“So, do you ever get to use any of those little things I taught you in the big leagues?”

My first flight instructor, Mario Feola, always loves to ask me questions like that one. He is perpetually curious about how my job is going and how it relates to the tips he passed on to me. He likes to see the ripple effect his teaching had on the making of a learner pilot, especially one like myself, now a new captain on a 45-ton airliner. Instructors are like that, especially wise, gray-haired ones. Mario has as much experience, and gray hair for that matter, as any airman I ever met. He has a big belly, a white beard, and a dominating presence in any room. He’s pretty much a jolly Italian Santa, only happier and more generous if that’s possible. This Santa, however, doesn’t have any reindeer—just a small, single-engine Cessna.

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

“So, what do you use?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, all of those hours crammed in that sardine can-sized plane with you, sweating in the Mississippi heat, cruising at what seems like dangerously low altitudes, really did have a profound effect. I learned a lot.”

• READ MORE: Ice on the Wings Brings About a Near-Miss Episode

Like the time I was in freezing conditions and started picking up heavy ice outside Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (KMSP). It was the kind of cold that makes penguins shiver and Minnesotans fly south for the winter—which was exactly what we were doing. The thick, clear ice started piling up on any surface exposed to the elements. No big deal: “Turn on the wing anti-ice protection.” Without hesitation, my first officer reached up and moved a switch that propels lava-hot air, taken directly from the interior of our own jet engines, and shoots it down a shielded enclosure within the edge of the wings. The resulting spike in temperature melts even the worst that this frozen tundra can throw at us.

Then it happened…a triple chime.

A triple chime is the highest-priority audible alarm in the aircraft. It is usually followed by a dozen nasty messages from the flight computer and an equal number of vulgarities from the flight crew. This one was no exception—bleed leak. The boiling, hot air from the turbines had escaped and was pouring into the unprotected components inside the wing. In a few moments, the compressed air would begin to destroy flight controls or even melt and deform the wing, leading to an uncontrolled roll motion. But to stop the heat now also meant that the ice would continue to compound aggressively on a cold wing, adding weight and disrupting the flow of air, which leads to an aerodynamic stall and a really bad day for my airline’s insurance provider.

“Remain calm, slow down, think.” Mario’s words passed through my mind. I first heard them a decade before. He was trying to get me to finally understand cross-country flying. Back then, long distance was from Diamondhead, Mississippi, to Slidell, Louisiana, not quite LAX to JFK just yet. “Remain calm, slow down, think.” Sage words reminding a learner that a lot of wrong decisions made in haste can turn a simple problem into the headline on the 9 o’clock news. OK, deep breath…think. I just heard another airplane report that the turbulence dissipated when it exited the clouds far below us. That means this layer must end with the base of the clouds.

• READ MORE: Treat High-Altitude Turbulence with Knowledge and Respect

“Perform the checklist for the bleed leak. We are going to declare an emergency, descend out the bottom of this weather layer and into the clear below,” I thought to myself. “Any ice we pick up will be minimal, and we will carry extra speed into the landing to compensate for any lift lost or weight gained.” Twenty minutes later, I was calmly telling the passengers, “Thank you. Please fly with us again.”

That wasn’t the only time a lesson came hurtling back into my consciousness uninvited. Like the time we were learning how to climb and descend at set speeds. It was a basic and rudimentary task that every pilot must get through. It was during that lesson that I observed our course would drive us into a spring shower, the kind that gently sprinkle rain, barely enough to get the ground wet, just enough to make you curse if you just finished washing your car. I asked Mario to go around it, but he refused: “It’s just water. Remember, it’s only water.” We passed through the shoot of drizzle without so much as a bump. The rain splattered the windscreen and slid right off. My fear was unfounded.

Once on the other side, Mario was quick to point out an unusual anomaly. Down below us, on a bubbly set of cotton-white clouds, was a perfectly round rainbow, cotton-white clouds, was a perfectly round rainbow, and in its center, the shadow of our airplane. “It’s a pilot’s cross,” he said. “It only happens when the sun is behind you, water is still hanging in the air, and those puffy marshmallows are down there. Our shadow makes the shape of a cross, and it’s only ever seen from above, solid proof that God loves pilots.”

A dozen years later, I was passing over the Great Plains. This time, however, I was five times faster and 10 times higher but still just as uneasy when the first few raindrops hit my windscreen. After all, the place 30,000 feet beneath me is nicknamed “Tornado Alley.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. You may notice some flashes of lightning originating from the thunderstorm cell to the left side of the aircraft. I just wanted to reassure you that I’ve adjusted our flight path to take us well clear of the storm. However, I do ask that you remain seated and firmly buckled up, as I expect to encounter some residual pockets of isolated rain and turbulence. Please do not be alarmed if we fly through any rain. Remember, it’s only water.”

As I ended the PA, I could see the apprehension of my new-hire copilot beginning to crack through her calm demeanor. “You’re not nervous?” she squeaked out. “Nah, we will be fine,” I said. “God loves pilots.”

At no point did Mario’s words ring truer than during an August flight to Montreal. We had just taken off and made our first turn out of Minneapolis. Passing through 3,000 feet, barely two minutes into our journey, a deafening boom rattled the whole airframe. Dials and needles on the faces of the engine instruments spun wildly out of control, the airplane lurched to one side, and a flame the length of a small car spewed out of the tailpipe of our left engine. I had seen this scenario a dozen times before from the relative calm and safety of our company simulator, but now the stakes were raised with real people behind me and real granite below. Instinctively, I grabbed the controls and reverted back to my Cessna days: “You fly the airplane. Don’t let it fly you.”

“I have the controls. Give me the quick reference checklist for engine one fail, severe damage, no relight, N₁ at 0.0 percent, engine temp past limits, standby for possible fire indication.”

That bark to my copilot was unmistakable. I am the captain. The ship returned to earth just a few seemingly hour-long minutes later with procedures done, flight attendants needlessly ready to spring into action, miles of runway cleared, a massive commercial airport at a standstill, and a dozen fire trucks waiting patiently. I landed without incident, taxied to the gate and then personally apologized to each passenger for the interruption of their travel plans. Every single one of them boarded our spare airplane to take them along the same stretch of sky just 40 minutes later. That told me that they trusted me—and would do so again.

Mario, there are some lessons from you that are far more important, though—the ones I live every day. The things I took to heart most were the things you didn’t do or say—like the fact that you never gave me a bill. Thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of your time, just volunteered, for nothing in return. You taught me that the best things in life are freely given to those that can never give it back to you. I’ve heard it elsewhere called grace. You taught me the value of patience, especially during the times it seemed like I was learning to crawl, not fly. I’ve never seen you get angry, and I’m not sure it’s possible for you. You taught me about having faith in the people you care about, and you never doubted me, even when I failed—and I failed a lot. You taught me to push myself to excellence, even if that push felt like a kick in the butt.

You once told me that you envied me. I guess it’s because I’m living out your dream occupation. But that’s just not the reality. I envy you. It is true that I’m a captain now, but you didn’t just make me into a pilot. You molded me into a better man, a man more like yourself, and that’s what I really wanted the most. That’s what I learned from you, Mario. I learned about flying, and life, from that.

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

The post Beloved Flight Instructor’s Lessons Continue to Replay in Airline Captain’s Head appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The well-known accident chain we read about in National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports also happens, no doubt even more often, in incidents that end up as hard-won lessons instead of accidents. The chain often starts well before the first rotation of a prop at start-up.

My father got his private certificate when I was a tyke. He logged about 800 hours in his life. He never owned his own airplane, but I grew up around aviation enough to have caught the disease very early. Though he was the one who actually taught me to fly, he was not an instructor. I went through the formality of earning my private certificate in 1983 at the age of 26. I did this at the Grosse Ile Municipal Airport (KONZ) in Michigan, located on an island in the mouth of the Detroit River where it empties into Lake Erie. I always loved flying, but now I was rabid about it.

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 those days I was working very long hours, and with a fresh ticket and access to a Cessna 150, I squeezed in flights whenever I could. That involved more night flights than was probably advisable at that point in my experience. But I loved being up at night and my regular routine of flying up the river and around downtown Detroit at 1,000 feet. Taking in the tapestry of lights was always magical and intoxicating.

One night the urge to fly welled up within me, and I headed to the airport where the 150 was tied down outside. Perhaps the most dangerous thing in life, and most certainly in aviation, is that you don’t know what you don’t know. And there were things I needed to know but did not. (Obviously, as I had been stupidly flying around at 1,000 feet at night.) As was a completely ordinary thing in Detroit in the winter, it had snowed. Per my training, I got out the broom and brushed off all the snow from the airframe. But (cue scary music here) there had been a bit of thaw, and under the snow was just a bit of ice. Not much, mind you. It was just a bit of crustiness, so I thought it couldn’t weigh very much. I figured it wasn’t a big deal since it was just me flying with partial fuel in the tanks.. It was a cold, clear, still night. Plenty of lift in this cold air, right? And, dang it, I wanted to fly so badly.

Everything else checked out just fine. I fired up the Continental O-200 and made my way across the big, dark, completely deserted field to the longest runway, did the run-up, lined her up, and shoved in the throttle. All seemed completely normal until I was out of ground effect, maybe 50 feet up. She felt saggy. This thing was not climbing. I was staring ahead into the inky blackness, where I knew a tall stand of pine trees was waiting for me at the north end of the runway. The accident chain instantly marched across my consciousness: inexperience, winter, night, ice, overeagerness, and drag, you idiot! I had stacked the deck against myself, and it was all going to end in those trees in a few seconds. There was really no better option than straight ahead, so I uttered a short prayer and waited for the impact.

It didn’t come. In the pitch darkness, I held the attitude indicator where I thought it should be and realized from the altimeter reading that I must have cleared the trees. I was soon high enough to have visual reference from the lights on the ground to the north. All I could think of was “climb.” The little 150 ponderously clawed its way up, while the altimeter moved at about the pace of hands on a clock. I eventually got up to a couple thousand feet and realized with terror that I was at that moment a test pilot in an unknown machine. I had no idea how to get it back down safely. I decided I needed to find out what the stall speed was with this stuff on the wings, so I would know what approach speed to use to avoid falling out of the sky. I decided I had enough drag already, so flaps probably would not be a good idea. I slowed down with my eyes on the airspeed indicator and waited for the break. To my surprise, the stall occurred at about the same speed it would normally. OK, I guess I’ll approach at the normal speed. I got her back to the field and lined up.

• READ MORE: Life Lessons of an Iced-Up Mooney

Grosse Ile airport is basically surrounded by water, and going in there on a moonless night one cannot see the surrounding trees. The runway lights are all you’ve got. It was a scary ride down the hill, and I carried a little extra speed anyway. At first, all seemed normal, but then almost too late, I realized that stalling wasn’t going to be my problem. This thing was coming down like a brick. The sink rate registered on my brain, and I firewalled the throttle, once again terrified that I was going to settle right down into those pine trees. The O-200 roared (like a mouse in a lion suit), and the laden little 150 somehow lumbered over the unseen treetops. I kept full throttle until I was just over the pavement. Fortunately, the runway was plenty long and I settled in smoothly. It was over, except my heart was about to pound its way out of my chest.

I vowed right then and there to never again fly any airplane with even a hint of anything on the wings. But perhaps even more importantly, I came away from that near miss with a constant question on my mind for any situation: What about this do I not know? Finding the answer is well worth any time and effort it takes. This has served me well in airplanes and in many other areas, such as just getting along with people.

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

The post Ice on the Wings Brings About a Near-Miss Episode appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was October 2006. I had just bought a terrific, well-equipped Cessna T210 about a year before. It had occurred to me that with such a great high-altitude aircraft that I should take some quality mountain flying instruction. A friend had told me of an outstanding mountain instructor based at Vance Brand Airport (KLMO) in Longmont, Colorado, and strongly urged me to take his two-day course.

The first day of the course was basic mountain flying. We covered mountain and high-altitude basics. Where and how to crash-land and survive. How to prepare an emergency pack. How aircraft performed. And so on. It was a thorough and excellent preparation.

