As we taxied out that morning, the tears started down my cheek. With a shaky voice, I asked for—and read back—my clearance. By the time the Piper Arrow reached rotation speed and lifted off the runway, my sobbing convulsions broke squelch and the tears in my eyes made it difficult for me to see. This was my departure from Leesburg International Airport (KLEE) in Florida after spending the last week of my father’s life by his side in the hospital and then in hospice.

We were flying home from central Florida to Virginia that Wednesday with the promise of a slight quartering tailwind. I felt an altitude of 11,500 feet might permit us to make it nonstop, but we’d have to eke out every efficiency possible, including “cutting the corner” off the coast of Georgia. I engaged the autopilot and contacted Orlando Approach. 

The next hour was a quiet and somber time. The metaphor of “slipping the surly bonds” and flying amongst the angels was not lost upon me. My mind was entranced thinking about the final days and the final words my father and I were able to exchange, replaying them over and over again as if to record them into my brain, never to be forgotten.

We were navigating direct to STARY, the intersection shortcut of choice for mid-Atlantic pilots making the trek to and from Florida. STARY is situated 13 miles off the coast of Georgia and permits an almost arrow-straight flight back to Virginia. I thought of STARY as a good, incidental omen.

We were just south of Jacksonville, about to go “feetwet,” when the faint odor of oil caught my attention. It’s not an unexpected aroma in a 42-year-old airplane, so I dismissed it and returned to reminisce vivid thoughts of my father. A few minutes later, my wife asked, “Do you smell that?” Snapping out of my stupor, I recognized the smell was getting a bit overwhelming, even for our trusty old bird. I confirmed to her that it was the smell of oil but having already convinced myself that it was normal,I said, “It’s OK, no big deal.”

As we approached STARY, I felt the first shudder. I looked over at my wife, and she was reading her book.About one minute later, it happened again. I looked at the engine monitor and then at her, and found her looking up at me. After the third time, the vibrations didn’t stop. “We might have to land in the water,” I told her. “Your job will be to prop the door open before touchdown.” 

I couldn’t believe I had spoken “those words” and—not ever one to be at a loss for them—her silence surprised me. She broke out the rosary beads from her purse and began praying.

I turned 30 degrees left and started making our way towards the angling Georgia coastline. As I looked ahead, I saw nothing but deserted beaches. It turns out, all of what lay ahead was wildlife refuge. Hilton Head was 65 miles beyond, and I thought for a brief moment that it might be nice to become stranded on Hilton Head—but the incessant vibration cut short my daydream.

I suddenly heard my first flight instructor, Jarl, preaching: “The closest airport might be behind you.” With the vast Atlantic Ocean off our right wing, I had only to look over my left shoulder and, as if on cue, there was St. Simons Island (KSSI), about 18 miles distant. It was then that I called JAX Center to report our engine problem. “Roger, 72T, say intentions and number of souls on board?” Wow! I couldn’t believe that I was being asked “that” question.

As I completed the turn towards KSSI, I began to think that this might have a happy ending after all. Descending into thicker air, the normally aspirated engine was able to make more power and consequently vibrated more intensely. I pulled the throttle and prop back in an effort to slow the engine and vibration, thinking that having less power for longer would be better than the engine’s sudden catastrophic loss. Between radio calls to JAX, I joined my wife in reciting the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Marys in alternating fashion. I also began to think of my father, wondering if I’d see him sooner than I had thought I would.

It felt like the next 20 minutes took an hour to pass. Approaching the non towered field, I began making my calls to St. Simon’s traffic 10 miles out. I wanted everyone/any-one to know that I was coming. Once comfortably within gliding distance, I began my circling descent. I continued my slow pull of power, knowing that I could not count on the assurance of adding any power back in. 

The landing on Runway 22 was uneventful. After pulling up to the ramp and shutting down, we didn’t know what to expect. Stepping off the wing, we found a puddle of oil already forming under the engine and a long streak of oil from the side of the cowl extending rearward all the way under the pilot’s storm window.

What was it? The No. 1 compression ring from the No.4 cylinder had decided to disintegrate. Miraculously, the ring remained within its channel on the piston. There would have been no telling our fate, had it come loose and been blown down into the crankcase. The ignored oil fumes was my first indication that the crank case was pressurizing and oil was being blown overboard. But I had missed it, too distracted with grief to take the early hint.

The lesson I learned from this incident is that grief can affect your flying skills just like some medicine can—perhaps more so—since it can cloud your judgment more insidiously than the obvious runny nose or sore throat. Flying while in such intense mourning led me to miss the cues that had been talking to me all along.

The post ‘Talk to Me Goose’ appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Why do we fly people without explaining to them what we’re doing? Why do we shush inquisitiveness from adults and kids? Some of us make the effort to take passengers along through the walk around and explain what we’re looking for. Some passengers are delighted to learn this, and they should be kept involved in the entire flight, for they might end up in flight school. Others are bored by it and just want to get in and get somewhere: they should fly commercial. How many of us have significant others that fit the latter description? You have my condolences.

The Great Inquisition

A friend has a Van’s Aircraft RV-6 that he often travels in with his wife. When he bought an Aeronca 7AC Champ and he took her on a cross-country flight to a familiar destination, halfway through the flight she inquired, “Shouldn’t we be there by now?” It was no joke.

In the RV-6, she had been quite chatty sitting beside him with the panel before her, and she seemed to be involved in the flight. Stuck in the rear seat of the Aeronca with nothing to interact with but the back of his head, it became clear that she wasn’t the least bit involved in the flight, and it turns out she really hadn’t been that involved during the RV flight.

On the return flight, he had her sit in front and do most of the flying. He no longer shared flight plans with her—he discussed them with her, and let her decide what the best route would be. She caught the bug, took an online ground school, and hired a local CFI for the air work. Within a year, she’d passed the knowledge test, found a designated pilot examiner who could fit in the RV-6, and earned her private pilot certificate. Flying isn’t for everyone, but we won’t know if flying is for our “one” until we involve them.

When I carry passengers in rough conditions, I have to keep them fully engaged with navigating or flying the airplane, just to avoid motion sickness. In Flight of Passage, Rinker Buck memorialized his nausea in the back seat of the family Piper PA-11, begging his brother—while being slammed by Taconic turbulence—to let him fly so he could keep his breakfast down. We can learn from his experience.

