentally prepared.
• Beginner pilots can be wary of asking ATC for changes. Don’t be shy about challenging ATC, including canceling IFR in some conditions.
• Book learning is wonderful, but when it comes to passenger emergencies and total eclipses, there is no substitute for being there.
• A 99 percent eclipse is interesting, but a total eclipse is a life experience. Don’t miss it in 2024.

The post Flying During a Solar Eclipse appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was August 15, 2015, the day my two daughters invited me out for breakfast for my 90th birthday. They took me to the EAA gathering held the third Saturday of every month at Marv Skie-Lincoln County Airport in Tea, South Dakota.

As we ate breakfast with the local pilots in the main hangar on this fine morning, outside sat a 1942 Waco open-cockpit biplane. Several people came over to our table and congratulated me on my birthday. Little did I know I was going to get a ride in that airplane that very morning! My daughters, Susie and Brenda, surprised me by arranging the ride. My son-in-law Kevin, an Army master sergeant, had connections with the South Dakota Air National Guard and was given the name of Bruce Beecroft, the pilot who owned the plane, from one of his colonels.

After I met Bruce, he gave me a safety briefing and we put on our goggles and headgear, climbed up the wing to clamber into the cockpit and strapped ourselves into that taildragger. Trundling down the runway on that clear, blue morning, I realized how lucky I was to have had a full life with the love of my family still by my side.

Soon, we were flying high above the cornfields and prairies in that open cockpit, staying level and true; there would be no aerobatics, or parachutes, that day.

My thoughts drifted back to another time 68 years earlier, a memory that, if it had ended differently, could have changed my life, as well as those of countless others.

I graduated from high school when I was 17. The year was 1943, and World War II was in full swing. I enlisted in the Navy and wanted to join the Navy Air Corps.

I applied for the V-5 program, which was training for carrier pilots at Pensacola, Florida. Their quota was filled and they told me to apply next time, but next time never came.

I was assigned to a ship at sea for the remainder of the war.

When I was discharged, I came back to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and learned to fly on the GI Bill when Joe Foss owned the Flying Service at Joe Foss Field, which was named after him for his distinguished military service. Joe was a Marine Corps major in World War II and the top Marine fighter ace (he shot down 26 Japanese airplanes). He earned the Medal of Honor and Distinguished Flying Cross, was a founder of the Air National Guard in South Dakota and a brigadier general, and later became the 20th governor of South Dakota, among other accomplishments.

Col. Curtis Shupe, a former Air Force flight instructor, was my main instructor. He had enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps and became an instructor in B-24, B-25 and B-29 bombers, and in later years piloted P-51 Mustangs in the Korean conflict. After Korea, he was recruited by his senior officer, Joe Foss, to be a fighter pilot for the newly established South Dakota Air National Guard. He also began working as a pilot and instructor for Joe’s Flying Service, which Joe had purchased from Curt’s father, Cecil.

Curt taught me how to fly and perform aerobatics in a Luscombe, a Stearman, a Fairchild PT-19 and a PT-26. Joe, being a friend of mine, gave me a pre-check ride to be sure I could pass the flight test for my Private Pilot License before John Smith came down from Huron, South Dakota, to give me the flight test for my license the next day.

I passed with no problem.

My friend Charley from Yankton, South Dakota, soon purchased a war-surplus Fairchild PT-19, which is a low-wing, single-engine open-cockpit monoplane with tandem seating. He flew it to Sioux Falls for a Standard Oil dealer meeting. He asked me if I knew how to loop a PT-19; he wanted to learn how. I said sure, I had done it many times in the Stearman and the PT-19 with my instructor, Curt, and I also did it solo several times.

It was a beautiful day in August. The sky was blue, and the weather was perfect. We put on our parachutes, which were required in an open-cockpit airplane when doing aerobatics, and took off for the practice area 30 miles south of Sioux Falls. I climbed to 4,000 feet and looked out at the cornfields and beautiful prairies below. I told Charley I would do two loops, and told him he could follow me through on the controls to get the feel for it. Then, on the third loop, I’d let him take the controls, and I told him I would follow him through.

We went into a shallow dive to pick up enough airspeed to go over the top. Near the top of the loop, we ran out of airspeed and were about to stall; I could see we were not going to make it over the top. I did what I was taught by my instructor in this situation. I took control of the airplane, and I gave it full left rudder and put the airplane into a spin, from which I knew how to recover.

When we started down, I wished we were higher; the airplane was slow to enter the spin, and we were losing altitude fast. It was time to make a quick decision to either bail out and activate the parachute or stay with the airplane and pull out before we hit the ground. About that time, the spin was slowing us and I decided to stay with the airplane. When we finally leveled out, we were only about 300 feet above the ground.

We flew back to Foss Field and landed. When we inspected the wings, we discovered a crack in the paint next to the fuselage. We were lucky when we dropped from 4,000 to 300 feet that we didn’t lose a wing. What I learned from the experience is always to have adequate airspeed and altitude for a loop.

In later years, I went on to get my instrument rating and commercial license and rating for multiengine airplanes. I have owned several airplanes, including a Cessna 170A and a Beechcraft Bonanza, and was part owner of a Piper Seneca twin. I flew for about 58 years, until I was 80 years old.

