Archive for the ‘Tip of the week’ Category

Did you know? Opening your flight plan

Monday, June 11th, 2012

Opening a flight plan should be the easiest part of your cross-country. Tune in the nearest Flight Service Station on your radio, call ‘em up, request that the plan be opened, give your departure time, and on you go.

Except it isn’t, sometimes. You forget to call up flight service. Or you call them up and nobody’s home because you copied down the wrong frequency. Or you call them up and they hear you, but for some mysterious reason the flight plan you filed is not actually on file, so you have to give them all the details while trying to keep the airplane upright.

Last week, pending a VFR flight from Maryland to Tennessee, I called Lockheed Martin to get a standard weather briefing. (I don’t usually file by computer.) After the briefer and I had gone over all the weather and notams, he offered to have the flight plan opened at the specified time without my having to contact flight service. I was pleasantly surprised–I hadn’t known this option was available. And it worked! How do I know? Because I was a few minutes late closing the flight plan, and flight service called me to check up on my whereabouts.

When I called for a briefing on the return trip, no such offer was made. So if you want to take advantage of this service, you might have to ask. And make sure you make a realistic prediction of when you’ll be wheels up–because when you say you’re in the air, the clock is ticking.–Jill W. Tallman

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Tip of the week #4

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Use simulators

Although the FAA only allows 2.5 hours of simulator time to count toward the total required for the private pilot certificate, you are selling yourself and your training short if you don’t utilize one for this reason. Various studies have found that in almost every required pilot knowledge and flight task, time spent in the simulator before getting in the airplane equaled less time in the air. And in the world of flight training, time is literally money.

What can you do in a simulator? Anything. From preflight inspection to navigation, a simulator is a great resource. And just because your instructor isn’t sitting beside you doesn’t mean the time isn’t valuable. Take navigation as an example. Intercepting and tracking VOR radials can be an abstract skill to learn. But in any simulator, even those considered games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, the transfer of knowledge comes quick and easy. You can easily reposition the airplane, look at your ground track from a bird’s-eye view, and pause the simulation as much as you want to work things out in your head.

Remember, flying is more of a mental exercise than a physical one. You don’t need to feel like you’re inside an airplane to advance your learning.

If your school doesn’t have a simulator, make the minor investment for a piece of home software. And forget about the logbook. Because if you learn how to do many of these things in a simulator first, your logbook will be much closer to 40 hours when you take your practical test.

–Ian J. Twombly

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Tip of the week #3

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Have fun.

I don’t care if you are learning to fly for pleasure or business, this is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be exciting to go to the airport and get in an airplane. Even if you are one of those students who is learning to fly because you are afraid of it, have fun.

Why the need to post something so obvious as this? Because it’s easy to forget. We’re a serious industry. Safety is serious. Airplanes are complex machines. We have regulations. And ramp checks (although seemingly not anymore). And nasty weather. But on those beautiful days when the sun is shining and the air is smooth, it simply doesn’t get better.

So, yes, training is hard sometimes. But there is an end. A wonderful, fulfilling end. Don’t forget that during stall practice number 851. After a couple of more mundane flights recently I got to fly a restored Super Cub on a beautiful day over fall foliage on a photo shoot for our January cover story. The fun doesn’t end.

Happy Friday.

–Ian J. Twombly

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Tip of the week #2

Friday, October 15th, 2010

Always have an out.

Advice like this seems obvious, but it’s only obvious because we don’t properly teach how to actually accomplish it. Having an out means that regardless of the situation, you have options. Here are two very different scenarios that detail how and why to start thinking this way.

Scenario 1

You’re a student pilot who is on her first long cross-country. Your logbook says you are allowed to go from airport A to airport B to airport C and back to airport A. But when you tune in the weather for airport C it seems like the wind could be beyond your capability. What do you do now? The weather is otherwise clear, so that’s not a concern. And you don’t have to worry about fuel. The first thing you realize is that you have multiple answers, a common issue with aviation. Often it’s a good thing, but choosing the right one is part of being a good pilot in command.T

The first thing is that you should have had a plan B for each airport. Ideally, your alternate would have long runways that have a different alignment to your planned destination. If you have a plan, and it looks like it will work, by all means execute it. It’s irionic to me that it often takes a more advancaed pilot to throw in the towel and activate an alternate plan. But all of us should be doing this from day one of training.

Assuming you don’t have an alternate already mapped out, you can either try to land, go to another airport, or turn around and go home. See, multiple options. In this case the only wrong answer seems to be to land at the original airport. There’s no prize awarded for not cracking up an airplane in strong wind. In other words, situations like this offer little reward but come with big risk. So what would you do?

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Tip of the week #1

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Let’s try something new this week. A recent flight had me thinking about all the little tidbits and tricks that spring up during our various training and travel sorties. What better way to catalog those than a weekly tip here on the blog?

Tip of the week #1

Always check notams at your alternate. This seems obvious, but with easy access to computer weather and briefings, it’s easy to overlook the notams at both your destination and your alternate. VFR pilots typically don’t pick an alternate as IFR pilots do, but they should. Always keep a Plan B in your mind, and take the time to check the notams at your Plan B stop prior to launch. Runways close, navaids go down, and TFRs do pop up.

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