This question is being asked at flight schools across the country as the CFI world and the nonaviation media are sharing the story of 36-year-old Philip Everton McPherson II, from Haddon Township, New Jersey. McPherson faces one count of involuntary manslaughter for the crash of the Piper PA-28-140 on September 28, 2022, that killed student pilot Keith Kozel, 49.

A federal grand jury indicted McPherson on August 1. He was arrested at his home on August 5.

• READ MORE: NTSB Releases Prelim Report on Fatal Oshkosh Accident

McPherson’s commercial and CFI certificates were surrendered to the FAA more than a year before the accident because he had failed a 44709 ride (reexamination for airman privileges).

FLYING Magazine obtained a copy of the 11-page indictment that said McPherson “acted with gross negligence because he knew that he was not competent to safely fly an aircraft as the pilot in command.” According to the indictment, his commercial pilot and instructor certificates were surrendered to the FAA in October 2021 after he failed a reexamination ride.

McPherson was employed by ProFlite Aero Services in Easton, Pennsylvania. FLYING’s attempts to contact the flight school for comment were unsuccessful. The website for the business is no longer in operation.

According to the indictment, in 2021 the FAA received a hotline complaint about McPherson’s alleged poor airmanship that included going off the runway on two different occasions while flying with a student, resulting in substantial damage to the aircraft.

• READ MORE: PC-12 Crash Claims Members of Prominent Gospel Singing Group

The first off-runway event was on November 18, 2020, when during the second attempt to land a Cessna 172 in a gusting crosswind the aircraft went off the side of the runway and the nosewheel failed, and the aircraft flipped onto its back. The winds near the site were reported as 13 knots gusting to 25.

The second event was on March 6, 2021, but FLYING was unable to locate the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident report for it.

The indictment notes the FAA made several attempts to reach McPherson—first by letter then by telephone—as part of its investigation to set up a reexamination ride. When he finally did the reexamination flight with the agency, he botched a go-around and the FAA safety inspector had to take the controls to prevent a crash, per the indictment.

After surrendering his commercial and CFI tickets, McPherson was granted a temporary certificate that allowed him to fly by himself or with another instructor in order to gain the skills necessary to regain his certifications. The temporary certificate carries the warning: “Carrying of Passengers Prohibited.”

McPherson did not request another reexamination ride, nor did he ask for an extension of the temporary certificate, which expired on November 8, 2021. But he continued to serve as a flight instructor carrying passengers.The indictment includes two pages of the initials of students and dates of flights.

He faces an additional 40 counts of serving as an airman without a certificate as he continued to fly with passengers and as an instructor between October 12, 2021, and September 2022.

The Fatal Flight

According to the NTSB, the fatal flight took off at 1:40 ET. McPherson told the agency the purpose of the flight was to go to a towered airport nearby so Kozel, the student who had 51 hours, could practice towered-airport operations.

McPherson instructed Kozel to perform a soft field takeoff. The aircraft was sluggish during the takeoff roll and had trouble obtaining airspeed. Kozel flew the airplane in ground effect trying to build up airspeed, and at least once the aircraft settled back on to the runway.

• READ MORE: NTSB Releases Details on 2 Lockheed 12A Crashes

McPherson allowed the takeoff to continue, but when the aircraft had trouble climbing above 200 feet, he took the controls. He told NTSB investigators that the engine was not producing full power, and there were trees ahead of them and no open places to land.

The Piper struck the trees and became inverted, coming down hard and catching fire. McPherson told investigators that Kozel was unresponsive after the crash. McPherson claimed he was injured but was able to drag himself away from the burning airplane. He told investigators he saw people approaching him and begged them to get Kozel out of the wreckage, but the fire was consuming the aircraft.

A witness account of the accident differs. The witness said he pulled McPherson from the wreckage and then tried to rescue Kozel, but the flames drove him back.

It should be noted that the Piper Cherokee only has a door on the right side of the fuselage. The instructor traditionally sits on the right side of the aircraft.

The NTSB ruled the cause of the accident to be a “partial loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.” The investigation noted that the weather conditions at the time were conducive to the “development of serious icing at glide power and was between the range for icing at glide and cruise power and serious icing at cruise power.”

According to the investigative docket, at the time of the accident McPherson reported having 1,350 hours total time of which 700 was in Piper Cherokees, with his last flight review or equivalent happening in March 2021. He also reported having flown 40 hours in the previous 90 days.

McPherson was arrested at his home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on August 5. He pled not guilty to all the charges and was released the same day after posting a $50,000 bond and surrendering his passport.

If convicted he could face a maximum possible sentence of 128 years in prison and a $10.25 million fine, and a $4,100 special assessment. He has been assigned a public defender. 

According to the Office of the Inspector General, the case is being prosecuted by assistant U.S. attorney Robert Schopf and special assistant U.S. attorney Marie Miller.

The post Illegal CFI Faces Charge of Involuntary Manslaughter appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Once a pilot adds an instrument rating, they’re legal to fly an ILS in blowing snow all the way to 200-foot minimums with an 1,800 RVR. But few of us would actually attempt such a demanding task with only our training and perhaps a bit of experience in actual conditions under our belt. I’ll call those folks “pilots with an instrument rating,” differentiating them from someone with more experience who would confidently undertake that operation. I’ll call that person an “instrument pilot.”

So, if your goal is to gain high levels of proficiency, experience, and comfort to ultimately grow from being a pilot with an instrument rating into an instrument pilot, how can you do that? I’m glad you asked because that’s just what we’re going to cover here.

Why Do It?

Why might you want to do this? It’s a lot of work, will take time, and generally involves nontrivial expense. What’s to be gained? Everybody’s answer will be somewhat different, but I can help you find yours.

Perhaps the most important question is, “Why did you get the instrument rating in the first place?” Maybe you did it to meet career aspirations. Or possibly you did it just to improve the utility of your basic private certificate, allowing you to go when the weather had been keeping you on the ground as a VFR pilot. 

In both of those cases, I’ll—perhaps argumentatively—encourage you to be the best pilot you can be. As a professional, your clients will certainly expect and deserve that. You should be able to competently complete any flight that’s both legal and safe for the aircraft. If you can’t, well, reread the previous sentence.

• READ MORE: How to Meet Instrument Rating Requirements

But what if it’s just you trying to go visit a friend? Don’t you deserve the same level of competence and confidence in the management of your flight and control of your airplane? It’s common during those personal flights to bring along a friend or family member. They deserve the same level of consideration as any paying passenger, so you owe it to yourself and your passengers to, again, be the best pilot you can be.

On top of all that, there’s a certain degree of pride involved. How would you feel after that ILS at the destination if your needles were bouncing from peg to peg, and you somehow managed to luck out enough to see the runway as the needles passed through the center? Compare that with the satisfaction, and yes, the pride, in sliding down the approach with needles that barely migrated off the center circle. Challenge yourself to always do better, and you’ll rarely find yourself performing poorly. But if you do, you’ll almost certainly know exactly why, and you’ll resolve to recognize the same situation next time and surely use that recognition and anticipation to perform better.

What’s the Difference?

I’ve talked about pilots with an instrument rating versus instrument pilots, but what’s the difference? Defining “instrument pilot” is a bit easier, so I’ll start there. Note that all this is a distinction of my own creation, so if you talk with others about it, you might get that thousand-mile stare until you explain.

An instrument pilot is one who has had enough training, enough experience, and most critically maintains enough proficiency that they can handle most anything that a given flight might be expected to throw at them. That doesn’t mean comfortably flying your Cessna 182 into an area of moderate icing. But it does mean that the pilot is both comfortable and competent to handle an inadvertent encounter with more significant weather than on the day of the check ride. 

• READ MORE: Instrument Rating Can Expand Your Travel Horizons

That weather might include ice, moderate turbulence, significant gusty crosswinds, and, yes, lower visibility and ceilings than forecast—possibly all at the same time. Naturally, these conditions will produce a greater concentration and focus on the job at hand by the pilot, but they shouldn’t bring so significant a ramping of anxiety that performance or judgment suffers.

On the other hand, a pilot with an instrument rating is a newbie. But by newbie I don’t mean that the instrument check ride was recent enough that legal currency hasn’t yet lapsed. I mean that the pilot doesn’t have much (or any) experience with a broad enough range of weather and atmospheric conditions to remain mostly calm and focused in handling that. This pilot likely still views anything worse than basic VMC as a reason to reexamine the go/no-go decision and might (or should) have personal minimums not much lower than 1,000-3.

Your Path Via the Right Seat 

Say you recently aced your instrument-rating check ride. Or perhaps you’ve long had the rating but never really had both the opportunity and confidence to “get your nose wet” much more than in benign conditions. Regardless of your starting point, how do you get to be a confident, competent instrument pilot? 

Like many things in aviation, the answer to that question is “it depends” and has multiple paths. 

Say your ultimate goal is employment as a pilot. It doesn’t matter whether you want to end up at the airlines, freight pilot, charter pilot, or even personal or corporate pilot. Work hard to build your experience to the point where you can get that first job beyond a CFI at the local flight school. 

Your short-term goal should be to fly in the right seat in a two-pilot operation, so possibly the entry-level freight or medical transport jobs might not be the best choice. 