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

By that time in my life, I had hiked and climbed all over central Colorado and felt a bit complacent about all the “stuff” I already knew. In fact, the instructor said he had never had a student as well prepared for emergency survival. (Wow! Thanks.)

The second day we launched from Longmont early in the morning. It was crystal clear and there was minimal wind. We worked our way along the Front Range, turned in toward the mountains just north of Pikes Peak, and then landed at Leadville-Lake County Regional Airport (KLXV), which is the highest airport in North America at 9,934 feet msl. We discussed density altitude, runway length, go-arounds at high altitude, and then landed.

I was alert in taking off from Leadville at almost 10,000 feet, but the turbo did its job, so away we went. We crossed Hagerman Pass (11,925 feet) at 12,500 feet while discussing the need for diagonal crossing of mountain passes in case of severe winds. It was all beautiful.

We worked our way down to the runway at the Glenwood Springs Municipal Airport (KGWS), which is 3,300-feet long at 5,916 feet msl. The instructor made clear that he wanted me at 72 knots, not 73 and not 71, because there was zero excess if I screwed up and landed in a housing development. Fortunately, that went smoothly. We turned around and departed down valley then worked our way up the valley to Aspen-Pitkin County Airport (KASE).

The reputation of Aspen being tricky is well earned. It lies in a narrow valley, but in the T210 it was pretty easy and has been such several times since. After the takeoff from Aspen, we headed to the north on a route that mountain pilots know well—and flatlanders often pay the price for not knowing well.

• READ MORE: Mountain Flying Tips

Heading easterly, we departed back over Hagerman Pass, and then the instructor said he wanted to demonstrate the effects of mountain wave flying. Heading north, we slid to the west side of the valley, and gently the wave pulled at us and we descended. We moved back to the middle of the valley and the descent stopped. We moved to the east up against the range that constitutes the Breckenridge Ski Resort and picked up the rising wave that swept us up and over the slope. It was elegant and beautiful. Then we flew north to return to Longmont.

As we approached Loveland Pass, somewhere around 13,000 feet, a huge, invisible sledgehammer slammed us, causing us to drop at least 1,000 feet. We had completely uncontrolled deviations 90 degrees left and right. Then we fluctuated up and down like a dying whale. I asked the instructor if he had been in s—t like this before. His response was, “Oh, sure…well, not this bad.”

Out of reflex, I dropped a notch of flaps. He admonished me to drop gear, too. Both the wings and fuselage needed to slow so they wouldn’t separate. This continued for what seemed like hours but it was likely minutes. As we slowly settled, we hit a sinker in straight-and-level flight, dropping at more than 1,500 fpm with pegged gauges. Fortunately, that diminished as we closed in on the top of Loveland Pass, which we missed by maybe a few hundred feet.

Unexpectedly, it stopped as it began. I was literally shaking and trembling. Wow. Was I almost killed?

Never before nor since have I experienced such turbulence. But I did come away with several lessons:

Mountain wave turbulence is unpredictable and can be treacherous. Keep plenty of clearance from terrain. Watch for capped clouds, spindrift snow, dust, or terrified pilots.

In particularly moderate to severe turbulence, slow down and drop flaps and landing gear if needed. Even in moderate turbulence and after years of flying, I will drop a notch of flaps to slow down things.

If turbulence is severe, use both flaps and gear and slow to just above stall speed.

Have good restraints and don’t be lazy about keeping them firmly fastened. Even with good restraints, we slammed our heads several times.

Mountain wave turbulence can be a great teacher that cuts both ways. Understand and respect it.

Subsequently, I have experienced many turbulent flights in the T210 and other aircraft. Admittedly, I had PTSD for several years after that episode, but you’ve got to get back on the horse and ride.

This is submitted in memory and honor of my friend and instructor, Cleon Biter, from Longmont. Cleon was an outstanding, patient, and brave flight instructor who died from nonaviation causes after surviving years of flying with young mountain pilots.

This column first appeared in the October 2023/Issue 942 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Treat High-Altitude Turbulence with Knowledge and Respect appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Shortly after getting my private pilot certificate in 1966, I began my real learning in the form of a near-catastrophic mistake.

Looking back now, it dawns on me that most of what I know today did not come from the normal, required syllabus training but from life experiences, along with an occasional hair-raising event, one of which I can finally share.

Like many pilots, most of my private pilot training took place in a two-place Cessna. My CFI actually weighed a morbidly obese 350 pounds and was in his upper 60s. Were we always overloaded upon takeoff? No, because being a hard-working, skinny, 25-year-old, I carried maybe 120 pounds. My first solo, however, gave me a startling surprise, though, when the Cessna 150 trainer shot up so rapidly…I had just shedded 350 pounds and struggled to acquire the new, lighter “feel.”

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

Transitioning from a lighter to a heavier single is a process we learn largely on our own without much training. Check rides are a helpful measure of safety and highly recommended. The larger the aircraft, the heavier the controls, and while often more stable, it is always different. Moving up to more advanced aircraft enhances our joy of flying. Plus, the heavier the airplane, the more sophisticated it often is. Constant-speed prop, retractable gear, etc. Even more challenging are those “category/class” transitions (seaplane, twin-engine, etc.) that take us to the next level.

By the time I had accrued some 140 total flight hours, a friend mentioned that his wife and her sister were returning home from a trip back east. It was late June. To save them the expense of a night’s lodging in Dallas, I agreed to fly to Love Field (KDAL) and fly them back to the now long-abandoned Butterfield Trail Airport just north of Abilene. I had never met the two passengers-to-be, but Phil, a nonpilot, was a fit, lean, future Navy sailor who spoke often of his active wife and sister-in-law. I was ready to log some additional quality time in my flying club’s Cessna Skyhawk 172 (N3707R).

At this point, I had been checked out in the club’s Cessna 182 Skylane and its mighty 210 Centurion, but I didn’t see the need for a larger, more expensive option. Now I was in for a gut-wrenching surprise. My lack of experience caused me to select an aircraft unsuitable for the flight.

The flight to KDAL with Phil was pleasant and uneventful, and I anticipated the return flight would be equally smooth. Love Field was Dallas’ primary airport in 1967, and there was no delay entering its airspace and getting taxi clearance to the general aviation area. We did not wait long at the GA terminal for our passengers to arrive.

What I felt when first meeting Tillie and her sister, Emma, was a sense of astonished shock. These women were not obese. They were, well…ladies of significant size. And they each had a fairly large, old-style heavy suitcase. I’m sure I silently gasped when I realized suddenly that our little Skyhawk was destined to be dramatically overweight. Overweight, that is, if we could even fit them into the rear seats with their bags. We were going to be massively overloaded and probably out of balance. Should I tell my passengers, “No, I’m sorry. We cannot do this”? Should I warn them of the risk?

As a weight/balance experiment with satchels of bowling balls, I had once safely “test-flown” a friend’s Skylane while being perhaps several hundred pounds over the maximum takeoff weight. Perhaps somehow by having completed this ill-advised and unauthorized experiment, it validated my faulty decision to proceed.

Even if we could shoehorn the passengers and baggage in, I knew we might have to abort. The Skyhawk baggage area was about 90 pounds maximum, but the space was too small to accommodate a large suitcase. We discovered that we could partially squeeze one into this minuscule space, thereby sacrificing a good deal of headroom. The other bag would just have to ride on their laps. Very uncomfortable, but it was only for an hour and a half. At this point, I was just concerned whether we could get airborne.

The weather briefing confirmed widely scattered showers with hot, very humid conditions, and calm winds. Not helpful conditions, to be sure, with high density altitude in effect.

• READ MORE: A Wing and a Prayer

I taxied to Runway 18, 8,000 feet in length, as I recall. The tower said, “Cleared for takeoff. Right turnout approved.” We started our takeoff roll. And we rolled. I was ready to abort if necessary. We kept rolling.

Not expecting to use more than about 4,000 feet, but already passing that halfway point, I became aware that we might not be airborne anytime soon. But lots of pavement still remained. Finally, though, our speed was sufficient and we lifted off, albeit very slowly. But what is this? We weren’t climbing! If anything, we were just mushing along. And we’re running out of runway!

Clearing the fence and crossing Mockingbird Lane, we couldn’t have been more than 50 feet above passing buildings. Any additional problem at this height could have been catastrophic.

Some 20 minutes later, we were level at 6,500 feet msl. Reaching the cooler altitude made things easier. My passengers were silent but likely aware that we had just been given a free pass by the powers that be. We were grateful for our good fortune.

But the day was summed up with some valuable lessons subtly delivered and taken to heart. First, I learned to never assume your passengers will weigh the average standard of 170 pounds, as it was then. Don’t be reticent about asking their weight and baggage sizes. Second, know your aircraft’s capacities. It might be helpful someday to know your storage area dimensions. Finally, and perhaps most redundantly, always be prepared to cancel your plans, even if that means unhappy passengers and a bruised ego and wallet.

This column first appeared in the September 2023/Issue 941 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Weight, Weight, Don’t Tell Me appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Early in 1974, my wife, Dorothy, and I had just moved from our home in Massachusetts to Appleton, Wisconsin, for my new consulting job. Since serving in the Air Force during the Korean War, I have had a lifelong interest in flying, so I was excited to realize I would be only a short drive to the location of the upcoming 22nd Oshkosh Air Show, which was to start on August 2. For many, arriving at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is a rite of passage, attending what becomes, for one week, the busiest airport in the world. We had a week we’d never forget.

As we drove back home, I said to Dot, “It must be great to learn how to fly.” Dot said, “Why don’t you try it?” To which I replied, “No, I can’t. It would cost too much and take too much time.” So, there I was, two days later at Appleton International Airport (KATW) in the pilot’s seat of a vintage Cessna 150, clutching my student pilot certificate and taking my first flying lesson. In December, with my consulting work finished, we moved back to Massachusetts. After we resettled, I continued my flying lessons at Marlboro Airport (9B1). With its 1,659-foot runway bookended by extremely tall pine trees, there couldn’t be a better place to practice landings and takeoffs. I finally earned my private pilot certificate on May 14, 1975. After we got home, Dot and I held a proper champagne celebration. Then we had a serious discussion about flying, and I promised her that the one thing I would never do was buy an airplane.

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

Besides, renting would be fine. A month later, I was reflecting on that decision as I was sitting in the left seat of my newly purchased 1958 Piper Comanche 250 at Minute Man Air Field (6B6) with its 2,700-foot runway in Stow. Wow. My landings didn’t have to be precise at all, not after my Marlboro short-field training. In July 1976 with my flight hours adding up, and my wanderlust afoot, I thought it might be fun to try a cross-country flight in my “Baby Airliner.” What better destination than a trip to Oshkosh for another air show? At that time, Burt Rutan was selling his VariEze homebuilt kits to builders around the country—a composite, canard, high-performance aircraft. Burt would occasionally visit some of the builders to help them assemble the kits. There were three kits being built at Stow that would be flying to the Oshkosh show. We planned on meeting them there to see how well the airplanes performed. We had the privilege of working with Burt for a few days.

The Oshkosh show was scheduled to start on July 31, so we started planning for our big adventure. We were to be joined on the trip by Mal Bennert, a good friend of ours who was also a certificated pilot. We spent Saturday packing clothes and thoroughly preflighting the airplane, cleaning, topping the gas tanks, double-checking our checklists, planning the flight route, etc.

Later that afternoon, my son Bill and daughter Sharon dropped by to see how we were doing. Because it was early and a beautiful day, we asked if they would like to take a final sunset sightseeing trip before we left. It would include a stop at Manchester Airport (KMHT) in New Hampshire for the proverbial hundred-dollar hamburgers. It was probably a good thing that we took that flight because later, when I radioed my landing intentions, my second radio was dead. It was an emergency because I would not launch on this trip without both radios working. After we landed, I told our mechanic my problem. Fortunately, one of the local pilots said he had a radio he could lend us for the trip. We spent Sunday replacing and testing the radio. I slept soundly that night, and we left early Monday morning in kind of an overcast day.

