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Five things I wish I knew when I started

This is a guest post by Chris Powell from his highly recommended aviation blog.

When I entered my aviation training I was already an atypically well-prepared student. I’d been following aviation and the flying community off and on since childhood. I’d flown in the right seat plenty of times, already understood basic aerodynamics, and generally knew a lot more than most people who walk through the school’s front door.

In retrospect, however, there are a number of things I know now that I wish I had known then. In no particular order, here are some of the more relevant bits of knowledge I’d like to pass on to the next person about to take the plunge into general aviation.

Do not impose any artificial deadlines. If you are a pilot-in-training, the overwhelming odds are you’re a goal-driven, type-A personality. You will be predisposed to mentally calculate hours, divided by training days, equalling “X” date as your projected certification date. It’s just who you are. The problem is, you will begin to fret if this date slips or changes in any way; you can’t help it, it’s in your makeup to set and meet goals. Your instructor will throw a wrench into your carefully crafted mechanism when he informs you that you need an extra lesson on landing proficiency, and your natural reaction will be to resent him for altering your plans.
You should make every effort to live in the “now” of your training, and avoid looking too far ahead. For one, the training today is enjoyable and rewarding — so do enjoy it! For another, you’re imposing artificial stress in an already stressful curriculum. So focus on today’s training and leave tomorrow’s for tomorrow.
As a corollary to #1, don’t plan on going anywhere around your checkride date. I had a 10 day vacation planned and reserved weeks in advance; as I got closer to my checkride and realized it would likely fall just days before my vacation, my stress soared. Would I complete the check before I left? Would the weather cooperate? If I missed it or blew it, how much would it cost to regain my edge after two nonflying weeks? You really don’t need this kind of stress, especially around checkride time. Just plan on being in town and flexible with your schedule.
Equipment really does fail, so don’t get lazy. If you aren’t absolutely familiar with General Aviation planes already, you can be forgiven for imagining them as cars with wings: crank up and go, and things just reliably work. But the fact is, airplanes — especially training aircraft — lead very arduous lives, and despite being fawned over by attentive A&P mechanics they do break. You’ll train for equipment failure, of course, but it doesn’t really sink in until you actually see things fail in flight. Some of the equipment failures I personally have witnessed over time include a GPS flatly refuse to receive signal; a gyro heading indicator go haywire and fail to indicate; a complete radio stack failure; numerous illumination outages; an intermittent transponder; an in-flight vacuum pump failure. And yes, you probably will check your drain sumps a hundred times and get nothing but clean fuel every time, but I’m here to tell you that you will one day see water come out — so conduct your preflight with diligence every single time, and be mentally prepared for the day that something stops working.
PIC responsibility is real. (…and the magic word “unable”) This one takes a while to sink in, even though you’ll be drilled on it again and again. You must learn and truly grasp that you — not ATC, no one else — is responsible for the safe conduct of your aircraft. You are in command.
You are in a partnership with ATC, so by all means understand and respect how their authority works, but recognize that the voice on the radio is not some Magical Sky God possessing omnipotence. They are human; they sometimes err; they may ask or suggest something you are not comfortable with; and in the end, they cannot fly or land the plane for you. This does not mean they are your enemy, it merely means that you are in charge and must always consider what is best, for your risk is greater than theirs.
As an example, at one point I was doing solo night landings for proficiency using my airport’s large, well-illuminated, 9000′ runway. It’s the natural choice for a pilot learning night work. For jet traffic reasons, the tower requested that I move to the airport’s narrow, short, not-as-well-illuminated runway. I agreed, but after having a look I decided that I was more comfortable on the large runway. It was a simple matter to radio the tower and negotiate a quick nearby orbit to kill time while the traffic cleared. Bottom line: it was up to me to determine what was safest and to request that. The tower, by the way, was perfectly happy to oblige me, but don’t let “offending someone on the ground” be a reason to remain passive in the case of doubt. You are PIC: remain actively in control of your flight and do what it takes to conduct it safely. The magic word “unable” is in every experienced pilot’s (and controller’s) toolkit — use it if you’re asked to do something incorrect or unsafe.
Leverage AOPA and the FAA Wings program. Membership in these two should be mandatory for every new student pilot. AOPA is working overtime to ensure your privileges as a general aviator are protected. And believe me, these privileges are under constant attack. The vast majority of people don’t fly recreationally, and if they think of GA planes at all, they probably regard them as noise nuisances. AOPA stands between GA and the masses who would like to turn our prime airport land into developments; they lobby against user fees; they publish great rafts of useful training and safety information. They are our sole bulwark against a very bleak GA world.
If you are in GA, in the United States, and not an AOPA member, you should be completely ashamed of yourself. Run, do not walk, to their website and sign up right now.
The FAA Wings program goes hand-in-hand with AOPA, and in fact they partner with each other to disseminate truly fantastic safety training materials. I’ve gained a tremendous amount from their courses and seminars — the production level on these things is absolutely stellar and they pour a tremendous effort into making them informative, enjoyable and just plain good. (Besides, when you complete various levels of the program you get little metal wings to pin on.) Unlike most things in aviation, this is completely free to join and use, and you can elect to be notified of seminars in your area. Through FAA Wings I got early notice a facility tour at Seattle-Tacoma International (that was quickly filled to capacity).

