Flying Summers Brothers

Loaded the Bag up the day before

There were times during my training in the Twinstar that I thought it would be worth renting the plane I was training in and doing a longer trip, up to the Bay area at least, to see what it would be like. I never did. They rent for hundreds of dollars per hour, which made sense when I would spend two hours and exit sweaty with new knowledge, but makes less sense to just ride along a route that I could fly in the Diamondstar, which I already owned.

Sometimes it seemed like a smart investment to make before we made the decision to buy a new plane, other times it seemed like it would be a significant portion of the cost of a new plane. We never did it. Continue reading →

During my hardest IFR flight last summer, I looked at the backup attitude indicator quite often. Possibly because our only real equipment failure in the plane was the alternator, resulting in all of the smoke and mirrors going south at the same time, I like having that backup when I am in the clouds.

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When you are learning to fly your instructor will go over what to do when you are lost: climb, conserve, confess and comply. You should initiate a climb because getting a better view is often helpful in your navigation. Once up a ways, pull back the power and conserve fuel; if you don’t know where you are you don’t know where you are going, so you shouldn’t be in a hurry to get there. Then talk to air traffic control and admit that you are lost. That’s the hard one for a lot of people. They want to believe that they are in command and it’s hard to feel in command if you have admit you have lost track of where you actually are. (Comply just means that if they tell you to do something, you should do it. I think they just wanted a fifth C.) Continue reading →

Trouble maker: red collar

The fellow that dropped off the plane, Dick Filbey, had two good pieces of advice. Actually, he had more than that, but I am cataloging them slowly. Both can be used by other pilots, so they should be documented here.

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One of the keys to safety in aviation is situation awareness. It is sort of a catchall for describing the environment, aircraft, and the human factors that affect a flight. Most importantly, the risks associated with the flight or the threats to the safety of the flight.

A lot of the awareness begins long before the flight, gathering information about the weather systems in the area, the runways and conditions at the airports you are flying out of and into (including an alternate airport near your destination, just in case you cannot land at your intended goal), and the possibility of Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs).

During the flight itself situation awareness has to do with the speed of the airplane, the terrain around you, the weather, and the route of flight that you expect for the remainder of the time you are in the air. On an IFR flight you are under the positive control of an air traffic controller, and since they can change your route at any moment you are then actively trying to adjust your picture of the rest of the flight. Continue reading →

What is the purpose of the landing gear hydraulic accumulator?

Such a good question. Really, in some ways, a meta-question. I stare at it on the pink 3×5 flash card I have made and search my mind for the answer.

Long time readers of blog may recognize this image, which I took as Dexter and I approached Denver, Colorado in the summer 2013. It was the end of a long day of flying, which began in Ontario, Canada. It’s possible the more conservative choice would have been to sleep in Nebraska, but both of us enjoyed the motion across the country and being striking distance from home the next day seemed like a great trade off for one more hop in the plane. I admit that I was a little anxious during the last twenty minutes of the flight. Darkness fell as a huge summer thunderstorm slid out of the Denver area to the north. I was already at 10,500 feet, so my engine did not have as much power as it does at sea level, and the controls are a little less effective when the air is thinner. In addition to the plane being away from the center of its performance envelope, I could no longer see the ground. I began to see the lights of houses, but I didn’t know if there was anywhere to glide to if I lost the engine. Continue reading →