The Flying Cafe

7 Tips to Getting Over Your Fears Before Getting Your Private Pilot License

2010-02-11T17:00:00.001Z

By Cris Cato

We all have fears. Some of us won't even admit to them, but we have them. Embarking on anything new, while being very exciting, can also be very scary. The reason, the main reason...fear of failure. You need to get over your fears not only of flying, if you have one. but of failing as well before you can be the proud owner of a private pilot license.

If you've taken a driver's test and didn't pass the first time, you remember what that was like when the instructor turned to you and said, "Sorry, you failed." If you looked up the word "down" in the dictionary, you would have seen a photo of yourself right next to the definition.
Nobody likes to fail, and fear of failure is one of the worst fears in the world.

Okay, great... now that we've established that... how do we deal with it?

Here are a few great ways of overcoming the fear of failure.

1. Consider The Missed Opportunity.
Imagine that you decide that you're too afraid to go through with learning how to fly and taking your exam. Now imagine what life is going to be like without being able to do this very thing that you love so much. I'm assuming that if you want to learn how to fly, there is a big reason for it. Focus on that instead of the fear and this will go a long way to alleviating that fear.

2. Research The Alternatives
Imagine what you will have to do without your PPL. You'll have to rely on commercial airlines. You won't be able to go where you want to go WHEN you want to go there. You'll be at the mercy of others. The alternatives to flying your own plane, if you don't want to rely on commercial airlines, are driving, train, bus and even boat. If that thought makes you sick to your stomach, focus on it. That'll get you over your fear of failure.

3. Put The Worst Case Scenario Into Perspective
Let's say you fail your PPL exam? What's the worst thing that can happen? They can't tell you that you can't take it again. You can still take another shot at it. It's not like this is a one time offer. If that were the case, there would be a ton of people not driving or flying planes. It's not the end of the world if you fail. At worse, you have to wait a little longer to get your PPL.

4. Understand The Benefits Of Failure
Believe it or not, you learn something from failure. You learn what it is you did wrong and get a chance to improve it. Would you rather that you didn't fail your exam only because some instructor took pity on you and ended up getting yourself killed because you really weren't ready to fly? I think you know the answer to that.

5. Make A Contingency Plan
If you do fail, have a plan. You should already be planning in advance on taking more lessons, getting more flight time and rescheduling. Failing doesn't mean that you give up.

6. Take Action
The best way to get rid of that fear is to just go ahead and do it. The more you procrastinate, the more afraid you're going to become until you reach a point where you're unable to take your exam at all.

7. Burn Your Boats
In ancient times, Greeks would burn their boats so that they had no choice but to move forward. They couldn't turn back. I don't know what you have to do in order to burn YOUR boat but do it. If that means picking up the phone and scheduling your exam, do it. Don't look back.

Hopefully, the 7 items I've gone over will help you get over your fears of getting your private pilot license

Cris Cato is an avid fan of aviation. If you are ready to pursue your very own private pilot license, head on over to my site for a special software that will help you prepare for the private pilot exam.
http://www.squidoo.com/Get-Your-Private-Pilot-License

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Mnemonic Checklist For Pre Take Off Checks Or Vital Actions

2009-12-16T18:00:00.000Z

By Chris Puddy

I have flown many different types of aircraft, and when I was operating both Airline and Air Taxi work single crew it was often slow and ponderous to try and use a check list, especially on simple aircraft like the Islander or Trislander.

So I developed a Mnemonic which I have adapted and use for all the aircraft that I currently fly or have flown. It is necessary to get the mnemonic in your head first, and some of these are well known like the FREDA checks or the HASELL checks that are used for the cruise and pre-aerobatics. When reading many UK checklists there is a pretty standard mnemonic annotated within the checks. This is the one I have adapted and it works for all aircraft I have flown including turboprops like the King Air or Twin Otter.

If you want to develop your own based on the following if it does not quite fit into your current checks, then it is easy to adapt. What is needed is to carefully go through the aircraft check list and make sure that using this mnemonic everything is covered. If there is something missing, then weave it into your mnemonic.

For example, the checklist for piston aircraft does not include turning on the autofeather, and so when I go through the check list, and I get to M for Mixture, Mags and Master, I then add this memory sequence. Manual = Auto feather. Job done.

So here is the list I have created, and you may notice that the final check is controls full and free. I have a good reason for this having taken off in a Twin Otter with the control locks in. That is another story that I may write about one day.

T Throttle friction tight

T Trim set

M Mixture Rich. Mags on Both. Master on both switches. Autofeather on.

P Propellor levers full forward

F Fuel. On and sufficient. Correct tanks. Fuel Pump on. Fuel primer Locked.

F Flaps set as required.

I Instruments and radio aids set as required for departure

H Harnesses

H Hatches and general security.

D De-Icing as required. Pitot Heat as required.

C Caution lights. Out or as expected.

A Altimeters. Set for departure.

When cleared for Take Off

T Transponder for radar visibility On. Strobes for human visibility On.

C Controls Full and Free.

That's it. I think you will find that covers everything in your aircraft, if not just modify it a bit, or put in a new letter or sequence of letters that you can remember. For instance the DCA is easy to remember for me as many countries have a Department of Civil Aviation.

Chris Puddy has been flying since 1965 and has over 14,000 hours experience mostly single crew on light aircraft. He is currently instructing in Bristol, and at the http://CotswoldFlyingSchool.com in Gloucestershire England.

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How to Work Out a Cross Wind Component in Seconds When on Final Approach to Land

2009-11-20T17:00:00.004Z

By Chris Puddy

When coming in to land it is often difficult to work out the cross wind component quickly. There are 2 quick methods I know to be able to do this and when you understand them choose the one that suits you best.

The first one is known as the clock code and with it you assume that any wind that is more than 60 degrees off the runway heading is a full strength cross wind. So if landing on say runway 27 which is 270 degrees from North, then if the wind direction is less than 210 or more than 330 degrees, whatever the strength is it is regarded as full cross wind. So if the wind is say 200 at 15 knots then it is a 15 knots cross wind.

Now to work out how much of a cross wind there is between these 60 degrees either side of the runway heading you imagine that the number of degrees off the heading are the numbers of minutes round a clock face. Then imagine how far round the clock face that is, and that proportion round the clock face is the proportion of the wind strength.

So if the wind is 20 degrees off the heading, say for example 290 at 30 knots, then 20 minutes is one third of the way round the clock face, so the cross wind component is one third of 30 knots which is 10 knots.

If the runway was 03 which is 030 degrees, and the wind was 070 at 20 knots, this is 40 degrees off, and 40 minutes round the clock face is nearly nearly three quarters of the way round the clock face so the cross wind is three quarters of 20 or 15 knots.

As wind constantly varies in strength and direction, then you do not need to be highly accurate with your calculation. If the wind is roughly 30 degrees off, it is half strength so roughly half the wind strength is the cross wind component. 45 degrees off is 3/4 of the strength of the wind and 60 degrees or more full strength.

Another easy way to work out cross wind and head wind component is using this simple mathematical formula.

For calculating cross wind. If the wind it 30 degrees off the nose it is.5 the wind strength, 45 degrees off.7 the wind strength, 60 degrees off it is.9 the wind strength, and if 90 degrees of then obviously it is full strength. This applies on cross country flights, or for working out the cross wind when coming in to land.

If for example when coming in to land the wind is 60 degrees off the runway heading it is.9 times the wind strength, so using simple arithmatic on a 20 knot wind just multiply 9 by 2 which is 18 knots. For a wind of 30 knots and 45 degrees off the runway heading the calculation is 3 X 7 which is 21 cross wind component. If like me you learned your multipliction tables as a child, this is easy.

If you reverse the formula, you can use it to work out head wind or tail wind component as well. So if the wind is directly towards you, it is full strength, if 30 degrees off it is.9 of full strength, 45 degrees off.7 of full strength, and 60 degrees off it will be half strength.

If it is 90 degrees off then there is no head or tail wind component. However bear in mind that any strong wind will be affecting the aircraft by drifting and turning into wind will in effect mean that you have to fly a longer track than a straight line so it will slow you down a little bit.

If the wind is coming from behind you, then the same proportions can be applied to work out the tail wind component, so if it is 30 degrees off your tail, it is.9 of the strength of the wind and so on.

For working out a diversion, you can apply this percentage to your airspeed to get the groundspeed, and then to work out drift interpolate the following formula as well. The formula is that at 120 knots airspeed, half the cross wind component is drift. So if you are flying at 90 knots then your drift would be 25% more than half the drift.

This method can be used to quickly calculate heading and groundspeed if a diversion is necessary, or if you want to check your calculations after using a computer to plan your journey.

Chris Puddy has been flying since 1965 and had had a variety of flying since then, mostly on light aircraft, and much of it single crew with no autopilot with many landings. He also has over 2500 hours instructing, and his varied experience is a huge benefit to his students especially as much of his flying was single crew without an autopilot.

Chris is CFI of the Cotswold Flying School at Kemble in the UK.

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Let's redesign the Artifical Horizon, shall we?

2009-11-09T18:00:00.001Z

New research has indicated that the Artificial Horizon which was introduced in 1927 to allow pilots to fly safely in cloud, is not actually the best design. Test carried out by cockpit ergonomics researcher Donough Wilson of Coventry University indicated that 92% of pilots would make a fatal error in recovering a plane shown in a specific position due to the limitations of the AH.

Look at this diagram

I'm confused. Is the plane on the left banking to the port or the starboard. If it is banking to port then why is the AH showing a turn to starboard? Or am I misreading this (which is - after all - the premise of the research)? I suspect that's the whole point of this: at a certain point a starboad turn will end up being indicated as a turn to port. Recovery from this would be to turn the plane to starboard thereby increasing the turn and putting the plane into a potential spin.

The new design works by keeping the horizon level and indicating the angle of bank of the aircraft by turning a display showing the heading. In the diagram above the plane is turning on a heading of 204 degrees. The benefit of this is that as you are turning the numbers will increase/decrease depending on your direction of turn. This is an additional safety indicator.

My problem is that the new design isn't quite as 'useful'. Is the plane in level flight but turning? Or is it pitching down slightly? If you are used to the design on the left you would assume that the plane was pitching down because the numbers appear to be below the 'horizon'. However in reality there is no pitch indication on this instrument. Not at the moment anyway. That's planned for the future.

There is concern about adopting such a radical design change. Phil Hosey of the International Federation of Airworthiness in East Grinstead, UK says "This would be like changing the side of the road a country drives on. And the big question is how long would it take existing pilots to train on this."

Indeed.

However there could be a potential us for remotely piloted vehicles such as the military UAV's. Any intrument which can give a remote pilot more spatial awareness would be better.

Original article and graphic courtesy of New Scientist

Tips and Tricks For Private Pilots - Check Ride Guides

2009-11-05T19:00:00.001Z

By Bruce Hogan

Anytime one is completing a practical test in any subject the attitude of the examiner plays a part in how comfortable and confident you feel. Of course you are going to feel some form of intimidation, but make every effort to put this aside as it will interfere with your capabilities.

Completing your Private Pilot Check ride is a perfect example of the above scenario. This is your final practical test before achieving your Private Pilot License. You must remember that the examiner has a job to do. He/she must determine that you are knowledgeable enough and capable of flying a plane on your own. There is a standard form that the examiner must follow but some will add a few twists of their own to see how you react. They go a little beyond the classic textbook knowledge.

A favored trick of some examiners is the pencil fallacy. Here they will drop their pencil at some point of time during your flying. Most often, it will occur when you are engaged in performing a task that requires your undivided attention such as doing a turn. Your first instinct is to want to impress the examiner, so you will immediately try to retrieve the pencil taking your attention away from your maneuver. This act of kindness on your part could cause you the loss of the chance to obtain your license. In other word a failing mark. Be one-step ahead of these types of ploys. Keep extra pencils on your kneeboard. Then simply tell the examiner you cannot reach their pen as you must concentrate on what you are doing, but in fact, you do have an extra one.

Always be prepared for the unexpected. Dead batteries are one of the most common mishaps. Let's assume you are being rerouted to another airport and your E6B that you rely so heavily on is suddenly flat. If you carry a good supply of extra batteries with you then there is not going to be a problem. If you don't then you have to rely on the wheel that you have thought about since your initial training. Talk about extra stress this is it. The last thing you need is any more stress at this particular time.

There are not only instances where deviating from your concentration could be dangerous they could also be embarrassing. You can imagine how you would feel if you were in the take off mode only to discover that, you hadn't removed the tie down rope? After all, isn't this something you should have completed in your pre flight? The lesson to be learned here is taking nothing for granted and check everything.

The purpose of this test is to show you are capable of being the pilot in command. This includes viewing your examiner as your passenger. Ensure that your passenger has his seatbelt on. If you miss this simple step you could be missing your license. Don't forget about the pre flight briefing that is to be given your passenger as well. You are ultimately responsible for the safety of your passenger regardless if he happens to be the examiner. Also, remember to do your break check at your takeoff. You have to show that you are considering the flight as a whole. You need to know that you can land.

You must always be prepared. This means that if the examiner were to tell you that an engine was out you would have to be prepared for an emergency landing. In this case, you need to be constantly aware of your surroundings and always know the possible places you could put your plane down safely if you had to do so.

These are just a few of the unforeseen circumstances your examiner could put in your path. Just be prepared for anything.

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What to do with empty economy seats....?

2009-10-30T18:00:00.002Z

Todays increase in airline usage - coupled with higher oil prices and increasing costs - has put a premium on airline occupancy. Recent airline earnings declarations have shown varied seat occupancy rates over the last 12 months. But one thing is for sure: The Holy Grail of airlines is to have every seat occupied on every flight. In reality this seldom happens. Some airlines (you know who you are) manage to fill these seats by offering 'free tickets' (which are then loaded up with additional charges and surcharges for everything from choosing your seat to breathing fresh air (Ok, I jest about the air, but it could happen!))

Air New Zealand on the other hand have gone a different route. They are apparently commissioning a new B777-300ER layout which has the possibility of 'seat beds'. The principle is straight forward. If you buy a ticket and the seat next to you is unused you can convert it into a bed. In economy class. Obviously you will be charged for this, but considering that ANZ had a recent trial where you could purchase an empty seat on a trans-pacific flight for an additional $75, this doesn't seem too bad a deal.

I think this is a brilliant idea. Instead of using traditional airline thinking which is saying 'I must pack as many cattle, sorry, passengers, into a plane as possible to maximise revenue' they are looking at this and saying 'We realise 100% occupancy is not possible on our routes so how can we maximise the revenue from the empty seats?". This solution is neat because it increases income, has a marginal overhead (An empty seat does not need feeding and needs no extra fuel to carry the occupant and baggage to the destination), and more importantly it gives the passenger something he or she would not normally get - an economy class bed. The question (As posed by this article from Flightblogger) is "Can Air New Zealand make more money from an 'empty' seat than from one that is occupied?"

To quote another post I saw on this

If Air New Zealand can pull this off, they'll be the first airline to offer lie-flat beds in coach, hopefully starting a trend that other airlines are eager to copy.

I wait with anticipation..

11 Proven Study Techniques to Become a Better Pilot

2009-10-26T11:00:00.000Z

Image via Wikipedia

By Amir Fleminger

Chair flying. Flight training involves learning new motor skills. You would do much better in the air if you learn those skills in a relaxed and safe environment, while on the ground. Airline pilots spend hours practicing procedures in a "procedure trainer" (a non-functional mockup of the cockpit) before they step into an expensive level-D flight simulator or into the actual aircraft. That way, they already know what to do. "Chair flying" is simply the act of pretending to fly the aircraft while seating in a relaxed environment. You can practice chair flying in a procedure trainer, in front of a cockpit poster, in a parking aircraft, or on your couch at home. Any of those locations work. Be sure to practice every procedure in your normal, abnormal, and emergency checklists. Reach with your hands to the approximate position of each switch, lever or knob required for the procedure in order to build "muscle memory".

Flash cards. Learning the huge amount of details for training can be very challenging. System descriptions, Aircraft limitations, regulations, SOPs, memory items are all required to be retained in your memory and put in use immediately when time calls. You can make flash cards to help you remember those items. Buy a pack of index cards from any office supply store. On one side of a card write a question such as: "what is the maximum takeoff weight?"; on the other side write the answer: "Normal cat. 2550 lbs. Utility cat. 2200 lbs." (for a c-172S). Make as many cards as you need to cover all subjects including: regulations, system descriptions, memory items, and aircraft limitations. Once you have a large pile of cards start using them. Read a question and try to answer it, then flip the card to see if your answer was right. Put aside all the cards that you answered right and keep reading through the ones you got wrong, until you answer all of them correctly.

Learn the "cockpit songs" for your aircraft. Sometimes you can be familiar with a procedure but still have difficulty performing it in a steady pace while flying. The reason is that your thoughts of "what to do next" are slowing you down. Practice procedures verbally, so when you later perform them in the air, you won't stumble. For example, recovery from a low nose attitude would be "reduce power, level the wings, slowly pitch up". By practicing this procedure verbally while "chair flying" you could easily recall it when needed in a checkride or even better, in an actual unusual attitude encountered in flight. You can take any procedure and build a verbal action list in this way.

Analyze "what if" scenarios. One very important (if not the most important) characteristic of safe pilots is the ability to make good and timely decisions. Luckily, this trait could be practiced and improved. Before, during, and after each flight consider "what if scenarios". WHAT IF the weather moves in over my destination while enroute? Where would I divert? Would I have enough fuel to go there? Or WHAT IF I have an engine failure on the takeoff roll? WHAT IF it happens immediately after takeoff? What would I do? You get the drift.

Take advantage of Group study. Studying with other people can boost your understanding of the material and help you gain new insights.
Highlight with a marker essential ideas in textbooks while reading them.
Use mnemonics and acronyms to aid memory retention. "Black square, you're there!" John and Martha King [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY0GxKRDBmk]repeat, referring to airport location signs. Although mnemonics often sound goofy, they can be very effective in helping you remember things better.

Visualization. Mental rehearsal helps us improve our skills and correct errors. Visualize each maneuver while on the ground prior to your flight lessons. This is a technique used by many pro-athletes to improve their game. You can use it to improve your flying skills.

Ask many questions.

Study the Practical Test Requirements for your rating or certificate level. After all, you have to know what's expected from you on the checkride so you won't be surprised.
Use a PC-based flight simulator or PCATD. Despite their many limitations, PC simulators provide you with free practice time. Although it cannot replace real practice time, it is still very valuable.

Amir Fleminger is a FAA Gold Seal Flight Instructor and an airline pilot.

Learn more and read news stories, tips, and tutorials about flying at Pilotscafe.com Connect with other pilots, ask questions about flying or help others on the aviation pilots forums.

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Instrument Flight Training - Old Analogue Or New Glass

2009-10-17T15:00:00.002+01:00

By Jon Pickering

General Aviation in the twenty first century desists in pursuing the technology of it's larger heavier cousins. Affordable computers and new technology has now bridged the chasm between GA aircraft avionics suites and the glass cockpit behemoths of the sky, and to the private pilot, offers an exciting new dimension to flying.

There can be no doubt that such instrumentation offers extra safeguards with visual representation of terrain, moving maps and courses, you name it, it's all there at a glance. Everyone would agree that such instrumentation offers the VFR pilot a level of safety, never enjoyed before, and yet, some would argue (myself included) that the temptation of a glass presentation might encourage the pilot to push into an ever deteriorating situation that he or she may not have previously considered pushing had their aircraft been furnished with analogue gauges. We should not forget that a VFR pilot with a thousand hours, is still just a VFR pilot, and only trained to that level, and is required to have their eyes on the natural horizon. With the introduction of glass cockpits in GA, there will be a natural tendency for those pilots to start spending more of their time inside the cockpit. VFR pilots delighted with their new modern avionics will find themselves relying on it more and more and may result in getting into more trouble with it than if they were without it in the first place. Without the correct training and guidance, the outcome could be disastrous, as the pilot will be have been lulled into a false sense of security thinking that they are equipped to deal with situations that will likely spiral out of control.

There are many varied types of pilots, but we can reduce them to two kinds. Visual pilots and number pilots. Most of you will fall into the visual category, the remainder of us are number pilots, and then there are the very few who are adept at both. My friend and colleague is a visual pilot but is a very accomplished IFR pilot also. He uses a visual picture in his mind, but uses numbers to confirm his situational awareness picture. I myself am a number pilot, all the way, and do not use a visual picture at all, the numbers tell me everything I need to know. Number pilots I think, will make generally better IFR pilots than there visual counterparts. It is important to clarify however, whatever kind of pilot you happen to be, neither one way or the other is right or wrong, ultimately, your training should be tailored for the way your mind processes information.

And so, we have reached the point and subject of this article. Adding the IFR rating to your certificate, old analogue or new glass?

As most of you know, GPS, EFIS systems employ satellites to compute a position in space, and presents that information to you on a colourful logical display, complete with terrain, intersections, and all manner of numbers in the form of a tape, like headings, courses, altitudes and the list goes on. Essentially, your being presented visual and numerical information. The currant land based navigation system for pilots is usually in the form of V.O.R's and N.D.B's. Although N.D.B's are officially being phased out, the V.O.R system will be with us for the foreseeable future and most GA aircraft use this type of navigation coupled with Distance Measuring Equipment. (D.M.E) So, which system do you decide to use to acquire you IFR rating? Having spoken to a good cross section of people including D.P.E's (Designated Pilot Examiners), FAA inspectors, other CFII's it seems the general consensus of opinion is that it would be advantageous to the IFR candidate to learn the V.O.R based system first, acquire the rating and then transition to a glass system. If you happen to be flying an aircraft that has both the analogue system and a say a Garmin 530 also, you will have to learn not only the analogue system but also learn to use the GPS system also, the rule states that you must be able to use the equipment that is in the aircraft. This will add extra training hours to your rating. If your a renter, and wish to rent an aircraft that has analogue gauges, and you decided to learn on a glass system, odds are when you go to rent that aircraft, you will not be able to fly IFR with it. Simply put, you will be incompetent to fly that system. The final conclusion, you are, and always will be, so long as the old system is around, an incomplete, and sub-standard IFR pilot.

Case in point, an young airline pilot who visited Kona some time back, wanted to rent a Cessna 182, no GPS of any kind, could he file IFR, no he could not. Why? He learned on a E.F.I.S and was unable to fly IFR using the analogue gauges, he even admitted as such. He was however willing to give it a whirl, I won't bore you with the details, except to say he was not much better than a VFR pilot. The simple fact of the matter is, not to learn the land based V.O.R system of IFR puts you at such a disadvantage, it clearly is detrimental to your skills as an IFR pilot. It will be far easier to advance to glass systems than to learn on a glass system and then go back, who goes back to old systems when you have learned a new one? Remember, once you have your ticket in hand, you can transition at your leisure to any glass system you want to fly. In today's world, everyone is after instant gratification, ten day Instrument Ratings, bare bones minimum standards as stated in the P.T.S and bare bones minimum hours, as little studying as possible. If that's the kind of IFR pilot you want to be, good luck, fact is you will probably end up on a piece of government paper as another FAA statistic, because you just won't be prepared to fly real solid IFR when the time arrives, and it will some day. Any pilot with mediocre skill can fly IFR when all is hunky dory, it's when you have an instrument failure or two, it's night IFR, the weather is bad, visibility is nothing and the only company you have are the outside strobe lights and yourself, that's when the true test of your instrument training will be revealed. The simple fact of the matter is, your standard of IFR piloting will be considerably higher having mastered a analogue system first. One last note before I conclude this article, if you do have anyone else in the plane with you, you're responsible for their lives, get the picture?

Greetings everyone, Jon here, I am a CFII here in Kona Hawaii. I take flight training very seriously and in particular, the instrument rating. I am interested only in excellence and making you the best IFR pilot out there. Please feel free to visit my website at http://www.herculesflightservice.com for more information. If you have any questions, email me and I will be happy to provide you with an answer.

