A mistake as it turned out.

My plan, though better, changed by the hour. I was meant to meet my friend Kip in Middlebury, Vermont, but he called me early that morning to tell me there was a good chance of cloud cover. I was secretly relieved. 

The night prior I found a U.S. Navy site that allowed me to put in the name of any city in the path of the eclipse, and it would spit back the length of totality. The difference between places only 40 miles apart was shocking. One minute of totality for Middlebury, while just a bit farther north in Burlington yielded three and a half minutes. Interestingly, the site also allows for an altitude input in meters. When I put in 2,000 meters over Middlebury, it jumped from a minute to that 3.5-minute mark.

Geometry, baby. 

I considered being in the air for the eclipse, but I knew I’d be distracted and worried about a midair. I wanted to be firmly on the ground watching the skies. But I also wanted the full three-and-a-half-minute whack. So, I kept flying north. The issue was that any airport that had an FBO was chock full—in many cases weeks in advance. I had to find an airport that was small enough to not have an FBO that was also dead center on the path of totality. Kip came through again, directing me to Jackman, Maine. 

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No tower. No FBO. Just a breathy line guy who normally does snow removal and other simpler tasks other than deciding where to park the deluge of airplanes coming into his domain. I got there early enough to get a primo spot that would get me out first after the event.

I brought a camping chair, food, reading materials, and the eclipse glasses I bought on Amazon. It was severe clear at Jackman as I set up camp. I did an apron walk, going from one end of the airport to the other talking to other aircraft owners along the way. We nodded solemnly about all the people who drove north from all over the country only to get shafted by cloud cover. Under the surface, though, I detected a certain glee in these pilots’ ability to simply fly a bit farther and find the right conditions. I know I felt it.

An airplane is the perfect tool for chasing an eclipse.

The event itself surprised me in a few ways. I thought I’d be able to see the moon as it approached the sun, but it was nowhere to be seen. Not until it started to encroach on that blazing disc. And then we all waited. The biggest surprise was how bright the world remained all the way up to 90 percent cover. I could not detect any discernible drop in light level. Even the last 10 percent was a slow move toward totality. It’s the last 15-20 seconds that astound. The difference between a 96 percent eclipse and totality is like the difference between a really nice sunset and the galaxy splitting in two.

When totality began, I could hear the entire town of Jackman, almost a mile away, cheer loudly. A second later, it hit us (the shadow travels at 1,600 mph) and a similar cheer went up at the airport. Off came the glasses, and I stared right at the moon as it covered the sun. It’s immediately clear why people for millennia thought this was God’s work. It was the first time in my life I felt like I was on a different planet. 

I looked around and that beautiful orange sky you see in the west after a sunset was occupying every horizon—360 degrees around. It felt like the sun was setting everywhere all at once. The dog next to me started whimpering. I just about teared up. I wasn’t expecting an emotional reaction, but there it was—that feeling of being so small, so entirely insignificant.

• READ MORE: The Wisdom of Keeping Transmissions Short and Sweet

Three and a half minutes, as it turns out, is too short. I found myself wishing it would have lasted longer. There is this brilliant phenomenon called the diamond ring that appears a few seconds before and then after totality. It is a last burst of light on one side of the moon as the glow of the corona emerges from the background and silhouettes the opposite edge. It looks just like a diamond engagement ring, but it only lasts for a few seconds on either side of the eclipse. I can still summon it in my memory at will.

It left a mark on my memory—not my retina.

I thought about all the people that either missed it because they could not move their cars quick enough once they understood the weather would hamper the view, or the many people that would spend hours and hours in their cars driving home. There was something about knowing I was going to fly home that felt like a continuation of the experience. This is why I love aviation so much. The act of getting into that Bonanza and starting the motor still feels like magic to me. A specific, childlike variety of the stuff. Same feeling I got watching the eclipse—wonder.

Once daytime was returned to us by the celestial gods, I climbed in my Bo and started the motor. Buckled up and watched as the three planes in front of me all took to the runway together, back-taxiing to the departure end. I moved up to the hold-short line and watched them soar overhead as I prepared for my turn.

I was airborne in no time and checked in with ATC who agreed to flight following. When it came time to pass me off to Boston Center, I was met with this transmission:

ATC: November 1750 Whiskey, squawk VFR, frequency change approved.

Me: Can I have the next frequency, please? Five-Zero Whiskey.

ATC: Five-Zero Whiskey, Boston Center is not accepting any requests for advisories.

Me: OK. Can you just give me the frequency so I can monitor what’s happening in the sector? Five-Zero Whiskey.

ATC: Yes, but just don’t ask them for flight following.

Me: OK, Mom. I promise. (I didn’t actually say that. Wanted to, though.)

Me: Wilco. Five-Zero Whiskey.

Nothing like being spoken to like an 8-year-old to confirm the childlike state of wonder I found myself in that day. 

This column first appeared in the July/August Issue 949 of the FLYING print edition.

The post Total Eclipse: What a Difference an Airplane Makes appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Let’s go back a bit. I last flew on December 13—a day trip to East Hampton to meet a TV writer. I left for Israel a few days later, where I spent a month researching my last Leading Edge column. When I returned, I had only a couple of days between my next trip to Miami to race my Kramer motorcycle at Miami-Homestead Speedway.

I was going to fly myself until my friend Josh offered to fly us down in his new TBM. I could write another column just on that single flight. Nonstop to Miami from upstate New York with a 60-knot headwind. A tip: Don’t get into a turboprop if you want to continue enjoying your piston single.

The morning Josh was coming to pick me up I decided to get to the airport early and fly. That was January 18. It had been over a month since my last flight and I was itching. I was also excited to use my new rig—an aging ATV with a plow that I welded a 2-inch ball onto paired with a new towbar. Between the very low temps and my hamfisted throttle application, I snapped the tow pin clean off the airplane as I pulled it out of the hangar. I headed off to the FBO to grab a few guys to come help me push the airplane back into the hangar.

