The idea resulted in the famous “Mercury 13,” led by Jerrie Cobb and formed in 1960. Yet many in the U.S. believed that space was no place for a woman, and Russia would become the first country to produce a female astronaut. For many of the Mercury 13, an elite group of women aviators, their hopes were dashed. Yet one would touch space, albeit nearly 60 years later—Wally Funk. 

Mary Wallace Funk was born in 1939 in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Flying was on her mind from an early age, and at 8 she attempted her first flight by jumping off her parents’ roof wearing a Superman cape. While this obviously didn’t work, her mother knew Funk had the grit needed to be a pilot, and at 9 she took her first flying lesson. 

By the time Funk reached high school, mechanics and aviation had captured her heart. She attempted to enroll in courses such as mechanical drawing yet was redirected to more “appropriate” subjects such as home economics. For Funk, this simply wouldn’t do, and she left high school to enroll at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. While there, she became a member of the “Flying Susies” and graduated first in her class of 24 pilots. Funk would go on to become a civilian flight instructor at 20, teaching U.S. Army officers. 

At 21, Funk volunteered for NASA’s “Woman in Space” program. Despite being younger than the recommended 25-40, she was selected and would go on to be a part of the elite Mercury 13. The rigorous tests were both physical and mental, and in some of them Funk scored even higher than John Glenn. Despite their success, however, the prevailing idea was that women didn’t belong in space, and the program would be canceled after two years.

Funk would go on to become the 58th woman to earn an airline transport pilot rating, yet could not find work with a carrier due to her gender. Not to be deterred, in 1971 she became the first female FAA flight inspector. In 1973, Funk was promoted to the FAA Systems Worthiness Analysis Program, and in ’74 she was hired by the National Transportation Safety Board as its first female air safety investigator. Funk would spend 11 years in that position until her retirement in 1985. Even in retirement, she kept herself busy as an FAA safety counselor. 

It was in 1995 that the first space shuttle to be piloted by a female (Eileen Collins) was launched. Funk was on hand with several other members of the Mercury 13 to watch their dreams come to fruition.

Yet for Funk, that wouldn’t be the end of her journey to space.

In 2021, Funk finally saw space on the first New Shepard mission, part of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin project. At the time, the trip made Funk the oldest (82) to fly to space, a record she took from Glenn (77) but was surpassed later that year by William Shatner (90). 

Funk has received countless honors and awards, including from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, Smithsonian Institution, and alma mater Stephens College. Her time in aviation has included 7,000 students soloed, with 3,000 achieving a multitude of ratings.

Funk, now 85 and residing in Grapevine, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, has logged more than 18,600 flight hours in her career. So it’s little wonder why her biography,  Higher, Faster, Longer: My Life in Aviation and My Quest for Spaceflight, remains an inspiring read for flying and space enthusiasts.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on Plane & Pilot.

The post Wally Funk: Breaking the Glass Ceiling, All the Way to Space appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It is a lovely, peaceful spot set on a knoll, but most of the remains—people who went down the Ohio River and settled on the flat ground below in the late 1700s—were reinterred up here above the floodplain. That large, flat area, called the Turkey Bottoms, would become “Sunken Lunken” Airport in the early 1920s.

I’ve heard comments about how many approach and takeoff paths take you right over graveyards, but I never realized how many cemeteries are located on airport properties.

• READ MORE: Perusing Some Old Logbooks

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea. The ground between or alongside runways and taxiways is flat and well cared for, and what could be a more appropriate resting place for pilots and aviation aficionados? The thought of resting in a place with airplanes soaring into the sky nearby…hey, that makes sense to me.

But since Lunken (KLUK) hasn’t yet seen things my way, I have a plot in a little and very old cemetery at the base of the Mount Washington neighborhood water tower, sitting on a hill about 4 miles from the airfield.

The airport beacon is mounted on top of the tower, and many a night I’ve navigated home fi nding my way toward that bright light.

Out of curiosity, I “uncovered” information about the incredible number of airports—large and small—where an old cemetery is found on the property. And it’s fascinating how the problem is solved.

A Chicago field, originally called Orchard Airport and the site of the Douglas Aircraft Company, was renamed O’Hare (KORD) in 1949, and in 1952, graves in Wilmer’s Old Settler Cemetery—0.384 acres on O’Hare Airport property—were removed by court order because they were in the path of a proposed new runway. Reportedly, 37 whites and an unknown number of Native Americans interned there were reburied in three nearby cemeteries.

Just how long a grave can be “reserved” for sole use by the original inhabitant seems to depend on state and local practices. It’s common for cemeteries to rent plots, allowing people to lease a space for up to 100 years before the grave is allowed to be recycled and reused.

In Ohio, it’s 75 years, but I could find no universal law here. It seems that much depends on the preference of surviving—if any—family members. Sometimes a court order is required.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (KATL) consistently wins the title of the world’s busiest airport and it continues to grow, engulfing more and more small communities. When a fifth runway was added in 2006, it vastly increased the number of possible operations, but it also enveloped two century-old cemeteries.

• READ MORE: Sometimes the Flying Weather’s Fit Only for Turkeys

Authorities decided that these two small family and church burial grounds, Hart and Flat Rock cemeteries, would simply be incorporated into the airport’s master plan. Despite being located between runways with takeoffs about every 30 seconds, they are still publicly accessible via a dedicated access road with signs showing the locations.

Probably the most famous—and curious—on-airport remains can be found at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport (KSAV).

Members of the Dodson family, Daniel Hueston and John Dotson, are buried alongside Runway 10, while Richard and Catherine Dodson’s graves are actually embedded beneath that runway. If you look really hard out of an airplane window, you can see the markers.

On quiet Saturday mornings, local pilots have been known to ask ground controllers for the “Graveyard Tour.” If cleared, this allows one to taxi out to the Dotson grave markers on Runway 10/28 so passengers can snap a picture before taking off.

Everything is haunted in Savannah and ghost tours are big business, but thus far, no one has figured out how to monetize the graveyard tour at the airport. Perhaps the two flight schools on the field could start incorporating a ghost tour into their sightseeing flights.

When Smith Reynolds Airport (KINT) in Winston- Salem, North Carolina, acquired property in 1944 to extend a runway, about 700 graves in the private African American Evergreen Cemetery were relocated to a new location. But it seems some marked graves remain in a wooded area within the airport complex.

• READ MORE: The Man Who Saved the Iconic Hartzell Propeller Company

If you watch carefully while driving on Springhill Road south of Tallahassee International Airport (KTLH) in Florida, you’ll see a break in the security fence. Pull in there and drive between the fences with signs proclaiming it is a restricted area, and you’ll come upon gravestones of a cemetery around which the airport runways were built. It’s known as Airport Cemetery and was originally a pauper’s graveyard. About 15 graves are designated with stones, but it appears there are about 20 other sunken depressions marking graves.