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Understanding Wake Turbulence and How to Avoid It

2009-10-09T15:00:00.000+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

By Jimmy Drago
Wake turbulence is one of the most common flight disturbances. Most pilots experience it on a regular basis. In short, wake turbulence is the result of wake vortices that are created whenever an airfoil produces lift. Lift results from a pressure differential at the wing surfaces, with the lowest pressure occurring above the wings and the highest pressure occurring beneath them. The pressure differential then causes a rollup of the airflow behind the wings, which results in a swirling air mass that occurs downstream of the wingtips. The air mass rotates counterclockwise at the right wing and clockwise at the left wing.

Slow flying, heavy aircraft produce the strongest wake, but short wing aircraft, due to their short wings, are the most prone to experiencing a variety of wake turbulence situations, the most dangerous of which is an induced roll and yaw. Because the pilot has little altitude for recovery, induced roll and yaw is particularly dangerous during take off and landing. During takeoff and landing, vortices push toward the ground and move away from the runway when the wind is low. But moderate to high wind keeps upwind the vortex in vicinity of the runway, which can cause the down wind vortex to push an aircraft into neighboring runway paths. When an aircraft reaches altitude, vortices stabilize at between 500 and 900 feet beneath its flight level. Until then, however, pilots must make certain to avoid drifting into other flight paths.

Uncommanded aircraft movements are the greatest indicators that an airplane is experiencing wake turbulence. Because the onset of wake turbulence is often surprisingly subtle, there have been many fatal instances where pilots attempted a landing during mild turbulence only to experience severe turbulence as they neared the runway. When a pilot suspects that wake is affecting his or her aircraft upon landing, the safest move is to execute a go-around or a missed approach in order to prepare for stronger wake turbulence on the re-approach.

With that said, there are ways to insure that wake turbulence is avoided in the first place. Starting with takeoff, departing a few minutes later than your scheduled departure time if another aircraft immediately preceded you is a smart idea, especially on a windy day. Then, once you depart, avoid crossing behind and below the preceding plane. Instead, try to climb above the plane's flight path or deviate slightly upwind from its path. If you have no choice but to cross behind and below its path, attempt the pass at 1000 feet or more below its flight path. When landing, make sure that your touchdown point is well ahead of a preceding aircraft's touchdown point, and always land well before an outgoing aircraft reaches its rotation point. If you're landing behind another aircraft on a crossing approach, be sure to cross above its flight path.

Avoiding wind turbulence is one the most important safety aspects for large and small aircraft alike. Unless you take the right precautions, wind turbulence can lead to an induced roll and yaw, which can be fatal upon takeoff or landing. Wind turbulence is an everyday aspect of flying. But unless pilots understand how it works and, therefore, how to avoid letting it get the best of their aircraft, their chances of experiencing an induced roll and yaw remain high. For more information on wind turbulence and how to avoid it, visit apstraining.com. They are expert instructors in aerobatics and spin/stall flight training.

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Flight Training - Instrument Rating Basics - First Crucial Hours

2009-10-01T15:00:00.000+01:00

By Jon Pickering

Today I am going to write about an aspect of IFR training, and one of the most vital aspects of Instrument rating there is. This concerns both CFII's and pilots alike. The need to be able to fly the aircraft precisely. That means training to what I like to call, zero, zero tolerance. That means dead on an altitude, dead on a heading. Pressure from pilots to rush into flying approaches, holds, etc. will end up being completely detrimental to them in the long run, and as yet, are unable to comprehend the negative impact this will have. Pilots new to IFR training must be made to understand the need to master precision flying skills before learning to fly holds, holding entries and such.

I get inquiries from pilots all the time, such as, "why do I have to spend all this time doing this? When can we move on to the good stuff?" and similar questions. These questions, are indicative of a pilot who has no concept or understanding of the absolute necessity to master this skill prior to advancing further into the syllabus. As CFII's, it is our responsibility to convince new IFR students that without this skill, probably, the most important skill in IFR, they will never make safe, good, IFR pilots. The acquisition of this skill will enable them to fly safely, it will enable them to manage their instrument flight workload effectively and efficiently.

IFR student pilots, embrace this phase of your training, learn to fly the plane precisely in any configuration, learn to trim the aircraft for a climb, a decent, level flight, an airspeed. Trim skills will be the most valuable weapon in your IFR arsenal. Once you have that skill mastered, it will make the rest of your IFR training much easier. If you decide to take short cuts and rush it, consequently you will be fighting the course all the way through, your confidence will suffer and you will become despondent and disillusioned.

A fair amount of time will be spent with your hands off the yolk to perform other duties, you will be unable to do this if you are having to make corrections to maintain the desired headings and altitudes. In smooth air your plane will be trimmed up exactly to maintain an altitude, and your able to maintain an exact heading with your feet on the rudder pedals. A demonstration of these skills consistently, and competently will be the indication for your instrument instructor to advance you into the next phase of your training, whilst never permitting your newly acquired skill to regress. If you have not realized thus far, you have now mastered a great skill, and are already head and shoulders above your VFR peers. Further into your rating and undertaking actual IFR flights, it should have dawned upon you by now, how essential this skill is. In busy airspace, typically Class B, "Air Traffic Control" take deviations in altitude very seriously, a deviation in altitude could get you violated. At the very least, a call to the control tower.

Instrument Flight Rules and Instrument training is not to be taken lightly.

My name is Jon Pickering. I am a CFII here in Kona Hawaii. I take flight training very seriously and in particular, the instrument rating. Please feel free to visit my website at http://www.herculesflightservice.com for more information.

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Running on Fumes - "Those Fuel Gauges Always Read a Little Low"

2009-09-27T15:00:00.001+01:00

By Byron Edgington

Ever heard this one from another pilot, or possibly even your instructor? Maybe they also told you there's a margin of error built in, or "that's just an engineering number", or perhaps your check's in the mail? It makes me wonder how many pilots are traversing the sky right now feeling, as the industry lingo has it, 'fat, dumb and happy' looking at gauges that are telling them the absolute rock bottom truth, while they're busy ignoring what they're seeing?

Here's my own experience with this conundrum of what I'll refer to as gauge-denial. They say confession is good for the soul. Well, every pilot ought to be forced, on a regular basis, to confess his or her sins, the transgressions they've made in aviation during the past year, and then submit them anonymously for the benefit of all. The following is from my distant past, when I'd been a helicopter pilot for a very short time, but should have known better anyway. It involved a long cross country flight, over a lot of real estate, with no access to a fuel truck, and a fellow pilot who was in deep denial with me.

We'd taken off in our UH-1 Huey from home base around nine a.m. with a couple of brass types aboard, a crewchief, and a full bag of gas. In the UH-1H, a full load of jet fuel will keep the blades turning and Mister Engine happy for about two hours and thirty minutes, give or take. After that time things get very quiet. The 'H' model Huey's fuel tank held 209 gallons. That figure will be important to remember later on.

Takeoff and cruise to our destination were uneventful. It was a glorious fall day, and by ten o'clock we were circling our landing spot near the Ohio River. We landed, the generals departed for their appointed rounds, and we shut the Lycoming T53 turbine off to await their return. The flight down had been comfortably quick; a tailwind had assisted our passage, and the Huey--not known for either speed or aerodynamic excellence--had achieved a remarkable 115 knots across the ground. In Vietnam, where I'd flown as recently as one year prior to this incident, that speed was more than sufficient to take me from one end of our area of operations to the other. Indeed, in the war zone, our standard cruise speed in the Huey was 80 knots, or slow enough that the heavily loaded Cobra gunships could keep up with us until they'd unloaded ordnance. This factor may have contributed to my complacency about the fuel situation that day. Another factor, about which the aviation god was notably indifferent, was that I'd survived the war, so I may have been feeling a bit bulletproof. When we landed, the gauge read 740 pounds, or enough for about one hour and fifteen minutes of cruise flight.

The generals returned at eleven o'clock and boarded my Huey. Soon the turbine whined, the blades spun up, and we took off into a moderate headwind, bound for home.

Leveling at 3,000 feet, and getting the cockpit cleaned up, we settled in for what I expected to be a trip north that may be a tad longer than the one south, but not much. At that point in my career I'd not heard the old expression about never making up with tailwind what you lose in headwind, so I had no idea the reverse was equally true. A couple of rough calculations on my trusty whiz wheel, and I began to see the harsh wisdom of that statement. Checking a second, then a third time, I spun the wheel on the E6B device, rechecked the settings, blinked a time or two, and shook my head. According to Mister Flight Computer, our ground speed was a glacial 87 knots. In Vietnam that would have been no cause for concern; over there I'd never flown more than forty miles in any direction or I would have been greeted quite rudely. But this was friendly Ohio, where forty miles was only halfway home. I looked at the fuel gauge: 500 pounds, or enough for about 45 minutes of flight with no reserve. One more look at the map, and my concern mounted a bit more: our course line to home base was exactly 80 nautical miles. Given our ground speed, we had another 50 minutes to fly. This was not rocket surgery; we didn't have enough fuel to get home.

Unless, as a lot of pilots still believe with varying degrees of acceptance, 'those gauges always read a little low', in which case we might squeak by.

As new to the flying game as I was, and as prepared to assume that last adage, as interested in an uneventful flight, and fully vested in getting the generals back to their very important meeting, I opted to press on. The rest is ascribed to experience--how it is gained, and at what expense, if we're lucky.

Eighteen miles from home, the 20 minute fuel low warning light flashed on, its brilliant glow filling up the caution panel like the tilt light on a pinball machine. Great, I thought, reaching for the flight computer. To my consternation, our ground speed had actually decreased a bit, further increasing my store of aviation experience, by teaching me that headwinds always increase as fuel level decreases.

Yet one more spin of the flight computer revealed an ETE of 21 minutes, give or take. By then the warning light had been casting its ardent yellow glow in my cockpit for three minutes. I could have fried an egg in my armpit. Despite the cool fall day, sweat sneaked from under my helmet, and trickled down my back. I hoped the generals and my crewchief didn't notice my discomfort; this was going to be awfully damned close.

Here's the upshot of the tale. We landed on the ramp at home base with the fuel gauge on its absolute zero setting. The 20 minute, low fuel warning light had been alight for 23 minutes. With utter relief, we twisted the throttle off, and the blades wound down. I couldn't state with any degree of precision if the engine had stopped due to my input, or if we'd just flat run out of gas. Watching the fuel truck drive up and stop, I knew the topping off to follow would be very interesting indeed.

The blades stopped, my crewchief tied them down, and the fueler began his ritual. The fuel nozzle slipped into its port, and jet fuel began splashing into the tank, displacing what fumes were left there. I watched the truck's fuel delivery meter race on, clicking along through fifty, one hundred, one-hundred-fifty gallons. As it passed through 190 gallons and never slowed, I knew we'd come damned close to fuel exhaustion. Finally, at 201 gallons the automatic shutoff snapped, and the tank was full. I'd landed the Huey with 8 gallons left in the tank, about enough for two or three minutes of flight. That figure is misleading, however. Could I have hovered along another two or three minutes? No, and here's why: according to the operator's manual, the UH-1 fuel tank has about five gallons of unusable fuel. Thirty seconds or so would have made the difference that day between a landing and an inflight flameout.

I learned a lot on that mission. To plan better; to find fuel somewhere--even a remote spot--to ignore a general's priorities in favor of aviation safety; and to stop listening to those old, tired aviation maxims that give comfort when what we really need is fuel--and a dose of common sense.

Does the gauge 'always read a little low'? It did that day, lucky for me. But the unusable fuel factor could have done me in, regardless. So next time you hear of a margin of error, or a built in engineering factor with the aircraft, take it from me. The best way to stay safe, and to retire, as I did, with little fanfare, and your record intact, is this: build in a little margin of error the other direction. Remember, those fuel gauges always read a little high.

Byron Edgington is a writer, public speaker and retired commercial helicopter pilot. He is also the author of the aviation memoir, The Sky Behind Me to be published soon.

Byron@caffection.com

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Is a Private Pilot Considered an Amateur Pilot?

2009-09-11T15:00:00.000+01:00

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by Chet Val

The media is always on hand when an accident or incident involving a general aviation aircraft occurs. It seems that they watch like a hawk for anything negative news to promote. Be it for tv ratings, newspaper circulation, magazine sales, etc the watchful eye of the media has always been quick to carefully detail airplane crashes and near misses. The private pilot is always being scrutinized in the media and in many cases being referred to as an amateur pilot. The word amateur is defined in numerous ways. It can be defined as a person attached to a particular pursuit or study without formal training or pay. Another definition is someone who pursues a study or sport as an informal pastime or hobby. The definitions are similar and broad. The problem is that the term amateur pilot paints the picture of an individual who reads a magazine on flying airplanes, and then hops into the nearest cockpit and flies away. Acquiring a private pilot certificate and the legal means to fly an airplane indeed requires formal training as well as certain medical requirements as well as successful completion of numerous tests. So where does the word amateur come into the picture? In comparison, a private pilot flying for hobby and fun does in fact need substantially less training then a commercial pilot flying cargo or human beings across the sky professionally.

Flying for sport or hobby requires a private pilot certificate in the USA. There are also certificates available that require less training such as the Sport Pilot certificate. This certification carries with it certain stipulations due to the fact that it requires less training and is less costly to the student. The private certificate however provides the pilot with the ability to fly in controlled airspace which can be critical depending on where he or she lives or flies. Another difference between these two certificates is the need for a medical exam by a certified medical examiner specifically qualified and approved by the FAA. A Sport pilot certificate does not require the student to pass an aviation medical exam.

Future pilots must be able to understand, speak, and read English. Aircraft control towers and airports, use the English language for communication. This is actually true in most airports around the world, even where English is not the native language. Choosing a flight school is very important. Information is always available at your local general aviation airports. Training does not come cheap. A private pilot certificate requires forty hours minimum of actual flying time. This includes the time in the airplane with an instructor as well as time spent flying solo. Many flight schools recommend students seek a medical certificate from your local FAA certified physician prior to starting any training. Once the student has passed that, your flight school or private flight instructor will begin the process of both ground training as well as in-flight training. Ground school varies tremendously among students based on amount of time spent per week along with the rate of material absorption. Student pilots can acquire information through a variety of methods including the internet, training videos, and good old fashion books and manuals. At some point in your training beyond basic ground school, student pilots have to take a multiple choice written test, nowadays typically from a computer terminal, with software provided by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Upon passing the written FAA test, as it is referred to, you need to log in-flight training hours beyond the minimums required by the FAA. For a private certificate, students need to log solo time, night flying time, and demonstrate the ability to successfully compete cross-country flights which are flights from one airport to another. A check-ride, or final test, is then required with your local FAA designated examiner. The check-ride includes an oral test accompanied by a practical test where the student must demonstrate a variety of specific maneuvers and familiarity with the airplane. This is the point where the word amateur becomes skewed. With all the requirements met and tests passed, the student will be issued a private pilot certificate. Although a pilot's experience is measured over time in flying hours and new pilots certainly lack air time when compared to a pilot who has been flying for years or even decades, it still seems a bit harsh to label a private pilot as an amateur pilot.

Chet owns and operates Eye of the Pilot, a private pilot networking site dedicated to sharing the experience of general aviation and the adventure of being a private pilot. You can visit Eye of the Pilot to view general aviation pilot videos and aviation pictures submitted by members. Account signup is free for pilots of any rating.

Learning to Fly - Structuring Your Lesson and Study Plan to Save Time, Effort, and Money

2009-08-19T15:00:00.000+01:00

Image by Sam Kindler via Flickr

By Ben Lovegrove

If you have had a trial flight and you find yourself determined to learn to fly, then you're probably eager to start right away, but before you embark on this project spend a little time planning a study schedule. Obtaining a Private Pilot's license is a rewarding experience in many ways, but it will take up time, effort, and money. You can save on all three by having a structured training plan.

Unless you are retired or fortunate enough not to have to work for a living then most of your time will be taken up by your employment. You may be footloose and fancy free or your may be in a relationship and you will have to take into account the time you devote to your partner and to your home and any other responsibilities.

Learning to fly is like acquiring any others skill; it takes practice and diligent study. So the first question you have to ask yourself is how much time you have spare to devote to your studies. Ideally you should have at least one flying lesson per week but you will also need time to study books, CDs, and other materials. Two lessons a week would be preferable, but it would be difficult to arrange more if you work full time. If you're not working then of course you could book lessons whenever you like. However, you also need to spread the lessons out and add ground school studies into the schedule as they are an essential component that compliments the practical lessons.

A flying lesson consists of a pre-flight briefing in which your instructor will explain the purpose of the lesson and the desired outcome, and a post-flight briefing in which your instructor will review the lesson. Add to that the time spent traveling to and from the airfield and an hour long flying lesson can easily take up three hours. There will be days in which you have two lessons back to back, and later on in the course you'll go on longer flights across country so the time factor will increase.

The point to remember is that one or two flying lessons and accompanying ground school studies can easily take up eight hours per week when you start your lessons. Your enthusiasm will be high so these will be hours you'll enjoy but you may need to explain to your partner that you need to make this commitment in order to achieve the goal. Drops in continuity of training and practice will eventually cost you more time, effort, and money as you catch up when training resumes.

Weather will be a huge influence on your continuity of practice. If you live in the UK then you'll be very familiar with the unpredictable weather. Even the summer cannot be relied up to provide the ideal conditions for lessons and if your chosen airfield has grass runways then there may be days lost in the winter when the ground is waterlogged. Bear in mind that in three of your weekend lessons might be canceled due to adverse weather conditions. If you only fly at weekends and one lesson is canceled then it could be two weeks between your lessons. How much will you remember from one lesson to the next?

Your choice of airfield may involve weighing up the pros and cons of each. If you live near a grass airfield but another with a hard runway is within reasonable distance it might be better to travel to the further field in order to take advantage of the reliable runway and other advantages like the busier control tower. A busier tower will mean more radio calls and that is never a bad thing. R/T (Radio Telephony) i.e. talking on the radio, is often a bit of a psychological block to some student pilots. Fear of saying the wrong thing and appearing ignorant has caused many a student to feel anxious about using the radio. The only way to overcome this is to develop confidence through practice and knowledge. The more you use the radio the better you'll feel about it.

So assuming you have assigned blocks of hours each week that you can commit to learning to fly then your training should keep to a healthy pace and you will soon be marveling at the new skills and knowledge that you have acquired. You will also save yourself money because the continuity of practice and study will cut down the number of flying hours it takes for you to reach the required standard for the practical exams at the end of the course. Once you've bought the study materials it costs no more to study for one hour than it does for ten, but being in the air costs hard cash for every minute of fuel burnt. You want to be good enough to be a competent certified pilot but you don't want to spend more money than is necessary.

Flying schools often advertise a price for a course of lessons that will take your from beginner to someone who has flown all the hours required in the license syllabus, but these figures are based on the minimum number of hours in the syllabus and most students will exceed this figure for a variety of reasons. So budget for more than the price in the advert as it's unlikely you will be ready for the final exams in the minimum time. Save time, effort and money by sticking to your schedule and keeping to a pace of practice and learning that will eventually reward you with your pilot's wings.

Ben Lovegrove is a holder of a UK Private Pilot's Licence. He learned to fly in the 1980s and enjoys nothing more than some aerobatics over the green fields of England. He has two aviation related blogs: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate and Love Airlines.

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Staying on Top of Your Game As a Pilot

2009-06-22T15:00:00.002+01:00

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By Jeffrey Synk

There are many things you can do in aviation that will keep you at the top of your flying game and offer lots of enjoyment and excitement whether you are flying or not. New ratings, new certificates, pilot networking, aviation organizations, and magazines are but a few, but before I talk about those more in-depth, first I would like to share with you a little story.

If You Give A Pilot A License
I occasionally read a story to my daughter called, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," by Laura Joffe Numeroff. It's a story about what happens when you give a mouse a cookie. You discover that if you give a mouse a cookie, he is probably going to want a glass of milk. And if you give him a glass of milk, he is probably going to want a napkin, and if you give him a napkin...well, you get the drift. The story goes on and on until finally it comes full-circle with, "If you give a mouse a cookie..."

"If You Give A Mouse a Cookie" is a charming story and somewhat similar to what flying is all about because once you get your Private Pilot license (certificate), it is really hard to stop there. It's basically a tease. Your realize that you are somewhat limited, so you get your Instrument rating. Whew! Your done! Oh, but not quite. You've done some cross-country flights and some night flights and suddenly you realize that you have over 200 hours in your logbook. Then someone says, "Hey, why don't you get your Commercial rating?" This gets you thinking that maybe you might want to try to make some money flying, so you get your Commercial rating. Eventually it becomes one certificate and rating after another much like if you "give a mouse a cookie."

Now whether you want to just stay a Private Pilot or get multiple ratings and certificates, the fact is you have to keep training and learning. Flying is a skill and one that needs to be practiced regularly much like any endeavor you undertake. Besides, it keeps flying interesting and fresh and offers a ton of opportunities, especially if your goal is to fly professionally someday. Now you don't have to go get ALL the ratings available, of course, because that can get very expensive. It is fine to be a Private Pilot and fly because you love to fly. But, either way, you have to stay current on the latest developments in aviation and "proficient" in order to fly safely. This is the best way to stay on top of your game but it is easier said than done.

Staying Motivated About Flying When Not Flying
Money and weather are always an issue when it comes to flying. So what do you do if money is tight or the weather seems to always be bad but you still want to stay involved in flying? Even after you have received your Private Pilot license or have gone all out and launched a career as a pilot, there are always ways you can be working to keep up with what is going on in aviation and the aviation industry. Here are a few suggestions:

Join An Aviation Group
One of the best things you can do to stay motivated and stay involved in flying is to join a group of other like-minded pilots in your area or on-line, like on Facebook. Pilots are a unique group of people and the experiences you have flying are unlike any other hobby or profession there is. It's natural you will want to belong to a community of pilots who share those common experiences. A few groups you may want to consider are aircraft restoration societies, glider clubs, Civil Air Patrol (http://www.gocivilairpatrol.com) and air show planning organizations. All these groups focus on improving aviation in their own way and are a lot of fun to be a part of.

Networking With Other Pilots
Networking with other pilots can offer you many benefits as well. The groups mentioned above are great for networking and a flight school is a great place to build future relationships, too. Your local fixed-base operator (FBO), which is an aircraft service center at an airport that provides fueling, aircraft rentals and possibly charter services, is ideal. Just striking up a conversation about the flying conditions that day or sharing important facts about the local area like "flight restrictions" or preferred operational procedures that you know about or heard about from other pilots may open the doors to opportunities undreamed of. One very good friend landed a flying job just this way. And don't forget to stay in touch with your flight instructor. You never know when you may need that letter of recommendation for a future airline job interview and who better to provide that letter than the pilot who taught YOU how to fly?

Building A Relationship With The FAA
There are other levels of networking and staying in the flying game that you can tap into as a member of the aviation community that you may not have thought of before. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Even though we think of the FAA as that big governmental agency in the sky, the FAA is staffed by individuals who are interested in taking care of pilots and making sure everybody lives up to the same standards so the industry is safe and profitable. If you live near a big enough airport, you probably have an FAA Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) (http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/field_offices/fsdo/) near you. These representatives would like nothing more than to know you better to find out how the agency can serve your needs. At many locations, the FAA holds meetings every other week that are really classes for pilots just like you to help you stay up-to-date with your education and to answer any questions that may have come up about the aviation industry and the FAA's relationship to it. Furthermore, the FAA offers free training and free publications through their website all focused exclusively on the aviation industry that you can take advantage of. So include your local FAA FSDO representatives in your network of professional associations. It will pay you well to tap this huge resource.