Failed attempt No. 1.

• READ MORE: The Wisdom of Keeping Transmissions Short and Sweet

Miami was no better. I had my first crash on a race bike in years. A simple low-side but a good ego bruising and a few hundred dollars in parts. At least my mom’s birthday dinner went off without me breaking anything else. On January 28, I flew back home and replaced the towing pin and pulled the airplane out. Carefully. I did an extra-long preflight since it was now over six weeks since she’d flown. Sitting in the cockpit with that familiar smell of leather, I was excited to knock the dust off both man and machine.

And then that runaway starter. As humans, we are so good at pattern recognition. With the engine running, it was barely perceptible, but I could just sense something was different. In fact, I have heard tales of this rare occurrence ending with a fried starter as some pilots continue their flight not knowing it is still engaged. I don’t know if I heard it or felt it, but either way, I yanked the mixture to cutoff. The engine died, and sure enough, the starter was still turning and the prop was still spinning.

My left hand snapped to the master switch and turned it off. Nothing. I started pulling circuit breakers after that. Unlike my autopilot and trim, which have pronounced, red collars, the starter breaker is not something you imagine needing to access with any urgency. I finally found it and pulled it. Still nothing. Prop still spinning. I imagined the starter starting to heat up. Will it catch fire?

• READ MORE: Milking It: How to Extract Every Last Bit From Airplane and Pilot – FLYING Magazine

At that point, I started pulling every breaker on the panel. I probably looked like a kid at Six Flags playing whack-a-mole. Frantic describes it best. I pulled the flaps breaker, and the starter finally disengaged. I stared at the breaker wondering how on earth that could have done the trick. Of course, it didn’t.

Once the master switch failed at stopping this event, it should have been clear there was nothing else to do—just not to me in the heat of battle. The starter on my airplane is wired directly to the battery. In hindsight, the only thing I could have done was get out of the airplane and move around the spinning prop, open the cowling, and somehow disconnect the battery.

Failed attempt No. 2.

There are real downsides to having your mechanic based 2,000 miles away from your home field. At least Fernie answers his phone on weekends. He told me he had heard of this happening but that it was exceedingly rare and likely a bad solenoid. I ordered a new one, and Phil Taylor from Taylor Aviation came to the rescue a few days later. He and I changed it out in my unheated hangar. With the mixture in cutoff, I pushed the starter button and the prop turned. More importantly, it stopped when I released the button. Problem solved, but too late to fly.

I came back in the morning to finally go flying. Pulled the airplane back out onto the tarmac and flipped the master. Nothing. Dead battery.

Failed attempt No. 3.

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This has been one of the longest hiatuses in my 14 years of flying, closing in quickly on three months as I write this. So, what’s the takeaway? We often hear about the importance of currency as pilots. Staying sharp. Flying often. Our aircraft are no different. Machines, like human bodies, do not like sitting still. Joints need movement. So do cranks and cams. As pilots we fuss over additives and hacks when the solution is to just go fly.

I get it. We live in a society where quick fixes are ubiquitous. Supplements to pills. But nothing beats a good old workout.

I find that at my age bad things happen when I am stationary. So long as I keep it moving, everything stays lubed. Nothing freezes up. Would that old starter solenoid have opened properly had I been flying regularly? I would bet yes.

As if I needed further proof, I arrived in Los Angeles a few weeks ago to yet another reminder. I went to visit my hangar in Van Nuys to grab my truck when I noticed oil all over the floor. My ’94 Ducati 900SS had spilled every last drop onto the epoxy. I have yet to pull the bodywork, but I am guessing a seal corroded and that was that.

Her crime? Stillness.

This column first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Machines, Like Human Bodies, Do Not Like Sitting Still appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Succinctness is the single most prized quality a pilot can exhibit when on the radio. It’s almost as if that little push-to-talk button is buried on the backside of the yoke so as to remind you to only use it when necessary. Break glass in case of communication.

This is for a good reason. There are times when multiple pilots are trying to talk to a controller in busy airspace. Without concise communications there will quickly be a backlog of speeding airplanes no longer in their original positions. At some point, this transitions from a nuisance to a danger. And so we are taught to be frugal with our words.

Say who you are, where you’re at, and what you want. Do so using the fewest number of words. Like a chef making a reduction, distilling the information I need to convey to its purest essence is a joyful exercise for me. The sauce just tastes better.

Becoming a writer, and later a pilot, taught me that words are powerful, have distinct meaning, and should be used sparingly. As an added benefit, people will plain like you more when you’re succinct. Certainly air traffic controllers. I remember being at a wedding with my dad when a known yapper in the family took to the podium to make his speech. My father stretched his legs out, slid down in his chair, closed his eyes, and proclaimed, “Nap time.” Even as a 10 year old, I had a conscious thought that I never wanted anyone to have that reaction to me opening my mouth.

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Flying south from Sullivan County Airport (KMSV), my home field upstate, toward New York Class B during rush hour, things sometimes get a little unruly—at least on the radios. Combine a collection of airplanes all trying to check in at once with a tired controller toward the end of his shift who possesses a strong New York accent, and I will find myself wishing I had popcorn on board.

New York Approach: “OK, everybody stop talking! JetBlue 2073, heading one-eight-five, climb to one-seven thousand. I got two Pipers calling. The one near Kingston, say request. Everyone else, standby!”

Let me tell you, pilots become wonderfully concise when responding to a stern call like that. Everyone just tightens it up. Short and sweet. Good sauce. Nom. Nom. Nom.

Whenever I’m entering the pattern at KMSV, my instructor, Neil, will come on the radio after I’ve made my initial “10 miles from the field” call. “Hello, Ben. How are you?” KMSV is pretty far from anyone or anything, and there isn’t ever much traffic. Yet it still makes me anxious to talk on the CTAF if it’s anything more than calling out my turn to left base. When I answer him with even the shortest pleasantries, I feel like I’m breaking some rule, or at the least, betraying some code. It just feels wrong. My replies are so short you’d think I disliked the man.