I’m betting you know many others, but I found one at Burlington International Airport (KBTV) in Vermont, where the graveyard is surrounded on three sides by the facility. And there’s Florida’s Flagler Executive Airport (KFIN), North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham International

Airport (KRDU), New York’s Albany International Airport (KALB), and Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (KSHD), where Revolutionary War veteran Mathias Kersh and his wife, Anna Margaret, rest—all sites of small family plots. The behemoth Amazon recently added 210 acres as part of its air cargo hub at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (KCVG) and is seeking permission to move 20 graves from the land it owns there.

No discussion of final resting places and cemeteries would be complete without a mention of a glorious shrine to aviation built a quarter mile off the end of Runway 15 at California’s Hollywood Burbank Airport (KBUR), formerly known as Bob Hope Airport. It’s called the “Portal of the Folded Wings.” The 78-foot-tall structure was designed by a San Francisco architect and built in 1924, intending it to be the entrance to a cemetery called Valhalla Memorial Park.

With its location so close to Burbank Airport—then called Union Airport—and the site of the Lockheed Company, aviation enthusiast James Gillette wanted to dedicate it as a shrine or memorial to early aviators. It took Gillette nearly 20 years, but it was finally dedicated as the final resting place of pilots, mechanics, and aviation pioneers in 1953. In addition to the ashes of those actually interred inside the portal, a number of brass plaques honor famous aviators resting elsewhere, such as General Billy Mitchell and Amelia Earhart.

Familiar aviation pioneers whose ashes are found inside include Bert Acosta (Admiral Richard Byrd’s copilot); Jimmie Angel, whose remains were removed and scattered over Angel Falls in Venezuela, where he crashed flying a Cincinnati-built Flamingo; W.B. Kinner, builder of the first certified aircraft engine as well as Earhart’s first airplane; and Charlie Taylor, who built the engine for the Wright Flyer and operated the first airport on Huffman Prairie in Dayton, Ohio. You can visit the site in Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood, California.

But I can’t write a story about aviators who legally rest on airport properties without mentioning who knows how many ashes that have been surreptitiously scattered from airplanes flying over the deceased’s beloved home airport.

This column first appeared in the Summer 2024 Ultimate Issue print edition.

The post Ultimate Issue: The Connection Between Airports and God’s Acres appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

They were rare in general aviation airplanes until 2014 when the FAA simplified the requirements for installing them. A proliferation of aftermarket AOA systems followed, ranging in price from around $300 to more than $3,000. I don’t know how widely these devices have been adopted, nor do I know whether any study has been made of their impact on the GA accident rate.

Despite its well-known shortcomings as a stall-warning device, the airspeed indicator remains the only AOA reference in most airplanes. It has the advantages of being a mechanically simple system, intuitive, and familiar. Speed is an everyday experience, while angle of attack, for most pilots, remains in the realm of the theoretical.

Theoretical or not, I think, to start with, that we could improve the terminology. “Angle of attack” is really a proxy for something else, namely “the amount of the maximum lift available that is currently in use.” So it would be more meaningful to speak of a “lift indicator,” “relative lift indicator,” or “lift fraction indicator.”

• READ MORE: The Craft of Providing Variety in Airplanes

One of the advantages of thinking in terms of lift fraction is that almost all of the important characteristic speeds of any airplane—the exceptions are the nonaerodynamic speeds, such as gear-and-flap-lowering speeds—fall close to the same fractions of lift regardless of airplane size, shape, or weight. Best L/D speed is at around 50 percent and 1.3 V_s at exactly 60 percent. Stall, obviously, is at 100 percent. A lift gauge is universal: It behaves, and can be used, in the same way in all airplanes.

A few years ago, in a column titled “A Modest Proposal,” I suggested demoting the hallowed airspeed indicator to a subsidiary role and replacing it with a large and conspicuous lift indicator. I borrowed the title from a 1729 essay by Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, in which he satirically proposed that poverty in Ireland might be relieved if the populace were to sell its manifestly too numerous babies to be eaten by the rich. My appropriation of Swift’s title was meant to suggest that I considered my proposal was about as likely to be adopted as his.

At the time I wrote my article, I was not yet aware of a 2018 paper by a team led by Dave Rogers, titled “Low Cost Accurate Angle of Attack System.” Using a simple underwing probe and electronic postprocessing, Rogers and his group achieved accuracy within a fraction of a degree of angle of attack with a system costing less than $100. That’s more accuracy than you really need, but better more than less.

• READ MORE: Looking at the Physics of STOL Drag

The low cost is made possible by the availability of inexpensive small computers— Rogers’ team used a $20 Arduino—that can be programmed to do the math needed to convert the pressure variations read by a simple probe into usable AOA data. Processing is necessary because the airplane itself distorts the flow field around it and makes it all but impossible to read AOA directly with a vane or pressure probe situated close to the surface of the aircraft. Besides, configuration changes, like lowering flaps, alter the lifting characteristics of the wing.

Designing an accurate system is only half the challenge, however. There is also the problem, perhaps even more difficult, of how best to present the information to the pilot. Little agreement exists among current vendors. Some presentations use round dials, some edgewise meters, some various arrangements of colored lights or patterns of illuminated V’s and chevrons resembling a master sergeant’s shoulder patch.

In 1973, the late Randy Greene of SafeFlight Corp. gave me one of his company’s SC-150 lift indicators for my then-just-completed homebuilt, Melmoth. The SC- 150 used a rectangular display with a moving needle. There was a central stripe for approach speed flanked by a couple of dots for climb and slow-approach speeds, and a red zone heralding the approach of the stall. The probe that sensed angle of attack was a spring-loaded, leading-edge tab, externally identical to the stall-warning tabs on many GA airplanes.

Apparently, some people mounted the SC-150’s display horizontally, but that made no sense to me at all. Given that I wanted it vertical, however, Greene and I did not see eye to eye about which end should be up. Greene was a jet pilot used to a lot of high-end equipment (SafeFlight made autothrottles, among other fancy stuff, for airliners). He understood the device as a flight director—as you slowed down, the needle should move downward, directing you to lower the nose.

I, who despite having acquired in my younger days a bunch of exotic ratings, am really just a single-piston-engine guy, saw it as analogous to an attitude indicator and thought that as the nose went up the needle ought to do the same. Greene saw the display as prescriptive; I saw it as descriptive.

Recently, Mike Vaccaro, a retired Air Force Fighter Weapons School instructor, test pilot, and owner of an RV-4, wrote to acquaint me with FlyONSPEED.org, an informal group of pilots and engineers working on (among other things) practical implementation of a lift-awareness system of the type described in Rogers’ paper. The group’s work, including computer codes, is publicly available. Its proposed instrument can be seen in action in Vaccaro’s RV-4 on YouTube. 