Flying Magazines And Publications
Finally, flying magazines and publications are a great way to stay in touch when you don't have much time. One of the reasons I got back into flying after a long hiatus was because of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) "Flight Training" magazine available at any bookstore. Here was a magazine that "talked to me." It kept me up-to-date on the latest-and-greatest technology, procedures, news, and commentaries regarding aviation. Then, when I became a flight instructor, it offered valuable tips on instruction techniques and ideas. Another terrific magazine is "Flying." Great articles and lots of good information are filled with every issue. These magazines will definitely keep you on top of your game.

Conclusion
So there you have it. Flying, and flying often, or getting new ratings and certificates is by far the best way to stay proficient and to grow as a pilot. Realistically though, money, time, and personal commitments often get in the way. Hopefully, you have seen that there are other ways to stay in the game of flying even if you aren't actually flying. It is important to stay involved in flying once you start because if you don't, your "flying" dream may slip away and that would be tragic. Being involved with aviation groups, networking, building relationships, and reading magazines are some of the best ways I know how to stay in the game.

Jeffrey is a captain at regional airline and is based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He flies the CRJ200, CRJ700, and CRJ900. He holds an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificate, a CL-65 (CRJ200) type rating, Gold Seal Certificated Flight Instructor (CFI), and Advanced Ground Instructor. He has over 4000 hours total flight time.
He writes the blog Almost the Speed of Sound (http://www.flycrj.com) which is about his experiences, insights, and thoughts about being an airline captain and flight instructor. He is also the author of "The CRJ Quicknotes Study Guide" which is available at http://www.flycrj.com/order.html
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Airplanes Don't Stall, Pilots Stall Them

2009-05-29T15:00:00.001+01:00

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By Doug Daniel

When smooth airflow separates from your wings they stall, losing most of their lift. If you are lucky the airplane drops like a brick, pitches down, accelerates and starts to fly normally again. If you are not so lucky, one wing stalls, rolling your airplane toward the stalled wing as it progresses to a spin before you can recover. It is probably a good idea to keep the airflow attached to the wing and the tail and every other surface needed for controlled flight.

An aerodynamicist would tell you that stalls can only occur when an airfoil reaches or exceeds its critical angle of attack. I would say that a stall occurs only when you try to make the wind turn too sharp a corner.

You see, air is sticky. Not very sticky but it is a little sticky. An aerodynamicist would clear his throat; raise his eyebrows and say, "Viscous." So let's ignore the aerodynamicist. It's sticky. When air blows past a gently curved surface, like a wing, it tends to stick to the surface even though the surface curves away from the wind.

If the wing is symmetric top and bottom and the wind is coming straight on, the wind impacts the front of the wing and builds a high pressure area there. Then as it starts to follow the contour of the wing, like anything following a curved path, it gets pulled out. But its stickiness holds it next to the surface. The result is low pressure over most of the surface, top and bottom.

Now if you pitch the wing up a bit by pulling back on the stick a bit, the air on top must change direction a bit more than the air on the bottom. The result is more low pressure on the top and less on the bottom. Perhaps the high pressure area on the bottom of the wing is bigger than before. The wing is sucked up by the top and pushed up by the bottom. We call this lift.

The airflow separates from the wing of a properly designed airplane before it separates from the tail. If the tail has lift and the wing doesn't the airplane's wing drops and the tail doesn't. This is a good thing because the wing comes down and faces a lower pitch attitude. The results are that the wind re-attaches to the upper surface, lift is restored and the airplane returns to normal.

Now suppose the pilot continues pulling back on the stick. As soon as the wing develops lift, it goes up too far again and stalls again. We call this bobbing action 'buffeting.'

Buffeting is good because it warns the pilot that he or she is pulling too hard on the stick and the wing is ready to enter a serious stall - one that could lead to a potentially fatal spin.

So now we know that the real warning of an impending serious stall is buffeting. We also know that buffeting is caused by pulling the stick too far. So we know that the way to avoid a stall is to pull less when we feel buffeting. We also know that if we pull less on the elevator, that the airplane will go down. That could be a really bad thing. Increasing the engine's power simultaneously with easing up on the elevator can mitigate that sinking feeling

Notice that no where in this discussion of what causes stalls and what to do about them was the concept of airspeed needed. Stalls are only caused by pitching the wings up too far - nothing else. Even though stalling speed is a useful term, there really is no unique stalling speed for an airplane. You have to read the fine print. What 'stall speed' usually means is the speed at which an airplane's wing exceeds its maximum pitch attitude if the airplane is loaded to maximum landing weight, is in the landing configuration and flying straight ahead

Doug Daniel is a long time pilot, flight instructor, software engineering manager and author. His department developed the software for the out-the-window-displays for the space shuttle, F-117, RS-71 and numerous other exotic aircraft simulators. His writing focuses on flying techniques designed to make flying easier and safer. If this was interesting, visit his website at http://www.FlyingSecretsRevealed.com/flying_questions/

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How do Ryanair make money?

2009-05-15T15:00:00.001+01:00

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I read an interesting article from Wired magazine recently which basically stated that on a typical London to Barcelona flight it costs Ryanair $70 per seat. (This is the cost to the airline NOT the price of the ticket).

So I got to thinking about this and wondered about the economics.

The plane used on that flight will probably be the B737-800 which has 180 seats. At $70 per seat the cost of the flight is $12600. The flight lasts somewhere in the region of 2 hours therefore the cost per hour to Ryanair is $6300.

Within that $6300 the following has to be included:

Fuel for 1 hours flight on a medium sized 2 engine commercial airliner
Half the landing fee for the destination airport
1 hours salary for a pilot and co-pilot
1 hours salary for 4 cabin staff
Maintenance costs for 1 hours flight
Aircraft leasing costs for 1 hours flight
50% of the handling fees for the baggage at the destination.
Salary of the check-in staff at the departure airport
A proportion of head-office overhead fees
Profit.

Let's take the head office overhead and the profit out of there so as not to confuse matters too much.

Now let's look at some figures we know: A Gulfstream IV aircraft carries up to 13 passengers over 4500 miles at a time. It has two small engines and can be leased for around $5200 per hour

Commercial aircraft leasors will lease an Airbus A320 (similar to a Boeing 737) on an
ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance & Insurance model) (i.e without fuel and other costs) for $2750 per hour On top of that the airline will have to pay for items such as:

fuel and oil;
aircraft landing, handling, navigation and terminal charges;
passenger and cargo handling;
airport taxes, all passenger related taxes and security taxes;
aircraft parking and ground security;
ramp services including towing, push-back, de-icing, nitrogen and oxygen services;
all dry goods, including but not limited to head rest covers, airsickness bags, blankets and pillows;
ATC fees and all international route charges;
cabin cleaning and water services;
aircraft interior deep cleaning and exterior cleaning;
airport security passes and permits, if required;
over-flight permits;
custom taxes, immigration and inspection fees, import and export duty's;
landing and traffic permit and slots;
office space including telephone, fax, email;
spare parts facilities (storage) including air conditioning;
one van for transportation of mechanics and parts;
insurance - passengers, baggage, mail, cargo and war risk insurance;
any additional cost reference to insurance coverage will be on Lessee's account;
any and all other reasonable direct operating costs, incurred in the performance of the flights whether or not listed above.

Aviation fuel is currently charged at around $830 per metric tonne (assuming a 45% reduction of the price of $1280 at the height of the fuel issues). Fuel to Barcelona is about 6.65 metric tonnes which gives a cost per hour (assuming the two hour flight) of $2400

So we know so far that we are looking at approx ($2400 + $2750 = $5150) just for the aircraft and fuel The landing charge at Barcelona is approx €6 per tonne which would equate to approx €250 for the plane or €125 per hour. This doesn't include any of the salaries for the crew, nor any of the additional costs listed above. Flight crew earn less than $72 per hour (which equates to $145 per hour for the two flight crew) Cabin crew are on considerably less than that (say $20 per hour * 4 = $80.

While these figures are only approximate (and the result of some investigative digging on the internet), it does prove a couple of things

1) Ryanair are not good staff payers
2) The margins are very thin
3) Somewhere cuts must be being made to ensure the costs are kept down. Remember in the remaining $100 per hour Ryanair must pay for ALL the maintenance costs, and insurance as well as those costs detailed in the list above

How do they do it? Are my figures inaccurate? Can anyone with inside information let me know please?

Cost free flying? Worth considering...

2009-05-13T15:00:00.003+01:00

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What if I told you there was a way to fly as often as you like, in all weathers, in whichever aircraft you want, from wherever you want, with live ATC and it won't cost you anything. You'd like that wouldn't you? Of course you would. But you would also want to know what the catch was wouldn't you?

Well, I have one word for you: Simulation.

Flight simulation is a growing industry. Since the early days of the Microsoft Flight Simulator the state of the art has moved on in leaps and bounds. Whole industries have sprung up to manage the ancilliary markets with thing such as new planes, scenery and adventures. A whole host of forums, web-sites and communities have appeared dedicated to the art and science of flight simulation. I even heard about a guy who is building his own 747 flight simulator - with full motion control - in his garage!

The problem with a lot of this was always twofold:

1) Even if you get all the latest add-on's, up-to-date software and patches, it was still a case of sitting in your room staring at a screen and playing with a keyboard.
2) It didn't fully replicate the flying experience because it was missing one vital ingredient - proper Air traffic control.

Well unfortunately the problem of 1) is not going to go away soon. Even the guy building his own 747 simulator is still a guy sat at home - albeit with some sophisticated machinery. But the problem of 2) is more easily solved.

Flight sim manufacturers have included some pretty good ATC functionality in their packages. Each release brings more and more advanced settings and realistic situations. But at the end of the day it is all preprogrammed and cannot take the place of 'real' controllers. Back in the early days of flight simulator software there began a parallel movement to create and run a community of Air Traffic Controllers using ATC simulation software. The software was fairly rudimentary to start with, but as with the flight simulators it has increased in sophistication to the point where it can be very lifelike indeed.

Except that it is not, actually real life. It's computer controlled planes in a computer created environment.

So on the one hand you have the pilots wishing they could have ATC that was 'real' and on the other controllers wishing they could have 'real' pilots to control. It didn't take long for someone to make the logical connection and pretty soon VATSIM was born.

VATSIM is the Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network which uses some sophisticated software to link pilots, planes and air traffic controllers together across the internet.

It works very simply:

With your flight simulator program you download a small piece of software which acts as a "squawkbox" to provide a transponder type functionality to your machine. This channels all your typical transponder type information from your flight sim to the web.

On the web are servers which monitor this data and pass it to other simmers who are running the same squawbox software as well as ATC's simmers who are running controller software.

The net result of this is that you fly your own simulation on your own machine, but - with the aid of the squawbox and a headset/microphone - you are connected to controllers who can both see your plane AND interact with you as a pilot, along with all the other pilots who are currently using the squawbox.

The beauty of this is twofold:
a) You get to fly your own planes in your own environment whenever you want, thereby increasing your flight time and experience (albeit simulated).
b) You get fully managed ATC cover - with ALL the appropriate terminology - which thereby increases your comfort level and experience when interacting with real ATC and flying real planes.

The whole process is very well thought through and it works like this:

Once connected you file a flight plan. This can be VFR or IFR. You can fly long distance in a 747 or just do circuits in your Cessna, or any combination in between.
You tune your flight simulator radio to the correct frequency and a real live voice greets you and issues instructions. (These folks, by the way have gone through some fairly extensive training and mentoring and are every bit as good as the real thing)
When you fly you can both see other (non AI) planes in your sim AND hear their transmissions on the radio.
Air traffic control will act in the expected manner providing directions, asking questions, giving clearances and providing flight following. It's pretty much as close to the real thing as you can get it. The system is even designed to download the real weather from the nearest airport to your current location and update your simulator.

In recent days I have flown my Cessna around the outer edges of the London CTR and been directed away from controlled airspace. I have taken a Dash-7 from Farnborough to Amsterdam, an Airbus A320 from Amsterdam to Gatwick and even flown circuits in a Cessna around Gatwick (It's not recommended in real life as the landing fees are so high and dodging the 747's can be tricky, but it is possible). This weekend I will be flying an A320 from Frankfurt to Hamburg as part of a 'Real Ops' exercise to simulate the real life movements around a major airport. There will be upwards of 400 flights arriving and departing. Should be fun.

Now before you look at this and say "It's not the same as flying the real thing because you would never be able to fly an Airbus without years of training" let me just clarify one thing. I fly all sorts of planes in the simulator, including the ones I was originally trained on - single engine propeller planes - and every time I fly one in the simulator it improves the way I fly them in real life. I can use this as an exercise to do all those things I would never want to do in reality - such as simulate an engine failure or something equally as nasty. It also allows me to practice my instrument flying (Which you will all have done some of in your PPL training) without worrying about really getting lost. Now imagine being able to do all this AND have some friendly controller watching over you - all for free!

I thoroughly recommend having a look at flight simulation and VATSIM. It can surely only improve your flying can't it? Even if it makes you more comfortable talking with controllers this is a great benefit to it.

Here are some links to help you get started:

VATSIM - The central hub for this. Create a free acount and log in
Squawkbox - The connection software (again free)
FSInn - An alternate connection software (A lot more functional but a bit too complex for my liking)

Listening to ATC transmissions - The Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949

2009-04-08T15:00:00.001+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

There are several great sites out on the internet that are streaming live ATC transmissions for all to hear. However one thing you won't hear on any of them are ATC transmissions from the UK.

It never occured to me to wonder why until I wanted to listen to a friend of mine as her flight left for Hong Kong recently. When I looked into it apparently there is legislation forbidding it. Section 5(1)(b) of the WT Act 1949 states that it is an offence if a person "otherwise than under the authority of a designated person,

either:

(i) uses any wireless telegraphy apparatus with intent to obtain information as to the contents, sender or addressee of any message whether sent by means of wireless telegraphy or not, of which neither the person using the apparatus nor a person on whose behalf he is acting is an intended recipient;
or:

(ii) except in the course of legal proceedings or for the purpose of any report thereof, discloses any information as to the contents, sender or addressee of any such message, being information which would not have come to his knowledge but for the use of wireless telegraphy apparatus by him or by another person."

So for all those of you who like to use scanning equipment to listen to ATC you are all breaking the law by using the scanner. Owning, purchasing and selling a scanner is not illegal, but in order to legally use it to listen to UK ATC transmissions (and emergency service transmission) you have to be a licensed user of the frequencies in question. Any CAA or JAR certified pilots who are reading this will be fine because they will hold a Radio Operators license as part of their certification, but a normal 'man-in-the-street' is commiting an offence by doing this.

But only if you are based in the UK. So If I was listening from Holland, for example and I could pick up Heathrow ATC - or similar coverage from the UK - I could broadcast it legally. Also this law doesn't apply to Southern Ireland which means I can listen in quite legally to Shannon and Dublin. Nor does it apply to many of the European countries, Oceanic countries, Central and North America.

So why the UK?

Well, according to the Radiocommunications Enforcement Policy Unit this is because "No-one likes their private or business conversations to be listened to. Parliament has passed these laws to protect the privacy of radio users". So let me get this right: If you are transmitting using a commonly accessible, unecrypted, non peer-to-peer signal which is easily and readily receivable by consumer grade electronics, you are deemed to be having a 'private conversation'?

What's wrong with this picture?

What happens when it all goes terribly wrong. A test pilot story.

2009-04-06T15:00:00.001+01:00

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You may have heard of the SR-71 Blackbird. Built almost entirely from titanium and stainless steel at the Lockheed Skunkworks in Burbank, California, the Blackbird was able to cruise at Mach 3.35 for extended periods, at altitudes of over 80,000 feet. Designed from the start as an invulnerable platform for strategic photographic and electronic reconnaissance, the Blackbird flew with impunity over the Soviet Union, China, and virtually every "hot spot" in the world until it's retirement in 1998.

Of course flying at such extremes of speed and temperature had both advantages and disadvantages. The air friction outside is so much that normal metals used to create aircraft would simply melt. Furthermore, ejection at that point would put a pilot into such extreme low pressure - it's right on the edge of space - that his blood would literally boil. So being a test pilot in such a plane has more than the normal share of risk.

Here's a first hand account of what happens when flight testing the fastest aircraft ever made goes ever so slightly awry. Next time you have an engine loss at 3000ft and have to put down in a field or divert to an alternate airfield think of how much worse it could be.

(Link courtesy of Alexis Park Inn)

Any pilots care to help me?

2009-04-04T13:53:00.003+01:00

My recent post about the new Air Traffic Services Outside Controlled Airspace gave some basic information about the new services that came into effect on March 12th last year.

Well, it's been almost a month of using this and the weather in the UK has been sufficiently good to enable you pilots to get some experience with the new services.

Any chance of you dropping your thoughts in the comments?

What you like about them
What you don't like
What you would change
How easy the changeover was
Any problems you encountered

I would like to get some feedback for my readers who, maybe, haven't been able to get out and do the hours yet.

Please let me know your thoughts below....

The cheap flight - an update

2009-03-18T15:00:00.004Z

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You may recall a couple of months ago I wrote a post about what I considered to be a misleading airline ticket pricing strategy. The airline - Ryanair - had advertised a 'free flight' which ultimately could have cost me as much as £105 including taxes and the 'additional charges' they levy.

Well this week I actually took the flight and I wanted to post a few thoughts on the experience and, maybe, see if my readers had had a similar experience.

My opinion is that Ryanair are attempting to make the experience of flying with them as uncomfortable as possible for a passenger. It is almost as if they've said "We are the cheapest airline around and as such you will suffer for the fact that you aren't paying a lot for your flight".

The suffering starts when you book.

The web-site itself is poorly designed with a cluttered layout, garish colour schemes and lots of 'offers' and 'adverts'. It has 14 tabs and 11 menu options to negotiate. This is mainly because Ryanair's business model is not to raise money be selling seats, but to raise money by selling everything other than seats (more about that later). As I mentioned previously the pricing is misleading and the addition of an extra charge for paying by credit card on-line is the salt in the wound that would, ordinarily, have put me off buying the ticket.

So the initial impression is not good. Lot's of bad design and a barely concelaled glee at finding different ways to take money off you whilst still offering 'free flights'. On top of that there is anecdotal evidence of the web-site having loopholes and problems which result in lock-outs and double charged credit cards.

Does it differ when you get to the airport? No. I checked in at Bournemouth which - admittedly - was going through some major renovations at the time. However the process was as follows:

Queue up
Give details to check-in lady
Show passport
Check one bag in
Take second bag (golf clubs) round to another desk
Queue up
Give details to second check-in lady
Pay for second bag
Receive confirmation slip/receipt
Take second bag (golf clubs) back to first desk.
Queue up
Give confirmation slip/receipt to first check-in lady
Receive boarding card
Take clubs to a third check-in area
Show boarding card to guard behind glass screen
Drop clubs on conveyer belt - hope they get treated well and arrive at destination.

16 steps including three queue's to check in one bag, one set of clubs and receive a boarding card. Nice way to start a relaxing holiday.

Ryanair operates a priority boarding sytem which means (for an additional fee) you can board the plane before the majority of the other passengers and choose 'the prime seats' (whichever they may be on a 737 with 180 identical seats). When priority boarding is called, however, there is a general scrum as folks jostle and work their way to the front of the queue to get on board.

Once on board passengers try desperately to find stowage for the 180 bags they have taken on board, each one of which is packed to the gills and just inside the maximum weight and size allowance (thereby not incurring an additional charge from the airline). As a result the plane takes off with packed overhead lockers, suitcases sticking out underneath seats and - most worrying - bags jammed behind peoples legs, a definite safety hazard in case of evacuation. None of the cabin crew seemed to mind this.

The aircraft themselves are designed to be as uncomfortable as possible. The interior decor is deep blue and bright yellow. The deep blue tends to be the leather on the seats you are sitting on and the yellow tends to be the overhead bins, the walls and - particularly - the back of the seat in front at eye level. This colour yellow fits with the airline's theme but it is also not at all conducive to trying to sleep or rest and relax. On top of that the seats do not recline. At all. Plus there are no storage areas in the back of the seats and your vision is dominated by the safety leaflet which has been embedded (surrounded by the garish yellow) into the headrest of the seat in front.

I suppose I could deal with that if that was the extent of it. However the modus operandi of the Ryanair flight is to minimise the opportunities to do anything other than spend money. There are constant interruptions throughout the flight:

Drinks are served (to buy, of course)
Food is served (to buy, of course)
Lottery scratchcards are served (to buy, of course)
Duty free goods are served (to buy, of course)
Telephone cards are served (to buy, of course)

Then the cycle starts again. On a flight of a little over 2 hours I was offered two lots of drinks, two lots of food, two lots of scratchcards, a phone card and some duty free. I bought nothing, however. But each interruption consisted of an announcement over the public address system (pre-recorded by a Scottish gentleman with just that right sort of grating Scottish accent that I find annoying), followed by the cabin staff parading up and down the aisle trying to sell you things.

I tried reading the in-flight magazine as a distraction. Except there isn't one. Well, there is one, but it is handed out at the start of the flight to anyone who wants it. The magazine itself consists of a number of (admittedly quite well written) articles coupled with over 30 pages of in-flight advertising for Ryanair itself. Oh, and once you have the magazine you have to keep hold of it because - as mentioned earlier - there are no seat back pockets to store anything in.

Overall I found the experience to be very unsettling. The casual lack of respect with which customers are treated did concern me. The apparent safety violations of allowing bags to be stowed behind passengers legs was also worrying. I had concerns about whether Ryanair skimp on their aircraft maintenance to save money, but have been unable to uncover anything reliable that can confirm whether this happens or not. With a relatively new fleet I have to believe that this is not an issue at present.

My question to those who know is "Does this follow the Southwest Airlines lo-cost business model or is o'Leary at Ryanair blazing his own trail and wanting to run an aerial bus service?"

I suppose in the big scheme of things (and this is the argument a lot of people will - legitimately - throw back at me) for a 'free' flight what, really, can you expect? My counterargument to that is "How much abuse and bad service will you support before 'free' becomes 'too much'?". After all there has to be a dividing line between what you would expect if you were paying regular fares to a regular airline, and the level of service you expect when paying lo-cost airline fares. When does this tip the balance from being 'free and rough' to being 'abusive'?

Aviation industry looks to go green

2009-03-11T15:00:00.001Z

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Aviation leaders have taken a proactive role in looking at ways of mitigating their environmental impact according to a recent report from wired magazine

The 11-point plan laid out in "Aviation and Climate Change: The Views of Aviation Industry Stakeholders" (.pdf) was developed by some of the industry's leading trade groups and addresses everything from general aviation and commercial carriers to aircraft manufacturers. It outlines a broad principles for the industry and policymakers to adhere to as they grapple with climate change, and makes it clear the industry wants to be more involved in the discussion -- and solution.

This is an interesting development because it places the aviation industry in a pro-active postion when it comes to climate change and the impact this industry has on the environment.

Although the devil is in the details:

A lot of the text is pretty straightforward (or 'boilerplate') and they talk about items such as a "comprehensive energy policy" - which provides either little information and even less confidence. Additionally there are attempts within the document to position ecological regulation in direct opposition to jobs by stating that "potential benefits of regulation should be weighed against the cost to the economy, jobs, communities, and the transportation system"

There are, however a number of rays of light emanating from this document in the form of proposals to overhaul ATC systems to reduce aircraft holding times, or adopting operation efficiencies such as continuous decent approaches which reduce fuel consumption.

Overall the document is welcome change of direction for the aviation industry which has -up until now - tried to distance itself from it's environmental impact with claims that aviation emmissions account for 'just 2%' of the global CO2 fallout globally.

Although I suspect the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December has served it's purpose of focusing the minds of aviation bigwigs.

Farnborough Air Show 2008 - ZERO Infringements!

2009-03-04T15:00:00.000Z

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One of the facts released at a 'wrap up' meeting for the bienniel Farnborough Air Show was that despite two weeks of formal restrictions of flying across popular areas of Class 'G' in mid July 2008, there were NO infringements (and that's for the second Farnborough Air Show in succession).