• READ MORE: Leaving in the Chocks

Because I wanted to keep both tanks as full as possible, our first fuel stop was planned for Binghamton Airport (KBGM) in New York. We had been flying for about two hours, which put us over the Allegheny Mountains—not too hospitable on the ground. I was pilot flying for this first leg, and all was going well. Dot was in the back, reading a magazine, and we were just cruising along. Suddenly, I thought I heard a skipped cylinder from the engine. I asked Mal on the intercom if he heard that. He said, “Heard what? I didn’t hear anything.” I said, “Yeah, that nothing is the noise I’m talking about.” Just then, the engine coughed for a few beats then a few more until finally it went quiet. Nothing like a shot of adrenaline to liven up a dull morning. I wanted to start down the checklist for “Engine Power Loss During Flight,” so I said, “Mal, you’ve got the airplane.” He answered, “I’ve got the airplane.” I wanted to be free to check the obvious things that can stop an engine, the most likely being fuel starvation. The fuel selector was on the floor between the pilot and copilot. Looking down to move it would have taken my eyes off the horizon—not a good idea. I said, “Leave the flaps and gear up and trim for 100 mph.” Mal answered, “Flaps and gear up, trim for 100.” (For youngsters reading this, we were still using miles per hour back then.)

I looked down at the fuel selector, and it was positioned on the right tank, which was the correct one that I had selected before we left. I turned it to the left tank, pushed mixture to full rich, pulled carb heat on, and turned on the fuel pump. The prop was windmilling nicely, which was a good sign. The best sign, however, was the sound of the engine coughing twice, spitting a little because the carb heat was on, and then coming up to full power. “Now,” I thought, “pretend you’re a professional pilot. Just take a deep breath, wipe the sweat off your brow. Return all settings back to cruise. Continue with normal flight.”

• READ MORE: Why Do Pilots Use Checklists?

When we landed in Binghamton, I immediately dipsticked the right tank. It was dry as a bone. What had happened? As is so often the case, a series of small errors can result in a major problem. After we took the sightseeing flight Saturday, I had every intention of topping off the tanks when we returned, but I was totally distracted by the new problem—the dead radio. While working with that on Sunday, I completely forgot the needed gasoline, thus causing the right tank to be partially empty and run dry before my predicted time.

Is there a moral here to be learned? I don’t know. Checklists are only good when used at the right time. But how do you know when that is, and who checks the checklist checker?

This column first appeared in the August 2023/Issue 940 print edition of FLYING.

The post Checklists Only Function When They’re Open appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was July 26, 1977, exactly four days after I passed my instrument check ride—one that was performed almost entirely in IMC, but that is another story. I was headed out on my first IFR flight as a rated pilot to see my parents in St. Louis. My flight that day was from the Strongsville, Ohio, airport, now a housing subdivision south of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (KCLE) to the Spirit of St. Louis Airport (KSUS) in suburban St. Louis.

My ride that day was a brand-new Piper Archer, N2876K. It was well equipped for that era; it even had a two-axis autopilot and DME—a luxury in those days. The flight was planned for four hours plus, with a stop in Indianapolis for fuel and to check weather at the Combs Gates FBO. I filed my first solo instrument flight plan and departed at 8:30 a.m. local. The weather was VFR all the way to Indianapolis International Airport (KIND)with only early morning haze to contend with. After picking up my IFR flight plan from Cleveland Departure, I climbed with the sun at my back into a cloudless blue sky. I felt like I belonged.

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

A quick 2 hours and 15 minutes later, I was taxiing up to Combs Gates with a real sense of accomplishment, maybe even more than four days earlier when I passed my checkride. After all, I was flying in the “system” with no supervision—entirely on my own. However, that was about to change. The next segment between Indianapolis and 50 miles east of St. Louis produced one of those life-altering moments for an aviator, one that shaped every aspect of my future flying career.

As I topped off the tanks and had a sip of Coke, I had a pleasant conversation with a flight service specialist who gave me a standard briefing that included: “VFR along the entire route but with a chance of isolated thunderstorms.” Your typical Midwest summer forecast.

Fair weather cumulus started to form, but nothing in the briefing hinted at a go/no-go decision. In fact, the briefer mentioned the cloud bases reported along the route were at least 7,000 feet. Just for safety, I filed for a westbound altitude of 6,000 feet on Victor 14. I wanted to be on an IFR flight plan—just not hard IFR.

I headed west above the haze and leveled at 6,000 feet. As I approached Terre Haute, Indiana, I saw a confusing solid wall of clouds extending many thousands of feet above my altitude. The clouds didn’t look like cumulus. A quick call to Indianapolis Center confused me even more. The controller said he wasn’t “painting” any weather from my position all the way to St. Louis.

At this point, I considered canceling IFR and landing at Terre Haute. But I scrapped that idea. My ego got in the way. After all, I had just passed my check ride in actual, and I was beaming with confidence. Onward I flew into the cloud bank. The initial ride generated an occasional bump at worst. I felt confident I had made the correct decision to continue. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Soon I was handed off to Kansas City Center over eastern Illinois. By this time, the Archer was jolted by continuous moderate turbulence. My confidence quickly turned into real concern. I keyed the mike and asked the new controller about the weather in front of me, but he only came back with “light to moderate” precipitation for the next 50 miles. At this point, the airplane was still on autopilot and handling the chop and occasional upset.

Then the situation got worse. Torrential rain, continuous lightning, severe turbulence, and—most upsetting to me—the vertical speed indicator was first pegged up to the stops and then pegged in the opposite direction. I reduced power for an indicated airspeed lower than maneuvering speed (V_A), but I knew I was in trouble. I was convinced the wings were going to separate from the airframe. I felt more like a helpless passenger than PIC.

I called Kansas City Center again, but this time I confessed my unfortunate position. I was on the verge of tears. There was little or no controlling my altitude. The updrafts and downdrafts were so strong I knew any attempt to maintain altitude would cause a break up.

• READ MORE: Racing a Storm Is Not the Best Choice

I needed help, quickly. The controller sensed the urgency in my transmission and calmly said, “Stand by.” A few moments later, the controller handed me off to a new one. I was to be his only customer, and he volunteered that he was only “painting” light to moderate precipitation, but I told him the airplane was in severe updrafts and downdrafts. He said to keep the wings level, and he would try to steer me clear of the heaviest precipitation.

Time stood still. I have no recollection of how long he vectored me. He kept saying not to worry about altitude and just try to keep the wings level. The controller continued to “suggest” headings followed by “How’s the ride now?” I wasn’t reassured, but I did robotically turn as suggested, all the time going up and down the elevator. I was soaked through with perspiration and exhausted.

This went on until just south of Litchfield, Illinois, when he cleared me down to the minimum en route altitude (MEA), and I broke out of the cloud bases. Now I had a fighting chance of surviving. There was lightning in all quadrants and sheets of virga I had to dodge, but that was manageable. While the updrafts and downdrafts had subsided, there still was continuous moderate-to-severe turbulence. My head hit the side of the airframe, the headliner, and the glareshield. And without warning, just as I was handed to St. Louis Approach, the airplane broke out into CAVU VFR.

I landed at Spirit of St Louis Airport with the aircraft in one piece—but I was scarred for life. I had been sure I was going to die and would be just another low-time pilot who flew into a thunderstorm. I was so grateful the controller had helped me through, but I knew I would never look at instrument flying the same way. Thousands of hours later, I am still haunted by that flight.

This article first appeared in the July 2023/Issue 939 print edition of FLYING.

The post Humbled for Life appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

My friend, the late Bill Kershner, who encouraged me to write my flight testing book, wrote his own book titled Logging Flight Time, published by Iowa State University Press. It’s about Bill’s humorous experiences during his flying career. In that book he had a chapter entitled “Chocks.” Bill thought that most everyone in aviation has had a humorous experience with those devices used to keep an airplane from rolling on the ground. I believe that Bill was correct; I certainly have my own.

After spending 10 years in the industry as a test pilot and having had to exit two test airplanes via ‘nylon letdowns’—also known as parachutes—I decided that academia might be a little less hazardous. So I became a professor of aviation systems at the University of Tennessee Space Institute in Tullahoma, Tennessee, where I became friends with Bill, who lived in Sewanee about 20 miles away.

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

The fellow who ran the FBO in Tullahoma (KTHA) at the time was Walt Harris. Walt had been a pilot for the State of Tennessee when Winfield Dunn was the governor. Walt had been his pilot and, as a result, believed that you could accomplish almost anything with politics. Walt also felt that the Tullahoma Airport needed an FAA-designated pilot examiner. After his efforts to encourage the FAA’s Nashville Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) to appoint one were unsuccessful, Walt went the political route by contacting his congressman.

The FAA does respond to political pressure, and before long, the Nashville FSDO contacted Walt telling him they would appoint someone, but that he needed to come up with the names of three people for them to evaluate. Walt, of course, wanted the job for his flying school. I became involved when Walt showed up in my office at the university’s facility at the airport, asking if I would submit my name for the evaluation. I have been an FAA-designated engineering representative (DER) test pilot since 1971, and this was 1980. Not really wanting to be a pilot examiner, I went along for Walt’s sake to be one of his three names. The other individual in the “hunt” was Jerry Ritchie, who had previously worked for the FAA as an inspector and was running an auto parts business in Tullahoma.

Several weeks later, I received a call from Walt telling me that the FAA would be in Tullahoma on a certain day for the evaluation, which would include an oral exam and a check ride. On the appointed day, I showed up at the FBO with the requisite paperwork filled out, but with no preparation for the oral examination or the check ride since I did not want the job.

The FAA had flown with Walt in the morning after they arrived, and they would fly with Jerry Ritchie and me after lunch. The oral exam consisted of a review of my paperwork and a few questions about my background, which was conducted by Lonnie Thurston (who has since retired).

After the brief oral, he said, “Let’s go fly.” He also said we would not need a preflight inspection since “we flew the airplane twice this morning, and it was okay.” I normally do not trust people I do not know well with my preflight inspections, but since he was the FAA—and I didn’t care about being a pilot examiner—I let it go. We climbed into the Cessna 172 that was to be used for the check ride, and I started the engine. Lonnie had told me what he wanted to do during the oral exam, so I proceeded to add power to taxi. The airplane did not seem to roll with what I thought should be enough power to taxi, but it had been a while since I had flown a Cessna 172, so I added more power. Still nothing happened.

About that time, Jimmy Chapman, the line boy at Tullahoma—now part owner in the FBO—came running out of the FBO waving his arms and pointing at the wheels. I then realized I had not pulled the chocks from the main wheels. Feeling like a complete fool, and knowing I was for sure not going to be a pilot examiner, the remainder of the ride went uneventfully. Upon com- pleting the flight, Lonnie told me they would let me know who would be designated in a couple of days. I was pretty sure it would not be me.

Much to my surprise, a few days later, Lonnie called to tell me that they were designating two pilot examiners in Tullahoma and that I was to be one of them. The other one was Jerry Ritchie.

I served as a DPE in Tullahoma for 25 years, issuing pilot certificates for private, commercial, instrument, and multiengine pilots. However, I never did find out what Walt had done that caused me to be designated instead of him. I was sure I had blown the check ride when I forgot the chocks.

It could be the FAA responds to political pressure—but not always in the way you would like.

The post Leaving in the Chocks appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

As a pilot and airplane owner, I try to share my passion for flying by donating my time and airplane—a recently purchased single-engine Cessna 172N—for worthy causes like Pilots ‘n Paws. 

Recently, Roland Vegiard and I embarked on a charitable trip in support of Pilots ‘n Paws relocating some sheltered animals for the Bradford County Humane Society from Towanda, Pennsylvania, to Asheville, North Carolina. 

We volunteered to take two dogs, brothers Denver and Dakota, down to Asheville and return with nine puppies. With the help of Bob Heinrich of Heinrich Aviation at the Bradford County Airport (N27), we loaded up and launched off for Asheville Regional Airport (KAVL) with a fuel stop at West Virginia International Yeager Airport (KCRW) in Charleston. 

• READ MORE: Rescue a Pet, Build the Connection

Arriving at Asheville we were met by Natasha Kush and her team who handles pet relocations there. We loaded up nine of the cutest puppies you could ever hope to meet and headed back to Charleston for another fuel supply and then back to Towanda.

Roland and I were cruising VFR at 9,500 feet msl working with TriCities Approach over southern Virginia when suddenly things got extremely quiet. Not the radio…the engine!