Having that experienced captain next to you will serve multiple purposes. First, it will allow you to experience more varied conditions than you might feel comfortable tackling on your own, especially at first. Also, while your captains might not be CFIs, you’ll receive a lot of instruction. Many captains in this environment understand your need for experience and further education and happily provide it. Others might not want that role, leaving you to provide your own education through quiet observation.

• READ MORE: Instrument Rating: Why Are You Waiting?

Either way, flying with someone who’s both more experienced and has ultimate responsibility for the outcome of the flight is a wonderful way to learn. You should be as cautious and as methodical as you would be if you were solo, but ultimately it will be the captain who evaluates the conditions and assures the safe outcome. This allows you to learn the safe capabilities and limits of that operation in those conditions. You get to see what can be done and how to do it.

This route also will expose you to multiple captains, each with a different style. I remember vividly when I went through upgrade training at an airline, a member of management came into our class on the first day and asked us to reflect on our time in the right seat and try to identify the best captain we had flown with. After we considered that, he then asked us to think back over the same experiences and identify the worst captain we had flown with.

Everyone in the class had the same reaction. We were unable to identify a single-best captain. Instead, multiple captains were identified, each with some different traits that made us think of them. But everyone was instantly able to identify the single-worst captain with whom we had flown. 

As the class discussed, the manager then simply told us to determine the traits in the best captains that we wished to emulate and exactly what made that one person the worst captain and vow to never do any of those things we disliked.

If you’ve got your CFI or CFII, do as much advanced instruction as you can. Lacking a CFI, go around to all the pilots you can find and offer to fly with them as a safety pilot. Doing either of these won’t be as beneficial as flying with some 10,000-hour captain, but it’s still valuable experience to aid in your growth as an instrument pilot.

Learn from the Left Seat

But what if you don’t want to become a professional pilot and just want to be the best possible private pilot you can with the tools you have? There are a lot of paths you might choose, and I’ve got some recommendations that you can find your own variations along.

First, you must fly as often as possible. Every time you fly as pilot in command (PIC), fly IFR. I don’t mean 20-30 hours a year. I mean 10 hours or more a month, usually just about every week. This allows you to continue building on your experience rather than the ever-so-common two steps forward, one back. Even if the weather is “severe clear,” fly in the system to gain more experience and comfort within it. Rarely accept a visual approach at the destination. Fly an approach, even if it’s in VMC without a view-limiting device. If you can take a safety pilot, fly under the hood.

Don’t be afraid to tackle increasingly challenging weather conditions. Sure, if you just got your instrument ticket, you want to be very careful. But as you gradually gain more experience, put it to use. If you have a trip planned and the weather forecast stretches your comfort, that’s good. I often say that you can’t expand your comfort zone from within it. If the operation stretches your comfort more than you’re willing, find an instructor with plenty of experience and ask them to accompany you.

Watch for those marginal VMC and benign IMC days and go out to the airport and fly a few approaches on your own. As you do that more often, you’ll gain more comfort with those conditions.

I’m a strong believer in the value of simulators. I’m not going into a long discussion of sims, but here are a few basic points: If you can afford it, fly an approved sim, a Basic or Advanced Aviation Training Device (BATD/AATD). The difference to you at this point is largely irrelevant, so pick what’s available. Also, to the greatest extent possible, find something that simulates as closely as possible the aircraft you fly, both from an aerodynamic perspective as well as the panel. 

One of the lowest-cost approved simulators I know comes from Gleim Aviation. It’s a BATD that emulates a Cessna 172 SP with your choice of analog six-pack instruments or a Garmin G1000. If this is sufficiently close to what you fly, it’s an excellent choice for only $8,500.

If what you fly isn’t readily emulated with an approved simulator (which is common), you can build your own. My personal belief is that a sim that isn’t approved but closely emulates your aircraft is superior to an approved sim that isn’t close. That’s my thinking, but others disagree. 

My reasoning is simple. This is my example, but it applies broadly across the entire GA fleet. I fly a Cessna 340. Nobody makes an ATD for a C-340. The closest is usually a Beech Baron, but Precision Flight Controls can emulate a 414. Then, my airplane has full EFIS—there’s not a round dial on the panel. ATDs for any type might offer a G1000, but the retrofit stuff in my airplane is far different from a G1000. So to emulate my aircraft, I need to build the sim myself, and that won’t be approved for logging time. I’m OK with that. If I need to log some instrument time, I’ll go rent an approved sim for a few hours or get the time in my own airplane under the hood with a safety pilot a few times a year.

Once you’ve got access to a sim, fly it regularly, always in low-IMC. Fly approach after approach. Some weeks you’ll just fly approaches, repositioning yourself to the IAF and going in from there. Other weeks, practice with failures. On other sessions try doing a full flight from departure to destination. 

As you fly the sim more, add precipitation, ice, gusty winds, etc. In other words, build the severity of the weather until you can handle most anything. 

Then after completing one of these paths, you too will be an instrument pilot.

But There’s a Risk

Not long after I retired from 121 flying, I fell out of currency and needed the ol’ six-in-six to regain it. I hopped into an AATD and flew the requisite approaches, holds, etc., using raw data with no autopilot or flight director. The instructor was impressed. I was too, as I had never flown that sim before.

I figured it was all my experience as an instrument pilot. After all, that level of proficiency doesn’t leave you too quickly—or so I thought. Then a couple years later, repeat. Um, my performance was dismal, even with the flight director. What happened?

Well, instrument flight skills are highly perishable. If you’ve spent years comfortably flying as a proficient instrument pilot, well, reread that previous sentence. Once you no longer fly that often, you will lose those skills you worked so hard to gain. Trust me, it’s only through constant exercise that you can retain them.

So here’s my warning: Once you gain the competence and proficiency that you seek, you’ve got to continue working to maintain it. If you don’t keep flying at nearly that frequency, you risk reverting to just another pilot with an instrument rating. Although you might not have to start over to regain instrument-pilot status, you will have to work at it. You invested too much to get there in the first place, so don’t allow that proficiency to lapse.

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

The post Ultimate Issue: Instrument Rating vs. Instrument Pilot appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

According to the NTSB report, ADS-B data indicates the aircraft departed Trenton Mercer Airport (KTTN) in Trenton, New Jersey, around 7:40 a.m. and flew to Hartford Municipal Airport (KHXF) in Wisconsin before departing KHXF around 11:45 a.m.

• READ MORE: NTSB to Focus on ‘Four Corners’ of PC-12 in Fatal Crash Probe

ATC recordings and ADS-B data show the aircraft was on the Fisk arrival when the pilot was directed to make a wider turn to accommodate an L-29 and an L-39 that were landing in front of him. The pilot confirmed he had them “in sight” and initiated a left turn. He was subsequently cleared to land on the yellow dot on runway 36L and acknowledged the clearance.

The NTSB report noted that the aircraft crashed into a soybean field about 1.5 miles from the end of Runway 36L, catching fire and destroying the plane. It struck the ground on a heading of 060 degrees and came to rest in the same direction. The main wreckage included the fuselage, empennage, and wings, with flight controls intact. The wreckage has been recovered for further investigation.

Investigators found weather conditions at the time of the crash to be VMC with a visibility of 10 miles.

This article first appeared on AVweb.com.

The post NTSB Releases Prelim Report on Fatal Oshkosh Accident appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Cooler heads observed that the majority of unintentional spins occurred in the traffic pattern, particularly on the base-to-final turn, where there was no room to recover even if the pilot knew how to. So knowing how to spin and recover served no purpose, besides its entertainment value—which, to be sure, was considerable.

Under the new dispensation, pilots were taught, in theory at least, not how to recover from a spin but how to avoid one. Nevertheless, stall spins, usually in the traffic pattern, still account for more than a tenth of all airplane accidents and around a fifth of all fatalities. Because they involve a vertical descent, stall spins are about twice as likely to be fatal as other kinds of airplane accidents.

• READ MORE: A Cautionary Tale About Pilot Freelancing

Why has the FAA’s emphasis on stall avoidance not done more to reduce the number of stall spin accidents? There are probably many reasons, but I think the lack of realism in the training environment deserves some blame. The training stall is a controlled maneuver, briefed in advance, approached gradually, calmly narrated, and recovered from without delay. The real-life, inadvertent stall is sudden, unexpected, and disorienting.

The pilot does not see it coming and so does nothing to prevent it. The training stall is so reassuring that pilots fail to develop a healthy fear of the real thing. After this preamble, you may guess that I am going to talk about a fatal stall spin.

The airplane was a Van’s RV-4, an amateur-built two-seat taildragger with a 150 hp Lycoming engine. It had first been licensed 13 years earlier and later sold by its builder to the 48-year-old pilot, a 1,300-hour ATP with single- and multiengine fixed-wing, helicopter, and instrument ratings. For the past six months, the pilot had been on furlough from regional carrier Envoy Air, where he had logged 954 hours in 70-seat Embraer ERJ-175 regional jets.