Well done to everyone concerned, and that means UK pilots as well as the clubs, air traffickers, magazine editors, forum moderators, AIS staff, aviation organisations and the 2008 Farnborough Air Show planners, all of whom helped spread a consistent message running up to, and during, the two weeks of restrictions.

(This post first appeared on the FLY ON TRACK web site run by my radio axaminer and general good guy Irv Lee. Please take time out to visit the site. It has great information on avoiding airspace infringements)

The new ATC procedures outside controlled airspace.

2009-03-03T15:00:00.002Z

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The UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) recently announced a wave of changes to the provision of Air Traffic Control services outside controlled airspace.

Up until now the provision of ATSOCA waas provided by a variety of air traffic units and used by all airspace users - from General Aviation to commercial and military aircraft. On 12th March 2009 these services will change when a complete revision comes into effect. It is therefore vital that all controllers and pilots have a detailed knowledge of the change.

All the information about these changes is available at the airspace safety web site, but I wanted to give you a summary of the changes here.

Previously when contacting a LARS service (such as Farnborough) you could receive services such as FIS (Flight Information Service), RIS (radar information service) or RAS (Radar Advisory Service). Each of these was a different level of service providing different information and coverage. As a general aviation pilot flying in VMC you generally needed nothing more than a flight information service.

Under the new rules and regulations the services which can be provided are as follows:

Basic Service: A Basic Service is intended to offer the pilot maximum autonomy and the avoidance of other traffic solely relies on using the 'see and avoid' principle, to avoid other traffic.
Traffic Service: A Traffic Service provides the pilot with traffic information on conflicting aircraft. No deconfliction advice is passed and the pilot is responsible for collision avoidance.
Deconfliction service: A Deconfliction Service provides the pilot with traffic information and deconfliction advice on conflicting aircraft.
Priority Service: A Procedural Service is a non-radar service, where instructions are provided aimed at achieving deconfliction minima from other aircraft to which the controller is also providing a Procedural Service.

Each of these differs quite substantially from the current service provided by controllers.

The Civil Aviation Authority has produced multimedia CD's which explain and illustrate the different services. All registered UK pilots will receive this CD over the next couple of days. If you haven't received this CD (or if you are not a registered UK pilot) you can access the contents online at the Airspace Safety Website.

Learn about the new servies, take the Selftest and stay safe!

Airplanes Don't Stall, Pilots Stall Them

2009-03-01T15:00:00.002Z

Image by I am Mike's photos via Flickr

By Doug Daniel

When smooth airflow separates from your wings they stall, losing most of their lift. If you are lucky the airplane drops like a brick, pitches down, accelerates and starts to fly normally again. If you are not so lucky, one wing stalls, rolling your airplane toward the stalled wing as it progresses to a spin before you can recover. It is probably a good idea to keep the airflow attached to the wing and the tail and every other surface needed for controlled flight.

An aerodynamicist would tell you that stalls can only occur when an airfoil reaches or exceeds its critical angle of attack. I would say that a stall occurs only when you try to make the wind turn too sharp a corner.

You see, air is sticky. Not very sticky but it is a little sticky. An aerodynamicist would clear his throat; raise his eyebrows and say, "Viscous." So let's ignore the aerodynamicist. It's sticky. When air blows past a gently curved surface, like a wing, it tends to stick to the surface even though the surface curves away from the wind.

If the wing is symmetric top and bottom and the wind is coming straight on, the wind impacts the front of the wing and builds a high pressure area there. Then as it starts to follow the contour of the wing, like anything following a curved path, it gets pulled out. But its stickiness holds it next to the surface. The result is low pressure over most of the surface, top and bottom.

Now if you pitch the wing up a bit by pulling back on the stick a bit, the air on top must change direction a bit more than the air on the bottom. The result is more low pressure on the top and less on the bottom. Perhaps the high pressure area on the bottom of the wing is bigger than before. The wing is sucked up by the top and pushed up by the bottom. We call this lift.

Image via Wikipedia

Suppose you pitch the wing up a lot by pulling the stick a long way back. The air on the top has to change direction a lot and the pressure on the top drops a lot. If you pull the stick far enough, the low pressure area on the top of the wing sucks air from the back of the wing forward, separating the airflow from the top of the wing. This is bad. The low pressure area on the top of the wing disappears as it is filled by the forward flowing air. The wing loses lift. This is a stall.

The airflow separates from the wing of a properly designed airplane before it separates from the tail. If the tail has lift and the wing doesn't the airplane's wing drops and the tail doesn't. This is a good thing because the wing comes down and faces a lower pitch attitude. The results are that the wind re-attaches to the upper surface, lift is restored and the airplane returns to normal.

Now suppose the pilot continues pulling back on the stick. As soon as the wing develops lift, it goes up too far again and stalls again. We call this bobbing action 'buffeting.'

Buffeting is good because it warns the pilot that he or she is pulling too hard on the stick and the wing is ready to enter a serious stall - one that could lead to a potentially fatal spin.

So now we know that the real warning of an impending serious stall is buffeting. We also know that buffeting is caused by pulling the stick too far. So we know that the way to avoid a stall is to pull less when we feel buffeting. We also know that if we pull less on the elevator, that the airplane will go down. That could be a really bad thing. Increasing the engine's power simultaneously with easing up on the elevator can mitigate that sinking feeling.

Notice that no where in this discussion of what causes stalls and what to do about them was the concept of airspeed needed. Stalls are only caused by pitching the wings up too far - nothing else. Even though stalling speed is a useful term, there really is no unique stalling speed for an airplane. You have to read the fine print. What 'stall speed' usually means is the speed at which an airplane's wing exceeds its maximum pitch attitude if the airplane is loaded to maximum landing weight, is in the landing configuration and flying straight ahead.

Doug Daniel is a long time pilot, flight instructor, software engineering manager and author. His department developed the software for the out-the-window-displays for the space shuttle, F-117, RS-71 and numerous other exotic aircraft simulators. His writing focuses on flying techniques designed to make flying easier and safer. If this was interesting, visit his website at http://www.FlyingSecretsRevealed.com/flying_questions/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Doug_Daniel
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Cessna goes for the jugular with new private jet ads

2009-02-12T15:00:00.001Z

Image via Wikipedia

Cessna are taking on the government with their new ad campaign according to the Wall Street Journal.

Their ads are going to say "Pity the poor executive who blinks," and gets rid of the company jet. "One thing is certain: true visionaries will continue to fly."

According to the WSJ:

Across the industry, new orders for private jets have almost evaporated, and hundreds of existing customers have sought to defer or cancel orders that were placed in higher-flying days. In addition to layoffs, some jet makers have cut production by as much as 56%. Cessna, a unit of Textron Inc., is laying off more than 4,600 people, or roughly a third of its work force, to cope with the sudden drop in demand for private airplanes of all sizes.

Most of this stems back from the time when the Big Three auto makers flew to Washington on their private jets to ask for government money. The backlash has been immense and lots of companies have downsized their jets as a result of the economic climate. Cessna thinks that by branding corporate executives as leaders rather than followers they will increase demand. "Timidity didn't get you this far. Why put it in your business plan now?" Instead of retreating, the company argues, companies should adjust and make sure they are flying the right type of aircraft.

Good luck to them. Here is the ad itself. Here is the microsite.

Flying tip #6 - The Mayday Call

2009-02-11T15:00:00.001Z

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Hopefully no-one will ever need to make a genuine mayday call during their flying career and indeed the large majority of pilots never do have to make one.

But if you did, are you aware that there is a right and wrong way to do this? It's the only instant fail part of the Radio Telephony licence under JAR rules so it's worth getting it right and remembering it.

The correct format can be remembered using the mnemonic NAAN IPPA:

MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY (yes, three times)
Name of station addressed
Aircraft callsign
Aircraft type
Nature of emergency
Intentions of pilot
Position (or last known psition): flight level/Altitude/Height; heading
Pilot Qualifications (No instrument qualifications: IMC rating etc.)
Any other useful information e.q. persons on board etc.

So as an example if you were Grumman 34 and you had experienced an engine failure you would say:

MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY Thruxton Radio this is Grumman 3, a Cessna 150 with total engine failure attempting forced landing at Bourne Park. Last known position 7 miles north of Andover; 1500 feet heading 200 degrees; PPL; 2 POB

The exact same mnemonic can be used for Urgency calls with the prefix 'PAN' (said 3 times). As an example, you are flying a Piper 28 call sign G-ARYI which experiences a rough running engine. You might call:

PAN PAN, PAN PAN, PAN PAN; Southampton Approach this is G-ARYI a PA-28 with a rough running engine, diverting to Thruxton airfield. Present position one mile north of Lymington, alitude 1500 feet heading 340; PPL; three POB.

Remember the ultimate difference between a Mayday and a Pan is that one is a distress call the other is an urgent situation.

Distress: The aircraft is threatened by serious and/or imminent danger and requires immediate assistance

Urgency: A condition concerning the safety of an aircraft or other vehicle, or of some person on board or in sight, but not requiring immediate attention

If you can't raise anyone on your radio use the International Aeronautical Emergency Frequency which is 121.5

The 747 is 40 years old.

2009-02-10T15:00:00.001Z

Image via Wikipedia

(This post also appears on The Musings Cafe)

I first had the occasion to fly on a 747 back in 1977. My family had decided to emigrate to Australia and I had to go with them by virtue of the fact that I wasn't old enough to live on my own.

We arrived at Heathrow on a cold December morning to jump onto one of the state-of-the art Boeing 747-200's that Qantas ran. We were, of course, in economy/coach class for the flight which seemed to last for ever. In actual fact it was 8 hours to Bombay, a further 8 hours to Perth and another 4 or so hours to Sydney where we stayed for a couple of days.

I remember walking up and down the twin aisles of the plane amazed that such a huge thing could even move under it's own power let alone fly - and fly for so long. Having said that, this was my first flight and having nothing else to compare it with the bar was set fairly high to begin with.

The highlight of the flight was when I asked one of the cabin crew if I could go up to the cockpit and - somewhere between Bombay and Perth - is was allowed access to the inner sanctum. This was great for two reasons: 1) It was on the upper deck so I would have to climb the stairs and 2) I would have to go through First Class to get there. This was in the days when 747's still had a cocktail bar on the upper deck and not business or economy seating. It was also the time when the stairs to the upper deck were still circular.

I sat with the captain and his flight crew for about 30 minutes asking them about all the controls and getting them to demonstrate whatever they could. The Captain even turned the heading switch on the autopilot so that I could see how the plane turned by itself (Apparently my mother in the economy cabin muttered "I bet that's our Gary doing that...'). For a child it was magical.

I couldn't wait to get back on a plane. Unfortunately it wasn't something I wasn't able to do for a while after that, but I have made up for it since.

And now the 747 is 40 years old.

The initial flight of this 'Jumbo' jet took place in the skies above Everett, Washington 4 decades ago. The plane itself was built in a factory that had not even been completed when the first parts started arriving (and which is still the largest manufacturing building on the face of the planet). It was a plane of superlatives. The largest commercial plane ever built. The longest commercial plane ever built. The quietest plane ever built. With it's new turbofan engines it was smooth, fast and efficient (by those standards) and it even had an upper deck where the pilots sat. Airports had to be redesigned to handle them, new equipment had to be built to tow them and pilots needed additional training to deal with the fact that when the rears wheels touched down they were still over 90 feet off the ground! This thing had twice as many wheels in it's undercarriage as any other plane, for goodness sake.

It was truly the plane that ushered in the era of mass travel. Thanks to it's huge size, capacious cabin, and efficient engines it brought the price of long distance aviation down to the point where some airlines are offering free tickets on flights.

Since that initial flight I have flown many hundreds (almost thousands) of times. I am even now qualified to fly an airplane on my own (but not a 747), but the Jumbo is still my favourite plane and I have a number of special memories of that aircraft:

1) Sitting between the Captain and First Officer on the flight deck as we approached Sydney's Kingsford Smith airport at dusk. We approached over the water. It was light enough to see everything but dark enough that all the lights were on. Fabulous
2) Sitting at the back of a 747 on a return flight from Australia watching an old lady slowly negotiate her way down the aisle to the toilet only for the whole plane to drop suddenly in turbulence as soon as she locked the door and sat down. I swear she must have hit the ceiling
3) Being upgraded to seat A1 on a British Airways 747 shortly after they had recently upgraded all First Class to individual cabins. A fully flat bed, personal service and gourmet food on a 13 hour flight to Hong Kong. Luxury
4) Sitting upstairs in business class on a 747 right behind the cockpit bulkhead. As we stood at the end of the runway the pilot said "Ladies and gentlemen tonight's flight to Cape Town will take a little over 12 hours. Once we start rolling we will be on the runway for about a full minute before we lift off. Enjoy your flight". The plane started rolling. I timed the run. We rolled for exactly 58 seconds before the rear wheels lifted up. I shook my head in disbelief. The olderly lady seated next to me asked why. I told her "I've been flying for many years now and it never ceases to amaze me how 300 tons of metal fuel and cargo can fly. But then again as long as the Captain knows how it all happens we're fine". She looked at me and smiled "Oh, he knows how it all works" she said, "He's my husband"

File this under "Aviation humour"

2009-02-07T15:00:00.001Z

Image via Wikipedia

The following is not what I originally intended this site to be used for, but when reading this in my inbox I was forced to laugh out loud.

Who really cares whether these are true or not, they're funny! If you want funny AND true - try Dave Gunsons "What goes up might come down"

The following are accounts of actual exchanges between airline pilots and control towers around the world.

"TWA 2341, for noise abatement turn right 45 Degrees."
"Centre, we are at 35,000 feet. How much noise can we make up here?"
"Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes when it hits a 727?"

From an unknown aircraft waiting in a very long take-off queue: "I'm f...ing bored!"
Ground Traffic Control: "Last aircraft transmitting, identify yourself immediately!"
Unknown aircraft: "I said I was f...ing bored, not f...ing stupid!"

O'Hare Approach Control to a 747: "United 329 heavy, your traffic is a Fokker, one o'clock, three miles, Eastbound."
United 239: "Approach, I've always wanted to say this... I've got the Little Fokker in sight."

A student became lost during a solo cross-country flight.
While attempting to locate the aircraft on radar, ATC asked, "What was your last known position?"
Student: "When I was number one for take-off."

A DC-10 had come in a little hot and thus had an exceedingly long roll out after touching down.
San Jose Tower Noted: "American 751, make a hard right turn at the end of the runway, if you are able.
If you are not able, take the Guadalupe exit off Highway 101, make a right at the lights and return to the airport."

There's a story about the military pilot calling for a priority landing because his single-engine jet fighter was running "a bit peaked."
Air Traffic Control told the fighter jock that he was number two, behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down.
"Ah," the fighter pilot remarked,
"The dreaded seven-engine approach."

Taxiing down the Tarmac, a DC-10 abruptly stopped, turned around and returned to the gate. After an hour-long wait, it finally took off.
A concerned passenger asked the flight attendant, "What, exactly, was the problem?"
"The pilot was bothered by a noise he heard in the engine," explained the flight attendant. "It took us a while to find a new pilot."

Tower: "Eastern 702, cleared for take-off, contact Departure on frequency 124.7"
Eastern 702: "Tower, Eastern 702 switching to Departure. By the way, after we lifted off we saw some kind of dead animal on the far end of the runway."
Tower: "Continental 635, cleared for take-off behind Eastern 702, contact Departure on frequency 124.7. Did you copy that report from Eastern 702?"
Continental 635: "Continental 635, cleared for take-off, roger; and yes, we copied Eastern... we've already notified our caterers."

One day the pilot of a Cherokee 180 was told by the tower to hold short of the active runway while a DC-8 landed.
The DC-8 landed, rolled out, turned around, and taxied back past the Cherokee.
Some quick-witted comedian in the DC-8 crew got on the radio and said, "What a cute little plane. Did you make it all by yourself?"
The Cherokee pilot, not about to let the insult go by, came back with a real zinger:
"I made it out of DC-8 parts. Another landing like yours and I'll have enough parts for another one."

The German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They not only expect one to know one's gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them.
So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206.
Speedbird 206: "Frankfurt, Speedbird 206 clear of active runway."
Ground: "Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven." The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.
Ground: "Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?"
Speedbird 206: "Stand by, Ground, I'm looking up our gate location now."
Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): "Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?"
Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, twice in 1944, but it was dark, and I didn't land."

While taxiing at London's Gatwick Airport, the crew of a US Air flight departing for Ft. Lauderdale made a wrong turn and came nose to nose with a United 727.
An irate female ground controller lashed out at the US Air crew, screaming: "US Air 2771, where the hell are you going?! I told you to turn right onto Charlie taxiway! You turned right on Delta! Stop right there. I know it's difficult for you to tell the difference between C and D, but get it right!"
Continuing her rage to the embarrassed crew, she was now shouting hysterically:
"God! Now you've screwed everything up! It'll take forever to sort this out! You stay right there and don't move till I tell you to! You can expect progressive taxi instructions in about half an hour and I want you to go exactly where I tell you, when I tell you, and how I tell you! You got that, US Air 2771?"
"Yes, ma'am," the humbled crew responded.
Naturally, the ground control communications frequency fell terribly silent after the verbal bashing of US Air 2771.
Nobody wanted to chance engaging the irate ground controller in her current state of mind. Tension in every cockpit out around Gatwick was definitely running high. Just then an unknown pilot broke the silence and keyed his microphone, asking: "Wasn't I married to you once?"

Wind flips plane over on runway - not following the rules...

2009-01-30T15:00:00.001Z

The BBC has a great little clip of a Cessna being blown over on landing at an airport in Colombia.

Watch the clip here : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7859807.stm:

It's interesting for two reasons:

1) The fact that you hardly ever see 'little' accidents like this filmed - especially in such close-up detail
2) The weather was, apparently a contributing factor, but you have to ask if such a tailwind existed why was the pilot landing on that runway?

Remember the piloting skill more important than all the others? How about how to walk away from your crosswind landings? And the three most dangerous landing mistakes pilots make? All these may have helped the pilot as he attempted the landing.

One person was slightly hurt in the crash.

------------------------------------------------

On the subject of aviation (and that is what this site is about), Virgin Atlantic are in the news again for two reasons. Firstly the have been sent a fabulous complaint letter about the food on their Mumbai-London flight and secondly they have the best commercial on TV at the moment. Enjoy! And see how many subtle jokes and references you can spot.

The Piloting Skill More Important Than All Others

2009-01-28T15:00:00.000Z

The Piloting Skill More Important Than All Others
By Doug Daniel

This is the one skill that makes the difference between good pilots and so-so pilots. It applies to visual flying and instrument flying, to gliders, land planes and seaplanes, to single engine planes and multi-engine planes, to jets and props. Often referred to as attitude flying, it is really taking charge, deciding what you want to do and doing it.

You must hold the airplane in what ever attitude you choose. For example, the secret to a three-point landing is to put the airplane in a three point landing attitude just above the runway at the right airspeed and hold it in that attitude until it lands. Don't put it in the three-point attitude then let the nose drop. Hold it in the attitude. Be in command.

The secret to successful instrument approaches is to decide what heading, altitude or rate of descent, and airspeed to fly then to take command and fly. Don't chase the needle; don't let the heading wander; and don't drift off altitude; just take charge and fly.

The secret to successful crosswind landings is to align your fuselage parallel to the runway with your rudder pedals, control your airspeed with your elevator controls, and keep your airplane exactly over the center line of the runway with your aileron controls. You cannot do this by letting your nose weave aimlessly, by letting the airplane drift around, or by letting the nose pitch up or down. You must be in command. You must know exactly how you want your airplane oriented in space then you must put it there.

As the airspeed changes and as the wind gusts, your control input must change accordingly. Put that behind you. Don't even think about it. Just think about the airplane's attitude compared with what it should be. When the airplane so much as twitches out of place, put it back where it belongs. You must do whatever it takes to keep the airplane in the attitude you need.

You cannot control an airplane's attitude if you are not continuously aware of its attitude. Sounds straightforward, doesn't it? But this is the reason that some pilots seem to be passengers rather than pilots. They don't yet have that sense of situational awareness that all good pilots possess. How then to have situational awareness?

Think about the airplane's attitude more than any other parameter. When flying visually, spend most of your time mentally out of the airplane. Don't be a casual observer. Don't say, "Oh, the horizon is slowing dropping. Isn't that interesting?" Think of the world as staying still and of the airplane's attitude as changing. As soon as the nose starts up, bring it back down. Certainly you want to tweak the trim so you don't need to concentrate, but put the pitch attitude where is should be. That is your task. Be in charge.

The same advice is valid for instrument flying. You can still be mentally out of the airplane even if there is nothing to see when you look out the window. The attitude indicator and every other flight instrument tell you something about your airplane's attitude.

Whether in the clouds or clear sky, you must maintain a mental picture of your airplane in space.

Know what your airplane's altitude should be; always know what your airplane's altitude is; and make them the same.

----------------------------------
Doug Daniel is a long time pilot, flight instructor, software engineering manager and author. His department developed the software for the out-the-window-displays for the space shuttle, F-117, RS-71 and numerous other exotic aircraft simulators. His writing focuses on flying techniques designed to make flying easier and safer. If this was interesting, visit his website at http://www.FlyingSecretsRevealed.com/flying_questions.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Doug_Daniel http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Piloting-Skill-More-Important-Than-All-Others&id=1905584

Is Flying For Everyone?

2009-01-14T15:00:00.001Z

By Harry Cameron

As we at the beginning of a new year again a lot of people will want to do their private pilot license. Obviously there are many reasons for wanting to fly varying from achieving a long term goal, a life long dream, the start of a new career or maybe simply to be able to say:"I can fly". Whatever the reasons are I often get asked by a new student "do you think I'll be able to fly".

Maybe firstly we must ask ourselves what does it take from an individual in order to fly an airplane or helicopter for that matter? A certain amount of co-ordination comes to mind. In my opinion most people has what it takes although some has to practice and exercise this particular skill. Discipline I think plays an important roll as flying involves quite a bit of responsibility in some way or the other. My personal favorite is of course a person's attitude. The willingness to study, the way an individual handles criticism and the ability to handle stress but to name a few. These are just some qualities amongst hundreds.

I think every student should and can answer the question: "will I be able to fly?" for themselves. For some it might take longer than the minimum requirement but determination and will pull them through. Many a time students has told me that flying is not for them and I take my hat off to a person that can realize their own lack of ability or whatever reason they base their decision on. Your personal motive for wanting to fly plays a very important roll. So I personally think that it's not a simple black and white answer to be made by an instructor but rather a combined decision.

I think that in the beginning students base their abilities solely on the "stick and throttle" aspects of flying, rightly so because that's all they know but I often tell students that a good stick and throttle pilot is not necessarily the best pilot and that they must consider their other strengths as well when they make a decision whether to continue flying or not. In a lot of cases all it takes is a bit of a mindset change.

I personally think that almost any person can be taught to fly but I think the real question should be whether any person can be a safe pilot not necessarily the world's greatest pilot, and that's maybe where the instructor or flight school for that matter plays a very important role.

If ever you face the decision to quit flying or not maybe think what is your motive for flying, ask yourself whether you enjoy it or not, can you financially afford it to carry on longer if need be, do you need to change your attitude?

http://www.harry-helicopter-training-syllabus.com

http://www.askharryhelicopter.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Harry_Cameron
http://EzineArticles.com/?Is-Flying-For-Everyone?&id=1859517

Whether the weather be hot. Or whether the weather be not....

2009-01-12T15:00:00.001Z

As a VFR rated pilot the one thing I am constantly looking to understand and master is the weather. That and the price of oil are the two things that govern the amount of flying I can do in a given period of time (When oil is up aviation gasoline is expensive and I don't fly as much)

So is there a simple way to learn and understand the weather? Yes there is - get a book and learn it. There is no substitute for understanding why weather does what it does and how clouds are formed etc. etc.