The prototype indicator created by the FlyONSPEED group mixes descriptive and prescriptive cues. Two V’s point, one from above and one from below, at a green donut representing approach speed, 1.3 Vs, the “on speed” speed. The V’s are to be read as pointers meaning “raise the nose” and “lower the nose.” An additional mark indicates L/D speed. G loading, flap position, and slip/skid are also shown on the instrument, along with indicated airspeed.

Importantly, the visual presentation is accompanied by an aural one. As the airplane slows down, a contralto beeping becomes more and more rapid, blending into a continuous tone at the approach speed. If the airplane continues to decelerate, the beeping resumes, now in a soprano register, and becomes increasingly frenetic as the stall approaches. Ingeniously, stereo is used to provide an aural cue of slip or skid—step on the rudder pedal on the side the sound is coming from. The audio component is key: It supplies the important information continuously, without the pilot having to look at or interpret a display.

This system—it’s just a prototype, not a product—is pretty much what my “modest proposal” was hoping for, lacking only the 26 percent-of-lift mark that would indicate the maneuvering speed. Irish babies, beware.

Now I just have to figure out what we’ll do with all those discarded airspeed indicators.

This column first appeared in the Summer 2024 Ultimate Issue print edition.

The post Ultimate Issue: AOA Gets Revisited—Again appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I recently caught up my logbook in preparation for a New Zealand PPL validation, and I’m closing in on 16,000 hours. The country’s authorities also wanted to know my solo time—e.g., sole occupant of the aircraft. The number was surprisingly small, most from way back when I was a Part 135 freight dog. These days, all my work flying is multipilot, but even when puttering around in my Stinson 108, I’m usually accompanied by my wife or friends. I don’t mind flying alone, per say, but I do find it more rewarding when there’s someone with whom to share the experience.

In two decades at the airlines, I’ve come to appreciate that those I fly with really are one of the best parts of the job. Over the years, I’ve shared the flight deck with hundreds of pilots and enjoyed flying with almost all of them. Going through my logbook, I see so many familiar names—and some are still good friends. This is a small industry, and I have chance encounters with past colleagues all the time—in airplanes and airports, obviously, but also in crew vans and layover hotels and pilot-frequented bars, like Darwin’s Theory in Anchorage, Alaska, or Moose’s Saloon in Kalispell, Montana.

My last two airlines, Horizon Air and Compass, were small regional carriers, and it was pretty common to fly with the same person multiple times. This didn’t happen much during my first eight years with my current employer as we’re a huge airline of 17,000 pilots, and over that time I flew three aircraft types out of three large bases. Once I bid to the fairly small Seattle 737 base, though, I started occasionally flying with the same first officers, and it was nice to experience that familiar, small-airline vibe once again.

• READ MORE: Exploring New Zealand’s Grand Islands by Air

One thing I haven’t done, until recently, is buddy-bid with anyone. This is the practice of coordinating your schedule bidding strategy with a pilot in your base to fly as many trips together as possible.

My good friend Brad Phillips, who I’ve written about here, buddy-bid the majority of his 11 years at Horizon Air with just two captains. I’ve also written about Joe and Margrit Fahan, a married couple at my airline who, prior to their joint retirement, buddy-bid international trips on the Airbus A330 together. Over the years, I’ve had trips where I really clicked with my counterpart and probably should have broached the idea of buddy-bidding but always figured that variety is the spice of life. Besides, doing so with any degree of success demands a good bit of seniority out of both parties, and until recently this is something I usually lacked.

But then in summer 2022, I flew with Steve Masek, and we went salmon fishing in Anchorage and had beers at Darwin’s and got along famously. We bid several more agreeable trips together, our wives met and gelled well, and Steve and Daniela gamely helped Dawn and I lay down 3,000 feet of PEX tubing the weekend before our hangar floor was poured. But then Masek got himself awarded a B737 captain slot, far below me on the list in that dark, dank corner where poor junior slobs are forced into reserve, red-eyes, and four-leg days. It was a dumb thing to do, but I’m thrilled for our junior FOs because Masek is a super guy and an excellent pilot.

Before his upgrade last fall, we buddy-bid one last long Anchorage overnight. We wet our lines in Ship Creek on a midnight rising tide, chomped cigars, and quaffed Woodford Reserve in the moonlight—and, alas, the salmon treated us to not even one solitary nibble.

• READ MORE: Part 2: Exploring New Zealand’s Grand Islands by Air

By then I had already found Masek’s replacement, Heather Griffin. We flew a three-day trip together last July and quickly realized that we were going to be fast friends. Heather got her start flying skydivers and is a licensed skydiver herself, as am I. Griffin also flies paragliders, which is a goal of mine. She snowboards and I ski, we both sail, and we both ride dirt bikes.

On the last day of our trip, she realized that I’m the guy who writes for FLYING and used to live on a sailboat and spent years cruising the Caribbean, and she told me that she actually decided to pursue an airline career after her dad (also a pilot) showed her my columns as evidence that she could fly for a stuffy old airline and still live an unconventional, adventurous life. Aw, hell—with me, flattery will get you everywhere. Instant BFF.

Griffin and I were planning a flying, camping, and dirt-biking trip to Tieton State Airport (4S6) in the Cascades of Washington state for a few weeks hence, and she and her husband, Kevin, accepted our invitation to join. We had a great weekend, flying the Stinson at sunrise and sunset, riding Bethel Ridge in the mornings, splashing in Rimrock Lake during the sweltering afternoons, and talking around the campfire while millions of bright stars wheeled overhead. Dawn got to know Heather and liked her a lot.

Meanwhile, I developed a man-crush on Kevin, who’s as cool as his wife: an air ambulance pilot with a bunch of tailwheel time, a badass dirt bike rider, and a great storyteller with a wicked sense of humor and a colorful past as a Coast Guard flight mechanic, commercial fisherman, and Alaskan surf shop operator.

• READ MORE: Pilot Mental Health Remains the Last Taboo in Aviation

With the spouses properly introduced, Griffin and I started buddy-bidding. When the PBS window opens each month, we peruse the bid package and text back and forth, debating the merits of various trips and crafting a common strategy that will fit both of our plans. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. When the schedule assignments come out, we dig into the reasons report, figuring out what we did right and where we went wrong. As our trips together approach, we confer again to make layover plans: playing pinball in Raleigh, North Carolina, skydiving in Phoenix, roping up at an Anchorage climbing gym, or skiing at Lake Tahoe.

In cruise, shared interests fuel our conversations, and future adventures are a frequent topic. It didn’t take much to convince Heather and Kevin to join Dawn and I on an 11-day, 11-person dirt bike trip down Baja California in January. Griffin’s dad, Scott Condon, came too—and at 65 turned out to be the best and fastest rider of us all. It was a fantastic time with a wonderful group of friends, and we’re planning another big ride in the Pacific Northwest this summer.