What to do if you get lost in a plane

This is a guest post by Jason Schappert from the highly recommended M0A blog.

Even in today’s age where the navigational instruments are state of the art and technologically advanced, pilots will still find a situation wherein he or she is lost in the air.

There can be a momentary panic at the onset of the thought that the airplane is lost. That is understandable: airplanes depend on fuel to fly, and every minute that you are lost you are wasting precious fuel. It might even come to a point to make an emergency landing somewhere if the fuel is not enough. Such a thought is scary for pilots, as some emergency landings are just controlled crashes that can result to injury. However, it is important for pilots not to give in to these thoughts and instead keep their wits about them.

In order to circumvent the effects of panic, the five C’s of aviation have been devised. The five C’s are: Confess, climb, conserve fuel, communicate and comply.

Confess

In some cases, panic kicks in when one has denied to himself for sometime that he is lost. When you find that you are seemingly off-course, admit to yourself that you are lost. Trying to tell yourself otherwise will only amplify the shock that you will feel once the truth sets in. Remember you need to be very calm with this. Check the instruments and find out how far you are off course. If there are errors in the instruments, note them as well.

Climb

Climb to the maximum safe altitude that your aircraft can fly. This will be useful later on as it can help you save fuel and spot landmarks from the better vantage point.

Conserve

Conserve fuel so that you are minimizing the chances of you having to “perform a crash” or emergency landing because you don’t have sufficient fuel to reach your destination. Cut down to the most fuel-efficient speed and power that your aircraft can muster as you wait for instructions.

Communicate

Call for help. Controllers are there to help you out, and make sure your transponder is on so they can see in your their radar. This way, they can pinpoint your exact location and give you the necessary course to set you back on the right path.

Comply

If the tower or controller gives you directions, don’t argue. Remember, you are the one who is lost and they are the ones who has the instruments to guide you back in. You’re not in the position to dispute their vectors and suggested approaches.

(Matthew Stibbe here – in the UK, it’s well worth calling Distress and Diversion on 121.5 if you’re, ahem, temporarily unsure of your position. They have satellites, tracker dogs and all kinds of cool stuff at their disposal. Plus they’re nice people and they like helping pilots.)

What’s your preflight routine?

For pilots, state of mind is as important as engine health or electrical power. Accident reports are full of stories about pilot error: fatigue, inattention, distraction and, yes, chatting about crew rosters and missing their destination altogether.

When it comes to single-pilot GA flights, your mental state is even more important. There is no ‘spare pilot’ to catch your mistakes.

It’s a big topic but I’d like to focus on one area where we have the greatest level of control. It’s often overlooked but I think it is very important. It is the time between leaving the house to go flying and the time you start up the engine and begin taxiing.

Your preflight routine can make a big difference to the safety and success of a flight and yet it is almost completely overlooked as a critical stage of flight. So, what can go wrong?

