“What the —!”  the learner cried out as we rolled out from landing.

Ahead of us some 1,000 feet down the runway there was a bald eagle standing on the centerline, scarfing down the carcass of what looked like a large white rabbit. We brought the aircraft to a stop as the bird stopped its feeding frenzy and hopped toward us, spreading its wings and obviously saying, “Come at me, bro!” in eagle. 

We had three choices: We could try to scare the bird away by heading toward it and run over the carcass in the process, go off the runway to the side and take our chances in the grass area that needed mowing, or we could do a 180-degree turn and taxi back. I chose door number three and in taking the aircraft demonstrated the pivot turn to the learner. 

As he taxied us back to the ramp, I got on the unicom and reported that there was an eagle parked on the runway. That brought out the airport manager with his truck and big shovel. He scared off the bird by waving the tool, then picked up the remains of the white rabbit and flung it into the woods on the east side of the airport. The eagle flew after the carcass. Within 10 minutes there was a warning on the one-minute weather about wildlife in the vicinity of the airport. 

The airport manager later told me that as it was May and the carcass was that of a white domesticated rabbit and figured it was a pet Easter bunny that had been dumped. Sadly, this happens a lot and pretty much condemns the animal to death. He also noted that there is no such thing as one rabbit, suggesting the abandoned pet was pregnant when it was left and likely mixed with the wild population, resulting in more rabbits. Their presence attracts the higher predators such as coyotes and eagles—two animals you definitely don’t want to hit with an aircraft. He was right. In the following weeks, there was an uptick in coyote and eagle encounters at the airport.

• READ MORE: FAA Researching UV LED Lights for Prevention of Increasing Bird Strikes

One of the most frequently asked questions is how much trouble would a pilot be in if they accidentally hit a bald eagle—or any animal for that matter. The answer is none. However, the FAA has provided us with guidance with Advisory Circular (AC) 150/5200-32B. 

According to the AC, pilots are asked to report encounters with all birds, bats, and terrestrial mammals larger than 2.2 pounds. That means if you hit a rabbit, muskrat, armadillo, fox, coyote, domestic animal, deer or something else with hooves, the FAA wants to know about it because it helps the agency create wildlife management plans to make airports safer. 

Additionally, biologists want to know about these things because it can help them track migratory patterns.

An increase in animal activity at an airport can also be a clue that there is something else happening on the property.

For example, when deer and elk started appearing en masse on the north end of the airport, the manager realized there was likely a hole in the fence against the tree line. There were thick trees on both sides of the fence, so getting to it involved making your way through a lot of slash and uneven terrain. But someone did it and had cut the chain-link fence intentionally.

Based on the tire tracks that appeared to be from ATVs—and the number of hangars that were broken into—it was suggested that someone was accessing the airport to steal tools and anything else they could sell for scrap metal. 

If You Hit an Animal

The AC has instructions on how to file a report and with whom. Pilots are asked to do this when “bird or other wildlife remains, whether in whole or in part, are found: (1) Within 250 feet of a runway centerline or within 1,000 feet of a runway end unless another reason for the animal’s death is identified or suspected.”

In addition, the FAA wants to know about it if “the presence of birds or other wildlife on or off the airport had a significant negative effect on a flight,” such as forcing the pilot to abort takeoff or the aircraft leaving the pavement to avoid a collision. 

You can report the event online at the Airport Wildlife Hazard Mitigation website or via mobile devices.

The Worst Thing to Hit

According to the AC, the animal encounters that are likely to result in the most damage are  white-tailed deer, snow goose, turkey vultures and Canada geese. 

I have encountered all of these, fortunately from a distance. Mostly we have geese in the Pacific Northwest, and airports invest a lot of time and money into methods to deter the birds from roosting there. This includes noise cannons, using an airport dog to chase them away, or having someone drive around in a golf cart to chase them away.

There are some airports that disguise ponds on their property by filling them with black or gray plastic balls (think the ball pit at a kid’s amusement center). From the air the birds see the black and gray and assume that it is cement, not water, so they do not land.

If you see a gaggle of geese near the runway, notify airport personnel before you take off or land. The staff will likely chase them off before you take the runway. Bonus note: If you land at an airport and see plywood dogs mounted on revolving poles in the airport grass infield, that’s a good indication they have bird issues. Birds see the faux dogs moving in the wind and avoid the area.

Avoiding Birds

You can decrease your chances of having a bird strike by avoiding places they congregate, such as bird sanctuaries. Pay attention to the altitude restrictions noted on the VFR sectional and terminal charts, especially along coastlines. 

Most birds fly at 2,500 feet or less, so flying higher than that can mitigate your risk. Be careful with flocks of starlings and seagulls as their numbers can create serious issues if you fly through them. If you see them on the ground, don’t buzz them. They will likely launch in a panic with disastrous results.

Unfortunately, most of our knowledge about bird strike avoidance is theoretical and anecdotal. Some pilots believe that turning on the landing light will deter birds because they will see and avoid the aircraft.

If you see a bird approaching head-on, pull up, being careful not to stall the aircraft. The birds often dive to avoid aircraft—so do bats. But sometimes you just don’t have the time to react. I speak from experience.

I was flying with a learner on downwind at an altitude of 1,000 feet agl when we saw a red-tailed hawk heading right for us. It had descended into the pattern, and it was going the opposite direction. It had its belly toward us, and it was flapping wildly. There was a thump, followed by a shudder in the airframe, and we felt and heard something roll over the top of the aircraft. I took the controls and gingerly tested the rudder and elevator while my learner looked outside for damage. We didn’t see any, and the landing was normal. After landing we discovered a small dent, and some blood and feathers stuck to the top wing next to the air vent.

We had noted where the strike took place, including the altitude and our airspeed at the time of impact. This information was used to fill out the FAA Bird/Wildlife Strike Report. 

We were lucky because we were not going too fast, and the bird did not hit the windscreen. The higher the speed, the greater risk of structural damage. GA aircraft windscreens are definitely not designed to withstand bird strikes.

The most important thing to remember if you encounter a bird strike is to fly the airplane. Pilots who have experienced bird strikes that resulted in significant damage tell stories of the aircraft “flying a little wonky” because of a big dent in the wing or tail and having trouble maintaining altitude if the windscreen is compromised.

But they lived to tell the story. That’s what’s important.

The post Avoiding and Surviving Bird Strikes appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Today on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, I’m at Homey Airport (KXTA), also known as Groom Lake, aka “Area 51.” I’ve come here to the remote Nevada desert to fly one of the most iconic top secret aircraft of all time: the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter.

The story of the F-117 begins in 1964, when Soviet mathematician Pyotr Ufimtsev published the paper, Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction. It demonstrated that the radar return from an object depended more on its shape than size. Given the technology at the time, Ufimtsev’s insight was dismissed as impractical in Russia. But by the 1970s, given friendly aircraft losses to SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) in Vietnam and the Middle East, engineers at Lockheed’s “Skunk Works”—famous for designing cutting edge military planes like the P-38 Lighting, U-2 spy plane, and F-104 Starfighter—began taking the idea seriously.

• READ MORE: Reaching Uncharted Corners of the Globe in a Fokker F.VII

One key to minimizing radar return was to replace conventional streamlined, rounded surfaces with flat, angled surfaces designed to scatter radar waves in different directions. The wings would be swept back at a steep angle, like an arrowhead, and the vertical stabilizer (tail fin) replaced by an angled V-tail, all to reduce its radar profile.

The two turbofan jet engines were placed above the wings to shield their heat signature from the ground. The flat, reflective surfaces of the turbofan itself were shielded by an intake grill (to the right).

The engines have special exhaust ports in the rear to shield and minimize the heat released. The F-117 has no afterburners to give it extra thrust, as this would defeat the purpose of nondetection.

Instead of slinging weapons and bombs outside the fuselage, they are stored in an interior bay, safe from radar detection. Even opening the bay doors dramatically increases the F-117’s radar profile, so it must only be done for a few seconds over a target. Additionally, the exterior surfaces of the F-117 are all covered in a special coating, designed to absorb and deflect radar waves. The fork-like prongs jutting from the front of the F-117 are sensors to detect airspeed, angle of attack, and other instrument readings. The F-117 has no radar, which would immediately give away its presence. The glass panel in front of the cockpit is an infrared “eye” that enables the pilot to see in the dark and guide bombs to their target.

The windows of the F-117’s cockpit are ingrained with gold, which allows radar waves in but not out. Examples of the F-117’s cockpit are now on display in museums, and the layout is fairly similar to other single-pilot combat airplanes.

• READ MORE: Exploring the Checkered History of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter

Initially a “black project” funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), starting in 1975, Lockheed cobbled together two prototypes under the code name “Hopeless Diamond,” which first flew in 1977. Although both prototypes crashed, the project was a sufficient enough success to proceed with a production model, which took its first flight from Area 51 in 1981. The first airplanes were delivered to the U.S. Air Force in 1982.

The radar-minimizing design features of the F-117 make it quite unstable to fly. In fact, it can really only be flown with computer assistance, using a fly-by-wire system derived from the F-16. Because of its difficult aerodynamics, the F-117 quickly gained the nickname “Frisbee” or “Wobblin’ Goblin.”

The shielding of its jet engines, and lack of afterburners, also means that the F-117 is subsonic (it cannot break the speed of sound), making it much slower than most conventional fighters. In fact, despite its designation, the F-117 is not a fighter meant to intercept and dogfight with enemy airplanes. It has no guns, and though in theory it could carry air-to-air missiles, its lack of radar would render them fairly useless.

• READ MORE: The Story of the Schneider Trophy and the Supermarine S.5

The “Stealth Fighter” is actually an attack aircraft or light bomber, intended to be used in covert missions or evade air defenses, mainly under the cover of night. Some say that the “fighter” designation was used to attract pilots to the program who would normally have preferred flying fighters over bombers.

After testing at Homey, the F-117 was assigned to a special secret unit at Tonopah Test Range, also in Nevada. A total of 64 combat-ready airplanes were eventually built. Throughout the 1980s, however, the F-117 was kept completely secret. While rumors and sightings of it abounded, the U.S. government refused to confirm that any such aircraft existed. The first acknowledged use of the F-117 in combat was during the U.S. invasion of Panama to topple dictator Manuel Noriega in 1989.

Before I elaborate on its combat history, I need to land this airplane. The F-117 doesn’t have any flaps or air brakes to slow it down. I pull the throttle back to nearly idle just to descend. The approach speed of the F-117 is really fast—around 250 knots—and it touches down at 180 knots. So on landing I pull a handle next to the landing gear to deploy a parachute, to slow me down in time.

Now let’s talk about the known combat record of the F-117. It’s 3 a.m.  on January 17, 1991. Just over a day since the coalition deadline for Saddam Hussein to withdraw his Iranian forces from Kuwait has expired. An F-117 flies over the desert just south of Baghdad.

F-117s are leading the first strike of the coalition air campaign in the first Gulf War, aimed at taking out key command and control installations in the Iraqi capital. With a radar reflection the size of a golf ball, the F-117 glides silent and unseen over the bends of the Tigris River toward its target. Meanwhile, Iraqi anti-aircraft guns fire blindly into the night sky—a scene I remember watching unfold live on TV as I sat in my college dorm room. Combat losses for the F-117 that first night were projected at 5 percent. In fact, every single one of them came back from their missions safely.

By the end of the first Gulf War, the F-117 had flown 1,300 sorties, hitting an estimated 1,600 high-value targets, with the loss of a single aircraft. Though some of its performance may have been exaggerated—initial estimates of 80 percent target accuracy were scaled back to 40-60 percent—the F-117 became a leading symbol of the U.S. technological edge that helped establish it as the world’s sole superpower going into the 1990s.

• READ MORE: Recreating the Final Flight of the Red Baron

Fast-forward to the evening of March 27, 1999. At Aviano Air Base in northern Italy, an F-117 prepares for another night of bombing Yugoslavia, as part of NATO’s intervention to compel Serbian forces to withdraw from Kosovo. The aircraft, call sign “Vega 31,” is flown by Lieutenant Colonel Darrell Patrick “Dale” Zelko, a Desert Storm veteran. His target is a command-and-control center in downtown Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Along with several other F-117s on similar missions, he will fly east across Slovenia and Hungary before refueling midair and turning south to enter Yugoslav airspace.

I’ve heard the story two ways. The first has Zelko approaching Belgrade from the northwest and being picked up by Serbian radar as he opened his bomb bay doors—presumably before he could hit his assigned target. The second version, which the pilot himself tells, has him skirting Romanian airspace and coming toward Belgrade from the east. He dropped his bombs on target then continued west to head back home. (From what I can gather, Zelko was actually quite a bit higher than I’m portraying here, and there was a cloud layer about 2,000 feet above the ground.)

Just south of the two in Ruma in the countryside west of Belgrade, a mobile S-125 Neva SAM unit detected the F-117, despite its stealth profile, and locked on. Two SAMs were fired. The first missed the cockpit by inches, and the proximity fuse somehow failed to trigger. The second hit one wing and sent the F-117 tumbling out of control. After an initial struggle, the pilot ejected, was able to evade Serbian ground forces, and was rescued by U.S. helicopters. Years later, Zelko met the man who commanded the SAM unit that shot him down, and the two became friends.

Interestingly, the U.S. did not take any steps to destroy the wreckage of the downed F-117. The official reason was that the technology was already out of date, and there was no rationale to fear it falling into enemy hands. While the F-117 Nighthawk was used in 2001 in Afghanistan, and again in 2003 over Iraq, it became increasingly clear that it was nearing the end of its useful days, soon to be replaced by newer aircraft like the F-22 and F-35 that incorporate further advances in stealth technology. In 2006, the U.S. Air Force announced that it was retiring the F-117 and began putting the fleet into storage. A few went to museums, and others began being scrapped.