We completely lost engine power. As there were only 60 or so hours on this zero-time rebuild engine, it was instantly one of those WTF moments when Roland and I looked at each other in disbelief and immediately began to go through the standard emergency procedures trying to troubleshoot the situation. We advised ATC of our situation and, thanks to the updated GPS and moving map displays, glided our way without any further difficulty into the Virginia Highlands Airport (KVJI) at Abingdon, Virginia. 

The staff at KVJI couldn’t have been nicer and more accommodating even summoning Washington County Sheriff’s deputies Sgt. Alexander and Dep. Blalock of their Animal Control Division, who arrived with pet food, water bowls, and makeshift leashes to make sure that our nine “passengers” were watered, fed, and given the opportunity to visit the grassy areas on the airport. 

I simply cannot thank these folks enough for their hospitality, time, and assistance. We were able to rent a minivan from the local Avis car rental service and then embarked on the more than nine hour drive back to Pennsylvania. All of these great people will forever be in my debt and gratitude. 

Roland and I use trips such as this to better hone my IFR skills and become more proficient with the Garmin glass panel suite that I had installed last year in my airplane.

It was almost comical when this happened. It was like a robot took over both Roland and me at the very same instant. Roland was flying this leg from KAVL to KCRW while I was working the radio and pretty much monitoring the Garmin 3X Touch. As soon as we recognized from the multifunction display that the engine stopped producing power and oil pressure was at zero, Roland instantly went to the best glide speed while I went through the mixture, carb heat, mags, and fuel selector tasks.

Fortunately, KVJI was visible through a thin cloud layer at 9,000 feet, about 10 miles away, and we headed directly there to circle over the pattern. I think that the comical part was Roland kept the landing roll-out speed pretty brisk, making it possible to make the turn off of the runway onto the taxiway and then on to the ramp rolling right up to the front door of the FBO. We later joked that the late Bob Hoover would’ve been proud by this ‘conservation of energy’ display.

The post Engine Failure Turns Puppy Ferrying Flight Into Glider appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Seven Days after my first solo in the iconic T-37 while in U.S. Air Force pilot training at Williams AFB in Chandler, Arizona, I found myself strapping in for my second solo flight. To be sure, I was excited. The T-37, “Tweet” as it was affectionately called, was a small twin engine jet trainer that’d been in the USAF inventory since the late fifties. Maybe when it was brand-spanking new, the crews that flew it were awestruck. But by the time I began training in that little sucker in the early ‘80s, it was kicked around as the ugly sibling to the more beautiful and much better-performing T-38 Talon.

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

But, your first jet is always your favorite. OK, not really, at least not my feelings about the Tweet. But I had been flying a 150-horsepower Piper Super Cub for four years prior to entering the USAF, so to me, the T-37—with its twin 1,000-pound thrust Continental jet engines—was a big responsibility. I took each flight, solo or with an instructor, as a very serious affair, and I felt extremely blessed to be training in jets in the USAF.

The T-37 was relatively small, possessed a midwing, and sat quite low to the ground. It had side-by-side seating and a big plexiglass canopy, hinged at the back, that allowed easy access to the cockpit. The two smallish jet engines that powered it were nestled in the fuselage, slightly below each wing, with the exhaust exiting behind and below the trailing edge of the wings right next to the fuselage. The instrument panel, compared to modern jet aircraft, looked as if someone took all the displays, dials, lights, knobs, and handles needed to operate the aircraft, threw them against the panel and installed them where they hit it. Random is a word that comes to mind on the placement of some of the lights, displays, knobs, etc. There was nothing ergonomic about that instrument panel, but, hey, it was a jet, and I was strapping in to go on my second solo.

In as much as “Willy,” the nickname of Williams AFB, was a place where USAF pilots learned to fly, it was also, as we were told in our in-brief prior to the beginning of flight training, a place where the USAF trained its air traffic controllers. We were warned that sometimes the controllers would make mistakes, and to be skeptical and cautious if some ATC directives/clearances seemed unusual or unsafe. You kinda had the blind leading the blind at times when you had a solo student pilot being controlled by a controller in training; it was when another more authoritative voice came over the radio to countermand a training controller’s more tentative instruction that you knew the Supervisor Controller had taken command.

After strapping in and starting those extremely high pitched, constant noise, variable thrust engines on the Tweet, I was ready to taxi for takeoff. It was a fairly long taxi from where my Tweet was parked to the active runway. During this period in its operational life, Willy was very busy. T-38s, T-37s, and F-5s were mixing in with each other daily as they either taxied for takeoff or taxied back to their parking spots after landing, so you had to listen to the controller’s verbal taxi instructions while being wary, wondering if their instructions were tainted with some mistake.

I called ground with ATIS and told them I wanted to taxi for takeoff. They cleared me to taxi to Runway 30L, which was the normal T-37 runway; I had about a mile and a half, at least, to taxi to get to the assigned runway. Since the air conditioner on the Tweet was not very effective, we taxied with our canopy fully open; it was early summer in the desert, so it could get quite warm.

I was nervous as I prepared for this flight, yet cocky too, as I taxied out. I’d done well on my first solo, getting ‘excellents’ in all three areas in which I was graded. Having broken the ice with that fledgling foray into the wild blue of the western skies, I was looking forward to breaking the bonds of gravity without some instructor jumping on my ass about something I was screwing up. 

About two-thirds of the way to Runway 30L, after turning left onto another taxiway, ground control called.

“T-37 Solo [not my actual call sign], your aircraft is smoking,” said Ground in a casual tone and inflection.

“Roger ground, jet engines do smoke,” came my immediate response, thinking this was a controller intraining, and he’d not spent much time around jet aircraft.

“Ahhhhh, T-37 Solo, be advised that your aircraft is smoking much more than normal,” came a more authoritative voice from ground control.

I’d begun to suspect something actually might be wrong, though I was not sure what, when another voice came over the radio, and it was not ATC’s.

“Hey Ace!” came the familiar voice, “Look over your left shoulder.” It was one of the instructors in my flight (good grief). He was with his student taxiing behind me.

Since it was an instructor, and since he used the term “ace,” I felt compelled to do as he commanded; I looked over my left shoulder.

“Holy Shit!!” was my first thought as I saw a thick plume of whitish smoke being exhausted from the left engine. It filled the sky behind my jet; bloody hell, no wonder ground said my jet was smoking. All cockiness immediately left me, a modicum of fear replacing it, and I told ground that I was going to stop and do an emergency ground egress, shutting down both engines before leaving the jet. I never waited for a reply or another word from the instructor, who was now taking another route to the active runway.

As the smoke rapidly dissipated and my nerves settled, I stood off the taxiway to the side of my little Tweet; I could hear the sound of  “tinks” as hot metal cooled and the last wisps of smoke vaporized in the warm desert air. Other T-37s, T-38s, and F-5s taxied by and the pilots looked over at this pathetic student, still wearing his helmet, standing by his disabled Tweet.

A few minutes after shutting down and wondering what in the hell happened to my jet, while also wondering if I’d “FUBARed,” a maintenance truck drove up, along with an airport firetruck and a crew van. I told maintenance what happened: “smoke,” and filled out the maintenance log with the same thing I told maintenance: “Smoke.”

This article was originally published in the May 2023 Issue 937 of  FLYING.

The post When a Tweet Turns into a Smokin’ Hot Jet appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was your typical winter day in the Chicago area, cold with the ceiling around 500 feet agl. My wife and daughters were driving to New Jersey to visit family, so this was an awesome excuse for me to fly my Mooney Ovation2 GX—the first one out of the factory with the Garmin G1000 in late 2004—to the east coast and introduce our Brazilian foreign exchange student to his first flight in a small airplane.

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

I checked weather en route, and it looked okay, with no icing reported along our intended route as I planned my departure from the Aurora, Illinois, airport (KARR). After a thorough preflight inspection, we hopped in the airplane, fired it up, picked up our instrument clearance, contacted ground, and taxied out to the runway.

Tower cleared us for departure, and we initially climbed to 3,000 feet msl. We contacted Chicago Center and were cleared to 11,000 feet for our cruise altitude. 

Above the clouds, it was sunny and calm, and our exchange student—never having flown in a small airplane before—was awed by the experience. 

Things were progressing along just fine until we reached eastern Ohio, when I noticed the cloud tops beginning to rise. I asked Cleveland Center for a clearance to 15,000 feet so we could continue to enjoy the smooth ride. We donned our oxygen masks and began our climb. 

As we ascended to 15,000, it became obvious that we were flying into an area where the cloud tops were approaching 15,000 and higher. I requested a climb to 17,000 feet, figuring I could stay out of the clouds and hopefully get close enough to the Morristown Airport (KMMU) to descend quickly through the layers. But I was wrong…that’s when the trouble began.

As soon as we reached 17,000 feet, we started clipping through the cloud tops—and that’s when the “Ice Man Cometh”—or “cameth” in our case.

I had never encountered icing before. The windshield iced over almost immediately, along with the wings. My airspeed started decreasing, and I couldn’t believe how quickly ice accumulated.

At this point, I knew we were in trouble. It was like my worst nightmare. I thought, this can’t be happening!

Execute a Plan

My thoughts immediately went back to my training and the admonition from instructors to never panic. And to execute a plan immediately. I let Center know we were picking up ice and needed an immediate descent to a lower altitude, hoping to find warmer air layers and stop the ice accumulation.

Center responded with, ”Mooney, maintain 17,000; you have a Dash 8 commuter underneath you.”

I replied, “Move the Dash 8—I’m descending now.”

Center cleared us down to 9,000 feet, where I leveled off between layers. At this point, we were still carrying the ice load, but the airplane was flying. We stayed at 9,000 feet until Center cleared us to 3,500 feet—and that’s when the banging started. It startled us at first, but it quickly became obvious that the noise came from the ice melting and breaking away—and hitting the airplane.We contacted the tower and were cleared for a VFR approach into Morristown. We landed without incident.

As I taxied up to the terminal, my wife and kids were waiting for us. I parked and opened my door and noticed a chunk of ice on the entry step. The cowling still had ice accumulated on the intake openings—a sight to behold.

Never Panic

So, what did I learn from this experience?

Never panic. Do not become complacent or let yourself be intimidated by ATC (in my case, Center). Act without delay, and do whatever you must to keep you and your passenger(s) safe.

Also, I could have done a better job analyzing the weather along my route.

Even though there were no en route icing reports at my filed altitude, I was not aware that the tops of clouds are generally laden with the most moisture and, at higher altitudes, that ice will form and accumulate very quickly on cold surfaces. Climbing to try to stay above the clouds and ice probably was the wrong decision.

Also, there are upgrades you can make to your airplane to help buy time. The Mooney and I returned to the Mooney Aircraft factory at Kerrville, Texas, later that month, where we had a TKS anti-icing system installed.

This article was originally published in the April 2023, Issue 936 of  FLYING.

The post Life Lessons of an Iced-Up Mooney appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

As a newly minted U.S. Army aviator and UH-60 Black Hawk pilot, being based in the Republic of Korea in 1988 was an ideal first assignment. The cost of living was low, the people were friendly, and the food was great. And then there was the flying. There were few rules in Korea, and as young lieutenants and warrant officers we took advantage and “aired out” our UH-60s often. 

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

The rules were simple. Don’t fly into the prohibited area of the capital, Seoul, aptly named P-73. Don’t fly into the Korean president’s TFR. As with the U.S., these were likely to pop up unannounced, or sometimes even move. And don’t ever, ever, stray north of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), into the People’s Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea. The North Korean military was known to try and lure aircraft across the DMZ through MIJI, or meaconing, intrusion, jamming, and interference. They’d set up false NDBs to mimic stations in South Korea. In the winter, when fresh snow covered panels indicating the DMZ, they would set up false panels in North Korea, or use other means to lure crews across the border, then shoot them down. Part of our Korea check out was testing on our ability to navigate the DMZ.

One day I found myself on the mission board with another lieutenant and longtime friend, John. We had gone through the lieutenant basic course together and he was one class ahead of me in flight school. We were told to put some hours on an airframe, so we decided to make a day of it.