Teaching Leads to Mastery

The best way to master a subject is to teach it. We’ll never possess all the answers, but we can learn humbly from the questions others ask. (If you’re a narcissist, fully aware of your incompetence, and can’t admit that you’re ignorant of or wrong about anything, go to a golf course instead of an airport.)

By sharing our experiences and imparting knowledge to our passengers, we exhibit our respect and caring for them. The airlines are required to conduct a passenger safety brief prior to every flight. How many of us do this in GA? The preflight brief is the minimum we should be teaching our passengers. If they appear disinterested, keep them involved anyway, at least until the aircraft is tied down or chocked at the destination.

There may be social obstacles to sharing our passion for flight with our passengers. I’ve been accused of mansplaining how to perform slips on final and how to time magnetos (it may have been my gesticulating with manly hands and my use of the expression, sparky-sparky that gave this impression).

Trying to connect with someone toting a cell phone is also a source of frustration. The “not my job” attitude can be exasperating, usually expressed with, “Why are you telling me this?” I typically respond with: “Because I’ll need your help.” Once their eyes stop rolling, I keep them busy with a finger on the chart and their eyes looking out, a vintage luxury that glass panels sorely lack.

A Wake-Up Call To Promote GA

Recent advances in avionics have minimized pilot workloads to the point where boredom can be more of a safety issue than the complacency that accompanies our overconfidence in the sparky-sparky system. Years ago, most GA autopilots performed altitude and heading duties only. There is no more helpless a feeling than hearing the faint voice of someone on the frequency who, while flying on top to the coast, succumbed along with his passengers to the soporific drone of well-synchronized props, awaking almost two hours out over the ocean with only 40 minutes of fuel remaining. For some, the greatest compliment a passenger can give a pilot is to fall asleep during the flight, but the best compliment is actually to stay involved with the flight.

The next time we hear—“Are we there yet?”—let it be a wake-up call that we could be doing more to promote GA by engaging our passengers more in our flying.

This article was first published in the 2022 Southeast Adventure Guide of FLYING Magazine.

The post Are We There Yet? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

My VFR flight started an hour earlier from Smartt Field (KSET) near St. Charles, Missouri, which is just a short 20-minute hop from the west. After landing at KCPS and meeting the other three pilots, we took off in quick succession, with permission and coordination from the tower.  Shortly after takeoff, the local controller handed us over to St. Louis Tracon, which then coordinated the flyover above the parade route.

Despite the haze, everything went perfectly well, and after the flyover, each of us split off to fly back to our home airports. I decided to fly back to the north over the scenic Mississippi River, and I coordinated with the KCPS controller again until my airplane was out of his airspace near Granite City, Illinois. From there, I skirted east of the St. Louis Class B airspace by staying over the Mississippi and tuned my radio to the unicom frequency, 122.7, for KSET traffic.

As I was flying in the haze over the confluence of the mighty Mississippi and the Missouri rivers at 2,000 feet msl, I saw a small cloud moving quickly toward me. Yikes—a large flock of snow geese over the Mississippi flyway! Who would have ever expected to see them in late August? For the uneducated, snow geese do not fly in a “V” formation typical of Canada geese but instead fly in what appears to be a small white cloud. After a quick bank to the right, I was out of their way and continued on.

Next, I transmitted on 122.7 to alert other pilots in the area of my position at 2,000 feet over Alton, Illinois, which is about 10 miles east of my home field. Seconds later, another pilot reported taking off from Runway 36 at my home airport, with the intentions of flying east. I assumed she heard me and would fly well below my westbound track. Remember the old saying about why you should never “assume” anything? This bears repeating.

Then it happened again—another large flock of snow geese suddenly appeared and another evasive maneuver was made. This distracted me so much, I forgot about the other airplane.

Within moments of banking out of the way of this second flock of snow geese, the ADS-B began yelling, “Traffic 12 o’clock, traffic 12 o’clock.” Drats, I could see nothing but the haze. Even though I had turned on the anti-collision lights, strobes and landing lights for an extra layer of protection in the reduced visibility, a Cessna 152 suddenly appeared head-on in my windshield. As I climbed to my right, the other airplane dived to the left. We were close enough that I could confirm it had the same tail number as the airplane taking off a few minutes earlier. Thankfully, the rest of the flight was uneventful.

There are plenty of lessons to be learned from this flight. First, always be vigilant when flying near a migratory-bird flyway, regardless of the season.

Second, exercise extreme caution while flying in haze. 

Third, never assume other pilots hear or understand what your position is—or what your intentions are. 

And finally, communicate. Initially, I was mad at the other pilot for nearly causing a catastrophe, but then remembered it was my responsibility to communicate effectively with others to make sure each of us knows where we are and where we are going.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the November 2021 edition of FLYING Magazine.

The post A Flock of Geese Triggers Another Hazard appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In fall 1967, I was a Marine second lieutenant and completed my first solo in a Navy T-34. After a couple of times around the pattern, the instructor got out, slapped me on the helmet, and told me to make three touch-and-goes and come back to pick him up.

In fall 2017, I completed my last solo, this time in a flight school’s Cessna 172. Between the two, a lot of gas went out the exhaust as I chased flying jobs.

After that first flight, I went through VT-2 at Whiting Field in Florida, flying the magnificent T-28C/B. Having requested jets, F-4s or A-6s, I found myself in North Carolina at New River Marine Corps Air Station, flying the CH-46 Sea Knight—a helicopter later called the “Phrog,” but in a loving, respectful way.

For me, flying Marine helicopters in Vietnam was the ultimate adventure. The job itself was simple enough: take care of the “grunts” on the ground, regardless of weather or the fact you were regularly being shot at. I loved it. I flew for a year, came home with a bunch of medals and, after a tour in the training command, was unleashed on an unsuspecting civilian world.

I ultimately wanted to fly for the airlines, but airline hiring has more ups and downs than a pork-bellies futures chart. I interviewed with the “spooks” but wanted an accompanied mission of some kind. I talked with Air America but found the same problem: no families included.

A few years later, I was on the Hawaiian island of Maui, still not flying, but I was bartending and having a lot of fun. I realized that I couldn’t do that forever—that I should go flying, which I could do forever. After sending out a batch of résumés to various companies in Hawaii, I was picked up by Aloha Island Air, flying de Havilland Twin Otters around the islands.

After three years with Aloha Island, and a lot of library time searching for operators in Africa, I was hired by Air Serv to fly Twin Otters out of Lokichogio (“Loki”), Kenya. Loki was on the border with Sudan, which was embroiled in its continuous civil war.