However, in recent years, there have been a number of sightings of F-117s flying near Edwards Air Base near California’s Death Valley. Some were reportedly painted grayish white, earning them the nickname “ghosts.” It is widely suspected that these F-117s are taking part in exercises designed to train pilots to detect and intercept enemy stealth aircraft. For fans of the iconic “Stealth Fighter,” it’s gratifying to know that some of them still appear to be flying.

In its entire operational life, there was only one known F-117 shot down. Its time may have passed, but that’s a remarkable record.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here. This story was told utilizing Aerial Simulations’ F-117 Nighthawk add-on to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, along with liveries and scenery downloaded for free from the flightsim.to community.

The post Reenacting Bombing Missions in an F-117 Nighthawk appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

One of the greatest values of having a home flight simulator is being able to use it when you only have an hour—or less—of free time. Since you can easily select any two airports within a reasonably short flying distance of one another, sometimes the near-unlimited choice results in decision paralysis, especially after a busy day in the real world.

To mitigate that, I chose two short flights that can be accomplished in a normal evening’s flight sim session. My selection criteria was to fly my first flight in New England, between two airports that I flew out of when I was training to complete my private pilot certificate. The second flight was a departure and destination in a part of the world where I had zero experience and no prior knowledge of the topography. The idea was to use the first flight of the evening as a warmup with the familiar and then end the night with the challenge of the unknown.

This Article First Appeared in FLYING Magazine

If you’re not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for? Subscribe today to get the issue as soon as it is released in either Print or Digital formats.

Subscribe Now

Featured

To add to the fun, I met up with a friend of mine from college in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020) multiplayer environment so that we could pilot the flights together in a very loose formation. My friend was just getting back into flight simulation after many years away from the hobby. We used Discord, the free communication app, to stay connected during the flights. Although we flew on MSFS2020, these flights are software-agnostic, and you can easily fly them on X-Plane 11 or XP12. Across both flights, there was only a short time spent in cruise, allowing all phases of the flight to occur quickly, adding to the challenge of staying ahead of the airplane. As a result, both flights delivered adequate feelings of accomplishment and a chance to enjoy a fun, aviation-themed experience from home.

Flight 1, The Familiar: New England Island Hop

• Purpose: Sightseeing
• Software: MSFS2020 with free enhanced airports from www.Flightsim.to
• Route: Departed Nantucket (KACK) Runway 24 to Katama Airpark (1B2) Runway 3
• Aircraft: Cessna 208 Caravan
• Conditions: Summer; live weather, adjusted to midday at noon local time
• Distance: 22 nm
• Time en route: 14 minutes
• Modification: If you are interested in roughly doubling your flight time, I recommend you depart from Block Island (KBID), especially if you have never flown out of the 2,500-foot runway.

After getting Discord set up outside of the flight sim environment, we met up on the ramp at Nantucket, Massachusetts (KACK), using the multiplayer function in MSFS2020. My friend’s father was an active pilot during his childhood and even flew one of the B-17s that toured the country during the 1980s and ’90s.

Since we both share an interest in all things aviation, I jumped at the opportunity to welcome him back into the exciting world of flight simulation, especially considering all the advances made since the flight sims of our college days. Neither of us had tried the multiplayer function in MSFS2020 before, and I was eager to fly with some company since most of my flights from home are solo endeavors, save for the excitement and immersion offered by live ATC services provided by VATSIM and PilotEdge that I regularly layer into my experiences for added realism and a chance to practice on the radio.

• READ MORE: Our Pilots of the Future May Share Sim Stories

For our first flight, we selected the venerable Cessna 208 Caravan, a popular island-hopping aircraft with robust landing gear, which seemed like an ideal choice for our destination. Sitting in our cold and dark aircraft, my friend suggested that I try the digital checklist function in MSFS2020, which is accessed by clicking the icon in the menu bar near the top of your screen once you are loaded into an airplane. Having never flown the Caravan, the digital checklist features a small “eye” icon to the right of the instructions listed. Clicking the “eye” causes the camera to cleanly sweep to the individual button, switch, or lever you need to operate to perform the checklist item. Using the “eye” icon provided a visual flow of the checklist during engine start and helped me understand the layout of the cockpit and controls.

Alternatively, you can use your mouse or hat switch on your yoke to move the camera manually to each item in the cockpit, but the “eye” was much faster and more convenient. Many general aviation aircraft in MSFS and X-Plane offer in-depth systems modeling, making the start-up experience a learning opportunity for the curious sim pilot. On the evening before I try a new airplane, I search for a start-up procedure video on YouTube, just to get familiar ahead of time. @JonBeckett’s channel on YouTube offers both videos and checklists to help get you started. For many years, I used a physical paper checklist in-sim but recently started using the ForeFlight checklist function on the iPad mounted in my flight sim cockpit.

Even though it is another piece of technology to manage, I like the green check mark that is displayed next to each completed item in the ForeFlight checklist. This shows your progress, making it easier to see if you skipped a step. You can also edit a checklist in ForeFlight. I added reminders to complete a takeoff briefing before departure and tap the brakes during climbout to halt the wheels from spinning before raising the landing gear. The sim is an ideal environment to become comfortable with new checklist behaviors, and I have enough practice that I am ready to try it on a future real-world flight.

After engine start, my friend and I taxied our Caravans to Runway 24 for takeoff. We opted for a formation takeoff, and I found it very difficult to stay within 500 feet of my friend’s aircraft. I could immediately tell why formation flying requires a lot of training and how challenging it must be to hone this skill in the real world.

Departing KACK in the Cessna 208 Caravan

Once in the air, we turned west over the ocean toward Katama Airpark (1B2), located on the southeastern corner of nearby Martha’s Vineyard. A popular real-world New England fly-in destination, Katama features a short taxiway connected to a grass parking area right next to the beach, making it one of few beach-side general aviation airports accessible to private aircraft in New England.

I selected Runway 3 as I had landed on it a few times with my instructor during my private pilot flight training a decade earlier. I hadn’t been back to visit Katama in the sim yet, so I hoped my memory of the real-world location would help me with my visual approach. It was a short flight across Nantucket Sound, and I opted for a 2,000-foot cruising altitude, keeping our two-ship flight VFR below a broken line of puffy, fair weather clouds at 2,500 feet that stretched south of the island out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Turning Final for Runway 3 at Katama Airpark (1B2)

Since I use a single 4K 55-inch TV screen as my main monitor, I supplement my situational awareness with ForeFlight on my tablet and my Real Sim Gear G1000 PFD and MFD sitting in my Stay Level Avionix panel. Using all of this information together kept me from overflying the right-base-to-final approach turn, and I rolled out on a 3-mile final with “030” bugged on my heading indicator. Spotting Runway 3 is an interesting visual exercise in both the real and flight sim world.

• READ MORE: Taking a Virtual Flight with the Yawman Arrow

The runways at Katama are neatly cut from the flora of a large field. As there are fields that border the airpark on both the left and right sides, I double-checked to make sure I was lined up with the correct one.

Although Runway 3 is 50 feet wide and 3,700 feet long, it looks narrower and shorter from the air. The light winds kept the last few hundred feet of my approach stable, and I checked to make sure I was at 75 knots, with full flaps and prop full forward. I was interested to find out if grass had been modeled differently than pavement, as the surface in the real world typically requires a soft-field landing, slightly nose high, to minimize the vibration on the aircraft’s landing gear.

With one last trim adjustment before touching down, the Caravan’s muscular suspension deftly swallowed up any surface undulations that may or may not have been modeled, and I let the aircraft roll out to the end of the runway, where I turned around in time to watch my friend come in for his landing.

I particularly enjoy landing at airfields that I have flown into in real life, using the flight sim’s digital version as a bridge back to a memory from my real-world logbook. However, one of the many benefits of home flight simulation is the option to leave behind the familiar and try new destinations in unfamiliar parts of the world. The only cost is your time, and selecting from any of the 37,000 registered airports in MSFS2020 can spark some anxiety of choice, which often leads me to stay in New England, where I have the most real-world flying experience.

But such “comfort zone” behavior does a disservice to a world full of new airport destinations, re-created in impressive detail, waiting just beyond the click of a mouse.

Flight 2, The Unfamiliar: Skagway to Haines, Alaska

• Purpose: Sightseeing
• Software: MSFS2020
• Route: Departed Skagway (PAGY) Runway 20 to Haines (PAHN) Runway 26
• Aircraft: Beechcraft Baron BE58
• Conditions: October; live weather, marginal VFR, light rain, 4 p.m. local time
• Distance: 19 nm
• Time en route: 15 minutes
• Modification: Consider departing from PAHN and then returning to Skagway (PAGY) to try landing on Runway 2. The airport at Skagway sits at 44 feet msl but is ringed by 5,000-plus-foot peaks, making it an intimidating approach but visually stunning.

My friend from college spent part of his formative years living outside of Seattle. An Alaskan cruise with his wife found them departing as passengers in a single-engine GA aircraft out of a small airport called Skagway (PAGY), located roughly 65 nm north of Juneau in a mountainous and glacial region of Alaska near the Canadian border and Coast Mountains. It would have taken me decades of sim flying to find Skagway, and when my friend described the unique geography of steep mountains rising around three sides of the airport, it sounded like the ideal unfamiliar departure point for our next flight.

With live weather enabled, my friend and I met up on the ramp in marginal VFR conditions with light rain and 3 miles visibility. Despite the weather being definitely below my personal minimums in the real world, the conditions gave us a chance to test our visual navigation skills as we flew down the Taiya Inlet to Haines Airport (PAHN). Climbing out of Skagway in the MSFS Baron, I had all the de-icing equipment and pitot heat on as a precaution and was cruising at 3,000, well below the 5,000-foot ridges, to avoid the clouds.

The light rain stopped, and the weather in-sim improved as we approached the town of Haines, and I had a clearer picture of the mountain peaks through the remaining tattered clouds. Beautiful was an understatement, and I used my camera commands to look out over the wings for a better view. The geography of Haines was no less striking than Skagway, and both airports should be on your short list if you have never explored Alaska in the real world or flight simulator. MSFS pulls local METARs when using live weather, and I cross-referenced the information on ForeFlight. The winds were coming from the west out of 220 degrees at 23 knots, providing a 40-degree left crosswind for landing on Runway 26. We chose a flight path that had us make a right turn over Haines toward the airport located northwest of town. My friend opted for a 3-mile right base to final.

Wanting a closer view of the mountains to the west of the airfield, I flew southwest over the Chilkat Inlet. Being mindful of the peaks to the west and blowing snow that was starting to lower visibility, I turned back toward the airport and descended to traffic pattern altitude, which I had set using my altitude selector on the Garmin G1000 PFD. I entered the pattern using a standard 45-degree entry to a left downwind for Runway 26. Consequently, that also gave me a great view of my friend’s aircraft on final approach.

We kept it mostly quiet on the comms for landing, but my friend mentioned the strong crosswind on final. Turning from left base to final, I double-checked that my fuel selectors were on, verified my gear was down, mixtures were set to full, and I moved the Baron’s props to full forward. The strong westerly wind was pushing me off the centerline of 26, which I started correcting with rudder and aileron. I opted for approach flaps only and worked pretty hard to touch down on the left rear wheel first. My Virtual Fly YOKO+ flight yoke builds up mechanical resistance as you approach the edges of the control travel, providing valuable immersion during high workload moments like short final. I landed a bit off the centerline but kept the Baron out of the snowy grass and taxied to the end of the runway, having needed most of the 4,000 feet available.

The unfamiliar geography, marginal VFR conditions, and crosswind on final provided plenty of challenges for a short flight, reminding me how much the home sim experience has to offer. Add to that the unexpected challenges of live dynamic weather, and there were a lot of variables to be managed during the 20-minute flight.

Sometime this winter when the weather in the real world is below your minimums, load up MSFS or X-Plane and try one of the innumerable short flights to a new destination. I hope you enjoy the exploration. Let us know your favorite short flight aircraft/airport combination by writing to edit@flying.media.

Quick MSFS2020 Tips

Visit www.flightsim.to and search for the airports you will be using for your flight. The flight sim community has built enhancements of all kinds to the base Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 sim experience, including both free and payware.

You may find free upgraded airport scenery that you can download and place into your MSFS2020 community folder so that it will be loaded automatically for your flight. Run a search for how to find your community folder, and then set the location as a favorite so you can find it easily in the future.

This column first appeared in the January-February 2024/Issue 945 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Here Are 2 Quick VFR Flights to Try on Your Home Flight Simulator appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Redbird Flight Simulations and the Recreational Aviation Foundation (RAF) have launched a new initiative that will foster the creation of training materials supporting recreational flying, including backcountry trips.

“The pilot shortage has caused many flight training providers to focus their operations primarily on recruiting and training professional pilot candidates,” said Charlie Gregoire, Redbird’s president and chief operations officer. “Consequently, pilots interested in pursuing recreational flying opportunities are left with little support beyond the typical $100 hamburger run. This new initiative with the RAF will broaden exposure to the many flying activities outside of training for a new certificate or rating, and arm pilots with information for how to approach them safely.”

• READ MORE: Recreational Aviation Foundation Remains the Sum of Its Hearts

Since 2006 Redbird has been building basic aviation training devices (BATDs) and advanced aviation training devices (AATDs) to supplement the educational process. The AATDs are used around the world by pilots, flight schools, colleges and universities, and K-12 programs.

