For beginning students, listening to, and understanding ATIS can be daunting. There’s a new language to learn and many of the controllers speak rather quickly. With a little knowledge and practice, everyone can learn to confidently get the ATIS information. Continue reading
The last flight of any aircraft must be a sentimental event. When that craft is the last shuttle to fly to its final resting place, even more so. When I heard that Shuttle Endeavour was coming to Los Angeles to become part of the California Science Center, I knew that I’d have to see it. As a pilot, I was hoping I could see it from the air. Today, I did that. Continue reading
Well, it was bound to happen. On Monday, I had my first real engine out landing. Luckily, I did it intentionally in a Schleicher ASK 21 glider. Continue reading
A reminder to all local pilots that the UCLA football season is starting soon. That means games at the Rose Bowl and the TFRs that go along with the games. The first Rose Bowl game will be on Saturday, September 8th. You can find the schedule online, but here’s a quick summary of home games: Continue reading
It’s summer and that means high temperatures and high density altitudes. We’re forecast to get near 100F this week. However, in Southern California, we usually have options. Continue reading
Many airports have an entry SLPxxx in the remarks section of their METAR. What is it? SLP stands for “Sea Level Pressure”. As an example, let’s look at a Burbank METAR:
KBUR 151753Z 14007KT 9SM CLR 23/14 A2994 RMK AO2 SLP127 T02280144 10228 20167 50000 $
I’ve flown about 2500 hours in small single-engine airplanes (1500 of that as an instructor). In all that time, I’ve never had a serious equipment failure, or declared an emergency [knock on wood?]. I have cut flights short and landed early (what some would call a precautionary landing). In each of those cases, I did it because I felt something wasn’t right and it was better to get on the ground and diagnose, before things potentially deteriorated to where I had fewer options. Today was one of those days… Continue reading
In planning for a cross-country flight, consider the topics covered by a briefer for a standard weather briefing. For weather information within 6 hours of your planned departure, all these should give some useful information. For my students, I recommend they sign up for an account on https://www.1800wxbrief.com/ prior to their first cross country flight. Continue reading
Wow. I read last night that another pilot violated the Presidential Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) and then this morning, I hear that three more small planes were intercepted. During the last visit, a pilot was intercepted and forced to land at El Monte as one of my student’s watched, and during a February visit, a really clueless pilot was also intercepted. While seeing an F-16 in flight might be cool, this is NOT the way to do it. Continue reading
I’ll start off by saying I rarely file a VFR flight plan (and I’ll explain why), but every pilot needs to know how to file, open, and close a VFR flight plan. There are times when they are valuable and our club requires that all student pilots flying solo cross country flights file and open a flight plan. Continue reading