Flying tip no. 3 : Carb Ice

What is carb ice: Carb ice is a phenomenon caused by cold air forming ice in the intake of your engine's carburettor. If enough ice is present it can completely cut off the air to the engine thereby causing your engine to stop (We'll go into why this happens later)

What removes it: Propeller engines have a function known as Carb Heat. This, basically, takes warm air from the exhaust and pipes it directly into the engine air intake. This has two effects

1) It removes any ice particles that are present and allows them to be ingested into the engine where they cause no harm
2) It provides warmer air to the engine which reduces it's effectiveness (it's a result of one of the laws of physics related to air pressure and temperature). This is why carb heat is not "always on".

When to use carb heat: Surprisingly enough carb icing can occur at any time of the year in just about any weather. All that are needed are two ingredients:

a) Moisture
b) A drop in temperature enough to freeze the moisture

Obviously in winter the problem is more obvious, but consider this: In a normal airplane engine intake the Venturi effect - whereby the air speeds up through the narrow intake causing a pressure change - can cause the ambient air temperature to drop by as much as 30 degrees centigrade. Given that the average summer time temperature for the UK is about 24 degrees you can see how carb ice can occur.

The most likely candidate for carb icing is on a warm summers day with good humidity when the pilot reduces power to descend from a cruise. Why?

It is caused by a combination of the sudden temperature drop due to fuel vaporisation and pressure reduction as the mixture passes through the carburettor venturi and past the throttle valve. In other words when you cut the throttle back to lose altitude it produces the two conditions needed for icing - The fuel vaporises and cools the air, and pressure in the venturi drops at the same time. If the temperature drops below the dew point then any moisture in the air will form water. If the temperature drops below the freezing point then this water will freeze.

There are many cases when carb ice should be used and the CAA safety sense leaflet Piston Engine Icing covers the cases in detail. But two points I will make as general tips:

1) Be liberal about applying carb heat before reducing power (don't be afraid to use it).
2) Don't keep carb heat on continuously (it uses air warmed on the exhaust and bypasses the air filter in doing so. This can ingest unwanted things into your engine!)

Amazing and breathtaking aviation pictures

For those of you who don't know airliners.net, it is a site containing user submitted aviation related photos. There are all sorts of (good and bad) aviation photo's on the site and I recommend a look around if this is what you're into.

The alternative is to visit this site that has collected a group of the most amazing pictures from airliners.net and published them in one place.

A lot of these are amazing because of what they represent (The threshold at Julianna Airport in the French Antilles, for example which has a beach where visitors vie to get as close as they can to the landing aircraft). But others are amazing because of what they show: A fleet of (now scrapped) Air France Concordes, or an American jet fighter at zero altitude with wheels up.

I would be interested to know your favourites.

Farnborough seeks to increase yearly movements

In news today Farnborough Airport (the largest dedicated business aviation airport in the UK) is looking to increase the number of aircraft movements it is allowed.

At the moment the local council is capping the number of movements at 28,000 movements annually. Considering this includes ALL weekend movements AND the airshow, this is a particularly small number of movements for such a large airport.

The reason the upgrade is needed is (as quoted by a Farnborough spokesperson)

"Between May 2007 and May 2008 we saw a 60% increase in airliner-size business jets at Farnborough alone,"

Not surprisingly the local council will need to look into this in light of complaints about noise, air quality and safety (Farnborough is, after all, surrounded on most sides by built up areas and approaches from the east are over heavily populated areas. The Westerly approach is less populated, but does overfly the Odiham RAF base).

According to Farnborough themselves they could accommodate 100,000 movements a year but will settle for about half that.

In my recent visit to Farnborough ATC I chatted with a few of the controllers there who said that they are under conflicting pressure from the users and the local residents. The users feel that the number of movements is artificially capped (and as such is causing them business issues) and the local users are, understandably, concerned about the affect of doubling the number of aircraft movements. Remember Farnborough generally deals with corporate/business jet aviation and - on my last visit there - had over 20 Gulfstream jets alone on the tarmac. We're not talking about weekend flyers in piper Warriers and Cessna 150's!

I'll keep an eye out on this one for you.

The qualifying cross country flight.. (Or how not to get lost when there's no street signs)

(picture courtesy Les Chatfield)

For many student pilots, the qualifying cross country flight (QXC) is a daunting experience. It's your first long flight alone, you're visiting airfields you might be unfamiliar with and - on top of all that - you've actually got to do the navigation!

No wonder many students dread the experience.