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I sometimes take this quest for succinctness too far. Tail numbers should be read back in full when other aircraft in the pattern have similar numbers as yours. My Bonanza is N1750W. When another pilot calls in with a tail number ending in “four-zero-whiskey,” that is not the time to be signing off with my usual, “five-zero-whiskey.” You spell it out in that case. Common sense.

Altimeter readings are a toss-up. When checking in with a new controller, I don’t repeat back the altimeter numbers unless there’s some monstrous difference from the last reporting station that would signify a weather change I’d want to confirm. Short of that, I just give my trusty “five-zero-whiskey.” It means I heard them, and I’m not gonna take up even one extra second of their precious time.

Creativity is not usually rewarded on the radio, but I will admit I love reading back anything with three zeros as “triple nothing.” Sue me. In life outside the cockpit, this desire for brevity has not served me well. Sometimes in conversation I will understand the point someone is trying to make long before completion. It takes everything in me not to stop them midsentence and say, “I got it,” and then summarize in two sentences what they’ve spent the last three minutes (and counting) trying to convey. This is decidedly not a great way to make friends. And apparently I’m not very good at hiding this aversion because even when I manage to keep my mouth shut, people will ask me if I am in pain. On the inside. Yes. I am.

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Screenwriters are like pilots: We have to get the most information across using the least amount of words. While a novelist can use language without any constrictions to paint a vivid physical and emotional landscape, we are beholden to some basic limitations. Screenplays are generally 120 pages, which universally correlates to one minute per page and yields your average two-hour movie. Reminds me of an old-school timing approach from the FAF to the MAP. 

There are levels, of course. Some of us are merely good on the radio. Some of us are heroes. I have heard recordings of pilots who have just declared an emergency that sound like they’re on muscle relaxers signing up for a meditation class. I am in awe of these pilots. I’ve only declared an emergency once in my 13 years of flying, and I have zero interest in hearing that tape. I was on my heels, scared, and my little brain added a whole bunch of unnecessary words to every transmission. 

I’d like to think my dad would appreciate my radio calls—emergencies notwithstanding. He passed long ago. But if he’s up there listening, I hope he gets to hear me read back a revised IFR clearance departing New York airspace with clarity and an economy of words. That or a really good wedding speech.

The post The Wisdom of Keeping Transmissions Short and Sweet appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

So, how did I get down there? I’m sure you can guess.

New York to Birmingham is about the limit for my Beech Bonanza as far as nonstop flights go. At more than four hours, it’s also the limit for me. At that point, my brain and bladder are competing for who more urgently wants to land. The flight down was a breeze. Good weather, nary a bump. I actually did stop at Tazewell County (KJFZ) in Richlands, Virginia. I like the ForeFlight feature that allows you to find the cheapest fuel on your route. Cheap fuel usually corresponds closely with remoteness and level of services—the farther from a population center and the fewer amenities, the cheaper the gas.

In this case, it also seemed to tie in with the difficulty of the approach. The field rests on top of a plateau surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains with a steep drop-off on the approach side of Runway 25. Now add some gusty winds, and it’s a pay-attention approach even in CAVU conditions. As I descended and started to feel the effects of the wind passing over those mountains, I remembered that I had not been flying in more than five weeks. Not my usual M.O., but life got busy, and I did not have any time to fly all of September.

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There are parts of flying that are akin to riding a bike, but generally it’s not a very useful analogy for aviation. The truth is, your skill set does diminish with time, and it’s usually in the most critical envelopes of flight. I narrowed my focus, watched my speeds, and landed firmly with only half flaps to counter the gusts with a little breathing room. I took fuel, chatted up a pleasant retiree from Maine, and departed for Birmingham. On departure I thought about how the approach caught me off guard in a way that I could not have prepared for by any method short of flying more. Noted.

While my friends brought my bike, I brought everything else down in the airplane. With the rear seats removed (yes, I have a separate weight and balance prepped for just this purpose), I was able to fit everything from spare tires to tools, a full-size tent, sleeping bag, gear bag, and bike stands. There is this utility scorecard that lives in my head for every flight I make. The more utility and efficiency I can pack into a flight, the better I feel about the decision to use the airplane, and more interestingly, myself.

Being able to utilize the Bo to its maximum ability combats the small voice in my head that still whispers barbs about the extravagance of owning an airplane. The same goes for the pilot, and this is where things get sticky. As far as the airplane goes, I will load it close to its maximum weight and balance. I extract every bit of convenience and performance I can from the Beechcraft. Approaching those limits is easy as they are written in stone and simple to obey. Finding those limits in myself is quite a different experience.

I spent the weekend on the track riding my Kramer, all the while watching a large weather system make its way north and east. I rode well, which helps me do everything else better, from tying my shoes to making espresso to flying an airplane. Racing fires every neuron you have. It sharpens you in a way nothing else can. One second of inattention can spell disaster. Even instrument flying in IMC gives you a greater margin than that.

I woke up on my birthday, the morning of October 7, to terrible news from Israel. Between the approaching storm and my family in Jerusalem, I decided to head home and not race. Everything went back in the airplane save for the spare tires whose sacrifice to my lap times meant they would retire in Alabama. Filed IFR for 10K and headed up into the clouds. I was slightly nervous about the flight but gave myself a pep talk: This is why you have an instrument rating. This is why you have enough Garmin glass to warrant an exhibit at the Corning factory. This is why you have a Bonanza. I mean, isn’t that the point of all this? It is, with one large caveat. You can only load and fly the airplane to its limits so long as everything is in working order. Same goes for the pilot.

