Airmanship

Prior to the advent of jet transports like the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 in the late 1950s, what we’ve come to know as...

Editor’s note: Last month’s issue included a cover story on wake turbulence and how we may encounter it even when our training suggests it...

Dynon’s Skyview HDX EFIS solutions for certified aircraft include a pair of EFIS displays in 10-inch and 7-inch form factors. The units can be...

The Evolution E5 is Aspen’s entry-level electronic flight instrument. Like the Garmin G5 stack, it combines an artificial horizon and a heading indicator but,...

Garmin’s G5 can be configured as an artificial horizon or directional gyro and mounts into the same instrument panel openings as the removed mechanical...

Garmin’s new GI 275 is a series of instruments designed to fit in the standard 3.125-inch panel opening but offer an all-electronic attitude indicator/attitude...

Editor’s Note: This is the first in an occasional series of articles exploring the details and considerations of replacing conventional mechanical flight instruments with...

Everyone talks about the weather but no one ever does anything about it. (Stop me if youve heard that before.) The same could be said about managing the risk of general aviation. We-both this magazine and the industry as a whole-spend a lot of time preaching to pilots about the mechanics of understanding weather forecasts, determining if the aircraft is capable, and making honest evaluations of our own performance in considering how and when to conduct a flight. But once we identify the need to mitigate a risk, we sometimes have little space left over to describe the tools we can use. Lets try to fix that.

The mission was a simple day trip from my home field in southwest Florida to a familiar destination in north-central Georgia of 407 nm, planned to take 2+30 one-way. Spend a few hours on the ground visiting with an old friend, grab a late lunch, then hop back home later the same day. The airplane was ready and willing. But the weather wasnt cooperating as I wanted. The destination airport offered its own challenges. And while I was instrument-current, I wasnt as proficient with low IFR as I would have liked.

Vintage aircraft often have vintage owners. Familiarity being a source of contempt, long-time owners of aircraft seeing little activity may also see little need to perform preventive maintenance or conduct regular inspections. It was just fine when I parked it; what could possibly have broken while it was sitting in a hangar? can be a familiar refrain to pilots who have owned the same airplane for a significant time. After a while, the pilot/owner is so familiar with the aircraft, he or she can tell somethings wrong just by the slipstream noise.

The Pacific Northwest, for the purposes of this article, includes the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming. Thats a huge hunk of territory and comprises more than 250,000 square miles for Washington, Oregon and Idaho alone. The region includes two major mountain ranges-the Cascades and the Northern Rockies-and many smaller ones, as well as several major river basins. There are major cities in the region, such as Seattle, Portland and Boise, but also thousands of square miles of largely empty land and wilderness.

I try to fly our airplane at least once every two weeks because just as its not good for a plane to just sit in a hangar, its also not good when a pilot doesnt practice their skills. Sometimes, even on clear days, I will fly instrument approaches at a nearby Class C airport. I do this for several reasons: to verify that all of the navigational instruments work properly, to practice working with ATC and if things dont work, I am in VFR conditions and am at very little risk.