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Contrails: A Hand Me Down Flying School
By Steve Weaver
When I think about the aircraft that populated our flying business in the late ‘60s, I realize what an eclectic mix of airplanes it was. We had two, four, and six place airplanes, very old airplanes, one almost new airplane, and even a twin in the person of an old Aztec. Each had a role in the business, and each one had a distinct personality that I still remember.
At birth, except for colors and optional equipment, airplanes are pretty much identical to the brethren that share the production line. In 1977, while working for Cessna, I parked my new 310 demonstrator on the ramp at Allegheny Airport in Pittsburgh while I went inside to meet with someone. I returned a half hour later just in time to see a gentleman thoroughly pre-flighting my 310. I watched from a distance while he did a textbook preflight inspection. He drained all the sumps and inspected the fuel sample for dirt or water, he checked the oil in both engines, then slowly circled the airplane, poking this and wiggling that.
The Hazards of Confirmation Bias in Aviation
By Shanon Kern
A wise pilot once told me, “If you’re planning to fly somewhere, be ready to drive.” At the time, I didn’t fully understand the relevance of this statement. In my inexperienced student pilot mind, I believed that I would be able to plan a vacation, reserve the plane months in advance, and fly to my intended destination. I was unaware that in order for a scenario like this to work out, a lot of external factors would have to fall perfectly in place.
According to the NTSB database, in 2013 there were a total of 49 part 91, aviation related accidents where instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) prevailed. As I searched through the database and read the weather reports, I was left wondering why a pilot would choose to fly in such adverse weather conditions? After reading several factual NTSB reports, a pattern started to develop. The majority of the flights were not VFR flights into IMC conditions. They were cross-country flights where the weather was questionable, at best, from the start.
Contrails: Twisted Humor Stalks the Skies
By Steve Weaver
I’ll admit it, during the years that I was instructing, as much as I loved to fly and to teach flying, there were times when I needed a break. The years that I was running the little country flight school in the late sixties and teaching eight to ten hours a day for weeks without a break, I sometimes longed for a change of pace. It was hard, unrelenting work.
But the schedule of the flight school dictated the hours that we flew and in the summer, we tried to take advantage of the long days. We harvested every hour that we could to help us stand against the long, dark winter that was to follow, and summer days when I could just relax were few.
So sometimes I did dumb things that amused me, just to break up the routine a bit. It was nothing that I could go on the road with, but those incidents served to give me chuckles and most of the time, they gave them to the whole airport.
Editorial: All We Can Do is Rant?
By Ed Downs
The title of this month’s column is both a statement and a question. Follow along and see if you can decide which interpretation is correct. With patient understanding from the editors and production team of In Flight USA, this writer has been waiting until the last minute, hoping for good news from AirVenture 2013 regarding the outrageous fees assessed by the FAA to support this year’s EAA program.
Regrettably, as of the time this is being written (EAA AirVenture 2013 is underway), the fees still apply and even Congressional efforts have had little or no positive effect.
The FAA tossed in an additional insult by officially announcing that FAA Administrator Michael Huerta was not going to attend the traditional “Meet the Administrator” event at AirVenture 2013. Virtually all FAA activities at the program were canceled, including Wings course participations and safety seminars. The official FAA explanation was that budget constraints prevented the FAA from attending and Administrator Huerta had previous plans made months earlier.
Contrails: Bending Metal
By Steve Weaver
The one occasion where the retail worth of the plane in which Weaver was flying was rapidly and substantially reduced. The Ercoupe was later repaired and flown by Joe-Joe for another 20 years. (Courtesy of Steve Weaver)In recent years, even I have had to acknowledge that I have entered, albeit reluctantly, the category of the mature airman. As such, I have joined the ranks of those with a successful (read survived) flying history spanning fifty years or so and it is natural for the August members who inhabit this strata to be occasionally asked by our younger brethren about things that they consider worrisome in their own flying career. Crashing would be one.
How many times, they will ask, have I been involved in occasions where the retail worth of the airplane I was flying was rapidly and substantially reduced?
It’s a complicated question to answer, especially if you take the Clinton-esque approach to it and say it depends on what your definition of crashing is. I choose to do that, since it reduces my record of shame by 50 percent if I don’t count flying the Super Cruiser through the top of a large oak tree as a crash. My point there being that the airplane did not come to a complete stop, which I maintain is a basic requirement for a certifiable airplane crash.
Contrails
Living Without Wheels
By Steve Weaver
Instructor Russ Weaver (no relation, Billie Sue Nester, student, Steve Weaver and friend David Austin. (Courtesy of Steve Weaver)Stopped at a traffic light this week, I noticed the car in front of me sported a license plate holder that proclaimed that the owner’s other car was an airplane. I thought back to a time when I could have used a license holder that said “My other airplane is an airplane,” but then I wouldn’t have had a car to attach it to.
There have probably been other aviation zealots, who have owned two airplanes without owning a car, but I’ve never met another one and it was a strange set of circumstances that caused me to be in such a position.
Contrails
Flying With the Newly Dead
By Steve Weaver
I don’t know, but when I look back at the almost 50 years I’ve spent in aviation, it seems to me that my career didn’t unfold as it really should have. Rather than the orderly, planned and supervised tempering of my peers, my progression into and through the various aviation endeavors always seemed to happen in spasmodic bursts that often left me with Alice in Wonderland-like bewilderment. Looking around at my next role, as a flight instructor, or a survey pilot or whatever new phase I found myself in, I found myself totally clueless about how to properly proceed.
For one thing, I had no real mentors, other than the odd instructors that popped up at vital times, and then were gone. I was a restless student pilot with my own airplane, and by keeping it at small, out of the way strips I managed to stay under the radar for about 300 hours of dangerous wandering before settling down enough to get my private license. Adding the commercial license seemed like a natural thing to do since my logbook was fat with hours, and when the examiner told me I flew well enough to pass the flight instructor’s exam I decided to get that rating too.
General Aviation in China Growing
By Alan Smith
The 2010 General Aviation Forum held in Beijing.When looking at change and economic growth in China, one first has to understand what kind of nation one is looking at. Start with the sheer size of China – in fifty years, its population has increased from a bit more than 500 million to more than one billion 328 million people. This has occurred despite government laws prohibiting marriage before the age of 29 and then limiting the number of children brought into the new family to one. As one can easily figure out, those regulations were almost impossible to enforce.
Smack In The Middle of a Thunderstorm
By Steve Weaver
I crouched miserably behind the instrument panel of the shuddering, heaving Aztec, listening to what sounded like a million BBs being shot against my windshield. I was reviewing my options as well as my sins, and I took what comfort I could from an observation that I remembered by someone who had been there; that when you’re really flying in hail, you won’t wonder if that’s what it is. I was still wondering, so this must still be rain. But rain like this I’d never seen. This was like being inside a garbage can that was being shot with fire hoses. I wondered how the engines could continue to run, since they seemed to be under water. Lightning was streaking on each side of me and almost at the same time the deafening crash of the thunder would for an instant, block the noise of the rain and even the engines. I was smack in the middle of a thunderstorm and I was not a happy young aviator.