Search results

I have in the past. I posted about my near icing related crash on the flight home from a long, and very thorough instrument check ride. We all make mistakes. We share those mistakes so others can learn from them. We should not however, seek to limit what people might learn from it, or fall...

You'll get no argument from me. I was playing devil's advocate by adding the usual explanation I hear from people who think full rich is needed on the ground to keep the engine cool. Note use of the the "theoretical", as opposed to practical. ---- Running full rich at low power settings on...

Exactly. The CFIs who do teach students to lean for best power when taking off at 5000 feet or above are probably also the CFIs who teach students how to clear a fouled plug - by running up to 1500-1800 rpm and then aggressively leaning the mixture until the plugs clear.

I hate to break it to you but that is, at best, an ad populum logical fallacy. At worst, it's pretty clear evidence that pilot training is badly flawed. There are a few reasons that CFI's don't teach or advocate leaning engines below 5000'. First, it's one more thing to teach and airplanes...

Just to be clear...we are in total agreement on this. I was just pointing to where Salty was coming from. I was also being nice by saying it was mostly theoretical. Here in NC on a 95-100 degree day flying around at low altitude, with my IO-320 warm enough to start stumbling at low rpm due to...

There are potentially two ways to harm the engine with improper leaning on the group. The first is the theoretical issue that I think Salty is suggesting where on a hot day on a hot taxiway at idle with no wind (or a tail wind), there might not be enough air passing over the cylinders to keep...

It's not about "not making errors in judgement", it's about "learning from them, so you don't make them again".

I didn't expect my comment to go over well with the OP or with a number of other people in the thread. Keep in mind however, that one incident with a door coming open in flight is just that - a single incident. Having a similar event happen again now makes it a pattern that *should* compel...

My understanding is that this was a student pilot. Not his first solo, but still a student. Under extreme stress people devolve to their lowest level of *fully* mastered skill. In this case, he hadn't mastered the concept of controlling and aircraft in yaw with the rudder to a sufficient...

One of my former instructors had been a DC-6 and DC-7 pilot and worked as a check pilot in those aircraft. One of the bad habits he often observed were pilots trimming all the control pressure off on approach as it made the approach very easy to fly. However in the DC-6 and DC-7 when you added...

A couple thoughts on this. First, I was doing stop and go landings the other day on a 2700 ft grass strip. I was rolling out in about 500 ft with full stall landings and in about 700 ft with wheel landings. I easily had 2000-2200' of runway left for the subsequent take off. Neither end of...

Eric, you are the same guy who had the cabin door pop open near Sedona right? If so, there's an unhealthy pattern developing here. To me it suggests one of two things, neither one of which is all that charitable - my apologies in advance: 1) You need to reconsider what you are doing in...

You learned a lot; AND the airplane is still flyable (after replacing the gasket). That's a win-win. Now take it one step farther and consider: "What's going on if you see fuel coming off the trailing edge of a high wing?" The answer is the same thing. You don't have to actually see the...

If you want to have any reasonable idea of the altitude you need to return to the runway in the event of an engine failure, you really need to practice it in your particular airplane under various atmospheric and load conditions. For example, the other day I was practicing crosswind landings...

I flew down the beach near Cape Fear and Oak Island this afternoon to get some pictures of the lighthouse for my son's history project. We maintained 1000' AGL, (and or safety reasons climbed well above the traffic pattern at SUT off the beach south of SUT). I'm pretty sure someone could...

My very first flight instructor gave me the same piece of advice to the effect that statistically a power failure was most likely to occur at the first reduction in power after take-off. The best explanation I ever found was that reciprocating engines are more likely to fail when an rpm...

I have a few thoughts on this based on personal experiences. First, when I was in high school, there was a DC-6 that landed in a pasture in the middle of north central South Dakota close to where we had our ranch. It had engine trouble and landed to make repairs. A rancher drove up on his...

Where the engine was located in the fuselage wasn't the issue, it was where the ammo was carried in the nose and the fact that it often wasn't carried and/or was expended in combat, which moved the CG too far aft. The P-39 had that large, heavy (213 lb) 37mm M4 cannon in the nose along with a...

There's a missing factor here. When I am sitting on the ground with the engine at idle, the prop is producing a breeze because the engine is running. Similarly, if I pull the throttle back to idle in flight, the engine is still producing power and will still be generating some thrust, or at...

If the CFI isn't *named* on the policy as an insured individual, and is instead just an *approved* individual the CFI would be smart to have the owner get a waiver of subrogation to prevent the CFI or his insurance from being sued after an accident. The same applies for a ferry pilot who...