Category: Flying – Page 2
November 666 Echo X-ray, Do You Read?
(Something from the archives: a 2008 post about Air Traffic Service Units in the UK and my native ability to talk too much. I’ll be back with fresh content next week.) Air/Ground Radio Airfields with A/G Radio offer an information service with a radio operator who are not licensed and not under close CAA supervision.…
Read more… 7 May 10
Cross Country Solo – Part Three
The cross country navigation exercise is required to complete the JAR private pilot’s licence. It is effectively the first time the pilot is left alone with the plane, dependent on the new skills learned over the past few weeks. It is now not simply a case of handling the plane but also juggling the full…
Read more… 16 Apr 10
Cross Country Solo – Part 2
The cross country navigation exercise is required to complete the JAR private pilot’s licence. It is effectively the first time the pilot is left alone with the plane, dependent on the new skills learned over the past few weeks. It is now not simply a case of handling the plane but also juggling the full…
Read more… 9 Apr 10
The Last Flight
Max Grogan, a pilot and avid photographer, posted this story to BeechTalk.com, a wonderful community of pilots and Beechcraft enthusiasts. I was immediately entranced and contacted Max directly to thank him for this heartwarming story of the brief friendship of two men, united by a love of flying. He was kind enough to give me…
Read more… 12 Feb 10
Brookman’s Park VOR (BPK)
I shouldn’t have hopped the fence. It was shut with a big padlock and surrounded by barbed wire so I can’t exactly claim that I hadn’t noticed it. But I’d walked such a long way – 5 miles! – just to take some photographs for my blog, it seemed such a shame to give up…
Read more… 25 Sep 09
Pitch vs. Power: Landing Better
Flying is hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. When I first started flying, I presumed that the phrase was referring to the take-off and landing. I hadn’t even begun to conceive of things going wrong in the air; flying from A to B was the easy bit. Getting into the air and…
Read more… 10 Jul 09
Accident Reports
In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380
On the 17th of April in 2018, Southwest Airlines flight 1330 experienced an engine failure while climbing to cruise altitude. The aircraft was a Boeing 737-7H4 (registration N772SW) with two…
Going Around: Bulgaria Air Charter flight 8115
It was 4am on the 16th of July 2018 when the Bulgaria Air Charter flight crew arrived at the airport, an hour before the scheduled 05:12 flight 8115 from Catania…
Demystifying
How do you pronounce…?
This is a very interesting article by Allen Amsbaugh which was originally published in NASA’s ASRS Directline about the issues of navigational fixes which sound or look similar. The ASRS…
Flightradar 24 and aircraft tracking
Flightradar24 (FR24) is a global flight tracking site which offers realtime information about flights by tracking ADS-B. ADS-B stands for automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast. This is a means for an aircraft…
History
How to shoot down a fighter jet...while flying it.
The Grumman F-11 Tiger was a popular US Navy fighter aircraft introduced in 1956. At the time, it was known as the F11F Tiger. Grumman had been working to modernise…
The Real “Bionic Man”
Some of you may have spotted the recent comments on Wingless Flight in the M2-F1 by aerospace journalist and author Nigel Macknight, who had written about NASA’s M2-F2 pilot Milt…
Fun Stuff
Microsoft Flight Simulator: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Microsoft Flight Simulator has released a new version, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, fourteen years after the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator X. The timing couldn’t be better, of course, with…
Toddler Overboard and other aviation videos
I’ve got quite a collection of interesting videos building up so it’s past time for me to share them! These are not all brand new but new to me and…
@FearofLanding
Mendel on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380From the final report: "For example, according to CVR information, during the 17 minutes between the time of the engine…
Rudy Jakma on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380That makes sense Chip. It also would confirm your observation that the aircraft was not severely damaged, otherwise an engine…
Harrow on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380The details of a flight plan often do not survive even the closing of the boarding gate, much less any…
CHip on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380The Wikipedia article says The aircraft, N772SW, a Boeing 737-7H4 was subsequently flown to Boeing in Everett, WA on April…
R Waskin on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380Re fuel and souls on board, isn't that information contained in the flight plan? I'm a private pilot, not commercial,…
Jon on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380Hear Hear! It is what they are trained to do, and they did very well. You hear often about how…