My thoughts returned to the present, back to August 15, 2015. The 20-minute ride in the Waco was much too short for such a fine aircraft, but we had to come down sooner or later. As the airplane touched down on the grass airstrip and jolted me back to reality, there on the field, my family was waiting. My son-in-law Terry was taking photos for us and for Kevin, Susie’s husband, since he was not able to be there. He was deployed to South Korea as a crew chief on F-16 fighter jets with the South Dakota Air National Guard.

My eyes were watering when I climbed out of the cockpit, thinking about how truly blessed I am — or perhaps it was from the wind in my face from the ride. No matter, it is an experience I will always cherish. My Susie is buying a ride for my son-in-law Kevin as a gift. Then he too can experience flying high in an open-cockpit biplane above the cornfields and the prairies of South Dakota, staying level and true. Aerobatics — wouldn’t you?

The post Aerobatics and the Importance of Altitude appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and nobody was flying. My open-cockpit biplane, a Great Lakes 2T-1A-1, was just the answer for a relaxing start to the day. It’s a great airplane for sightseeing. It flies low and slow, and turns on a dime. I departed Montgomery Airport (KMYF) in San Diego and put down at nearby Gillespie Field (KSEE) for a delicious cheese omelet. When I departed, it was still a ghost town; the Gillespie controller even offered an intersection departure on the perpendicular runway, just for fun. I departed into the clear, gorgeous empty sky. What could possibly go wrong?

I let my instincts take me where they wanted, and I found myself exploring East County and the wide, smooth rocks surrounding Loveland Reservoir. I circled an intriguing private airstrip called On the Rocks and imagined losing my engine but making a successful landing on the broken-up dirt runway. Then I turned back toward the coast via Otay Lake and made a low pass above the skydiving operator at Nichol’s Field (0CL3). Even the parachute guys were sleeping.

I looked at my watch and found it was time to return to Montgomery. For no particular reason, I decided to try a new path home and explore Sweetwater Reservoir and southwest San Diego. We generally stay away from Sweetwater since the Class Bravo ceiling gets down to 1,800 feet by the reservoir near the approach path to San Diego International Airport (KSAN). But it was a clear, calm day, with no aircraft in sight or showing up on my new ADS-B transponder, so I thought I would see the sights just east of the major airport.

I circled the reservoir about 1,600 feet above the ground, wondering why they named it Sweetwater; it looked more like brown water to me. Near the western edge of the reservoir, the Bravo goes down to the surface, which used to be worrisome but doesn’t bother me one bit now that I have more than 2,000 hours and a lot of ForeFlight experience. I’ve even “self-calibrated” ForeFlight against VORs, so I know that my position on the moving map corresponds to the center of the blue aircraft icon, not the wings. Five years ago, when I was getting my private pilot license, I would tease my instructor. He would get bent out of shape if I got near the Bravo. I told him he needed to get an iPad. His idea of where the Bravo began related to vague landmarks. I had GPS precision in my lap!

I headed directly west, staying under 1,800 feet, my eyes darting between the landscape, my instruments and my iPad. Just before hitting the surface Bravo I banked right, smoothly executing a perfectly coordinated turn north, and headed for Mount Helix. I studiously remained under the Bravo until my iPad indicated I had passed it. Then I turned hard west, called up the tower at KMYF and was cleared for a squeaky-clean wheel landing. Pretty much a perfect morning flight! Well, it was perfect until I started taxiing back to the hangar and ground control told me they had a number for me to call for a possible pilot deviation. Exhilaration turned to dread.

Tail between my legs, I called. It was a local San Diego number, so my embarrassment grew with each ring of the phone. When I told them why I was calling, I got a polite request to hold. I waited for the browbeating, but he could not have been nicer. “We just want to be sure, if you’re flying in this area, you know about the Bravo and the rules.”

“Of course,” I diffidently explained. “Granted, I don’t usually fly around Sweetwater Reservoir, but on this calm, empty morning, I decided to explore that part of San Diego, only because I have ForeFlight and was careful to stay out of the Bravo.” He continued to nicely explain that my deviation required they send around an American Airlines Airbus coming in from Dallas.

I was horrified. Here I was, frolicking around at 1,600 feet while above me I was creating havoc. I apologized and once again explained about my best friend, ForeFlight. I told him I likely had a misconception about how my airplane is displayed on the iPad’s moving map and asked if he could tell me exactly where I busted the Bravo.

“Well,” he said, “for that, let me transfer you to the guy who was tracking you.”

The third guy was even nicer than the other two. He emphatically explained that I did not actually bust the Bravo. I was always legal. It’s just that since I was barreling straight ahead, aiming for San Diego International Airport and not talking to anyone, they had to assume I was clueless and would just keep going on a collision course with the jet above me descending on final approach. That’s why they sent the Airbus around. A good decision on their part.

My guess is they wouldn’t have spoken to me if they hadn’t had to deviate the Airbus. I think a lot of us come close to the edge of the Bravo, but ATC probably lets it go if it doesn’t cause a problem. That morning I learned to see it from the controller’s perspective. They explained that it’s fine to fly close to the Bravo, but if you do, you need to be talking to ATC so they know your intentions. What I did was not illegal, but it caused significant stress for a lot of people, made a plane full of passengers 10 minutes late and probably cost American Airlines $10,000. I was legal, but disruptive and very impolite — and here I thought I was such a nice guy!

The post An Alpha Male Flirts with Bravo Airspace on a Sightseeing Excursion appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was a chilly March day in New Jersey, but the temperatures were finally rising above freezing on a regular basis. Signs of snow had all but vanished, and we CFIs at the flight school were looking forward to the start of spring and better flying weather.