The RAF was founded by a group of Montana pilots who realized that the threat of recreational airstrip closures was of national concern. The group is dedicated to preserving existing airstrips and creating new public-use recreational airstrips throughout the U.S.

The two entities are creating a catalog of resources covering topics such as practical flying skills and habits, planning and preparation, basic survival and first aid, and gear recommendations and usage.

Among the topics to be presented are: 

• What to pack and avoid packing for recreational flying adventures
• How to evaluate a potential landing zone
• How to read the wind without ATIS (or even a windsock)
• When to land (or not land) with a tailwind
• Nonstandard traffic patterns
• Basic first aid and triage
• Leave-no-trace and good-neighbor flying

How It Will Work

Over the next 18 months, Redbird will be releasing the material in written and video formats at no cost to pilots or training providers. In addition the organizations are collaborating on the creation of training scenarios for Redbird’s subscription-based personalized proficiency training app, Redbird Pro.

• READ MORE: We Fly: The RAF at 20 Years into Moose Creek

“This partnership with Redbird is exciting and yet one more piece in the aviation puzzle,” said John McKenna, RAF chairman. “We hope this excites a few more folks about aviation and perhaps the joy of recreational flying.”

For those lucky enough to be at this week’s Sun ‘n Fun Aerospace Expo in Lakeland, Florida, Redbird has a special edition of its MX2 aviation training device with a custom RAF livery on display to raise awareness of the initiative. The organizations are showcasing it in the Redbird booth (NE-51, NE-52).

In July, the device will be on display at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Pilots and prospective pilots are welcome to demo the device and try their hand at a series of recreational flying scenarios.

The post Redbird, Recreational Aviation Foundation Partner to Boost Backcountry Flight Training appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The Sun ‘n Fun Aerospace Expo is always a busy time for aircraft manufacturers, and it certainly has begun that way for Piper Aircraft. On Tuesday, the first day of the show, the Florida-based manufacturer announced the sale of 10 aircraft to Hillsboro Aero Academy (HAA) in Oregon.

According to Piper, HAA has purchased five Archer TX and five Pilot 100i aircraft, with the first delivery scheduled for early 2027.

• READ MORE: Piper Announces FAA Type Certification for M700 Fury

“We’re excited to collaborate with Hillsboro Aero Academy in supplying cutting-edge training aircraft and look forward to welcoming them into the Piper Flight School Alliance,” said Ron Gunnarson, Piper’s vice president of marketing, sales and customer support. “Piper is known for providing flight schools with durable and reliable trainers, and we’re confident these aircraft will help them grow their mission to provide thorough and cost-effective flight training to students in the world’s finest training aircraft.”

• READ MORE: A Virtual History of the Piper Cub

Hillsboro Aviation Academy was established in 1980 and over the decades has trained pilots in both airplanes and helicopters from 75 countries. The school has two locations for airplane pilot training in Hillsboro, west of Portland, and in Redmond, Washington.

“Our commitment at Hillsboro Aero Academy is to provide top-notch training for our students, and these new aircraft will be pivotal in achieving that objective,” said Nik Kresse, vice president of airplane operations at HAA. “We are pleased to announce the purchase of these 10 new aircraft from Piper and look forward to this new partnership.”

Diesel and DeltaHawk Engines

The sale to the flight school wasn’t the only news Piper announced Tuesday. The company has also entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Wisconsin-based DeltaHawk Engines.

According to Piper, the MOU will facilitate a collaborative effort aimed at exploring the feasibility of integrating DeltaHawk’s diesel engine into Piper’s PA-44 Seminole aircraft.

“We are thrilled to collaborate with Piper Aircraft on this exciting project,” said Christopher Ruud, CEO of DeltaHawk. “Our advanced diesel engine technology has been developed to meet the evolving needs of the aviation industry, and we see tremendous potential in integrating it into Piper’s PA-44 Seminole.”

The MOU outlines the development of a supplemental type certificate (STC) for the installation of DeltaHawk’s diesel engine into both new and retrofitted Seminole aircraft. The Seminole is one of the most popular multiengine trainers in existence and is used by flight schools around the world.

DeltaHawk  manufactures FAA-certified, jet-fueled piston engines for GA aircraft and hybrid power systems. 

• READ MORE: DeltaHawk Adds 2 More Engines

“We are excited for this collaboration to install the DHK engine into the Seminole for many reasons, especially knowing the reliability of DeltaHawk’s engines.” said Marc Ouellet, Piper’s vice president of engineering and manufacturing. “Working with DeltaHawk on this project aligns with our mission to explore cutting-edge technologies that can deliver significant benefits to our customers and the industry as a whole.”

The post Oregon Flight School to Buy 10 Piper Aircraft appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Instrument pilot trainees on all seven continents now have the opportunity to improve the quality of their instruction using the ICARUS Smart View Limiting Device. 

Nick Sinopoli, the inventor of the ICARUS Device, a high-tech view limiting device, knew this only too well after losing a friend in an aviation accident in 2016.

ICARUS was introduced to the training environment three years ago and is now used around the world by both the military and private sector.

The company recently delivered an ICARUS Device to Helicopter Resources, a company that provides services to government organizations in Antarctica. The area is about 40 percent larger than Europe and about as remote as can be imagined. There are no roads, so helicopters are crucial to bringing in provisions for the 5,000 who live there as part of various research operations.

• READ MORE: ICARUS Device Enhances IFR Training

About the Device

The name ICARUS is an acronym, standing for Instrument Conditions Awareness Recognition and Understanding System. Sinopoli, who is rated in both helicopters and airplanes and holds an engineering degree from Purdue University, designed the device so that visibility is gradually reduced. It almost sneaks up on a pilot, just as it often happens in the real world and sometimes leads to accidents when the pilot loses situational awareness, especially in marginal VFR.

How It Works

According to Sinopoli, the ICARUS Device is made of a polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) film that the pilot wears in front of their eyes, either clamped onto a hat or headset or clipped into a flight helmet. 

The PDLC is battery powered, and the device is paired with an app controlled by the flight instructor. The instructor can degrade the visual conditions gradually, allowing the client to experience the sensation of a sudden loss of outside visual cues while flying in the actual aircraft. 

There is also the option for the CFII to press a button to bring on clouds. The rate and amount of occlusion can also be adjusted by the instructor for a more realistic IFR experience, such as the sudden loss of outside references when marginal VFR turns into IFR.

According to the company, there are 500 ICARUS devices in use around the world in every kind of aircraft from a Cessna 172 to a CH-47 Chinook Helicopter.

The device sells for $1,250 and comes with a three-year warranty.

The post ICARUS IFR Training Device Delivered to Antarctica appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

One of the laws of learning is that it requires repetition, drill, and a lot of practice. It takes as much time as it takes to learn a maneuver, and more time and practice to gain proficiency, yet there are some student pilots and CFIs who resist repetition, insisting that the maneuver has been learned and can be flown to standard after one lesson.

This is dubious at best, and can be an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias where people with limited competence in a particular domain—like flying—overestimate their abilities. It is particularly common with someone who took lessons in the past then returns to it decades later. It can be difficult to accept the fact there is some rust on those skills.

• READ MORE: What You Need to Know Before Flying into Sun ‘n Fun

In this way, aviation is very similar to athletics. While you lettered in (insert sport you played in high school or college) some time ago, it probably wouldn’t be realistic to expect that same level of performance today. 

Poor performance in sports can be embarrassing and ego and body bruising, but rarely are the failures as high stakes as they are in aviation.

Similar Learning Process

Learning to fly is a lot like learning to play a sport. You begin by learning the fundamentals. In flying, you learn how to taxi, use the rudder pedals and throttle, and how to move the yoke or stick. In sports, you learn how to hold the bat, throw the ball, etc. With both activities most of us are clumsy at first, but with practice, repetition, and drill, you get better. Both athletics and flying take a good bit of hand-eye coordination, and you may find rekindling your playing of the sport improves your cockpit performance.

The role of the coach is similar to that of the flight instructor. If they are good at their job, you will remember what they taught you, even many years later. While it may have been awhile since you played, as life got in the way, expect there to be rust. But, if you were taught well, the skills will come back, provided you practice, and if necessary, are prepared to relearn things.

The athletics analogy is particularly poignant because I have just returned from playing in a field hockey tournament in British Columbia, Canada. For the unfamiliar, field hockey is a cross between soccer and lacrosse. I learned to play in high school but had to drop it after college.

• READ MORE: How to Make Sure Your Cross-Country Hours Count

It is very much an East Coast sport, so I was excited when I found a team to play with in Seattle. I am a goalkeeper for the Seattle Women’s team, and I returned to field hockey just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. And like a pilot who has not flown in years, there was a learning curve.

For starters, the equipment had changed significantly. The sticks are now composite, not wood, and the goalkeepers wear a lot more protective gear. Back in the day, I relied on a mouthguard, a padded glove, and a high pain tolerance in case the kickers and leg guards made of canvas and cotton batting around bamboo didn’t do the job. Today, goalies wear padded pants, kickers, leg guards, and hand protection made of nylon, rubber, and plastic. In addition, I have a helmet, throat guard, and body armor. When I saw the updated gear, I felt a bit like a pilot who learned to fly on steam gauges with a magnetic compass and an ADF for navigation who was now facing a Garmin avionics suite.

It had been so long since I played field hockey that I had to watch videos to relearn how to put on the gear and move in the goal cage. Kick and clear, shuffle, drop into the protective stance, etc. These are the basic moves, like climb, turns, and descents in aviation.

At practice, our coach leads the team through drills that benefit both the offense and defense. These are basically scenarios we will face in a game. It is not unlike pilots practicing steep turns, slow flight, traffic patterns, stalls, and emergency descents—things we could use on every flight.

• READ MORE: The Potentially Deadly Distraction of Social Media

Like flying, field hockey has a certain amount of risk: That ball hurts when it hits you, even with the protective gear. Some of those women players—like that gusting crosswind—are downright intimidating when they charge the goal cage. A few times I have been tempted to ask, “Do the Valkyries know you took the day off?”

I am supposed to stop the ball and clear it from the defense area with the kickers, my stick, or the mitt on my left hand. I have to read the situation, just like a pilot needs to when they are coming in for a landing—do I add power or flaps, or leave it be? If I lose situational awareness (where did that ball go?) or when there is a pileup in the cage (and we have them, trust me), someone—most likely me—might get hurt.

The only way to lessen the risk is more practice and drill so we are prepared as a team for any situation. It is sort of our version of knowing when to go around.

I find it useful to watch field hockey training videos before practice, just as I watch and recommend my learners view aviation training videos of the maneuvers we will be flying. This is particularly helpful for the learners who haven’t been in an airplane for months or even years.

Preseason Training for the Pilot

If you are returning to flying after a long hiatus, it may be useful to approach it like an athlete returning after the offseason. Here are some tips:

• Make the time to watch an online ground school that covers the basic maneuvers, procedures, and knowledge you will need to be a safe and effective pilot. There are several to choose from: Gold Seal, King, and Sporty’s to name a few. Find one you like and commit.

• Pay attention to the procedures for the maneuvers. A good majority of the physical skills we learn are acquired in part by watching someone else demonstrate it. At least it gives you an idea, then you supplement this knowledge by reading the pilot’s operating handbook (POH) for the aircraft so you have an idea of the metrics for takeoffs and landings, such as the appropriate speeds. Emergency procedures are also in there and should be memorized so you act rather than react in an emergent situation.

• Choose your instructor carefully. Find someone who loves aviation as much as you do and wants you to return to the sky rather than pad their logbook.

• Be patient with yourself. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes in the cockpit—but learn from them.

The post Flying with an Athletic Mindset appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Does it seem like there are more student pilots in the air these days? According to FAA data, there are.

The agency issued 69,503 student pilot certificates in 2023, up 24 percent from 2022.

A deeper dive of FAA’s civil airmen data shows the bulk of the certificates were issued in June (7,162) and August (7,813).

• READ MORE: The Cautionary Tale of the Destruction of Meigs Field

The June starts are no surprise. Student pilot starts usually increase in the spring as the weather improves. People receive introductory flights as graduation presents, Mother or Father’s Day gifts, or they decide to use their tax return to check that item off their bucket list or begin a new career.

The August figure may be associated with the beginning of the academic year at Part 141 colleges and universities.

Tips for Finding a School

You cannot control the weather, maintenance issues, or scheduling, but you can manage the amount of effort put into learning. To expedite your training, you will want to fly at least twice a week, although three times is better to make steady progress. Ensure the school has an adequate fleet and enough instructors to go around. 

• READ MORE: The Potentially Deadly Distraction of Social Media

When you do your research, find out how many learners (the FAA’s official term for student pilots) and renters the school has as well as how many airworthy airplanes and active instructors are on staff. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where there are 40 student pilots and seven instructors and only three airworthy aircraft. 

Don’t be surprised if there is a waiting list for training. Many programs at both Part 141 and Part 61 schools cap their enrollment to protect the limited resources of instructors and aircraft.

Also, find out if you can rent aircraft for solo flight after you have obtained your certificate. Some schools are so busy that they only allow active students to rent for solo flights. Find out in advance so there are no unwelcome surprises.

The post FAA Data Shows Student Pilot Numbers on the Rise appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In 1981 when the first Microsoft Flight Simulator was born, I was a young teenager—the spirit of adventure and realism of flight hit me like a storm. Suddenly, my intense model railroad hobby, complete with a huge basement layout, took a back seat. This technical marvel, hosted on this heavy, metal box of a newfangled PC, captured my heart and imagination forever. I wonder if my parents were grateful for this weekend “babysitter” as my dad hauled his computer home from his office for me to play with on Friday nights. It certainly kept me home and out of trouble, with no mischief or calls from the local police late at night.

