Gyroscopic Precession

Do you fully understand the famous “turning tendencies” which act on propeller-driven aircraft? It’s one of the first things primary students are taught when flight training commences. And the concepts are not all that complicated. Yet I’ve found that even long-time instructors often lack a proper understanding of at least one of these forces, specifically gyroscopic precession. Here’s an excerpt from one of Bob Miller’s Over the Airwaves newsletters: “An unexpected stall, coupled with four powerful left-turning tendencies of a single engine airplane in a steep climb and insufficient right rudder, could easily produce a left hand spin.” I wrote Bob to tell him that I only count three “left” turning...

Snafu

My life can be a little complicated at times, even by time zone-hopping pilot standards. You see, at the present time, I have six employers: Sunrise Aviation, Dynamic Aviation, Skytypers, Opera Pacific, and two individual clients. As you might imagine, keeping my schedule straight isn’t easy, especially since each of my employers uses a different system. One of them sends out the schedules as Excel spreadsheets. Another has a proprietary web-based system. Still another does everything via text message. Then there are rehearsal calendars from Opera Pacific, which are in constant flux. Those are only available in paper format. Then there are benefit performances, Angel Flights, family affairs, birthdays, anniversaries, SCR performances, and more. Currently, I...

Air on a Six-String

The Tiger Has Landed

I just returned from a 48 hour round trip to southern Florida to pick up a refurbished Grumman AA-5B Tiger and ferry it back to California. I’ll say this for general aviation, it’s always an adventure. I took a few photos, which are available here. My first thought after sitting down to memorialize the weekend: I’d forgotten how exhausting these transcontinental trips can be, especially when you’re dodging thunderstorms for 2000 continuous miles. Florida in late August — good times. The commercial flight out to Ft. Meyers was blessedly uneventful, but between the three hour time change and our 6:45 a.m. wheels up plan for Sunday morning, I was behind the curve even before we started. Fortunately the thunderstorms were confined to the...

Whatchamacallit

Ah, the minutia of aviation. A fellow CFI and I have been scratching our heads for the past month about the proper type designator for a DiamondStar. I’ve always thought it was DA40 and hadn’t heard anything to the contrary until someone recently said it was actually “DV40″. What the… Socal TRACON was queried during a flight today and confirmed it should be DV40. Now normally I don’t argue with the Feds, but I think Socal was mistaken. Diamond refers to it as a DA40 in manuals, on their web site, and on the aircraft itself. I just looked up the ICAO type designator for the DiamondStar and it shows as DA40. The Eclipse/Katana is a DV20, however. Try it yourself and enter “Diamond” as the manufacturer. The DiamondStar...

Airline Pilot or CFI?

This brilliant sketch manages to encapsulate my daily life as a CFI in the wilting summer heat. At 8 a.m. I’m Dean Martin. By 8 p.m., I’m Foster Brooks. Yes, it has quite a familiar ring to it, right down to the part about running an an hour and forty three minutes late for the next flight.

Another Reason to Fly GA

As a pilot, it’s my job to consider everything that might go wrong on a flight and have a plan of action for dealing with it. But I can honestly say I’ve never thought about this scenario: British Airways has issued an apology to a first class passenger on a flight from Delhi to London last week who woke up to find himself next to a dead body. The cabin crew had used an unoccupied seat in his row for the body of an elderly woman who had died in the crowded economy section about three hours after takeoff. Paul Trinder, 54, told the Mirror and Sun tabloids that he woke at 30,000 feet to discover the flight crew strapping the body into the seat near him. “I woke to see the cabin crew manoeuvring what looked like a sack of potatoes into the seat....

Legacy/Gol Accident: Ignorance Is Bliss

Selling crazy on the internet is nothing new, but for some reason it’s really getting under my skin as it regards the Legacy/Gol accident. I got into it the other day on an internet forum with someone who was sure the bizjet crew had to be at fault, yet couldn’t explain why. Can anyone out there explain to me why the Legacy crew was under house arrest for two months? Whatever the suspected cause of the accident, the detainment was a violation of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) 1963 Tokyo Convention, something to which every ICAO signatory subscribes. As far as I can tell, the crux of the detainment stems from the fact that “the pilots did not stick to their flight plan”. To those who are not aviators, that...

“Over The Airwaves” and the GA Fatal Accident Rate

Many of us in the aviation world have recently come to know the name Robert Miller.  Mr. Miller is an east coast CFI and the author of Over the Airwaves.  OTA’s masthead describes it as ”the bi-weekly journal for the proficient pilot”. I’ve been reading Over the Airwaves for about a year and find that I agree with Mr. Miller on many points.  He’s obviously dedicated to the issue of flight safety and a proponent of realistic, recurrent training which exceeds the Practical Test Standards and embraces the real-world aspects of flying. I continue to read OTA and learn a lot from it.  And I should note that his dedication to publishing Over the Airwaves is admirable.  One can’t help but stand in awe of the many hours it must take to...

Going Around

I see go-arounds all the time at John Wayne Airport.  And not just with general aviation aircraft.  The big runway is only 5700 feet long, so there’s not much room for error, especially with some of the larger transport airplanes that fly into the airport.  For example, FedEx sends a fully loaded Airbus A300 jumbo into Orange County each day.  As far as I know, that is the largest airplane to land at SNA. Anyway, the Southern California geography gives us a semi-permanent inversion layer, and it’s typically accompanied by a slight windshear at that altitude. Of course, sometimes that shear is stronger than others, and a few days ago I watched 6 airliners go around in the space of 30 minutes.  One of them was a Southwest 737 which turned final about...