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These are unedited notes I pulled from my flight log, written the evening of the flight after driving home: 

That was an intense flight. Must’ve been in the soup for almost the entire four hour and 20 minute flight. No convective activity, but moderate to heavy rain most of the way, with some turbulence thrown in for good measure. Black hole approach into Sullivan with a tiny bit of oil on the windscreen doing a lot of harm to the visibility. Oil did not register during daylight portion of flight. ATC cleared me for the approach, and I intercepted the glide slope just fine, but I was unable to turn the runway lights on. I was seconds away from going missed when I realized I had not switched over from New York approach to the CTAF. I quickly clicked seven times, and the runway lit up and I landed. For how prepared I was and how much time I had the end was a little bit of a pig f—.

Unlike the airplane’s state of utility, which only need be measured once before the flight, the pilot’s is a moving target. Decidedly not static. Milking every last bit of efficiency/utility from myself is not as straightforward as the aircraft’s. We often talk about evaluating ourselves before a flight. We don’t always think about it in the middle of the action. Things change. Look alive up there.

Also, from what I understand, ATC does not love it when you key the mic 42 times in a row trying to turn on nonexistent runway lights inside its facility.

This column first appeared in the January-February 2024/Issue 945 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Milking It: How to Extract Every Last Bit From Airplane and Pilot appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

After a few minutes of a steep, rough ride, we emerged into a clearing in the otherwise dense forest. Burn marks surrounded the mysterious, misshapen circle, and the ground was scorched black. Looking around, I could not find the culprit. It looked as if a fiery, pancake meteor had hit the earth, resulting in a non-crater.

Turns out it was an airplane. From the lack of a debris field you could tell the pilot plowed straight into the mountain. They had since removed all of the remains— both man and man-made. Bone and aluminum.

My friend told me the story behind the crash. A gentleman around my age had plans to see his girlfriend in another state. The morning he was set to depart was foggy and near zero/zero. But he was instrument rated and his airplane had a parachute. Let’s go!

From the propeller marks it was later determined the airplane was making power when it hit the ground, so he most likely suffered some type of spatial disorientation— my bet would be somatogravic illusion.

• READ MORE: Conversations in Dispatch Can Get Tricky

I looked around the perimeter and found something in the weeds—a small, melted chunk of aluminum. I stared at the piece of metal in my hand and wondered, “Why didn’t he just wait a few hours?”

I could have titled this column “Pheromones” and made it a more generalized treatise about flying unsafely during courtship. But the truth is women aren’t this stupid. Just us. Men.

A woman would know that a man she liked would still be around in a few hours. They understand the theory of object permanence. Men, we wear blinders. We get tunnel vision. And miraculously, around this one particular subject—unlike, say, mowing the lawn or loading the dishwasher—we never, ever experience mission creep. We never lose the scent, so to speak.

I recently got a full panel of bloodwork done. My doctor called me in and told me that I was generally healthy, but she said the one thing that had changed was my testosterone levels. She explained that they were far lower than they had been in 2016, my last full test. She offered up supplements to bring them back up. I didn’t have to think long… Hard pass. I explained to her that the freedom of not being bound, pinned, and betrothed to that specific hormone was not something I would give up for anything.

In hindsight, if I were given the option to bring my levels down to where they are now back in 1989, I would gladly have done so. I would have made 20 more films, written a hundred more screenplays, and saved a million more dollars on drinks, meals, gifts, and who remembers what else—all working to appease one appendage with an outsized role in my decision-making process.

In the movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon’s character wants to “go see about a girl.” He’s very determined. He also has the sense to do this in a sedan and leaves Boston on an unusually sunny day. Well played, Matt. That being said, if he had access to a Bonanza on a typical overcast New England winter morning, I wonder if he would have waited for low IFR to lift before departing. My guess is no.

Most of you know about my incident in Telluride, Colorado, that I have written about extensively in these pages. There was a woman behind that. I had plans to fly to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with someone I had recently met, and whom I did not want to disappoint. Our morning got off to a late start and the winds had picked up. We missed our window. I pushed on. She was very beautiful. I totaled the airplane.

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In the earliest days of my flying career, when I had only my private pilot certificate and no airplane of my own, I was flying a woman from my home upstate to a racetrack in New Jersey in a rented Piper Cherokee. When we departed KMSV, it was clear and a million, but down at Millville there was a solid overcast about 1,200 feet agl. I looked for a hole. There was none. All my friends were waiting for me just under that shallow cloud layer below us. They had a race bike ready for me to ride. We circled for a few minutes as I weighed the options.

I had the compulsory few hours of instrument training needed for my private under my belt, but nothing more. I knew the terrain fairly well, having flown there on numerous occasions. And apparently that was all I needed to make a horrible (and illegal) judgment call when I decided to slowly spiral down into those clouds. I didn’t even know what an instrument approach procedure was back then.

I kept myself in a steady state turn descending at 500 fpm, knowing/praying the ceilings would spit me out where the ATIS promised. And they did. We landed safely. I explained my drenched shirt as a gland issue. My companion was duly impressed, and I was permitted to mate. But anyone reading this who has flown an airplane knows how easily this could have gone south.

There are other stories. I’ll save them for another time. And no need to call my insurer. With my additional years and commensurate drop in Mountain Dude (testosterone), those days are long behind me. I write about them here so that maybe I’ll reach a young pilot, swimming in hormones who has similar thoughts about what he might do to gain favor in a woman’s eyes.

And I hope no one reads this as anti-female.

Quite the opposite. Ironically, most women would not be impressed by this decision-making in the least. In fact, if they knew the risks you had taken without their consent, you would likely be kicked to the curb. If there were a being on this planet who would understand a flight delay brought on by real safety issues, it would be a woman. Women are patient and understanding and generally risk averse.

And, fellas, gonna let you in on a little secret… If she’s willing to get in an airplane with you at all, you can be sure she already likes you. So, take a cold shower and wait for VFR conditions and common sense to prevail.

To this day, I keep that hunk of melted aluminum in my flight bag. Sometimes I’ll even take it out and hold it. It’s a great reminder of what not to do when you want to “go see about a girl.”