On my schedule was a private pilot with whom I would occasionally meet for a refresher flight. As always, he reserved our Piper PA-28 Warrior for a two-hour block of dual instruction. Though legally current, my client didn’t fly often and was a relatively low-time pilot. Before heading out, we established a plan, which included performing stalls, steep turns and emergency procedures because he thought those were the areas where he had the least recent experience.

I suggested some takeoff and landing practice, including soft- and short-field work.

We flew to our usual practice area and covered the airwork before I pulled the throttle well above the nice little airfield with its short runway at Aeroflex-Andover (12N). He did a good job with his engine-out and short-field procedures. As we departed back toward Essex County Airport (KCDW), I asked if he had done any actual soft-field landings. He replied that he hadn’t, but had always wanted to try.

I directed him toward nearby Trinca Airport (13N), a 1,920-foot grass strip that I visited many times over the years. I had him fly over the field, and we took a good look at the runway, which appeared clean and solid. I observed no signs of water or mud, and the turf appeared to be in good shape. Though I understood the risks of soft fields after the winter,

I had more than a thousand hours in PA-28s and felt very comfortable with soft-field takeoffs and landings. Up to now, that is.

The wind was from the west, so we flew the pattern for Runway 24. The approach went as planned. We flared with a little power and gently placed the mains onto what now appeared to be a surface that was softer and wetter than I’d thought. During the rollout, I realized the turf was in bad shape in some areas and I became concerned about the possibility of getting stuck.

I realized that we needed to get out of there or risk needing to make a call back to my boss explaining that his airplane was stuck in the mud.

I took back the controls and explained that I would be turning the airplane around for back-taxi and to prepare for takeoff. I explained that I would demonstrate the takeoff technique, so I set the flaps at 25 degrees and taxied around patches of mud as I headed to the runway threshold. I made a 180-degree turn and pointed the airplane at what appeared to be the firmest and driest part on the strip.

I applied full power and added back-pressure on the yoke, resulting in bumpy acceleration as the gear splattered mud all over the front of the airplane. As expected, acceleration was slow, and though the airplane was attempting to lift into ground effect, the patches of mud were causing much resistance, holding the airspeed below what was needed to get us off the ground. As I tried to nudge the aircraft into ground effect we would lift slightly, with the stall indicator sounding, yet any contact with the surface would immediately reduce airspeed and lift. We were in a region where the airplane was simply not gaining enough speed for constant level flight in ground effect, occasionally touching the muddy turf surface, which in turn retarded the airspeed.

We were in a window where the airspeed would allow a little lift yet not enough to stay out of the mud. Too high angle-of-attack or a little too much altitude and the plane would lose lift and splash down into the mud. Knowing that this could turn into a dangerous porpoise down the field, I continued to search for the small AOA window (which must be reduced as airspeed climbs), which would permit enough acceleration in ground effect to allow for a safe liftoff.

After passing the halfway mark, I realized we were beyond the safe abort point. We would clearly not be able to stop before hitting the tree line ahead. I had no choice but to continue and gain the necessary airspeed.

As the airspeed indicator bobbed up and down between 40 and 50 knots, my left-seat customer started insisting we abort, but I knew that would have resulted in a guaranteed disaster and I felt I was starting to maintain control in ground effect and the ASI was trending upward. The stall indicator was still sounding, but I now had the airplane solidly off the turf and the ASI was rising over 50 knots. My client now abruptly implored “Climb!” As we watched the tree line straight ahead getting larger, I replied with a solid “Not yet!” I am sure it looked very concerning, and maybe downright terrifying for my client, but I knew that we had to maintain the aircraft in level flight just above the ground (with the trees in the windshield) until we accelerated to just below Vx.

At about 60 knots, with a silent stall indicator (finally!), I gently rotated to best angle pitch and we climbed over the trees at Vx, clearing the tree line by around 300 feet, much too close for this nonbush pilot. With sweaty palms, I turned the yoke to head toward home. I explained all was OK, and we would discuss the details of our harrowing departure once we got back to the flight school.

Back on the ground, I parked the airplane next to a water hose to allow me to later clean off the mud-covered airplane. It was a mess!

I debriefed with my client and reviewed a few of the things we learned on the flight. I explained (and confirmed) that soft-field performance is far from an exact science, and in many cases the actual runway requirement for takeoff and landing is not only unknown but sometimes impossible to judge.

I explained that I was wrong to attempt landing at this or any turf field without a recent firsthand report on the runway conditions, which in this case would have completely altered our decision. I also emphasized two important points: First was the challenge and skill needed to get the aircraft into, and remain in, the small window just above the ground where the gear is above the turf but not too high where it will sink back down. One must get the airplane into ground effect as soon as possible, but the slightest settle back onto the mains will forfeit a significant amount of airspeed, resulting in the need for hundreds of feet of additional runway to recover the lost speed. This is much more challenging than anticipated when the only experience a pilot has is from simulations on hard surfaces where touching the ground results in minimal loss of airspeed.

The workload, accuracy and finesse required to maintain and accelerate in ground effect is far beyond what is demonstrated and practiced on a hard surface. The skill needed is analogous with and possibly more challenging than learning the landing round-out and flare.

Second was to allow proper acceleration in ground effect and not climb out of ground effect until reaching Vx, or risk one of those departure stalls we all have practiced up at altitude. A departure stall at low altitude will almost certainly result in a bad ending, and in our case, impact with trees.