In February, Heather and I got skunked, our buddy-bidding strategy foiled by pilots just senior to us. I flew with a bunch of great folks anyway—several of them brand-new to the airline—and had a lot of fun. March brought better luck. I’m about to fly a five-day trip with Griffin that includes a long Cozumel layover, and later on we have an easy four-day with 26 hours in Cabo San Lucas, where Dawn and Kevin will join us.

Most days, this is a really good job, and I frequently wonder at my good fortune. And then, when I thought my work life couldn’t get much better, I gained a good friend to fly with—and it did!

This column first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Finding That Right Pilot Buddy to Bid With appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Let’s go back a bit. I last flew on December 13—a day trip to East Hampton to meet a TV writer. I left for Israel a few days later, where I spent a month researching my last Leading Edge column. When I returned, I had only a couple of days between my next trip to Miami to race my Kramer motorcycle at Miami-Homestead Speedway.

I was going to fly myself until my friend Josh offered to fly us down in his new TBM. I could write another column just on that single flight. Nonstop to Miami from upstate New York with a 60-knot headwind. A tip: Don’t get into a turboprop if you want to continue enjoying your piston single.

The morning Josh was coming to pick me up I decided to get to the airport early and fly. That was January 18. It had been over a month since my last flight and I was itching. I was also excited to use my new rig—an aging ATV with a plow that I welded a 2-inch ball onto paired with a new towbar. Between the very low temps and my hamfisted throttle application, I snapped the tow pin clean off the airplane as I pulled it out of the hangar. I headed off to the FBO to grab a few guys to come help me push the airplane back into the hangar.

Failed attempt No. 1.

• READ MORE: The Wisdom of Keeping Transmissions Short and Sweet

Miami was no better. I had my first crash on a race bike in years. A simple low-side but a good ego bruising and a few hundred dollars in parts. At least my mom’s birthday dinner went off without me breaking anything else. On January 28, I flew back home and replaced the towing pin and pulled the airplane out. Carefully. I did an extra-long preflight since it was now over six weeks since she’d flown. Sitting in the cockpit with that familiar smell of leather, I was excited to knock the dust off both man and machine.

And then that runaway starter. As humans, we are so good at pattern recognition. With the engine running, it was barely perceptible, but I could just sense something was different. In fact, I have heard tales of this rare occurrence ending with a fried starter as some pilots continue their flight not knowing it is still engaged. I don’t know if I heard it or felt it, but either way, I yanked the mixture to cutoff. The engine died, and sure enough, the starter was still turning and the prop was still spinning.

My left hand snapped to the master switch and turned it off. Nothing. I started pulling circuit breakers after that. Unlike my autopilot and trim, which have pronounced, red collars, the starter breaker is not something you imagine needing to access with any urgency. I finally found it and pulled it. Still nothing. Prop still spinning. I imagined the starter starting to heat up. Will it catch fire?

• READ MORE: Milking It: How to Extract Every Last Bit From Airplane and Pilot – FLYING Magazine

At that point, I started pulling every breaker on the panel. I probably looked like a kid at Six Flags playing whack-a-mole. Frantic describes it best. I pulled the flaps breaker, and the starter finally disengaged. I stared at the breaker wondering how on earth that could have done the trick. Of course, it didn’t.

Once the master switch failed at stopping this event, it should have been clear there was nothing else to do—just not to me in the heat of battle. The starter on my airplane is wired directly to the battery. In hindsight, the only thing I could have done was get out of the airplane and move around the spinning prop, open the cowling, and somehow disconnect the battery.

Failed attempt No. 2.

There are real downsides to having your mechanic based 2,000 miles away from your home field. At least Fernie answers his phone on weekends. He told me he had heard of this happening but that it was exceedingly rare and likely a bad solenoid. I ordered a new one, and Phil Taylor from Taylor Aviation came to the rescue a few days later. He and I changed it out in my unheated hangar. With the mixture in cutoff, I pushed the starter button and the prop turned. More importantly, it stopped when I released the button. Problem solved, but too late to fly.

I came back in the morning to finally go flying. Pulled the airplane back out onto the tarmac and flipped the master. Nothing. Dead battery.

Failed attempt No. 3.

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This has been one of the longest hiatuses in my 14 years of flying, closing in quickly on three months as I write this. So, what’s the takeaway? We often hear about the importance of currency as pilots. Staying sharp. Flying often. Our aircraft are no different. Machines, like human bodies, do not like sitting still. Joints need movement. So do cranks and cams. As pilots we fuss over additives and hacks when the solution is to just go fly.

I get it. We live in a society where quick fixes are ubiquitous. Supplements to pills. But nothing beats a good old workout.

I find that at my age bad things happen when I am stationary. So long as I keep it moving, everything stays lubed. Nothing freezes up. Would that old starter solenoid have opened properly had I been flying regularly? I would bet yes.

As if I needed further proof, I arrived in Los Angeles a few weeks ago to yet another reminder. I went to visit my hangar in Van Nuys to grab my truck when I noticed oil all over the floor. My ’94 Ducati 900SS had spilled every last drop onto the epoxy. I have yet to pull the bodywork, but I am guessing a seal corroded and that was that.

Her crime? Stillness.

This column first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Machines, Like Human Bodies, Do Not Like Sitting Still appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“To live is to fly, low and high. So shake the dust off your wings and the sleep out of your eyes,” is a line from the song “To Live Is to Fly,” written by a Texan, the late Townes Van Zandt, and made popular by another Texan, the late Guy Clark.

Those songs, along with Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles,” have been long-standing hits on my own aviation playlist. I say aviation playlist, though my ability to listen to music while flying has all but disappeared, and that, paradoxically, is a good thing. Back in the old days, when I flew mostly VFR, one could listen to uninterrupted music while flying. Once I got a Cessna P210 and headed for the flight levels, music in the air became much harder to appreciate.

Multiple panel-mounted music systems allowed for ATC communications to interrupt the songs, but that was frustrating. Nothing worse than bellowing along to the Eagles’ “Hotel California” only to be interrupted by a pilot who requires his rerouting to be repeated three times with phonetic spelling. By the time the music comes back on, all you hear is “…but you can never leave.”

I bought the Cessna P210 right about the time Hank Williams Jr. released a song called “High and Pressurized.” In my day job as a cancer surgeon, I played this song in the operating room, the car, and the house. We were going up, up to those flight levels. “It don’t take long to get there, if you’re high and pressurized. It ain’t very far from nowhere, if you’re high and pressurized.” There’s a line about the mile-high club, but that’s for a different day and different magazine.