In many ways, the job was similar to the one in Vietnam: rough country, taking care of relief workers in a hostile area, but not shot at as much.

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After Sudan, I was working for a drilling company in Algeria, working a five-weeks-on, five-weeks-off schedule in the virtual center of the Sahara. Finally, through connections I had made in Loki, I was hired by Champion Airlines to fly the “big iron,” Boeing 727s. Later, I was in 737s and Twin Otters for Saudi Aramco in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. I was there on 9/11—an interesting time.

Returning to the US, I taught ground schools and got my CFI-I. I worked for flight schools in the Los Angeles area and enjoyed the interaction with the students until one porpoised on her first solo landing and tore up the airplane. So much for that job. Fortunately, she wasn’t hurt.

I was hired by a Cessna Caravan company in Hawaii, but things started to change. During training, I couldn’t remember simple procedures or checklist items, things that I had easily mastered in previous years. Consequently, ground school did not go well.

I returned to the mainland and worked for a flight school out of Santa Monica Municipal Airport (KSMO) in California, but the problems continued. I didn’t tie down an aircraft—twice. I wasn’t being lazy; I just forgot. That company moved their operation, and I moved to another flight school. The instruction seemed to be going better, but I often had to go through a long process to remember what I wanted to say to the student.

I was taking out a renter for an area-and-aircraft checkout, but I had left my iPad, filled with all the ForeFlight goodies, in the car. I didn’t even think about it, though I had been a dedicated “don’t leave home without it” user. Weather was marginal—low scud with some haze—but I still could see the ground. We went out and did the usual maneuvers and returned to the airport. Taxiing in, ground control called and gave me a number to call. Yeah, the FAA.

A week or so later, a student and I entered the downwind, and she landed normally, no big deal, but I once again received the call-the-feds message. A couple of weeks later, I was invited to visit the local FSDO for the dreaded 709 meeting—a check ride to reevaluate my skills.

In the FSDO office, I met with three examiners. The lead said they had two things to discuss. One, that I had neither acknowledged nor obeyed a tower instruction to “go around,” break off the landing and reenter the pattern. And two, that I had violated the nearby Class Bravo airspace. I had no memory of either incident and said so.

The second man at the meeting took out some papers and showed them to me. One was a radar track of our flight, showing it crossing the departure path from the Bravo airport. The first guy asked, “Didn’t it occur to you that you weren’t where you should be when you saw the airliners taking off under you?”

Read More: I Learned About Flying From That

I told him that we were above an undercast and had only occasional glimpses of the surface, but that everything was clear above and around us. The second guy brought out a cassette recorder, and I heard my voice calling for landing and the tower telling me to go around. I have no memory of either call.

The dates were set for an oral and a flight test. All would be to ATP standards. Great. It had been nearly 20 years since I had obtained my ATP, and I had been busy flying in distant places, far from the FAA, and not reviewing the books as I should have. Besides, remembering procedures, checklists and manuals had never been a problem—until the Caravan ground school.

I went home and studied but could not maintain my concentration or, upon review, remember what I read. I had years of teaching that exact material and couldn’t remember it 20 minutes later. A meeting with the FAA confirmed that maybe I had, as the representative said, “lost a step.”

A week later, we all met at the FSDO again, and I surrendered my certificates: an ATP and airplane-multiengine-land certifications, with B-737 and G-IV type ratings; as well as airplane-single-engine-land, rotorcraft-helicopter and instrument-helicopter certificates, with BV-107 and SK-58 type ratings. I asked for and received a 24-hour temporary certificate and drove back to the airport where I checked out a Cessna 172.

I flew out over the ocean and went through the various maneuvers, enjoying the ride and not really thinking that it would be my last as a PIC. I asked for the ILS under VFR conditions back in. At pattern altitude, I called for an overhead break and landed gently on the numbers, taxied in, and tied down the airplane. As I was walking back to the office, a couple was walking toward me, headed for their airplane. The woman said something to the man, who turned to me and said, “She said that you really look like a pilot.”

“I am a pilot,” I said.

It was a couple of hours later I realized that, after 10,000-plus hours across 50 years in all kinds of flying machines over all parts of the planet, I had lied to her.

This story appeared in the August 2021 issue of Flying Magazine

The post No More Happy Landings appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

My mentor and neighbor—an Eastern Airlines captain and the only airline pilot living within 30 miles of Madisonville—happened to be driving to Louisville to catch his deadhead to New York. He said I could ride with him to Louisville, and he would help me prepare for the flight. His offer lent my “rescue” mission an air of authority. My friend Catherine thought the plan was grand and volunteered to go on the adventure as well. What could possibly go wrong?

The muggy August air in Western Kentucky hung like kudzu on the oaks as we made our way east on the Western Kentucky Parkway. The high glare cut visibility to maybe 8 miles, my most generous estimate. We were slightly behind schedule, but I calculated we could still make it home before dusk.

When we arrived at the FBO desk in Louisville at 6 p.m., the lineman could barely remember the faded green-on-white 172. He located the airplane on the line board and recalled: “Since I really wasn’t sure on your friend’s plans, I put her back on ‘the Slope.’ I topped her off myself last Saturday evening after the storms cleared.”

My airline-pilot friend drove us out to the old Cessna. The preflight was uneventful. I clicked on the master switch and checked the fuel gauges—both read “full.” On the struts, I dipped a finger in each tank. Full as promised. Satisfied with the airplane and our flight planning, we gratefully sent my airline-pilot friend to catch his flight to New York.

The lineman wasn’t kidding when he called it “the Slope.” I had to set the parking brake once the chocks were removed. Catherine and I boarded, strapped in and fired up the old Lycoming. It ran beautifully. I taxied forward a few feet to sit upright as we copied Bowman Field ATIS and got our taxi clearance.

The weather for the 90-minute rescue mission was technically VFR, with “winds light and variable…visibility 10 miles with haze,” but haze was an understatement. On takeoff, my vision was surprisingly obscured. To be sure, I could see directly below, but I had only a faint horizon—if at all. Most of the time, I was following the compass and looking often at the attitude indicator for reassurance. Catherine, normally reserved, had a lot to say about the sensation but was all smiles. This new and lonely experience as PIC in reduced visibility was sobering. I hoped the visibility would improve.

Straight and level at 6,500 feet, I searched into the fish-gray, nearly featureless cone of visibility below us for the landmarks along our course. At last, Rough River Lake emerged—albeit slightly out of place. Hmm. A quick correction of about 20-plus degrees northward, and we continued on course.