But never fear, in a few moments I'm going to give you a couple of tips to reduce the stress and eliminate the fear. First want to tell you about my QXC

I did my QXC in Florida. Now for those of you who've never been to Florida let me try and describe the land.

Flat.

Featureless

Flat and featureless.

Sure there are some towns there (Orlando being the main one I was focused on) but outside of that it's just flat and featureless. Occasionally you'll come across a body of water (actually quite a lot of bodies of water) but they are so indistinct as to be almost unusable for navigation. (As an exercise, go to Google Maps and type in "Land o' lakes, Florida", click on satellite and see what the ground looks like.)

Needless to say this makes the QXC a bit of a challenge. The key in this case is to make sure you are flying on the right track and keep a careful control of your timing. For example on the first leg of my QXC (Kissimmee to Ocala), I knew that I needed to position myself just left of Magic Mountain and take a particular heading for a length of time. This would bring me to the edge of Eastlake Weir which had hwy 42 running South and hwy 441 running west of it. The key was knowing that as long as I kept the direction and distance I would arrive at the lake. It was big enough to act as a navigation point and I could correct any drift as and when the lake came in sight.

Remember the key thing about the QXC: It's not meant to check how well you can follow a line on a map. It's meant to check how well you can navigate from point A to point B. This includes making navigation corrections when you go off track. As an example, when I first flew the QXC route I did it with my instructor. We got to Crystal River (which is a lovely place on the Gulf Coast with a friendly little airport) and the next stop was back to Orlando. However, as we took off from Crystal River my instructor noticed that the Gulf coast was actually a lot of reclaimed land that had huge, expensive houses on them, so we went for a little cruise over the bay to check out the houses.

Then I started navigating back to Orlando.

Of course at that point all my calculations were completely hopeless. I was starting from the wrong place and on the wrong heading. My instructor knew this, of course, and said nothing. I just followed my original track and kept checking the map vs the ground below to determine where I was in relation to where I should have been. About 15 minutes into the leg I finally located our actual track and was able to make adjustments. We made it back to Orlando in time to circle the airport for 20 minutes waiting for the business jets flying into Disney for the weekend to land!

Anyway back to the tips:
Tip 1: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate
It's the old adage. Make sure you fly the plane first and foremost. Keep doing your FREDA checks. Ensure you're flying straight and level at the height you planned and the speed you planned. There is no excuse for not making sure your number one priority is to actually fly the plane.

Tip 2: Plan, Plan, Plan
The key to making a good QXC is to plan, plan, plan. Have your route plotted thoroughly before hand. Mark it in pencil on your map - heavy black pencil so you can see it. At the start of each leg write the heading and expected flight time in a box as an easy reference. Mark expected landmarks you wish to navigate by (river and road crossings, major arterial highways, castles, masts, odd geographical features etc). Consult Google Maps or Microsoft Maps in satellite mode to see what the landmarks look like from the air. Have all the appropriate radio frequencies to hand. Draw a layout of the destination airports to know where the runways are and what the joining instructions are likely to be. Be prepared.

Tip 3: Fly the route before hand
Nothing beats having flown somewhere before to give you a feeling of experience. Your QXC needs to be at least 150nm to 2 separate airports one of which is 50nm from the other. This sounds imposing but really, it's a flight to an airport in the distance, a second flight to a nearby airport and then a long trek back home. If you think of it in those terms it's not so bad. With your instructor, find the ideal locations to fly to. He or she will help you with the planning of your pre-QXC flight and this will make the actual flight itself far easier.

Tip 4: Chose easy airports to fly to.
Depending on where you're located, it's not always easy to find good airports to fly to. But for your QXC you need fields that are not too big (otherwise you end up paying high landing charges AND have to deal with air traffic control etc. This can generally cut out places like Shoreham and Bournemouth) but not too small that they are hard to see visibly from the air (Flying to Popham or Old Sarum, for example is difficult if you don't know what you're looking for or where it is). Find a reasonably sized airfield with a hard runway if possible: Bembridge, Blackbushe, Thruxton, Wellsbourne Mountford, Oxford, or Lydd are good examples down South. Also find airfields that are not close to controlled airspace (Fairoaks is a lovely field with a long hard runway, but is under the Heathrow Class A airspace: it's an added distraction you don't need on your QXC)

Tip 5: Read Jeremy Pratt's 'Navigation Meteorology' part of the Private Pilots Licence Course handbooks.
Apart from having a wealth of information and additional tips he has also added a section called 'Visual Navigation - A Practical Example' (pp nav83 to nav91) which takes you through a complete flight using map extracts and photographs of ground features to help identify navigation features etc. This is extremely useful as a means of focusing the mind on the correct navigation items and the correct mindset.