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Just as with the P210, I finally twigged to the fact that music in operating rooms inhibited communication. Though there aren’t many thrills that can match performing a complicated cancer operation while listening to some Jimmy Buffett, I gave it up. I am down to listening at home or in the car. This is a real but necessary loss. I had noticed that when we closed a patient’s incision after a big operation, the residents and fellows seemed to work a little faster if Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” was playing.

No doubt I’m dating (aging?) myself with these titles, but the music my kids listen to seems to reflect the times: dirge, lament, and depression. Many surgeons play classical music while operating. That wasn’t for me. I was more into the Eagles than Gustav Mahler. Interestingly, the effect of music on surgical task performance has been studied. A report in the International Journal of Surgery compared multiple studies and concluded that “classic music when played at low to medium volume can improve surgical task performance by increasing accuracy and speed. The distracting effect of music (should be considered) when playing loud or high beat type of music.” OK then.

“Eight Miles High” by the Byrds was thought to be a drug song, but to me it represented a band of young musicians who had discovered the private jet and thrill of rocking westbound at 43,000 feet. Can you imagine such a thrill? Come to think of it, altitude always seems to provide perspective and release from earthly concerns.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Foo Fighters, and Pink Floyd all recorded songs called “Learning to Fly,” but they aren’t about learning to fly actually. They are metaphors quite easily understood by any pilot. They are about recovery and restoration, victory and perseverance. Isn’t that what learning to fly is really all about?

The album that captures the romance of commercial flight was made in the 1950s. Come Fly With Me by Frank Sinatra featured songs about Chicago, New York, Brazil, and Paris.

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The cover showed the jaunty crooner with a come-hither gesture. In the background lurks a Constellation in TWA colors. Given that Connies flew nonstop from San Francisco to Paris in the ’50s, I can’t imagine a more romantic image.

You want lonely? Try “Early Morning Rain” by Gordon Lightfoot. “Big 707 set to go…She’ll be flyin’ o’er my home in about three hours time.” If that doesn’t conjure up a lonely, barely sober dude by the side of the runway, I don’t know what does. You want wistful? In “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” John Denver, contrite but not reformed, sings of separation and regret. He promises a wedding ring, but we’re not convinced.

Whereas songs about commercial travel are redolent of separation, loss, and loneliness, tunes about flying are exuberant and, well, uplifting. It is all about becoming airborne. My flying friends, when queried, came up with some great tunes. The theme from the 1954 movie The High and the Mighty is all strings and whistling—just like that ancient pelican John Wayne whistles about in the cockpit. One suggested “Born to Be Wild” by Steppenwolf. I’m confident you’ve got a few.

Every friend mentioned the song that captures the exuberance and challenge of flight: “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins. If you were alive in 1986, had an interest in flying and a pulse, you could not get this melody out of your head. I don’t know how old you were when that movie, Top Gun, came out, but anybody over 8 will remember the ripped bodies, grave bravado, amazing flight scenes, and the iconic line, “I feel the need…the need for speed!”

As the movie opens, we watch fighters launch off a carrier deck, steam curling up, the quick salute, and then the cannon shot. The P210 didn’t fly like that, but it was close enough for me. I felt exhilarated as if I were Pete Mitchell, Tom Cruise’s character.

A need for speed indeed.

This column first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post That Sound of Music in the Air appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

We were told that our last port of call in the Falkland Islands would be canceled because of weather as per the captain’s decision. The new course would proceed directly back to our departure/arrival port of Buenos Aires, Argentina, which would give us two additional days at sea for a consecutive total of four.

We were checking the obligatory retirement cruise box along with 2,300 of our closest friends. The trip was enticing because of its primary mission to sail along the coastline of the northern Antarctica Peninsula. In addition, my wife and I were invited to be part of a diverse and colorful group of 17, mostly professionals, from various parts of the Caribbean, U.S., and Canada. The jury is still out on whether we are cruise material, but more on that later.

• READ MORE: One ATC Sector of Separation

The bypass decision was a maritime form of diversion to an alternate airport. Why this sudden change in itinerary? A ForeFlight dive into the current and forecast Falkland Islands weather gave no indication of an arrival problem. Was there more to the story? Was Norwegian Cruise Line dictating the diversion? And who was I to doubt the captain’s authority after my 34 years of airline service?

Although disappointing to us, the news was devastating to about 100 Argentine passengers who had booked their trip for the purpose of honoring their war dead from the 1982 conflict with the British. (Out of respect, I’ll reserve judgment for those who booked a two-week cruise that had maximum focus on an extraordinary part of the globe and not on a small, ancillary destination.)

The Argentines staged a protest in the ship’s atrium, flag waving included. The demonstration succeeded in compelling the captain to provide an explanation. He conceded to an onstage public appearance at the 1,100-seat theater the following morning.

Prior to the uprising, I had written a note to the captain requesting a visit to the bridge with the intention of comparing my former B-777 cockpit to that of a 965-foot ship. Most likely, the visit would be in jeopardy, with my note at a low priority because of the circumstances. Fortunately, I was wrong, and an invitation arrived for the last day of the cruise. But not before my wife and I were able to witness the spectacle at the theater. Perhaps the captain was concerned that the protest would escalate and possibly interfere with other passengers’ enjoyment, but I wouldn’t have subjected myself to the blatant abuse and disrespect displayed. As a matter of fact, using one of his crewmen as a translator from English to Spanish, the captain threatened to leave the stage because of the unruly behavior.

• READ MORE: Giving Your Airplane a Face-Lift and Tummy Tuck

Apparently, the decision to bypass the Falkland Islands was due to the domino effect that the forecast weather for our departure from the harbor may have created. High winds were anticipated, and thus high seas. It was a mooring operation, so the tenders would have a difficult time docking at the port and then at the ship. In addition, two ships that weren’t originally expected to be moored in the harbor could become potential collision hazards if they became free of their anchor holds or swung in the wrong direction.

Aside from the safety risks, high seas would slow the movement of the tenders and significantly delay the departure time, which would jeopardize the reservation for the pilot boat arrival window into Buenos Aires, possibly forcing our ship to remain outside the port overnight. Passengers with airline connections would potentially miss their flights. It sounded all too familiar.

With the drama of the previous two days of Argentine dissent behind us, Carol and I were excited to take a tour of the bridge. Our escort tucked us into a line of people that were part of the behind-the-scenes tour.Granted, I didn’t expect to simply enter a larger version of a B-777 cockpit, but the expansive nature of the bridge caught me a little off guard.

No different than the reaction of visitors to my cockpit over the years, it took a few moments to assimilate the organization, stations, systems, and technology. In actuality, I wasn’t quite sure exactly what was in front of my face. But I am a boater, so most of it made sense.

The main bridge area contained a massive array of consoles with a spectacular panoramic view. Embedded into the consoles were large electronic navigation screens, communication equipment, and various switchology. I initially refrained from asking questions so as not to interrupt the tour group that we had followed. When the 20-something crewmember that was herding the group and providing brief narratives of various ship functions began to appear bored, I initiated a polite series of questions.