In the short term though as a pilot you will want to be able to decrypt a TAF or a METAR.

So let's have a look at these. First things first

A TAF is a weather forecast. It's easy to remember this because it has an 'f' in it like forecast. A METAR is a current state.

TAF's and METAR's are usually written in shorthand with a HUGE number of abbreviations, but they all, generall,y follow a very similar format. Learn the format and you are well on the way to understanding what is what.

Here's a typical METAR: EGLF 031420Z 06004KT CAVOK 02/M05 Q1028

When translated that becomes :

Conditions at:	EGLF (FARNBOROUGH, GB) observed 1420 UTC 03 January 2009
Temperature:	2.0°C (36°F)
Dewpoint:	-5.0°C (23°F) [RH = 60%]
Pressure (altimeter):	30.35 inches Hg (1028.0 mb)
Winds:	from the ENE (60 degrees) at 5 MPH (4 knots; 2.1 m/s)
Visibility:	6 or more miles (10+ km)
Ceiling:	ceiling and visibility are OK
Clouds:	unknown
Weather:	no significant weather observed at this time

It's not difficult really.. You start with the location of the METAR (EGLF - Farnbourough) and the date and time (all times are in zulu - UTC or Greenwich Mean Time as it used to be called) 031420Z This is the third of the month at 14:20 zulu.
Following that is the wind information 06004KT (from 060 degress at 04 knots)
Then the cloud conditions: CAVOK (Ceiling and visibility OK)
Then the temperature:02m05 (2degrees temperature and minus 5 degress dew point)
Finally there is the atmospheric pressure Q1028 which is 1028 millibars (this is a UK setting in the US this would be something like 29.92inches of mercury)

A TAF is very similar to a Metar except that it identifies a time period for which it is valid and adds information about expected weather conditions:

EGLF 080729Z 0807/0815 25004KT 2000 BR SCT005 BKN035 TEMPO 0807/0811 BKN005 BECMG 0811/0814 6000 NSW

This can be translated as

Forecast for:	EGLF (FARNBOROUGH, GB)
Text:	EGLF 080729Z 0807/0815 25004KT 2000 BR SCT005 BKN035
Forecast period:	0700 to 1100 UTC 08 January 2009
Forecast type:	FROM: standard forecast or significant change
Winds:	from the WSW (250 degrees) at 5 MPH (4 knots; 2.1 m/s)
Visibility:	1.24 miles (2.00 km)
Ceiling:	3500 feet AGL
Clouds:	scattered clouds at 500 feet AGL broken clouds at 3500 feet AGL
Weather:	BR (mist)
Text:	TEMPO 0807/0811 BKN005
Forecast period:	0700 to 1100 UTC 08 January 2009
Forecast type:	TEMPORARY: The following changes expected for less than half the time period
Ceiling:	500 feet AGL
Clouds:	broken clouds at 500 feet AGL
Weather:	no significant weather forecast for this period
Text:	BECMG 0811/0814 6000 NSW
Forecast period:	1100 to 1500 UTC 08 January 2009
Forecast type:	BECOMING: Conditions expected to become as follows by 1400 UTC 08 January 2009
Winds:	from the WSW (250 degrees) at 5 MPH (4 knots; 2.1 m/s)
Visibility:	4 miles (6 km)
Ceiling:	3500 feet AGL
Clouds:	scattered clouds at 500 feet AGL broken clouds at 3500 feet AGL
Weather:	NSW (no significant weather)

So basically you can split this into three sections - a 'main' section indicating the general forecast:
EGLF 080729Z 0807/0815 25004KT 2000 BR SCT005 BKN035

A 'temporary section' indicating differences for a subset of the time
TEMPO 0807/0811 BKN005

and an expected transition after that temporary time
BECMG 0811/0814 6000 NSW

Once again we have location (EGLF - Farnbourough) followed by a time of forecast (080729Z - 7.29Zulu on the 8th of the month) with validity time following that (0807/0815 - from 7.00hours until 15:00 hours on the 8th)

After the timings and validity we arrive at the wind information : 25004kt (Wind from the WSW at 4 knots)

Then comes the visibilty information : 2000 (2000 metres = 2 Km)
Then the predominant weather information BR = mist
Then the cloud coverage scattered clouds at 500 feet AGL and broken clouds at 3500 feet AGL

Temporary sections indicate conditions between certain hours in this case 07: 00 and 11:00 on the 08th where the cloud will be broken at 500 feet.

For a complete list of what the different weather abbreviations mean, visit this page. I know it looks like there are a lot to remember, but if you think about it there aren't actually too many. For example if you do most of your flying in the South of England the chances of you having to remember 'VA- Volcanic Ash' and 'PO' for 'Dust/sand whirls - Dust devils' are unlikely. Typically there will be the following

BR - Mist
SH - Showers
SN - Snow
RA - Rain
DZ - Drizzle
HZ - Haze
FZ - Freezing
OVC - Overcast
FG - Fog
GR - hail
PY - Spray

If you live in Southern California, or near Mount St Helens, Washington, there are probably different ones you need to be wtaching out for....

How to Walk Away From All Your Crosswind Landings

2008-12-16T22:00:00.000Z

By Doug Daniel

I was recently asked about the possibility of a wingtip strike when landing in a typical light plane like a Cherokee or a Cessna 172. Specifically, I was asked about how far the aileron control could be deflected without hitting the tarmac when one or both of the main landing gear is on the runway after landing at near stall speeds.

I will admit that I have never tried to hit the runway with my wing tip and I don't know anyone who has. However, it certainly can be done. Perhaps a better question is: what landing technique will guarantee that the wingtip does not strike the tarmac in a crosswind?

I want to talk about landing techniques in a really strong crosswind before I tackle the issue of wingtip strikes. After all, wingtip strikes are not a credible issue except in crosswinds that approach the airplane's crosswind limitations.

To make controlled crosswind landings, you should master the skill of pointing your airplane in the same direction that it moves over the ground. If the airplane is pointed in some other direction when you touchdown, the best you can hope for is abrupt side forces on your landing gear followed with a swerve as the airplane swings in the right direction. The worst is loss of directional control followed with a trip off the side of the runway, possible ground loop, nose over, wingtip strike, or all of the above

Pointing the airplane it the direction it moves is the most essential landing skill. It is not as easy as it sounds. And it certainly requires practice before it can be mastered. In a nutshell, here is how to do it:

Point the airplane in the direction that it travels by turning the nose with your rudder pedals alone. Move the airplane from side to side by changing your angle of bank with ailerons. Control airspeed or height above the runway by changing your pitch attitude with your elevator. This lets you keep your wheels pointed in the direction the airplane moves and keep your airplane directly over the middle of the runway. This is exactly where you should be when you land.

Landing in a crosswind, you touch the runway while cross controlled. This is a steady state condition. Your airplane is not rolling around its long axis. That is to say that it has a steady angle of bank. In a general aviation, production light plane, you cannot cross control far enough to touch the wing tip.

The technique that works best is to try to keep the downwind main wheel barely off the runway as long as possible after you have touched down with the upwind wheel. To hold the downwind wheel off, you must continuously increase aileron control defection until it reaches its limit. Eventually, as the airplane continues to slow down, the ailerons lose power and the other main wheel will settle onto the runway.

Finally in any well executed crosswind landing, the aileron control will be pushed to its limit. An important point here is, that just like any other aspect of good airmanship, you should move your controls smoothly and with the purpose of changing the airplane's attitude. A snap roll is the only situation where I deliberately move the controls violently.

Now, back to the subject: how might you strike a wingtip? I can think of two ways.

Suppose you suddenly and violently slapped the aileron control all the way to its limit. Two things would happen: the airplane would no longer be properly cross controlled, and it would start to roll. Now it is possible to strike the wingtip. In other words, you would have just fouled up a perfectly good crosswind landing. You would have put the airplane in a very difficult situation, one that would require a particularly skilled pilot to salvage. I don't recommend it.

The more likely situation is that you land wings level in a strong crosswind. That is to say, not cross controlled. Here, the airplane is crabbed into the wind and the wheels are not aligned with the airplane's path over the ground. Because the airplane is not aligned with its path through space, the wheels will generate a very strong side ways force on the undercarriage when they touch the runway. With luck, this results in a sideways skid. Just like in a car, if the wheels are far enough apart, the airplane skids until it either stops or straightens up. If the wheels are not far enough apart, you're unlucky. The airplane rolls over, striking the ground with its wingtip.

The lesson here is: use proper crosswind techniques and you will not need to worry about wingtip strikes.

Doug Daniel, long time flight instructor, invites you to visit http://www.FlyingSecretsRevealed.com/flying_questions/ for more flying articles like this one. You may also feel free to contact Doug by visiting his website.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Doug_Daniel
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(Image courtesy of pmarkham. Released under a creative Commons attribution share alike license)

How much does a free flight cost?

2008-12-14T16:00:00.000Z

I booked a flight today. The flight was from the UK to Spain sometime early next year. The reason I booked it: it was free.

That's right, free - the advertised cost for that flight was £0.00. With the imposed duties and taxes the amount I should pay is £20. A great deal. I was delighted.

Having made the, admittedly easy, decision to purchase I clicked on the site to book the ticket. It took me to a page I've never seen on airline booking sites before. It started asking questions:

Was I going to be checking bags? Yes. So you'll need to check in at the airport. That's £4 each way for airport check in.
How many bags are you checking in? One. That's £8 each way for the first bag and £16 each way for subsequent bags.
Do you want to be on of the first to board the plane? Yes. That's £8 each way for priority boarding.
Will you be taking any sports equipment? Yes, golf clubs. That's £25 each way.

Each question I answered added extra cost to the flight. Each question I answered reduced my faith in the customer service of the airline. Each question I answered annoyed me more and more.

The terms and conditions of flight for this airline is over 6000 words long. Each paragraph details something that either reduces the airlines liability, increases the passengers liablility or increases the cost. (note these are not the general terms and conditions, these are just the terms and conditions related to actual flights with this airline)

The terms and conditions of flight are where you find, for example, that this airline charges you for checking in at the airport. You can check in on-line for free, unless you have luggage in which case you will need to check in at the airport. If you want to take hand luggage (which is the only way to avoid the check-in fee), it should weigh no more than 10kg and not exceed the maximum dimensions of 55cm x 40cm x 20cm. (That's a little less than 2 feet by a little more than 1 foot by 7 inches deep). Thank God I'm not taking more than one bag on board, nor do I have children with cots and buggies. These would have been extra and - God forbid I needed to take my own oxygen - this would have cost me £100 each way.

So when they totaled up the fare, my 'free' flight was going to cost upwards of £100. As I stifled the desire to throw my Macbook out the window I clicked the 'purchase now' button... only to find another £4 added to the cost! This, apparently, was a 'processing fee' for paying by credit card. Over the internet. Which is the only way to pay this airline when booking over the internet.

If it costs £4 to book a flight over the internet, the flight is not free. It can never be free. The cheapest it can be is £4!

I've mentioned in the past how behavioural psychologists should do more work for the airlines. This airline surely doesn't understand customer behaviours.

Yes, £100 for a return trip from the UK to Spain is still excellent value, I understand that. But £100, a disgruntled customer and a misleading airline pricing structure, for a 'free' flight is not on.

What would have been nicer is to do the following:

Cost of air fare: £180 return
Are you checking less than 3 bags? Yes: Let's deduct £50
Are you taking golf clubs? Yes: Price is included
Are you wanting priority boarding? No: Let's deduct £16
Are you checking in on-line? Yes: Let's deduct £8

Total price £100. Result: One cheap air fare. One happy customer and one airline getting exactly what it asked for.

(Picture courtesy of Irishflyguy. Released under a Creative Commons attribution, share-alike license)

Mach 1 ride on Concorde at Oshkosh 88!

2008-12-01T16:27:00.003Z

(image courtesy of Dave Hamster. Released under a Creative Commons Attribution license)

It's not often I'll pimp a fairly low quality Youtube video here on the Flying Cafe. But I saw this video on Concorde and figured "What The Hell"

This is a download of a VHS video taken on board a BA Concorde back at the Oshkosh Air Show in 1988.

With the demise of Concorde a few years ago it's impossible for videos like this to be made any more. The high cost of doing something like sending a supersonic plane (one of only 13/14 in existence) to an air show made this prohibitive even before the plane was canceled. Now of course there are no airworthy versions left which means this is a time capsule to the past.

A couple of things to notice. I believe that even on regular flights the cockpit door was left open during the journey and people were allowed to wonder up to the cockpit as they desired (although I'm not sure how this changed after 9/11). According to Dave Gunson the Mach meter isn't actually attached to the instrumentation it's just one of the cabin crew cranking it up behind the scenes (although I'm pretty sure that isn't true). It is true that you can balance a 50p coin on the tray table as the plane transitions through the sound barrier and it will not fall over. It's that smooth.

Just to put the flight in the video in perspective, at the time the Concorde went out of service a transatlantic return ticket LHR to JFK retailed at around $10,000 (£6000). That equates to around £1000 ($1600) per hour for the flight. For this you got a narrow, cramped, leather seat, tiny windows and very little in terms of in-flight movies etc. But you did also get first class cuisine, free champagne, a view of the curvature of the earth from 60,000 ft, priority landing at LHR on the runway closest to the terminal (regardless of the runway in use) and the luxury of knowing that you have bought the one thing that money cannot buy - time: A 10am departure from LHR would get you into JFK at 9.30am, giving you time to hold an important meeting and catch the return flight to arrive back in London on the day you left.

I lived in London for many years and saw, literally, thousands of flights head over the city towards Heathrow. Almost without exception the only plane that made me and other Londoners stop and look twice a day was the Concorde. A fabulous plane.

Has anyone else reading this flown Concorde? Loved it? Loathed it?

Thanks to airpigz for the video which has recently been updated.

You might be a pilot if....

2008-11-14T18:48:00.002Z

I found this post on the Airspeedonline blog and it made me smile.

It's called "You might be a pilot if..." and is a little close to the bone in certain areas. I have to admit I've done a couple of these (but I'm not saying which ones....)

For those of you who are UK based and don't get the Jeff Foxworthy reference read this.

Any others you would add to the list...? Drop them into a comment, please.

The UKGA has decided

2008-11-10T20:00:00.000Z

The guys from the UKGA have now made a decision about how they want to proceed with funding and managing the site...

Dear fellow UKGA-er,

The lines are closed, the votes have been counted, and we can now reveal...

In our first email to you, we said that we wanted to find out just how many people would support us if we made UKGA a commercial site. Well, we've been absolutely overwhelmed by the many kind comments you've sent us, and by the pledges of financial support you've made. It's gratifying to know that even what we've done so far is proving useful to you.

On the basis of your commitments, we've decided to go for it. In the past, when it had to fit around other projects, UKGA moved forward slowly, and we're as excited as you are by the possibilities when we're working on the site every day.

Our top priority is to get UKGA on to a more stable and fast hosting platform, which we're already doing. Because of your support, we're testing our new server now, and we hope to move the site onto it during the next week. We'll be in touch over the next couple of days with details of the move. After that we will be making some immediate changes to the site, particularly to the NOTAM system. We'll be setting up a blog too, so that you'll be able to see what we're working on, what's coming up, and give us your feedback.

One area of concern that has been raised several times is that of what we're going to do with the forum, and whether it should be covered by a membership. We've decided that the forum should be accessible to everyone free on an ongoing basis. Likewise, the classified service has become very popular, and we don't want to stop that valuable service. Therefore, we'll also offer free classified adverts and hopefully extend this with an emailed classified newsletter. The other parts of the site will be available on a subscription basis.

So, the time has come for us to ask you to make good your pledges. As many of you know, we already have PayPal available on the site, which will let you pay by credit card or PayPal account. This is the fastest route, especially via the Paypal link on the site, as it will update UKGA automatically. If you prefer to go to paypal.com directly to send your subscription, please use the same email address that you use for UKGA, otherwise we won't know who has sent us the funds!

If you like, you can send us a cheque: UKGA, 297 College Road, Whitchurch, Cardiff CF14 2NW. You can also pay by bank transfer if you wish. Drop us an email and we'll send you our bank account details.

Finally, we'd like to say an especially warm thank you to everyone who has already sent a contribution. Several people on receiving our email immediately turned to PayPal and sent us a membership fee, without any questions. Thanks again to you all, and thank you to everyone who has supported us in the past.

For now, happy flying, and I can tell you that we're looking forward to delivering more great functionality at UKGA.

Nev & Phil

So there you go!

Well done, guys, looking forward to details of the subscription costs etc....

Most anyone can become a pilot

2008-11-09T00:01:00.001Z

By Chris Bridges

The quest to learn to fly is a lot easier than what most people think. You don't have to become a commercial or military pilot in order to fly.

You can be part of general aviation, or the area of aviation where pilots fly for the sheer enjoyment of flying.

Today there are thousands of potential pilots, just like you, who are learning to fly. They come from all walks of life and have various reasons for wanting to learn to fly. Some fly to expand business opportunities, while others seek to attain careers in the aviation industry. Some are even looking for an activity that they can share with their family.

Whatever your reasons may be, there are some basic requirements that you will have to meet in order to fly solo (which is a requirement to get your your license

In the United States, you must be at least 16 years old (to fly solo), speak English, and pass a basic medical exam.

In Canada, you must be at least 14 years old (to obtain a Student Pilot Permit, 17 years old to obtain a license), speak English, and pass a basic medical exam. In Canada we also offer a Recreational License which takes half the time to get as opposed to a Private License, therefore it is cheaper.

In the United Kingdom, you must be at least 16 years old (to fly solo, 14 years old to start logging your time, and 17 years old to get your Private Pilot License), speak English, and pass a basic medical exam.

In Australia, you must be at least 16 years old (to fly solo, 17 years old to hold a Private Pilot License), speak English, and pass a basic medical exam.

That's all. So, as long as you meet these requirements, you can take to the skies.

Please visit www.learning-to-fly.com for a lot more information about aviation and flying, including aviation history, aviation employment, pictures of airplanes, experimental aviation (kit planes or home built airplanes) and aviation weather.

I am an avid supporter of flying, with a Commercial License, Multi Engine Rating, and Multi IFR Rating. My time in the air has been few and far between as of late but it doesn't diminish my passion for aviation and anything related to aviation. I wish to pass that passion on to others so feel free to spread the word.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chris_Bridges
http://EzineArticles.com/?Most-Anyone-Can-Become-a-Pilot&id=1496377

Blind pilot guided to land by RAF:

2008-11-08T14:42:00.001Z

A pilot who suddenly went blind while flying his plane at 5,500ft (1,676m) was guided in to land by an RAF plane.

A pilot suffered a stroke while flying, went blind as a result, and was guided down to a successful landing by the Royal Air Force.

The pilot was on a flight from Glasgow Prestwick Airport to Colchester, Essex when the incident occurred. He declared a mayday. Despite air traffic controllers' efforts, the pilot was unable to land
the plane at nearby Full Sutton Airfield near York and was directed to
RAF Linton-on-Ouse. A plane was scrambled from the airfield to fly alongside him and - with the aid of RAF controllers - guide him down to the runway.

With his limited sight he was unable to see the runway until immediately prior to landing, but managed to place the plane on the middle of the runway, slowing it down to a stop just before the end.

A scary experience, I'm sure, and one I hope nobody ever has to go through.

Kudo's to the RAF ATC. I've mentioned before in these pages that they provide an excellent service and this goes to prove the point.

Instructor Idiosyncracies

2008-11-03T08:00:00.000Z

Over my years flying I have been fortunate enough to have been instructed by quite a limited number of people.

There was Aaron in Orlando who took me through my initial training. Then there was Simon at Thruxton who took me mostly through to my PPL check ride. The check ride itself was taken by Bob - a long time instructor and examiner. Since then I've done a couple of check flights and these have been taken with instructors I've not met before.

What is actually very interesting is the individual idiosyncrasies of the instructors themselves. Obviously my major influence was Aaron who took me for 75% of all the hours I've flown. I knew what he was looking for when flying, I was comfortable with his teaching style and we worked well together as a unit.

Simon was very similar. His teaching style was identical to Aaron's. He focused on the same things and conveyed the same sense of relaxation as Aaron. However, because of the differences in teaching between the US and UK he did tend to look at some things with a more critical eye than Aaron. This was good and I enjoyed it.

But having now taken 2 check rides with two other instructors it is obvious that there are 'pet' items that each instructor looks for.

For example. When doing a pre-engine shut-off, both Aaron and Simon would happily snap the key round to the off position several times to check that the magneto's cut out. One of my other instructors went apoplectic when I did that recently. He was convinced it damaged the engine and tried to stop me doing it.

Last week, for example I was doing a check ride, and as I turned downwind the instructor reminded my to do my landing checks. As I turned downwind! We had barely reached circuit height by then. I politely told him I usually left the checks until later, waited until we had turned base and started the checks. Then - as I dropped the Carb heat lever on - he put his hand over that and said 'Leave that on until we land now. The engine will be fine' Now I understand the issue with carb ice and how the heater is important - especially in cold weather - but I was sure that it is not recommended to leave the carb heater on for too long as it brings warm air directly from the engine bypassing the filter.

Ah well. It's the idiosyncrasies that make instructors different.

(Photo by Flyguy92586. Releases under a creative commons attribution, share-alike license)

The Future of UKGA......

2008-10-14T17:52:00.001+01:00

As many of you will know I have been espousing the virtues of the UKGA web site for a while now.

It is an independent web site set up by a couple of guys who run it pretty much off their own backs.

However things have now come to a head and a decisive movement is needed.

I'll let the guys themselves tell you:

As many of you will know, devoting time to UKGA has been increasingly
difficult for Phil and me during the past few years, as we’ve juggled
the demands of family, challenging clients, and of course UKGA
development and maintenance.

Indeed, it has been a source of
some frustration to us both that we’ve not been able to devote as much
time as we would wish to development and maintenance. The pending
queue of content has quite a backlog, and our UKGA programming progress
is frustratingly slow. Similarly, we’ve also found the financial
pressure of UKGA increasingly difficult to bear. Although we’ve been
able to support UKGA for several years, it bothers us that we haven’t
been able to invest in new technology as we would have wished – hosting
platforms, bandwidth, new software and services, mapping, text
messaging, and so on, have all taken second place to our immediate
family expenses.

Unfortunately both time and money have become
even more precious recently, as I was made redundant two weeks ago.
This was an unexpected blow, and it has certainly made both of us very
conscious of where our priorities – in time and money – have to lie.

But
we also see this as a fantastic, and perhaps one-time, opportunity for
UKGA and for us – to provide the world-leading service that we’ve
always dreamt of providing: near-instant comprehensive flight planning;
and to make UKGA the best resource possible for UK general aviation
pilots.

The only way that we can make this happen is for us to
devote ourselves to UKGA and its future, by making UKGA a commercial
enterprise. If everyone who used UKGA this year (more than 4000 of
you!) paid a membership of, say, £25, we would stand a good chance of
being able to execute our plans fully.

In practice, of
course, 4000 won’t subscribe, but we’d like to make this decision on
the basis of facts. We want you to send a pledge to us to show
support. If enough of you think we’re worth backing, we’ll throw
ourselves into it lock, stock, and two smoking programmers.

Our
development plan includes drag-and-drop route planning, better NOTAM
mapping, terrain awareness & MSAs, more airfield mapping, W&B
calculation, take-off and landing performance, group management and
booking, and much more besides.

Send us an email to pledge@ukga.com
to show your support. We think it’s worth it. Do you? Let us know.
If you want to talk to us about this decision, our operators (me and
Phil) are standing by: 07976 200186 or 07967 323316. We’ll be happy to
hear what you think.