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Soon, we neared the halfway mark on my sectional. Per training, it was time for a progress confirmation check. The aircraft was flying perfectly. Oil pressure was fine and—what? My fuel survey revealed an alarming fact. More than half of the fuel we had on takeoff was gone. A quick calculation: I was halfway to the destination and had used more than half of our fuel. That equaled a pretty big problem. Three things could have been happening: my gauges were wrong, the burn was far too great, or I was leaking fuel.

With each gentle bump of the air, the gauges seemed to dip just a little lower. Maintaining at least the appearance of competence for my passenger, I tried to think through the situation. On preflight, the tanks were topped by the lineman. I had personally inspected the tanks as well—full, to the brim. When I first switched on the master, the fuel gauges both read “F.” I had to have started with full tanks. My fuel burn must be too great. But how? At this rate, the burn must be way more than 14 gallons per hour. Impossible—but irrefutably true.

We droned on, now in the presence of considerable doubt. With declining visibility, dusk approaching and an apparently monstrous fuel burn, I had decisions to make. Press on or land safely where could we refuel, recalculate our course, or even reconsider the very wisdom of this trip. The current trajectory took me to about 8 miles short of my destination. Not good. My heart rate increased, and I could see the National Transportation Safety Board report already.

Could I make Bowling Green? Do they have fuel? I assumed so, but the hour was getting late. If we ended up stranded, where could I go with Catherine and no credit card? I struggled with my conscience and decided to land.

Read More: I Learned About Flying From That

We turned definitively southward and began a gentle descent. Twenty minutes later, we were in the pattern at KBWG. Never had the numbers been so inviting. The gauges taunted me with the idea that I could have made it to Madisonville, but I squelched that thought. The tarmac was a place where I could unravel this mystery and think.

The landing was a squeaker. On the ramp, we exited the airplane, and I explained our plight to the evening attendant. He topped the tanks with nearly 24 gallons. The gauges had been right.

Just as in life, reviewing a situation with another often illuminates the real problem. The lineman, Catherine and I discussed our predicament and looked back at the elderly but beautiful bird sitting up proudly on the ramp. Standing safely on terra firma, my thinking was now clear.

On level ground, with the airplane and tanks upright, we could see that there was no leak except in my attention to detail. Topping off the tanks and doing the preflight on the sloped ramp had been the issue. Replacing the 12 gallons burned—and adding the 12 gallons not filled or recognized in Louisville—reconciled all details. “The Slope” had gotten me.

I had been trained by three very different flight instructors: a teenager not much older than I was, a swashbuckler, and a brash retired US Navy captain. Though they approached flying very differently, they all taught me that when presented with a conundrum in the air, “land and sort it out” on the ground. If you eat crow, so be it. I followed their advice and was glad I did.

This story appeared in the June/July 2021 issue of Flying Magazine

The post Summer Haze and Low on Fuel appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The flight began normally. Little did I know how crazy and funny things would end up becoming. It was my student’s last flight before his first check ride in the private pilot portion of our Part 141 curriculum, which comes just before a student’s first solo. We were flying a Cessna 152.

We had a long taxi because the main runway nearest the flight school was closed, as it would be for the rest of the summer as it went through updates and repairs. Taking off just behind us was a SkyWest CRJ. Our takeoff was normal, and everything was going fine—until about 50 feet agl, when I saw something small fly off the dashboard and straight into my student’s lap. I ignored it at the time and continued talking to ATC, who then told us to begin our outbound turn to get us away from the departure end of the runway, to make way for the CRJ. I heard the tower telling the CRJ our position and asking for them to report us in sight.

“SkyWest (call sign) has the little bugger in sight,” the SkyWest pilot said, referring to us.

I responded on frequency: “Who you callin’ little bugger?”

Radio silence.

I then said, “But, seriously, jokes aside—thanks for bein’ here, guys.”

He responded: “Hey, we’re right here with you, man. No problem.”

I smiled. I had thanked them because the events of this story took place in June 2020, when aviation had come to a screeching halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And, at the time, it felt as though it was just us two up in the sky that day. Well, us, and a stowaway.

As we were climbing through about 2,000 feet, the unexpected happened. I glanced over at the thing that had flown into my student’s lap. Turns out, it was a wasp.

“Oh, my…” I said quietly into my mic. My student, focused on flying, didn’t say anything. I continued: “OK, I don’t want you to worry, but there’s a wasp on your crotch. I’m going to reach over and try to kill it, OK?” He said: “Oh… Sure… OK.”

I then proceeded to awkwardly try to smush the thing with my checklist—trying not to get fresh in the process—when it moved and started hiding right under the seam of his pants.

Realizing things were getting a little too personal, I took the airplane from him and let him try to find it and kill it. At this point though, the wasp had disappeared. We assumed it was dead. We were wrong.

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I should mention that these communications with the tower and the SkyWest jet were happening at the same time as my student and I were trying to vanquish the wasp, but what I’ve related so far gives a good rough timing of how it all went down.

Then tower gets in on the joke from before: “Little bug—I mean, Cessna (N-number), contact departure. Safe flight, talk to you in a bit.”

Little did he and the SkyWest pilot know, we were dealing with a literal little bug in the cockpit, making the irony palpable.

So, the flight continued normally for a while. I had my student practice some steep turns and stalls, then it was time to head back in for some touch-and-goes. We were entering the pattern and doing a forward slip to a go-around when I saw something fly at me this time. My student turned to me in shock and, with a look of horror on his face, said, “Oh…”

“What? What is it?” I asked. “Is it on my face, my shoulder—what?” (I had trouble seeing or feeling anything; we both had masks on because of COVID-19 policies, and I was wearing sunglasses.) Then, before he could answer, the wasp jumped off me and onto my student. I quickly took the controls again, and he struggled to get it off of himself.

Read More: I Learned About Flying From That

Finally, I grabbed the checklist and whacked it off his shoulder and onto the floor. “He’s on the floor,” I yelled. “Stomp him out! Get him!” My student stepped on the wasp, finally extinguishing it. Once ready, my student took back the flight controls, and we finished our landings, successfully completing the flight.

I should note that at no point during the flight did either of us completely ignore the airplane or fight over controls, and we both used clear communication when transferring use of them between us. Once we were on the ground, we both had a good laugh about the whole thing, and I apologized profusely for grazing his thigh and having lost my cool a little over a wasp. He wasn’t the slightest bit bothered and laughed it off.