On the day of the accident, he added 24 gallons of fuel to the RV and flew from Telluride (KTEX) to Durango (KDRO), Colorado, a 25-minute trip, to pick up a friend. They then flew back to Telluride, where the temperature was 1 degree Fahrenheit, and a 10-knot breeze was blowing straight down Runway 27. The density altitude at the runway was about 9,600 feet.

Entering a wide left-downwind leg at about 100 knots, the pilot gradually decelerated and descended. By the time he began his base-to-final turn, he was about 200 feet above the runway and was going to slightly overshoot the extended centerline if he didn’t tighten his turn. His airspeed dropped to 50 knots, and the airplane stalled and spun. An airport surveillance camera caught the moment—a blur, then a swiftly corkscrewing descent. It was over in a few seconds. Both pilot and passenger died in the crash.

• READ MORE: Two Fatal Cases of the Simply Inexperienced

The National Transportation Safety Board’s finding of probable cause was forthright, though it put the cart before the horse: “The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed…which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack…” Actually, the opposite happened: The pilot allowed the angle of attack to get too large, and that resulted in a loss of airspeed. It was the angle of attack, not the airspeed, that caused the stall.

Still, it was an airspeed indicator the pilot had in front of him and not an angle-of-attack indicator, so to the extent that the pilot was consciously avoiding a stall, he would have had to use airspeed to do so. 

The published stalling speed of the RV-4 at gross weight is 47 knots. In a 30-degree bank, without loss of altitude, that goes up to 50.5. Individual airplanes may differ.

But in any case it’s misleading to make a direct, mathematical link between bank angle and stalling speed, although the NTSB frequently does just that. When you perform a wingover, your bank angle may be 90 degrees, but your stalling speed is certainly not infinite. In the pattern, you can relieve the excess G-force loading associated with banking by allowing the airplane’s downward velocity to increase—assuming that you have sufficient altitude.

On the other hand, with your attention focused on the simultaneous equations of height, position, glide angle, and speed that your mental computer is solving in the traffic pattern, you may not even be aware of a momentary excursion to 1.2 or 1.3 Gs.

• READ MORE: Three-Mile Limit: Novice Pilots Succumb to the Perils of Total Darkness

The RV-4, with a rectangular wing of comparatively low aspect ratio and no washout, stalls without warning in coordinated flight but is well-behaved and recovers readily. Uncoordinated, it can depart with startling abruptness. It resembles all other airplanes in being less stable when the center of gravity is farther aft, so maneuvering at a speed just a few knots above the stall may be more perilous when there is a passenger in the back seat. Like most small homebuilts, the RV-4 is sensitive to fingertip pressure on the stick and easily overcontrolled.

The NTSB’s report on this accident does not include any information about how many hours the pilot had flown the airplane or how many of those were with a passenger. The FAA registry puts the cancellation of the previous owner/builder’s registration just one month prior to the accident, suggesting the pilot may not have had the airplane for long.

The pilot never stabilized his approach. He descended more or less continuously after entering the downwind leg several hundred feet below pattern altitude—to be sure, the pattern at Telluride is 400 feet higher than normal—and never maintained a steady speed even momentarily. His speed decreased more rapidly as he entered the final turn, perhaps because he felt he was a little too low and instinctively raised the nose. Besides, the terrain rises steeply toward the approach end of Runway 27, possibly making him feel he was descending more rapidly than he really was.

A final factor that may have played a part in this accident is the altitude. The runway elevation at Telluride is at about 9,100 feet. Density altitude doesn’t matter for speed control in the pattern if you pay attention to the airspeed indicator, because all the relevant speeds are indicated airspeeds. But your true airspeed, which is 10 knots greater than indicated, can still create the illusion that you have more speed in reserve than you really do when you are making a low turn to final.

There’s a reason that students are taught to establish 1.3 V_s on the downwind leg, begin the descent abeam of the threshold, and maintain a good speed margin throughout the approach. It helps keep the stall-spin numbers down.

Note: This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

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

The post Ultimate Issue: Analyzing a Fatal Final Turn appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It’s been the catch phrase used everywhere the last few years, and it has become the gold standard of top quality aircraft or those so realistic and so well designed that you could study them to obtain actual type ratings and pass an initial course.

Most add-ons are of simpler design and varying levels of quality, but over the years, these study level aircraft for the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS20) and X-Plane 12 (XP12) platforms have grown in numbers.

I am old enough to remember the old fighter sim called Falcon 4.0 in the late 1980s and early ’90s. It came with a thick paper manual that felt like a novel. I miss those days of real boxes, manuals, and reading material.

Some of the most detailed aircraft add-ons come loaded with PDFs to study, and some have nothing at all, leaving it up to the customer to go online or just obtain the actual real aircraft’s study manuals. It seems lazy to not bother to publish a manual for an aircraft release, but then again, if it’s so realistic that the only PDF says “go obtain a real Airbus A320 POH” for more information, I’m sold. If something is that good and complete, then I think the developer is allowed to be lazy, or perhaps a bit big braggish.

Most commercial pilots, or experienced aviators in general, were dismissive of flight sims at home. Twenty years ago, I was embarrassed to come out of the sim closet for I’d be a victim of skepticism or at least a target of laughter. “No flight sim can do anything close to what ‘real pilots’ deal with in Level D sims,” I was often told. Or, I’d hear, “Oh, yeah, that little Microsoft Flight Simulator, I played with it once. It looked like a cartoon, so that won’t help anybody.”

• READ MORE: Turn Up the Heat in Sims With Density Altitude Games

This is what every older-and-bolder, gray-haired retired airline pilot said when seated to my left.

Now that I have gray hair, I am all too happy to encourage the younger generation to get active with sims when they aren’t flying the real thing. It’s also accepted among almost all real pilots I know as a really useful tool now that photorealistic graphics are everywhere and far exceed the quality of a $20 million sim the FAA approves. For as little as $2,000, you can rival those simulators at home.

I am not going to mention every study level aircraft available—that would require a book.

Yet over the years before and even right through MSFS2020 and XP12, several come to mind and most are quite famous and have been around for a long time:

Precision Manuals Development Group

The company has been around since the early 1990s. It’s the longest add-on group ever for any sim, and in my opinion, the finest. Everything about it is study level.

Its entire Boeing products are the gold standard of what an add-on should be, and nobody has rivaled it in producing a Boeing 737NG, 747-400, or 777. Now since the release of MSFS2020, we have been enjoying the entire 737NG set, including BBJ. Almost every system, failures, controls accuracy, autopilot, performance, switchology, sounds, visuals, etc. have all been reproduced perfectly.

• READ MORE: The Art of Simulated Long-Haul Flying

Years of development for just one airframe. You’d ace a type rating in the real aircraft after spending time with PMDG products. I wish I could go get a 737 type rating just to test this theory myself. I feel I know no other aircraft as well as this one, due to my years with PMDG 737s. Now, we are about to get its 777 finally after years of waiting patiently. It will be released this year and continue the outrageous quality and realism we all crave from a company that really only releases masterpieces.

Fenix

This company is a new entrant that stormed onto the stage just last year with its completely detailed A320 for MSFS2020. Upon release, it quickly became accepted as the most detailed Airbus for any sim platform.

In my opinion, the early release suffered from performance and frame rate issues as it couldn’t compare to the smoothness and fidelity of the PMDG lineup. But a year later, with all the refinements and the recent release of the update or Block 2, it is now a masterpiece. Detailed systems right down to individual circuit breakers are modeled. Engine modeling and accuracy is key. All that has been done, and now the IAE version is included, each with its own systems, sounds, and realistic performance.

• READ MORE: Taking Risks at a Trio of Mount Rainier Airstrips, Virtually

Some say it has blown past the PMDG. Whatever the opinion, I share the zeal. It’s smooth, precise, and many real airbus pilots online tout it as basically perfect. A true study level that you’d absolutely use during type rating school. I’ve enjoyed flying it now, as much as I have over the years with the PMDG lineup.

SimMarket

This company sells the Maddog MD82 for MSFS2020. I am not as familiar with the older airliners, so I will defer to the majority of sim fans online holding this up to the level of the Fenix.

For MD fans, this is also a real keeper. It represents a blend of systems modeling and accuracy all from the later ’70s to later ’80s replicated at a high level. In a battle for the top, this is often referred to as the best airliner ever made for MSFS2020. I’ll have to learn it better to give my own opinions, as I have used it little, never being a Maddog fan. But I see the reviews touting it as in the top few airliners ever released.

X-Plane

It has the outrageously in-depth Felis 747-200 series for the X-Plane sim. It is one of the most complete jetliner simulation add-ons I have ever used—from nose to tail. This is one of the reasons I still use XP12.

I cannot say enough about this masterpiece other than I wish it was available on MSFS2020 as well. You need to be three pilots at once to handle this beast. Setting up view points is key, as you’ll not only be pilot and copilot but flight engineer as well, often manipulating the systems as you sit sideways. You can feel the quality, heaviness, and momentum.

X-Aviation

The company sells the most renowned and sought-after bizjet for any sim, the Hot Start Challenger 650. This completely study level jet is once again simulating entire circuit breakers from head to tail. Setting the bar so exceedingly high, it’ll be what all future bizjets are compared to.