Navigation in itself is not difficult. Flying an aircraft along a straight and level flight in itself is not difficult. Speaking to ATC on the radio in itself is not difficult. The difficulty comes when you are trying to do all three at the same time. This is what makes the QXC flight so daunting. Follow the tips above and these will, hopefully, give you an added level of confidence to offset the trepidation.

Autogyro!

So here I am at a very busy Blackbushe trying to avoid a load of cub scouts waiting for a quick local flight over their house and I see this Autogyro.

It's something of a first for me as I've never actually seen one live. In fact the nearest I've been to one is watching "You're Only Young Twice" with Ken Wallis flying Little Nellie across Japan. So it's something of a rarity to see a real, live version!

Wonder what they're like to fly?

Flying on nothing but fumes and... algae?

Boeing have recently announced that they are promoting the use of algae based fuels in their engines. Or to be more precise they are looking at using algae based energy sources as a means of replacing the worlds reliance on fossil fuels for aviation. The logic behind this is quite simple: Raw algae is fast growing and does not need fresh water. It also doesn't conflict with food quotas (a charge often leveled at biofuels made from corn, for example) This in turn won't drive up the price of food in the short term. With some experts predicting oil will rise to $400 per barrel this makes financial sense.

Of course it is one thing to test a particular fuel in a particular engine on a single flight (as Virgin Atlantic did recently), but in order to make Algae biofuel viable there has to be a supporting infrastructure according to a steering committee of the Algal Biomass Organization, a nonprofit that promotes and advocates for the development of commercially viable transportation fuels.

In order to achieve that viability, Algae-based fuels need a supply chain the committee says, adding such fuels are in the early stages of development. The organization aims to accelerate the development of such power sources.

Over the coming months both Air New Zealand and Continental will make test flights using biofuel in one of the engines, and Virgin Atlantic is hoping a trial can be performed using algae as a biofuel source next year.

How quickly before this filters down to the average Lycoming or Continental engine used in GA...?

Bembridge - Everything you've heard is true

(Photo courtesy PhillipC)

I've read a couple of reviews from folks who've flown across to Bembrdge on the Isle of Wight and, without exception, they are all extremely positive.

Obviously I had to go and check this out myself, in that case. So last Friday I took a Piper Warrior II out from Thruxton on a quick jolly over the open water.

The weather was absolutely fantastic, CAVOK ("Ceiling and visibility OK") with a nice North-Westerly wind that helped us on our way down to the coast. In fact total flying time per the plan was 28 minutes.

On the way down I connected with Boscombe Down who held on to me for the grand total of 2.5 minutes before handing me over to Farnborough. They had me squawk a different code and held on to me for another 5 minutes before telling me to 'Freecall Bembridge and squawk 7000'. All this when I was still just a little South of Lasham! I tuned to Bembridge and listened to their tower for a while. Reception floated in and out as we passed over the South Downs at 2000ft heading towards Portsmouth and the Spinnaker Tower.

Passing over the Spinnaker Tower was great. I dipped the wing for a good look as we passed and headed out over the water.

I had researched the field at Bembridge quite thoroughly and knew the layout, the frequencies and the procedures, so it held no terror for me. However, the one thing I wasn't 100% sure of was the exact location. Sure, I knew where it was in relation to Bembridge the town, and the nearby coast. I had checked out the view on Google Maps to determine where it was in relation to other parts of the island. But when approaching over the Solent at 2000ft the perspective was different and, of course, distance was compressed. Nonetheless I headed for the general area that I knew the airfield resided in.

From the vantage point I had I could see a feature on top of a small hill almost directly ahead of me. I decided to use that as a navigation focus and head towards it. I believed the airfield was beyond that and to the right. Aiming for the hill gave me something I could use as a turning point to head inland to the field.

As we left Portsmouth I called Bembridge Radio who gave me the airfield information (Runway 30 Right hand circuit in use) and the circuit traffic (One on approach). The standard approach to Bembridge is a high pass along the runway with a break at the end (either left or right depending on which runway is in use) and then a drop down to circuit height on the downwind leg. Knowing that there was only one other plane in the circuit I requested a right hand base join instead. The permission came back 'No problem. Follow the C172 on finals'

About this time I was approaching the feature on the small hill when I realised that down below me (and about 3 miles ahead) was a C172 passing left to right. I followed its track and saw the airfield to my right this side of the feature I was using for navigation! I quickly made a left turn and dropped the plane down (using copious Carb Heat, of course) to swing in behind the C172 and make the approach.