I wish I had a better moral to this story, but I’ll leave it with this: Don’t be one of those pilots who takes everything too seriously. There’ll be times in either your training or your career when you’re stuck in a small space with another person and the most unexpected stuff happens—it’s a place where many good and bad memories are made. In those moments, emergency or not, you have the choice to make it a good memory or a bad one. A lot of us always say, “Well, I would’ve done X, Y and Z,” but until you’re actually in that situation, you really don’t know what you’d do. Remember that there’s no one simple fix to any situation, so just make the best of it, and don’t forget to enjoy the ride and laugh about it in the end.

This story appeared in the April/May 2021 issue of Flying Magazine

The post A Bug Interrupts a Flight Lesson appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In 1948, living in New Jersey, I wanted very much to get into flying. My inquiries led me to Secaucus (now a metropolis in its own right, 10 minutes from New York City), where I found the Dawn Patrol seaplane base located on the Hackensack River. The owner-operator was a veteran Navy pilot, who just a few years earlier had engaged in combat flying a torpedo bomber. His name was Cliff Umschied, and the fleet consisted of two Luscombes on floats. I was a kid and didn’t have much money at the time, but it was the beginning of a long and wonderful love affair with aviation. The lessons that my own flight training taught me stayed with me over the years until I eventually became an instructor and a designated pilot examiner.

Fast-forward to the Korean conflict that erupted in 1950. The following year, I found myself at Naval Air Station Barber’s Point on Oahu, Hawaii—about 15 air miles from Pearl Harbor—having completed several rounds of technical training, though I still wanted to fly. One day, I took a bus that made a stop at Honolulu International Airport (KHNL), now David K. Inouye International Airport, and there discovered the Hawaiian School of Aeronautics, owned and operated by a very pleasant woman whose husband at the time was a colonel fighting in Korea. Her name was Marguerite Gambo Wood, chief flight instructor and DPE. The fleet, as I recall, consisted of four Aeronca 7AC Champs, two Ercoupes and a Seabee. My instructor was June W. Johnson, a young lady probably not more than six or seven years older than I was.

June told me that her husband was a pilot for Hawaiian Airlines, then a freight carrier for the islands. We did air work over the pineapple fields—the same ones flown over by the attacking Japanese planes 10 years earlier—and pattern work mostly at Bellows Field, an abandoned World War II base on the east side of the island, not far from Kaneohe. We got by in a Champ with no electrical system at an international airport with 10,000-foot runways and four-engine traffic going on all day by using the light-gun system. We taxied out to a pad that was monitored by the tower, and when he flashed his light, we acknowledged by wagging the ailerons and elevator. Returning to the field, it was a right downwind with the ocean on our left. We watched the tower for their signal and rocked our wings to acknowledge. After just a few hours, I was signed off for solo and encouraged to go up and do stalls and spins at will.

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But by far the most challenging and memorable period for me was fulfilling the cross-country requirements. That’s what the Ercoupes were for—flying to the other islands. They had electric starters, greater fuel capacity, 75-horsepower engines and not-so-great condenser-tuned radios.

I flew the cross-country once with June and a second time alone. The flight took us from KHNL to Diamond Head at the southeastern tip of Oahu, then across the channel to Lauu Point at the western tip of Molokai, landing for a pit stop and verification signature at Molokai Airport.

Sounds simple enough, but it entails flying over what is serious open water for about 30 nautical miles in an Ercoupe with a questionable radio. Then it was off to the north coast of Molokai, a route that took us to the second required landing at Kahului Airport on Maui. The route ended with flying south to the coast of Maui, then back west to Lauu Point and home.

In the ’60s, we moved to Westchester County, New York. On weekends, I freelanced as a CFI at a small field in Duchess County (I taught my youngest son to fly on those weekends) and used nearby Westchester County Airport (KHPN) every chance I could. At 57, I left the business world and began 10 years at KHPN as a flight instructor, chief flight instructor and, for several years, designated pilot examiner for the local FSDO. I never forgot the skills I acquired over the pineapple fields on Oahu in the little Champs.

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On one of the last flight tests sent my way, a fellow instructor referred a young gentleman who had completed the private pilot training requirements. After the preliminary logbook check and oral exam, we went through the preflight and then did a couple of landings—they met the standards. We then left the pattern, and I directed my applicant to a work area nearby, telling him that we were going to do some stalls and steep turns. Now, many applicants for a flight test exhibit some nervousness, and I’ve always believed that a reasonable examiner makes allowances for that, but his reaction was quite visible.

We cleared the area, and I told him to do a gentle no-flaps stall and recover at the first sign of a break. By that time, judging by his demeanor, I’m sure he was in a sweat. I had him do a couple more clearing turns to help settle him down and then told him to do a full-flaps stall with a full break and recovery with minimum altitude loss. The result: left wing well down, controls crossed, and we were in an incipient spin. Had he been alone, he would have died. I recovered (shades of my early training in Oahu), suggested that he relax, and headed back to base.

In our discussion afterward, he told me that he hated stalls. I asked him how many stalls he had done in his training. His response: “Three.” (Mental note: Mention to the instructor the importance of completing requirements before recommending a flight test.) To the applicant’s credit, he retrained with his instructor, overcame his fear and came back to me for a retest, leaving happily with his private ticket.

When unpacking our things after the move to Westchester County, I came across a box of some old records, and sure enough, among the items was the 1951 Hawaii sectional, the very chart I used for the cross-country flights—course lines and all. Given the layout of the islands, it’s a very big sectional—a good 5 feet long and about 18 inches high. It has been framed and hangs on the wall of my “cave” over my desk. Every day, it brings back the joy I had flying in beautiful, pristine Hawaii. I was a fledging at the time, but the challenges it presented and the education it provided lasted a pilot’s lifetime.

This story appeared in the March 2021 issue of Flying Magazine

The post Hawaii Lessons in an Ercoupe appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was my first flying job—the one you dreamed about having all your life. The one for which you strove, saved and worked so hard, and it was finally real. I had to leave my native New Zealand and move to the Australian Outback to get it, but that just made it all the more exciting, away from the familiar and out into the vastness of that huge sunburned country.

I was based on Elcho Island, off the north coast of Arnhem Land, about 200 miles to the east of Darwin. To say it is remote is an understatement. No roads, no shops, one radio station and one TV channel. At least we had a paved runway. Most of the airstrips I would be flying to were red dirt, which meant, in the wet season, red mud.