Sadly, only X-Plane 12 has it, but again, that’s another reason I still use it. The accuracy, realism, handling, etc. is all spot on. I fly a similar aircraft in real life and find this exceptionally close to the real thing. Again, it’s a type rating quality example to learn from. Many have called it the best jet ever designed for any sim, and it’s impossible to disagree. It certainly rivals the airliners above in total quality and experience.

Flysimware

It has a Learjet 35A that was recently released in “early access.” I have featured this in many an article so far, and it is well on its way to what I would call an honorable mention study level aircraft.

Its blueprint quality visuals, scaled parts, and cockpit clarity make this a winner right out of the gate. I’ve never seen such a beautiful reproduction in an early access or beta-style release. The flight quality, accurate avionics, sounds, and more make this a really promising product when the final version comes out.

It is the best pure bizjet built specifically for the MSFS2020 lineup so far. Let’s leave the jetliners behind now, as accuracy and study level can go down a category and be just as advanced.

A2A Simulations

The company has the 1960s Piper Comanche 250 featuring its coveted Accu-Sim 2.0 technology to bring a living, breathing aircraft to your desktop. This example must be run as gently as a real one, maintained and babied, or else face what real owners face: expensive repair bills.

You can damage and destroy the airplane if you’re a ham-fisted pilot. The aircraft requires a full preflight and walk-around inspection. You can test the fuel and do everything a real pilot would during a flight.

Continually monitoring its wear and tear, systems, and cleanliness is all part of this intensely realistic model that keeps its constant state alive, meaning it will remember its health on a continual basis, even if you fly something else in between on different days. You even get to perform an overhaul and other yearly tasks.

This airplane has quite a following and has been labeled by many as the best general aviation aircraft ever designed for any sim. I believe A2A is leveraging its AccuSim technology to future releases, and it certainly has captured the immersion of owning, operating, and maintaining a personal airplane like no other.

Conclusion

These are all my experiences with what I own and fly in the sim world. Your opinions may vary, especially when you get into the smaller airplanes as it’s much easier to simulate a simple single-engine in study level than an airliner.

In some ways, many of the default or add-ons for GA are close to this namesake already. A basic default Cessna will accelerate any new student pilot right to the top. The graphics of MSFS2020 and XP12 aircraft are good enough and photorealistic enough to permanently lodge in the brain of anyone learning to fly and stay current.

It’s a great time to study and learn in today’s flight sim environment. Compared to what we had in 1981, everything now is study level.

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

The post Ultimate Issue: Taking Sim to a New Level appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I am coming up on 21 years as a CFI, and there are stumbling blocks I’ve seen freshly minted CFIs trip over. Here are 12 suggestions to help make your journey as an educator a smooth one for both you and your learners:

1. Use a syllabus

Even if you were not trained with a syllabus, or the school you are working at is Part 61 and doesn’t require it, please use one, be it paper or electronic form. It will help you stay organized and deliver lessons in a logical order. Make sure your learners have a copy and bring it to lessons.

Pro tip: If your learners don’t have a copy of the syllabus, you’re not really using one with them. They need to have a copy for best results.

2. Introduce FAA certification standards on Day 1

The Airmen Certification Standards (ACS) is required reading for both the CFI and learner. A learner can’t perform to standard unless they know what those minimum standards are. The ACS spells them out quite clearly.

Don’t wait until just before the check ride to bring them out and apply them. Use the ACS in the pre-brief so the learner knows the metrics for which they are aiming.

• READ MORE: The Importance of Embracing Proficiency Culture

3. Stress the use of a checklist

This starts with the preflight inspection. Have the checklist in hand. Teach to the premaneuver, cruise, and of course, prelanding checklists as well. Emergency checklists should be memorized.

Bonus points: Show the learner the pages in the pilot’s operating handbook or Airplane Flying Handbook from which the preflight checklist was derived. Teach them to use that if the checklist disappears— as it often does at flight schools.

4. Teach weather briefing and aircraft performance

Teach the learner to obtain and interpret a weather briefing and to calculate aircraft performance from Day 1. Discuss weather minimums and how their personal minimums will change as their experience grows.

If the learner does not want to fly in certain weather—such as especially turbulent days or if the weather starts to go bad during a lesson—be ready to terminate. Flight instruction is about teaching good decision-making in addition to flying skills.

5. Manage your schedule for the learner’s benefit

While it is true that most CFIs are building time to reach the airlines, do not overload your schedule at the expense of the learner. The learner should be able to fly at least twice a week, though three times is optimal for best results. Manage your student’s load so you are flying six to eight hours a day—that’s a hard stop at eight hours.

Be ready to go at least 10 minutes before the learner arrives. That means scheduling lessons so the aircraft is on the ground at least 15 minutes before the next lesson so that it can be serviced if needed and you can take care of the debrief and logbook of the previous client. Be sure the person who does the scheduling understands the limitations of scheduling, such as when you timeout at eight hours.

Pro tip: The quickest way to lose a client—and possibly your job—is to disrespect a learner’s time. There will likely be a time when you miss a lesson or are late. Apologize and make it up to the learner by giving them a free lesson, even if it means you have to pay your employer for the use of the airplane and your time. You won’t like it, but it’s about character and doing what’s right, especially if the school has a “no-show, you-pay” policy for the learners.

• READ MORE: Separation Anxiety: When Your Instructor Moves on, Your Logbook Tells the Story

6. Don’t spend too much time on the controls

This is a hard habit to break. Try holding a writing implement in your hand while you hold your other arm across your body. If you are going to fold your arms on your chest, tell the learner it’s to show them you’re not on the controls.

Some people interpret this posture as being angry, so make sure you say something up front.

8. Eliminate the ‘pretty good’ metric

“Pretty good” is not a pilot report on weather conditions or an assessment of the learner’s performance. Teach them to be precise on weather observations, such as “light winds, ceiling at 3,000 feet,”, and for learner performance use metrics, such as “altitude within 200 feet,” for performance review.

Ask the learner how they would like feedback on their performance—in the moment or at the end of the lesson in the debrief. Some learners prefer the CFI to sit there quietly while they flail around with the controls. Others prefer real-time correction, such as “your heading is off by 10 degrees,” which allows them to fix it.

9. Don’t pass up the opportunity to teach a ground school

That is when you really find out if you really are a teacher of flight or a time builder. Teaching in the classroom and demonstrating something in the airplane involve vastly different skill sets.

Reading slides off a screen or material out of a book is not teaching. To be an effective teacher, the CFI needs to get the learners engaged in the material. The best teachers are memorable.

• READ MORE: Make Flight Reviews for CFIs Worthwhile

10. Allow the learners to make mistakes

Mistakes are part of learning. In aviation, they happen quite a bit, and as long as no metal is bent, no one is physically hurt, there is no property damage, or broken FARs, allow them to happen.

If things go badly and the learner is upset, the worst thing you can do is tell them to sit there while you fly back to the airport. This can destroy their confidence. Instead, try having the learner review and practice a maneuver already learned. Strive to always end the lesson on a positive note.

11. Plan for poor weather or mechanical delays

Always approach each day with two plans for each learner—flight or ground. Let the learner know in advance what the plans are: “If we fly, we will do this; if we cannot fly, we will do that.”

There is the option to cancel if the flight cannot be completed, but you should be prepared to teach. For example, if the weather is below minimums or an aircraft is down for maintenance and the shop rules permit it, take the learner into the hangar and do a practical pointing using the aircraft engine or cockpit instruments.

12. Make time for your own proficiency and currency

Protect your flying skills. You can do this in part by demonstrating takeoffs and landings or by asking the learner if they are OK with you doing a few at the end of the flight with the understanding you will be paying for that aircraft time and will adjust the bill accordingly.

Don’t neglect your instrument skills either. Use the advanced aviation training device (AATD) if the school has one and shoot a few approaches and holds a couple times a month, or pair up with another CFI during off-peak hours to do some real-world IFR flying.

An instrument rating is part of the requirement to be a CFI, so make sure you keep it ready for use.

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

The post Ultimate Issue: First Few Hours of Being a CFI Are the Hardest appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Since I got back into home flight simulation, I look forward to the winter as the cold weather guarantees a few more weekends that I get to spend indoors, guilt-free. The winter makes it easier to schedule a weekend afternoon flight in my flight simulator, no matter what the real weather is doing outside.

One goal I set was to begin the BVARTCC WINGS series of training flights, which are self-paced and available to be flown whenever there are live air traffic controllers from the VATSIM service controlling the Greater Boston airspace online.

To help complete the WINGS program, I set the secondary goal of learning to use the G1000 for IFR flying, with the BVARTCC WINGS flights serving as an ideal live training environment. The volunteer VATSIM air traffic controllers watch and assess each WINGS flight and issue a pass or fail rating at the end, turning each into a mini-check ride, all from the comfort of your home  simulator. The WINGS flights also require that pilots follow the correct communication and navigation procedures for transition in and out of the airspace in the Greater Boston Class Bravo.

Although many sim pilots have flown the full series of BVARTCC WINGS flights, I am always surprised at how few real-world pilots are aware that this program exists and can be completed with only a basic flight simulator.