Bembridge is a single, hard, runway a couple of miles inland from the coast. The coast at that point is steep and rocky and the land behind the coast rises and falls with small wooded areas between the coast and the runway. In addition to this there is a road that crosses the airfield just short of the runway threshold. Having researched the airfield I knew that this would cause an interesting approach. I was right. The hills cause the pilot to think he's lower than he is and start to lift the plane a little (even with the Bembridge PAPI lights), and the air current over the hills will lift the plane then drop it over the other side.

With a little bit of hill induced windshear and good reliance on the PAPI approach lights I planted the PA28 down past the numbers and casually braked to a stop about 2/3rds of the way down the runway.

"Welcome to Bembridge" came the voice over the headphones. "180 degree Trackback and take the first hard left to exit the runway". I complied, following the hard taxiway down to the HUGE field that serves as parking for visiting aircraft. I was given "Row Alpha" to park on and stopped the plane just in front of terminal building.

The landing fee was £10 which I paid at the cafe checkout along with my coke and Yorkie bar. Security were very accommodating and showed me where to sign in. I spent 2 hours in Bembridge sat on their decking area sipping a cold drink. Bembridge is home to the Britten-Norman aircraft company and they have several examples parked on the grass. They also service Cirrus aircraft and the mechanics were at work on one of them when I arrived.

Two things of note:

1) In the 2 hours I was there they flew two planes out for checks after servicing (a Cirrus and a B-N). I saw the whole of the Cirrus flight and I can tell you that approach he made was so low I swear he just missed a truck on the road before the threshold!

2) Bembridge must be a lot trickier in a Cessna than the Piper I flew in. For over 40 minutes I watched 2 Cessnas (a 150 and a 172, obviously pilots under tuition) doing circuits and almost without exception they came in high and fast every time, floating down the length of the runway before landing. In fact at one point the C172 was so high on approach that he missed the airfield completely and ended up going around. Everytime they crested the hill short of the Runway 30 threshold they would balloon up causing the pilots to drop the nose radically to lose height. I was convinced at one point I was going to see a prop strike because one circuit was so steep on final I was convinced he would bury the nose in the ground. Obviously the instructor recovered that one and earned his salary!

The return journey was pretty uneventful. I routed west from Bembridge over Cowes before turning back to Portsmouth and retracing my route North around Solent airspace. I was actually tempted to route directly through Solent controlled airspace to Thruxton but I had heard from an ex-controller that Solent hates in when GA planes do that. Can anyone confirm or deny that?

Just North of Portsmouth I contacted Farnborough for an FIS (Flight Information Service) only to be told to standby. It was VERY busy on the Farnborough LARS with it being a Friday afternoon/evening and I could hear the controller handling several planes and the traffic into and out of Farnborough itself. I waited for him to get back to me but he seemed to have forgotten about me so I kept a listening brief and made my own way back to Thruxton.

Flying time: 40 mins.

Flight Safety : Some figures

Picture by tomthetombinator
Reading today about the initial report on the Piper Cherokee which crashed near Oban in April 2007, it reminded me of the latest set of fatality figures for General Aviation in the UK (These figures and associated text are taken from the CAA's "Clued Up" magazine).

According to the CAA in 2007 there were 14 fatal accidents involving aeroplanes which claimed the lives of 25 people (If you have your copy of Clued Up, the graphic on top of page 9 and part way down has an incorrect legend, the colours should be swapped). This is by no means the worst year for fatalities (that was 1999 which had 15 crashes claiming 39 lives), but it isn't as good as, say 2003 which had 4 crashes claiming 5 lives.

So does this mean that flying is unsafe?

Absolutely not. Statistically it is still the safest form of transfer. Deaths per passenger mile are still substantially lower than all other forms of transport. But what it does point out is the fact that there are still common reasons that crashes occur. They are generally a result of more than one problem or reason, and they are often a result of bad judgement in bad weather, or incorrect speed causing stalling (it's quite ironic that one of the major causes of road deaths is excess speed and one of the major causes of flight deaths is insufficient speed). Skimming the CAA data the following reported circumstances appear "Descended into sea in low cloud", "Incorrect flap setting on take off. Collided with obstacle", "Crashed turning back following engine failure after take-off", "Crashed in Turkey in reported deteriorating weather'

The preliminary report on the Oban crash appeared to suggest that alcohol may have been a contributing factor with both the pilot and co-pilot being at least twice the legal blood alcohol limit and maybe as much as 5 times over. Of course this is rarely the only cause of an accident (any accident) and the CAA do point out that 'loss of control at low speed continues to feature in the initial reports' of many accidents. In other words keep your speed up when close to the ground and stay current with stall/spin avoidance procedure.