We had a ragtag fleet of Cessnas, mostly 206s, 207s and 402s—all old and high-time but well-maintained. These were working bush airplanes, carpets long gone and replaced by painted plywood floors and high-density vinyl seats. It was worth getting out of bed early because the last person in had to fly the 207 for the day—and on short-strip work in the tropics, this was to be avoided. It was not so affectionately known as the “Lead Sled” or “Ground Gripper.” Ours had started life ferrying coffins around with an undertaker in Arkansas.

The first year passed without incident. I was, as the chief pilot put it, “greener than pea-and-frog pie,” and I knew it. I was cautious and careful.

The closest strip to home was Marparu, 16 miles away on the mainland. We went there almost daily, supplying the aboriginal community with pretty much everything. Food, doctors’ visits, teachers in and out, and medevac. If it could fit in the Cessna, we flew it.

A fellow Kiwi, Ian, was building a new schoolhouse there. It was a large job for one man, but he worked tirelessly, and slowly over the months, the school took shape. I flew food and supplies into him every few days, and every two weeks, I flew him out so he could catch up with his wife who lived in the local mining town an hour or so to the east.

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At last, the school was completed, and Ian asked me to do a couple of flights to get his tools and leftover building supplies. One of the things he needed to get was a set of plank stands about 10 feet long, so it was going to be a job for the 207.

The runway at Marparu is about 2,800 feet long, literally cut out of 50-foot-tall trees. There’s a clearing at each end, another 1,000 feet or so of felled-but-not-cleared trees. The surrounding terrain is dead flat. To prepare for the trip, I removed all the seats except for the one behind the pilot’s seat, so we could have as much cargo space as possible.

The day was typical for the wet season: high humidity, low QNH (airport pressure setting), high temperature at around 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and not a breath of wind. I was sweating just thinking about loading the airplane. Upon landing, I was confronted with a mountain of gear next to the strip. There were tins of paint, lengths of wood, jerrycans of diesel, a concrete mixer complete with single-cylinder diesel engine, nails, three large truck batteries, and all manner of other things dear to a builder’s heart.

I did some calculations and figured we could lift about 1,000 pounds. I only had some bathroom scales to weigh all his stuff, so a fair bit of guesstimating went on. A lot of the stuff was “dangerous goods” and shouldn’t have been put on at all, but with some serious complete-the-mission focus and wanting to please my friend, a lot of warning signs were ignored.

The 207 looked a little saggy on its undercarriage, but the strip was long, and I’d flown out of there many times at max weight, so I wasn’t overly concerned. I made sure to use every inch of the runway and swung the tail around over the clearing to get maximum length. About halfway down, there was a painted-white fuel drum. I figured that if I didn’t have two-thirds the speed I needed by the time I passed the drum, I’d abort and offload some gear.

The 207 jumped forward with a reassuring eagerness. Sixty knots came up as we passed the drum, and I was lulled into thinking this was all going to go to plan. At about 65 knots, though, it just stopped accelerating. It took me a couple of seconds to notice this, but what I did notice was that the end of the runway was approaching. Quickly.

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For a fleeting second, I thought about aborting anyway, but we were too far in for that now. As the end of the runway arrived, I rotated, and with the stall-warning horn wailing, we staggered into the air. We were far from out of trouble. Though airborne, we were over the clearing and still had 50-foot-tall trees to clear. Those trees seemed a very long way above where I was sitting. Half my brain was screaming at me to push forward because we were on the verge of the stall, while the other half was yelling to pull back to avoid the trees. All of my brain was telling me that this wasn’t really happening.

All that flammable cargo would shortly turn us both into a flaming crash site, miles away from any help. I braced for the impact, but it didn’t happen. How we got over those trees I’ll never know. A breath of wind, the hand of God—I have no idea. We skimmed along in the tree tops for what seemed like minutes and then ever so slowly climbed into the sky. I milked the flaps up in 1-degree increments. I kept in full power for a full five minutes. It took more than five minutes to climb to 1,500 feet.

During the whole one-hour flight, we never got above 3,500 feet or 105 knots. The magnitude of my foolishness had begun to sink in. How had all that training and all that carefulness been thrown aside so easily? I’d let wanting to get the job done and look capable and fearless in front of my friend cloud my judgment very badly.

When we landed, I had trouble getting out of the airplane because my legs felt like jelly. Ian looked at me with a strange expression on his face. “Was that as close as it looked?” he asked. “I thought the wheels were going to start turning in the treetops.” I gently put my arm around his shoulder and made a tiny gap between my thumb and forefinger. “This close to dying,” I said. He laughed. I don’t think he believed me. We unloaded the supplies onto several trollies. Luckily, it had started to rain, so no one came out to help us. The boss would have probably fired me on the spot if he’d seen it all.

That was 25 years ago, and I’ve never forgotten the lesson I learned that day. Work within the limits, be careful, and if it feels like a bad idea, then it probably is.

This story appeared in the January-February 2021 issue of Flying Magazine

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A lot has been written over the past few years about pilots relying on the automation to fly the airplane to the detriment of actual hands-on-the-stick piloting skills. I have long been baffled by pilots’ reliance on the autopilot. But perhaps this attitude comes from my Air Force training early on and particularly from a black, black night at low altitude over the Atlantic Ocean. In October 1973, the war in Vietnam was winding to a close. For the previous three years or so, I had been flying the Lockheed C-141 Starlifter to Southeast Asia and all over the Pacific Ocean, supporting the US missions in that part of the world. Then, a new crisis: Israel had once again been attacked by Egypt, and the Air Force was tasked with supplying arms to Israel.

From its birth as a modern nation in 1948, Israel has fought its neighbors for its survival. In 1967, in the famous Six-Day War, Israel had defeated the adjacent countries (Syria, Jordan and Egypt) in one week. Six years later, on the holy celebration of Yom Kippur, it was happening again. But this time, it was against a slightly different background. The oil-rich countries of the Middle East announced that they would cut off all oil shipments to any country that supported Israel in the conflict. This included any nation that aided in the resupply of any materiel. That meant that if the United States wanted to support Israel, it would have to do it without the air bases outside of its own borders.

The Lockheed C-141 was the Air Force’s second-largest cargo aircraft. Its four jet engines allowed it to cruise at just under Mach 0.8 with a range of 5,000 miles. It weighed about 70.5 tons empty and more than twice that fully loaded. It was the perfect aircraft for the mission. So here was the plan.