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post The Things We Men Pilots Do to Impress Women appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It’s not like I’ve never heard those words before. Things happen at busy airports, and the tower will sometimes throw something at you at the last second. But this was unusual in that I was on short final. No, short final is actually a misnomer in this case. I was over the numbers. Flaps down, gear down, throttle back to 15 inches, trim plus-9 and increasing. I was, quite literally, about to land. Things went a little sideways from there, but let’s back up a minute first.

I was flying a friend to Newark Liberty International Airport (KEWR) so she could catch a commercial flight home. I worked it out so that we’d land before 3 p.m. in New Jersey, avoiding the afternoon rush (and the increased landing fees the Port Authority charges). I filed IFR even though it was clear and a million. Always best to do so when flying into Class B airspace. Many pilots get nervous about flying IFR into busy airspace, but the reality is that it’s far easier than VFR. You’re told what to do and when to do it. It’s actually a great help in regard to workload mitigation. You can’t bust airspace when you’re IFR as they take all the decision-making out of your hands. Well, not all the decision-making. And that’s where my problem was.

It’s a short flight from Sullivan County International Airport (KMSV) in Monticello, New York, to KEWR, and before we even settled into cruise, we were being vectored around for a visual to Runway 11. Approach sent me over to Tower and immediately they asked me to keep my speed up then cleared me to land. I have been in this situation before and, wanting to help out, I do my best to comply. Flying into Newark in a single-engine piston makes you the redheaded stepchild. No way around that. So you do what you can to fit into the fast-moving environment. I maintained 160 kias for as long as I could then had to slow down to get configured for a stable approach. As it was, I did this on the later side. On a 5-mile final, I pitched up and pulled power to get below the 150 kias landing gear actuation speed. We quickly decelerated. The airplane stabilized in no time as I flew my Bo “by the numbers.” In this case, a descent, which means 18 inches manifold pressure and plus-3 on the trim. This setting will always give me a 500 fpm descent with the gear down.

I had heard nothing from the tower since being cleared to land, though I was aware there was a jet behind me. Being just a half mile from the runway, I dumped all the flaps at once and trimmed up to plus-9 to maintain my stabilized approach. Over the numbers I pulled power to idle and was trimming up to plus-12 when Tower told me to go around.

I have been asked to do things on short final before and it’s normally a nonevent. Flying into Van Nuys, California (KVNY), this past spring, I was told to change from 16R to 16L about a mile from the threshold. No problem. Bank left, continue descent, squeak the landing, impress your friends. Like most of us, I’ve also been told to go around more than once. No biggie. But this was different. I looked at my ForeFlight log, and it showed I got as low as 61 feet msl. That’s 44 feet agl at KEWR. This is where that decision-making I mentioned earlier comes into play. I should have simply said, “Unable.” There was no hazard in front of me. I was cleared to land. It was my runway, and I was committed at that point.

I knew full well what was happening: The controller got the spacing wrong and did not want to make the jet behind me go around as he knew I might not exit the runway in time.

• READ MORE: Misses, Near and Far…

It’s that voice-of-God vibe the controllers have. Sometimes you forget you’re allowed to push back. I did what I was told. And this is where it got a bit rough. My aircraft does not have approach flaps. Practically, what this means for me is that I don’t extend flaps on an instrument approach until I know I have the runway made. Why? Because this is the most dangerous, busiest envelope of flight that exists for a GA piston pilot. You’re close to the ground, and the airplane is about to go through some serious aerodynamic changes because of what you’re about to do. It’s a far simpler affair in a Pilatus or TBM. They have as little as one lever. I have three. For this reason, I don’t use flaps until it’s a sure thing since it means there’s one less thing for me to do when transitioning to a missed approach.

So…I acknowledged the go-around while I pulled back on the yoke to stop the descent. I added mixture, prop, and then throttle in quick succession. I retracted the flaps next. She moved around a little bit, but I kept things together and, as the airplane started to climb, I pulled the gear up. Not too bad, I thought. More than usual but not too bad. Except I had forgotten one important item—trim. At plus-12 with a clean airframe and full power, she suddenly shot straight up into the air.

It wasn’t close. No stall warning, but it got my full attention. I pressed forward on the yoke—hard. Forced the nose down as I spun the trim wheel forward with my right hand (not a time for the electric hat) until I felt the pressure subside and entered a normal climb. For a newer pilot, this is exactly how you enter a stall/spin condition.

Tower then sheepishly asked if I could make a short approach. Affirmative. Pulled back throttle to 18 inches and dumped the gear again. Flaps as well. Dove back toward the runway and squeaked the landing. The controller thanked me. No problem.

This column first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Conversations in Dispatch Can Get Tricky appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Waiting for the parts to arrive, I called someone I met a few years earlier when I was stuck in Albuquerque during COVID-19. Back then, Brandon Maestas was the in-house avionics guru at Santa Fe Aero Services, and he got my Garmin software updates squared away while we all waited for the world to come back. It was nice having some order in an otherwise chaotic moment in all our lives. I recalled him being a smart technician and getting things done quickly and cleanly. You remember people like that when they touch your airplane.

I rang up Maestas this time around to find he had left Santa Fe Aero for Los Alamos National Laboratory. Yeah, that one. He still does work for Santa Fe on the weekends, though, and agreed to meet me on a Saturday to update the software on the many boxes in my aviation stack. It was just the two of us in the large hangar, and we had time to catch up as the software loaded. Maestas’ new job involves him keeping 400 CNC machines running at the labs, and he loves the problem-solving skills the job requires.

Maestas has the kind of brain that likes to solve puzzles. Give him something broken, and he will fix it. Describe an issue, and he will diagnose it. I get it. Think of the joy we all felt as children in finishing a jigsaw or solving a logic puzzle. The satisfaction felt in “working the problem” is supported biochemically by bursts of dopamine. As it turns out, some of us are just better at it than others.

Sitting in the airplane, I told Maestas about a particular squawk in my avionics stack that no one, not since its installation, has been able to sort. When I say no one, that includes techs at Garmin, the entire online BeechTalk community, and at least five avionics shops spanning the country.