We would fly up to the northeast corner of South Korea by Sokcho and follow the DMZ to the west. We would hop into Camp Page in Cheongju for some gas and lunch, continue westbound to just north of Incheon, then follow the west coast of Korea down to our base, Camp Humphreys, near Pyeongtaek. A storm had recently come through and dumped some snow, so it promised to be a nice day for flying. Joining us was our crew chief, Sergeant Morey. 

The western side of Korea is dominated by the Taebaek Mountain range, so the first half of our flight would follow valleys and ridgelines. It would be much like navigating in the Rockies. Our UH-60 was well equipped with two HSIs. There were rumors about some newfangled navigation system that was slowly coming online and would use satellites, but that was in the future. We did have a Doppler inertial navigation system, but it was so unreliable we would joke that if we taped 25 cents to it and threw it out the window, we could at least say we lost a quarter. So, we relied on our map, clock, and HSI. I would navigate the first half while John flew, then we would change out after lunch.

The flight progressed well. We hit the east coast of Korea, followed it up to the DMZ, then made a left turn to the west. I was right on the map, and our times were working out. At some point things started to seem a little off to me. A bridge was not where I thought it should be… a valley was not there… At some point I told John to keep flying up a valley to the west. He looked over at me and said, “You mean to the north?” I said no, to the west, and pointed to my HSI that was showing 270 degrees, or a west heading. He responded, “No, my HSI and the magnetic compass show us flying north, and we’ve been flying north for some time.”

I looked at the standby compass; it showed north. I looked at my HSI and it showed west. At some point my HSI had failed and drifted off by 90 degrees, but I did not get a “fail” flag. John then asked the question that was on all our minds. “Sam, are we in North Korea??” I looked at him and responded, “That’s one possibility.”

John immediately turned south, dove down as low as he could, and pulled the collective to get every knot of speed he could milk from our trusty stallion. He would throw in occasional jinks to the left and right in case a young North Korean conscript got a lucky shot off at us. I continued to try and locate us on the map, but everything was running together. Eventually we spotted a South Korean flag at a remote mountain airstrip. This was nothing more than a small dispersal strip with a control tower to be used if war broke out. At this point we knew we were in South Korea. The airstrip had no identifier, and I did not see it on a map. We were getting low on fuel but decided to continue a bit to see if we could nail down our location and proceed to Camp Page. But we agreed that if we got to a certain fuel state we would return to this airstrip for gas.

We continued for about 15 minutes, but our luck didn’t change. John, as pilot in command, made the decision to return to the South Korean airstrip and get gas. I made some calls on guard but got no response. As we made our final approach the control tower flashed red lights at us warning us off. Unfortunately by this point, other lights were flashing at us. Our low fuel lights. 

We landed and were immediately surrounded by Jeeps mounted with .50 caliber machine guns and mean looking Republic of Korea (ROK) soldiers. Their tedium of being assigned to guard a remote airstrip was broken. They had purpose and life. We were escorted to the parking ramp, then given the signal to shut down.

I told Sergeant Morey to tell the guards we were Americans; we just needed some gas. He got out with his hands raised and was only able to get out “We’re Americans…” before being thrown to the ground and having a rifle put to his helmet. We eventually convinced the ROK soldiers we were not North Korean infiltrators, got some gas, and continued our merry way back home, deciding it was best to cut things short. Well, merry except for Sergeant Morey who, for some reason, was silent and sulking the entire way home. We wrote up the errant HSI and it was checked out by maintenance. The response was the one every pilot dreads. “Checked. Could not duplicate.” We then encountered the nonstop comments about lieutenants and maps. Until… a few days later our XO (executive officer) and the maintenance officer were flying the same aircraft, and it happened again. They, however, became hopelessly lost and had to land in a frozen rice patty, hike to a phone, and call for a fuel truck. I guess it goes to show you. Sometimes God smiles on fools and lieutenants.

This article was originally published in the March 2023, Issue 935 of  FLYING.

The post Astray Into the Zone appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In the early ’90s, a friend and I bought a Kitfox. It had a Rotax engine specifically made for airplanes. The worst mechanical event during our ownership was when the exhaust came loose in flight, filling the cockpit with noise and smoke.

Our kids grew up with this little airplane, and we flew all the time with the doors off, with them sticking their heads out into the slipstream for a better view. When a friend put his Cub on floats up for sale, we decided to purchase it. We sold the Kitfox to a friend who owned a powersports business, and that was the end of the Kitfox for me until late Summer 2002. The new owner of the Kitfox then wanted to sell the airplane. The buyer, a student pilot, needed tailwheel instruction, and I agreed to spend some time training him. I did not find out until our first lesson that the student had 55 hours of instruction and had yet to solo. This can be a red flag and may indicate someone is better off trying something besides flying. Because he was the new proud owner of the Kitfox, I agreed to give it a go.

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

After two lessons in non-ideal weather conditions, the student had yet to make a landing where I did not have to intervene. On wheels, this lightweight airplane could be a handful for someone of my experience, let alone a newbie. I told our friend it was a lost cause. He asked me to take the student up on a calm evening; if he could not manage landings, then I could call it quits. OK, deal! October 2 featured perfect low-wind conditions, so we met around 5 p.m. to practice landings. There was a light wind out of the northeast so we used Coldwater Airport’s smaller 3,500-foot Runway 3 (now 4). The landings were not going well, but the takeoffs started to get smoother. Around his fourth try, he landed without bouncing horribly and with zero input from me, and then made two more landings without help. As we climbed after the sixth landing, out of the blue he asked, “If the engine quit right now, what would you do?”

I explained that at low altitude, all you can do is pick the best spot straight ahead and push the nose down to keep the speed up for a glide and hope for the best. He nodded, indicating he got the concept. He lined up with the runway and executed his best landing yet. I said, “Wow, nice job,” as we rolled to a stop and took off again. 

I was finally feeling as though I no longer had to watch his every move. I was enjoying a view of the lake off to our right when, at around 200 feet, the engine went silent. It did not sputter like an engine starved for fuel or kick like it had a spark problem. One second it was running at full power and the next, it was completely dead. 

Training kicked in, and I immediately took the controls with no resistance on my student’s part. I shoved the nose down hard because in a climb at a low airspeed, most of the airplane’s momentum is coming from the engine. Without it, I had to use our altitude for airspeed. Once in the glide, the windshield filled with power lines, a busy two-lane highway, and a bowling alley. 

What I saw did not look survivable, so I did what we are trained not to do: I turned the airplane, but not by lowering a wing and banking. I somehow got the idea to push the left rudder and skid the airplane 90 degrees to the west of the runway.

The windshield filled with an unobstructed grassfield, but as comforting as that was, the maneuver had used up most of our precious momentum. The airplane was now in a nose-low, wings-level, minimum-speed descent. As the ground rushed up, I pulled back to raise the nose, but not much happened. The airplane hit with an awful crunching sound, and within a few feet, flipped inverted. As the g-forces of the sudden deceleration hit us, we were thrown against our shoulder harnesses, but they kept our faces off the instrument panel.

I asked my student if he was injured. “I don’t think so.” I told him to evacuate the airplane because of fire risk. We had been flying with the doors locked up and open, so there was no mangled metal in the way of our exit. We released our belts and fell to the ceiling, then rolled out onto the wing. From there, we stood up and ran. We could hear sirens in the distance because traffic on the road saw what happened, and many motorists were stopped and running in our direction. Someone had already called 911. After a few minutes with no fire, my student noticed the strobe lights were still flashing. He asked if he should turn the master power switch off. Smelling no gas, I told him to go ahead. 

The next morning at the airport, two FAA inspectors reviewed my credentials and one asked if I knew the survivability statistics of engine failure accidents on takeoff. I said, “Not very good.” He said so many were fatal, with pilot error being a big factor. He added since I was there talking to him, he wasn’t going to question whether my actions were correct. Since I was still alive, that was proof enough what I did worked. He said, “Let’s go find out what caused the engine to quit.”

There was fuel in the carburetor and ignition on all the cylinders, and the compressions were good, so we tried the starter. Within one blade rotation, the engine came to life. The conclusion? Engine failure from an undetermined reason.

Did you catch two unusual things that happened? The first was the student asking about engine failure procedures right before an actual engine failure. The second was that the engine went from full power to nothing at the worst possible altitude. The Kitfox’s engine has two ignition systems for safety and two spark plugs per cylinder. If one dies, you still have a redundant system to keep the engine running. Two toggle switches by the student’s left knee controlled the two ignition systems.

Several months after the accident, we discovered the student’s life was a bit of a mess. He had lots of debt, troubled relationships, and a huge life insurance policy which specified he was covered under pilot training. Had I not been onboard, his chances of survival would have been close to zero. The question remains in my mind whether he’d planned it that way.

This column was originally published in the February 2023 Issue 934 of FLYING.

The post Buyer Beware appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In 1976, I was an inexperienced 24-year-old pilot when I got my first “real” flying job. I was hired by a small commuter airline to fly mail at night and passengers during the day in Piper Navajo and Navajo Chieftain twins.

A normal sequence started on day one at 10:30 p.m. in Charleston, West Virginia, flying east to Baltimore, Maryland, then back west to Martinsburg, West Virginia, then further west, ending in Cumberland, Maryland, at 3:30 a.m. the next morning. At 11:30 a.m. on day two, I would fly passenger runs until 9 p.m., then at 9:30 p.m., pick up the airmail run back to Charleston, finishing up around 1:30 a.m. on the third day. At every stop, I had to unload and reload 1,600 pounds of mail and somewhere find time to check the weather and get something to eat.

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

This was all-weather, single-pilot flying. You didn’t cancel an airmail run—you flew.

One night, on the Baltimore to Charleston leg, I had an exceptionally heavy load of mail, so I elected to carry less fuel than normal. The weather was forecast to be good VFR at Charleston, so I had no problem with this fuel load. However, when I arrived in the Charleston area, it was (in the old sequenced teletype-style report format) W0X0F, which means “Indefinite, Ceiling Zero, Sky Obscured, Visibility Zero in Fog.” I got the weather in Huntington, West Virginia, and Cincinnati, Ohio—Huntington was down too, but above minimums, and Cincinnati was good VFR. I figured if I flew that direction, I would arrive in Cincinnati with about 15 minutes of fuel, so I chose to fly on to Huntington.

As I continued westbound, passing over the Charleston VOR, Charleston Approach informed me the visibility had just come up to a mile. They then gave me a 180-degree turn back towards the airport, where I could see that the departure end of Runway 23 was clear but the approach end was still covered in fog. They also informed me that this was closing back down pretty fast, and by the time I could get vectored for the approach, it could very easily be zero visibility again. What could I do to get safely and legally in with only 1-mile visibility? The contact approach.

I was only 4 miles from the airport when they cleared me for the contact approach to Runway 5. Fortunately, I had already reduced power and extended the gear and flaps, lining up on the runway and slowing down to get the rest of the flaps out. One steep descent and landing later, I was safely on the ground in Charleston. As I was taxiing in, the visibility dropped rapidly, and the tower informed me that the reported visibility had just sunk to zero again. As I was taxiing the aircraft from the APO (Airport Post Office) to parking, ground control informed me that Huntington had a severe thunderstorm earlier that night, which had knocked out their lighting. I would have arrived at Huntington and not been able to land. Thanks to a momentary break in the fog and the contact approach, I was able to deliver the mail into Charleston instead.

After this incident, I vowed to never put myself in a situation where I did not have enough fuel for other alternatives, and it changed the way I looked at alternate airports—for example, Beckley, West Virginia, sits at a higher altitude and is less susceptible to fogging in. A knowledge of what the FARs said about what I could do was also important.

On another night, flying from Baltimore to Charleston, I was over Elkins, West Virginia, at 10,000 feet msl, and had been experiencing light to moderate icing. I changed altitudes three times to try to get out of it. After having to cycle the wing deicing boots multiple times, I noticed that the aircraft was not regaining speed like it normally would. Hearing the loud banging of ice sliding off the propellers and hitting the fuselage told me that the propeller deicers were working normally. There is only one deicing light, on the left wing, and it was pitch dark outside, so I thought to get my flashlight and shine it on the rightwing. There was almost an inch of ice on that wing: The deicing boot had failed.