Thanks to everyone who has helped us in the past, and we sincerely hope that we can make UKGA fly.

Nev & Phil

So there you go: cough up or potentially lose this excellent resource! £25 a year is very little: It will barely buy you enough aviation fuel to run your Cessna for 30 minutes, but it will mean keeping this excellent little site working for a good while longer.

Send an email to pledge@ukga.com. Show your support!

Qantas 747 depressurisation update

2008-10-08T18:34:00.002+01:00

You may remember back in July that a Qantas 747 en-route from Hong Kong to Melbourne experienced a sudden depressurisation that ripped a hole in the fuselage just forward of the wing. You may also remember I decried the use of sensationalistic journalism in my post about this incident.

The Air Transport Safety Board preliminary report has been produced for this incident

Apparently one of the row of oxygen containers in the hold spontaneously exploded. The explosion had 2 effects:

1) It blew the hole in the fuselage causing a sudden depressurisation
2) It forced the oxygen container up through the floor of the cabin where it damaged an exit door and an overhead bin before falling back through the hole in the cabin floor and being sucked out of the aircraft through the hole in the fuselage.

So far there is no explanation of why the oxygen tank exploded.

As per the report there was no 'plummeting', just a normal controlled descent to a more suitable altitude. Nobody was hurt in the incident and procedure was followed correctly. In fact, according to industry experts "It may seem like the aircraft is going through a radical maneuver, and
it is radical compared to normal flying, but this is standard protocol."

Nothing to worry about. Move along, please......

Three Most Dangerous Landing Mistakes Pilots Make and How to Avoid Them

2008-10-06T16:58:00.002+01:00

By Doug Daniel

Over-shoot, under-shoot, loss of directional control, wing tip strikes ... are all symptoms of mistakes made BEFORE the pilot touches down. Mistakes that are easily to correct - but not necessarily in a way you might think.

I landed at the Nuttree Airport in a Cessna 172 in 1968. I felt pretty smug. It was a very smooth landing, one of those landings that you could hear but not feel. Then a wind gust picked me up and I landed a second time on a parallel taxiway. The pilot taxiing in the opposite direction was kind enough (or perhaps stunned enough or frightened enough) to hold short of a turn-off so I could move over to the parking apron. I couldn't look him in the eye as we went past. Red-faced, I mumbled some excuses to my passengers that I didn't believe. I had just made the three biggest (and most common) mistakes a pilot can make when landing.

Determined to never let that happen again, I spend a great deal of time in the intervening 40 years thinking about how to avoid these mistakes. The NTSB says that a full 45% of the weather-related accidents are caused by crosswinds and gusts. I believe it. It is time to introduce some little known techniques that help prevent these accidents. But first, we should look at their causes.
Landing too fast is caused by flying the approach too fast or trying to force the airplane on the runway before it is ready. The solution is to fly a consistent approach at the same airspeed, picking a safe projected glide point (or PGP), and controlling the PGP until you land. But hold the airplane a foot or so off the runway until the airplane nose has rotated up to the landing attitude. Hold that attitude until the airplane lands. That way you will land at the right speed.

Failing to cross control in a crosswind leads to ground loops, being blown off the side of the runway (the MOST common cause of accidents in the United States), wing tip damage, or, in my case, flying over the infield and landing on a taxiway. To put it simply, cross controlling is using the rudder to keep the long axis of the airplane parallel to the long axis of the runway and using the ailerons to keep the airplane positioned over the runway. This guarantees that you will keep the airplane moving straight down the runway after the wheels touch.
Quit flying the plane before the plane is through flying is one of the most dangerous mistakes that a pilot could make. Its cause is lack of concentration. Its solution is good flying habits.

I was lucky at the Nuttree. If the crosswind had been coming from the opposite side, I could have been blown into a canal. Remember that just because the main gear is on the ground does not mean that there is no 'fly' left in the airplane. Also remember that if you keep the airplane just above the runway until it absolutely, positively will not fly any more, then it will an unusually strong gust to put it in the air again.
It is easy to be lulled into the bad habits that lead to these mistakes. When the wind is gentle and the runway is long, all will be forgiven. So the question is: how to keep these bad habits from developing?

I want to tell you about two exercises that have helped pilots more that I could have ever imagined. They are the 'very slow Dutch roll' and the 'controlled projected glide' point. Neither is difficult or dangerous. Both simplify and strengthen any pilot's ability to land.

The very slow Dutch roll is a simple exercise done at a safe altitude. It teaches two very important skills. First the pilot learns to continuously move the stick and rudders to control the airplane as conditions change, and second, the pilot learns how to cross control the airplane in the most extreme circumstances.
Here is how to do a very slow Dutch roll. Pick a point on the horizon and hold it steady as you change the angle of bank, airspeed and flap configuration. Maintain constant altitude. Change your bank very slowly. Continue to increase the angle of bank until either the aileron or the rudder is pushed to its limit. This is the angle of bank for the maximum crosswind that the airplane can handle. The cross controlled airplane slowly accelerates to the side for a minute or two. During this time, the pilot must move the flight controls continuously as the airplane accelerates to the side - an unanticipated benefit of this exercise.

Let me tell you about the projected glide point or PGP. When you approach the runway your eye will naturally gravitate toward a point on the runway that does not move in your field of vision. The phenomenon is much like when you are on a collision course with another airplane: it stays still in your field of vision but just gets bigger. Well, there is always a point on the ground where exactly the same thing happens. This is the point that you would glide to if you never made that last little flair to land. This is an extremely valuable concept that can save you many hours of landing practice. I never heard another flight instructor talk about it but I am sure that many pilots use this technique.

You can control the PGP with power and drag while keeping the airspeed constant. To move the PGP closer to you, reduce the engine's power or increase the airplanes drag - usually with flaps. To move the PGP away from you, increase the engine's power or decrease the airplane's drag

Use the two concepts together to make consistent, safe landings. Once established on final, use the center line of the runway as your reference point for very slow Dutch rolls. Use the ailerons to position the airplane on the extended centerline, the rudder to keep the long axis of the airplane parallel to that extended centerline. Move the PGP to the same place every time. I recommend the runway threshold. Consciously continue cross controlling until the airplane slows to a taxi.

These two simple techniques will get you to the same place on the runway every time in a landing configuration that compensates for crosswinds or gusts until the airplane is going so slow that you can taxi to parking.

Doug Daniel, respected flight instructor and author, recently wrote Flying Secrets, an extraordinarily popular e-book, operates a website for interacting with fellow pilots. If you want to learn more ways to refine your flying skills and get a *free report* on how even a PC-based flight simulator can help you fly better, ask his experts a question or just get the free report, click here now => http://FlyingSecretsRevealed.com/flying_questions/.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Doug_Daniel
http://EzineArticles.com/?Three-Most-Dangerous-Landing-Mistakes-Pilots-Make-and-How-to-Avoid-Them&id=1510027

Top 10 Private Aircraft

2008-09-20T17:28:00.002+01:00

By Skye Lanse

When it comes to air travel, the rich and famous fly in their own private jets. Fitted with luxurious interiors to suit their affluent taste, these private planes such as Boeing, Cessna, or Convair, make the trips their wealthy owners more comfortable and enjoyable.

10. Donald Trump - Boeing 727-23

Originally operated by American Airlines, this 1968 vintage jet was reconfigured to hold 23, with pale leather armchairs, gold plated seatbelt buckles, oil paintings, and Waterford crystal lamps. The "Trump" logo on the side of the aircraft is 30 feet long, 4 feet high, and made of 23 carat gold leaf.

9. Roman Abramovich - Boeing 767-33A

This 767 may look ordinary on the outside, but its interior is reportedly outfitted with chestnut and decorated with gold. The aircraft can often be spotted at Luton Airport some 40 miles north of London, where Abramovich spends much of his time.

8. The Sultan of Brunei - Boeing 747-430

The Sultan bought this 747 brand new for at least $100 million and had it fitted with a special interior and features such as washbasins of solid gold and Lalique crystal at an additional cost of some $120 million. The Sultan has several other aircraft, but this is his largest.

7. Jimmy Buffett - Grumman HU-16 Albatross

This former military Grumman HU-16 Albatross amphibian aircraft owned by singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett is named "The Hemisphere Dancer". In 1996, it was shot at in Jamaica by local police who suspected it of carrying drugs.

6. Air Force One

The aircraft used to transport President George W. Bush on important state and domestic visits, Air Force One is a Boeing 747-200B that has been heavily modified with secure communications systems, electronic equipment, a self-contained baggage loader, front and aft air stairs, and the ability to refuel in-flight.

5. Mark Cuban - Boeing 767-277

Billionaire Mark Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team, reportedly had custom-made seats installed on the aircraft that are large enough to accommodate the team's tallest players.

4. Elvis Presley - Convair 880

Named "Lisa Marie" after Elvis' daughter, this Convair 880 was customized with 28 seats instead of the usual 110. The tail of the now preserved jet was painted with The King's personal "TCB" logo, which stands for "Takin' Care of Business".

3. Bill Gates - Bombardier BD-700 Global Express

Owned by Challenger Administration LLC on Bill Gates' behalf, this jet can carry eight people at a cruising altitude of 51,000 feet for a distance of 6,500 nautical miles, a range that permits nonstop Tokyo-New York or Los Angeles-Moscow flights.

2. Wayne Huizenga - de Havilland Canada DHC-6-320 Twin Otter

One of the most rugged and reliable utility transport aircraft ever built, the unpressurized Twin Otter can carry up to 19 people and take off from and land on rough strips as short as 100 yards. This aircraft appeared in a seaplane chase scene in the James Bond film "Casino Royale".

1. Harrison Ford - Cessna 525B CJ3 Citation Jet

Harrison Ford pilots his own CJ3, which can carry six people in comfort for some 1,900 nautical miles. Ford is considered so good a pilot that the FAA asked him to be the spokesman for the runway incursion awareness and prevention campaign that the agency started in 2001.

Source: community.warplanes.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Skye_Lanse

http://EzineArticles.com/?Top-10-Private-Aircrafts&id=1458337

Landing a Plane - 10 Tips to a Greasy Smooth Touchdown

2008-09-11T17:21:00.002+01:00

By Jonathan Money

It's said that any pilot is only as good as his last landing. Landing a plane on a runway is a complex process of maneuvers and control inputs that tests every student pilot to the limit. Even after flight training ends, a pilot will always aspire to make great landings - it's the one key part of flying where success can be definitively measured - either by a smooth, effortless touchdown... or by something entirely different.

When landing a plane, a multitude of things must be done all at once. And since your landing will depend upon outside factors (wind speed, direction, air temperature, etc...) as well, even the greatest pilot only has so much control over how the landing goes. No one makes a perfect landing each and every time, but with the following landing tips you can give yourself the best chance at impressing your passengers, yourself, and maybe even the tower operators too:

Make a Strong Approach - A great landing always starts with a great approach. On your downwind leg, already be at pattern altitude. Already be at the correct airspeed. Check your heading indicator, and make sure your plane is flying parallel to the runway heading. Doing these things in advance will free you up to really concentrate on your base and final legs - falling behind on these duties will have you playing 'catch up' with the entire landing process.

Concentrate - Flying with friends is always fun, but when it's time to land a plane the pilot needs to focus 100% of his or her attention on the landing process. All too often a conversation will continue all the way down to the runway, and the landing will always suffer for it. After calling your downwind, politely silence your passengers so you can give all of your attention to your altitude, airspeed, and position without any other distractions.

Stay Center - Learning to fly on a wide runway, staying on the centerline might not seem as important to you. As you visit smaller fields however, you'll learn that sometimes staying center of the runway is the only choice you have. After turning base to final, get lined up quickly. Concentrate on keeping the nose of the plane pointed down that center line, using small aileron and rudder movements to avoid drifting. When your touchdown comes, that's one less axis (yaw) you'll have to worry about, freeing you up to concentrate on the other two.

Use Flaps Correctly - Landing a plane correctly requires touching down in the right spot at the right airspeed. Getting to that position and speed is the hard part, but fortunately for you, you've got some friends to help you out: flaps. Make sure you're using your flaps correctly though, and not just automatically flipping them down at a specific time or point during your landing sequence. Learning to land requires drilling the pattern with constant repetition, and it's all too easy to just file flaps away in the back of your mental checklist as something "to do" on your base and final legs. The truth of it is, a pilot should use an aircraft's flaps in different configurations during different scenarios depending upon wind speed, wind direction, altitude, airspeed, and the length of the runway you're landing on. Setting your flaps too early will lead to a high approach, with you overcorrecting by dive-bombing the runway. Setting them late might keep your airspeed undesirably high. Don't feel you have to use all notches of flaps at all times either - in some situations it's best to land with partial or even (in very windy conditions) no flaps at all.

Experience is the best teacher here, and it will take flying time in that particular aircraft for you to grow accustomed to optimum use of flaps. Understand that it's not something that can be learned strictly from a textbook.

Use the Runway Numbers - When landing a plane the phrase 'aim for the numbers' is commonly heard, but seldom to pilots get to land on them. Most pilots are too busy watching airspeed and pitch to worry about where the numbers are, especially on longer runways with lots of room. Still, you can use the runway numbers to help get to your desired touchdown point if you spend some time watching them during your final approach. As your touchdown draws near, you should have a good idea if you're high, low, or right on target. If high, aiming toward a spot someplace before the numbers can help you drop a little altitude. If low, look a little further past the numbers to get your nose up. Adjust throttle where necessary to make the nose do what you need it to. This may seem like an obvious little trick, but if used during landing it can greatly help with your touchdown position.

SideSlip - An often talked about maneuver in any student pilot's textbook would be the sideslip. During landing, a sideslip can be used to bleed off unwanted altitude without increasing airspeed or having to divebomb the runway. By applying opposite rudder and aileron, the aircraft will slip vertical position without changing its direction of flight. If you're a student pilot, you're going to want to practice this maneuver a lot. It actually sounds trickier than it really is. As you advance in your flight training, you'll find yourself sideslipping during landings without even being conscious of doing it. Get comfortable with it though, because it's a good trick to have in your bag when you need to use it during a high final approach.

Attitude, Airspeed, Altitude - As the runway approaches, your focus will move to your primary instruments. Airspeed is critical here, as you want to avoid stalling at all costs. Make certain you maintain safely above minimum stall speeds for your aircraft's flap configuration, and also make sure you're not going too fast. Adjust the nose of the plane to keep the airspeed needle right where it should be, and use power to correct your height above the runway. If you monitored these three instruments during your base and final legs, you should be very close to your desired touchdown point when landing the aircraft.

Look Down the Runway - Looking down the runway when landing an airplane is another great tip to getting the timing of your flare right - it gives you a better reference to the true horizon than looking at the ground rushing up beneath you. It takes some practice, but eventually you can balance keeping your eye on the horizon, while peripherally watching your height above the runway. As you do this, your hands will be making subconscious adjustments to the control wheel that should smooth out your glidepath.

Flare, Float, and Throttle - Knowing when to flare is half the battle. Knowing how much to flare is the other half. Get both of those control movements right, and your wheels will grease the runway. During your flare, make smooth controlled movements with the wheel or yoke. You're very close to the ground now, and any large or jerky movements will be amplified with disastrous results. Once you do flare, you should know immediately if you're high or low. A low flare can be fixed by smoothly applying more back pressure to the control wheel. A high flare can be corrected by holding control pressure and applying slight power with the throttle. Never drop your nose suddenly or dramatically when landing a plane... if you flare too high, it's best to ride out the 'float' and apply power if needed to smooth out the touchdown. A good pilot always keeps one hand on the throttle during his landing.

It Ain't Over Yet - The last mistake made by some pilots is thinking their landing is over the moment their wheels touch the runway surface. To avoid that classification, remember to control the entire length of your landing. The rudder is key, as it now controls just about everything. Make your rudder adjustments small - especially just after touchdown when the aircraft is still rolling pretty fast. Also remember to turn your ailerons to adjust for wind direction, so as to avoid being buffeted around by crosswinds. Your landing isn't over until you turn onto the taxiway.

Landing a plane isn't easy... but landing an airplane smoothly and correctly is even harder. Just as you have good and bad days, you'll always have good landings and bad landings. Still, arming yourself with the right knowledge and practices can go a long way toward making great touchdowns. Using the tips above, you won't land perfectly every single time, but you should see yourself consistently make better landings.

Visit Student Flying Club for more flying tips including flight planning, aviation articles, and all kinds of flight training tools for the student pilot - including an online E6B Flight Calculator.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jonathan_Money
http://EzineArticles.com/?Landing-a-Plane---10-Tips-to-a-Greasy-Smooth-Touchdown&id=1375513

Come fly the friendly... rails?

2008-09-10T11:13:00.003+01:00

In one of those bizarre "Did I really read that?' moments it appears that Air France/KLM are going into the rail travel business.

The EU's rail traffic laws will be liberalised in 2010 allowing non state-owned firms to ply the tracks with their own services. Air France and Veolia are going into partnership to provide international high-speed rail services. Initially they will route between Paris and Amsterdam and Amsterdam and London.

The logic behind this is actually quite sound. Having spent many years as an international commuter (living in London and working in Frankfurt or living in Belgium and working in London), I know that the actual travel time from leaving home to arriving at a destination on such a heavily trafficked route is comparative on rail and air. Competitive rates on the trains coupled with rising fares on the airlines have caused business travellers to start looking at the train as a viable alternative to flying.

The service will potentially run using trains known as the AGV, which can carry up to 900 passengers at a speed of 360 km/h (224 mph). At such speeds, passengers would be able to commute between Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport and Schiphol airport outside Amsterdam in approximately 1.5 hours. That's not bad going at all. A car journey of the same distance would take over 3 times as long and a flight (although only scheduled for about 50 minutes), would probably take somewhere between 2 hours and 3 hours including delays and extended check-in times.

Look for this to occur in October 2010.

British Defense Technology Company Claims to Break Unmanned Flight Record

2008-09-05T17:38:00.001+01:00

By Skye Lance

QinetiQ Group PLC, a British defense technology company, claimed on Sunday, August 24, that its ultra lightweight plane has broken the world record for the longest lasting unmanned flight.

According to QinetiQ, the aircraft, which is called the Zephyr, flew for 83 hours and 37 minutes straight. That is more than twice the official world record set by Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk back in 2001. It is also longer than the Zephyr's accomplishment last year, which was 54 hours of continuous flight.

QinetiQ, however, will not be celebrating anytime soon. The reported flight time of the Zephyr may not get into record books, because it did not meet the criteria laid down by the world's air sports federation, which is the body responsible for measuring and verifying air and space records.

"We were concentrating more on the flight than the record," said QinetiQ spokesman Douglas Millard.

The Zephyr, which has potential in the fields of reconnaissance and communications, is built from carbon fiber and features paper thin solar panels. It weighs 30 kilograms (66 pounds) and was launched by hand on July 28 in the Arizona desert in the United States. The aircraft was flown by autopilot and via satellite to an altitude of over 18,000 meters (60,000 feet), QinetiQ said.

During the day, the ultra lightweight was powered by the sun. At night, it relied on its rechargeable lithium-sulphur batteries.

QinetiQ stated that the Zephyr's more than three-day flight was witnessed by US and British defense officials. Still, it does not change the fact that the record is likely to remain unofficial.

http://community.warplanes.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Skye_Lanse

The air traffic controller who gives after dinner speeches

2008-08-28T09:00:00.001+01:00

(Surprisingly enough this post is the most visited individual post on this blog. I thought I would bring it back to the front again so that new visitors would be able to take advantage of it)

I've talked about this before but it's worth saying again: If you know an aviation enthusiast and you're looking for something to give them for a present, you can't beat Dave Gunson's "What goes up might come down"

Dave is an ex- East Midlands Air Traffic Controller who went into after dinner speeches when someone realised that you could talk about pilots and air traffic control in a very amusing way if you put the correct spin on it.

His most famous talk was to a bunch of merchant bankers in Birmingham (I think) which was recorded and released as a CD.

My favourite part, personally, is the discussion of flying on Concorde with the details of how heat causes it to expand and contract. Plus the Machmeter ("It's not really attached to anything. there's a stewardess at the front cranking it up manually").

This can be purchased from a number of places but Amazon is probably the easiest. Click here for a link

Enjoy!

NORDO!

2008-08-16T08:46:00.003+01:00

Nordo is an acronym meaning "No Radio". It refers to a plane which has suddenly lost radio contact with air traffic controllers.

In an earlier post I asked the following questions: How many people, for instance, know what to do in the case of a complete radio loss? What Transponder code do you use? How do you approach an airfield to land without the radio? What do the signals mean?

I promised the answers in a future post so here they are: (The assumption here is that you are flying VFR with a transponder. If you are flying IFR the procedure is much different and more complicated. See the AIP for more details)

In case of a complete radio loss it is vital to let ATC know. The quickest way to do that is to dial in the correct transponder frequency. In the UK this is 7600. In most radar controlled ATC units this will automatically add a label to your aircraft signal which wil indicate "Radio Failure".

However it is useful to actually ensure you have had a radio failure. I remember on a recent flight I was returning to Thruxton and couldn't raise them on the radio at all. I tried several times, switching out of the frequency and back in. Then - on re-checking the radio - I realised I had missed their radio frequency by .25 Mhz on the dial. Once had rechecked I called them up again and they answered.

So the first thing to do is check your equipment: Check the frequency. Use a different radio if you have one. Use a different headset. Make sure your radio is actually receiving power (a lot of radios now have a separate power switch). Make sure the volume and squelch are at appropriate levels.

If you've done your trouble shooting and your radio is genuinely not working then squawk 7600 to let folks now. Find the nearest airfield and look for light signals from the ATSU.

Light signals:
The following light signals are standard:
Steady red: Give way to other aircraft in air. Stop if on ground
Red pyrotechnic light or red flare : Do no land, wait for permission
Red flashes: Do not land - aerodrome not available for landing (if flying). move clear of landing area (if on ground)
Green flashes: Return to aerodrome wait for permission to land (if flying). To aircraft: you may move on the manouvering area and apron. To vehicle: you may move on the manouvering area
Steady green: You may land (if flying). You may take off (if on ground)
White flashes: Land at this aerodrome after receiving continuous green light then, after receiving green flashes proceed to apron (if flying). Return to starting point on aerodrome (if on ground)

If you are an aircraft able to give light signal to an ATSU, these are the options
Red pyrotechnic light or red flare : May I land?
Steady green or flashing green or green pyrotechnic or flare: May I land (by night). May I land in a different direction to that indicate by the T? (by day)
White flashes or white pyrotechnic light or switching landing lights on and off or irregular flashing of Nav lights: I am compelled to land

Remember these, they could come in useful

Looking at Variable Pitch Prop Training

2008-08-11T17:14:00.004+01:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of the things you can do to improve your general level of safety while flying is to get further training. Yes, it's usually expensive, but it is also your life you're talking about so it's probably worth it!

How many people, for instance, know what to do in the case of a complete radio loss? What Transponder code do you use? How do you approach an airfield to land without the radio? What do the signals mean? Something like this could save your life. (* answers in a later post - stay tuned!)

On the subject of training I'm looking at doing some additional training related to variable pitch propellers. I have managed to ingratiate myself into a group running a Cessna 182 Skylane and the guy running the group is an instructor (and Air Traffic Controller) who will give me the necessary training.

I went up to see the plane over the weekend. It's a 1972 Skylane with Autopilot, Garmin GPS (yoke mounted), redundant radio etc, etc, etc. Also, because it has the Continental VP prop there is the extra lever in the throttle quadrant (not that Cessna's have a throttle quadrant as such, just a line of levers sticking straight out of the panel)

Hopefully I should be able to get a couple of hours training to work out the peculiarities of VP props. In addition to that the training should also allow me work out the best way to land this big, heavy beast (remember I'm used to flying little PA28's around the sky, this is a big step up for me). According to the instructor, landing is achieved by remembering that 'The 182 is actually a two wheeled aircraft for landing - the nose wheel is there merely to stop the prop from striking the ground".