When I press the power button on the G5 AHRS unit that controls my autopilot in flight, the strangest thing happens: The tail will wag once, intensely, then settle back into coordinated flight. It’s disconcerting to say the least, and you must decide how badly you want to change the dimmer settings on the unit—the only reason I ever futz with the G5. My guess has always been that it’s a wiring issue. Something must have gotten crossed in the install so that the electrical impulse of pushing the power button somehow energizes the yaw damper.

I told him my theory while sitting in the airplane, and he neither nodded nor spoke. In Brandon-speak, that means my idea was being tacitly dismissed out of hand in real time. Right. I’ll be quiet now. Maestas sat there in the left seat thinking, considering, working. He then reached over and pushed the button himself. I knew better than to tell him the G5 had to be powered up for the oddity to occur. He then pushed on the other side of the unit, where there is no button at all. I was confused and skeptical at this point, but I just watched silently.

He then turned to me. “The G5 isn’t tightened down all the way,” Maestas said. “When you press the power button, you’re moving the unit itself, causing the internal, solid-state accelerometers to yaw. The servo is just reacting to the input.” I pushed on the unit myself. It moved, yes, but less than one-eighth of an inch. I told him that didn’t seem like nearly enough of an input to elicit that strong a response.

He just looked at me. I doubled down. “If a loose screw is the reason this has been happening for five years, I’ll buy you dinner next time I’m in town.”

Maestas took out a small screwdriver and tightened down the offending fasteners and replied without looking at me: “Where are you going to buy me dinner?”

• READ MORE: Inspired Individuals

My good friend Ilya is an ER doctor working out of a very busy Brooklyn, New York, hospital. He’s had plenty of opportunities to move up to an administrator position. He has declined them all. The extra money requires additional, and in his mind, unsavory work. Fundraising and palm-pressing are not Ilya’s strong suit. He’d rather stay in the trenches and do the real work. Every person that walks into his ER is a puzzle to solve. His brain accesses years of anecdotal, on-the-ground data that he has acquired as a practitioner, which is then cross-referenced with the medical encyclopedia that resides in his head. His brain then goes to work and, sooner than later, a solution is spit out the other end.

He has saved many lives over the years, but his job is still not as celebrated in quite the same way as others. Ilya has a humorous, slight disdain for surgeons and all of the kudos they receive. He explained to me that surgeons are high-level technicians. Craftsmen at best, glorified plumbers at worst. There is a skill set involved, no doubt, but it requires little thought. They don’t have to figure out much. The problem has already been solved by the diagnostician. They just have to implement the solution. They have to cut. And while both Ilya and Brandon are adept at using their hands to execute a designed course of action, the real joy lies in the diagnosis, in solving the puzzle. Why is this happening? Where did it originate? How can I fix it?

In my quest to get home, I found an angel in David Espinosa of Air One Systems. His shop is at the Double Eagle II Airport (KAEG) on the outskirts of Albuquerque. Espinosa interfaced with Garmin and got my new gyro ordered and installed. All was well again. I finally departed Santa Fe and continued my journey back east. Fried chicken in Memphis, Tennessee, and grits in Arkansas completed the trip home. On my last leg, up at cruise altitude, I reached over and carefully pressed the power button on the G5.

Nada. Nothing. No yaw. No movement. Not from the unit or the airplane. Just a command to change the dimmer setting. Looks like I’ll be buying dinner next time I pass through Santa Fe. Brandon’s choice.

This column first appeared in the October 2023/Issue 942 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Some Just Diagnose Problems Better Than Others appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

How do you know if someone is a pilot?

They will tell you.

As aviators we like to let everyone know, not only our own ability but that of our airplanes. We are proud of our dispatch reliability rate, the utility they afford, the ease of travel, and the time saved not standing in a TSA line. And we would love to tell you all about it in great detail.

And yet, for all that talk, we don’t always communicate very well with our passengers when describing risk. We don’t want to scare the deer. Or show our airplane’s shortcomings. Or our own.

But, yes, our little airplanes really do offer up all that utility. Add a Garmin suite of avionics to the already reliable powerplant/airframe in my highly updated Bonanza, and I can get in and out of places that no commercial airliner could ever attempt.

Part 91 takes away whatever remaining restrictions the majors have in getting off the ground. Technically, we GA pilots can take off in any conditions we like. Sure, we don’t necessarily do it, but we all know that we could if we wanted to badly enough. And that’s simply not a helpful framework for our self-deluding primate brains.

• READ MORE: Misses, Near and Far…

I remember once getting a call some years ago on a Saturday morning from my buddy, Dave. He and a friend had to make a wedding in California’s Bay Area that night. Their commercial flight into KSFO was canceled because of fog. He asked me if I could get them to a nearby airport in the next few hours. A part of my brain lit up at the thought of saving the day. It’s fun being the hero. I tried to remain calm and even had the wherewithal to tell him I had to check the weather first. But my mind was already 87 percent made up. I was getting them to that wedding.

Turns out it wasn’t just fog. There was a well-developed low making a ton of rain along with 70 knot winds at 10,000 feet. We flew right through that storm. While there was no convection, and I wasn’t exactly in over my head, it was not a flight that needed to happen. I had just received my instrument rating a few months earlier and was determined to leverage it to its full potential.

I remember this one moment up at altitude when I realized the weather at our destination was not going to lift above minimums. I told the guys we would not make San Jose and would have to land at Monterey. They were concerned with rental cars and ground transportation, blissfully unaware I had not studied our alternate’s instrument approaches—there are six of them at KMRY. Runway 28 was active, and it required a descent toward mountainous terrain and an approach that takes you right past peaks higher than the aircraft’s path. The surrounding terrain there is the real deal, having taken the life of a well-known CFI who had a CFIT accident in 2021 while departing into IMC.