I was obsessed. Once college approached, I knew I was going to become an airline pilot, and I wouldn’t stop until I was an old man flying a Boeing 747. I was originally going to go to college to become a TV meteorologist, but failing grades in math kept that dream far away. I found it much easier to get into a state college with an aviation program, so off I went to one in New England to become a pilot.

This Article First Appeared in FLYING Magazine

If you’re not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for? Subscribe today to get the issue as soon as it is released in either Print or Digital formats.

Subscribe Now

Featured

While earning all my primary ratings, private through commercial and CFII, Microsoft Flight Simulator was right there with me. It provided all I needed for that extra boost when studying ILSs, holding patterns, VOR tracking, stalls, slow flight, cross countries, and more. Once the newer versions of MSFS were released (these major new versions were anticipated and sold in PC software stores in malls back then), it would cause so much excitement and anxiety for me that I’d be prepared to drive hours to get the coveted box in hand before the stores ran out, or other friends I knew grabbed theirs. Then the worries over computer strength and how the new version would run upped the anxiety. But it was a fun time back then, one that blew past any young child’s Christmas morning memory on any new release day.

After acing my IFR rating (the CFIs never understood how I knew all this stuff prior to beginning flying), my next big “ace event” was years later during my first real job as a Cape Air captain flying a nine-seat Cessna 402. I had to go for weeks of indoc and training, and my monthlong-stay hotel room was filled with some great multiengine hardware. Throttle quadrants, rudder pedals, and all were a fixture in my small room along with the PC. Today, I highly recommend the Sporty’s Pilot Shop Flight Sim Starter Set—quality Honeycomb equipment—or FLYING’s custom rig.

• READ MORE: Ultimate Realism ‘X-posed’ in 747-200 Classic

Some fellow classmates came to observe or try engine failures in a Cessna 421 add-on, the closest thing we had to the lower-powered 402. But it all worked and made sense. My multiengine failures and a simulated ATP check ride—complete with many single-engine NDB approaches to minimums in the real airplane—all seemed easy to me as I was able to fly all this before. The heck with imaginary “armchair flying”—I had the real thing in my hotel room as far as I was concerned.

Years later, once again another big event was my initial type rating in my first jet—the Beechjet 400A—in Wichita, Kansas. Most folks get a full initial type school of more than three weeks for most bizjets. However, my Part 135 boss was a cheapskate (imagine that) and wanted me typed within a four-day recurrent session the other pilots get every year. That was a lot to accomplish. The instructors said they didn’t think I could do it, as nobody gets a type off a recurrent session. And since it was my first jet rating, I had to take the four-day FMS ground training event as well.

Learning an aircraft FMS is the hardest thing for new jet pilots, and I had no time to learn it. Well, I said let me try the sim and see how I do in the FMS. I had a secret weapon nobody knew about. I had been using an FMS for years in MSFS, thanks to PMDG (www.PMDG.com), the makers of the finest Boeing airliners for the sim platform. Once I was in the real Beechjet sim, I discovered, sure enough, the FMS is exactly like the one in the Boeing jets. Even the glass cockpit was similar. The instructors were dumbfounded as to how I could suddenly bang away at all the keys, programming and modifying all the while learning to fly the jet. I let the cat out of the bag and told them, thanks to me being a geek on MSFS, I had learned all this years ago. They’re reaction was “no way” … but I was told to go ahead and skip the FMS course. I got my type rating in four days!

There was a fairly good Beechjet add-on for MSFS2004 made by Eaglesoft, and I used it during this training event and subsequent recurrents as I became a captain for the 135 outfit I flew with for several years before getting a new type rating on a big, beefy Dassault Falcon 2000 eventually. Sadly, no Falcon products existed for any sim platform, so I was a bit overwhelmed during that initial type rating. But, as most flying jobs change, so did this one. I was suddenly changing jobs and getting typed in a Hawker 800 series—a bit of a step back from the big Falcon.

Now, once again I had the sim advantage as one did exist from designer Carenado (www.carenado.com). The Hawker 850 was out for MSFSX at the time, and it was excellent in preparing me for the overall layout, look, and feel for learning the cockpit. However, it was not too big on exact systems modeling, so I used it as more of a visual familiarization tool than anything else, as well as for some basic flying qualities I believed were probably modeled pretty well.

Soon that 135 job ended, as those old 800s were poorly maintained and most flights were an exercise in using the emergency section of the POH. So I quit, only to find a job flying a much newer, late model Hawker 850, exactly as I had in MSFSX. This was a hoot. The newness and power was so much greater than the older sister. But that new boss suddenly traded in the 850XP for a big, powerful Challenger 300. This was the pinnacle of my career back then, and I had yet another sim weapon—the incredible Challenger 300 for X-Plane 11.

This favorite of many was sadly discontinued years ago, but I used it to the fullest extent while it was available. Systems, operations, layout, and flying quality were all simulated. I became extremely familiar with the CL300 during this time, and once I was type rated and flying the real thing, I became a reviewer of the X-Plane version. I was even able to help the author a bit on tweaking some parameters to better equal the real jet.

But the more I flew the real thing, the more I realized how well done the X-Plane version really was. I used to think it was too powerful, easily performing initial climb rates hitting 10,000 fpm, then I found out, yes, indeed the real thing does it too. What a ride!

Now that sims have helped me learn the real aircraft I fly, what about other stuff? How about life and death? Through no fault of my own, or perhaps a clumsy error, or maybe being even wreckless a bit while flying on the PC, I have found myself in sudden potentially dangerous scenarios that require immediate thinking and problem solving. I often leave the airplane on autopilot to do other things but have returned on a few occasions to discover one or more engines have failed for some reason. In jets it could be because of high-altitude weather, lack of anti-icing items being used, or other issues. Now I must think and react as a real pilot.

Even without a checklist at hand, it’s a brain exercise that is nothing but beneficial. So in a way, that is an actual emergency not planned at all and definitely a surprise. In smaller airplanes I have experienced total loss of power, so a visual landing off airport is an incredible “big picture” situational awareness type of tool that’s very realistic. I have written about such emergencies in past issues of FLYING’s digital platform.

Actual live weather feeding can provide an unexpected moment. So now, it’s time to dig out approach plates or perhaps attempt a visual with terrain. How about a planned emergency? Sure can. Options in either MSFS2020 or X-Plane 12 (XP12) give you the ability to randomly have a failure of anything you choose at a specific time, keystroke, or random period. XP12 goes farther and gives you the chance of random bird impact and resulting crisis, with hundreds more just waiting for you to activate. During jet recurrent events, we practice multiple engine failures at V₁, so that is easily something I’ll do in the sims at home.

Get a friend involved to secretly program something bad to happen. Back when I was a single guy and had a fellow roommate pilot pal (Rob, this is you) whom I taught how to fly, we’d call these randomized, intentional moments of doom “horror flights.” We’d set up the other guy while he wasn’t looking to have to fly the Cessna 182 and have total electrical failures combined with vacuum failure at night. Looking up to see nothing but a turn coordinator to live by is terror in IFR. Use engine sound for rpm and wind noise for pitch. If the outcome was bad, we’d throw each other down the stairs to simulate a crash and resulting injury. This added to the fun and realism. I don’t think any of us really lost too much blood.

I have been to many airfields in the real world where I’ve experienced that “been-there-done-that” feeling. Places like KASE, KTEX, KHSP, KJAC, KVNY, KSFO, KTRK, CYVR, PHLI, and dozens more where, if it weren’t for the sim, I’d be a level behind. Most involve high terrain or odd procedures. My first European trips in the Challenger were done in MSFS or X-Plane. Any new places I know of that I am heading to will be at least seen virtually before going in real life.

Every sim session is educational and keeps the brain in “big picture” mode. SA, or situational awareness, is key. I have flown with so many other pilots that lack this skill or are somewhat always behind the jet. A home simulator keeps these skills sharp. You’re always thinking ahead about “What if…?”

You don’t even need the latest MSFS or X-Plane to do this—or a fancy PC. Any version would do. I’d go as far as to say some of the big picture things can even be accomplished with an air combat sim. If you’re always thinking and doing, planning and preparing with a home flight sim, you’re leaps and bounds ahead of the traditional “armchair” pilot.

Going from class to a hotel room, sitting in a chair with a cockpit diagram in hand, isn’t going to cut it. You’re missing the other half.

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Healthy Obsession: What Flight Sim Has Done for Me appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“Do you mind if I take a video of the pattern and the landing?” the learner asked, holding up his smartphone.

“How are you going to do that and fly?” I asked.

“I want you to fly it and I will video it so I can study it later,” he said.

This seemed like a good plan and we did it. This was before GoPros, and it was the first time I used video as an educational tool in the aircraft. 

These days lots of pilots have cameras in the cockpit. It can be a double-edged sword.

“The pilot was an influencer and routinely recorded flights that were shared to his/her social media.” How many times have you read something like this in an accident report either compiled by the nonaviation media or the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)?

Documenting Distraction

It’s easy to become distracted or get behind the airplane during a flight, and posting video on social media can make the pilot’s mistakes public in a big way. An example of this is the accident involving YouTube influencer and vlogger Jenny Blalock.

In 2021 Blalock, from Knoxville, Tennessee, was beginning her aviation journey and shared her experiences on her YouTube channel, “TNFlygirl.” Sadly, Blalock, 45, and her father James, 78, were killed on December 7 while flying her 1965 Beechcraft 35-C33 Debonair. The aircraft was equipped with a 260 hp Continental IO-470 engine, making it a high performance aircraft. It was also equipped with an autopilot, which if several of Blalock’s videos are any indication, was proving to be more of a distraction than a help in the aircraft.

At the time of the accident, Blalock had posted on social media that she had approximately 400 hours of flight experience and was looking forward to earning her instrument rating. However, some of the videos posted before the accident show a pilot who appears to be behind the aircraft —a Debonair is a lot of airplane, and things happen quickly.

• READ MORE: The Cautionary Tale of the Destruction of Meigs Field

A video shot about a year before the accident shows Blalock getting lost while attempting a flight in VFR conditions from Rockwood Airport (KRKW) to Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (KDKX) in Tennessee. Her father, who was not a pilot, was her passenger. The total distance of the flight is 40 nm, basically due east.

During the takeoff roll, Blalock incorrectly accounts for a crosswind by holding the yoke so the aileron on the side with the wind is down, opposite of what it should be. A few minutes later, she realizes she is headed southwest and turns to the northeast. She tries to use the autopilot, remarking, “see where it takes us,” then realizes it’s taking them to the right. Her father calls her attention to the highway beneath them, remarking they are going in the wrong direction and that they are heading west rather than east. The rest of the video shows her trying to figure out the use of the autopilot and where she is while the aircraft wanders, all the time within visual range of KRKW— the airport they took off from. Yet, she doesn’t appear to know where she is.

What is particularly disturbing is that in addition to looking out the window to see the airport they just departed from, the cockpit was equipped with a magnetic compass, a horizontal situation indicator (HSI), GPS, and what appears to be a tablet with ForeFlight. While the magenta line can be a crutch and a lazy way to fly, hitting “DIRECT TO” your destination airport will assist with situational awareness. If the GPS shows you the course is due east, you have to be west of the destination airport.

• READ MORE: Is a Medical Certificate Required for a Private Pilot Check Ride?

There are pilots who watched this video after the accident and wondered why the FAA didn’t take action. 

“The pilot in command is responsible for the safety of the flight,” the FAA told FLYING. “This includes ensuring there are no distractions on the flight deck. FAA inspectors do not proactively monitor social media accounts in search of violations. However, if someone reports an alleged violation to the FAA, inspectors will review a variety of information sources during their investigation.”

This may mean a review of the other videos.

In the weeks prior to the accident, Blalock had posted videos showing her experimenting with the aircraft’s manual trim and autopilot. The aircraft did not have electric trim. The videos show her struggling to make manual trim adjustments to coordinate with the autopilot.

In most cases, trim can be a pilot’s friend, as it can be applied to relieve control pressures, making for a smoother, less fatiguing flight. But it can also turn into an enemy, and you find yourself fighting the airplane to maintain nose up or down.

Trim as a Possible Factor in the Accident

According to the NTSB preliminary report, the weather was VFR with light winds when Blalock and her father launched from KDKX , heading to Saline County Regional Airport (KSUZ) in Benton, Arkansas. SkyVector shows the straight-line distance between the two points is 431 nm. The purpose of the flight was to take the aircraft for an avionics upgrade.

Shortly after takeoff, Blalock obtained flight following. The flight data shows that approximately an hour into the flight the aircraft began a series of altitude fluctuations, ultimately concluding in a 12,000-feet-per-minute dive at an estimated speed of 228 knots from which the aircraft did not recover. There was at least one distress call made before contact was lost.

• READ MORE: Beware of Perpetual Students and Endorsement Hunters

The NTSB examination of the wreckage revealed that the elevator trim was set to a 5-degree nose-down setting, but it was not determined if manual activation of the trim setting resulted in an automatic disengagement of the autopilot. This would likely result in a series of pitch oscillations as the aircraft would be out of trim. 

The NTSB is still investigating the accident, and the final results are likely more than a year away. For now, what we can take from the videos and preliminary report is that a pilot needs to know when and how to disengage the autopilot and fly the aircraft by hand. Know where the activation switch and the circuit breaker are. If the autopilot runs away, or is otherwise malfunctioning, pull the circuit breaker.

In at least one of the videos Blalock posted, she appears to be looking for the circuit breakers in her aircraft in midflight.

