Flying The Famous Fighter I give my wife Gisela a lot of credit when it comes to embracing mid-life dalliances. She enthusiastically mastered SCUBA diving and braved heli-skiing, and she gamely crewed our J-105 sloop, even on the stormy days. Still, I didn’t anticipate that we would find ourselves training together at Stallion 51’s facility Read More
What I’ve learned in nearly 50 years of examinations Over the years, I’ve equated my yearly visit to an Aviation Medical Examiner (AME) to a sporting contest. In this game, you don’t have a traditional opponent; the referee is your opponent. A win means the referee (the AME) signs you off, after going down the Read More
As expected, my recurrency training wasn’t going smoothly. The instructor was complaining of vertigo, no doubt brought on by my ceaseless bracketing of the course leading toward my clearance limit, where I was expected to enter a hold. Naturally, the depicted hold was oriented away from my entry heading, necessitating a course reversal, and, as Read More
Basic airmanship obviously requires management of the third dimension of mobility, that of height, in addition to forward speed and left-right movements. An aircraft’s ability to rise and descend means we must plan our actions to reach a point in space defined by distance in a vertical plane, not just map coordinates. This seems simple Read More
I was observing the demonstration of a piston twin Flight Training Device, or “simulator,” at a major university, where I was a consultant in the development of an “ab initio” airline pilot training program. Flying the “sim” was a senior airline captain who was also a consultant on the project. While the captain was at Read More