The US Air Force Military Air Command would pick up bombs and small arms ammunition from supply depots in the States, fly to Lajes Field air base in the Portuguese Azores (where we still had landing rights), and then to Tel Aviv, Israel. Aircrews would rest at Lajes; the airplanes would keep moving. This was a normal operation, but there would be two new wrinkles that nearly put me and my crew into the Atlantic. First, we were not allowed to fly over any other country’s airspace or land in any other country en route. Second, under no circumstances would we leave an airplane on the ground at Tel Aviv. The Air Force did not want to see a burning US aircraft at Tel Aviv on the evening news.

My logbook entries from that time show that my crew and I picked up loads in Indiana and Arkansas, then flew eight hours or so to Lajes to rest, then picked up an incoming airplane and flew it for seven to eight hours to Tel Aviv, and then the same distance back to Lajes for a beer and bed. We flew two uneventful trips from Lajes to Tel Aviv and back. We flew past the Rock of Gibraltar and then straddled various airspace boundaries as we made our way east across the Mediterranean Sea. About 150 miles west of Israel, a pair of Israeli F-4 Phantoms showed up off our wingtip and escorted us nearly to touchdown.

As we taxied in, we opened the cargo doors so we could begin offloading as soon as we came to a stop. The refueling truck slid in next to us as we stopped, and while we sat with the engines running, we received a weather briefing, filed our flight plan for the leg back west, unloaded our cargo, and filled with fuel. Then, it was time to call for taxi and head back west for another eight hours. Not one extra minute was spent on the ground.

The third trip, on October 28, was different. The first four hours of our flight east were uneventful. Then, the master warning light illuminated, along with the small warning light that indicated that the elevator artificial-feel system had failed.

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While small aircraft have cables running from the control yoke to the elevator, large aircraft do not. Movement of the yoke on large aircraft causes hydraulic valves to open and close, which, in turn, moves the elevator. The pilot gets no sensory feedback from this movement of hydraulic fluid. So, to give the pilot the sense of aerodynamic feel that we are all accustomed to, the good engineers at Lockheed included the elevator artificial-feel system. This was a system of springs that sensed the aircraft airspeed from the central air-data computer and adjusted the amount of pressure that the pilot would feel from movement on the yoke. Just as in smaller aircraft, the greater the airspeed, the harder it was to pull back on the yoke. Great system, and it worked almost all the time.

When the system failed, it generally failed in the mode that required more back pressure on the yoke than expected. There was an in-flight reset procedure, but if that did not work, the system had to be reset on the ground by the maintenance folks. So in our case, the system failed, and when we disengaged the autopilot, the nose of the plane dropped immediately—and hard. The copilot and I regained control of the airplane, reengaged the autopilot, and had a long chat with the flight engineer and the books about our approach and landing. The plan we devised was that we would fly an ILS approach with the autopilot engaged, and then we would disengage just as we needed to flare. At that time, the copilot and I would jointly haul back on the yoke and get the nosewheel up just high enough to land, and that worked ok.

We had no maintenance support at Tel Aviv, and the flight engineer was not able to reset the system. On another day, we would have left the airplane for the maintenance folks, but that was not an option. I knew that I could have refused to fly the airplane, but I also knew that it was going to be moved by somebody, immediately. I felt that it was not fair to put someone else into this situation, not knowing how to react. At least we knew what to expect and how to handle it. Our takeoff briefing was normal, with one addition: At rotation speed, both the copilot and I would pull back on the yoke, and as soon as we got the aircraft into the climb-out pitch position, we would engage the autopilot.

Another eight hours back, and we had time for a lot of conversation. The aircraft was certified for Category III landing operations, meaning that if we had the proper ground equipment, we could let the autopilot capture the localizer and glideslope, engage the autothrottle system to hold the airspeed, and allow the autoland system bring up the nose at 50 feet agl and set the airplane on the centerline. What could go wrong?

It was nearly midnight on a moonless night. The only lights to be seen were those on the island, about 20 miles away. We descended to about 2,000 feet, rechecked all frequencies and switch settings, and prepared to watch the autopilot do its thing. Though I had never done this before in an aircraft, I had done it over and over in the simulator.

Flaps were set at the approach setting, landing gear was down, and airspeed was established for the approach. We were on a 45-degree intercept to the final approach course for Runway 15, about 15 miles out. The localizer needle started to move off the edge of the case, and the aircraft began a left turn to intercept the final approach course to Runway 15. As the airplane began to roll out of the turn, we realized that there was a problem with our plan. We just did not know what.

We were all set for some type of downward runaway pitch excursion. Both the copilot and I were set to pull back on the yoke if necessary. However, as the airplane started to roll out of the turn, it began a smooth but rapid nose-up movement. Simultaneously, the airspeed began decreasing toward the stall speed. We already had gear and flaps deployed, exactly the worst position to be in with the airplane moving toward a stall. This was where training just kicked in.

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I don’t remember what I said, but I remember simultaneously disengaging the autopilot and autothrottles, rolling into a steep turn to the left and smoothly shoving all four throttles forward, and staring hard at the attitude indicator as I did so. As soon as the nose moved up, the lights of the island went out of sight—there was no horizon to be seen. To the left as we turned, there was nothing but black. No ocean, no sky—just black. Aircraft attitude and airspeed were all that mattered.

The copilot and I performed a steep turn on instruments, not much different from the ones that instrument students still practice. All that training kicked in without thinking. Fly the airplane. Attitude, airspeed, altitude, roll out on a heading of 150. Re-intercept the localizer. The autopilot worked on the earlier approach into Tel Aviv—try it again—carefully. The only thing we did differently this time from our earlier approach into Tel Aviv was using the autothrottle. So, skip the autothrottle, and see if that solves the problem. We would fly this approach exactly like the approach we flew eight hours before. Except it was night, and we had the lack of visual cues that nighttime brings on landing. This entire event, from pitch-up to rollout back on final, took less than two minutes—the time it takes to make a 360-degree steep turn.

Landing was otherwise uneventful, except that our adrenalin levels were sky high. It all went quickly. The rest of the crew did not know how close we came to putting the airplane into the ocean. It was just us two pilots that were shaking.

We were met, as was normal, by the maintenance crew. We pilots and the flight engineer described what had happened as best we could. The maintenance crew said, “Hmm,” and we all went to bed.