I knew I was in trouble and thought about descending, but I realized that would be an irreversible decision—and I could use my altitude to keep my airspeed up if I had to. My airspeed was stabilized at 150 mph (about 130 knots). I thought, ‘OK, she is flying good, so this is a good airspeed and I can get the gear down at this speed.’ I did not know how much ice was on the tail, so lowering flaps would probably have not been a good idea.

I informed ATC of my problem and was vectored onto the ILS Runway 23 at Charleston. I traded my altitude to keep airspeed up and got the runway in sight about 5 miles out. I put the gear down on short final and kept my airspeed at 150, flaring out over the numbers and getting it stopped before I ran off the cliff on the departure end. I found out from the mechanics that with the rain in Baltimore, when I tested the boots before takeoff, some of that water got sucked inside the boot through a pinhole, and this later froze the valve closed, not allowing any air into the boot to inflate it. With this incident, I learned that instead of just reacting, fly the airplane first then think things through carefully so you can make the right decisions.

One other night I was flying from Martinsburg to Cumberland at 3 a.m. I had 1,000 pounds of mail in the back, and it was my last leg of the night. About 30 miles out, the manifold pressure on my right engine went from 30 inches to 23 inches—I had lost the turbocharger. To me, there were three possibilities: 1. The turbocharger had suffered an internal failure; 2. The wastegate had failed; 3. The exhaust manifold had failed.

Well, one and two were not too bad, but number three was, and it would be pumping 1,800-degree-Fahrenheit air into the engine compartment. It took me all of about five seconds to think about this before I shut the engine down. The only approach at that time was a circle-to-land VOR approach to an airport surrounded by mountains and it was night. On the approach, I broke out of the clouds at about 300 feet above minimums (about 1,500 feet agl) and was able to see the runway lights about 5 miles out. I was then able to set up a normal base-to-final turn and land safely at Cumberland. This taught me the importance of knowing my aircraft systems and how they worked so that I could act accordingly. Also, I learned the importance of situational awareness, knowing where I was and what was underneath me.

In more than 30 years and 25,000 hours of flying NAMC YS11s, Douglas DC-9s and DC-8s, and Boeing 767s as a freight dog, I know the unexpected and unplanned will happen: unforecast weather, mechanical failures, even traffic. I learned how to deal with these things by just stopping and thinking first and applying all of the above lessons learned.

This article was originally published in the December 2022/January 2023 Issue 933 of FLYING.

The post Lessons Learned From Flying the Mail appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In late June 2021, I had a business meeting scheduled in Salt Lake City, Utah, so I was happy to have a good excuse for a cross-country flight from Ithaca, NewYork, in my 1979 Cessna 210N. I had an uneventful flight to the Northern Colorado Regional Airport (KFNL) near Loveland and Fort Collins, where I had planned to overnight and head to Salt Lake City InternationalAirport (KSLC) the next day. I filed IFR for KSLC via the northern route, which has somewhat lower minimum en route altitudes (MEAs). Shortly after passing the Medicine Bow (MBW) VOR, I noticed red flags on both Aspens (PFD and MFD), as well as major electrical discharge indications of the ammeter on the JPI930 engine monitor. I shut off all electronics except the Garmin GTN 750 and headed back to KFNL with ATC guidance. Denver Center suggested a landing at the Laramie airport (KLAR), but I feared there would be minimal maintenance facilities. Besides, the engine was running smoothly and I was in VFR conditions, so I elected to return to KFNL.

About 30 nm north of the airport, I lost radio contact with Denver Center as the GTN 750 screen and the rest of the instrument panel went dark. I connected the Icom handheld radio to my Lightspeed headset and continued trying to reach Denver and the KFNL tower. I was reminded that without an exterior antenna for the Icom handheld radio, its range is only a few miles. Radio communication with the remote KFNL tower was finally accomplished about 4 nm north of the airport as I entered a long left downwind for Runway 33. Denver had offered to give me block space for landing at KFNL, and they diverted traffic until after I landed. They also provided their phone number and requested that I telephone them immediately after landing. After parking the airplane, I called Denver Center and reported my safe landing. They thanked me, wishing me luck.

I then visited Professional Aircraft Services (PAS) and the manager, Larry Hallock. I described the loss of my electrical charging system. He informed me the voltage regulator was not defective, recommending we overnight a 100-amp alternator/clutch assembly from Dallas. This engine was a zero-timed Continental IO-550 with a direct drive alternator, which had not been removed or worked on since its installation at the factory.

The next day, the new alternator/clutch assembly arrived, but in the interim, the PAS maintenance shop had removed the direct drive alternator assembly from my engine and found disturbing evidence of a major hardware failure. I visited the shop and witnessed that the clutch shaft and lock nut in my alternator clutch assembly were loose and wobbly. There was no cotter pin in that shaft/nut assembly as there should have been, and there was visible evidence of metal pieces distributed throughout the engine. In addition, the four 5/16-inch bolts on the crankshaft face gear—which meshes with the smaller alternator clutch gear—were loose, allowing the face gear to “chatter” with the alternator clutch gear.

The cotter pin was conspicuous by its absence—and later found in the crankcase. It appeared to have not been “spread” after being inserted into the castle nut. The shop drained the engine oil, filtering it through a metal screen mesh as recommended by a recent FAA bulletin. Visible pieces of orange elastomer/rubber sealant were present—and when these pieces in the screen were touched with a magnet, multiple bits of ferromagnetic metal were observed. Some orange polymer as well as some small metal pieces were also inside the alternator housing casing, below the large gear on the crank case shaft. The oil filter also showed visible metal particles.

The telltale signs of a major engine problem drove the conclusion that a major engine teardown and repair was needed. Fortunately, KFNL hosts The “New” Firewall Forward engine overhaul shop. Jerry Doyle, general manager, and I agreed to move forward by removing the engine from the airplane and beginning the teardown, inspection, and repair.

An important question was whether the cost would be covered by either Continental, the engine manufacturer, or Avemco, my insurance provider. As noted above, this “new engine” was now 4 years old and had 430 hours on it. Continental informed me that my engine was past the 18-month rebuilt gasoline engine warranty.

I felt that my personal witness of the engine damage during the initial electrical system diagnosis provided substantial evidence for an assembly error when the alternator was installed at the Continental factory. In addition, my photos, which show the missing cotter pin in the direct drive alternator castle nut and related engine damage provided substantial evidence that someone at Continental had failed to follow standard operating procedures in the assembly of the alternator and had made the simple yet damaging error of not spreading the cotter pin after inserting it into the alternator clutch drive castle nut. In providing evidence, I referenced Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin NE-18-16 from June 2018, which described a fatal accident involving a Bonanza equipped with the same IO-550 engine. In the end, Continental compensated me for engine removal, parts, labor, and reinstallation of the engine. As a “Plan B,” I had also approached Avemco with a similar request, and my agent said they would help if needed.

The supply chain shortage problem made the engine rebuild period frustratingly long, and the shops were very busy. Plus, the 210 went out of annual inspection. There were no significant findings when PAS performed the inspection, fortunately. A year later, after my test flight, all looked good—and I flew home the next day.

The post Over The Rockies With No Alternator appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was our first night cross-country flight in the B-24, beginning at our base in Topeka, Kansas, on a triangular flight plan across the American Midwest. The aircraft was one in a pool of training B-24s and we’d not flown this particular one before.

We took off in the dark after only a gentle warning of a cold front we would fly over. Heading north, as we approached South Dakota, the weather got rough and wet snow appeared. We began to ice up. Then came the sporadic thump of rime ice thrown by the props against the fuselage. And then, I made one of the classic mistakes one should never make: I took my eyes off the instrument panel and began looking out the side window at the snow and patchy ice on the wing leading edge.

It was turbulent, and one large lurch of the airplane brought my eyes back to the instrument panel. It was awry. The gyroscope of the artificial horizon had tumbled, and the tiny aircraft silhouette was drifting across the instrument face. I reached forward to “cage” the gyroscope and as I did that, I must have pushed the wheel forward with my left hand. Suddenly, we were falling, twisting downwards…airspeed climbing…rate of descent moving toward its limit (2,000 fpm)…airspeed now over 300 mph…artificial horizon telling nothing…airspeed now past the red line on the indicator that said this aircraft should not exceed 355 mph.

I was 23 years old with nine other souls on board, alone at night, in a storm over Rapid City, South Dakota, losing all my altitude. And I was completely lost as to what to do. I was feeling very alone.

I was alone, for my engineer, who had been standing beside me, was forced to his knees by the diving spiral, and my copilot was sound asleep in his fully-reclined seat. There was only me to somehow figure out what was happening and what to do. I screamed, and that helped, and then I heard a voice, that often-damned training instructor’s voice from so many hours of instrument flying under the hood: “Needle, ball, and airspeed. Needle, ball, and airspeed. Damn it, why don’t you do as I say? Needle, ball, and airspeed!” Over and over and over again. 

And that did it. I focused on the instruments. Yes, I focused on the needle and ball. I straightened out the needle with the ailerons and then the ball with the rudder pedals. Now, I could focus on the airspeed (I don’t really remember what it was reading, but the engineer said later that it had reached 420 mph). I began pulling slowly back on the wheel to get the nose up and that airspeed down. Then, suddenly, the wheel came loose and my first thought was that the tail had come off! But it was my copilot, who had been awakened by my scream, brought his reclined seat back up, grabbed the wheel to pull himself forward, and unintentionally put us into a violent change of attitude that by all rights should have broken us up but didn’t. We had zoomed—from a steep dive to a steep climb. And the airspeed had fallen to somewhere around 92, but together we pushed the nose forward to get us level…at long last! Miraculously intact, ourcraft showed an altitude of 5,400 feet msl. The elevations around Rapid City are high enough (3,202 feet msl) to suggest we had been close to hitting the terrain, and afterwards, the navigator said he had seen lights of a city on the ground through the plexiglass dome on the top of his nose compartment! 

We did not do much talking through the rest of the night. We took up the western leg of our assigned triangle and flew straight and level, most of us sharing the unspoken concern—whether our aircraft’s structure was going to hold together. At the first signs of dawn, we noted that our path was converging with what seemed like a line of clouds and agreed it would be imprudent to fly through them with a weakened ship. Then we saw a well-lighted airport below. The code of the airport’s rotating beacon revealed it as Denver. It then dawned on us that those “clouds” were the Rockies and the “high cloud” was probably Pikes Peak. 

We turned and landed back at Topeka a little afterdawn, noted the frightening dive on the airplane’s log, reported it all to operations, and counted our blessings. Three days later, that same B-24 crashed with no survivors. It was last seen in a very steep dive. I assumed the elevator cables had given way. 

But, yes, if you lived in Rapid City in the winter of 1943 and thought one night you heard a large airplane in a screaming dive, you would have never known how close we came to dropping in on you.

The next night’s flight also ran into winter weather during a three-legged trip. This time, me and my crew flew out of heavy ice, seeking warmer weather to the southwest of the front. After landing in Tulsa, Oklahoma—Topeka’s weather having closed in—I met a young woman named Vivien Poe in a bowling alley and, before long, we were married in the chapel at the Topeka air base.

Editor’s note: John T. Foster flew west in 2003 at the age of 83.

The post Look Out, Rapid City! appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was the first thing that ran through my mind: “Talk to me, Goose.” But this wasn’t the Hollywood thriller I grew up with—Top Gun—this was a real-life tragedy. I’d just lost my father, and now I had an inflight emergency involving oil fumes in the cockpit and a vibrating engine. 

As we taxied out that morning, the tears started down my cheek. With a shaky voice, I asked for—and read back—my clearance. By the time the Piper Arrow reached rotation speed and lifted off the runway, my sobbing convulsions broke squelch and the tears in my eyes made it difficult for me to see. This was my departure from Leesburg International Airport (KLEE) in Florida after spending the last week of my father’s life by his side in the hospital and then in hospice.

We were flying home from central Florida to Virginia that Wednesday with the promise of a slight quartering tailwind. I felt an altitude of 11,500 feet might permit us to make it nonstop, but we’d have to eke out every efficiency possible, including “cutting the corner” off the coast of Georgia. I engaged the autopilot and contacted Orlando Approach. 

