AOPA Pilot Blog: Reporting Points

Did you know that today is National Aviation Day? It wasn’t at the top of my mind, either, until I heard it mentioned on the radio while I was driving to work this morning.

August 19–the birthday of Orville Wright–was designated National Aviation Day by presidential proclamation in 1939. Don’t confuse it with Wright Brothers Day, which commemorates the anniversary of the brothers’ first successful powered flights on December 17.

While National Aviation Day hasn’t captured as much of the nation’s attention as, say, Labor Day, we as pilots should celebrate the occasion in an appropriate manner. Let’s go flying! And what better occasion to introduce our passion to somebody unfamiliar with general aviation?

What were you doing 40 years ago today? Those of you who know me know I’m not the Mike Collins who orbited the moon as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took mankind’s first steps on the lunar surface. But I certainly was among those watching the black-and-white images of those historic steps dance across the tiny screen of a black-and-white television.

It was my pleasure, however, to meet that Mike Collins one cold December on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, at the annual commemoration of the Wright Brothers’ first flights. Collins was a guest of the First Flight Society, which established the Paul E. Garber First Flight Shrine at the Wright Brothers National Memorial; the Apollo 11 crew is among its honorees. I introduced myself and we talked for 20 minutes about other people who were trying to capitalize on our good name. 

Those original videos of the first moonwalk have been enhanced and can be seen on the NASA Web site, along with other interesting links the agency has collected that relate to Apollo 11 and its anniversary. Check them out.

How do you control the cost of your flight training? Do you try to fly frequently, to maximize retention and minimize repetition? Do you use a simulator–and if so, do you fly one at your flight school or a PC-based flight sim at home?

Please respond below, and let us know what’s worked for you (and what hasn’t). We’ll share the best ideas in a future issue of AOPA Flight Training magazine.

My wife loves to read online wikiHows and subscribes to a newsletter that delivers a “how-to” of the day.  She forwarded me yesterday’s, which was “How to Land an Airplane in an Emergency.” No, this isn’t an April Fool’s hoax–you can read this wikiHow here.

Is it any good? I felt the text was well organized but, as you might expect, the topic was greatly oversimplified. My guess is that much of the information came from one person’s limited experience. For example, step #4, “Call for help on the radio,” tells you to ”Look for a hand-held microphone, which is normally to the left of the pilot’s seat just below the side window, and use it like a CB radio.” The handheld mics I’ve seen to the left of the pilot’s seat usually are in a storage pouch on the door, often buried under the POH, not even plugged into the aircraft.

Comments can be found on the wiki’s “Discussion” tab and there was a lot of speculation as to whether somebody without at least some piloting experience would have any hope of landing an airliner. Frankly, I think a lot of that is academic; today, if both pilots of an airliner are stricken, it’s unlikely that any passenger would be able to breach the hardened cockpit door.

Read the Wiki and share your thoughts. Personally, I’ll continue to recommend the Air Safety Foundation’s Pinch-Hitter course, which is also available online.

Did you read about Ken Hill in this morning’s New York Times? Hill is an airplane repossession specialist–a bounty hunter. I first envisioned a bad reality TV plot, with a captured airplane roaring down the runway just as the sun’s disk breaks the horizon.

But Hill’s reality is not so Wild West in nature (at least, not usually). Which makes sense, because Hill also is an aircraft dealer. If he can’t retrieve the logbooks along with the airplane, it’s unlikely he’ll be able to sell it for as much as he could if the paperwork was complete.

Hill typically repossesses 30 airplanes a year, according to the New York Times article. Last year he retrieved 50–a number that he told the newspaper could double in 2009.

How’d you like to be an aircraft bounty hunter? Would you buy an airplane from one?

The news yesterday that creditors advanced Eclipse Aviation’s bankruptcy from Chapter 11 (reorganization) to Chapter 7 (liquidation) when funds for an anticipated sale didn’t materialize was disappointing, if not a complete surprise.

It seemed like only yesterday that Vern Raburn’s upstart set up shop. I had the unique opportunity to look inside the startup in late 2000, when the Eclipse 500 was being designed at the Williams International facility in Walled Lake, Michigan. A sign on a cubicle wall read, “What are you going to do today to reduce the weight?”