Our flight ended with a successful landing, but I will always remember walking away from the airplane toward the FBO when Dave asked me if I always sweated this much when flying. “Yes,” I replied. “I’m a ‘schvitzer.’” Better that than explain to him that I exposed them both to a much higher risk without ever giving them the option to make a choice for themselves. Had I called Dave back earlier that morning and explained that our desired destination was at minimums and our alternate had mountainous terrain surrounding it on three sides, he might very well have decided making the wedding wasn’t that important after all. More than 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, anyway. But I never gave him that option. I wanted to make it work—for me, as much as for him. And that’s a problem.

In the end, I didn’t even achieve the hero status that was fueling my decision-making process. The guys were scrambling to find a rental car as they tossed a thank-you over their shoulders as they walked to the FBO. I slowly made my way back to the airplane and just sat there in the left seat for a bit and breathed before filing and heading back to LA.

The best example of this noncommunication was also the worst day of my life: that fateful morning in Telluride, Colorado, where I encountered wind shear on takeoff and almost entered a stall/spin, ending with a gear-up landing. My passenger and I could have left later that day or the next morning. That’s when all the “reasons” start flooding in:

• The hotel room in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is booked.
• The restaurant reservation is made.
• The girl is new to me, and I want to impress her.
• My airplane is perfectly suited to the mission.
• I am a pilot of exceptional, bordering superhuman ability.

In hindsight, those seem patently absurd (the last, also being patently false) with the reality I was then served: a totaled airplane, a scarred pilot and his dog, and a woman who ended up being subjected to a terrifying, near-death experience.

Had I just asked her if she was willing to risk the flight at one of the most notoriously dangerous airports in North America because of mountain wind shear and a climbing density altitude, I can almost guarantee she would have declined. But that dialogue never occurred, because I never opened it.

There are times where we really don’t see the danger coming and, as such, a conversation cannot be had. For that, there is no remedy. But I find the vast majority of the time there is that tingling feeling that originates in your brain then migrates south to the back of your neck, where it surfaces, becoming almost topical—like an itch.

We almost always know. We just don’t always listen, and we often don’t speak.

This column first appeared in the September 2023/Issue 941 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Pilots Don’t Always Communicate Well When Describing Risk appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

My airplane has similar issues. I shouldn’t be surprised. We were both made in the same year: 1972. She’s serial number 9046. I’m somewhere around 108 billion. The Bonanza has evolved a lot faster than humans have. My knees are still Gen 1, and my electrical system hasn’t been upgraded to 28 volts. Not holding my breath either. My autopilot works just fine, but that’s not considered a desirable attribute in a human.

Last week I departed Los Angeles for New York. I flew straight back to Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0) in New Mexico to clean up some additional squawks that surfaced post-annual. These aren’t things Fernie missed, rather just additional groans and signs of aging that my bird is exhibiting. Fernie cared for her immediately and got us going in just a day. By comparison, my doctor has a “first available” three months out, and my squawks are quite a bit more difficult to address and repair.

As a young man, I sustained plenty of injuries taking part in the many extreme sports I was drawn to. To alleviate the depression of being sidelined by an injury, I would tell myself that the treatment was going to make me stronger than I was before. I believed that my double meniscus surgery would make my knees like new again. It didn’t. You could make a case that the multiple fractures I’ve endured have possibly healed stronger than they were pre-break, but the calcified bump on my foot over the fifth metatarsal makes it impossible to wear ski boots now.

I have similar fantasies when parts are replaced on my airplane. Unlike my knees, this is less of a self-deception. When Joe and Brian from ACE Aircraft Cylinders & Engines overhaul my Continental 550, I am flying behind an engine better than the one it replaced. I breathe easier knowing that Kevin O’Halloran refurbished my landing gear motor. The list goes on. These craftsmen are the equivalent of doctors for our airplanes. They keep our machines healthy.

The squawks I returned to Moriarty with seem to dovetail with my own physical issues. Stay with me here:

• N1750W developed a small oil leak from a flex joint on the breather tube.

• I cough up phlegm most mornings apropos of nothing.

• My Bo’s vernatherm isn’t functioning properly as the oil never seems to get up above 150 degrees at cruise altitudes.

• I’m in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the moment and couldn’t breathe on my run this morning here at 7K feet msl. I hid behind a bush to avoid the embarrassment of another jogger asking me if I needed help.

• The double-sided tape on my window scoop let go during taxi the other week, sucking the entire assembly out of the window and forcing me to shut down, exit the airplane, and run back to get it. No joggers witnessed this event.

• My knee let go on a tennis court in Griffith Park last month. I snapped it back into place, took an “L” on the match then went and got tacos.

• Lately, there is the faint smell of gas in the cabin.

• Lauren has been complaining about the not-so-faint smell of gas coming from my “cabin.” Neither issue has been resolved to anyone’s satisfaction.

I grew up in the 1980s with Steve Austin. “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology…Better. Stronger. Faster.” Nope. At 50 it feels more like: Slower. Dumber. Crankier. You take things for granted when you’re young. Now, your health is first and foremost. I used to throw my body around. No stretching. No thoughtfulness. Treated myself like a workhorse: ridden hard and put away wet. I imagine buying a new airplane (something I’ve never done) must allow a similar lack of concern.

Many manufacturers cover basic maintenance for a time, and the warranties are substantial, covering most everything that could go wrong. So a pilot behind a new aircraft flies with mechanical abandon, knowing they likely aren’t going to have anything go wrong—notwithstanding their own deficiencies.

My overhauled engine in the Bonanza has 400 hours on it. I’m right in that sweet spot between the infant mortality stage and the still-distant 1,400-hour TBO. I am not worried about my engine. I can imagine flying past TBO—something I intend to do—but it won’t be the same. Crossing Lake Erie will feel differently with 1,800 hours on the Hobbs. At some point, something will fail. Just like my body. At a certain point, there is only decline. You can try and fight it, but you will one day lose. The best we can do is manage it. This isn’t meant to be morose. I believe the ephemeral quality of life is meant to have us appreciate our time here in a way we could not if we were granted immortality.