This was one of those times in a pilot’s life where what looks innocent ends up being very much the contrary. These situations can result in invaluable experience gained, but without proper knowledge going into it, they often end in accidents.

Pilots who regularly fly in and out of turf fields usually have ongoing recent knowledge about field conditions and have a much better ability to interpret runway conditions during a visual low pass. What I’ve learned, for those of us with limited soft-field experience, is that it’s wise to get a firsthand field report before landing. Most public fields have a published phone number readily available.

I now realize that, because this field was less than 2,000 feet long, after landing and seeing the runway condition was soft and muddy, I should not have attempted the takeoff. I would have been better off hearing my less-than-thrilled boss’s voice when I explained that we wouldn’t be able to safely depart rather than my family getting the phone call had the departure ended badly. A bruised ego is so much better than a bruised body.

Robert M. Hanrahan has over 3,000 hours of flight time and holds an ATP and CFII/MEI certificates. On the weekends Bob can be found teaching at Century Air/KCDW.

The post A Visit to a Grass Strip Teaches a Pilot Valuable Lessons appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I’ve been diagnosed with a very unhealthy amount of cancer and am starting to take stock of my life. Looking back at a 35-year love affair with flying small airplanes, I realize just how important flying was to me personally. I just reviewed my logbook for the first time in many years and found one particular entry that I will remember forever.

April 14, 2002, was a great day to fly from La Porte Municipal Airport to Galveston, Texas, for some practice instrument approaches. The airplane, my 1971 Cherokee 180, N1835T, was starting to forget how to do them, so it was time to remind her.

There was a thick cloud layer at 400 feet, common in the area southeast of Houston, so I filed IFR, did the preflight, got my clearance, did my run-up and got ready to depart Runway 23. Throttle forward, pitch up, and the flight was under way. At about 300 feet, I was just getting ready to both enter the cloud layer and contact Houston Approach when the engine stopped. Just like that. One second it was running, the next it wasn’t. No warnings, no vibrations, no unusual sounds. Only a sudden silence.

There was a moment of stunned disbelief. Thankfully, it was only a moment because, pitched up and climbing at 70 knots with a stall speed of about 60 with no flaps, there wasn’t a great deal of time to figure things out. My first glance at the instrument panel showed the airspeed right at 60 and falling. I took that as a sign that dumping the nose was probably the first thing to do, so I did. I established a glide speed of approximately 70 knots as I tried to figure out what to do next. What ran through my head was the counsel of my instructor of many years ago to land, with so little altitude to work with, straight ahead. Turning would likely lead to an unsurvivable stall, and I know I’ve read articles on how difficult it is to pull off that turn. The only problem was that continuing straight ahead would have put me into a large brick building dead ahead, with parking lots and power lines on each side, which would certainly have done enormous damage to my new paint job.

My decision was to dump the nose even further to prevent a stall, and begin a turn back to the airport property, which I had barely left. I figured that even if I could get back to the 6-inch grass, the airplane wouldn’t move very far, and that it would be survivable as long as I stalled it out just above the ground.

Then the engine scared me even more by sputtering back to life. At this point, perhaps 10 seconds had expired; I hadn’t had time to switch tanks or mags, or done anything other than control airspeed and direction. As I leveled out of the turn, it quit again, but now I had a new plan. With the small addition of power, I figured I could probably get back to the crosswind runway, the 1,000-foot-longer Runway 12. And if not, there was a perfectly usable taxiway. And I would have settled for relatively level grass.

I declared an emergency over the CTAF, quickly stated my intentions to return to 12, and was gratified to see two or three other planes scooting to get off taxiways and clear the active to get out of my way.

Because the last time I dumped the nose the engine came back, and being sure of landing somewhere on the airport property, I gambled some altitude on trying that again. Sure enough, it roared back to life at pretty much full power. I used that power to build some airspeed and trade it for some altitude, and then slowed when I was sure I had the runway within gliding distance, with flaps. Power off (intentionally this time) and with flaps full, I put her down about halfway down the runway, with the engine quitting again just as I started to flare.

Life was good. The paint was not scratched.

At this point, I’m sure many readers have figured out that I had water-contaminated gas. Even though I checked all the sumps, there must have been some water hiding somewhere that got into the carburetor based on my pitch attitude. There’s lots of rain in Houston in the spring, and I had developed a leak in at least one of my gas caps.

The next week my airplane was in a hangar, with new fuel caps.

I consider myself to be lucky. I could have stayed in a stupor when the engine quit for another couple of seconds, and I would have died. I was lucky to have a primary instructor, Jim Soete, who, um, loudly reminded me to, no matter what was happening, pay attention to “airspeed, Don, airspeed!” His voice was in my head that day.

I’m keenly aware that life is not a survivable event. But unexpected flying issues are.

The post A Pilot Recalls the Most Basic Lesson of Airmanship appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The phrase “armed and dangerous” is an idiom I apply to a pilot with hazardous attitudes such as anti-authority (“don’t tell me”), invulnerability (“it won’t happen to me”) and macho (“I can do it”). These individuals fly by their rules in unpredictable and potentially dangerous ways, disregard established flight-safety practices, seem unconcerned for their own safety and that of others and appear a step away from an accident. The following flight involved such a pilot whose airplane nearly collided with the airplane I was flying as a flight instructor in the traffic pattern at a nontowered airport. Before the near midair collision, I did not fully consider a series of red flags from the pilot and assumed he would fly a normal traffic pattern.