A lot has happened since then. The Eclipse team moved to Albuquerque, and the Williams engine was abandoned for a Pratt & Whitney product–among many other changes. Raburn left the company. But today it appears that the sun has set on Eclipse; those cubicles are dark and empty (and their occupants left without at least one paycheck and their accrued vacation pay).

Or has it? There still are assets to be sold. Could there be a buyer in the wings? Time will tell.

Regardless of its ultimate fate, Eclipse and Raburn get credit for creating the very light jet category. Isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery? Alas, history doesn’t always reward innovators.

A conversation over lunch turned to flight schools as a fellow pilot talked about the poor customer service he experienced on his vacation while checking out in an airplane. Although we all may have similar stories to tell, I challenged those around the table to think about some of the good experiences they’ve had at flight schools–beyond the basic thrill of slipping the surly bonds of Earth.

And there were many bright spots. I heard about schools that always had a pot of coffee brewing, at least during these chilly winter months, and it was complimentary (each cup said, “Hey! Great landing!”). One pilot’s school sponsored weekly cookouts and other social activities. A flying club arranged monthly fly-outs of one to three days; students shared the flying and the expenses, and enjoyed sharing new experiences as a result. (You thought these were all going to be about food and drink, didn’t you?)

What do you like the most about the flight school where you trained, and why? What did that business do right? How did your instructor or school staff keep you coming back for more, especially as you struggled with landings, navigation, or whatever it was that you struggled with in training? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Coming home from AOPA Expo the other day, aboard a Delta Air Lines Boeing 737, we took off from San Jose’s Runway 30 Right and began a climbing right turn toward Atlanta. We kept climbing–and turning, and turning, and turning.

As we headed west toward the Pacific, I wondered if we were returning to the airport, but we were still climbing. Finally, we stopped turning and headed in a southeasterly direction.

Disembarking in Atlanta, I asked the captain what was up with that departure. He told me the spiraling climb was normal for San Jose, necessary to avoid the San Francisco and Oakland airspace to the north.

It reminded me that those kinds of things don’t always happen just to those of us flying small aircraft. Departing IFR to the west from my home airport, Frederick Municipal, usually requires flying to the northeast for radar identification–and then a climbing right turn until the DG finally points to the “W.” Does anything like that happen to you?

As a renter pilot, have you ever been disappointed to learn that one of your favorite airplanes had been sold, and was no longer on the rental line at your airport? Of course you have. But did you ever feel that way about an airplane you’ve never even flown?

It happened to me today.

There’s a Cessna 172, N505SP, that holds the title for airplane appearing most frequently in AOPA Flight Training. It was all a coincidence, really. The Skyhawk was purchased by a Wichita pilot for his daugher’s use in learning to fly. Our senior photographer, Mike Fizer, is based in Wichita, and 505SP’s availability allowed her image to make its way into the magazine. A lot.

So imagine my surprise when I opened an e-mail from a reader in Australia, who told me the airplane on Flight Training’s October cover (shown) was in a shipping container, en route to a flight school in Brisbane.

Fizer tells me the daughter earned her certificate, flew for a regional airline briefly, and now flies jets as a corporate pilot. Her dad’s moving up to a late-model Cessna 182, so 505SP was listed for sale. And it sounds like the Skyhawk is going to a good home; Gerry Dick says she’ll be used as a trainer and will share hangar space with a Super Decathlon and Citabria Adventure.

Even better, he’s encouraging me to visit. I may yet get to fly this Skyhawk the whole AOPA Flight Training staff has come to know so well.

Why do you go to events such as AirVenture in Oshkosh? Is it to stand in a long line just to walk through an Airbus, like these people are doing?

Nothing against Jet Blue, but I go to airshows to catch up on industry news, talk with other pilots, and see cool airplanes. Boeing and Airbus airliners can be cool in their own right, especially when you’re the person flying the airplane (or flying the simulator). But one of the reasons that I fly general aviation airplanes is to avoid lines like this.

Maybe these folks were just seeking a few minutes in the air conditioning, and a respite from the heat of the ramp….