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Flying Friday: how’d that dead bird get there?
Today I was listening to LiveATC, as is my habit, when I heard a Delta flight call in that they’d hit a bird. This isn’t uncommon. The FAA spends a lot of time and effort trying to keep airplanes from...
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Flying Friday: happy birthday, N32706!
Three years ago this week, John Blevins and I flew Delta to Salt Lake City to pick up N32706 and fly her home. I was perusing my logbook earlier in the week and realized that more than half of my total...
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Flying with Avidyne’s version 10.2 software
If you think updating the software on your phone is hard, try it with avionics. Avidyne has been promising a new release of the software for their IFD line of WAAS GPS units for a while now. Originally...
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Flying Friday: the great Gulfstream migration
Y’all may have heard of a little thing called Hurricane Matthew (or, as the Weather Channel continually called it, to the great amusement of my son Matthew, “DEADLY HURRICANE MATTHEW.”) And you may...
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Flying Friday: bird forecasts? Yep, it’s a thing
A couple years ago, I wrote a post about wildlife collisions at airports. (Spoiler: they happen and are just as hard on airplanes as they are on cars.) While reviewing the mishap investigation report...
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Fuel shenanigans
The saying goes that “you can never have too much fuel unless it’s on fire.” I have always been a believer in that truism, so I always fill the tanks before I go anywhere… except on a recent trip,...
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Flying Friday: of shops and annuals
I haven’t been flying much lately, sad to say. This is mostly because of weather, but partly because I have been busy with other things. However, as spring approaches, I’ve been eager to get back in...
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Stuck! (or, why I need an instrument rating)
Earlier this week I suffered an indignity common to all VFR pilots who fly cross-country: I got stuck someplace by weather. I’d flown into Houston on Saturday evening, planning to hop down to Corpus...
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Conquering the instrument written exam
BLUF: this was one of the most difficult written exams I’ve ever taken, far harder than any IT certification exam I’ve done, Back in December I wrote about the instrument written, widely alleged to be...
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First impressions: flying the Avidyne IFD540
cShort version: The transplant was a success and the patient made it home. Now, the longer version. I originally dropped the plane off on 31 December at Sarasota Avionics at Tampa Executive (KVDF). The...
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Flying Friday: my airplane’s broken, so here’s a blimp
I went to Tampa yesterday to pick up 706 from the shop. I was expecting to write a triumphant post today about flying behind all the new goodies. However, the GPSS steering system is confused and...
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Flying Friday: a sample of instrument flight
Bonus! Two Flying Friday posts in one day (here’s the other one.) There’s a difference between flying under instrument flight rules (IFR) and flying in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). When...
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Flying Friday: the avionics brain transplant begins
I fly a 41-year-old airplane. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. As I’ve said before, there’s something to be said for mature technologies, and the economics of general aviation are such that...
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Flying Friday: 2015 flying year in review
It’s fitting that as I write this, I’m sitting on a Delta 717 coming back from Tampa, where I just dropped the plane off for a month or so in the avionics shop (more on that in the near future). I...
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Fuel shenanigans
The saying goes that “you can never have too much fuel unless it’s on fire.” I have always been a believer in that truism, so I always fill the tanks before I go anywhere… except on a recent trip,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Flying Friday: of shops and annuals
I haven’t been flying much lately, sad to say. This is mostly because of weather, but partly because I have been busy with other things. However, as spring approaches, I’ve been eager to get back in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stuck! (or, why I need an instrument rating)
Earlier this week I suffered an indignity common to all VFR pilots who fly cross-country: I got stuck someplace by weather. I’d flown into Houston on Saturday evening, planning to hop down to Corpus...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Conquering the instrument written exam
BLUF: this was one of the most difficult written exams I’ve ever taken, far harder than any IT certification exam I’ve done, Back in December I wrote about the instrument written, widely alleged to be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On aircraft engines, part 2
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about piston aircraft engines (tl;dr: ancient and expensive technology but generally very reliable). The fact that the general aviation fleet is still powered...
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A flight simulator primer
I had originally planned to write more about engines this week, but reality— or simulated reality— has intruded, and this week I’m going to talk about flight simulators. For your convenience, I’ll skip...
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