My flight student and I performed a preflight risk-management assessment by 1) identifying potential hazards (using the FAA’s PAVE model, i.e., Pilot, Aircraft, enVironment and External pressure); 2) assessing risks (using the FAA’s risk-assessment matrix to determine the likelihood and severity of risks); and 3) mitigating risks of high likelihood and severity. We self-evaluated our personal physical fitness for flight by “passing” the IMSAFE checklist (Aeronautical Information Manual, Chapter 8). The airplane (a Cessna 172 NAV III, N1416W) was in excellent operational condition (no squawks), had nearly full fuel tanks, weight and balance parameters were within appropriate ranges, and it was appropriately equipped for the flight. Regarding the environment, visual mete­orological conditions prevailed; ceiling and visibility were unlimited; and wind direction and speed were 60 degrees at 8 knots. There were no TFRs along the route of flight, no notams adversely affecting the departure and arrival airports, and the flight was to be conducted on a weekday morning with light traffic expected in the area. A restricted area used by the military, immediately northeast of our destination airport, was inactive at our estimated time of arrival. While en route, we planned to monitor ATC to remain situationally aware if the restricted area were to become active. Also, there were no significant external sources of pressure compelling us to complete the flight on schedule. Because no significant hazards were identified, the likelihood of risks was assessed as remote to improbable, and the severity of risks was assessed as marginal to negligible.

Training objectives included flying to and from another airport, flying in the traffic pattern at a nontowered airport, takeoffs and landings, radio communication, and seeing and avoiding traffic. Our airplane departed at 11 a.m. local time from Gainesville Regional Airport (KGNV), a Class D airport in Gainesville, Florida, destined for Keystone Airpark (42J), a Class G airport in Keystone, Florida (airport elevation approximately 200 feet), 15 nm northeast of the departure airport. Runways 5, 23, 11 and 29 were available for use at 42J.

We flew 10 nm to the north of 42J and obtained the AWOS information. Because the wind direction was from the northeast, and to be in compliance with FAR 91.126 (an airplane must make all turns in the traffic pattern to the left, unless right turns are specified), we self-announced our intentions on the CTAF to enter the left downwind for Runway 5. A similar self-announcement was made 5 nm north of the airport. Subsequently, we self-announced entering the traffic pattern at a 45-degree angle, while on left downwind at 1,200 feet msl (1,000 feet agl) at 1 nm distance from Runway 5, and while flying on all the legs of the pattern during our touch-and-go circuits.

After we were established on a left downwind approximately 1 nm from Runway 5 and at the previously stated traffic pattern altitude, the pilot of a PA-28 Archer self-announced: “Keystone, Archer is 6 north at 4,000, coming in high and hot” — red flag number one. We immediately stated our airplane type and that we were established left downwind for Runway 5. I assumed he would follow conventional rules by entering the traffic pattern at an appropriate distance behind our airplane and not interfere with our airplane’s flight. The Archer pilot then stated, “Descending for 1,700-foot traffic pattern left downwind 5” — red flag number two. From the radio exchange, I realized he was diving too close to the airport to an incorrectly high traffic pattern altitude and most likely would be entering the traffic pattern at a higher-than-normal airspeed. About two minutes later, the Archer pilot stated, “4 north, left downwind 5 at 1,700, landing right on your tail” — red flag number three. He intended to fly an unorthodox traffic pattern, i.e., fly 3 nm too far from the runway and 500 feet too high while on the downwind leg. Also, his provocative intention to land a few yards behind us after our landing and while we were on the runway was fraught with danger.

Our traffic display depicted an aircraft flying parallel to and approximately 500 feet above our airplane. I looked up and to the right front and saw the Archer flying above and faster than our airplane. Approximately 30 seconds later, our airplane was abeam the numbers/landing threshold. We were about to reduce power, deploy flaps to the first setting and begin descending on the downwind leg. Again, I assumed the Archer pilot would wait until after we turned base leg and then to the final leg before he turned to the base leg. I scanned to the right again, and to my astonishment, the Archer had already turned left base and descended to our altitude (1,200 feet msl). It was perpendicular to and headed in the direction of our airplane on a direct collision course. Immediately, I took control of our airplane by applying full power, pitching up to best-rate-of-climb airspeed (74 kias) and readjusting the elevator trim to climb. At a 90-degree angle to the Archer’s fuselage, we flew above the Archer, avoiding a midair collision by approximately 100 feet. My flight student was visibly shaken by the near midair collision. Unwilling to endure additional risks from the Archer pilot, we departed the area back to our home base.

Although there were multiple red flags about his inappropriate flying, I assumed the Archer pilot would fly the traffic pattern properly. I should have immediately realized the potential danger posed by the Archer pilot following each red flag, especially after the third one. I made a mistake by continuing to fly in the traffic pattern, a near tragic mistake.

I relearned to 1) concentrate on recognizing red flags and be proactive; 2) never assume anything, especially the behavior of pilots in the traffic pattern at a nontowered airport; and 3) remain situationally aware of all aircraft in the traffic pattern.