The BVARTCC WINGS training program is broken down into six VFR flights, typically flown first, and then 24 IFR flights, all designed to be flown sequentially. As stated in the introductory reading, a BVARTCC club member may fly the flights in any order, and skip flights, but you must eventually fly all 30 flights to become a WINGS graduate.

In summer 2022, when I began the WINGS VFR flights, I decided to fly each of them in order, predicting that I would enjoy the learning and preparation required to successfully pass them. Each flight features increasing levels of difficulty requiring some studying and preflight planning before launching on them.

I found that the WINGS VFR program was an enjoyable way to knock the rust off my VFR Class D, C, and B airspace and communication skills as I prepared for the start of the WINGS IFR program. My relatively slow pace fit my learning goals and available free time, but if you take up the challenge of the WINGS program, you can choose the speed that works for you, provided you fly each flight when there are controllers actively managing the airspace.

BVARTCC publishes a schedule of controller coverage and updates its discord channel when volunteer controllers are working the airspace so you can plan ahead for your flights. When flying in the BVARTCC, you are expected to set your simulator to the live weather conditions.

Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) and X-Plane (XP) will reference current METARs based on your departure airport, which are updated roughly every 15 minutes, and will build the weather conditions in the simulator to match the real world. Each flight simulation program has its strengths and weaknesses concerning the execution of live weather in the simulation. Your experience will vary.

• READ MORE: Here Are 2 Quick VFR Flights to Try on Your Home Flight Simulator

However, one benefit of METAR-based live weather is that you can use ForeFlight or Navigraph on your tablet or secondary screen to check the weather at your departure and destination and have confidence that you’ll experience those conditions when you are flying in-sim. Accurate winds and barometric pressure settings are important components to using live air traffic control services like VATSIM so that weather conditions you’re experiencing in the sim are the same as the controllers are referencing when assigning runways for takeoff and landing.

I also set the simulator to the current time of day so that daylight changes realistically over the course of my flight. There are some additional basic hardware and software items you should have on your PC to get the most out of flying in the BVARTCC with live air traffic control. See the “Introduction” and “Getting Started” tabs of the WINGS section of the BVARTCC website for more information.

WINGS IFR 1: Introduction to IFR

The WINGS IFR 1 is aptly titled the Introduction to IFR flying. It is the IFR equivalent to a trip around the traffic pattern at KBOS.

To successfully pass the flight, one must file and fly the LOGAN4 departure, with vectors expected to bring the aircraft around to intercept the ILS approach back to the active runway for landing. All of the taxiing and ground movement must be done correctly as well, requiring full attention from startup to shutdown. Making a major taxiing mistake would fail the flight, so my iPad running ForeFlight was prepped with the aircraft checklist, map (zoomed in for taxiing) and the ILS chart for the active runway preloaded onto the “Plates” tab.

KBOS ranks well within the top 10 busiest airports in the VATSIM system measured by total aircraft movements per year. In the real-world, KBOS is typically just inside the top 30 for all international airports, but in VATSIM, KBOS is well-liked for its dynamic New England weather and challenging wind conditions.

It also is a popular destination for sim pilots who depart from Europe and fly across the Atlantic ocean and time their flights to conclude when there’s live ATC coverage from VATSIM controllers at KBOS. Someday I hope to make that cross-ocean journey, once my IFR and widebody jet operational knowledge is at the requisite level for the undertaking.

• READ MORE: Our Pilots of the Future May Share Sim Stories

With cross-ocean goals in the back of my mind, my journey into IFR flying began at the Signature Flight Support ramp on the northwest side of KBOS as it is the main parking area for general aviation aircraft. The winds were 19kts, gusting 28kts (above my personal minimums in the real world) and the Cessna 172—the recommended aircraft for this flight—was rocking in its chocks when I began the engine start procedures.

MSFS models wind noise, and I could hear the wind blowing and the airplane creaking while I started working through the checklist. With the engine running, I checked the ATIS, dialed in the correct frequency to request my IFR clearance and patiently waited my turn to key the mic.

The volunteer controllers do a great job managing “the weekend rush” of flight sim pilots seeking to fly while the airspace is live and I did my best to bide my time between the pushback requests, taxi instructions and other sim pilots opening their IFR flight plans. There aren’t always enough volunteer controllers to completely staff a given airport or airspace, so we all do our part to share this valuable resource as the controllers often have to stretch themselves across the clearance, ground, and tower communication roles.

Sometimes there are waits to get started but I’m always comforted by the fact that no real avgas is being burned. The busy communication frequencies offer the added challenge of being succinct on the radio when it is your time to push to talk.

After 10 minutes, I found my opening, asked for and then nervously read back my clearance, certain that all the other sim pilots could hear how green I was. As instructed, I filed my flight plan before starting my flight so that the controllers had my virtual flight strip on their display ahead of time. Soon I was following the taxiing toward Runway 9 following at least six aircraft taxiing ahead of me, holding at various intersections, with more sim pilots receiving their permissions for pushback from their respective gates. I could see three aircraft in the air on final for Runway 4-Right.

Until this point, I had never experienced such a busy live flight sim environment, and it was really exciting and immersive. The frequency was jammed with controllers conducting the symphony of aircraft movement, and from listening I could tell that there were pilots from all across the world taking part in this flight simulation experience.

• READ MORE: Highlights From FlightSimExpo 2024

Accents from the United Kingdom and the southern United States mixed in with pilots from New England, the Midwest, Latin America, and Germany as well. The international and domestic mix of pilots felt and sounded just like the real KBOS on a normal day.

Passing intersection Charlie on taxiway Bravo, my Ground controller offered me a takeoff from Runway 4-Left. I fumbled for the LOGAN4 departure chart on ForeFlight to verify the amended takeoff instruction, a quick reminder that the simulated IFR flight environment can be dynamic and that I must also be ready for a change of plans.

The 4L takeoff prevented me from waiting in the growing line of airliners cueing for Runway 9. Soon I was cleared for takeoff and lifting off from 4L, fighting the gusty conditions, keeping focused on my departure heading and altitude while awaiting my first turn to heading 090. Being vectored through the busy airspace was even more exciting than my usual flight sim adventures as I could hear and see the aircraft I would be joining shortly on final approach.

The visual resolution of other traffic is not what you are accustomed to in real-world flying. Still, it is usually easy to see the navigation lights and a distant but somewhat blurry shape of the aircraft near you making see-and-avoid relatively easy. I had been handed off to Boston Approach and was soon given my final vectors to intercept the localizer for 4R.

Switching back to Boston Tower, I received my clearance to land and tried to keep my approach speed up to minimize the impact of the traffic needing to slow behind me. On short final, I could see one airliner in the air and three aircraft waiting to takeoff on Runway 9.

There would be a small audience for my landing, but I needed to shift my focus to the lateral and vertical guidance of the ILS on my G1000 PFD while trying to maintain the centerline amid a blustery winter afternoon. Although it wasn’t the smoothest landing, I was happy to be back on the ground and safely clear of 4R. Departures on Runway 9 resumed and the controller let me know I had passed the WINGS IFR 1.

Being careful to follow the taxi instructions back to the ramp at Signature, I was excited and relieved to have my first IFR flight in the books. The busy and short flight in the IFR system required my full attention, and was a fitting introduction to IFR flying. I was grateful the live weather was VFR and not at minimums.

I couldn’t have known at that time, but my next IFR flight, the WINGS IFR 2, was going to be flown in actual instrument flight conditions and would really test my rookie IFR flying skills and sim pilot decision-making.

WINGS IFR 2: VOR Navigation

To begin the WINGS IFR 2 flight, I loaded into my Cessna 172 G1000 at the Signature Flight Support ramp at Boston Logan where my WINGS IFR 1 had concluded. The weather for the afternoon flight was 3 miles visibility, light rain and ceilings around 1,000 feet, with winds at 16 knots, gusting 27 knots.

Today’s flight would take me from Boston to Providence, Rhode Island (KPVD), via the TEC route found in the FAA’s preferred route database. The purpose of the flight was to build experience navigating with the VOR radio and then land at Providence using the ILS approach onto the active runway.

Per the instructions, I filed the LOGAN4 departure, received my clearance and began my taxi. Preemptively this time, I asked the tower controller if I could depart off 4L, which would keep me out of the snarl of airliners waiting their turn for takeoff. I quickly double-checked the departure instructions, received my takeoff clearance and was soon climbing up into the soup, fighting to stay on the correct heading while being pushed around by the winds.

After a few vectored turns I was given the ATC instruction “Direct to PVD,” and turned the CRS knob on my G1000 PFD to select a radial to follow to the PVD VOR. The CDI “needle” allowed me to finetune my course to the PVD VOR, and I was on the way to Providence.

Climbing to 4,000 feet, my filed altitude, I was mostly in the clouds, occasionally getting glimpses to either side or a quick look at the sky above. It was an airborne mess of conditions I had heretofore avoided as a private pilot and as a sim pilot. The late afternoon winter sun was breaking through the clouds and the light rain on the ground at KBOS had turned to freezing rain.

I made small lateral changes to try and avoid going through thick clouds where I anticipated the rain becoming more intense. There was turbulence to contend with, and it moved the airplane around a lot, but I decided to keep hand-flying the 172 for the practice of juggling the simultaneous responsibilities of aviating, navigating and communicating with ATC.