The number of engines was first on my mind. The answer was four diesels rated at approximately 20,000 hp. I also inquired as to how many bow thrusters were available, with three being the answer. I stumped my new friend with a question regarding the diameter of the propellers. What pilot wouldn’t want to know?

Apparently, my line of questions sparked enough curiosity that they eventually prompted the crewmember to ask if I had a professional marine background. Hardly. But I did reveal my former airline life to which he hesitantly accepted. When asked as to the timeline for him to mount four bars on his shoulders, he grinned. It would most likely be many years, perhaps 20. At one point, that same timeline was true for my airline.

With the official tour complete, Captain Luigi Gentile finished his last obligatory handshake. He strutted over to Carol and I with a broad smile. “So, you must be the retired airline pilot,” Gentile said. I nodded.

Soon, we were discussing his decision to divert from the Falkland Islands. I offered my admiration for Gentile to address passengers in a public forum. He wasn’t obligated to justify his decision, but he was a passionate man and wanted to dispel any notion that it was politically motivated. The fact that an Argentine first officer was part of his crew made him acutely aware of the cultural ramifications involved.

We compared notes regarding diversions and missed approaches, acknowledging the obvious that an airplane operation probably requires quicker decision time. At 39, having been a captain for almost six years, Gentile reminded me of my progression to the left seat at 33. In ship years, it was truly remarkable. He explained that he and his family had practically been born on the sea.

His first command came unexpectedly when the assigned captain fell unconscious from a cardiac event during the process of departing the pier. Gentile said he completed the cruise with a little sweat on his brow, never missing a beat.

Are the high seas different from overseas? Sure. But there are a lot of similarities. As for future cruises, I’ll let you know after November. The next cruise is with only 600 of our closest friends.

This column first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post High Seas vs. Overseas Setup Has Similarities appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In one of his books, Austerlitz, the title character goes flying at night with pilot friend Gerald Fitzpatrick in a “Cessna.” He describes the mesmerizing sight of the familiar constellations overhead. Now, looking up at the stars from an airplane is an entrancing experience, but no one ever had it in a Cessna.

The corresponding photograph, though somewhat distant and blurred, is clearly not of a Cessna but of a small twin-engine, twin-finned airplane that does, however, have a transparent canopy. I got the explanation for this apparent authorial fumble from a Swiss friend: Among nonpilots in Germany, “Cessna” would simply mean a private airplane, no particular brand.

The twin was actually a Miles Gemini, an airplane brought into being, like the original Beech Bonanza, by the anticipated postwar explosion in demand for personal air travel. It had four seats and was equipped with two 100 hp engines of the inverted in-line variety, housed in those nice narrow cowlings that many British and French aircraft of the 1930s and ’40s had. One of its unusual features was a big external airfoil flap.

Despite the flap, however, the published stalling speed of 35 knots cannot have been a calibrated airspeed—45 is more plausible.

Whatever its real landing speed, the fictional Gerald Fitzpatrick crashed fatally in his Gemini. His friend Austerlitz gloomily comments that this was bound to happen, since he was so fond of making sightseeing flights in the south of France.

• READ MORE: Looking at the Physics of STOL Drag

Novelists just won’t give private planes a break.

I wondered how the 3,000-pound Gemini would do on one engine. Late designer John Thorp, contemplating a trip to Europe with his wife, Kay, once propped up a couple of small Lycomings in front of his two-seat Sky Skooter. His friend George Wing, creator of the ubiquitous Hi-Shear rivet, happened to walk in, and thus was conceived the Wing Derringer.

Wing was not taking any chances on O-235s, however. The two-seat Derringer, with 160 hp O-320s, could definitely climb on one engine. The question of how a twin with 100 hp engines climbs on only one was answered, however, by the Champion Lancer, whose woeful single-engine performance was, like Sir John Falstaff, a cause of wit in many men.

Like many other early aviation enthusiasts, Frederick George Miles began in the 1920s as an amateur builder. Miles then started manufacturing small airplanes and eventually turned out a series of products that recalls, in its variety and inventiveness, the career of another homebuilder-turned-professional, Burt Rutan. Like Rutan, who started the Rutan Aircraft Factory with his then-wife Carolyn, Miles found a business partner in his remarkable wife Maxine, nicknamed Blossom, who, in addition to being his beloved, was a pilot, aeronautical engineer, stress analyst, and businesswoman.

In some respects, the paths of Miles and Rutan were different. Miles made airplanes for military and commercial use. Rutan, after leaving the homebuilt plans business that had launched his career, mainly produced one-off prototypes and never certificated any of his designs. (Beech ruined the Starship, he complained, in the process of certificating it. Beech engineers naturally took a different view of the matter.) But the two shared a wide-ranging versatility. Some designers, like Thorp and Dick VanGrunsven, turn out incremental variations and improvements on a basic theme.

With Miles and Rutan, you never knew what might come next. In Miles’ case the variety may have been due in part to his employing other designers, whereas Rutan designed all of his airplanes himself. Both men mastered the art of fast prototyping: Scaled Composites, the company Rutan founded, exploited foam-cored composites for that purpose; Miles’ medium was resin-bonded wood.

Miles’ greatest commercial success came during the pre-World War II years. He developed a number of training and transport airplanes and manufactured them in large numbers for the Royal Air Force. His efforts to produce a fighter were less successful. A 1940 prototype of a small wooden “emergency” fighter, proposed to stop the gap in the event that Hurricane and Spitfire production were hampered by German bombing, had a bubble canopy and a stock Merlin “power egg,” and looked just like a miniature Hawker Typhoon. Despite fixed landing gear, it rivaled the Hurricane in armament and performance, but it was never produced, mainly because the anticipated emergency did not materialize.

During the war, Miles produced a design remarkably similar in conception to Rutan’s first homebuilt. Like the VariViggen, Miles’ original Libellula—Latin for dragonfly—had a single pusher propeller, low wing, and high canard. The configuration was supposed to solve several problems associated with shipboard fighters, but the British Admiralty didn’t bite. A second version, this one with a high wing and low canard, was conceived as a bomber, with the idea that the tandem wing arrangement would provide an unusually large CG range. That airplane also ended up on the scrap heap.

The little Gemini twin, the one illustrated in Austerlitz, was a commercial success, as was a side venture the resourceful Miles got into: ballpoint pens. But the most striking Miles design from the wartime period was something completely different.

• READ MORE: Recalling a Good Pilot Friend and One Curious Character

The M.52, born in 1943, is said to have been the offspring of a ridiculous error. An intercepted German communication referred to the 1,000 kph speed of one of the jets then being developed. Someone failed to perform the conversion, and the belief took root that the Germans were perfecting a 1,000 mph airplane. Inevitably, the British felt they needed to follow suit, and Miles Aircraft earned the contract. (If it isn’t true, at least it’s a good story.)