Having spent 15 minutes sat in the cockpit and looking at everything it does remind me how familiar I am with the PA28 layout and how alien some of the controls are in the 182 (There's a whole section of the panel that has the autopilot controls!! The circuit breakers are hidden behind my yoke!! What's this panel with the knurled knob's on it near my feet??) no doubt it will all become clear in time.

More updates as they happen

Flying tip 4 - Radio comms

2008-07-31T12:29:00.004+01:00

Radio communication is vital in todays aviation world.

An increase in air traffic - coupled with pressures in schedules and increased expectations from airline passengers - has resulted in more planes moving around the sky at any one time.

This has manifested itself in an increased workload on air traffic controllers. This was something that was pointed out to me on my recent trip to Farnborough's Air traffic control facilities.

What was pointed out again and again is the need for pilots to be in contact with controllers and for them to have good communications skills.

Here's a challenge for you. Take a small airband scanner to your local airport and tune in to the tower frequency. Listen to what is being said and then see how many exchanges completely follow the standard comms pattern defined by the CAA. For example, the use of pleasantries is discouraged and all altitude readings need to have an altimeter pressure setting read back with them. (i.e. "... level at 3500ft, 1012").

Now change frequency and listen to the local LARS or zone controller. When a new aircraft comes on frequency and is told to "pass your message", listen how many do it right.

The correct sequence is:

Call-sign
Aircraft type,
Point of departure and destination,
Altitude with altimeter setting,
Intentions
Request

How many times have you heard someone on the radio say something like "G-Mike Mike Mike Mike is at 3000 ft currently abeam Reading requesting flight information service.. Oh I'm a Cessna 150" only be to asked the point of departure and destination and intentions?

Todays quick tip then is "Learn the expected items to pass on a radio contact (along with what needs to be read back to the controller)"

It makes things easier for everyone AND ensures everyone has all the information needed for a safer journey

photo courtesy of Nite_Owl

Qantas plane plummets from the sky!

2008-07-25T10:31:00.002+01:00

Talk about sensational journalism. I've just read a headline similar to the title of this blog post which talks about a plane "plunging 20,000 feet in terror" after a 10ft hole appeared in the side.

Now I'm not discounting any of the reports that have appeared in the press. I also know and understand that a hole that size in the side of a pressurised plane at altitude is not normal and needs to be dealt with. But I do believe that sensationalist reporting like that needs to be controlled.

Here's what we know as facts.

A Qantas 747 from London to Melbourne had taken off from Hong Kong an hour earlier and a hole appeared in the side of the plane. We don't know why. It caused a depressurisation which would have resulted in 2 things:

1) The oxygen masks would have appeared
2) The pilots would have executed an emergency descent to an altitude where the air was more breathable.

The aircraft touched down safely at Manila at 11.15am local time and all 346 passengers and 19 crew disembarked normally.

Anything other than that is pure speculation. A 20,000ft terror plunge is pure speculation and hyperbole

From the sounds of things there were no injuries, no damage to anyone and only a few passengers suffering from vomiting.

I'll keep an eye on this story for you. I'm interested to know what caused the damage ahead of the starboard wing which apparently penetrated the cabin.

The BBC appears to have the most well balanced view of the story at the moment

Farnborough

2008-07-21T13:45:00.001+01:00

Well yesterday was the last day of the Farnborough International Air show 2008 and I blagged a ticket courtesy of a major aerospace manufacturer. No names but it was a bit of a stealth attack if you get my meaning. . .

Despite the fact that I live 10 minutes from the place and have done for 11 years, this was my first time at the show. The queues were quite long and I ended up parking in a different post code but I finally got there.

The interesting thing is that the airshow is actually more show than air on public days. It has something of a carnival atmosphere with children's play areas, fast food stalls, racing car displays, simulator rides and an inflatable castle/slide. It's only when you get deeper into things that you see the static displays and the exhibitor pavilions. Unfortunately most of those pavilions were invite only. And I didn't have an invite!

Air displays:
Running in parallel with all this were the air displays which were quite spectacular. I saw the Hornet, the Blades display team (awesome aerobatics from a bunch of ex Red Arrows pilots), the Navy Lynx display choppers - who flew backwards along the runway, in formation, against a strong crosswind- the Battle Of Britain flight - a Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster bomber making low passes over the airfield- the Hawker Sea Hawk, and the first flight of a completely restored Vulcan bomber.

To be honest the Vulcan was more impressive than I thought as it was very loud, very big and climbed out at what looked to be a very steep angle. A lot of people spent a lot of money putting it back together and they still need more money to keep it flying.

Static displays:
In a way I was a little disapointed with the static displays Don't get me wrong there were quite a few of them, but with one or two exceptions they were all 'Stand at a dstance and watch' displays rather han 'Get up close and personal' displays. The exceptions were the US Air Force Galaxy, Hercules and F15 displays - although they were only letting in small groups at a tie and the queue was almost as long as the one to find a parking space to get in! I got onto the Sirrus stand and looked at their new SR22 Turbo as well as the SR20. Also, despite what you may have read on the Farnborough website, the Boeing 777 and several of the other static displays were not there - at least not on the Sunday. However one welcome arrival was the Airbus A380 which was parked on the end of the cross runway (the only place it would fit). This too was open for inspection - although only for invited people, which was a shame. i watched it for about 30 minutes and saw 8 people wonder inside it. The theme of the A380 was 'Environmentally recyclable' and I had to smile at the irony of pushing an environmental agenda when there were fuel guzzling fighter jets and the old Vulcan bomber flying overhead....

By the way, Blades display team are actually a fully licensed airline which means that you can fly with them, as a fully insured paying passenger, in the front seat of one of their Extra's. How cool is that!

Technorati Tags: farnborough, airshow, air show

Why the airlines should hire behavioural economists

2008-07-15T14:28:00.002+01:00

Scott Shane, A. Malachi Mixon III, Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University, has put forward a radical idea to help the airlines beat falling passenger numbers and higher costs.

He is recommending that airlines hire behavioural economists to understand how different framing of a problem can solve bigger issues. For example: How about the airlines paying passengers for NOT checking bag's in.

The principle works like this:

In a 'normal' situation, an average human considers benefits and losses on different scales. Thus finding $50 is proportionately more enjoyable than the pain of losing that $50, even though it's the same $50.

Knowing this he is recommending airlines change their pricing structures to take advantage of it.

At the moment you may buy an airline ticket for $150. Then when you get to the airport you check in 2 bags at $5 each. You ask for an aisle seat which costs another $5. During the flight you buy your $5 sandwich and $3 drink and spend another $5 on the headset to listen to the movie. In total your $150 flight has cost you $178.

So let's change the paradigm and take a behavioural economists approach to this:

You buy your ticket for $178. When you get to the airport you decide to check in only one bag. The airline refunds you $5 for the other bag not checked in. You still opt for the aisle seat but decide against watching the movie (which you've seen before). You get $5 back for not hiring the headset. You still have the food and the drink. At the end of the day your airline ticket cost you ($178 - $5 - $5 = $168). Overall you've spent more than the original $150 that ticket would have cost you, but you've spent less than the $178 you paid for the ticket. And, more importantly, you got $10 back off the airline.

From the airline's point of view the seat earned them the $150 they originally wanted for it, but they also made an additional $18 for the aisle seat, the food & drink and the one checked bag. Because this covers their costs they don't mind paying back the money to the customer and, on top of that, the customer feels better spending $168 for their $150 dollar ticket, than $150 for the ticket with 'surcharges' on top.

Refunds always beat surcharges, regardless of the overall cost at the end of the day.

I think this is a great idea. Richard Branson - are you listening....?

Braille Controllers.....

2008-07-12T10:05:00.002+01:00

So I read in the papers that St. Mary's airport on the Scilly Isles has been advertising for a new air traffic controller. Nothing unusual about that you may think. However following equal opportunity guidelines response to the advert can be received in Braille.

Now I can think of numerous jobs where blind and partially sighted people would have no problem undertaking (we already have blind politicians and sportsmen/ women), but if I'm flying the crowded skies of Southern England (or even the sparse skies over the Scilly Isles), I would like to think that the person operating the radar could at least see it!

A spokesman for the Council of the Isles of Scilly, which runs the airport, said the alternative formats were offered on all job adverts.

(Phot courtesy of pne)

Fear of Flying

2008-07-03T11:24:00.002+01:00

I got a note from a friend of mine in Australia recently. Regarding flying, he said.. "Would like to try it some time, though reading some of the other more recent posts makes me wonder how safe it really is!"

He was referring to posts I have written on this blog that mention accidents and incidents and, understandably it has raised a good deal of concern with him (and, no doubt, with other readers of his blog)

Let me tell you, there is nothing to be scared of when it comes to flying. Statistically it is still the safest way to travel. Statistically you are more likely to be hit by a meteor than be killed while flying (I'm not sure if that's true, but it illustrates a point!)

However: It is a well known fact that there are plane crashes every year. In fact there are quite a few plane crashes every year. A lot of them don't get talked about too much (small planes crashing in wilderness etc.). Some of them make the news, but not all (Colin McRae's helicopter crash last year and the Cessna Citation jet that crashed in Kent killing racing driver John Leslie). Mostly these get publicity more for the people who were on board than for the accident itself.

But there are, occasionally, large accidents that get coverage due to the sheer scale. The largest accident on record was the crash between two 747's on the tarmac at Tenerife in the 1970's. The Lockerbie bombing in the 80's and the 4 jets that went down on September 11th 2001 were terrorist attacks rather than accidents. TWA 800, the 747 that blew up over Long Island was an electrical short circuit.. the list goes on and on.

So let's put this in perspective. According to the National Safety Council, who have been logging US safety-related accidents since 1920, the odds of dying in an air or space related accident in the US in 2004 were 1 in 432,484. Compare this with the odds of dying in a car (1 in 19,216), pick-up truck (1 in 75,142) or as a pedestrian (1 in 49,139). What about "Inhalation and ingestion of other objects causing obstruction of respiratory tract" (1 in 91,340) or "Accidental poisoning by and exposure to noxious substances" (1 in 14,017) or "Assault by firearm" (1 in 25,263).

If you want actual data, 697 people were killed in aviation or space related accidents in 2004. That compares with 5976 pedestrians, 4018 motorcyclists, 15282 car occupants, 15494, 'Other and unspecified land transport accidents' and 17357 who were shot, stabbed or otherwise killed in an assault. And that's just the USA alone! According to the CAA in the UK, over the 1985-94 period, only 0.2 passengers were killed or seriously injured per billion passenger km flown by UK operators. This compares with 1872 on motorcycles, for example.

The fact of the matter is when you are in a large commercial plane the number of things that have to occur to cause a fatal accident are huge. It is very rarely a single issue that brings a plane down. It is usually a chain of events, missed items, mechanical issues and pilot error that all come to a point and cause the incident. Anyone who's watched National Geographic's "Air Crash Investigation' will know this. The Tenerife incident I mentioned earlier was caused by a combination of bad weather, no radar, tight crew schedules, an overbearing Captain who intimidated his crew, and a misheard radio communication. If any one of those had not been present the accident would have been avoided. Similarly, the TWA flight 800 crash was caused by the plane carrying an empty centre fuel tank coupled with decreased pressure from flying at altitude and a short circuit in a single wire (The empty fuel tank contained kerosene vapour which ignited when the spark from the short circuit met the lightly pressurised vapour). Once again a change in any of these circumstances would have prevented it (Standard operating procedure is now to keep fuel in the central tank to avoid the situation where vapour can form).

But when it comes to the smaller, general aviation planes of the type that I fly, the prospect of an incident is larger. The systems are simpler, but the pilots are less experienced (or more particularly they are less trained in all circumstances). This leads to situation where a single problem can cause an incident. In this years 'Clued Up' magazine from the CAA, Irv Lee talks about a carb icing problem he had which caused his engine to die and necessitate an emergency landing in a field. The cause of this was very simple: His student throttled back to start a decent without adding carb heat. As Irv himself says "That was the end of the flight". This wasn't a case of 3 or four things conspiring to cause an issue it was one simple mistake - a pilot error - as the student didn't follow his procedures correctly.

But again, to put all this into context, there were 14 fatal aeroplane accidents last year in the UK. The CAA believe that there were around 900,000 hours of general aviation flying in that time. That's not a bad ratio.

Of course a lot of the hoopla surrounding aviation accidents is causing many people to have a fear of flying. Most of this is to do with lack of control. But some of it is to do with not understanding how planes fly (I was on a long distance BA flight a number of years ago. As we rattled down the runway and the plane clawed it's way into the sky I shook my head in disbelief that 300 tonnes of metal, people and fuel could get airborne. The elderly lady seated next to me said 'Why are you shaking your head?"
"I fly upwards of 100 to 200 flights per year", I replied, "And I still don't really understand how it works. But it's not a problem as long as the pilot does" She smiled and leaned over to me 'It's OK", she said "The pilot know what he's doing. It's my husband").

One of the ways of combating this is to go on a fear of flying course. My mother took one of these recently. She used to hate flying, needed valium type pills to calm her down and remove the anxiety she was feeling. But she spent a day at Manchester Airport with British Airways and went on a 30 minute flight where the captain talked everyone through what was happening, and she nows flies 6 or 8 times a year to various destinations without any medication. It doesn't mean she likes flying, but it has removed her fear and anxiety.

So should my Australian friend be scared of flying in small aircraft? Absolutely not. They are statistically a lot safer than any other form of transport. Most occurrences are caused by pilots flying outside their comfort zone (into bad weather for example), and of the incidents that are reported, very few are fatal.

I'd rather be flying than in a car, personally!

(Graphic courtesy www.lumaxart.com/)
Technorati Tags: caa, GA, safety, aviation

Flying tip no. 3 : Carb Ice

2008-06-26T12:26:00.003+01:00

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

2008-06-21T15:49:00.001+01:00

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

2008-06-20T21:00:00.002+01:00

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)

2008-06-17T12:00:00.002+01:00

(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!

2008-06-15T12:10:00.004+01:00

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?

2008-06-13T12:00:00.005+01:00

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

2008-06-12T18:00:00.001+01:00

(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

2008-06-12T08:44:00.004+01:00

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

2008-06-05T00:01:00.001+01:00

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

2008-06-03T09:10:00.003+01:00

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.

Hamburg wing strike - more details

2008-05-26T15:59:00.007+01:00

You may remember the A320 which had a wing strike on approach to Hamburg at the beginning of March. The German investigation agency BFU has released a preliminary report about the moments before the accident.

Without reading the whole report it appears the following points can be gathered.

1) The plane was flying under dual control (i.e. both pilots were flying using the side sticks. Apparently the A320 allows this by summing the inputs), although the co-pilot was in charge of the approach
2) 50% of the approaches in the previous 10 minutes had resulted in a 'go-around' or aborted landing
3) The captain had over 10,200 hours experience including 4,120 on the A320 but the young lady who was in charge of the approach had only 327 hours on the A320
4) The crosswind at the time of the runway was 3knots over the maximum stated A320 crosswind component allowed for a manual landing, with gusts up to 17kt over the limit
5) The crew were offered an alternate runway where the crosswind would have been less, but declined (They ultimately landed on this runway after the wing strike)

So let me put this into context for you (or let me play Devils Advocate.....)

"You're an experienced A320 captain with many, many hours in type. You are flying into a runway where you know that crosswind issues have caused half the planes in front of you to miss their approaches. You decide not only to continue your approach to the runway, despite being given a more suitable runway to land on, but you then hand the flying of the plane over to a young, inexperienced co-pilot who then makes the approach into conditions that are outside the operating parameters of the plane you're flying.

And then the wing hits."

Hmmmm... It seems fairly black and white when you look at it like that doesn't it?

However, let me put a different spin on the same facts.

"As an experienced pilot with many hours on type you realise that the only way for your co-pilot to gain experience of real life crosswind landings is to allow her to fly them herself. Knowing that half the planes in front of you have already managed the landing without a problem - and realising that the crosswind parameters were marginal due to gusting, you hand the approach over to the co-pilot and keep a hold of the controls to help should the need arise. With the two of you working the controls you fly the plane onto the runway where a slight gust lifts one wing a little. You elect to go around and try the less hazardous approach only to realise later that the wing had made contact."

In the heat of a crosswind landing it is very easy to make decisions that - in hindsight - are not the best ones to make. I, personally, have made crosswind landings that were 'interesting' to say the least. However in a Piper Warrior with just me and the instructor there's a lot less riding on a careful approach than an A320 with passengers and freight on board.

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

As you can see, the facts can support two different interpretations and it then becomes difficult to see who, if anyone, is at fault.

Although if it was me I would have gone for the other runway regardless....

ATC Visit to Farnborough

2008-05-21T19:12:00.010+01:00

(Image courtesy Steve Parker)

As part of the Visit ATC month (which I have blogged about before) I was invited to go and spend some time with the good folks down at ATC in Farnborough.

We happened to go on a really good day as the weather was fine and - as an added bonus - the Farnborough Air Show press day coincided with our visit. There were several unusual planes there and a fly past of Extra's had been arranged.

The Tower
We were met at the gate by Lyn who would be our guide for the day and - once all our party had arrived - we headed up the control tower (Two 'stops' in the elevator, but in actual fact over 100ft in the air)

The control tower was an oasis of calm considering the number of movements it deals with. Local planning caps the limit at 25000 per year, but one controller and an assistant manage all this themselves (However, during the air show there is another controller as well).

The view from the tower was fabulous. As you would expect the whole of the airfield was visible as well as the overhead for nearby Blackbushe, and the Bagshot mast that delineates the southwest corner of the Heathrow TMA. Curiously, though, RAF Odiham (whose MATZ is controlled by Farnborough and is about 8 miles away) is not visible due to rising land on the western approaches to the airport.

Looking out over the airfield we could see a couple of special planes in for the press launch. I saw what I think was a DC3 Dakota as well as a glider and a Dove. They were all parked over to the right of runway 06.

Lyn explained the workings of the tower. All flights are controlled by paper strips. These are mounted on colour coded bars to help indicate movements. Blue bars indicate take-off's, buff/brown bars indicate landings and a third colour is used for overflights. When a flight plan is filed a strip is printed from the computer showing all the details and the assistant mounts it in it's correct coloured bar. As the plane calls in the controller can then match it with its strip and know where it should be and when. It is usually handed over to the tower about 6 miles from touchdown (and vice-versa for take-off's)

Shortly after we arrived the flight of Extra's turned up. We could see them approaching from the east and they flew to the north of the airfield and circled for a while awaiting clearance. After an incoming plane had landed they were given clearance and approached from the east. The did a flyby along the runway in perfect formation, sweeping in a lazy horizontal circle at the western end to approach back from the west. On their westerly approach they were given looping permission and, just short of the threshold they all pulled back and did a perfect loop-the-loop at fairly low level before tracking back down the runway and performing an un-and-break to prepare for landing. Each plane broke high and right, in sequence, to give separation from it's neighbour, prior to turning back downwind and doing an abbreviated base/final turn. All four plans landed within 90 seconds. Most impressive.

We moved downstairs to the part which I, personally, was the most interested to see :

Farnborough LARS.
Farborough LARS is now the radar installation that monitors all non-controlled airspace in the South West of England. Their coverage stretches from the South coast as far North as Cambridge & the Fens and from the East coast as far West as Southampton. All this is managed through 3 controllers sitting in a room at the foot of the tower at Farnborough!

The radar screens are brand new and state of the art, able to identify both primary and secondary signals, but with the ability to process secondary signals prior to displaying them. So, for example, a controller can say 'I only want to see things that are moving at a speed greater than 60 knots'. This will effectively remove anything that is slower than
that from the screens (gliders and the like). Transponder codes can be identified quickly as well and preprocessed prior to display. This means that anyone squawking '7000' will appear with a 'W' next to their blip. Anyone higher than a predefined altitude (say 25000 ft) will appear as a 'U' and anyone showing a known airliner transponder code will have their flight call sign displayed ('BAW297', for example). Geographical features can be added (or removed) as needed and the whole scale can be changed if required. This makes the screen a lot easier to read.

Flight Strips
I sat with Emily (who was controlling the LARS East sector out in Kent) and we chatted about how things work when a GA pilot contacts them. Back in the days when you did your RT exam you were taught the sequence of information to pass when asked to 'pass your message'. This sequence is:

Call-sign
Aircraft type,
Point of departure and destination,
Altitude with altimeter setting,
Intentions
Request.

The reason for this is that whenever an aircraft contacts LARS and asks for Flight information or Radar information, the controller will grab a blank flight strip, write your call sign on it (and the time you made contact) and say 'Pass your message' Then, when you pass the information back it will be written in the appropriate field on the flight strip. The fields are expecting the information requested above in that sequence. If you pass the information in a different sequence the controller has to jump all over the strip to fill your details in.

Transponder codes
The allocation of transponder codes has always seemed to be a bit random to me. But it appears that there is a method to the madness. Code are allocate depending on your controller unit and your departure airport. For example a plane being controlled by Farnborough LARS west departing from Blackbushe will usually be given a 403x code. The numbers are allocated sequentially and reused as the planes transfer to other controllers.

Each strip is given a transponder code and dropped into the stack sequentially. That way the controller can identify a plane on the screen through it's transponder code then get the call sign for that plane on the strip.

TIP: If you want a Radar Information Service, it's best not to ask for this during busy periods, or in an area where there are lots of aircraft. RIS's increase the controller workload to the detriment of other aircraft. Try flying out over the Kent area if you want a quiet patch - an RIS at that point will usually be accepted

Controllers usually work a maximum 2 hour stretch (Which, if you're controlling Farnborough LARS West, is a LOT of work) and then take a break.

Despite the fact that they were short of folks (the recent expansion of the LARS service to include LARS North and LARS East had stretched them to the limit) everyone was more than happy to talk (usually while controlling planes and answering phones at the same time) and overall the group spent a little over three hours in their company.

I would like to thank Lyn Combe and everyone at Farnborough ATC for their time and hospitality. It made the day really interesting.

A 'fun' emergency landing

2008-05-12T15:33:00.002+01:00

I was down at the local field airfield over the weekend listening to ATC (Tip: An excellent way to tune your ear to ATC lingo and speed is to listen using a cheap airband receiver), when I heard an exchange between a pilot and the tower.

The pilot was obviously an elderly gentleman who had flown in earlier on during the day. He was a little unsure about the airfield and started asking directions for taxiing out to the runway for a departure.

ATC were very obliging and steered him in the right direction. However as he was doing his run-up/engine check he obviously noted a problem and asked for time to investigate.

Once again tower duly obliged and he taxied away to a disused bit of tarmac to fiddle with whatever needed to be fiddled with. I could see the plane from my vantage point and noted it was a Piper Cub type aircraft (Tandem seating, cloth covered, fairly old and basic), and that it was painted in a lurid green livery.

After about fifteen minutes he came back on the radio, asked for permission to taxi, got back to the holding point, did his run-up and requested clearance. This was duly given and he started his takeoff run.

About 50 feet off the ground he came back on the radio asking for permission to switch frequency to the nearest LARS service with the following exchange

"Bxxxx Tower, this is Golf - Alpha Alpha requesting permission to change to Fxxx on 125 decimal".. there was a slight pause "Oh no, my engine's playing up again. I'm going to have to land immediately"

Tower gave him permission to land and - with his engine audibly misfiring even from my vantage point at the far end of the airfield - he executed a swift 180 in the air and landed back on the runway he had vacated only moments before - in the opposite direction!

I reckon the time from wheels up to wheels down was no more than about 20 seconds.

Now if you're going to make an emergency landing, that's the way to do it!

Lessons learned from a flight that might help other pilots

2008-04-28T09:52:00.002+01:00

My last flight was a bit of a sight-seeing flight around Southern England. I actually flew a route from Thruxton North to the other side of the M4, west to Swindon, South to Avebury and West Kennett and South back to Thruxton.