When flying in the traffic pattern, especially at nontowered airports in Class E and Class G airspace, my student and I were reminded to always remain vigilant of unexpected maneuvers of other pilots. Diving entries into the traffic pattern and descending above an airport, as in the case of the Archer pilot who abruptly descended from 4,000 feet to 1,700 feet (1,500 feet agl), create specific collision hazards and should always be avoided. Similarly, flying greater than 2 to 3 nm away from the runway on downwind, and then turning from downwind to the base leg while not self-announcing the turn on the radio, risks colliding with pilots flying an appropriately closer traffic pattern, as we were doing. A pilot flying an appropriately closer traffic pattern might not see an airplane on a 3 to 4 nm downwind leg or a 3 nm base leg. Using a common traffic pattern altitude and distance from the airport, i.e., 1,000 feet agl for general aviation aircraft and one-half to 1 nautical mile from the runway, respectively, are essential for minimizing the risk of collisions at airports without an operating control tower (see AIM Chapter 4, Section 3; Airplane Flying Handbook [FAA-H-8083-3B] Chapters 7 and 8; and Advisory Circular AC 90-66A).

Other lessons relearned were that onboard traffic-advisory systems exist to help visually acquire and avoid other aircraft and are not a substitute for an outside visual scan. While flying left downwind, we might have collided if I had not looked a second time for the Archer and relied on a previous view of its position on the MFD. During instructional flights, one pilot should always be responsible for scanning for traffic. Portable electronic devices and colorful glass panels can lead to excessive distractions and head-down time, limiting a pilot’s ability to see other airplanes.

What percentage of time should a pilot maintain outside visual lookout for other aircraft? As stated in the AIM, visual time inside the cockpit should represent no more than approximately four seconds for every 16 seconds outside. In other words, when weather conditions permit, pilots should look outside to see and avoid other aircraft for at least 75 percent of the time to minimize the likelihood of a midair collision. When flying in VMC, always “look outside and peek inside.” Scanning the sky on an arc from wingtip to wingtip for other aircraft and elevated obstacles is a key to collision avoidance.

Also, I learned about landing expectancy, i.e., the anticipatory belief that conditions were not as threatening as they appeared and the landing could be completed safely. Some pilots expect to land every time after flying in the traffic pattern. Although the Archer pilot’s flying was inappropriate, I expected the approach and landing could be performed safely, but I should have realized it was potentially dangerous. Landing expectancy is a form of “get-there-itis.” Pilots should always be willing to immediately implement safer options — for example, by performing a go-around/rejected landing or departing the traffic pattern and landing at another airport.

No matter how diligently a pilot practices risk mitigation and abides by flight regulations and safety recommendations, there are other pilots with opposite and hazardous attitudes who endanger others. Their potentially lethal behavior needs to be considered during risk planning, especially when flying at nontowered airports where there is no ATC direction, as well as in high-volume traffic areas. Flying in the traffic pattern with such pilots is akin to dancing with the devil — you could get burned.

The post When Flying By Your Own Rules Nearly Causes a Midair Collision appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Learning to fly is still one of the greatest adventures, even in this modern high-tech digital era. And the first solo is for most pilots the most memorable flight. I was so euphoric when my instructor climbed out of the Aeronca 7AC and told me to take it once around the pattern that I forgot to push the carb heat knob back in after our last landing and took off with less than max available power. But without a 200-plus-pound instructor in the back seat, the eager Champ seemed to literally leap into the air. Though it was decades ago, I can still remember the chilling thought after reaching pattern altitude that getting safely back on the ground, now 1,000 feet below, depended solely on my newly acquired and never-tested skill and judgment.

It took another 10 months to complete the required private pilot dual and solo flight time. Prophetically, the FAA examiner who filled out my new certificate told me that I was now licensed to “learn to fly.” But in the same 10 months, I had married and taken a lower-paying job as an engineering instructor at Cal Poly State College (now a state university). I was putting my bride through college, and renting an airplane was not in the budget.

Since I had graduated from college before getting drafted, the solution was to use my GI Bill benefits to pay for advanced flight training. Working my way up to a commercial license with instrument and multiengine ratings kept me in the air, building hours. I ended up with a CFII certificate, which blended well with my new position as faculty adviser to the school’s Mustang Flying Club.

Flight instruction is the ultimate teaching environment. The combination of eye-muscle coordination and a working, gut-level knowledge of the physics of flight makes for a complex learning situation. The challenge was stimulating to the mind, and each student who completed his or her ticket was a reward to the soul. But after taking 25 students through the program, even that began to lose its luster.

Fortunately, I shared my feelings with Rick, a dentist friend who had just started working with a Baja California medical mission. On three-day weekends every other month, they flew 400 miles south of the border to a combination orphanage/clinic to perform free services for the local population who had no other medical options. He invited me to go on the next trip after explaining that nonaircraft owners paid $180 each to help defray the expense of travel and lodging.

Of course I accepted. And three weeks later, on a Thursday evening, we hopped aboard a southbound Bonanza to the small, uncontrolled airport in Corona, California. There, we were met by Carlos, the mission director, who put us up for the night at his home.

The next morning, we drove to the airport for breakfast at the small cafe. It was crowded with about two dozen medical and support personnel including volunteer aircraft owners and pilots. This was going to be a six-aircraft mission, including four single-engine airplanes and two twins. Since I had a multiengine rating and the mission’s insurance required a copilot in each twin, I was assigned the right seat in an older high-time Piper Aztec.

Ralph, my “captain,” explained that the right engine was rather “tired,” burned oil and tended to overheat in a climb. No problem, I thought. I had flown my share of older, poorly maintained aircraft.

Our first leg was from Corona to Mexicali, Mexico. We lined up for takeoff behind the slowest fixed-gear airplanes. We were the second to last to depart, and after starting our initial climb, Ralph opened our border crossing flight plan with the local FSS. At first, the Aztec performed as expected, but by the time we reached 4,500 feet, the right engine oil temperature hit the red line. Ralph leveled off and reduced MP to 20 inches on both engines. While this slowed us a bit, the right engine cooled enough in 10 minutes to resume our climb to 6,500 feet.