The westerly winds I was flying against were slowing my groundspeed and the freezing rain was starting to adhere to the outside of my 172, creeping up onto the windscreen and attracting my attention. I switched on the cabin heat and pitot heat and thought about what options I had if the icing proceeded to get worse.

With the sunlight changing the color of the clouds above me, I estimated the top of the broken layer to be at 4,500 feet and figured I was one request away from a climb out into clear air, which represented my best chance for the ice to sublimate off the surfaces of the 172. ATC surprised me, letting me know there was traffic transitioning at 5,000 feet and I would need to manage at my current altitude.

I knew I had the option to declare an emergency but that would have concluded my WINGS IFR 2 flight early, without a passing grade. The icing had covered about 50 percent of my windscreen, but it was not immediately getting worse. Looking left and right, I couldn’t see a significant amount of buildup on the leading edge of the wing and still had normal control authority, so I decided to hang in there, hoping that the forecast of 5 miles visibility and a 3,000-foot ceiling at Providence was going to hold up.

The ride was not improving, and I was constantly chasing my heading and altitude in moderate turbulence. No physical discomfort in my sim cockpit, but the aircraft was moving around a lot, more than I had seen before. Having never flown in clouds for an extended amount of time, I was keeping focused on my basic instrument scan of the G1000 PFD, which included watching the attitude indicator, the altitude, the vertical speed tape, the turn coordinator arrows, and the CDI/needle of the VOR. Coming in and out of the freezing rain and into the momentary gaps of sunlight made for dynamic visuals and enhanced immersion caused by the high-fidelity winter weather modeling.

After about 30 minutes en route, I had flown over the Providence VOR and was now south of Quonset State Airport (KOQU). I was out of the cloud bank now and being given vectors to intercept the ILS for Runway 5. I had the chart loaded onto my iPad and I switched my nav radio to the correct frequency. I was vectored back to the ILS about 12 miles south of KPVD and used the extra time to think ahead of the airplane and I quickly briefed the anticipated turns and descent required to pick up the final approach course.

ATC cleared me onto the approach and then quickly cleared to land since I was the only aircraft in the area. With clouds behind me, and a low cloud deck over the Providence Airport, it got significantly darker and the wind blew my 172 all over the approach. Although the freezing rain had stopped, the cloud deck over Providence was lower and the visibility was less than what the METAR had reported before I left Boston.

The icing on my windscreen hadn’t melted and turned the approach lighting to Runway 5 into a fuzzy blur ahead of me. Fighting the wind gusts, I kept my focus on the localizer and glideslope, with occasional visual checks through the windscreen ahead.

On final approach 1.5 miles out and 500 feet above ground, I kept my speed up and my flaps at 20 degrees as I encountered low-level wind shear causing large changes on the vertical speed tape and my aircraft to shudder noticeably. Clearing the “fence” just before Runway 5 at Providence, the gusty surface winds pushed the 172 back and forth across the centerline as I tightened my grip on the yoke and worked corrections on the rudders. 50 feet above the runway, I pulled back on the throttle and tensed for a brisker than normal landing.

Once I made contact with the surface, it took a lot of rudder input to keep the airplane on the cement as I had a roughly 30-degree crosswind and wind gusts that threatened to push me into the grass. Finding an opening on the frequency, I made my clear-of-the-runway call and the controller let me know I had passed the WINGS IFR 2.

In my parking spot on the ramp in front of the Atlantic Aviation FBO building, I reflected on the strain and challenge of the 40-minute flight from Boston as the wind whipped over the control surfaces of the just shutdown 172. It was my first short cross-country flight in the IFR system, my first encounter with simulated icing conditions in the clouds and it was a challenge from start to finish with the moderate turbulence and gusty winds. Also, I was challenged to rely on VOR navigation as my main navigation source, not having done that since my private pilot training.

Admittedly, the G1000 PFD in CDI mode offered some additional situational awareness compared to a traditional steam gauge instrument and I was also running ForeFlight on my iPad.

I justify the ForeFlight map as it really aids in situational awareness since my flight simulator is connected to a single 4K TV and does not provide the peripheral vision you have in a real airplane. I use the moving map in ForeFlight to help supplement what I would normally see outside the airplane. I had made the flight more challenging by deciding to hand-fly it but I wasn’t confident that I could manage the automation provided by the autopilot and the other variables.

In future WINGS IFR series flights, I’ll need to be able to use the autopilot proficiently, so I noted this as an area for additional practice. It is one of the many features of the G1000 that I will need to better understand before getting deeper into the WINGS program.

The weather en route provided the biggest challenge, and I now had my first minutes of simulated IMC under my belt. I also contemplated how close I came to a very serious icing situation in the 172, knowing that it had no Flight-Into-Known-Icing capability. I’d like to think that I would never have found myself in that situation in a real airplane, but I was glad to have experienced it in my simulator first. Also, I’m careful to make sure the experience doesn’t build any false confidence, the images I have seen of the real icing lead me to believe that I narrowly avoided a situation that could have doomed my flight.

The MSFS2020 experience was all in the digital world, but the fidelity of it was impressive and the decision- making it prompted resulted in real stress and discomfort from the task saturation I encountered.

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

The post Earning Your Winter WINGS appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The Atlantic hurricane season officially began June 1 and runs through November 30. While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has not released its official forecast for 2024 as of this writing, in an average Atlantic hurricane season the U.S. experiences 14 named storms, seven of which are hurricanes and three are major hurricanes.

Buckle up. Given the likely return of La Niña (one of three phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation) and record warm sea surface temperatures in February as heated as we see in mid-July, this is not good news if you were hoping for just a mediocre season. If you live and fly anywhere along the Atlantic coastal plain or the Gulf of Mexico, here’s how you can prepare for what may be a wild hurricane season.

Even though hurricane season peaks on September 10, the tropics will begin to see increased activity during the months of June, July, and August as sea surface temperatures increase and the jet stream migrates north into Canada, creating a more favorable breeding ground in the tropics. During this time, what are called tropical waves will develop in the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea, forming in the tropical easterlies (winds moving from east to west). A weak area of low pressure with a closed circulation called a tropical depression may develop along one of these waves.

• READ MORE: The Ins and Outs of Pilot Weather Reports

If conditions are favorable, such as the presence of weak atmospheric wind shear over relatively warm waters, then convection can organize and strengthen into a tropical storm. Once it reaches tropical storm criteria, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) will give the storm a name. The first named storms of 2024 were Alberto and Beryl, with Chris, and Debby to follow. If you recognize a few of these names, be aware that the list is recycled every six years. The NHC points out that a name is removed from the list only “if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name for a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity.”

Saffir-Simpson Scale

Let’s become familiar with the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. This scale from 1 to 5 was introduced in the early 1970s by the NHC, using estimates of peak wind, storm surge, and minimum central pressure to describe the destruction from both water and wind for tropical cyclones making landfall.

The Saffir-Simpson scale was simplified in 2010 to be solely determined by a one-minute-average maximum sustained wind at a height of 10 meters (33 feet) above ground level. Once a tropical cyclone reaches hurricane strength (sustained wind speed of 64 knots or greater), it is assigned a category, with a Category 1 hurricane being the weakest and a Category 5 hurricane being the strongest (sustained wind speed of 137 knots or greater). There has been some interesting discussion lately to expand this open-ended scale from 5 to 6 categories given that some of the strongest Category 5 hurricanes are well above that minimum threshold and may not truly capture the potential destruction. This change, however, is unlikely to occur any time soon.

• READ MORE: How to Wrap Your Head Around Weather

Next, you should become familiar with the NHC website, where you will find all of the official guidance published by NOAA. Each named storm, tropical depression, and tropical disturbance will be tracked along with public advisories, such as watches and warnings (e.g., hurricane watch) based on the threat to people and property. You’ll also find a public discussion for the tropics when there are no named storms and a discussion for each system being tracked.

Hurricane Graphics

One product that is ubiquitous during hurricane season is the tropical cyclone forecast cone graphic. This is designed to depict the expected track, location, and strength of the tropical cyclone over the next five days. It also shows the cone of uncertainty.

According to the NHC, “the cone represents the probable track of the center of a tropical cyclone where the entire track can be expected to remain within the cone roughly 60-70 percent of the time.” Of course, the cone tends to get wider with forecast lead time. In other words, there’s more certainty with a forecast that is valid in 48 hours (smaller cone) versus one that is valid in 120 hours (larger cone).

Currently, the graphic only includes those watches and warnings along coastal regions. Starting in 2024, the NHC will be issuing an experimental tropical cyclone forecast cone graphic that also includes inland tropical storm and hurricane watches and warnings in effect for the contiguous U.S. Recommendations from social science research suggest that the addition of inland watches and warnings to the cone graphic will help communicate inland wind risk during tropical cyclone events while not overcomplicating the current version of the graphic with too many data layers.

