The Airsick Pilot I spent some time as a bush pilot in Western Alaska. I flew small 6-passenger airplanes from village to village. Sometimes I flew all passengers, sometimes all-cargo, and sometimes a mixture of both. Many great flying stories come from this time...
Steep Turns Flight Instructors refer to steep turns as a “performance maneuver,” meaning it is a maneuver that teaches pilots how to control the aircraft in far more demanding situations than straight and level flight. Pilots explore broader parts of the aircraft’s...
Here’s one of my favorite flying stories. It was summer and the fishing lodges in Alaska were running at full steam. I had landed a sweet gig as the first officer on a Super DC-3 flying passengers from Anchorage out to some of these remote lodges. The Super...
Common ways slow flight can go wrong and how to fix them. Slow Flight trains pilots to recognize and handle situations in which the airplane is flying at or near its minimum controllable airspeed with the wing flying at high angles of attack (AOA). It is a vital step...
Seven ways Private Pilot Ground Reference Maneuvers can go awry and what to do about them. Ground reference maneuvers teach pilots to control their aircraft’s path along the ground in various wind conditions. Traffic patterns, approaches, takeoffs, and landings all...
Advice for those new to driving 100+ horsepower tricycles. If you’re new to flying airplanes, taxiing is a skill that can be hard to master. Steering with your feet, having more than one brake, and no gas pedal makes for a strange arrangement. Here’s a quick list of...
Do you hate practicing power-on stalls? If so, you’re not the only one. For many pilots, a departure stall performed at full-power feels as close to an unintentional spin entry as you can get. Our palms sweat a little as we see the high pitch attitude and...
As a flight instructor and card-carrying aerodynamics geek, adverse yaw is something I thought I knew all about. I can smoothly deliver the checkride-ready explanation for what it is and how airplanes are designed to correct for it. So, I was a little shocked when I...
I advanced the throttle of the Piper Warrior, and as my instructor and I accelerated down the runway I scanned the usual items – engine gauges, airspeed, the runway centerline. Everything seemed to be in good order. I don’t think I forgot anything, and...