We made our “10 minutes to border” crossing report to the San Diego FSS as we passed El Centro and headed straight for Mexicali International. The tower controller was exceptionally proficient in bilingual radio communications and cleared us for the downwind leg. Looking over the airport environment while still in the air, I noticed the lack of a taxiway for the long jet runway. Ralph joked that the funding for the taxiway went into some official’s pocket and that “back taxiing” was the rule here.

All of the mission pilots lined up for the less expensive Pemex fuel while the passengers went into the terminal to clear customs and obtain visas. Carlos advised us to tip the agents doing the paperwork $2 each to “grease” the process. I had much to learn about doing official business in Mexico.

Back in the Aztec, Ralph went through an abbreviated checklist and called out “clear right.” He hit the starter but nothing happened. We pulled the nacelle upper cowling and a quick check of the system indicated a burned-out starter motor. A quick check with the local mechanics indicated that a replacement would have to come from the U.S. side of the border.

Carlos was used to problems like this. The Comanche B that was part of our group had left on the second leg of our flight about 30 minutes before the starter failure. Its pilot, George, was a certified engine mechanic. So, the next plane to leave, a Cessna 182, was to contact the Comanche in the air and request that he return after discharging his passengers at the clinic. That should get him back in time for another trip in case the Aztec was grounded for the rest of the day. Time was critical because in Mexico, twins can fly at night but single-engine aircraft cannot.

So we waited while the other airplane returned stateside to pick up a rebuilt starter. The Comanche made it back first. He had really stretched his fuel reserves, and it took more than 60 gallons to fill the tanks. Carlos then decided on our final course of action.

Since I had time in a Comanche 180, I would fly the B model with most of the remaining medical personnel and Carlos in the right seat to help navigate. He said if we left immediately we would have sufficient remaining daylight. George agreed to stay and help repair the Aztec. He reported that the weather to the orphanage was ceiling and visibility unlimited.

With that pirep, I made the wrong assumption that I had all of the preflight information needed and hopped in behind a familiar set of instruments and controls. The passengers boarded, with two smaller dental assistants occupying the narrow third row. A call to the tower cleared us for an intersection takeoff to the south. With a 270 hp Lycoming, I had no doubt that the 3,200 feet available would be more than enough for our needs.

Wow — what a difference that extra 90 hp made. As we cleared the airport environment and adjusted the power for a cruise climb, Carlos directed me to simply follow the dwindling Colorado River until it emptied into the Gulf of California. To me, this was a flying adventure of a lifetime. Leveling at 10,500 feet, we continued along the east coast of Baja until we came to Punta Final. There, we turned 10 degrees to the right and aligned with two dry lakes about 50 miles ahead.

It was then, about an hour into our flight, that I became concerned about how low the sun was getting. The sectional for the area showed we had another 200 miles to go. The Piper’s true-airspeed dial indicated we were doing about 185 mph. How much daylight did we have left? It didn’t help when Carlos explained that all of the airstrips between us and our destination belonged to the military and we would face arrest if we landed on one, even in case of emergency. We were out of range for any help by radio, and I started feeling guilty. Our quick change in plans had made me the PIC, and I failed to obtain an important piece of information for the safety of this long cross-country leg.

Fortunately, my engineering background suggested a solution. I asked Carlos to hold a chart plotter upside down along the horizontal portion of the instrument panel while I put the right wingtip under the sun and leveled our “bird.” I then put a pencil in the hole of the protractor portion and read where its shadow crossed the markings. Carlos thought I had gone nuts, but my crude sextant showed that the sun was about 20 degrees above the horizon. I then explained to my puzzled passengers that with Earth turning at 15 degrees per hour, we should have about an hour and twenty minutes left before sunset.

At our present speed, that would be cutting it too close. I didn’t want to chance trying to land on a dirt airstrip I’d never seen without a chance for a missed approach and a second time around the pattern. But we also had the advantage of being at a relatively high altitude — potential energy to put to use since our destination was at 60 feet msl. So I trimmed the nose down slightly and advanced the power to give us a rate of descent of 200 fpm and a TAS of 200 mph. That should do it.

In about 20 minutes, we spotted Baja’s I-1 on the Pacific coast. I turned early to save a few miles, which allowed us to gradually merge with our ground path to the clinic. In another 15 minutes, Carlos, who had made the flight dozens of times, was able to give me a direct bearing that would save us another few miles.

When we arrived over the 40-acre compound, we were down to 1,000 feet msl and the sun was kissing the horizon. We made it with little time to spare.

Unless you have visited the Vizcaino Desert, you cannot appreciate the lack of twilight between sunset and total darkness. There are no nearby hills to reflect the rays of light still streaming above ground level. Fortunately, our first approach worked, with no trouble in judging our critical height during round-out and touchdown. But by the time we had taxied to the parking area, tied down and walked to the dining hall, it was pitch-black outside.

The congratulations from the pilots inside didn’t keep me from mentally kicking myself. It was only a week from the winter solstice — the shortest day of the year — and I had flown almost 400 miles into unknown territory with a different set of flight rules and without a complete briefing, which would have included the local time of sunset. Lesson learned!