Think Before You Post

There has been at least one pilot who allegedly intentionally crashed an airplane for “views” on social media. Others post when they have an incident, like clipping an outcropping with a wingtip.

Maybe these events were not done intentionally, but posting them certainly was deliberate. We all make mistakes, and the lucky pilots live to tell about them. Remember, you are working hard to be a pilot, so don’t jeopardize it with a poor decision made public.

The post The Potentially Deadly Distraction of Social Media appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Purdue Global and Questar III BOCES have formed a partnership to bring hands-on aviation education to high school students through a program aimed at putting them on a path to flight training and careers in aviation.

Questar III is a Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) agency that provides instructional and support services to 22 public school districts in New York’s Rensselaer, Columbia, and Greene counties. Questar’s aviation program includes classroom curriculum and flight training to 11th and 12th grade students.

• READ MORE: Purdue Global, Pilotsmith Form Flight Training Partnership

Purdue Global is Purdue University’s online program for working adults who are seeking flexible paths to a range of university degrees.

The aviation program has partnered with authorized flight schools in the Albany, New York, area where students can begin their flight training. While enrolled, they can work toward earning their private pilot certificate and instrument rating. The program reduces training costs and gives students the advantage of experience when they graduate.

The program is offered at no cost to families and is one of only a few available to high school students across New York state. Nearby Purdue Global alliance partner Hewison Aviation will provide opportunities for students to continue their education after high school.

• READ MORE: Epic Flight Academy Partners with Purdue

Through the partnership, Questar graduates who are admitted and pursue a Purdue Global degree in professional flight or aviation management will receive eight college transfer credits for earning their private pilot certificate. Students who earn instrument ratings will receive an additional 15.5 transfer credits when they enroll.

Students who continue flight training while enrolled with Purdue Global will have the opportunity to receive up to 45 additional transfer credits with the completion of the FAA certificates and ratings, including private, instrument, commercial, multiengine, and CFI.

“We are thrilled to partner with Purdue Global on this initiative,” said Questar III BOCES district superintendent Gladys Cruz. “It provides a new pathway for our aviation graduates to continue their education with one of the most mature and prestigious collegiate aviation programs in the country—and accelerate towards their careers as professional pilots.”

Purdue Global’s professional flight degree program is a collaboration between Purdue Global and Purdue University’s School of Aviation and Transportation Technology in West Lafayette, Indiana. It combines the quality of the university’s well-known aviation program with Purdue Global’s flexibility and affordability.

“We are pleased to join forces with Questar III BOCES through recognition of prior learning in both the professional flight and aviation management program,” said Sara Sander, Purdue Global vice president, dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and interim dean of the School of Aviation.

The post Purdue Global and Questar III BOCES form Aviation Education Partnership appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Do you know someone who is a perpetual student pilot? 

Perhaps they have held a student pilot certificate for several years—and have completed most, if not all the requirements for the private pilot certificate—but they are reluctant to take the check ride. It isn’t a case of running out of money or not having the time to fly. The delay in taking a check ride could be a case of not having confidence. 

The CFI endorsement for the check ride is good for 60 days. Ideally, you would have been in touch with the designated pilot examiner (DPE) and set up the check ride before the CFI signed you off.

Be careful about self-imposed delays. You don’t want to lose your proficiency, and if you delay, you may find your knowledge test that was good for 24 calendar months has expired or your medical certificate has turned into a pumpkin. If your solo endorsement, which is good for 90 days, expires, and the CFI perceives you have been dragging your feet, don’t be surprised if the instructor is reluctant to sign you off for another 90 days. This is especially true if you are training under Part 61, where the CFI is responsible for every person they endorse for solo. 

• READ MORE: How to Find Your Best Ground School Fit

A colleague faced this with a learner who owned his own aircraft. The learner had fulfilled the requirements for the private pilot certificate and flew twice a week, so it wasn’t a matter of being unproficient. He just didn’t want to take the test. There were 20 days left on the check-ride endorsement when the CFI gave the learner another 90 solo endorsement with a warning that this was the last one. I believe the phrase “put on your big boy pants and go take the check ride” was used. The CFI told him he would not endorse him again. The learner admitted he was nervous about the check ride and lacked confidence. The response to this was a barrage of mock check rides with different instructors. Although we didn’t have to endorse him, when three others gave the blessing, he felt ready to go.

Don’t Be Pushy

The opposite of the learner lacking confidence is the impatient, pushy student who shops around for endorsements.

They are in a hurry and have a “check-the-box” mentality. They may challenge the CFI and try to bully the instructor into supplying the endorsement for the check ride. It’s not just private pilots either. A colleague working with a multiengine instructor (MEI) candidate received an email from a local DPE who wanted to know why he had not signed the applicant’s 8710 application for a new instrument or rating. The perplexed would-be recommending instructor replied “because we’ve only flown twice, and he’s not even close to being ready. ” When confronted, the MEI candidate somewhat sheepishly admitted he figured if the DPE assigned him a test date, the instructor would have to sign him off.

Shopping for Endorsements

When a CFI endorses your logbook, their signature is a statement confirming that based on their observations, you are competent to do that particular activity. If the CFI hasn’t flown with you, don’t expect them to endorse your logbook. Yet there are some learners who go from CFI to CFI looking for a flightless endorsement or a quick flight and a quick signature. These learners can be almost predatory, looking for a CFI they can persuade to sign them off with minimal effort.

A private pilot applicant whom I had never flown with wanted me to endorse him for the check ride. He was frustrated because although he had achieved the experience requirements, his CFI refused to sign him off. He thought it was a personal grudge on the part of the CFI. I was skeptical. I knew the CFI and asked for their perspective. He said that although the applicant had logged the required experience, his ground knowledge was soft in spots, and his airmanship was “hit or miss” at best. The CFI told the learner he needed more practice to meet the standards, and once the learner met them, the endorsement would be forthcoming. The learner had burned through two other CFIs at the school. He had a pattern.

• READ MORE: Who Is Teaching? Low Time and Social Media Make for a Bad Combo

I did a mock check ride with the learner. Some things he did very well—others not so much. I saw the soft spots and made suggestions as to how he could improve. This was not what he wanted to hear. The learner had a bad case if “my other CFI said.” He had done much of his training in another state, and when a different CFI pointed out the soft spots or things that needed improvement, the learner would reply defensively, “It was good enough for (names previous instructor).” Maybe it was; maybe it wasn’t. But at this point at this time, the minimum standards were not being met, so no endorsement was given.

The learner verbalized his frustration and made an appointment for another flight, then was a no-show. He disappeared for a few months, returning when most of the cadre of CFIs had turned over. He had a tendency to approach the younger, more inexperienced CFIs, claiming a CFI who had “just left” “forgot” to endorse him. He played the same game with solo endorsements—he needed those to rent aircraft.

The local flight schools began to warn each other about him. He had a tendency to try to bully the dispatchers. Some had notes posted at the front desk warning not to rent to him. It took him more than four years for him to finish his certificate—he ended up going to an accelerated program out of state.

• READ MORE: Redbird: Learning to Fly Has Gotten More Expensive

It’s not just the younger, inexperienced CFIs who are the targets of the endorsement hunters. It’s the out-of-practice, return-to-the-fold CFIs who can fall prey as well. A recently retired 777 captain who returned to active instruction after a 20-year hiatus gained a reputation for being quick to endorse, particularly with first solo learners.

“How do you get through all 15 things in 61.87 in a one-hour flight?” I asked when I learned he had endorsed a Part 61 learner who had just four hours dual logged and was only a third of the way through the private pilot pre-solo syllabus. 

The retired 777 captain gave me a blank stare. They had done a few laps in the pattern, he said,  and that was good enough for him. He’d also neglected to give the learner the pre-solo exam. The flight school owner and the chief instructor pulled him aside for some education. He explained that “things were different from when he taught back in the day.” 

The post Beware of Perpetual Students and Endorsement Hunters appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Today in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 I’m going to be flying the Fokker F.VII, one of the world’s first civilian airliners that blazed new paths to uncharted reaches of the globe in the hands of aviators like Richard Byrd and Charles Kingsford Smith.

Anthony Fokker was Dutch, born in the colonial East Indies. In 1910, at age 20, he moved to Germany to pursue his interest in aviation. He soon founded his own airplane company there, and during World War I it designed a number of successful and famous fighter planes for the Germans. Fokker himself was an accomplished pilot. I wrote a previous article on the Fokker Dr.I triplane, which you can check out here.

• READ MORE: Recreating the Final Flight of the Red Baron

After losing WWI, Germany had to surrender all its warplanes and aircraft factories, including Fokker’s factory, under the Treaty of Versailles. Fokker, however, was able to bribe railway and border officials to smuggle some of his equipment back to his native Netherlands. That equipment allowed him to reestablish his company in Holland and design the Fokker F.VII, a single-engine transport for the fledgling postwar civilian market. I’m in one of those models here, in KLM colors, at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport (EHAM).

The F.VII’s fuselage was fabric stretched over a steel-tube frame. Its wings were plywood-skinned. The original, single-engine version of the F.VII was powered by a variety of different models of radial engines, which ranged from 360 to 480 hp. Inside there was room for eight passengers, as well as a bathroom (the door to my right here).

The cabin was connected to the two-man cockpit by a little door under the fuel tank and starter switches. On the instrument panel, from left to right: oil pressure and temperature, altitude, another oil temperature gauge, air speed indicator (with a turn indicator below it), clock, and rpm tachometer. Around the cockpit you can see all the wires and pulleys connecting the controls to the flight surfaces outside. Turn or push the yoke and they quite clearly move. Fly by wire, indeed. The compass is basically a bowl with a magnet floating in it.

The designer of the initial F.VII was Walter Rethel, who was later hired by Willy Messerschmitt and went on to design the famous Bf 109, the main German fighter at the start of World War II.

With a single engine, even a fairly powerful one for its time, the Fokker F.VII didn’t exactly spring off the ground. It lumbers into the air and climbs gradually. Nevertheless, in the early 1920s, the F.VII became a successful early passenger transport for early airlines such as Dutch KLM and Belgian Sabena. Here I am flying over the historic center of Amsterdam.

In 1924, the F.VII even introduced flights from Amsterdam to the East Indies. Needless to say, it wasn’t nonstop and could take many days.

In 1925, automakers Henry Ford and his son Edsel began the Ford Reliability Tour, a challenge for aircraft to successfully complete a 1,900-mile course across the American Midwest with stops in 10 cities. To compete in Ford’s challenge, and make the airplane more reliable in general, Fokker had the F.VII redesigned to have three engines, adding two mounted on the side struts. The new F.VIIb/3m, decked out here in Sabena colors and flying over Brussels, became immediately popular, with 154 built. Each of the three engines was a 200 hp Wright J-4 Whirlwind.

• READ MORE: Exploring the Checkered History of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter

Belgian tycoon Alfred Loewenstein, calculated to be the third-richest man in the world at his peak in the 1920s, even owned his own private Fokker F.VII. Flying over the English Channel in 1928, he had one of the most unfortunate bathroom breaks in history. You see, the door to the bathroom (left) is directly across from the door to the outside (right). It seems Loewenstein opened and walked through the wrong one and fell to his death in the water below. Though to this day, some still suspect it was murder. There’s even a book about this incident, The Man Who Fell from the Sky by William Norris.

If that were the sum of the F.VII’s history, it might be pretty uninspiring. But to tell the rest of it, I’m here at Spitsbergen in Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard for Byrd’s flight to the North Pole. Richard Byrd was a U.S. naval officer who commanded air patrols out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, during WWI. He played an active but supporting role in the first attempts to cross the Atlantic by air, and in 1926 had his big shot at fame. His Fokker F.VIIa/3m, mounted on snow skis, was named the Josephine Ford, after the daughter of Edsel Ford, who helped finance the expedition.

This was a two-man expedition, with Byrd accompanied by Navy Chief Aviation Pilot Floyd Bennett. The passenger seats were torn out and replaced with extra fuel tanks and emergency supplies.

The inside of the cockpit is quite similar to the one-engine version but with three separate throttles and tachometers (showing rpm). There was no airport in Svalbard at the time, so they had to take off from a snow-covered field—hence the skis. Byrd’s flight, from Svalbard and back, took 15 hours and 57 minutes, including 13 minutes spent circling at their farthest north point, which Byrd claimed, based on his sextant readings, to be the North Pole.

Did he really reach the North Pole and become the first to fly over it? This remains hotly disputed to this day, with some researchers claiming that he faked his sextant readings and fell short of his goal. In that case, the true prize would belong to Norwegian Roald Amundsen, already the first to reach the South Pole by land, in his airship Norge.

• READ MORE: The Story of the Schneider Trophy and the Supermarine S.5

A few observations about flying the Fokker F.VII, at least in the sim. First, it’s not very stable, in the sense of wanting to correct back to straight and level flight. It’s sensitive to being loaded either nose-heavy or tail-heavy and requires a lot of control input. Second, that big wing really likes to glide. To descend without overspeeding, I basically have to put all three throttles back to idle and glide down.

Last, there are no differential brakes and no tailwheel. That makes the F.VII extremely hard to control on the ground, even just to taxi. That’s especially true on snow skis.

Whether Byrd truly did reach the North Pole or not, he became a huge national hero when he returned to the U.S. Byrd and Bennett were both presented with the Medal of Honor by then-President Calvin Coolidge at the White House.