The result was a 5-foot-diameter cylinder with thin, straight wings and a then-unprecedented, and prescient, powered all-flying stabilizer. Air for its centrifugal-compressor jet engine came in through an annular intake surrounding a shock cone, à la the MiG-17 or SR-71. The pilot sat inside the shock cone. In retrospect, the design looks sound except for its lack of area ruling, and it could probably have gone supersonic, given sufficient thrust. But in 1946, with the first prototype nearly complete, the U.K.’s Air Ministry suddenly canceled the project.

The abrupt cancellation, which was never persuasively explained, fueled a persistent notion among British airplane buffs that their government had abjectly bowed to U.S. insistence on being the first to “break the sound barrier.” Indeed, the Bell X-1 rocket aircraft, which did so in 1947, was being developed at the same time as the M.52.

However, the M.52 may have been shelved simply because of the distinct possibility that its still-unproven afterburning turbojet might not be powerful enough to propel it past Mach 1 in level flight—let alone to 1,000 mph.

This column first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post The Craft of Providing Variety in Airplanes appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

On a whim, I dug into some old logbooks, as well as some diaries from the years between the mid-1960s and mid-’70s, and have been alternately convulsed with laughter, drowned in tears, and flat-out amazed at the number of people I taught (or tried to teach) to fly. As far as I know, none have hurt themselves, their passengers, or their airplanes (well, except me).

By 1964, I’d graduated from college, flown briefly for TWA as a hostess, met Ebby Lunken, and worked for his Midwest Airways commuter airline through its good days and bad, accepting a marriage proposal from Ebby and then backing off. He was “the moon and the stars,” but there was an age difference of 30 years. So, we remained close and, 10 years later, finally got married. I guess I knew it couldn’t work since I backed out on a trip to Las Vegas and then let two marriage licenses expire here at home.

Well, it didn’t—the marriage ended after eight years. I had cut way back working at my flying school—depending more and more on part-time instructors—and put all my energy into playing society lady, trying to be accepted by Ebby’s friends who were 20 years or more older and the cream of Cincinnati society.

Anyway, before all that, I’d begun as a 250-hour pilot, instructing for a large flying school at the airport for several years at $5 per flying hour. Two years later, I agreed to a part-time job instructing for Johnny Lane at Lebanon Airport (I68) in Ohio, while still acting as a sort-of secretary in the mornings for Ebby at what remained of the doomed Midwest Airways.

In those years, if I could earn $100 a week and pay no more than $100 a month for an apartment, life was good—not lavish, but good.

For seven months, I commuted back and forth between Lunken (KLUK) and Lebanon, mostly in my Pietenpol Air Camper, and then came back to Lunken for the winter. I loved the characters at Lebanon—doctors, pig farmers, a radio personality, and lots of “flying farmers,” many with “interesting” airplanes.

• READ MORE: Sometimes the Flying Weather’s Fit Only for Turkeys

After instructing in a leased Cherokee 140 for a couple years, I bought a Cessna 150 for $6,000 from “Moose” at (now defunct) Blue Ash Airport and opened “Miss Martha’s Flying School” (really called Midwest Flight Training to take advantage of the name on a big hangar Ebby owned). Eventually, I added a few leasebacks, and some students had their own airplanes. In those 10 years, I logged nearly 6,000 hours of dual instruction and became an examiner for my (now) Part 141 school.

Browsing through these old logbooks resurrected so many emotions—laughter, frustration, tears, and truly beautiful memories. Of course, now I’m a defrocked CFI, but nobody will ever erase those years of hard work—sweating and freezing on airport ramps and in little trainers—and loving it (well, mostly).

My school prospered initially, I think, because most members of the Harrison Social Flyers, a flying club at the (now) Cincinnati West Airport (I67), had been flying permanently on student permits. You could do that in those days without all the required signoffs from a CFI. One hot summer day, I was at Cincinnati West in my Cub, sitting on a bench and drinking a Coke. Around the corner was a gaggle of club members who were mightily ticked off because one of the members “got himself a private license.” Well, the rules were changing, and they all were soon going to take the private written exam and get certificated.

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Coincidently, I was teaching a free evening ground school at the old Cincinnati Tech High School. A large part of the class were Harrison Social Flyers who then took the written and came to my flight school to get their certificates.

Here are a few vignettes (among so many):

• Glenda was a beautiful, polite, and very Southern lady living in Cincinnati while her husband finished his medical training. My trainers had speakers and hand-held mics—no headsets. One afternoon after we landed, the tower told us to turn left at the next intersection with another runway, but Glenda turned right, and the controller was not happy.

She was quite flustered and, before I could grab the mic, she said, “Now, listen, y’all. Just shut up.” I grabbed the mic and later escorted Glenda to the tower to deliver an apology. She charmed them.

• Another student—a 40-something businessman—always scheduled his dual sessions in the early afternoon. He was a nice guy and doing fairly well when I asked why this time suited him. The air would be smoother in the morning.

“Oh, that wouldn’t work,” he said. I thought he meant it would interfere with work until he explained: “I have lunch with some buddies around 11:30 [a.m.], and I can have a couple martinis to relax myself before flying.”

My reply? “Uh, we need to talk today instead of flying. That martini thing isn’t going to work.”

• Then there was Connie, who was flying with another instructor, my friend Bill Anderson. He was getting nowhere because, when he pulled the throttle on simulated power failures, Connie would throw up her hands and scream (and/or cry). I said I would take her on, so we talked about the exercise on the ground (even though instructors at that school got paid only when the engine was running).

Off we went and, sure enough, I pulled on carb heat and closed the throttle at 3,000 feet, and she went into Sarah Bernhardt mode. I folded my arms and, eventually, said, “Gee, it looks like we’re gonna crash.” Connie got her wits about her and, at maybe 1,000 feet above a bunch of farm fields, she set up a glide and checked fuel and mixture.

I gave her back to Bill and, later on, I guess she freaked out on a solo flight in the traffic pattern. Gene Buckley, a handsome and accomplished air traffic controller, calmed her down and she landed safely. I don’t know if she ever got a private certificate.

• The ATCs, mostly ex-military, were lots of fun. My student landed with a “thunk” one summer day on the runway in front of the tower, and the left wheel pant flew off into the adjacent grass. The tower closed the runway, announcing it would reopen “when Martha found her pants.”

This column first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Perusing Some Old Logbooks appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The FAA has said we may log an instrument approach if we are in actual or simulated conditions inside the final approach fix [Ref:§ 61.51(g)(3) and §61.57(c)]. But think about whether you were in actual IMC or not. As one example, you’re on a straight-in visual on a clear evening with the setting sun directly in your eyes, making any visual references in front of the aircraft useless. Although there’s not a cloud in the sky, you loaded the precision approach for belt-and-suspender situational awareness. That was a good call because the early evening sun is blinding any attempt to look out the window. You transition to the instruments and fly the approach, intercepting the GPS glide slope and keeping the VDI centered. Sun visors down, you finally see the runway and land. Was that loggable?