The next hour was a quiet and somber time. The metaphor of “slipping the surly bonds” and flying amongst the angels was not lost upon me. My mind was entranced thinking about the final days and the final words my father and I were able to exchange, replaying them over and over again as if to record them into my brain, never to be forgotten.

We were navigating direct to STARY, the intersection shortcut of choice for mid-Atlantic pilots making the trek to and from Florida. STARY is situated 13 miles off the coast of Georgia and permits an almost arrow-straight flight back to Virginia. I thought of STARY as a good, incidental omen.

We were just south of Jacksonville, about to go “feetwet,” when the faint odor of oil caught my attention. It’s not an unexpected aroma in a 42-year-old airplane, so I dismissed it and returned to reminisce vivid thoughts of my father. A few minutes later, my wife asked, “Do you smell that?” Snapping out of my stupor, I recognized the smell was getting a bit overwhelming, even for our trusty old bird. I confirmed to her that it was the smell of oil but having already convinced myself that it was normal,I said, “It’s OK, no big deal.”

As we approached STARY, I felt the first shudder. I looked over at my wife, and she was reading her book.About one minute later, it happened again. I looked at the engine monitor and then at her, and found her looking up at me. After the third time, the vibrations didn’t stop. “We might have to land in the water,” I told her. “Your job will be to prop the door open before touchdown.” 

I couldn’t believe I had spoken “those words” and—not ever one to be at a loss for them—her silence surprised me. She broke out the rosary beads from her purse and began praying.

I turned 30 degrees left and started making our way towards the angling Georgia coastline. As I looked ahead, I saw nothing but deserted beaches. It turns out, all of what lay ahead was wildlife refuge. Hilton Head was 65 miles beyond, and I thought for a brief moment that it might be nice to become stranded on Hilton Head—but the incessant vibration cut short my daydream.

I suddenly heard my first flight instructor, Jarl, preaching: “The closest airport might be behind you.” With the vast Atlantic Ocean off our right wing, I had only to look over my left shoulder and, as if on cue, there was St. Simons Island (KSSI), about 18 miles distant. It was then that I called JAX Center to report our engine problem. “Roger, 72T, say intentions and number of souls on board?” Wow! I couldn’t believe that I was being asked “that” question.

As I completed the turn towards KSSI, I began to think that this might have a happy ending after all. Descending into thicker air, the normally aspirated engine was able to make more power and consequently vibrated more intensely. I pulled the throttle and prop back in an effort to slow the engine and vibration, thinking that having less power for longer would be better than the engine’s sudden catastrophic loss. Between radio calls to JAX, I joined my wife in reciting the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Marys in alternating fashion. I also began to think of my father, wondering if I’d see him sooner than I had thought I would.

It felt like the next 20 minutes took an hour to pass. Approaching the non towered field, I began making my calls to St. Simon’s traffic 10 miles out. I wanted everyone/any-one to know that I was coming. Once comfortably within gliding distance, I began my circling descent. I continued my slow pull of power, knowing that I could not count on the assurance of adding any power back in. 

The landing on Runway 22 was uneventful. After pulling up to the ramp and shutting down, we didn’t know what to expect. Stepping off the wing, we found a puddle of oil already forming under the engine and a long streak of oil from the side of the cowl extending rearward all the way under the pilot’s storm window.

What was it? The No. 1 compression ring from the No.4 cylinder had decided to disintegrate. Miraculously, the ring remained within its channel on the piston. There would have been no telling our fate, had it come loose and been blown down into the crankcase. The ignored oil fumes was my first indication that the crank case was pressurizing and oil was being blown overboard. But I had missed it, too distracted with grief to take the early hint.

The lesson I learned from this incident is that grief can affect your flying skills just like some medicine can—perhaps more so—since it can cloud your judgment more insidiously than the obvious runny nose or sore throat. Flying while in such intense mourning led me to miss the cues that had been talking to me all along.

The post ‘Talk to Me Goose’ appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The question, “Are we there yet?” is asked so often by young children traveling with little concept of distance and time that it has become a joke for adults to ask it of each other when traveling as well. It’s not always a joke for adults. For pilots, it can be indicative of your passengers’ disconnect from the flying process, like children strapped into a plurality of seats with their sipper cups and board books for company.

Why do we fly people without explaining to them what we’re doing? Why do we shush inquisitiveness from adults and kids? Some of us make the effort to take passengers along through the walk around and explain what we’re looking for. Some passengers are delighted to learn this, and they should be kept involved in the entire flight, for they might end up in flight school. Others are bored by it and just want to get in and get somewhere: they should fly commercial. How many of us have significant others that fit the latter description? You have my condolences.

The Great Inquisition

A friend has a Van’s Aircraft RV-6 that he often travels in with his wife. When he bought an Aeronca 7AC Champ and he took her on a cross-country flight to a familiar destination, halfway through the flight she inquired, “Shouldn’t we be there by now?” It was no joke.

In the RV-6, she had been quite chatty sitting beside him with the panel before her, and she seemed to be involved in the flight. Stuck in the rear seat of the Aeronca with nothing to interact with but the back of his head, it became clear that she wasn’t the least bit involved in the flight, and it turns out she really hadn’t been that involved during the RV flight.

On the return flight, he had her sit in front and do most of the flying. He no longer shared flight plans with her—he discussed them with her, and let her decide what the best route would be. She caught the bug, took an online ground school, and hired a local CFI for the air work. Within a year, she’d passed the knowledge test, found a designated pilot examiner who could fit in the RV-6, and earned her private pilot certificate. Flying isn’t for everyone, but we won’t know if flying is for our “one” until we involve them.

When I carry passengers in rough conditions, I have to keep them fully engaged with navigating or flying the airplane, just to avoid motion sickness. In Flight of Passage, Rinker Buck memorialized his nausea in the back seat of the family Piper PA-11, begging his brother—while being slammed by Taconic turbulence—to let him fly so he could keep his breakfast down. We can learn from his experience.

Teaching Leads to Mastery

The best way to master a subject is to teach it. We’ll never possess all the answers, but we can learn humbly from the questions others ask. (If you’re a narcissist, fully aware of your incompetence, and can’t admit that you’re ignorant of or wrong about anything, go to a golf course instead of an airport.)

By sharing our experiences and imparting knowledge to our passengers, we exhibit our respect and caring for them. The airlines are required to conduct a passenger safety brief prior to every flight. How many of us do this in GA? The preflight brief is the minimum we should be teaching our passengers. If they appear disinterested, keep them involved anyway, at least until the aircraft is tied down or chocked at the destination.

There may be social obstacles to sharing our passion for flight with our passengers. I’ve been accused of mansplaining how to perform slips on final and how to time magnetos (it may have been my gesticulating with manly hands and my use of the expression, sparky-sparky that gave this impression).

Trying to connect with someone toting a cell phone is also a source of frustration. The “not my job” attitude can be exasperating, usually expressed with, “Why are you telling me this?” I typically respond with: “Because I’ll need your help.” Once their eyes stop rolling, I keep them busy with a finger on the chart and their eyes looking out, a vintage luxury that glass panels sorely lack.

A Wake-Up Call To Promote GA

Recent advances in avionics have minimized pilot workloads to the point where boredom can be more of a safety issue than the complacency that accompanies our overconfidence in the sparky-sparky system. Years ago, most GA autopilots performed altitude and heading duties only. There is no more helpless a feeling than hearing the faint voice of someone on the frequency who, while flying on top to the coast, succumbed along with his passengers to the soporific drone of well-synchronized props, awaking almost two hours out over the ocean with only 40 minutes of fuel remaining. For some, the greatest compliment a passenger can give a pilot is to fall asleep during the flight, but the best compliment is actually to stay involved with the flight.

The next time we hear—“Are we there yet?”—let it be a wake-up call that we could be doing more to promote GA by engaging our passengers more in our flying.

This article was first published in the 2022 Southeast Adventure Guide of FLYING Magazine.

The post Are We There Yet? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“Would you go to Hanover County, Virginia, and fly the Cub I just bought to my grass strip in southeastern Wisconsin?” A friend in need asked me—and I was happy to make the trip.

“Sure.” So I flew commercial into Richmond where the seller picked me up, then introduced me to the prewar Piper J3L-65 Cub. She was original and in remarkably good shape, so I prepped her for the trip and slept on the FBO’s couch that night.

We departed at dawn intending to complete the 600-mile jaunt back to Wisconsin in one day, provided we could pass the bottom of Lake Michigan before a storm system blowing up from St. Louis, Missouri, arrived.

The Lycoming 65-hp engine smoothly pucketa-pucketa’d along, and the skylight made the cockpit a bright and cheery space. We were warmly greeted at both fuel stops. During the second stop, I checked on the weather: The front was west of Indianapolis, moving northeast. My goal transitioned to something similar to Rinker and Kern Buck’s Flight of Passage: A True Story: If we could just get into Indiana…

Passing Grand Lake in western Ohio, dark anvils dominated the western horizon. Since there were several small airports south of Fort Wayne, Indiana, I decided to race the front to one of them, or divert east to Van Wert County. The O-145-B2’s stack was roaring at 2,500 rpm and the head gaskets held, but that pudgy USA 35B airfoil was no match for the winds aloft.

With an anvil looming above, I noticed an orange blob below: a windsock, limp on its pole beside a small hangar. The adjacent narrow strip of green beckoned us. We peeled off into a descending turn, slipped down to the eastern threshold, and settled into—not onto—grass that was well over two feet tall, through which the old wooden Sensenich prop was now flailing.

We were committed to waiting out the storm here—I had to throttle up to keep us moving. Using the hangar as a reference, we snaked through the grass to where there would likely be tiedowns. Facing the hangar, I shut down, leapt out, and managed to find three old tires—with nylon ropes still inside through the fescue forest. I lifted the tail and repositioned the old girl between the tiedowns. With the front roiling above, I tied down the wings and was just pulling the lock knot tight on the tail rope when the frontal gust hit hard. The old ropes, green from disuse, managed to hold fast as heavy raindrops began drumming the fabric.

I slid into the back seat and closed up the cockpit. It was like being in a car wash. The winds rocked us against the ropes. I fastened the seat belt, lest a tiedown fail and we get flipped. Then I discovered the skylight leaked, just above me. The wind eventually died down and the downpour subsided to a gentle rain with lots of virga drifting by. The visibility wasn’t improving: we were down for the night.

Mosquitoes—protected from the rain by the wings and having discovered every opening in the cockpit—harassed me for blood with their unwelcome whine. As dusk closed in, I rinsed down some snacks I’d brought along with water from a canteen. I stepped outside under the wing and was promptly ambushed by mosquitoes. I retreated to the cockpit, closing the door and window with their poorly kept promises of protection.

I hung my legs over the front seatback, trying to get comfortable—I tried straddling the seatback, I tried positions that a yogi wouldn’t attempt, and I crawled over the seatback to try various contortions up front, all to no avail. The front seat seemed more exposed to the whining marauders, so I returned to the back seat and hunkered down.

The temperature dropped, and my A-2 flight jacket was no match for the damp cold. I needed to layer up, so I stuffed the few articles of clothing I had inside the jacket and zipped it all the way up, tucked my hands into my armpits, and shivered myself to sleep. The cycle of drifting off to sleep, hearing a whine close by, swatting the air until quiet was restored, and drifting back to sleep continued until dawn. Fortunately, I could see clear skies to the west.

I ventured out on feet too frozen to feel, stretched my legs, and performed a walk around, removing torn grass from the lower tail wires, wing struts, and main gear, and untied and coiled the ropes back into their tires. I stomped the grass down under the prop and examined both it and the air filter. The filter was clean, but the prop had a definite green hue to the brass leading edges. I completed the preflight and prepared the cockpit.

The eager Lycoming started on the first blade and pucketa’d away as her oil warmed. I performed a quick run-up and began a high rpm taxi through the rough to the far end of the runway. To turn around at the end, I had to get out and pick up the tail as if she had a tail skid.