The following year in 1927, Byrd outfitted a new Fokker F.VII/3m, named America, to bid for the Orteig Prize, promising $25,000 for the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris (or vice versa). Anthony Fokker himself had recently moved to the United States and was part of the team preparing Byrd and his crew—the odds-on favorite—for the Atlantic crossing. During practices, however, America—piloted by Fokker himself—crashed, injuring both Byrd and Bennett and postponing their attempt. As a result, while America was being repaired, Charles Lindbergh—an unheard-of underdog—made the flight solo in the Spirit of St. Louis, becoming an aviation legend.

• READ MORE: Simulating a Bombing Raid in an F-16

The Fokker F.VII would still achieve fame, though, crossing a different ocean at the hands of Australian pilot Charles Kingsford Smith in 1928. If you’ve ever passed through Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport (YSSY) and wondered who it’s named after, you’re about to find out. (If you’re an Australian, you already know).

Movie star handsome Smith, known as “Smithy,” fought as a combat engineer at Gallipoli in WWI but soon joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot. He was shot down, injured, and returned to become a flying instructor in Australia. From that day, Smith had a dream to cross the Pacific Ocean by air from the U.S. to Australia. By 1928 he was ready to try to achieve that goal. That’s why I’m here at Oakland Municipal Airport (KOAK) in California, where he took off in his Fokker F.VIIb/3m Southern Cross. Not unlike Byrd’s airplane, the inside has been altered to make space for extra fuel tanks.

At 8:54 a.m. on May 31, 1928, Smith and his four-man crew lifted off from Oakland on the first leg of their journey to Hawaii. At the time, flying to Hawaii, much less Australia, was an extremely daunting prospect. While they had a radio with limited range, there were no radio beacons to guide them. They could only estimate a course based on the latest, often inaccurate, weather reports over the Pacific and hope that unexpected winds wouldn’t blow them off course and make them miss Hawaii entirely. As they flew over the Golden Gate— the bridge hadn’t been built yet—they knew that several aviators before them had estimated wrong and simply vanished into the vastness of the Pacific.

The first stage from Oakland to Hawaii covered 2,400 miles and took 27 hours and 25 minutes (87.54 mph). It was uneventful. But one can only imagine their joy as they arrived here over the northeast shore of Oahu.

They landed at Wheeler Army Airfield in the center of Oahu. The Southern Cross was the first foreign-registered airplane to arrive in Hawaii and was greeted at Wheeler by thousands, including Governor Wallace Rider Farrington. Smith and his crew were put up at Honolulu’s pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel to rest for the next stage.

• READ MORE: A Virtual History of the Piper Cub

The runway at Wheeler was too short for the Southern Cross to take off fully loaded, so they flew to Barking Sands on the west coast of Kauai, where a special runway had been constructed. They took off from Barking Sands at 5:20 a.m. on June 3, bound for Suva in Fiji.

The journey from Hawaii to Fiji was 3,155 miles—the longest flight yet over continuous seas. It lasted 34 hours and 30 minutes at an average speed of 91.45 mph.

Halfway across near the equator, the Southern Cross encountered a tropical thunderstorm. Keep in mind, the crew did not have the benefit of an artificial horizon. The only way it could keep level, flying blind, was keeping a close eye on airspeed, altitude, and the inclinometer (or turn indicator). Somehow, the crew weathered the storm and kept going.

The crew undoubtedly felt great relief when it spotted the green landscape of Fiji ahead. There was no airport at that time, so the Southern Cross landed on a cricket field. Once again, it was far too small to use to take off again, so after a few days’ rest, the crew relocated to a beach from which to depart for the next and final leg of the journey. Leaving Fiji on June 9, the aviators embarked on their final 1,683-mile stretch home to Australia.

Once more they encountered storms, which blew them nearly 150 miles off course. Even when the weather was clear, the unrelenting and trackless ocean must have been overwhelming.

The Southern Cross reached the Australian coastline near Ballina, well south of its intended target, and turned north toward Brisbane. As the crew reached Brisbane, it was greeted by an aerial escort. The goal was Eagle Farm Airport northeast of the city—now the location of Brisbane’s main international airport.

The Southern Cross had flown 7,187 miles (11,566 kilometers) in 83 hours and 72 minutes. The Pacific Ocean had been conquered by the air for the very first time. A crowd of 26,000 greeted Smith and his crew when they touched down at Eagle Farm.

Smith died in 1935 at 35 when his airplane disappeared over the Indian Ocean while attempting to break the England-Australia speed record. His career was filled with both triumph and scandal, but he is still considered Australia’s great aviation hero. If you visit Brisbane’s airport, you can still see the real Southern Cross on display in a dedicated hangar.

The Fokker F.VII continued as a popular airliner into the 1930s. However, the vulnerability of its fabric-and-wood construction became apparent following a 1931 TWA crash that resulted in the death of famed University of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. As a result, the Fokker F.VII gave way to all-metal airliners such as the Boeing 247, Lockheed L-10 Electra, and eventually the DC-3.

One of the most popular early successors to the Fokker F.VII was the Ford Trimotor, basically an all-metal version of the F.VII. For all their sponsorship, the Fords seem to have gotten something out of it in the end. Anthony Fokker, nicknamed “The Flying Dutchman,” lived most of the rest of his life in the U.S. and died at  49 in New York in 1939 from pneumococcal meningitis.  

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here. This story was told utilizing the “Local Legend” Fokker F.VII add-on to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, along with liveries and scenery downloaded for free from the flightsim.to community.

The post Reaching Uncharted Corners of the Globe in a Fokker F.VII appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Textron Aviation, the parent company of Cessna Aircraft, has announced an agreement to supply California Aeronautical University (CAU) with 15 Cessna Skyhawks, with first deliveries beginning in 2027.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled to announce this acquisition of Cessna Skyhawks, which marks a significant milestone in our commitment to providing top-tier aviation education,” said Matthew Johnston, president of CAU. “These new aircraft will help elevate our flight training degree programs, ensuring our students receive the best possible learning experience and preparing them for successful careers in the aviation industry.”

• READ MORE: Cessna 172 Skyhawk Avionics

According to school officials, the aircraft will be utilized at their locations in Bakersfield, San Diego, and Ventura, California, as well as in Mesa, Arizona.

The new aircraft will add to CAU’s current fleet of Skyhawks and Beechcraft Barons. School officials say the flight program continues to grow, and the aircraft are necessary to help maintain an “optimal student-to-aircraft ratio at the university.”

Backbone of Training Fleet

Designed in the 1950s, the Cessna Skyhawk, also known as the C-172, has been the backbone of the training fleet for more than 60 years. It’s difficult, almost impossible, to find a pilot who hasn’t logged time in a Skyhawk. The design began with a round-dial panel, manual flaps, and straight tail. Today it features the shark-fin tail and a full-glass panel sporting Garmin G1000 NXi avionics with wireless connectivity, standard angle-of-attack display system, and proven dependability. The aircraft is equipped with a McCauley aluminum fixed-pitch propeller and a 180 hp Lycoming IO-360-L2A engine.

• READ MORE: ATP Flight School to Add 40 Cessna Skyhawks to Training Fleet

According to Textron, more than 45,000 Skyhawks have been delivered around the world.

“For more than six decades, the Skyhawk has been at the forefront of innovation, empowering aspiring pilots and setting new standards in flight training,” said Chris Crow, vice president of Textron Aviation piston sales. “We are delighted to continue inspiring the journey of flight by providing California Aeronautical University students access to the most-produced, single-engine aircraft globally.”

The post California Aeronautical University Expands Training Fleet With Skyhawk Buy appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Are you actively enrolled in flight training? What do you think of the experience so far?

Redbird Flight Simulations asked questions along these lines for its annual report on the state of flight training.

Redbird’s 2024 report was culled from survey responses that included questions about the frequency of training flight, use of a syllabus, and how busy flight schools are to name a few.

The report consulted CFIs who work at flight schools from the mom-and-pop variety with a handful of “seasoned” trainers to the larger academy style with 20 or more later model aircraft.

• READ MORE: EAA Education Center Continues to Expand with New Investment

This year 1,701 people responded to the survey, representing a 57 percent increase over 2023.

Student pilots were put into three categories: active, lapsed (have not flown within three months), and prospective. Active pilots were defined as a certificated pilot who has flown in the past 12 months but isn’t receiving training toward a new certificate or rating.

The survey took information from student pilots, lapsed and prospective pilots, flight instructors, and designated pilot examiners.

Among the findings, according to the 27-page report, are that flight schools are busier than they have been before—so much so that some have waitlists. Of those surveyed, 70 percent received flight training, 49 percent received ground training, and 18 percent received a new rating or certificate.

The survey found the cost of training has increased—you’re looking at $14,000 for a private pilot license (PPL), taking an average 24 weeks. Last year, training costs for a PPL averaged $12,500. According to the report the most expensive certificate is the commercial pilot license (CPL), costing $15,000 and requiring an average training time of 18 weeks.

According to the survey, 48 percent of the pilots flew one to 50 hours in the past year, and 28 percent 50 to 100 hours.

At least 83 percent of the active students did their training at one flight school with more than one primary CFI, and 57 percent were on the professional pilot track.

• READ MORE: FLYING’s Flight School Guide

When asked to rate their CFIs on a scale of 1 to 5, the average rating was 4.3 while the flight schools received a 3.6.

The survey also asked about the use of simulation technology for flight training. According to respondents, students and prospective students placed a higher value on its use than many instructors.

The survey also took note of the challenges facing flight training. Both flight schools and independent CFIs noted they had concerns about aircraft insurance, maintenance challenges, and pilot examiner availability. The schools also reported some concerns about finding and hiring qualified flight instructors.

• READ MORE: What Is the Right Age To Start Flight Training?

The report did not address CFI turnover. This can have a dramatic impact on the quality of instruction given, as it takes awhile to learn to be an effective teacher. According to the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators and the National Association of Flight Instructors, many CFIs actively teaching have less than a year of experience as flight instructors. 

The Redbird survey also determined that getting CFIs to use a syllabus is still a challenge as 32 percent of the learners surveyed said their CFI didn’t use one.

Designated Pilot Examiners (DPE) were also included in the survey. The average number of applicant tests conducted in one year by full-time DPEs was 245, while part time DPEs did 130 tests. When asked about the quality of applicants as compared to five years ago, 45 percent of the DPEs stated the applicants were worse and cited a lack of preparation of the applicant followed by a lack of skill as the dominant factors in check-ride failures.

More information about Redbird’s “The State of Flight Training” 2024 survey and report may be found here.

The post Redbird: Learning to Fly Has Gotten More Expensive appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Recently I was reunited with a former classmate I have known since grade school. We had the same teachers who inspired us, and we both became teachers ourselves.

We agreed there were times when compulsory education seemed tedious, and there was the added challenge of having transportation to get to school, wearing “the right clothes,” etc., which was often a distraction. We both could have done without a lot of that, and agreed the experience would have been better experience with the option for remote learning.

But this was a time when we still had telephone booths and blue mailboxes on corners. The digital age was not yet upon us, and the term “online” applied to fish.

That has all changed now, as online classes are as common as rocks on the beach. If you are considering taking ground school, and have a choice of face-to-face or online, consider this: The material presented will be the same, but the delivery and learner responsibilities are a bit different. It will come down to what works for you.

Face-to-Face

This time of year, ground school enrollment tends to increase as the good flying weather is just around the corner. Before you invest your money (and it will probably be  a few hundred dollars) and time, there are some things to think about.

Do you have the time to commute to a face-to-face class? Or will you be rushing from work to the airport? Will the class schedule interfere with already planned vacations or home projects?

Most face-to-face ground schools are 10 weeks long, consisting of about four hours of lecture and five to six hours of studying. You will definitely get more out of the class if you do the assigned reading before the lecture. If you cannot make this commitment, this may not be the right time for you to enroll. Keep in mind that many FBOs do not give refunds for ground school, even if you have to drop out due to an unforeseen circumstance, like an illness in the family.

Also, some face-to-face courses have minimum attendance rules. For example, if you miss more than X number of classes, you are not allowed to continue, or you may not get the endorsement at the end of the course that allows you to take the knowledge test. That endorsement, by the way, is only good for 60 days. Consider that when you make your plans.

Before you sign up, find out who is teaching the course and if they have experience as a ground instructor—not a flight instructor—beyond the pre-brief and post-brief. It is very discouraging to enroll in a ground school that turns out to be little more than a CFI reading out of a book or the slides off a computer screen. Ground school should be a lecture, discussion, hands-on experience, and if the CFI is good, memorable in a positive way.

To the learners, hear this: Teaching someone to fly an airplane is a lot easier than teaching in a classroom. You show the learner what to do, and they do it. There are many CFIs who avoid teaching ground school because they know it isn’t their skill set. There are others who think repeating something louder and slower is teaching. It really isn’t, but that may be the education model the CFI was trained under.

Online Courses Offer Control

The beauty of online courses is that the learner controls the pace and time of instruction. You could binge watch, doing five lessons in one night, or spread it out to two a week. Don’t try skipping ahead in these courses, however, as they have algorithms baked in to record how much time the learner spent in that lesson. A warning box will pop up telling you that you are going too fast. It also records if you skip something, so don’t even try it.

With online courses you can go back and watch a lesson if something doesn’t quite click. Many online courses provide a way for you to contact a CFI to clarify a concept.

If you are enrolled in a Part 141 program at an FBO or college, it may use a specific online course. It likely dovetails into the syllabus.

If you’re training under Part 61, you have more freedom, and you may want to test fly each course—most allow you to sample a few lessons for free—before you commit.

Some learners get the most out of mixing ground schools. One of my current learners is using Sporty’s Online Private Pilot course and Gold Seal at the same time. Both courses have the same material but are organized differently. This immersion seems to be working for her.