It was quite some time before I realized what had happened. I was so focused on the malfunction of the elevator artificial-feel system that I did not realize that the aircraft was making the same rookie error that every student pilot makes. When we roll an aircraft into a bank, we need to increase our lift, because our lift perpendicular to the horizon has decreased. We do this by increasing the angle of attack, and the only way we can increase the angle of attack and hold altitude and airspeed is to increase power. The airplane did this and added the correct amount of nose-up trim to hold the level turn. However, it was slow to add power to hold the airspeed—just like a student pilot.

A failure to increase power will result in either a loss of airspeed or altitude. This is true in Cessna 172 or in a Boeing 777. Or in the Starlifter. In our case, the aircraft was calling for more power because the altitude was fixed and the turn to final was causing the airspeed to dissipate. But just like a beginning student learning steep turns, the autothrottle system was behind. It was trying to add power, but it came in late. When the airplane rolled out on final, the plane was low on airspeed, and the only thing it knew to do was to increase the pitch to hold altitude, which just caused the airspeed to drop more. Bad cycle. The solution for any impending stall is to decrease the angle of attack, while following up with increased power. I have always thanked Lockheed for giving us an aircraft with an abundance of power—because we had enough to make the runway.

This story appeared in the December 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

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I’ve been flying for 30 years and never experienced a hiccup from an airplane engine while airborne. That changed a few minutes into a recent flight. This story can’t rival a sudden engine stoppage and forced landing—it’s a story of an engine that seemed on its way to quitting—but I hope it provides some useful lessons.

It was unseasonably warm on February 23 in the Upper Midwest, with a bell-clear, blue-sky day beckoning for some flying. I never have to worry about finding something to do in an airplane because I have an ongoing project of landing at every airport in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin, the four states neighboring Minnesota, where I’d already landed at all 135 airports.

If there’s flyable weather at my home base of St. Cloud Regional Airport (KSTC) in Minnesota, there’s a good chance there’s good weather in one of the other states. So a friend and I headed out to northern Iowa in my Mooney, starting out in the northwest part of the state and heading east toward Decorah (KDEH), landing at all airports along the way. We ended up at Decorah an hour before sunset and fueled up for the return home.

We took off uneventfully in fine weather on an instrument flight plan to Anoka County-Blaine Airport (KANE) in Minnesota, climbed to 6,000 feet, settled into cruise and leaned the engine to rich of peak. After about two minutes of conversation, I began to feel a vibration. It felt exactly like the roughness you feel when going lean of peak and beyond, to the point where the first cylinder or cylinders begin to lose power—that is, “leaning to roughness.” However, the vibration continued to get worse, and the engine seemed to be on its way to destruction, peaking in about 10 seconds, so I knew I needed to land as soon as possible. I hoped for an airport because I still had power, though Iowa farm fields would be an option if necessary.

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I started a left turn toward the nearest airport, holding altitude in order to maximize my glide range. During that turn, I considered specifically where I wanted to go. I could make a 180-degree turn back toward Decorah, where I knew they had an FBO with repair facilities. Or I could do a 90-degree turn back toward the nearest airport at the time, Cresco, Iowa (KCJJ), where we had been earlier. I decided to go to Cresco; I learned quickly that when your life is on the line, all other inconveniences are secondary.

This is where I confirmed that an iPad running a big moving map—the ForeFlight app in my case—can be a lifesaver. When making that turn, I knew generally where Cresco was because I was just there but not a specific heading. I simply turned the airplane in that direction by pointing the symbolic airplane using the moving map. I identified the town visually, and I adjusted my heading to maintain a ground track straight to where I knew the airport was. If I had used the nearest-airport feature on the GPS, it would have taken longer.

I declared a mayday call to the Rochester, Minnesota, approach controller with whom I was already in contact, and she provided information on direction and distance along the way.

Once established toward the airport, the glide-range circle shown on ForeFlight told me I was not yet within gliding range, and for that reason, I maintained altitude. All of the above took place in 20 seconds. At that point, I turned my attention to the engine, and at once, I found that the engine monitor flashed that cylinder No. 3 in my Lycoming IO-360 was running at something like 450 degrees F. I left the throttle wide open and pushed the mixture in full rich. A few seconds later, the engine started to become smoother and restored to normal after no more than 10 seconds. The cylinder-head temperature dropped rapidly. I waited until I was within gliding range, stayed high for a couple of miles beyond that, began a descent into a tight traffic pattern suitable for a possible dead-stick landing, and landed uneventfully.

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We taxied to the ramp and were quickly greeted by the local police and the airport manager who had been called by Rochester. Cursory inspection of the engine revealed nothing unusual. The airport manager, Clair Pecinovsky, put me in touch with Mike Connell, an airplane mechanic at Decorah, and he graciously offered to come to Cresco to look over the engine, including the fuel injectors, spark plugs and borescope. In the meantime, we returned home via a rental car.

The inspection revealed no damage to the engine, but one spark plug on the misbehaving cylinder No. 3 had a cracked insulator. After conferring with Connell, my own airplane mechanic and some more research, the best theory was that the No. 3 fuel injector experienced a partial obstruction leading to a leaner mixture, demonstrated by the resulting higher exhaust-gas temperature—as shown in the data dump from the JP Instruments EDM 700 engine analyzer—which led to a detonation or preignition event perhaps instigated by the cracked plug (most likely detonation).

The spark plug was replaced, and the next week I hitched a ride in a friend’s airplane, circled the airport to confirm all was well, and flew home uneventfully with a deliberately rich mixture. At a safe altitude over my airport, I put the engine through its paces of various mixtures, RPMs and power but could not cause any anomalies.

I’ve been a Monday morning quarterback and came up with the following suggestions for others:

• Don’t have regrets about calling mayday. I received a benign call from the FSDO afterward, and that was it.
• Don’t wait—reflexively push that mixture in full rich as you start your turn to see if that helps. It apparently did in this case.
• The engine went back to normal so promptly, I briefly considered proceeding home. Resist the temptation. Make the precautionary landing.
• Go to the nearest airport. All other considerations are secondary when it comes to threatened power loss.
• If you don’t have an engine monitor, get one. I’m considering getting an audio alert for temperature alarms because I still can’t believe I didn’t see that flashing cylinder-head temperature. I’ll be checking more frequently, at least for that flashing warning.
• Invest in a panel or yoke mount for your iPad or other moving-map display; it provides a wealth of safety information.

This story appeared in the November 2020, Buyers Guide issue of Flying Magazine

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