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out of an airplane. A good set of SOPs, well used, should ensure a safe flight. For example, a fuel management SOP might include:• Confirm, through multiple means, fuel on board before takeoff.• Monitorfuelburninflight,andregularlyre-compute fuel remaining at the estimated time of arrival (ETA), and• Divert and land for fuel if that computed figure ever dips below one hour’s worth at cruise power.• A landing gear SOP might be to:• Extend retractable landing gear at the point you descend from or through traffic pattern altitude when flying a VFR traffic pattern.• Confirm through multiple means the proper extension of the landing gear, and• Re-confirmgearextensiononshortfinal,immediately going around if the gear cannot be confirmed to be down and locked.If you follow these SOPs every time you won’t fall victim to a fuel exhaustion crash, and you won’t have a gear-up landing simply because you forgot to extend the wheels. Procedures like these keep you solidly in the middle of the airplane’s safe flying envelope.Beyond StandardizationThere are times, however, when you may need to fly closer to the edge of the flight envelope. Only by knowing what you must do to safely complete a flight task, and how the airplane predictably responds to changes in attitude, power and configuration, can you safely venture away from the safe, middle-of-the-envelope center. In other words, you can’t safely experiment with new ideas and new techniques unless you are very firmly grounded in the SOPs.Here’s a real-world example: I’m flying that same Baron 58 into a busy airport, and controllers ask me to fly “best speed” to the outer marker ... a very common request. My approach SOP won’t work because that’s too slow for the turbine traffic behind me. Ultimately, I want to transition to approach SOP before I reach decision height so I can make a normal landing and clear the runway as quickly as possible. Since gear extension is necessary under this SOP, and putting down the landing gear is the quickest way to decelerate, I pick a power setting that keeps me just under the Baron’s maximum gear extension speed in level flight. As I’m intercepting the glideslope, I’ll transition to the approach SOP and decelerate down the glideslope until I’m flying a normal approach. It meets the speed restriction and my safe-landing goals; I can accurately predict what the airplane will do, so it is not a huge increase in workload that might distract me from landing safely.Covington Aircraft Engines Half Page4/C Ad20 • TWIN & TURBINEJANUARY 2016