Here's a few things I learned that might help you if you are flying

1) Experienced navigators are good to help with the map reading. We both knew where we were going, but as we were specifically looking for items on the ground (white horses carved into hillsides to be exact) it was useful to have a navigator. The lesson learned is that people who can navigate in a car need to learn that we cover more ground a lot quicker when flying at 115 knots (I was in a Warrior III which goes slightly faster than I'm used to). We actually overflew one white horse two or three times because we weren't looking in the right place below us.

2) ATC are wonderful people. Bearing in mind that this was a Friday, I flew into RAF Lyneham CTA. I contacted them well in advance, told them my approximate routing and asked for permission to cut across their zone. Knowing the area as I do I was aware that there was a large amount of military air traffic in the region and fully expected to be told 'Stay out of controlled airspace at all times", but to my surprise I was given a clearance not ABOVE 1500 feet (!) to overfly central Swindon and enter the controlled airspace. When I questioned the altitude (expecting to have been told not BELOW 1500 feet) I was informed that there was IFR traffic on approach and I would need to stay below them. Excellent! I cut across the controlled airspace, overflew the stone circles at Avebury (see picture) and headed towards the long barrow at West Kennet. ATC asked me if I was then routing direct to Thruxton and I asked if I could circle Avebury again. They said 'Sure, no problem'. Excellent service - especially when he was also looking after Hercules and HS 125's heading into and out of RAF Lyneham at the same time.

3) The weather needn't stop you having fun: but it can affect your plans. When I left home for Thurxton it was sunny and clear. The METAR called for clear skies up to 7500 feet and then scattered above that. I did a check flight and a couple of circuits to get currency for taking passengers and by the time I had finished, the weather had closed in. I was looking at a flight to the North and I could see that the slant range was not good heading that way. Back at the flying club I discussed things with the instructor and we decided that - as long as I could turn round whenever the weather turned - I would probably be OK. The truth of the matter was that the clouds never caused a problem other than preventing more than about 5 miles of forward visibility (Check out the Avebury photo to see the actual visibility). We were clear of cloud at all points, we were in site of the ground at all points and we were never seriously looking at a diversion. However it did rain during the flight and I was always conscious of the fact that as long as the weather was moving in from the West I would have to keep routing East to stay clear. Originally we were looking at flying south west around the danger zones outside Boscombe Down to get a look at Stonehenge, but this ended up out of the question. Although this is now something to do on another day!

In summary - not a bad days flying after being away from aviation since October last year, but the weather might have been better.

(Picture courtesy of Jo Long)

Got a check flight today

2008-04-25T07:44:00.002+01:00

It's been a while since I was up in a plane (either commercial or GA) so the guys down at the airfield have decided I need a check flight before I hire one of their PA28's today.

I've never had a check flight before but I assume it's sitting in with an instructor, doing a circuit or two and making sure you remember to do the right things at the right time in the right order.

Hopefully they'll then let me loose with a plane and I can go off into the wild blue yonder. I'm looking to go out over Wiltshire and North Berkshire today, specifically Avebury and the stone circles there with a routing back over Stonehenge. It's interesting because the Avebury is right on the edge of the Lyneham CTA and Stonehenge is surrounded by danger areas. Should make for an interesting flight.

Customer Omega for airlines

2008-04-13T17:31:00.003+01:00

I stumbled upon this article quite by chance recently. It came through on my Friend feed (See this post about Friend Feed if you're still not there with this...)

Basically, Jeff Jarvis has, I think, hit the nail right on the head when it comes to airlines and how they treat their passengers. I should know - at one point I was flying 2 or three times per week for a couple of years. Of course it is a fairly broad statement and there are airlines out there who do not treat folks that way (Virgin Atlantic has a better reputation than most in the UK), but certainly amongst the national carriers and the smaller, budget airlines there does seem to be a tendency to classify passengers as a necessary nuisance.

I do remember one instance where a mistake had been made with my transatlantic reservation (with one of those well know American based Airlines) and in order for me to travel I had to purchase a full ticket for the whole flight (which cost somewhere in the region of £5000). This was a full price business class return ticket for my whole journey. Then - despite the fact that we were able to uncover my original reservation later on no discount was applied - and then to make it worse the airline magically 'lost' my original payment which meant they were unable to refund me the £5000 for the second ticket I bought. Despite getting the credit card company involved I still ended up out of pocket. Seriously out of pocket!

Let's hope that there are no more Omega passengers.

I wonder where the airlines will go next......

Photo courtesy of d'n'c

Visit ATC - an update

2008-04-12T08:34:00.003+01:00

Well, after a number of frantic e-mails back and forth I've managed to secure my place on a visit to Farnborough's Air Traffic Control unit on Tuesday 13th May

If anyone reading this is also going to be there then either let me know before hand or say 'hello' to me on the day. I might bring a camera and see if we can't get a few photo's!

Safety in the Skies

2008-03-24T11:14:00.002Z

I've picked this up at a couple of places on the web and it's worth repeating.

A recent article at the BBC told the story of whistle-blower in Air Traffic Control who claimed that the controllers are deliberately sequencing aircraft closer than is necessary in order to meet targets for aircraft movements. He claims this is common-place and potentially impacts safety.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons.

1) From a process point of view, the process allows controllers leaway to do this sort of thing (apparently with the collusion of their management). Is this a process issue? Should there be stronger controls? Is the procedure designed well enough?
2) From a flying point of view, are we comfortable that the system can deal with aircraft being this close? I know that on several occasions flying in to Heathrow as a commercial passenger the aircraft has had to go-around because the plane in front hasn't vacated the runway yet. The go-around procedure is meant for just such an eventuality, but to need to do this due to air traffic issues is stretching a point, I feel.

So as a passenger would you rather arrive on time, but in a potentially risky situation, or later than advertised but safer? I know where my vote is going

Any thoughts or comments from you?

Visit an ATC Unit !

2008-03-20T09:08:00.004Z

I don't know about you, but I find that I understand how things work much better when I get in there and start seeing things up-close and first hand.

Telling me something will only get me so far. I have to see it in action.

That's why, when I listen to the guys working the air traffic control in the UK, I always want to know how they are dealing with requests, what the conditions are like in the room and what I can do as a pilot to help them to help me

I was delighted, therefore, to learn that many of the air traffic control units in the UK will open up their doors in May to allow visitors.

The event is being organised by the Airspace and Safety Initiative and encompasses MOD facilities, NATS facilities and a couple of other units such as Cambridge, Blackpool and Inverness.

More details are available on the website along with contact information to book your place. The events are free but spaces are limited. You must be a holder of a pilots licence (NPPL, PPL, BGA certificate etc). Those attending will be required to show their licence. If you have not pre-registered or cannot produce your pilot licence you will not be admitted on the day.

Hopefully you will be able to make it to one of them, and if your going to Farnborough, I might see you there!

Flying in the US. Part Two

2008-03-20T06:36:00.002Z

In one of my earliest posts I talked about how I had learned to fly in Orlando, Florida. I want to go into some more detail about that training to help you understand if you want to take that decision yourself.

In the earlier post I mentioned several of the advantages of using somewhere like Kissimmee as a base for flying. These included Air Traffic Control and ATIS experience, no landing fees and excellent weather. But I want to talk about the downside for a few moments.

Downsides:
The school I used (which will rename nameless, but was a flight training organisation based in Orlando), is one of at least two based at the airport. They do helicopter and fixed wing training as well as PA28, C172 and the full ATPL course. The facility has training rooms, an IFR simulator and full weather and briefing stations. They have a complement of instructors who do FAA and JAR training as well as instrument training and all the associated ATPL ground school classes. All in all it was a well organised school. But the downside to this is that it was always incredibly busy. There was a shortage of instructors, a shortage of planes and a shortage of slots. Any weather delay compounded the problem dramatically. Luckily I had a dedicated instructor which helped immensely, but I met folks out there who were on limited time courses and were simply not able to get the hours they needed and went home disappointed.

Added to that were the issues of the chief pilot. He was a dour Englishman who was being pulled in too many directions at the same time resulting in him not having enough time to do anything. As chief pilot he was responsible for administering and marking all exam papers, reviewing and finalising all flying documentation, authorising all student flights, dealing with the 'head office' area located on a different site as well as performing all the skills tests. For a small school with 5 or six instructors and a constant stream of students that would be acceptable, however for a large school with up to 15 instructors and literally dozens of students this was a major overload of work for him. I remember one day waiting almost 4 hours for him to return from a skills test, complete a set of documentation, make a dozen phone calls, hold a meeting with three guys from the aircraft hire section and have his lunch, before I was able to go in and request an exam paper from him which I completed in 45 minutes and waited another 2 hours for him to mark. As this was a critical exam needed to progress my flying hours it effectively meant I spent 6 hours of one day unable to fly. Extremely frustrating! In addition to this my dedicated instructor was also unable to fly and therefore lost a days earnings.

Upsides:
So what are the upsides? Well, assuming you can get yourself airborne, the upsides are tremendous. I've already mentioned the weather which is usually good and - even if it isn't - is usually very predictable - if the weather forecast said rain showers at 10 am you would get rain showers at 10am. It made planning flights very easy! There is a great deal of freedom in flying across the pond. Whilst they are, obviously, governed by the same rules and regulations we are, the implementation of those rules has resulted in a more liberal attitude. What do I mean? Take PPR, for example. "Prior Permission Required". it is a prerequisite of most UK airports, aerodromes and landing fields. You have to contact them prior to departure to inform them that you will be arriving and when. Now I'm not saying there isn't a good reason for this (for some tricky approaches - such as those into Fairoaks which is under the Heathrow Class A airspace - it is usually a good idea to get a briefing), but why, then, can I take off in Orlando and pretty much fly where I want without having to let anyone know my destination and then land randomly at whichever field appeals to me? I've already told you how I flew into Melbourne International Airport on a whim for a touch and go, following a 737 on finals. I also trekked out to the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral for some flying and - whilst the space centre itself is restricted, I was able to spend several hours doing touch and go's at Merritt Island which is the nearest field still on the Cape Canaveral peninsula. My first solo was taken at a field called Winter Haven near Cypress Gardens. It's another field with good concrete runways and a nice, tricky approach that takes you over a large lake just prior to touchdown (Extremely interesting if attempting a short field landing. Imagine aiming for the water as your landing spot and flaring out to land right on the end of the runway. A little scary!). All of these landings were done without PPR and none of them cost me a cent. There are no landing charges.

ATC :
How many of you have worked in a complex, ATC managed traffic pattern? There aren't many fields in the UK where this happens. Shoreham is one (although the definition of 'complex' in this case might not mean the same thing). At Kissimmee the airport is a genuine working regional airport with traffic arriving from all points of the US and the Bahamas. As well as training pilots there helicopters, tourists coming in from Key West and environs as well as a host of corporate jets of various sizes heading in from New York, Chicago and the West Coast, not to mention a group of P51 Mustang's based at the field doing military style 'bank-and-break' maneuvers over midfield and peeling off to land in sequence. Throw a 10 or 15 hour student into the middle of that with air traffic control and you get some interesting situations which, I feel, are unique to the area.

On more than one occasion I have been asked to extend a downwind leg to allow a jet to make an instrument approach. I've also been told (while on short finals) to 'go-around' because a Cessna Citation was approaching behind me and would have been forced to go around himself (jet's being more expensive to 'go-around' on than a little PA28).

Summary :
There is no doubt in my mind that the US is geared more towards the pleasure flying end of the spectrum than the UK. Things just seem 'easier' and less hassle when flying there. The weather is good and predictable, the costs are lower, and the administration overhead is lower.

Why wouldn't you fly in the US?

Wing Strike!

2008-03-10T07:42:00.005Z

No doubt you will have seen the footage of the Lufthansa Airbus hitting it's wing during a crosswind landing.

For those of you who haven't, the video at the link was taken by a couple of guys standing underneath the approach lights in Hamburg as the plane came over during some pretty nasty weather. Obviously it was crabbing in at an angle to compensate for the crosswind. As it approached the runway it straightened up and started to float down to the surface. Suddenly the right wing lifted, the left gear struck and the plane tipped over striking the left wingtip on the ground. The pilots executed a go-around and landed without incident a short while later.

Now a couple of things strike me about this (and I'll get onto how this affects private pilots in a moment)

1) Moments before landing the plane drifts across to the left of the centre line and assumes a much more crabbed position than previously
2) Apart form that this didn't seem to be anything more than a seriously windy crosswind landing

So what actually happened? Well I assume that this is similar to the 777 crash at Heathrow recently in that there will be lots of opinion and conjecture, but very little known about the truth for a while. However, it is probably fair to say that the pilots were comfortable with the approach right up until the point the plane's undercarriage touched when, it appears, a gust of wind tipped the right wing up causing the result you saw.

But the question does present itself of 'When should you execute a go-round?'

I've flown many, many landings during my training when the conditions included something of a cross wind on approach. Personally I find these landings more fun and challenging and like to do them. But they're not easy.

There are 2 schools of thought for flying crosswind approaches in single engine planes. One is the 'crab-and-kick' approach (similar to the A320 Airbus in the video) where the plane is flown in level but crabbed into the wind, the pilot kicking the plane straight with the rudder just prior to touch down. (This video shows that it can be done on really big planes as well!). The second school is where you always fly the plane down the centreline of the runway but counter the crosswind by banking the plane into the wind (Wing down). This effectively puts you into a constant turn which is counterbalanced by the wind pushing you back. That's the way I was taught.

Both of these have benefits and downsides. The downside to the first approach 'crab-and-kick' is that you are susceptible to any sudden gusts of wind from one side which can upset the balance of the plane by pushing one wing higher than the other (as, I believe, happened in Hamburg). The downside to the second approach is that, by definition you are coming in with one wing lower than the other. This means that the chance of a wing strike increases. This is also the reason larger planes don't do this. The benefit of the second approach is that you can consistently keep the plane on the centre line of the runway without having to worry about drifting off left or right in a crosswind.

So how does this apply to us private pilots? Well, ordinarily we would like to be in a position where we only land when there is a minimal or zero crosswind (ideally we would like to land right into the prevailing wind!). But that doesn't always happen. There are many reasons for this: What happens, for example, if you're local airport/airfield has a perfectly good runway heading into the wind but some student has made a particularly hard landing and blown a tyre on their PA28 thereby rendering the runway u/s until they change it? (Yes, I was that student, but in my defence I made a perfectly good landing that time: it was the heavy landings earlier on in the session that caused the problem...) Now all the other planes in the circuit are having to land on the crosswind runway. Everything from 5 hour beginners to experienced Gulfstream are landing into a right to left crosswind.

This is the time when your airmanship really comes into play. Crosswind landings are tricky for the reasons I've already said, so knowing when to make the 'go-around' call and when not to becomes even more important. Chances are if you're coming in 'crab-and-kick' then you're going to have to anticipate any sudden gusts which would send you off the centreline. Depending on where you are in the approach (Long Finals, short finals, over the numbers) your reaction is going to be different. I always work on the basis that if I'm in a situation where I'm going to have to work hard to make the landing then I'm going round. This could be because I'm too high, too low, too fast, not mentally prepared (doesn't happen often, but when it does I'm definitely going round), way off the centre line or when the runway ahead isn't clear. I would much rather do another circuit and make a good landing than struggle to get down, make a mistake and end up as a statistic or a video on Youtube.

If you're coming in 'Wing-down' then the same principals apply.

Always make the call as soon as possible. If you're with the instructor he or she will respect you for displaying good airmanship. If you have passengers they will appreciate you making the landing smoother and more comfortable. If you're by yourself it will give you another approach to practice, another circuit to do and more flying time. It's a win-win situation.

So should the Lufthansa pilot have made the go-round call earlier? I know I probably would have done. From the point about 4 seconds prior to the main gear landing when the plane started to drift off to the left. That would have been my go-round point.

I wouldn't have made the news headlines in such a spectacular way, but my record would be blemish free and Lufthansa would have one less piece of maintenance to worry about...

photo (C) Lars Trejau

What goes up might come down

2008-02-25T14:18:00.005Z

Many years ago I was lucky enough to be given a copy of a tape by a guy named Dave Gunson. Dave was an air traffic controller at East Midlands airport and had made a bit of a niche for himself as an after-dinner speaker.

This particular tape was a speech he gave to a room full of bankers and it talks about his role as an air traffic controller.

Sounds boring, right? Wrong! This is one of the funniest recordings I've heard in a long while and is definitely one of the best as far as aviation is concerned.

He'll talk about working with French Air Traffic Control. ("Non!'), how airports make their money ("You can make as many take-offs as you want free of charge. We'll only charge you for the landings"), flying the Concorde ("It stretches nearly a foot every time we go supersonic. Its a good job it shrinks back otherwise we'd have the longest plane you've every seen after a couple of months"), and many other aviation themed topics.

Amazon are selling it here in the UK What Goes Up Might Come Down!

You could also check out the list of books I recommend, including some great ones by Rod Machado the voice of Microsoft's Flight Simulator and a genuine aviation humourist himself.

Introducing "Fly-On Track" - Airpsace infringement prevention advice

2008-02-22T12:33:00.003Z

One of the things that Private pilots have a tendency to do much more than the airline jockeys is to infringe restricted airspace. 99% of the time it is as a result of bad navigation or not paying attention or not realising that there is a restriction in place. It's is very rarely, if ever, deliberate.

Nonetheless there are an increasing number of controlled (or restricted) airspace infringements on a year by year basis. In just about every case where this happens there is an impact on other air users. Whether it is a controller having to divert 747's around you to avoid an airprox, or an air show having to cancel a Red Arrows display, the impact on others is rarely negligible.

Fly-On Track is a web site that aims to inform pilots of the impact of these infringements as well as educate them on methods of avoiding infringement, providing links to sources of controlled airspace information and also highlight the dangers and impact of an infringement.

One of my favourite parts of the site is the radar displays. This shows actual radar scans from NATS of various light aircraft infringing airspace and causing problems. Just to emphasise the impact of this, read the section at the bottom of this stats page which quantifies the cost of diverting a 747 from approach. It's more than you think...

The site also has links to a lot of CAA safety sense leaflets which I find invaluable in helping me understand and learn about some of the safety issues in aviation. I also like the printout which you can slip into your kneepad to give you a visual aid to preventing infringement (it also has a template for radio calls to ATC units to help you sound more professional!).

I recommend you allocate a good chunk of time to read through this web site as it has lots of links to lots of different publications and pages. It's a very useful site that should be on every UK aviators bookmarks.

Flying Tip # 2 - Climbing out

2008-02-01T07:05:00.002Z

So you've finished all your checks, got your departure clearance, pushed the throttles forward and trundled down the runway. At the appropriate speed you palm the control yoke back and the nose lifts off

You're flying!

Now what?

As you start to climb to some predetermined altitude (having trimmed the plane for the best rate of climb or best angle of climb), the chances are that you will be in quite a nose up position. Not too nose up, obviously or you'll stall!

If you're flying VFR then the key requirement is to keep looking around for other aircraft. That's fine if the aircraft are to your left or right, but how can you look out for other 'planes that are directly ahead of you?

It's quite easy and can be accomplished two ways:

Today's Flying Tip is "Every 1000 feet or so, either push the yoke forward and level out for a few moments, take a look around the nose and continue, or, make a sweeping 'S' turn left and right to unblock the area under the raised nose. Take a good look around and continue"

If you're in some fairly busy airspace you will probably want to try the first of these two options, but if you know the area around you is clear (or if you're just up for a joyride with no particular destination in mind) the second option will probably be best.

The 14 top links to make you a better pilot

2008-01-19T13:40:00.000Z

As a pilot there are always sites on the Internet that are very interesting to browse.

These tend to fall into distinct categories

A) Sites related to flying an aircraft or preparing for a flight
B) Sites related to the aircraft itself
C) Other aviation sites

Note: These links are primarily UK based

1) Are you connected to the UK General Aviation Website yet? If not, you should be. It has details of every UK airport, a forum, contact details and - I use this all the time - a flight planning facility which automatically looks up weather and relevant contact details for locations you are flying to, through and from.

2) Need a new chart, headphones, or a GPS? There are lots and lots of aviation suppliers on the web. My personal favourites are Transair and AFE Online

3) The Cessna Aircraft Site For those of us wanting to fly the 150, 172 or even the RG versions!.

4) The Piper Aircraft Site For those of us flying Piper Warriors or Cherokee's etc.

5) The Cirrus Aircraft Site I learned to fly with a guy who had just ordered a brand new Cirrus. Lucky guy....!

6) The Tecnam Aircraft Site you know who you are..

7) The Beech Aircraft Site If you're an MS Flight Simulator fan you'll have flow the Beech Bonanza or the King Air. This is the site

8) Airliners. NETFor loads and loads of pictures of aircraft taken in every conceivable position, location and attitude go to Airliners.Net Check out some of the scary approaches into the old Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong. If video is more your style, check out their sister site

9) Pilot Magazines Web site If you don't subscribe to Pilot Magazine you can still connect to their web site and read some of the articles in there.

10) The Civil Aviation Authority - They who must be obeyed. If you're applying for a license you can check out the waiting times here. If you're looking to buy a plane you can check out the registration details here

11) Irv Lee's Web Page. The layout is a little garish - bordering on ugly, but it has loads and loads of information on it. Irv will give you lots of advice, help you and instruct you - he's also a key Southern England RT License instructor

12) A High Viz Vest with built in plane chock. This is a brilliant idea and I use it all the time. It's a proper High-Viz vest for going airside and a handy chock you can use on your aircraft wheels when you get to your destination

13) The Private Pilot Simplifier - It's the book that has all the answers for you for pilot exams, but it's also incredibly useful when you're in an unfamiliar situation yourself. Get the question, look at the answer and it explains the answer to you as well. Great for those situations when you aren't sure whether your actual altitude increases or decreases with a drop in air pressure (It decreases... "High to low, down you go"))

14) Microsoft's Flight Simulator : I know pilots tend to "pooh pooh" the MS Flight Simulator but I honestly believe that the reason I managed to learn to fly so quickly is because I have many hours of simulator experience. While the feelings etc, aren't as realistic as a proper plane, the mechanics and the focus and attention needed are just as real. Plus you can fly when the real weather is Baaaaad! (See more Sim products in our store)

That's my list. Got any more you would like to add?

Flying tip #1 - Engine Failures

2008-01-18T08:50:00.000Z

With the recent happenings at Heathrow and the Boeing 777 apparently losing all power on approach resulting in a forced landing short of the runway, I thought it might be useful to cover a quick tip I learned when practicing engine failure's for my PPL

There is nothing more terrifying than losing an engine in a plane - especially if that is the only one you have. Losing an engine close to the ground is especially terrifying (know as a 'fanstop' during practice), as one's instinctive reaction is to lift the nose to keep the plane from plummeting earthwards. This, however, is exactly the wrong thing to do. Lifting the nose will cause the speed to bleed off which, just after a take-off, will more than likely lead to a stall. At that altitude this can be fatal (look what an effective stall at about 40 feet did to that 777 - ripped the wheels off and shredded the engines and most of the left inboard wing)

The key thing is to find your ideal glide speed (usually around 71 knots in a Piper but check your operating handbook for precise figures) then focus on where you're going to land the aircraft.

At higher altitudes, an engine failure can be just as devastating, but you do have more time to concentrate and react. This can mean giving you time to find a better landing spot, attempting engine restarts and calling in a Mayday.

So when attempting engine failure practice from altitude, here is today's Flying Tip "Every 1000 feet or so, open the throttle fully to get fuel flowing through and keep the engine running" the last thing you want is to complete your practise engine failure, get to 500 feet and find you're engine has gummed up, or lack of carb heat has created ice in the intake. You are then in a real engine failure situation and now only 500 feet up.

Very scary!