Electrification of Hurricanes

It’s probably not a surprise to hear that a healthy squall line moving through the Midwest can generate lightning at a rate of more than one strike per second for an extended period of time. But what about in a tropical storm or hurricane? You might be astonished to learn that, on average, a hurricane rarely produces more than a single lightning strike every 10 minutes. While there are some hurricanes and tropical storms that are highly electrified (especially when making landfall), don’t let your guard down—many are not.

No GA pilot is going to fly through the center of a tropical storm or hurricane on purpose. There’s typically plenty of advance warning from the NHC on the location and track of these powerful weather systems. However, once the tropical system makes landfall and weakens, how safe is it to fly through some of the precipitation remnants of the storm? A dissipating tropical system over land can contain some nasty convective turbulence and even small EF0 and EF1 tornadoes. Consequently, it is not unusual for the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) to issue a tornado watch for most tropical systems making landfall.

• READ MORE: Flying Through the Center of a Trough Should Have Been Uneventful

The precipitation signature as depicted on a ground-based radar mosaic associated with tropical cyclone remnants may not look too threatening to the average pilot.

First, it is often void of lightning, unlike what you might see with other convective outbreaks. Also, the automated surface observations in the area may only include +RA for heavy rainfall. In other words, you may not see +TSRA implying lightning exists as well as rain. Second, the ground-based radar mosaic may not have much of a true cellular structure with high reflectivity gradients that we often see with other deep, moist convection.

Despite the lack of lightning and a relatively benign-looking radar image, tropical system remnants should be treated as if they were that intense squall line in the Midwest. After such a tropical system makes landfall and begins to rapidly dissipate into a tropical depression or extra-tropical cyclone, it will move inland carrying similar risks.

This is evidenced by the remnants of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This was a powerful storm that made landfall as a strong Category 3 hurricane at the end of August near New Orleans and moved north into the Tennessee and Ohio valleys as it dissipated.

Even after the storm was declared as extra-tropical, tornado watches were issued just to the east of Katrina’s track along the central and southern Appalachian Mountains and into the Mid-Atlantic. It is important to understand that the lack of lightning does not imply the lack of dangerous convective turbulence.

In order for lightning to form within deep, moist convection, three ingredients must be present in the right location of the cloud. This includes ice crystals, supercooled liquid water, and a “soft hail” particle called graupel.

Updrafts in tropical systems are actually quite limited, usually no more than 1,500 feet per minute. These updrafts are far from upright, owing to the strong horizontal wind shear present. According to hurricane researcher Dr. Robert Black, “while there is some presence of electrical fields, the graupel-liquid water-ice combination turns out to be at the wrong place at the wrong temperature and in insufficient volume to give the spatial charge distribution to produce a lightning discharge.”

In layman’s terms, little supercooled liquid water gets carried high enough to the level necessary to electrify the cloud. This continues to be true even after the tropical system makes landfall and dissipates inland.

The most serious electrification occurs in the outer rain bands as they spiral outward from the center of the storm. These can often look a lot like that Midwest frontal convection. Most convective cells along that squall line in the Great Plains or Midwest often move in a northeasterly direction based on the shift of the air mass and the winds aloft.

However, this may not be the case for these tropical cyclone bands. You may find these cells moving in a northerly or even westerly motion depending on the track of the tropical system.

Remain Outside of the Northeast Quadrant

If you split the storm into four quadrants based on its forward movement, the most intense atmospheric shear occurs in the northeast quadrant. This is typically where you will find the highest storm surge at landfall and where tornado watches are usually issued. As the system makes landfall, moves inland, dissipates, and becomes extra-tropical, you will find the northeast quadrant should be strictly avoided.

As we make our way through hurricane season this year, keep a close eye on the tropics and heed the guidance from the NHC. Even weak storms making landfall can add significant hazards for most aircraft. The convection associated with these storms is not the normal kind we experience during the warm season. Therefore, you can’t assume that the same ground-based signatures you might steer away from with normal convection will be present with this tropical convection.

Last, but not least, don’t use the lack of lightning to be your guide to determine what precipitation is safe to fly through. Assume there is ample wind shear in the atmosphere regardless of how it appears on radar. It may prove not to be a fair match for your aircraft or skill set.

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

The post Keeping an Eye on the Storm appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

My dad and grandpa’s Cessna 172 Skyhawk XP, with its delightfully itchy sheepskin seats and the “Please step outside to smoke” sign on the dash, introduced me to aviation as a 7-year-old. I would practice ELT searches with my dad, organize Jeppesen charts, and try to read the instruments just like he would.

And being a kid in the ’80s, buzzing soccer games and friends’ houses only helped cement a love of aviation—and, as it turned out, adrenaline. I assumed that my dad’s skillful IFR landings and the rigor applied to his Civil Air Patrol work were the norm for pilots.

With grandpa’s passing, the C-172 went away. We didn’t have much extra money, so Saturday morning flights became a thing of the past. I grew up and eventually started a company and had some kids and raced some cars. I knew enough about being a pilot that I would not have the time to fly consistently and, therefore, I would not learn to fly well. As the company did better, I would dry lease or fly on fractionals to meetings and races. I wouldn’t think about the pilot we hired, the maintenance record of the airplane, or how young the pilot in command was. I was just excited to be in a small airplane again.

• READ MORE: Finding a Deer in the Headlights

The first lesson to pay attention came in the form of an early delivery Eclipse 500. I often dry leased a Malibu and hired a pilot (its owner). I enjoyed the steep approaches to Truckee, California (KTRK), and talking shop as I flew in the right seat with him. Each flight was an informal lesson. Soon, his Malibu went away, and a brand-new fast and high Eclipse 500 took its place. The idea of a very light jet (VLJ) was intoxicating. So much so that I never once questioned his ability to step up from the Malibu, nor did I question the sea of yellow “INOP” stickers that littered the panel of this dubiously certified little jet.

He and I were flying a short hop from McClellan Airfield (KMCC) in Sacramento, California, to the 3,300-foot strip at Gnoss Field (KDVO) in Marin County. Prior to takeoff, reports of fog made Gnoss a no-go, so we planned to fly an even shorter hop to Napa County (KAPC), which, it turns out, was also in the fog.

I sat in the right seat, and we talked about the new little jet’s systems. I admired the cockpit layout and the elegant sidestick jutting out from my right armrest. As we came in for the approach to Napa, there was thick fog for miles. I assumed it was a high layer and we’d punch right through just like dad used to. The pilot descended into the fog, and I did my job being a quiet passenger. In a slightly stressed tone, he asked if I could see the runway. Runway? We’re still way deep in the thick of the fog. And then there it was, still shrouded in fog, maybe 400 feet below and well to the right of us. I pointed it out as the numbers passed by us, and the airplane aggressively turned to line up with the still-shrouded runway. There was no way we were going to try to land, right?

• READ MORE: Beloved Flight Instructor’s Lessons Continue to Replay in Airline Captain’s Head

Thankfully, the pilot chose to go around. We went around on a steep climb to the right. And that’s when I heard the stern voice of the ATC—who I would soon find out was sitting in the tower…to our right—tell us that the go-around was to the left, and it’s critical to know and follow go-around procedures. We climbed back out of the clouds, he lined it back up, and we tried it again. Nope. Then again.

The third time, it went worse. The runway was nowhere in sight. The pilot muttered something about how we need to be careful as there are antennas nearby. We finally see the ground, which I think was somewhere between Runways 18L and 6. He went around again…to the right. The controller was now aggressively chastising him on the radio when I realized that we were still low and still turning and now in a banked descent somewhere near the tower and Runway 6. I looked up (yes, up) through the windshield and saw an access road and grass at a very odd angle to the panel. We weren’t level nor straight. And there is a tower somewhere to our left.

I knew enough about flying that this is a view that not many see from the windscreen of a jet a couple of hundred feet off the ground and can talk about later. My confidence that the pilot was in control was near zero. I knew that we needed to level the wings and pull back ASAP. I had the clarity of mind (thanks be to evolution for situations such as these) to know that grabbing that elegant little sidestick would probably kill us. Or then again, maybe it would save us.

The cliches of time slowing down and life flashing before my eyes proved to be true. My fingers opened inches from the stick, and I looked left to the pilot’s hands to see if he was going to level us first. I would give him exactly one second before I’d yell, “My plane!” I know, this is a supremely dumb idea. My brain was very much in “don’t-die” mode. Thankfully, he didn’t freeze up. He flew the airplane out of the situation that he got us into.

We climbed out as the controller gathered himself and offered a different type of IFR approach. I didn’t understand this exchange. What are we using? To this day I have no idea how he was navigating. Whatever was offered by the concerned controller was declined.

We rose above the clouds and were silent. Neither of us wanted to talk about what had just happened, so I asked him to go back to McClellan.

“Can’t. Not enough fuel,” the pilot responded.

I asked if we could declare an emergency and land at Travis Air Force Base (KSUU). That runway has to be a mile wide and 3 miles long.

“No,” he said.

What? Why would we depart Sacramento and into Napa’s fog with a thimble full of jet fuel?

We had to go back in for another try. I was not excited about this, so I just shut my mouth and did my best to spot the runway. Due to the stress of the situation, I have little recollection of that landing other than the controller talking him through it and, in a wise act of self-preservation, reminding him that the go-around procedure is to the left.

