“Know your limitations and don’t exceed them” is common advice for aviators. That statement is all well and good, so far as it goes. It generally encourages you, as the pilot, to do a good job of preparing for each flight...
Do you remember when you first picked up the mic to contact air traffic control? It was undoubtedly a scary time. In fact, the normal process of transmitting information to your brain’s motor cortex to make your mouth move and create...
Plane & Pilot’s theme is simple—the title says it all. Airplanes and pilots interacting with one another in harmony. Just the other day, I was flying for my real-life company down into the Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (KOPF) and came across...
January 1, 2020, was a red-letter day in the transition to automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B). ADS-B Out was required in Class A, B (including the Mode C veil), and C airspace in the United States, as well as generally above 10,000...
With his parents watching, an F-14A fighter pilot took off from the Air National Guard airfield adjacent to Nashville International Airport (KNBA) in Tennessee. He immediately pitched up more than 50 degrees, climbing up into the clouds in a noisy blaze...
There’s always potential for miscommunication whenever low-time pilots are involved with air traffic control. That doesn’t mean they should avoid all such entanglements. Whenever student pilots interact with controllers rather than fellow apprentices in the break room, there’s going to be...
Instructors, learner pilots, and DPEs alike will need to brush up on the new Airman Certification Standards (ACS) and a couple of Practical Test Standards (PTS) that went into effect nearly across the board May 31. The two unaffected categories are...
Are you working on your instrument rating? You’ll want to get the latest edition of The Instrument Pilot Oral Exam Guide from Aviation Supplies and Academics written by Jason Blair, a designated pilot examiner and frequent contributor to FLYING and Plane...
Airplanes and cicadas are not a good mix. They make a mess when they hit the windscreen. They are distracting when they swarm you as you are trying to do a preflight inspection of the airplane. And sometimes, they can get...
Of all the challenging tasks confronting newcomers to aviation, perhaps the least-appreciated and most difficult to overcome is learning to speak the language of aviation. Our lingua aerial is full of strange new terms unrelated to those of other activities that...