Lets put this in context, though. Since 1990 the number of UK accidents with fatalities in general aviation (aeroplanes with a weight <5700kg) is less than 200. This averages out at 11 per year (or roughly one per month). Compare that with the number of aircraft registered to fly in the UK and the number of aircraft movements recorded and the proportion is very, very minor.

Fly safe.

Ten tips for safer flying

The following article is slightly abridged and comes from Clued Up magazine, the CAA's free annual publication for pilots.

Ten ways to make your flying safer

(photo by egm757lover)

1) A flight with an instructor
These are various reasons why you may need to take a flight with an instructor. It might be for licensing reasons, for insurance, because you want to build a new skill or just because you feel a little rusty at the start of the year.

However if you're not thinking of flying with an instructor on the near future you might want to think again. Whether you exercise your skills or not, they can get blunted over time, and new ideas and even new regulations come along and leave you behind. Bad habits can form without you knowing and a flight with an instructor can identify and tackle these.

But make sure it's not a jolly. Tell the instructor exactly what you want from the flight, discuss with him how you might be able to use your airborne time for the best benefit and so that you can try out the things you feel need brushing up on.


2) Become more qualified
Expending on number 1: why not do some differences training or work towards a rating? Flying a new type, or leaning new skills - aerobatics, tail dragging, strip flying and so on - can improve your general awareness of flying as well as adding extra skills. Night flying can teach new skills which can be transferred to day flying.

More challenging would be to train for an IMC rating. The skills learned can be of immediate use to VFR flying.

3) Maintenance - get to know your aircraft.
If you are an owner you will, or course, have read the POH (Pilot's Operating Handbook) cover to cover, but how much else do you know of your aircraft?

Even if you're not mechanically minded, watching an engineer working on your aircraft can add tremendously to your knowledge of the your plane and how it works. More often than not you'll get some free hints on what to look for in the walkaround, as well as a few pointers on things to look for on your particular type. it's not always easy to see ow this might help you in a crisis, but sometimes it does. This could be one of the best safety investments you ever make.

4) Get yourself a weather subscription - and an AIS login
Weather is a factor in a surprisingly large number of accidents. Whether it results in a tragic controlled flight into terrain caused by unexpected visibility or a simple bent nosewheel because by windshear, the weather is often the cause.

So it pays to make sure that you are well up on your Met. There are a number of organisations offering Met courses for aviators, which will not only help you make a personal forecast of the weather and an assessment of the current situation, but will make you able to understand the effects of weather on your flight.

But you will, of course, need to get the weather from an official source before you go flying, so make sure that you sign up to one of the web-based services which are available, and make sure you make full use of them!

5) Evaluate yourself medically
It's thankfully rare for a pilot to be incapacitated while at the controls. but medical or human factors considerations can often lurk behind the other, more obvious causes of an accident. beware of them.

Are you on medication or have you drunk alcohol recently? The effects of alcohol are well known, but with medications it's not always clear. If there is any doubt either don't take the medicine or don't fly.

Obviously recreational drugs are incompatible with flying - despite some anti-heroic attempts to prove otherwise.

While you're in the air you still need to be aware of your body. The thinner air at altitude and the change in pressure as you climb or descend - and the way that they affect your nasal passages - may indeed be the first indications that you are going down with something.

Mental and emotional stress can also affect your flying and decision making - this can be a difficult call to make, as many pilots use flying as a means of relaxation, and it's not easy to tell whether the stress alleviation element will be enough to justify flying.

Also make sure you know the signs of hypoxia, hyperventilation, carbon monoxide poisoning (do you have an in-date detector in the cockpit?) and the rest, and have a plan about what to do of you realise you're suffering from them.

Finally think about injuries - mainly those you are recovering from. Broken limbs, twisted ankles and pulled muscles can all be put to the test in the flying environment and suffering pain and discomfort as a result is not a good thing.

6) Listen to your clearances
Runway incursions are a major issue worldwide, and have caused some of the worst acdidents in aviation industry (including what is generally considered to be THE worst accident, when two 747's collided on the runway in Tenerife, killing 583 people) So make sure tat you listen carefully to clearances. Don't just hear what you expect to hear: write it down, read it back and refer to it if you're in doubt.