I learned about flying from that. Know your pilot. That was the last day I ever flew with or talked to him. And I never received an invoice.

The next lesson about flying regarded the airplane, not the pilot. The pilot was new to me, and lessons learned, I asked many questions about him and those who knew and recommended him. He was an instructor, A&P mechanic, military, commercial, with tens of thousands of hours over the decades. This was no hobby; this was his career. However, the airplane he was going to fly was a recent JetProp-converted Malibu. All the pilots talked about how fast and fun it was to fly. The giant exhaust sticking out of the cowling and expansive glass cockpit won me over.

He flew me from Truckee to Bakersfield, California (KBFL), so I could test a race car at the track in nearby Buttonwillow. The flight down was fast and comfortable for a solo passenger. When the day at the track was done, I made my way back to Bakersfield and climbed into the JetProp. The pilot did his walk-arounds, safety checks, and used checklists. I like this guy. We took off into the moonless black night over central California and left the lights of Bakersfield behind. I was tired, so I sat in the rear-facing seat and kicked my legs up. I was looking at the scattered lights of a few farmhouses far below. It was dark. It seemed too dark. I then noticed that there were no lights on the wingtip.

That’s odd.

I looked over my shoulder to the pilot and saw no lights on the panel either. He was digging through his duffle, so I used my phone to light the cockpit. He grabbed a flashlight and a hand-held radio and visually swept the panel. A lone old-school artificial horizon was installed to the far right of the new glass panel. It was in the worst possible position for a single pilot in the left seat, flying on a moonless night over dark farmland.

The pilot calmly radioed an emergency and climbed higher to give us the best possible chances if the engine stopped turning. Unfortunately, the radio was low on batteries, so he could only make a short call before it died. He would leave it off for a bit and then turn it back on for a short transmission.

He continued to fly the airplane, scan the instruments with his flashlight, and try to restart the electrical system to no avail. He kept calm despite some (actually, a lot of) sweat. The emergency gear extension knob was used, and two clunks were heard—but not three. He turned the radio back on and requested a flyby to see if the nose gear was actually down. As he approached the tower, the emergency lights on the runway lit up the night as fire trucks and ambulances staged themselves along the taxiways.

The tower controllers apparently didn’t know where we were, and we flew right by in the dark and didn’t get a gear-down affirmation signal. I assumed radar would tell them where we were, but it didn’t seem like they were able to see us. The pilot kept scanning the panel, flying the airplane, and checking altitude to ensure that we were still within glide distance of the airport. As he flew the pattern it was eerily dark, so I stared at my phone and contemplated texting my wife.

He flew a perfect approach. As we descended over the sea of emergency lights, he held the airplane a few feet off the runway and landed long in order to bleed speed then gently set down on the mains. He then held the nosewheel up until he could gently set it down. Like butter. The gear held. I clearly had the right pilot for the situation. We taxied off the runway, and he shut down the engine on the taxiway—and it got very dark around us once again.

The downside to landing long is that no one saw us. The controllers would later share that they assumed we were down out in the dark desert. The runway was so long and wide, this tiny unlit airplane was easy to miss as it landed long right down the center while they were scanning the skies.

Someone radioed to the emergency crews that they thought they saw someone. All the emergency trucks started racing down the taxiways. The pilot yelled for the first time. “Get out of the airplane! They don’t see us!”

After all this, we were about to be run over by one or more well-meaning, 70,000-pound fire trucks. We ran from the airplane into the grass as their lights finally spotted our darkened plane, and they slammed on their brakes.

I rented a Nissan Sentra and drove the six hours home.

I had vetted the pilot but did not vet the airplane beyond admiring the panel and that sexy exhaust. A short had killed its generator, inverter, and battery. I should not have chosen to fly on a recently converted airplane until hundreds of flight hours had passed.

Passengers should educate themselves to vet both plane and pilot. The admiration and trust we have for both is well earned but should not be universally applied.

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

The post Everyone Should Pay Close Attention in the Cockpit appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was about 1 o’clock in the morning. The air on the surface was warm and humid. If he checked the weather—there was no evidence that he did—he would have expected to find widespread but patchy cloudiness over the route of flight and at the destination. In some places clouds were broken or scattered with tops at 3,000. Elsewhere buildups climbed into the flight levels. Ceilings and visibilities under the clouds were good, at worst 700 feet and 5 miles. The temperature and the dew point were only 3 degrees apart, however, and there was a slightly increased risk of fog formation owing to, of all things, particulate pollution from dust blown in from the Sahara.

During the short flight, he climbed to 3,600 feet, probably to get above some cloud tops. It was pitch-dark as the crescent moon was far below the horizon. As he neared his destination he descended to 1,500 msl, 1,300 feet above the terrain, and reduced his groundspeed from 175 knots to 100 knots.

The airstrip at which he intended to land was 3,500 feet long, 40 feet wide, and had a light gray concrete surface oriented 4/22. Other than a hangar on an apron at midfield, there were no structures on the airport and no edge lights along the runway.

The only lights were red ones marking the runway ends. The surrounding area was largely dark. Sam Rayburn Reservoir sat close by to the north and east, a vast region of uninterrupted black. Parallel to the runway, about half a mile north, was State Highway 147, lighted only by the headlamps of infrequently passing cars.

• READ MORE: Two Fatal Cases of the Simply Inexperienced

For almost an hour, the pilot flew back and forth over the airstrip, tracing a tangled path of seemingly random right and left turns. His altitude varied between 350 and 1,100 feet agl and his groundspeed between 65 and 143 knots. His ground track, as recorded by ATC radar, suggested no systematic plan, but it was broadly centered on the northeast end of the runway.

The last return from the Saratoga, recorded 54 minutes after it arrived over the field, put it 9,700 feet from the northeast end of the runway on a close-in extended left downwind leg for Runway 22 at a height of 350 feet agl and a groundspeed of 94 knots. The Saratoga was below radar for the remainder of the flight.

Its burned wreckage was found at the southern edge of the clear-cut area surrounding the runway, several hundred feet short of the threshold. A trail of parts led back across the clear-cut to its north side, where the airplane had clipped a treetop at the edge of the woods. From the orientation of the wreckage path, it appeared that the Saratoga may have overshot the centerline on base and was correcting back toward the approach end lights when it struck the tree.

In the course of the accident investigation, it emerged that the airplane was out of annual, its last inspection having occurred in 2017, the registration had expired, and the pilot’s medical was out of date. The pilot had 400 hours (estimated) but did not have an instrument rating and, in fact, had only a student certificate. The autopsy turned up residues of amphetamine, methamphetamine, and THC (the psychoactive component of cannabis), but investigators did not rule out the possibility that the drugs could have had a therapeutic purpose.

• READ MORE: Three-Mile Limit: Novice Pilots Succumb to the Perils of Total Darkness

The National Transportation Safety Board’s report on the accident declines to speculate on whether the drugs impaired the pilot in any way. In fact, the NTSB report concedes that “the pilot’s aircraft handling was not deficient relative to his limited experience of flying in night instrument conditions and the prolonged period of approach attempts.” The finding of probable cause cited only the pilot’s “poor decision-making as he attempted to land at an unlit airstrip in night instrument conditions.”

The pilot bought the Saratoga in 2016 and then took flying lessons, but he stopped short of getting the private certificate. His instructor said he had never given him any instrument training. The pilot’s wife said that he “normally” flew to the airport at night and circled down until he could see the runway.

The airport was in Class G airspace. What the cloud conditions were we don’t know—the nearest automated reporting station was 24 nm away—and so we don’t know whether the Saratoga was ever in clouds and, if so, for how long. Maneuvering around at low level for nearly an hour in darkness and intermittent IMC would be taxing even for many instrument-rated pilots, and so it seems likely that if the pilot was in clouds at all, it was only for brief periods.

• READ MORE: Fatal Cirrus Accident Shows That Some Knowledge Doesn’t Translate

Two things strike me about this accident. First, how close it came to not happening: If the pilot hadn’t clipped the tree, he might have made the turn to the runway successfully and landed without incident, as he apparently had done in the past. Second, that he had ever managed the trick at all. I can only suppose that the contrast between the runway clear-cut and the surrounding forest was discernible when there was moonlight and that he was able to use GPS and the runway’s end lights to get himself to a position where his landing light would illuminate the runway.

Rugged individualism being, supposedly, an American virtue, I leave it to you to applaud or deplore the nonconformist aspects of this pilot’s actions. Perhaps a certain amount of freelancing is inevitable in an activity like flying. But I deprecate his persistence. One of the essential arrows in every pilot’s quiver should be knowing when to quit. He set himself a nearly impossible goal, and after flying half an hour to his destination, he spent an hour trying to figure out how to get onto the ground.

If it was that difficult, it wasn’t worth doing. There were other airports—with runway lights—nearby.

At the time of the crash, the pilot was awaiting the decision of a Houston court in a wrongful  termination lawsuit that he had filed against a former employer. Five months later, the court found in his favor to the tune of $143 million. Thanks to a terminal case of “get-homeitis,” however, he wasn’t there to enjoy it.

Note: This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

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

The post A Cautionary Tale About Pilot Freelancing appeared first on FLYING Magazine.