Now don’t get me wrong, I assign no blame to anybody who’s been in a near-hit incident, you can take every precaution, and it can still happen. But that’s no reason to be fatalistic. There are lots of things you can do. But let me backtrack a bit. Once, long long ago, when I was [...]
Why do so many Americans go round in circles when they fly? I first came across this strange colonial practice many years ago when I first flew in America. Then it didn’t matter because I was using my UK license to ‘piggy back’, but I felt I ought to know why the ‘turns around a [...]
A day out – in West Drayton! Many years ago, on the first leg of my qualifying cross-country, from Ipswich to Earls Colne, I was ‘temporarily’ unsure of my position. Recognising that I was heading rapidly in the direction of Stanstead, I decided that it was prudent to act sooner rather than later and asked [...]
I’ve been asked this many times. To try and make the story interesting I’ll write in the form of a modern thriller; with flashbacks, disjointed time-line and internal monologues. Tweet. He stared at the screen. Another pilot, consoled. Another family now enjoying the luxuries of aviation. He sighed. Still more pilots come. Tweet. Aaaaarghhh!! We’re [...]
Flying back from Jersey, about 5 miles from the coast one dark evening, just visual with the coast and the Isle of Wight, at about 3,000 feet, I was doing the usual; using every resource available in the aircraft to cross-check where I was and what was happening. GPS, agrees, sufficient satellites available, visually check [...]
Ever ditched an aircraft at sea? The wisdom is that you should land tail low and land parallel to the major swell. It’s covered in AIM 6-3-3, But this doesn’t cover what happens after the ‘landing’. In preparation for crossing that mighty stretch of water the English channel (which nonetheless is really cold – and [...]
General aviation pilots sometimes prefer flying at night. The air is less turbulent, usually (no heat from the sun to mess things up). Over populated areas there are numerous lights and roads to follow, some of which are easier to see at night than during the day. The air has fewer aircraft in it too, [...]
Night flying is a joy! There are so few aircraft about you can have aerodromes like Southend all to yourself (or Norwich if you don’t mind being escorted by security to the GA terminal). Navigation is easy too. It’s not the same as day-time navigation of course, it’s different and it needs to be practised [...]
One of the tasks of the FAA private pilot certificate training, is the ability to touch down at a given point, or spot landings. Accurate control of your energy sources is critial of course. Your energy sources are potential energy, knietic energy and the energy that is latent within your fuel. If you’ve wasted your potential energy [...]
“Aviate, navigate, communicate.” As pilots we hear this a lot from instructors and other pilots, but what does it actually mean in the air? The first part, Aviate, is adequately described by the joke about Prince Philip being taken for a joyride in a De Haviland Moth. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about [...]