One of the bonuses of online ground school is that often you can revisit the lessons even after you have received your certificate. This refresher, while not required by the FAA, is often the mark of a good pilot. If it has been awhile since you did a soft field takeoff and you plan to fly to a grass strip, review that lesson to make sure no knowledge has been lost. Remember, pilot proficiency begins on the ground.

More Specialty Training

Many online education providers also have specialty courses, such as preparing for your flight review, tailwheel training, or backcountry flying. It’s also a way to sample a different kind of flying without getting anywhere near an airport.

If this is your first endeavor into ground school, trial and error is probably the best way to determine what works for you and what doesn’t. Good luck, and may learning take place.

The post How to Find Your Best Ground School Fit appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

You have probably heard the saying “failure is a key to success.” That’s a simple way of saying that you will learn more from your mistakes than from your successes.

Learning to fly is rife with opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them. Your flight instructor’s job is to make sure the mistakes don’t bend the aircraft or you.

Cultural Bias

In some cultures it is considered insulting to the teacher if the learner does not understand something. They will say they understand when they do not. This often results in unfortunate situations, so please, please, please, if you do not understand something or you are unsure, let your CFI know. A good CFI will break down the process to see where you got lost. 

Sidenote to CFIs: Repeating something louder and slower does not help someone learn. All it does is signal to the learner that you are getting frustrated with them.

• READ MORE: Always Remember to Taxi with Care

Self-Imposed Pressure

In my more than 20 years of flight instruction, I have found that people who are successful in other aspects of their life, such as their career or school, can get very upset when they struggle or make a mistake in the airplane. Please understand that aviation is not a “pay-your-fee, get-your-B” activity. As far as the translation of career success into the cockpit, if your career requires significant hand-eye coordination and multitasking—such as operating heavy machinery—there may be some positive transference. If the self-reported success is defined by a fat paycheck or owning a chain of businesses, it might be more difficult. Be gentle with yourself, especially if you are an older learner, because it has probably been awhile since you learned a new skill. Rejoice in the learning process.

Also, if you become frustrated, please don’t take it out on your instructor, and instructors, please choose your learners carefully. Most CFIs get to a level of experience where they realize after a few minutes they are not a good fit for a particular learner. Saying “I am not the right instructor for you” solves this problem.

Forgetting the Checklist

Instructors can address this by modeling good checklist use during all facets of flight. As learners tend to emulate their instructors, if you encounter a learner or pilot who tosses the checklist in the back seat after takeoff, there’s a good chance they learned it from their CFI.

Steering with the Yoke on the Ground

This is the classic beginning pilot move for the learners who already know how to drive. It’s the Law of Primacy in action. This is why many CFIs teach taxing the first time by having the learners either sit on their hands or instruct them to keep arms folded on their chest.

Riding the Brakes During Taxi

Taxing is about energy management. It’s often helpful for the CFI to handle the energy for the first part of the taxi lesson to demonstrate what it takes to get the aircraft moving.

Failure to Get a Preflight Weather Briefing 

Because you can drive in rain and fog, and airliners takeoff in rain and fog, some learners are surprised to find primary flight lessons are VFR dependent and require certain visibility and cloud clearance requirements. They may show up at the airport when the visibility is zero-zero.

One of the first ground lessons that should be taught is how to access a weather briefing and interpret it. The weather minimum for flights away from the airport, as well as those that are better suited for staying in pattern, are discussed. 

Fumbled Radio Calls

Everybody stumbles on the radio at first. Evvvvvverybody. Knowing what to say, when to say it, and who to say it to can be a challenge. Talking on the radio is a form of public speaking, and some people are terrified of it. It takes practice, but no one has ever been physically hurt from stumbling on the radio.

• READ MORE: Can You Pilot an Aircraft While Wearing a Cast?

Bounce Landings

Come in too fast or flair too high and you will bounce the landing. The first bounce is often followed by the first go-around. Learning usually takes place quickly.

Trying to Stretch the Glide with Back Pressure

This is a mistake that needs to be corrected immediately. Many CFIs take their learners up to a safe altitude and have them put the aircraft into the landing configuration and try to “stretch the glide,” which usually results in a power-off stall. These accidental stalls can be frightening, so the CFI should brief the learner about what is going to happen and how to recover from it.

Poor Rudder Use

Many learners over-control the aircraft with the yoke or stick because they haven’t been introduced to the rudder. One way to teach rudder use is to trim the aircraft for level flight and have the learner fly a rectangular pattern just using the rudders. The CFI may want to demonstrate a skid just so the learner feels and sees what it looks like.

Failure to Study the Syllabus

You will get more out of your flight lessons if you study the material that supports the lesson. When a learner doesn’t do the required studying, whines about having to read, or calls it boring, it’s a pretty good indication they are not taking their flight training seriously. As long as the learner understands that failure to study will slow their progress toward obtaining a pilot certificate, they can stretch it out as long as they want. The CFI will still get the hours.

Thinking You Have Mastered a Maneuver in One Lesson

You will learn a maneuver or task during one lesson then practice it in subsequent lessons. When you get close to solo, you may spend the entire hour in the pattern.

Repetition is the key to mastery. You will be practicing maneuvers over and over again. Refer to the Airman Certification Standards to determine if you have reached minimum acceptable levels of performance.

Failing to Use Reference Materials

If you have a question about a certificate requirements or regulations on how to log time, etc., look it up in an FAA-approved source, such as the Federal Aviation Regulations/Aeronautical Information Manual (FARAIM) instead of posting a question to social media or relying on “a guy you heard from.”

This is particularly true for the CFIs. We’re supposed to know where and how to look things up and teach that to the learners. Warn your clients to never rely on “my instructor told me,” because things can get lost in translation, such as the learner who insisted her CFI told her to always take off with the wind at her back.

• READ MORE: Never Let Them See You Sweat as a CFI

Trying to Force the Solo

There are learners who read stories online or hear from other pilots who claim to solo in six hours. I know they exist. I have met them. I also know a few of them learned to fly in the 1940s in a J-3 Cub or sitting on their father’s lap in the family airplane.

Solo takes as long as it takes, and there are 15 things you need to know how to do (and do consistently) before we cut you loose in the pattern. Check FAR 61.87 for details.

We Expect Mistakes

Unless you do something especially foolish—like arguing when you are told to go around—it is highly unlikely your instructor will become cross with you for making a mistake. That’s how you learn.

That’s not to say we don’t become frustrated when we’ve gone over the same topic or maneuver multiple times. In those situations, that’s when the CFI needs to figure out a better way to teach it or suggest a change of instructor because we are just not getting through. The learning process is about the learner’s needs, not the CFI’s.

The post Mistakes Are All a Part of Learning appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

My introduction to the world of aviation occurred on an afternoon in fall 1990, when I was 7 years old. I remember it clearly. My childhood best friend and I were taken to the local movie theater in Concord, New Hampshire, to see Memphis Belle. Although it was rated PG-13, my best friend’s father was our chaperone, and I believe he hoped the film would open our eyes to the seriousness of air combat. He was a U.S. Navy pilot during Vietnam, flying the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, and served as a captain at Delta Air Lines, flying the McDonnell Douglas MD-80.

At the beginning of the film, a B-17 returning from a World War II mission makes a low pass over the Memphis Belle’s aircrew playing touch football at their base, signaling the return of the squadron. The beautiful shape and proportions of the B-17 and the unmistakable sound of those four Wright R-1820 engines thundering over me in the theater made the most indelible impression, and my love for aviation began at that very moment.

This Article First Appeared in FLYING Magazine

If you’re not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for? Subscribe today to get the issue as soon as it is released in either Print or Digital formats.

Subscribe Now

Featured

In spring 1991, David Tallichet, the pilot/owner of N3703G, one of the B-17s flown in the film—the other was Sally B—brought it to Concord Municipal Airport (KCON), and I waited in line one rainy afternoon to tour the interior with my mother and grandfather, all three of us climbing up the steep ladder into the hatch located below the cockpit on the pilot’s side. One of my favorite early memories was pausing with my grandfather behind the pilot’s seat as he patiently answered my questions about the dizzying array of instruments, levers, and switches in the cockpit. As a boy, it looked impossibly complicated, but I was intensely fascinated.

• READ MORE: Taking a Virtual Flight with the Yawman Arrow

After the tour, I purchased a poster at the souvenir stand that Tallichet politely signed for me. At nearly 70, he was gallant in both appearance and manner and spent some extra time with my grandfather and I, taking us around the exterior of his B-17 while he and my grandfather compared notes on their flying experiences. During WWII, Tallichet was a copilot of a B-17 in the 8th Air Force, completing 20 missions. After the war, he became a successful businessman and amassed an impressive personal collection of military aircraft.

Before we departed his company, Tallichet asked if I wanted to fly when I grew up, and I automatically answered yes. Standing between him and my grandfather, who wouldn’t aspire to what each had accomplished as pilots? That poster with his autograph hung in my childhood room until I went to college.

After that close encounter with the movie Memphis Belle on the ramp, I drove my friends and family crazy by asking to rent the film at least once per month, watching it until I could recite most of the dialogue with my sister. Without YouTube in the mid-’90s, there was no easily accessible footage of what it looked like to fly a B-17 from the pilot’s seat, so I repeatedly rewound the videocassette to watch the flying sequences to try and understand how it all worked. In 1993, a friend of mine in the neighborhood heard me talking about the movie and invited me over to his house after school. He owned an early PC with a color monitor and had a copy of the recently released combat flight simulation called B-17 Flying Fortress: World War II Bombers in Action by MicroProse. This was my first flight sim experience of any kind, and I had so much fun trying to fly the B-17 that I didn’t move from the cockpit to try the other crew positions. The cockpit and the gunner stations on the bomber were faithfully modeled as much as was possible at the time. For example, in the waist gun position, you could look toward the front of the B-17 and see the wings, round engine nacelles, and propellers spinning. Your role in one of the gunner positions was to defend the Flying Fortress from attacking enemy fighter aircraft. All of this sounds rudimentary today, but the missions, crew stations, and color animation were created in the early 1990s.

Experiencing the B-17 combat simulator came at a critical and impressionable time in my childhood, and I can still remember the thrill. In speaking with many pilots I have met over the years, a lot of us had a chance to try a home flight sim that served as a connection and an on-ramp to the larger world of aviation. For me, using a flight sim was a lot of fun, and it only made me more excited to try my first real-world flight lesson when I turned 14.

Back during the late ’90s, Chris Palmer—aka @AngleofAttack and a CFI who now runs a successful general aviation training business and popular aviation YouTube channel from his home airport in Homer, Alaska—started flying the European Air War WWII combat simulator. Palmer remembers learning the basic flight and power controls and the thrill of flying a fighter aircraft over the English Channel to challenge the Germans in air-to-air combat. As a teen, he purchased Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) and dreamed of becoming an airline pilot. He would load an airliner into the simulator and enjoy departing from many of the major airports around the world contained in the title’s library.

That early exposure inspired him to pursue real-world flight training. By the time he turned 17, Palmer started ground school and had already learned radio communication basics from the hours he spent on VATSIM, the live air traffic control service staffed by trained volunteer controllers that can be layered into a home flight sim with a software plug-in. After learning how to edit highlight videos for his high school football team, he built a study-level training course on how to fly the Boeing 767 on FSX. These video lessons achieved scale and, 17 years later, the DVDs, which complement a professional ground school study program, are selling to aspiring pilots training for their next upgrade.

When I came back to the world of GA to finish attaining my private pilot certificate in 2010, there was nervousness about the coming pilot shortage. Articles on the topic abounded, and writers made educated guesses about from where the next wave of pilots would come.

The question poised at that time was could enough discovery or EAA Young Eagles flights be conducted to successfully introduce the next generation to general aviation in time to stave off the looming airline pilot retirements not too many years in the future.

In 2014, I changed jobs into a marketing position where I could combine my passion for GA with my skill set as a social media marketer tasked with representing a leading general and commercial aviation product. Around this time, YouTube’s user base was rapidly expanding in popularity, and aviation enthusiasts could follow pilots on journeys from their first training lessons all the way to the airlines. Some pilots such as @flightchops (Steve Thorne) and @steveo1kinevo, who had modest followings of around 30,000 subscribers at that time, would amass hundreds of thousands of them over the next few years as their content attracted aviation enthusiasts from all over the world.

Today there are popular pilot/content creators who have used their engaging videos to help bring pilots of all ages to the airport for their first flight lessons. YouTube and the other social media channels have connected a global audience made up of millions around the world to pilot content creators with the time, equipment, and capability to publish their flying stories and share the world of GA with new, ever-widening, and more diverse global audiences through the mysterious and perplexing magic of the algorithm.

Fast-forward to this summer, and Jorg Nuemann, head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, presented to a large, in-person audience in June at FlightSimExpo, where he shared that MSFS2020 had achieved more than 12 million individual users since the software launched in September 2020. With the recent launch of X-Plane 12 in 2022, and the continued growth in popularity of Digital Combat Simulator (known as “DCS” and featuring modern fighter and rotor wing aircraft), each software program continues to attract a specific segment of digital aviation enthusiasts. Acknowledging that there is some crossover of home flight simulation pilots between these popular software titles, each offers a digital aviation experience where the user can hop over the virtual airport fence and climb into the cockpit or flight deck of so many faithfully digitally created general, commercial, and military aircraft.

Taken together, these software titles have amassed a worldwide user base on a scale not seen before. The result is YouTube and flight simulation are introducing enthusiasts to the world of aviation by serving as the top of a giant funnel, bringing the user into digital aircraft that are visually accurate to their real-world counterpart complete with high fidelity systems modeling. I believe the next generation of pilots is already here. They are fluent users in the digital world, easily finding flight simulation and aviation video content online.