Stress. Traffic delays, passengers who don’t show up on time, planes that have been left in a bad state by previous pilots etc. I read one accident report about a British student pilot who was a doctor. At the airport before a solo cross-country flight, he was called over to help with someone who had fallen ill. The poor chap died and yet our doctor continued with his flight despite having experienced a very stressful event.
Forgetfulness. On my second flight into Amsterdam Schiphol, I arrived at the airport without the approach plates. Ouch! Luckily, TAA UK were able to print out the basic plates in time for my flight. But this kind of thing is best avoided.
Plane problems. I fly a shared group aircraft. This means that I often find it low on fuel, strewn with garbage or with small tech problems that require a check in the MEL or POH to be sure I’m legal and safe to fly. Just taking the wing and body covers off can take a while.
Passengers. Nervous or first-time passengers need extra time and help. I’ve also taken some friends flying who thought that they could arrive any time they liked since it was a ‘private plane’. They were nearly two hours late and I had to repeatedly refile my flight plan etc. for the Isle of Man.
Weather. I occasionally find myself sitting in a crew lounge or the flying school at Denham waiting for fog to lift or rain to stop. My home base is VFR-only and just inside the Heathrow control zone which puts special restrictions on my ability to fly there, even with an instrument rating.
Slot times. Eurocontrol and ATC can play havoc with a well-planned departure. I’ve been sat on the ground several times at French airports waiting for a delayed departure slot or for a controller to find a ‘missing’ flight plan. For VFR trips, fast-approaching night time can also be a restriction. Nobody enjoys night landings at Denham. I think carrier pilots could use it for night training.

How avoid the problems?

Leave earlier. Just as there are fuel margins for a possible diversion, I like to give myself a time buffer. I like to be at the airport an hour before my planned departure, especially if I have an airways flight and slot time booked.
Park passengers. I prefer doing my preflight inspection and cockpit preparation alone so that I don’t get distracted by questions or interruptions. Passengers prefer staying in the lounge until the flight is ready. Frequent flyers who can help or who know how to sit quietly can join me but generally, I like to park my passengers until I’m ready for them.
Leaving home checklist. I have a pre-flight planning checklist that I use to make sure I’ve done everything I need to do with the flight plan etc. But it also includes items such as: passport, Euros, camera, charts etc. so that I don’t leave home without them.
Go bag. I like to repack my flight bag after each trip so that it is ready for the next one. I also get my charts – I print them out from Jeppesen Flightstar – bundled up with all my other flight documents such as the weight and balance schedule and put them in the pocket of my flight bag the day before. That way, it’s very hard for me to forget them.
Risk analysis. I put together a risk analysis table that takes account of currency, weather, airport familiarity, type of approach etc. to give me a quasi-objective ‘read’ on whether the proposed flight is routine, requires extra care and planning or whether I should just go back to bed. Because I can easily get myself in an indecisive funk about the weather, this helps me take the stress out of the decision.
IMSAFE. This acronym – illness, medication, etc. – is built into the MFD on the Cirrus and it’s a useful reminder to check in with yourself before committing to a flight.
Remember, it’s just a hobby. My biggest problem comes from the feeling that I need to complete a flight once I have committed to it, especially if I have passengers. However, the flight must be safe, legal and FUN. It’s very important to remind yourself that you can always go flying another day.
iPhone. My lovely iPhone has changed the way I fly. With Homebriefing.com, I can amend flight plans or send delay notices. With Avbrief.com and meteox.com, I can get accurate, up-to-date weather and rainfall radar information. When I’m overseas, easy access to this information is invaluable especially in that short window before you take off when you really need to be up-to-date with the latest information.
Timetable. For each flight, I compile a single sheet with the timetable for the day with everything in Zulu, London and local time. This makes booking restaurants and taxis easier. In the past, I’ve been on too many trips where I haven’t planned carefully enough and found myself turning up at restaurants for lunch at 2.30pm or having to rush back. I also put the main phone numbers for the day on the sheet – passengers, handling companies, restaurants etc. This means that I have everything to hand when I need it.

By using checklists and procedures in the hour or two before the flight just as we all use them in the air, you can reduce stress and enhance safety.

Fuel starvation – myths and reality

This is a guest post by Jason Schappert from the highly recommended M0A blog.

“Aviation officials say there’s a simple way to prevent hundreds of small plane crashes: fill up the gas tank.”

This is the statement I woke up to in my RSS reader the other morning. It’s this very “compelling” statement that has caught the eye and ear of many major newspapers and newscasts.

For some of us general aviation maybe a hobby for others it maybe a career. I can effectively speak for both departments. Regardless of our purpose in aviation we all have to do our part to shed the real light on general aviation.

I’m a huge advocate for general aviation and to see articles like this with headlines like above breaks my heart. It’s our job as pilots to conduct a proper preflight, calculate fuel burn, weight and balance etc…

However let’s defend our position. The very next line in that report states: “The National Transportation Safety Board says running out of fuel has been a cause or factor in 238 small plane crashes in the past five years.”