The Moonless Night Letter

Flash back to the early 1980s when Joseph Carr asked the FAA legal department some interesting questions about logging instrument flight time. One scenario is a flight over the ocean on a moonless night, without a discernible horizon for visual reference. Controlling the aircraft by 100 percent reference to instruments, is this loggable as actual instrument time even though the conditions were officially VFR? This resulted in a formal legal interpretation by the FAA’s chief counsel that’s commonly called the “Moonless Night Letter.” And while the rules for logging time (it’s in 14 CFR61.51) haven’t changed in close to 50 years, there’s an interesting discussion about actual versus simulated instrument conditions that’s worth talking about.

According to the Moonless Night Letter, “simulated” instrument conditions occur when the pilot’s vision outside of the aircraft is intentionally restricted, such as by a hood or goggles. Moreover, “actual” instrument flight conditions exist “when some outside conditions make it necessary for the pilot to use the aircraft instruments in order to maintain adequate control over the aircraft. Typically, these conditions involve adverse weather conditions.” Typically—but not always.

The chief counsel concluded that actual instrument conditions may occur in the case described, which is a moonless night over the ocean with no discernible horizon, if use of the instruments is necessary to maintain adequate control over the aircraft. Still, that brought yet more questions than answers.

The Six-Month Rule

Before 1997, the six-month rule for instrument currency in 61.57 also required six hours of instrument flight time. This may have originally prompted Carr to query the FAA, but discussions and questions about the Moonless Night Letter continue, which we’ll explore. They have not been addressed by the FAA, so we’ll speculate on the answers. You might have different opinions, and you might be right. Consider two concepts.

First, the Moonless Night Letter does not define “instrument meteorological conditions” (IMC). It defines “actual instrument flight conditions.” The two are not synonymous. The FAA defines IMC as conditions less than the requirements for VFR flight (see, for example,14 CFR 170.3 and the pilot/controller glossary).

The second concept is “adequate control of the aircraft.” To borrow two of the three oft-repeated trio of flight priorities, I’d say this refers to the ability to aviate, not navigate. The “aircraft instruments” referred to are the aircraft’s attitude instruments, not its navigation instruments. Put another way, the Moonless Night Letter permits us to log actual instrument time when outside conditions require us to use the instruments to keep the shiny side up. For example, a pilot flying on top of an overcast to a broken cloud deck, who has no difficulty flying level but needs to rely on some navaids to stay on course, is not in “actual.”

Who Needs an Instrument Rating?

It’s not only about instrument currency. Notably 61.65 requires 40 hours of instrument flight time for the airplane instrument rating, only 20 of which must be dual with a CFII. Some of those are commonly flown under simulated conditions. Could our student forgo the hood, find a desolate area on a moonless VFR night with high overcast, and build some of that time solo? Visibility might even be excellent, with another aircraft’s bright LED navigation and anti-collision lights clearly visible 20 miles-plus away. Putting the wisdom of that aside, the Moonless Night Letter presumes visual conditions qualifying for VFR, and there is nothing to suggest our student couldn’t log that. Then there’s the question of adequate control. 

If you consider that this Moonless Night Letter refers to aviating and not navigating, when exactly do the outside conditions require instruments “to maintain adequate control over the aircraft?” There’s a lot of personal comfort, proficiency, and pilot discretion here. “The determination as to whether flight by reference to instruments is necessary is somewhat subjective, and based in part on the sound judgment of the pilot.” But the letter adds “the log should include the reasons for determining that the flight was under actual instrument conditions in case the pilot later would be called on to prove that the actual instrument flight time logged was legitimate.”

Most can agree on the “flight over the ocean on a moonless night without a discernible horizon.” Aviation texts and FAA handbooks and guidance (and countless National Transportation Safety Board accident reports) describe a series of visual illusions that can lead to severe spatial disorientation. Among them are sloping cloud formations, a nighttime scene with little ability to differentiate ground lights and stars, and “black hole” approaches and departures.

After that, reasonable opinions diverge. Flying above a broken cloud deck? Unless the cloud formations are sloping, even a student pilot should be able to maintain control. Similarly, on my checkout in the Colorado Rockies I was asked to do steep turns in a valley surrounded by mountains. It was disorienting and I had to go to instruments. That was the point, but it certainly wasn’t “actual instrument flight conditions.”

Can You Log the Approach?

The FAA’s 61.57 requires, among other things, logging six approaches and one hold in the past six calendar months to stay current. You might ask if you could log a practice approach while in Moonless Night conditions. In the scenario, the pilot heads to a remote airport in a desolate area, “activating the airport lights only after passing the FAF.” I don’t think there’s an easy answer, and my educated guess is a firm “maybe.” I don’t see a problem with natural phenomena such as the FAA-recognized “black hole” approach when there are no approach lights giving visual cues. But how would the FAA treat the decision to avoid turning on the lights? Is it “outside conditions?” Or is the pilot’s vision being “intentionally restricted” in a manner akin to simulated instrument flight?

Years after the famous Moonless Night Letter, if asked, the FAA might make a distinction between “natural” conditions resulting from outside causes and “artificial” conditions the pilot creates. Or it might say it doesn’t matter whether the conditions are natural or artificial, so long as the pilot (a) needs the flight instruments for aircraft control and (b) is not wearing a hood restricting the ability to see and avoid traffic.

That Blinding Sun

We began with a scenario where the position of the sun makes seeing the runway impossible, so the pilot flies the approach to find the runway. Here, there’s no “natural” vs. “artificial” distinction—it’s the sun. But what about the aviate-vs.-navigate distinction? If some of the horizon is visible to the sides, is flying the approach required to maintain control of the aircraft or is it simply a navigational aid?

Ultimately, it’s a judgment call. As the FAA chief counsel acknowledged, it is “somewhat subjective, and based in part on the sound judgment of the pilot.” One pilot in this situation might decide to log the approach—another might not. My best answer is borrowed from longtime aviation writer Bob Gardner who once said, “You are the best judge of whether an approach has made you a more proficient instrument pilot or has just allowed you to fill a gap in your log.” That has always been my personal guide.

Fortunately, this discussion is an academic mental exercise for most of us. We no longer have a time requirement, and Moonless Night conditions requiring an approach are uncommon. If you do encounter one, use your best judgment, but be prepared to justify it in the rare instance a question arises.

Mark Kobler is a regular contributor to sister publication IFR magazine, the journal for the accomplished pilot continuously looking to expand their knowledge base in the name of safety.

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