The post Lesson Learned on a Flight in Unfamiliar Territory appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I’d always wanted to learn to fly. After all, it was in my blood. My dad and mother had many dates in his Piper J-3 Cub. He would land in the hayfields of her father’s farm to pick her up. When the corn was short he landed in the cornfield between the rows. According to their story, he had to sell his Cub to buy a new washer and dryer to clean my diapers. He always regretted that decision, but I’m sure my mother would argue the point. My uncle George sold Pipers at the time, along with Minneapolis-Moline and Massey-Harris farm equipment. I have some of his old Piper parts books and paperwork. Recently, I found a bill of sale from Piper to my uncle for a Piper Super Cruiser that he sold to a local farmer for $2,725.69 on January 14, 1947.

My first flight was with George’s son Denny in his Cessna 182 when I was 10 years old. I joined a local flying club in central Ohio to pursue my goal of learning to fly in the spring of 1975. The Hummingbirds Flying Club was privately run by a bunch of good ol’ boys, with affordable dues and rates that fit my budget, since I was fresh out of tech school and farming with my dad. There were about a dozen of us in the club flying an old Beechcraft Musketeer, a 180 hp four-seater, tail number N4017T, and we flew out of a grass strip on my instructor’s family farm. Bill even had the runway lit with three lights on either side, one on the center and two 100 yards in each direction from the center lights. The runway lights were to be turned on inside the barn before departure for night flying. The goal when landing was to touch down at or before the center lights.

I had been taking lessons from Bill for a couple of months and doing quite well, with several solos logged. When I showed up at Bill’s for my next lesson, he said it was time for some “big airport” experience. We only had about an hour of daylight remaining when we finished the preflight and climbed aboard the old Beechcraft.

I opened the window, shouted “Clear!” and turned the key to start the Lycoming, and the prop barely moved. The battery was dead. I thought that was the end of the flying for this evening. But no, Bill had another idea. “I’ll get my Buick, hook the jumper cables up and we will be good to go,” he said. Well, this sounded logical to me, and I had great faith in my instructor, who was an accomplished pilot. Little did we know that this was setting us up for a surprise later in the evening.

We jumped the battery through the baggage-compartment door and fired up the engine. Bill backed the big Buick out of the way and climbed aboard, and off we went. With the delay, we now had about half an hour or so before darkness would fall. We did the usual maneuvers: turns about a point, slow flight and stalls. Then Bill said it was time to head for Port Columbus as he gave me a heading to fly. The trip promised to be a short 25 miles, and I could see the city lights coming up in front of us on this beautiful clear night. What a magnificent site for this farm boy droning along toward a big-city airport. All along the journey, Bill was coaching me on navigation and communication, pointing out Ohio State University’s airport and other important landmarks along the way.

We eventually received permission to land on Runway 10L and subsequently entered the pattern in a left base leg for final. After we landed,

I asked for permission to taxi to 10R for departure. In order to taxi from 10L to 10R, we would need to travel all the way around the Columbus terminal filled with Boeing 707s and 727s.

I remember the sight of a taxiing DC-10 was quite impressive to this 22-year-old student pilot. Experiencing the massive machines had me craving more time among the big shots.

Several minutes later, we made our way to 10R and immediately received permission to taxi into position and hold. Bill, with his calm and quiet nature, instructed me to pull onto the runway, line up with the centerline and stop. At this point, we were on the 10R numbers, waiting for permission to take off, with the runway lights providing some luminescence on the moonless night. Again, I was mesmerized by what I was observing for the first time sitting on that 10,000-foot-long runway at night with all the airport lights and the big iron at the terminal. What I was experiencing that night up to this point was one of the reasons, I told myself, that I wanted to fly.

We sat there for what seemed to me like a long time, which was several minutes. Just as I was wondering if we’d ever be cleared for takeoff, Bill instructed me to rev the engine to keep it from fouling up. Putting a little more pressure on the brakes, I advanced the throttle a good bit.

Wow! What happened next made many people do a double take. First, the tower controller who noticed our landing and navigation lights suddenly come on as we were sitting on the numbers was shocked to see us there. The pilots of the 707 on short final arrival for 10R received the command “Abort! Abort! Abort!” Third, Bill and I realized we were sitting ducks in a little Musketeer about to be potentially crushed by a huge Boeing 707 full of people. Not too many pilots can say that they know what it’s like to see a 707 at less than 50 feet above you with a red glow emitting from each of its four big turbojets against a pitch-black sky! The noise was deafening. I could feel it in my bones.

What we didn’t realize at the time was that with the dead battery and idle alternator, there was no electrical power being generated to provide lights or, importantly, radio reception. We were sitting on the numbers at 10R, completely invisible to everyone. We wouldn’t have heard permission to take off if or when it was given from the tower. The controller might have simply thought that we took it upon ourselves to depart since, from what he could see, we weren’t there.

The next thing we heard the controller say after the abort order and the 707 pilot acknowledging the go-around was, “Who is that on 10 Right?” I never saw Bill flustered or scared before this. He quickly grabbed the mic and announced, “This is 4017 Tango!” The rattled controller’s voice on the other end simply said with exuberance, “I thought you were gone. Get out of here!” Those were his exact words. I can only imagine what the consequences would be if this were to happen today. Bill was rather quiet on the return trip; he had a better understanding than I did of what had just transpired.

Oh, and yes, I put the Musketeer back down on the farm field just before the center lights.

The post A Student’s First Flight to a Towered Airport Nearly Goes Terribly Wrong appeared first on FLYING Magazine.