After some quick research I found that in 2008 alone there were over 26 million hours flown! That’s in 2008 alone. So assuming these “5 years” the article refers to the yearly hours flown would be quite similar.

In other words out of an estimated 125 million hours flown there were 238 crashes related to fuel exhaustion. That’s less than .1%!

Yet there are two sides to every story. Yes, fuel starvation related accidents are low. However couldn’t they be lower? What can we do to prevent them. After looking over several NTSB reports related to this topic they all end with “The loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot’s failure to manage and monitor fuel usage.” Or something to that nature.

Pilots don’t go flying expecting to run out of fuel. Fuel management is the most preventable general aviation accident yet still year after year a handful of pilots turn their aircraft into impromptu gliders!

This situation won’t be solved by simply saying. “only leave the ground with full tanks” because we know that’s not possible. Rarely can I take a student, myself, full fuel, and flight bags on a flight in my little 150. It’s just not safe.

How do I avoid this problem, while still staying within my weight limits? I plan. Before each flight I say: “Okay, this will be an hour long instructional flight my 150 burns 4.5 gph during flight instruction. However I’d rather be safe and call it 6. During my instruction flights I require my students to have an hour reserve. (although the FAA only requires 30 mins) So we’ll tack on an additional 6 gallons. (Again rounding high). It looks like there is some weather to our south so just to be safe let’s add another 45 minutes and make sure we’re within our weight and CG limits.”

That is a typical conversation in the hanger while preflighting. Shouldn’t you be thinking of these things? Yes the FAA says 30 minutes additional fuel for VFR day. But why not tighten the rules? Why do just enough to get by?

My friends aviation is a wonderful thing, let’s defend it and stick up for it. We’ll always have nay-sayers. Be safe, fly your best, and remember, a good pilot is always learning.

Four checkrides in one

Checkrides happen. It’s an inevitable part of being a pilot. But knowing that doesn’t make them easier or more fun. On Saturday, I had to do four:

JAR Single Engine Piston rating renewal. Somehow, stupidly, I had let this lapse. I can still fly N-reg aircraft on my FAA CPL but I like to keep all my ratings current so I decided to renew it.
JAR IMC rating. This rating lets me fly G-reg aircraft in clouds in the UK. It has to be renewed with a flight test every couple of years and my rating was due to expire later this year but it made sense to renew it now because it doubles up with some of the FAA tests.
FAA Instrument Proficiency Check. You can keep an FAA instrument rating current by performing six approaches, some holds and some tracking in actual IMC (or under the hood or in a sim) within the past six months. However, this is a pretty low standard of currency. You could fly them all in January and then do nothing until July. I don’t think you’d be very current at the end of it. My preference is to fly with an instructor or do an IPC every three to six months. That way I know I’m legal and current.
FAA Biannual Flight Review. I passed my CPL in October 2007 so I didn’t need to do a BFR until later this year but it seemed to make sense to wrap it up with the other stuff because so much of it overlaps.

So off I went with John Page from TAA UK in N147GT to do some holds, tracking and approaches at Southend. The sneaky so-and-so had fixed it with the controllers to switch of the glideslope on my second approach so I had to revert to a localiser-only approach. It wasn’t elegant at first as I had to check the plate for the heights and so on but I made a good recovery and would have landed safely.

This is why I prefer doing checkrides with instructors because you learn something each time. Left to my own devices, I would have done a radar-vectored, auto-coupled ILS approaches and it would have been a cake walk.

Then we went off to the local area for the dreaded compass turns. I can master computers and GPS systems with manuals 500 pages thick. But a simple magnetic compass, a stopwatch and some schoolboy maths does my head in every time. Then some other VFR SEP/BFR type stuff: practice forced landings, stalls, steep turns etc.

After that, recovery from unusual attitudes. With foggles. On the back up instruments. In turbulence. My gyros toppled completely and I was nearly sick but this is good practice. It was a pleasure to get the circuit portion of the checkride over and land after nearly two hours aloft.

Then the paperwork. As Wernher von Braun said “Going to the moon is easy but the paperwork is very difficult.” (His biography was called “I aim for the stars” but some wag suggested that the subtitle should be “…but sometimes I hit London.”) Anyway, I’m back on the top line now and good to fly.