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I pulled up the historical METARs for the time of the accident for airports like LAL, GIF, MCO, ISM, even in the other direction up to OCF etc. They were all reporting similar foggy conditions at the time of the aircraft departure as BOW. Airports with RVR equipment were reporting between 1000...

What makes departing in Central Florida patchy fog conditions risky is that you are probably negative return, all nearby airports likely have similar conditions, and a forced landing will be beyond dicey. Based on my experience in the area, I suspect the pilot had okay runway visibility and...

Fly often. You'll spend money faster but spend less in total. Stretching it out between lessons is a good way to increase your total spending on relearning things.

You know, I've never asked for explicit Bravo clearance when taking off from a Bravo airport... or even thought to ask for it. Have I been wrong to not seek explicit clearance, or is that the elusive implicit case?

Better check where that 9 year old is at.

Fire Resistant clothing is absolutely amazing. Basically what it does is have a much higher threshold of energy before the fabric itself ignites. Depending on the construction/rating they may not help too much from the heat of the initial flames... but... the clothing itself won't catch fire...

This topic is crazy because everyone has an opinion based on a sample size of 1, and anyone with enough money to put a study together has a way they want it to turn out, and a too short a study period to really prove anything. No one self reports accurately what they are eating or how much they...

Does a TFR really extend into Canadian airspace?

I've had a number of different G1000 quirks pop up. Some of the quirks I've seen are persistent or reappear. Knowing the airplane well so you can tell what's new versus known is valuable. The start-up fault is one of the toughest discipline-wise as well as emotionally. But here's the...

The hard part of this hobby is how grey every decision is. With sufficient conservative decision making almost any flight can be cancelled and you can feel like you are being too aggressive at the same time. It's maddening to be safety focused. Keep a viable backup plan at all times. Have...

Recently, I wanted to descend for some flightseeing... I did a 30 degree bank 360 turn, pulled the power, and dropped a few thousand feet. Rolled out on the original heading at the altitude I wanted. For me and my training... it was benign and boring. For my wife, her eyes got all big and she...

The docket has documents detailing the justifications for the 5000 foot shelf for simultaneous ILS approaches, the lack of them actually performed, and how the space ends up getting used even without the amount of traffic they expected. There's no big conspiracy. It's plain and simple that...

In some places if you are a visitor to the country and you get into a car accident it's automatically your fault because it wouldn't happened if you weren't in the country. The logic is pretty similar here. The thought process seems to be that if the Bravo shelf was higher, he wouldn't have...

I was on the ground one time adding oil with a paper filler cone when a gust of wind came up and in a blink the paper cone was gone. One mechanic's opinion was to not worry.... it couldn't be in there, no place for it to go/hide. Another mechanic said... can't hurt to open it up and look. It...

There are some places where if you are in an auto accident as a foreign tourist it is automatically your fault regardless of the circumstances since the accident wouldn't have happened if you hadn't been there. I didn't expect that kind of logic would apply in the US though. The pilot just...

I've had 3 checkrides and 3 very different experiences, but all 3 had significant memorization and general knowledge expectations. From what I can tell the examiner is trying to find the end of your knowledge, and they will find one. So you need to know where to find things and you need to make...

The average family medical plan now costs employer+employee $20,000/year. For an employee that makes $50,000/year and pays the average employee contribution, that means healthcare cost is 33% of their compensation. That's 3x the amount they'd pay in Federal Taxes. And it doesn't even include...

I used to have a hard time hitting the transmit button but after awhile you realize that the stupidest thing you've ever said on the radio isn't the worst thing that controller heard that day. I've noticed that roughly half of the time I get a "call when on a 3 mile base" or similar they call...

I used to think the instrument rating was about flying in bad weather. But really, that's surprisingly little of what I find useful about it. It's not a bad weather magic bullet... in the worst weather (convection/icing) it's much safer to fly VFR ironically. It's just a much safer way to fly...

Lantana has Palm Beach Flight Training. I did a 10 day rental with them in a 172 a few years ago. The airplane was in good shape. They came across pretty gruff but in the end they were reasonable on the major points. I'd probably expect about 3 hours of clock time to check out between paperwork...