Although we may not see them at real-world GA airports yet, I am already flying with them in the flight sim club of which I am a member. Listening to their radio calls approaching the Boston Class Bravo airspace, these flight sim pilots, many years my junior, are flying digital airliners into KBOS executing complex IFR arrivals with crisp and professional radio communication. Any of these flight sim pilots could show up to their first real-world discovery flight and surprise their unsuspecting CFI by being able to file and read back an IFR clearance without a single hour in the real-world logbook. Although these students will be well prepared in some aspects of flight training, they will have areas where the flight sim experience can’t adequately do so. But I’m confident a capable CFI will be able to diagnose any weaknesses and bring the student up to the relevant test standards.

To check that assumption, I asked Palmer about his thoughts on home flight-sim use and how it could potentially complement real-world flight training. As an experienced CFI who has successfully trained many private pilots, I wondered if he had any concerns about flight students crossing over from the digital world of flying into the real world—specifically the cross-country stage of private pilot training.

“If flight sim is used in the correct way, it can help you advance your flight training,” Palmer said. “There are more advantages than disadvantages. For example, you can easily mix pilotage and dead reckoning to practice navigation skills. You can plan the flight, get the

exact winds, get the exact weather, and set the correct time of day. Putting that high-fidelity tool in the hands of a student will allow them to find the airport, and [so] on their first cross-country flight, it doesn’t have to be a surprise anymore.”

Within the MSFS2020 and X-Plane 12 software, the student can explore most local airports since they are nearly all modeled. If the student pilot already has ForeFlight, they can pair their tablet with the sim and use it to find the FBO and plan the radio frequencies and approach to the airfield. Even just being able to explore the basics of ForeFlight while on your home sim can be time well spent.

“If you approach the sim seriously, and fly it to a high fidelity, it will pay you dividends by helping you feel more prepared for your private pilot flight training,” Palmer said.

In terms of behaviors to watch, Palmer cautions the new student to be ready to practice converting some of the flight sim knowledge into the real world, including getting used to the traffic scan since that is a habit not readily practiced in the sim. Simply recognizing there will be areas to relearn in actual flight training is the first step.

Equipped with their many hours of flight simulation experience, the student may already have a strong understanding of airspace, communication, navigation, and checklist use but may require some fine-tuning by their CFI.

“There’s nothing like real flying, no matter how much flight sim time you have,” Palmer said. “Go try flying a real airplane. You’re one of us. You like flying things. I am passionate about it, and I want flight sim pilots to experience real-world flight. Take a few discovery flights and see where it leads. At the very least, a real instructor can provide feedback and lesson pointers that you can bring back into the flight sim world.”

The next generation of pilots will one day share their stories about how they found aviation. In our youth, both Palmer and I supplemented our interest in aviation with early flight simulation experiences.

With the growing popularity of the home flight simulation, coupled with aviation content on YouTube and other channels, we are in the middle of a rising tide of digital flying activity that will hopefully continue to widen the funnel, bringing new people into real-world aviation, making it more accessible, and strengthening it for the future.

This feature first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Our Pilots of the Future May Share Sim Stories appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Over all the years I have been a flight simmer, I have collected a variety of hardware to get the job done. I am quite happy with my assembly of equipment, which allows me to pilot the virtual skies when the craving needs satisfying.

I am fortunate enough to go to work and play with actual flight controls connected by pulleys and cables to a bizjet worth some $20 million. Yet, this career only came after spending the first 20 years of my young adult life behind a computer, seeing the world, learning jet systems, playing the role of airline pilot, and educating myself on everything I could about what a career might be like in this exhilarating world. 

After so many years using Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) 95, 98, and X, and X-Plane, I felt I had a pretty good hand on geography, airport locations around the entire U.S., and almost all of the major landmarks. Indeed, that was the case. As I started my career flying jets around the country in 2004, I definitely had that “I’ve been here before” feeling.

Starting with a good computer is key. MSFS or X-Plane won’t run well on a poorly optimized or weak machine. The good thing is prices have come way down these days, so it’s easy to find a good, solid PC to run either sim. My advice is, as always, get an intel chip base, i7 or i9, with Nvidia GeForce video. MSFS has always been the least hassle with this combination. Also required is a monitor with G-Sync technology, either on the laptop itself or externally on a home desktop system. I tried a non-G-Sync laptop by accident recently and returned it immediately due to screen tearing and artifacts, as well as stuttering in frame rates. Not all gaming machines are G-Sync, so beware and do research. The difference is night and day when using a G-Sync display.

• READ MORE: Setting Up Your Sim

Also, I am here to state (though it goes against many opinions among gamers) that a powerful laptop specifically built for gaming will run any sim phenomenally. Do not believe the naysayers. Yes, a desktop is the most powerful system to run a sim, but the compact technology in today’s top-end laptops is far superior to what it used to be. And trust me, you’ll not notice much of a difference. I like the laptops as they come ready to use, already built with the right components melded together for peak performance and quality. It’s cool high-tech wizardry.
You will never find a “gaming” computer in a Walmart, Staples, or even Best Buy. I highly recommend online purchases from dedicated retailers like, Xotic PC, Jetline Systems, or in some cities the great Micro Center. I bought mine at a local Boston Micro Center, and I love the hands-on shopping and ability to just bring it in for any issues or maintenance.

My mainstay sim gear to complement the laptop is the Thrustmaster TCA Sidestick Airbus Edition, Xbox Elite 360 controller, and Thrustmaster THQ throttle quadrant. All are easily portable and high quality. Our friends at Sporty’s Pilot Shop offer a bundle of these. The Xbox Elite unit can be purchased at most stores and is exceptionally great for programming the autopilot functions that I use. MSFS seems to accommodate an unlimited number of plug-in USB devices, and this inexpensive unit is one I highly recommend.

Twenty years ago, we had flight yokes, rudder pedals, and more. Yet they were quite heavy and extremely expensive. The market is wide open now with many brands to choose from, satisfying everyone from the casual simmer to the home cockpit builder. Military enthusiasts get what they’re looking for as well, with extremely realistic side sticks replicating exact fighter jet models.

Even though I love my portable on-the-road sim setup, when sitting at home, feeling the throttle quadrant in my right hand with the yoke in my left, feet in place, I can forget that this is all simulated. The realism is really heightened when using a 747 and swapping out the normal two-engine jet for the quad jet pieces that come standard with the Honeycomb base throttle unit. Now, manipulating four individual throttles really comes to life. You feel like you’re in command of something big.

A 747 or Piper Cub, it’s all available when using a Honeycomb THQ. The combinations are limitless and the quality is great. It offers precision handling, and all the parts and pieces can be popped off and on easily to turn it into anything you want. Then you just assign each slider to something in the MSFS controllers configuration screens.

The default throttle parts for Honeycomb are great and work the best overall. Recently, a new company called Prodesksim has started making add-on enhancements for the existing Honeycomb throttle quadrant. ProDeskSim attachments  add visual realism, true-size parts, and functionality. However, one issue I discovered is that the overlays, or underlays, of the throttle and speedbrake strips keep popping out of place as they don’t sit tightly enough to withstand the speedbrake or flap levers moving in and out of place.

Each time I use either the flaps or speedbrake axis, the plastic inserts all pop out from the detents being used. You can use the items without the flap tracks certainly, but you lose immersion and the actual detents most of the units use.

To remedy the loose underlay parts, you have to be very careful or kind of hold them in place with an available finger before using the axis. If you’re a cockpit modeler simulating just one type of jet, you could glue these into place, but it would be permanent. 

I have since learned that ProDeskSim has implemented a fix for all future units to keep this issue from occurring (my demo units came out early in 2023). The innovation here is great. I love how the company can make so many options and attachments based on the default unit. You can turn your Honeycomb unit pretty much into any GA or jet aircraft you want, making the possibilities seem endless.

I’m honestly not fond of reassembling each time as I change aircraft often enough to where this would be a big setback. For a cockpit modeler of one particular jetliner, this isn’t an issue. I found myself using the Boeing twin jetliner units the most as they are fantastic and only take seconds to install.

In case you’ve never used rudder pedals, it’s definitely one of those experiences where you don’t know what you’re missing until you try it. Once you set your feet snugly on them, you’ll wonder how you survived without for so long. I can’t bring them in my suitcase or I probably would.

Getting all the right hardware in place is the first step to enjoying your sims. You certainly don’t have to spend a fortune since the basic Airbus stick-and-throttle unit combined is only $199. The quality is precise and solid. There are online folks who have showcased using real aircraft cockpits and even airliners from nose through first-class cabins to run their sims. I can only dream of that for now.

The post All the Right Tools for Setting Up a Flight Sim appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Lesson two was about to begin for the private pilot candidate. Before I climbed into the airplane I spied something on the taxiway that shouldn’t be there. It was a bolt about half as big as a smartphone. I picked it up and the learner remarked it was a good thing we didn’t taxi over it. I agreed and noted foreign object debris (FOD) isn’t the only thing to worry about when you are taxiing from parking.

Watch Those Wings

“Move like a minesweeper in troubled waters,” my instructor said as we pulled out of the aircraft parking area. Protocol at the school meant pulling the aircraft out of its parking stall with the towbar and positioning it perpendicular to the stall and making sure the tail wasn’t pointed at another aircraft before engine start. 

It was a confined area, so you had to move slowly, with your head looking left and right as you took care to keep the nosewheel of the Cessna 172 on the gold line. On sunny days you learned that, as long as the shadows didn’t touch, the wingtips wouldn’t hit properly parked aircraft.

Slower Is Better

One of the first lessons a fledgling pilot learns is how to taxi their aircraft. This is more than learning to steer using the rudder pedals and controlling the speed with the throttle and not riding the brakes. 

Your instructor will caution you to taxi no faster than a brisk walk and not to jam on the brakes. Instead, use energy management. Taxi as if you don’t have brakes and always be thinking of what you will do and where you will go if the brakes fail during taxi.

This is one of the reasons you test the brakes before you head to the runway. FLYING contributor Jason Blair advocates the one-at-a-time method for brake check, followed by both. I was a low-time CFI when I learned this technique, and it came in quite handy when the left brake proved to be very spongy and just this side of worthless. I was glad we discovered this before we tried to stop in the run-up area that was just on top of a berm. Had we gone down the berm, it would have been Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

• READ MORE: Paper Chase: Beware of Prop Wash

Follow the Gold Line if You Have One

How wide is the wingspan of the aircraft you fly?  How wide is the taxiway? These are metrics you need to know, especially if you intend to have a career in aviation and fly the so-called “big iron.” If the airport information page includes a warning about taxiways off-limits to aircraft with wingspan beyond a certain size, respect it.

Bad things happen when a pilot taxis too close to another vehicle. In 2010 a fueler at King County International Airport/Boeing Field (KBFI) in Seattle had to duck to avoid being decapitated when the wingtip of a business jet came through the windshield of his truck.

Maintain Centerline

In a nosewheel-equipped airplane it is fairly easy to hold the centerline. Line it up with your right leg or a line of rivets on the cowling. In a tailwheel-equipped aircraft you will need to serpentine to keep an eye on the taxiway. Don’t go too far one way or the other, and remember if you go too fast, taxiing a tailwheel aircraft can be like pushing a shopping cart backward when you are wearing heels for the first time. (Gentlemen, ask your wives and girlfriends—it is a rite of passage for us.)

Be particularly careful when taxiing up to the fuel pumps. I’m a big fan of shutting down and walking the airplane the last 10 feet or so, carefully positioning it with the towbar. Get a wing walker if needed. Most pilots are happy to help, and you will probably make a friend in the process. 

Don’t Go Rogue

Bad things happen when pilots don’t stay in their lanes. I mean that literally. I watched a Piper Seneca that was being led to parking by a designated airshow volunteer on a scooter decide to take a short cut. Rather than following the scooter, the Piper pilot turned to the right, cutting across the grass, which was rather long and hid a small ditch. When the nosewheel went into the ditch, both propellers hit the ground as well. You can guess the rest.

Ditches aren’t the only hazards. I’ve become wary of other aircraft taxiing after an experience involving a Mooney pilot who took a shortcut across the parking ramp. It was Sunday morning and the flight school ramp was very empty as most of the fleet was already up. 

There was a Mooney at the fuel pump. The pilot started the engine and revved it, spinning the aircraft as if to head to the north transient parking area. I thought he was going to head there by way of the taxi lane, but instead the pilot proceeded to head straight north over the empty tie-down positions. I should say they were empty except for tie-down straps, metal hooks, and wooden chocks. 

I had just stepped on to the ramp when there was a loud ping, and a metal hook attached to 6 inches of green tie-down strap bounced along the ramp, catching me in the left shin. It was more startling than painful, but it still made me yell, which brought Boss running. “The Mooney ran over one of our tie-downs!” I said, picking up the hook still attached to the severed strap. 

Boss put on his Dad face and went to “talk” to the Mooney pilot. The strap that he had run over now looked like a mare’s tail, there was paint missing from the propeller, and the edges were rough. It also had strands of strap embedded in it. The damage was probably expensive and definitely could have been a lot worse—all just to save a few seconds with a shortcut across parking spots.

I saved that chunk of strap with the hook, and I show it to all my learners when we discuss ramp safety. I teach them to curl up the tied-down straps and put the wooden chocks on top of them positioned so the pilot knows how far back to park the airplane in its stall. Although it takes a few minutes, I’d rather take the time than risk potential damage by leaving tie-downs and chocks in the open for the unaware and or unobservant to run over.

The post Always Remember to Taxi with Care appeared first on FLYING Magazine.