It's not just runway clearances which need this care: every mis-heard, half-remembered or misunderstood clearance is a potential accident. So if in doubt, ask again. (In addition always check any runway or departure clearances you have been given yourself visually. I was cleared to take-off on a solo flight during my initial PPL training in the States and immediately told to hold short as a Piper was on short finals for landing on the same runway. it was a simple controller slip but it could have caused damage to two planes and fatalities to two pilots - Gary)

7) Go to a CAA Safety Evening
There was a statistic which said that nobody who had been to a CAA safety evening had suffered a fatal accident. Although that can no longer be claimed, the Safety Evenings are highly recommended as a way to improve your safety thinking. Cynics say it's because only safe pilots go to Safety Evenings. So make yourself a safe pilot and attend one. And don't just listen, participate. Ask questions, and use the whole evening to share experiences, techniques and advice with others.

8) Go on a ditching course
The UK is an island, so if you want to go anywhere else you'll have to go over water. In addition many flights over UK airspace cross water - the Bristol Channel, the Channel Islands, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland - even the Isle of Wight - all involve cross water flights. And, however unlikely, a cross water flight does involve the possibility of ditching.

Ditching is one of those thing that is so difficult to prepare for because there are so many factors involved, ad so few case histories to learn from. but there are things you can do to improve your chances of survival if you do have to make a controlled landing on water.

The most critical factor is to extend your survival time as much as possible. Wearing (and knowing how to use) a life jacket is vital. Knowing how to escape from the cabin is another. make sure you brief your passenger - even if there aren't any (because you'll also be reminding yourself of the actions to take in the case of an emergency and I bet you haven't thought about that recently)

All of these things and more will be explained in a ditching course at one of the many centres around the UK.

9) Check your height
Controlled flight into terrain can spoil your day. But experience suggests that FIT is rarely the sole cause of an accident - it's usually the result of other factors. Tiredness and lack of concentration, spatial disorientation, flight into poor weather, lack of communication, wrong pressure settings and poor planning can all contribute. Airliners have Ground Proximity Warning Systems and some light aircraft feature GPS units which can provide your height above terrain and warn you of approaching danger (make sure the data is up to date); if you don't have these, it's down to you.

Being aware of your surroundings, whether you're in VFR, marginal VFR or IFR is essential. Use all the tools at your disposal: your eyes, your ears, your altimeter (If you have two have you done a simple cross check?), your map with safe altitudes and so on. None of these is 100% reliable in every single circumstance, but together they increase your safety factor many times over.

10) Do your weight and balance checks
How long is it since you did a proper check? Not just "two people and full fuel should be OK because it was last time", but a real number-based exercise? Interesting academic research currently being done seems to show that changes in fractions of inches in the centre of gravity can make a big difference on the safety statistics on particular types - so make sure that you know that you are within safe limits and can clear the obstacles at the end of the runway!

11) Enjoy your flying
(Did we say 10 things? Well, we couldn't leave this one out...) A safe pilot is a happy pilot, so enjoy your flying and there'll be no excuse for not being safe.

Clued up

The Civil aviation authority has started a yearly magazine which it sends free of charge to all pilot licence holders registered with them. It is called "Clued Up' and I received my 2008 copy yesterday morning.

As you may expect from the CAA the prime driver behind this publication is safety and compliance to procedure. As such it contains articles about reducing airspace infringements, identifying and dealing with Carb Ice issues (a great little article written by my RT examiner Irv Lee) and links to various documents/PDF's and standards from the CAA website.

There is also a link to the Fly on Track website which I have identified on this site before as being useful. In particular the radar replay's which show what happens when GA pilots (or indeed military pilots) infringe on controlled airspace. These are well worth reviewing if you are looking at flying anywhere near controlled airspace.

One of the best articles was about Red Arrow airspace infringements (i.e GA aircraft infringing airspace when a Red Arrow display is occurring. This happens every year and causes the Arrows to cancel the remaining parts of the display). Whilst it may seem like something that is difficult to identify and know, there are clearly marked notices of this and the information can be found in NOTAMS on the AIS web site, or by calling 0500 354802 prior to departure.

Other articles to read include a fascinating one about the Air Accident Investigation board, the us of flight simulators in training, and information from a PhD student studying Information Flow and it's relevance to flight safety. There are also articles from experienced pilot talking about errors they have made and what caused them as well as ten tips for safer flying. I will be replicating that article on this site over the next couple of days as I think it is a well written and very useful piece.