At the other end of the runway was a typical paved country road with a set of power lines and a barbed wire fence running alongside, with a soybean field beyond. I could see up and down the road. There was no traffic for this humble runway, so I fed in the power, and flailed grass about three quarters of the way down the runway. That Lilliputian Lycoming gave us all she had—not much—but it was enough to get above the grass and into ground effect. Keeping the nose down to build speed, the Cub and I departed between power lines and fence, climbing out over the soybeans, headed for home.

It’s easy to romanticize flying cross country in an antique: It’s just you and an aging airframe with an anemic engine spinning a wooden prop on some grand adventure, but we still need to exercise good judgment. Racing a cumulonimbus to achieve an impulsive goal is foolhardy, and not diverting to your planned alternate is stupid.

Being in a hurry to land, then landing at a strange airport without first verifying its condition, is poor practice. Compounding that error, I put myself in a hurry to leave. I ignored my fatigue and the runway conditions, and performed a risky stunt. I could have napped while a local farmer mowed the grass. Then I would have cleared the power lines by 50 feet.

All the poor decisions that should have led to our demise were in perfect alignment. I got away with it, yes, but not because of skill, nor luck: it just wasn’t our time…then.

The post Racing a Storm Is Not the Best Choice appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

We’re not going to talk about “winter flying.”

This is about flying in winter—when you are on a scheduled commute. It’s about adding extra time towarm up the airplane and clear the ice and snow from in front of the hangar. And, it’s about all the things that can go wrong when you are trying to warm up the air-plane and clear ice and snow from in front of the hangar.

During my first years of flying from Maine to Massachusetts, I didn’t have a hangar, so I didn’t have to clear the ice and snow from in front of it. Instead, my airplane, a 160 hp Piper Tri-Pacer, The Rocket, was parked on the ramp at Central Maine Regional Airport (KOWK) at Norridgewock. I had hired a local seam-stress, an expert furniture upholsterer, to make wing and fuselage covers for the airplane.

These covers were a complex thing of beauty. The hard part was getting the main fuselage cover up and over the twin antennas on top of the cockpit. Once those antennas found their way through the proper holes—cut especially for them—everything else would fall into place.

After mastering the shortcuts of covering your air-plane, you then have to learn to do it in a strong wind at night, and/or sliding around on ice. More than once on icy, windy nights, I spent more time covering the airplane than I did flying home from Massachusetts.

Just because The Rocket was on the ramp did not mean I did not have to clear ice and snow. My winter air-port is owned by the town of Norridgewock. The town brain trust evidently takes a legal view, rather than a common-sense one, of snow removal: If plow trucks get too close to the airplanes, they might damage them, resulting in costs to the town. Therefore, plow trucks stay far away from the airplanes for which they are ostensibly plowing snow. This results in anywhere from 3 feet to 5 yards of snow in front of each airplane.

After a mere 6-inch snowstorm, this “front yard” of snow becomes a pleasant form of moderate exercise—away to get one’s muscles limbered up before flying. After a 30-inch snowstorm, usually followed by blowing wind and drifts reaching almost twice that high, this “exercise” becomes an hours-long beatdown.

During this particular snowstorm, I tried hard to cajole the plow truck driver to get as close to my airplaneas possible. A man of Norridgewock integrity, he wasn’t cajolable.

“Shame on you—are you from New York?” said the look on his face.

“No, I’m from ‘Exhausted’ and fed up with this symbolic snow plowing,” said the look on my face. He wouldn’t budge.

On the way into the airport, I had noticed his car. It had a large R/C airplane sitting in the back seat. “This guy loves airplanes,” I thought. I asked him if he’d like to go for a short flight.

“I’d love to go for a short flight,” he said. “I’ve got some time. I’ll take you up for a few minutesbefore I fly to Massachusetts,” I replied. “Maybe some other day,” he said. “By the time you get all that snow dug out in the front of the plane, you probably won’t have all that much time. Besides, I’ve got a lot of plowing to do.” And he did, just not in front of my airplane.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Maine winters can push you pretty hard, but this push comes with a gift: It makes you pay attention to nature. And when you do, you become more aware of the dramatic natural beauty that’s all around. This struck me particularly on one cloudless night. I was standing on the ice in front of my rented hangar. The sky was a blanket of stars with the arc of the Milky Way easily visible, running in a gray line north to south.

I pulled The Rocket out of the hangar by scattering some sand on the ice in front of the nose wheel to give my feet a bit of purchase. I had tried using slip-on cleats before, but when you’re tugging on a 2,000 pound airplane, the cleats tend to roll off your shoes.

I got the airplane moving a bit and was looking up to take in the inspiring display in the heavens. The mo mentum of the airplane was pushing me, gliding me slowly across the ice. Just then, my heels hit a ridge in the ice and I fell backwards in front of the nose wheel— one leg on either side of it—with the Tri-Pacer gathering speed as it cleared the hangar on a gentle downslope toward the taxiway.

This was not a good position to be in. It seems obvious that the immediate remedy would be to squirm backwards faster than the nose wheel is closing in on your personal property. It became clear, however, thatyou can’t squirm backwards as quickly as you would like, when your fanny is on glare ice. Out of prudence, I raised one leg and kicked hard at the turning nosewheel, regretting that I had removed the wheel fairings for winter flying.

The danger of kicking a turning nose wheel with an airplane bearing down on you—while lying flat on your back—is having your foot thrust under the wheel. Fortunately, the hard kick propelled me across the dark ice and gave me enough room and time to swim and slide out of the way of both the nose wheel and the main gear. Lesson learned. Now when I move The Rocket around on ice, I bring along more sand—a lot more sand—and apply what the British call “utter caution.”

By February or so, the snow outside the hangar—having been cleared more times than I can remember—had combined with the snow that had fallen off the hangar roof to become a foot-high ridge of solid ice. The path in front of the hangar was now reduced to three wheel ruts painfully sculpted with a pick and ice scraper. In fact, the phrase “clearing ice” is a bit comical. No one actually clears ice. You chop away at it until you are ready to collapse, and then you live with what’s left.

By early March, even the wheel ruts seem too deep to navigate. The ice mound in front of the hangar has been shaved down just a tad, allowing me to start the airplane in the hangar and drive it at near full-throttle up and over the ice and out into the clear, sacred space where the airport plow truck has done its symbolic work.

Getting the airplane back into the hangar, usually at night, means somehow getting it up and over that ice dam. This can’t be done with the muscles of one human being. I pondered taxiing the airplane face-first into the hangar, but that would just set up the problem of get-ting it out the following week. The solution: I bought a manually operated winch and installed it in the back of the hangar. The Tri-Pacer has a great sturdy hook under its tail, making it easy to winch it in backwards. But the process takes the better part of an evening in summer and most of a night in winter.

Survival Kit Basics

I have always carried a survival kit in the Tri-Pacer; it seems like an optimistic thing to do. It consists of a narrow-cut mountain backpack and a separate nylon bag with a pop-up, two-person tent, a tarp, and one of those squashable sleeping bags that folds to the size of a football. In the pack are a change of clothes; some thin, wool underwear; a couple pairs of Smartsocks, which combine wool and synthetic fibers; a wool “watch cap”; a good hank of nylon rope; three small, sealed tins of tea; and three or four of those old-fashioned, liquid-filled cigarette lighters.

Living in Maine, I used to keep one of those liquid lighters squirreled away in every jacket I owned. TSA agents gradually confiscated most of them as I tried to board commercial flights.

Probably the most important item in the survival backpack is my huge Gurkha knife, or kukri. It looks like a big Bowie knife with a down-curving, 30-degreeangle in the middle of the blade. Also, I’ve always kept a first-aid kit and a quilted, three-quarter-length coat—good for sub-zero weather—tucked away on the shelf be-hind the back seat.

Of all the hazards of flying in winter, the hardest one to detect is baggage creep. It occurs over a period of several winters; and then, one sunny February morning, you realize you’ve been lugging 75 pounds of stuff with you in the back of the airplane. In addition to the tent, sleeping bag, and survival backpack, you now have onboard a big plastic bin full of tools, hydraulic fluid, duct tape, extra inspection port covers, a nylon bag full of heavy tie-down stakes and rope, plus wing, windscreen, tail and cowling covers, and a 10-pound jumper cable with a special fitting on it for starting a Piper.

At some point, you have to inventory all this stuff and decide what you really need because it’s getting out of hand. Come some blistering hot summer day, all of this survival gear and these extra tools are going to prevent you from clearing the trees at the end of the runway. Of course, if that does happen, you’ll have everything you need to survive.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the Q1 2022 edition of FLYING Magazine.

The post In Winter, It’s Not the ‘Flying’ Part That Gets to You appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Oh, those early flying years—making no money to speak of but being a commercial pilot flying for a living. Troubles seemed so far away. I had my first job after graduating college as a flight instructor in Indianapolis. Life was grand, what could go wrong? I was married to a registered nurse who could support us, and I could go flying every day.

It was a beautiful Indiana winter morning in 1973. What a great opportunity. One of my instrument students owned his own aircraft, a Cessna 210, and was letting me borrow it for fuel to take a quick two-day vacation to Disney World in Florida. My wife and I were so excited. We’d been married for not quite two years, with no children yet—three to come later—and we were inviting our chief of maintenance, Jerry, his wife and their two small children to go with us.

All six of us packed up and had a wonderful flight down, first to Memphis (KMEM), Tennessee, for fuel, then Daytona Beach (KDAB), Florida, for more before arriving at Orlando Executive Airport (KORL). Mickey Mouse, here we come! Well, after one great day at Disney, it was time to head back to the cold, desolate state of Indiana.

• DON’T MISS OUT: Subscribe to FLYING Magazine

The preflight and engine run-up seemed fine—I mean after all, I had the chief of maintenance with me. We both noticed what looked like a flutter on the oil-pressure gauge, but good pressure registered on the gauge.

Takeoff was smooth—the night air crisp and clear—and we were off for Chattanooga (KCHA), Tennessee, for our first fuel stop. I’d filed an instrument flight plan and all was going well, yet it still seemed like there was a flutter on the oil-pressure gauge. The engine was running smoothly, but Jerry and I both decided to stop before the Smoky Mountains and check into this in more detail.

I was about to change our destination with Atlanta Center when it happened. The engine just sputtered and stopped. I called ATC to report our problem, and when restart was futile, I announced to the controller that I had lost my engine and wanted to spiral down to whatever this airport was that I saw below me.

I’ll never forget the next two broadcasts from the controller: First, “I understand you lost your No. 1 engine?”

I reply, “No, I lost the engine.”

“Oh, you’re cleared to do whatever you want. Let me know how it turns out!”

Fun aside now. I’d trained hundreds of students in engine-out procedures in single-engine airplanes. Set up best glide speed, select the best landing spot. Things were a little more difficult than with my students though. It was night, I was in a retractable-gear aircraft that uses the engine-driven hydraulic pump to operate the four gear doors and the gear itself—and I had my family and another person on board.

You don’t want to get too “dirty” with a lot of drag while gliding, but I wanted to use the windmilling prop to assist in putting down the gear. (No gear-up, dead-stick emergency landing for this pilot that night.)

Well, lo and behold, the gear came down before the slowing airspeed stopped the prop. We spiraled correctly and touched down as if nothing was wrong. We coasted onto the FBO ramp and came to a halt near the fuel pump. “Need some fuel?” asked the lineman scurrying up to help. “No,” I said. “It’s a little more problem than fuel for us tonight.” I later found out that my wife was asleep as we glided down and was awoken by the other woman telling her that she didn’t want my wife to die in her sleep. My wife later admitted she would have rather not been awake during a night crash.

• LISTEN: FLYING’s I.L.A.F.F.T. Podcast

To make this long story short, nothing could be done to determine the fix for the airplane that night. We found out later that the No. 6 cylinder ring had cracked and then broken, causing the loss of all oil pressure. Trying to get home that night is another dreadful story, but we made it after sleeping all night in chairs at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. And the airport where we landed? Oh yeah, it was in Eastman, Georgia—you know, of Eastman Kodak Co. fame. Anyway, a new engine was shipped there, and Jerry and I returned a week later to install it and flew home. That too is another story, but I learned about flying from that.

Editor’s note: This article originially appeared in the December 2021 issue of FLYING.

The post A Flutter in the Gauge appeared first on FLYING Magazine.