Category: Flying

Among the first things student pilots learn is the importance of a thorough walkaround and a California man now has plenty of time to ponder the wisdom of that precaution. Police in Compton, Calif., allege that Troy Long, of Bellflower, described as a “former student pilot,” pulled a gun on staff at the Compton/Woodley Airport when they discovered him taking keys from the hook. They say he then bolted for a Cessna 152 parked outside. As staff called the authorities, Long started the aircraft and made good his escape — except for one thing. He didn’t unhook the chain holding the tail to the concrete.

 

When police arrived they found the 152 straining against its restraint. They had guns, too, and the rest was by the book. Long was arrested without further incident and booked on suspicion of air piracy, which can carry a life sentence.

VFRMAP – Digital Aeronautical Charts.

You can look at flight charts across the US, switch it to High or Lo IFR, road map, etc.

H/T Jeff

I’ve wasted spent my fair share of time playing computer games keeping my flying skills up on computer flight simulators and I always wanted to set up a cool flight simulator with a nice yoke, rudder peddles and multi-engine controls.  So far the most that I’ve done is get a good joystick that has a twist grip for the rudder and hook up a few extra speakers.   Never in my wildest dreams did I consider doing this.

 

Mounting a camera on the outside of an aircraft – Golf Hotel Whiskey.

On the new reality show that I’m on “DANGEROUS FLIGHTS” we mounted up to four go Pro’s on our planes and never had any issues or noticed any decrease in performance.  I’m sure we paid a penalty in true airspeed but it was negligible.

Plane crashes in Gulf; pilot thought to have been unconscious | Pensacola News Journal | pnj.com.

Sounds like he had a pressurization problem and passed out before he could get his mask on if he had one.  Too bad the coast Guard couldn’t get to the crash site in time but after being above 25,000 feet for so long he was probably dead anyway.

I’ve never been to Sun N Fun but always wanted to go.  I’m really hoping Dangerous Flights sends me there next year, because I’m too cheap to pay for it on my own.

 

There are an infinite number of lessons a pilot can learn about flying airplanes.  Some of them are basic and covered by his or her instructor in flight school, some can be picked up hanging around the airport and some are learned the hard way.  If you’re lucky you can survive the hard ones and live to pass them on to others.  

   I’ve never been one to follow rules if I can get away with breaking them.  I guess I’ve always thought that most rules were made to keep people that weren’t as good as I was from hurting themselves.  After I made my first solo my instructor told me that I was cleared to fly by myself even if he wasn’t at the airport so  long as I remained in the pattern.  Well me being me the first thing I did was go out the next day when my instructor wasn’t there, hop in the mighty Cessna 152 and take off for the wild blue yonder.  I was sure that the restriction to remain in the pattern was a good idea for most new pilots but rather silly for a great pilot such as myself.  I flew about ten miles away from the airport and proceeded to let my inner fighter pilot out.  I did steep turns, stalls and wing overs.  I was finally free to fly like I always knew I could.  Having a blast and wanting more I decided to push the nose over hard and do a little zero gravity.  Things went well for about two seconds until I floated out of my seat and into the yoke.  I did have my seat belt on but had it very loose not thinking about the ramifications of zero gravity.  With my chest resting on the yoke I was unable to pull out of the dive and the ground started coming up fast.   In a panic Thinking quickly  I pushed myself away from the yoke with one hand and pulled out of the dive with the other.  A little shaken and thoroughly humbled I flew back to the airport just a little more experienced than when I left.  

    I thought I’d learned the main lesson about doing zero gravity in an airplane, always tighten your seat belt first, until years later when a mechanic told me about a plane that had crashed after a loose nut in the belly had become jammed in the elevator cable after doing the maneuver.   Since then I’ve found a lot of loose screws, nuts and all kinds of junk in the belly of planes I’ve worked on.  Yesterday while cleaning under the floor boards of Black Betty I found so much loose junk that I was amazed that nothing had ever gotten jammed in the maze of cables and pulleys that ran under there.  

All that being said doing zero gravity can still be a lot of fun.

I haven’t been to Reno yet but really hope to fly my Queen Air “BLACK BETTY” down there this year.  One of the pilots on Dangerous Flights races’ his L-39 there every year and it would be awesome to watch him race in person.  I just hope they don’t do anything stupid like move the crowd too far away because of the accident last year.  The only way air races’ are fun to watch is to be close to the action.  That carries an assumption of risk that people who go there are willing to take, I know I am.  Maybe I’ll enter “BLACK BETTY” Do they have a big, slow former military transport category?