The Six Million Dollar Man comparison doesn’t hold water in regards to my body. But in some ways it does hold true for my aircraft. The Garmin suite of avionics I have in my airplane make it far more capable than it was when I first bought it with its steam gauges and a VOR receiver as its sole means of navigation. But there is a law of diminishing returns at play here. The airframe is aging. Metal fatigues. Magnesium pits. Floorboards rot. At some point, and it may not be for years, you’re putting lipstick on a pig.

This is where the comparison between myself and the airplane has its limits. I am deteriorating at a faster pace than my Bonanza. Sadly (or not), N1750W will outlive me. With proper care, she still has many years ahead of her. Me…I’m entering what is effectively the last third of my life. Don’t worry: I’m still sending it. I have no intention of slowing down. But I’m aware that time is ticking. In the meantime, I’m gonna keep applying that lipstick. Appearances must be kept.

This column first appeared in the August 2023/Issue 940 print edition of FLYING.

The post Time Is Ticking on My Youth—and My Airplane’s Too appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I’ve written in these pages about combining my love of racing motorcycles with aviation, flying to distant racetracks and sometimes even landing on the track itself. Aviation sweetens the pot for any adventure. It’s a simple equation: Anything you like to do + Aviation = A Win.

Food pairs exceptionally well with aviation. In fact, one of the oldest cliches in aviation is the $100 hamburger (now pushing $300 in many modern airplanes) whereby you fly to a semi-distant location and have a burger before flying home. Sometimes the burger is just an excuse for the flight. There is something about a flight being mission-oriented that checks another box for me. I understand why pilots take part in humanitarian relief, angel flights, or dog rescue missions. I would fly just for the sake of flying, but having a reason makes me feel like an airline transport pilot.

Food is one of the last remaining things in this ultra-homogenized country that still has some regional specificity. Take a road trip this summer and stay on the interstates if you want to see hat I mean. It all looks the same. Chain after chain punctuated with superstores visible from the freeway. It’s numbing and offensive. Cracker Barrel does its best trying to masquerade as local fare, but it’s not authentic Southern cuisine by any measure. Waffle House is the only one I find irresistible, but I’m not starting up the big-bore Conti to go there either.

No, you have to exit those thruways and get on some two-lane blacktop, where you can still find the mom-and-pop restaurants that don’t have an HR department or a social media presence. This dovetails nicely with general aviation in that the bulk of our 5,000 some-odd airfields are well off the beaten path. Throw in a free crew car and a little bit of research, and you’ve got the makings of a nice lunch. Sometimes I skip the research, roll into a small town and just ask who makes the best fried chicken. If you were to only fly into commercial-service airports in the hope of finding a similar experience, you would miss a whole lot.

I am writing this column from the patio of La Mama in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s a new restaurant housed in what was previously a craftsman home right in the middle of town. Landed in Moriarty (0E0) this morning and dropped the Bo off with Fernie, who is addressing a few leftover squawks, post-annual. Jumped in his truck and drove straight here for a sublime bowl of soup and a sandwich on house-made focaccia. Double mission, double joy.

• READ MORE: Flying for Food: The Butcher Block Edition

I have flown to Catalina Island (KAVX) in California numerous times for what is a decent breakfast (nothing I’d spend time driving to) just to justify the gorgeous trip across the water and the carrier landing on top of a mountain. Camarillo (KCMA) is a close second, where the landing is not as exciting but walking up to the outdoor restaurant on the field a mere 50 feet from your parked airplane is an experience worth burning some 100LL.

I seem to make a cross-country trip in my Bo every few years, and I keep a digital folder of restaurants I want to visit. While a restaurant on the field is the gold standard, there is also something great about borrowing a mid-’90s vintage Crown Vic crew car with the driver’s side spotlight still intact from its previous life as an unmarked police car. I love how people still get out of your way in that thing.

Sometimes, the culinary destination outshines the flight. Rare, but it happens. My buddy Carlo and I flew up from Los Angeles to Los Gatos, California, a few years ago to experience one of the best-ever meals at Manresa. Sadly, the restaurant is now closed (a victim of COVID-19), but I will always remember that flight/meal.

I enjoy the cheap meals as much as I do the high-end cuisine. Aside from an appreciation of all foods, the people are much friendlier in the eateries that don’t come with Michelin stars. I tumbled into PJ’s Rainbow Cafe in Mountain View, Arkansas, a few years back on a cross-country flight. With an actual rainbow on the front glass, this place would absolutely be a gay hangout if it was located in the West Village in NYC. I walked in and immediately noticed the tiles of the dropped ceiling were individual advertisements for local businesses. I’d only seen this done on menus and the occasional tabletop until I entered this establishment. Dining next to me was a woman with an incomplete beard who told me to get the chicken-fried steak. She was with her husband (full beard), whom she met online and who “drove down to Florida to pick her up.” I overheard another woman discussing the eye makeup in the Netflix drama series The Queen’s Gambit and finally had a conversation with a elderly man in full military dress blues who owned a local health food store. He somehow confused me with someone else in the small town (population: 1,700) who apparently I looked like, and we struck up a conversation. He works in the honor guard and buries deceased servicemen and women. These are encounters and meals you simply aren’t going to have anywhere near JFK.

Gonna pick up the airplane in Moriarty tomorrow then head back east for the summer. I haven’t been home in more than a year because of my work. Staring at a VFR map of the country, I am planning my route back. People assume this is a regimented, regulation-fueled exercise. Nope. Taste buds and curiosity are the drivers here. BBQ in Kansas with Sean or a little sandwich shop on the South Side of Chicago with Chris? Not sure yet. Will get airborne and figure it out at 11.5K.

This column first appeared in the July 2023/Issue 939 print edition of FLYING.

The post Food for Flight Is the Way to Go appeared first on FLYING Magazine.