Federal regulations require “service animal relief areas” for animals like guide dogs who accompany their owners of flights, but the areas are open to all pets traveling with their families.

 What are CDRs?

CDRs are preplanned routes of flights that can be issued to pilots when thunderstorms, turbulence, or traffic constraints preclude ATC from issuing the standard routing between the airport pairs. These preplanned routes have special 8-letter identifiers (such as MDWTEBC6 ) where the first three letters are the departure airport ID, and the next three letters are the arrival airport ID, and the last two letters are for specifying which specific CDR route is to be used between the two airports. Thus the origin of the name CDR (Coded Departure Routes).

By giving a controller the ability to assign a preplanned CDR, coordination between ATC facilities and the flight crew is simplified. This can save time and avoid possible mistakes. This is done simply by assigning an 8-character clearance versus a lengthy reroute with all the Airway, VOR and intersections.

For more information on CDRs click here

There is an old aviation saying: “Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment”.  And another well known quote that is found in numerous FAA manuals goes like this: “A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid those situations which require the use of superior skill”.  But how do we get that “Good or superior judgment”?  The FAA does not tell us flight instructors how to teach judgment.  However FAA manuals do define pilot judgment as the mental process by which the pilot recognizes, analyzes, and evaluates information regarding himself/herself, the aircraft, and the external environment.  And they go on to say that good pilot judgment can be developed as part of a flight-crew training program.  But the FAA does not mention anything on how to teach judgment, more so good judgment.  The FAA does say that the best way to learn good judgment is through flying.  

A quote from FAA-P- 8740, Pilot Prerogatives: “You don’t have to fly every day to be good – to be sharp – but you do have to fly and to practice often. Practice makes better pilots. What is needed, then, is to gain exposure to flying in small, digestible chunks, and to effectively evaluate this experience. This is how judgment is developed.”   As an instructor it is easier to fine tune a student’s flying skills than to teach them good judgment.

Words like sound, good, critical, poor, best, professional are often used to describe what kind of judgment a pilot has or should have.  The FAA explains (in very good detail) what can impair our judgment or what can have an adverse effect on our judgment.  Designated Pilot Examiners use judgment when conducting a check ride.  We as pilots are even taught that good judgment is so critical to flying safely.

So how do we teach good judgment?  When examining this question in the various FAA manuals we find that the FAA does give some clues on teaching good judgment.  Judgment goes hand-in-hand with decision making and experience is also used when discussing judgment.  So perhaps the key the teaching judgment (good judgment) is to give your students the necessary tools and skills so that they demonstrate “good” decision making skills, and through their good decision making skills they will gain experience at their own comfort level. 

Pilots can relate to real life stories or experiences from other pilots.  There is nothing better than to learn from others mistakes.  So when teaching judgment I find that it is best to give real life examples or scenarios.  Share with your students your experiences.  A good discussion to assist in teaching judgment is a talk about early fuel stops and weather delays.  Years ago I was told a story about an airline captain on a flight from the west coast to New York.  As the flight neared the Ohio area the talk on the frequency was about a line of storms and that there would be a delay of about an hour getting into New York.  ATC was giving holding instructions to pilots and most said that they had enough fuel to hold for over an hour so hold they would.  This particular captain had “be there, done that” and he decided to land short of New York and take on fuel.  After landing and refueling he arrived up at altitude only to hear on the frequency that the other flights that decided to hold were getting low on fuel and had to land ASAP for fuel.  Our captain displayed good judgment, he evaluated the weather and the amount of traffic on the frequency and with all of that information he knew it was best to land early and get fuel.  As it turns out his flight was one of the first into KJFK (the delay ended up being more than 2 hours). Perhaps his good judgment was because of his experience.  So back to our question of teaching judgment, we can give our students tools to assist them in their decision making process and thus they will be gaining experience.  And it is their experience that will give them good judgment.  We as flight instructors may not teach judgment directly however we teach decision making and it is through decision making and experience that pilots learn judgment (good judgment).

Our fee for this service is $900.00.  There is a $450.00 fee due at the signing of our agreement and the balance of $450.00 is due when the aircraft is sold.  On average it will cost between $300.00 and $600.00 to sell an aircraft.  We will sign a broker agreement for 120 days.  At the end of the 120 days if the aircraft has not sold we can revisit our options and depending on the situation there may be an additional fee to continue listing the aircraft.

Click here for a slide show of the event

 Here is the parade video shot by Pat on the way to the show.

There were numerous engines on display with most of them running.  Some were steam powered while others were gas or diesel powered.  Here is some video of some of the engines running.

There were several steam powered tractors that were parading around.  And Chuck was enthused with the Model A Fords.

Here is a little piece from Centennial of Flight  in Charles Taylor’s own words about the first aircraft engine.

“We didn’t make any drawings. One of us would sketch out the part we were talking about on a piece of scratch paper, and I’d spike the sketch over my bench. It took me six weeks to make that engine. The only metal-working machines we had were a lathe and a drill press, run by belts from the stationary gas engine.

The crankshaft was made out of a block of machine steel 6 by 31 inches and 15/8 inch thick. I traced the outline on the slab, then drilled through with the drill press until I could knock out the surplus pieces with a hammer and chisel. Then I put it in the lathe and turned it down to size and smoothness.

The body of the first engine was of cast aluminum and was bored out on the lathe for independent cylinders. The pistons were cast iron, and these were turned down and grooved for piston rings.

The completed engine weighed 180 pounds and developed 12 horsepower at 1,025 revolutions per minute.

While I was doing all this work on the engine, Will and Orv were busy upstairs working on the airframe. They asked me to make the metal parts, such as the small fittings where the wooden struts joined the spars and the truss wires were attached. There weren’t any turnbuckles in the truss wires, so the fit had to be just so. It was so tight we had to force the struts into position.

The fuel system was simple. A one-gallon fuel tank was suspended from a wing strut, and the gasoline fed by gravity down a tube to the engine. The fuel valve was an ordinary gaslight pet cock. There was no carburetor as we know it today. The fuel was fed into a shallow chamber in the manifold. Raw gas blended with air in this chamber, which was next to the cylinders and heated up rather quickly, this helping to vaporize the mixture. The engine was started by priming each cylinder with a few drops of raw gas.

The ignition was the make-and-break type. No spark plugs. The spark was made by the opening and closing of two contact points inside the combustion chamber. These were operated by shafts and cams geared to the main camshaft. The ignition switch was an ordinary single-throw knife switch we bought at the hardware store. Dry batteries were used for starting the engine, and then we switched onto a magneto bought from the Dayton Electric Company. There was no battery on the plane.

Several lengths of speaking tube, such as you find in apartment houses, were used in the radiator.

The chains to drive the propeller shafts were specially made by the Indianapolis Chain Company, but the sprockets came ready-made. Roebling wire was used for the trusses.”

Click here for an article that Harry Kraemer published in Aviation Maintenance in December 2003.

Click here for some more reading on Charles Taylor from Aircraft Maintenance Technology.