Recent content by Rory

I think that the idea of a flight instructor offering unlimited flight time should raise some red flags.

Interesting recent example of a Cessna Skyhawk crashing into someone’s front yard despite what appear to be alternate landing sites without a 180 degree return to the airport (no fatality, currently under investigation):

Perhaps someone else has mentioned it, but if not I’d like to suggest that you think very carefully before agreeing to make an upfront payment to get a “discounted” hourly rate.

And here’s footage of a Cessna landing on Long Island’s Sunrise Highway last July, plus comments from the pilot:

Interview with the pilot:

There’s a current thread on pre-flight checks in which a contributor mentions mixed-up controls. The NTSB/FAA Safety Team has made a great video on this about a real case. I’m creating this separate thread on the video because of how powerful it is, and because it has only 1500 views on...

Yes. Given a choice between plain English and jargon, I will choose plain English every time unless there is a really good reason not to. Except for radar, which is at this point a well-understood word, I use the full form of all of those. There is some debate about what METAR stands for. I use...

In ForeFlight, it’s possible both to create a checklist from scratch and to customize an existing checklist. One of the first things that I did in ForeFlight was dump I.M.S.A.F.E. and create a checklist, based on the underlying principles, that makes sense to me and my situation. I’m a lot...

You aren’t alone. The acronyms and mnemonics are rampant. I concluded that they were getting in the way of my understanding, and made a conscious decision to ban both from my aviation vocabulary. Obviously not the right choice for everyone, but it works for me.

I agree. From Manhattan the New Jersey airports make more sense, and KISP is a bit of a haul even from Queens and Brooklyn. If you like the Hudson Valley, I also think that Orange County is worth considering. When you factor in traffic, it’s a viable alternative when it comes to travel time...

Let me get this straight. When I calculate density altitude using the common private pilot formula, there's a significant discrepancy between the number I get and the number that ForeFlight gives, and that discrepancy proves not to be linear between airports, and asking about it here is in your...

Then don't do more.

Not only did I not say anything about safety, I said specifically in the very post you quoted that the method works on a practical level and that if the discrepancy isn't of interest, cool. Some people are interested in physics, and better understanding formula, and some aren't.

If you are right, cool. Since you seem interested, perhaps do some density altitude calculations for a number of airports using the rough and ready pilot method, then do them from ForeFlight or NOAA and tell us what accounts for the discrepancies, especially the significant discrepancies...

I'm not criticizing you or questioning whether your method works on a practical level. I raised a question about something that I observed with respect to negative density altitudes and that, when I investigated it further, showed a significant discrepancy between the results of the formula we...