Flymall.org is pleased to announce that we have joined forces with another aircraft dealer and we can now offer our customers new and used Light Sport Aircraft. These include Tecnam, Piper, Cessna, Remos, and Czech Sport Aircraft. You can deal directly with us and receive the Flymall personal touch throughout the purchase process. We are looking forward to assisting you with your Light Sport Aircraft purchase. Blue skies and tailwinds.
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).
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Flymall has a new campaign to help you sell your aircraft. Flymall pays for all advertising, responds to all inquires, prequalifies all potential buyers and sends you only qualified/serious buyers. You will be responsible for demoing the aircraft. Flymall is only acting as an advertising agency therefore we will not be able to demo the aircraft. We are able to meet a buyer and show them the aircraft in the hangar or at your tie down, however we will not be able to fly the aircraft.
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.
Flymall.org has launched a new section on our website called “DayTripper”. It is full of day trip and/or flyout ideas. It uses the same program used for our aircraft inventory you can use the “Search Aircraft” box in the upper right corner and use key words to find an idea. You can type in “flyout” and all of the flyout ideas will be displayed. If you plan to be at an airport and you want to know what there is to do there you can type in the airport name or identifier to see what we have available. We are also adding local places to eat or for catering for each airport listed in our database. You can also search for ideas by the city or town name. There are also non flying day trip ideas, just enter your topic of interest to see what we have listed, for example type in “trains” and you will find several day trip ideas for the train enthusiasts. If you like driving or bicycling type in “covered bridge, tour, drive, driving, cruise, cars, automotive, motorcycle, or cycling and I have a covered bridge tour idea – we will be adding more driving tours or scenic drives . There are also some unusual vacation ideas listed, for example we have an underwater hotel in Florida. We also have several hiking and/or bicycling trail finders that allow you to search for a hiking or bicycle trail near you. For most we have a link for the local weather and forecast (aviation and non aviation weather is available via the link). We plan to have the weather available for all daytripper events. We are still building the database, so this is a work in progress – keep checking back to see what has been added. If you have an idea please email us, you can email us directly from the daytripper section of this site.
For aircraft delivery or ferry pilot services contact www.theferrypilot.com. They offer services throughout the U.S., Canada, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean!
It was a brisk morning with temperatures in the 50s. Three cars and one motorcycle (yours truly on the motorcycle) met at the cruise in location to parade over to the Agricultural History Farm Park for the 14th Annual Gas & Steam Engine Show.
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.
Spring has finally sprung and it is time to dust off our motorcycles and go cruising. To help kick off the season I invited a friend over for lunch to talk about cars and motorcycles. The conversation turned to engines and naturally being a pilot I added a little about aircraft engines. Soon I was on the topic of Charles Taylor and how he built the first aircraft engine for the Wright Bros. I explained how Charles Taylor built this first aircraft engine with some very basic tools and how that engine not only met the Wright Bros requirements but it exceeded them. Several years ago I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing one of his 1903 engines run. The engine that I saw run was ALL original ran just fine – over 100 years old!
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.
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The temperatures were mild – upper 50 to low 60 for our March 7 2010 cruise in lunch at Red Hot & Blue. Everyone was thrilled to be out on such a nice day especially after the back to back blizzards we had a few weeks ago. We all arrived around 12 noon and to our surprise there was about 10 cars on the cruise in lot – folks just hanging out outside talking cars!
Inside the atmosphere was electrified with gear heads talking about their winter projects and showing pictures of the progress. This is just the second year for our cruise in and it is rapidly growing. We had to spend a little time rearranging the room to accommodate the large turn out (about 20 people).
The employees at Red Hot & Blue were prompt and very helpful. To my knowledge there were no major mix-ups with our orders. And I believe we all had a great lunch! Chuck gave a nice speech and next we had our “show and tell”. We also discussed our plans for our cruise outs. We’re planning to meet at our cruise in lot and drive to some local car shows and other gatherings. Stay tuned for more information via Chuck’s emails.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating how a child was allowed to direct air traffic at the nation’s sixth-busiest airport – New York’s JFK International.
As CBS News Correspondent Kelly Wallace reports, the Feb. 17 incident involved a child on the radio to pilots of planes awaiting takeoff. The boy was allowed to make at least five transmissions to commercial jets.
In tapes obtained by CBS News, the boy is clearly heard:
Boy: AMX 403, Contact departures. Adios.
Pilot: Contact departures. Aeromexico 403. Adios.
An adult — reportedly a controller — made sure the pilots were in on the joke, Wallace says.
“That’s what you get guys when the kids are out of school!” the adult says on the tapes.
Another transmission from the tape:
Boy: Jet Blue 171 cleared for takeoff.
Pilot: Cleared for takeoff. Jet blue 171.
Boy: Jet Blue 171 — contact departures.
Pilot: Over to departures. Jet blue 171. Awesome job. (chuckle)
In a statement, the FAA says, “Pending … our investigation, the employees involved in this incident are not controlling air traffic. This behavior is not acceptable and does not demonstrate the kind of professionalism expected from all faa employees.”
The FAA confirms to CBS News that the two employees who have been suspended are the controller who brought his son into the tower (the FAA confirms it is his voice on the recording) and the supervisor who “tolerated” the incident.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association says, “We do not condone this type of behavior in any way. It is not indicative of the highest professional standards that controllers set for themselves and exceed each and every day in the advancement of aviation safety.”
Air control towers are highly secure areas, Wallace points out, and it’s still not clear how this could have been allowed.
CBS News Travel Editor Peter Greenberg says, “You’re dealing with two separate violations here: access to the tower itself, and access to radio frequencies. And you’re dealing with a potentially dangerous situation. … The bottom line here is any air traffic controller on the ground in that particular case who was handling departure control would be multi-tasking, talking to more than one pilot at the same time. In order for his son, or whoever the kid is, to make those radio calls, he had to relinquish control of the microphone and stop talking to those other pilots.
“You’re talking about multiple runways with both departure and approach, and one miscue can lead to disaster. The good news is, of course, if there is any good news out of this, is that this happened on the ground, and not at an air traffic control center, where you’re dealing with many more planes in the air in terms of aircraft separation.”
Usually, says Greenberg, “No one has an opportunity to talk on that microphone other than a licensed air traffic controller.
” … Ironically, this incident happens at a time when the air traffic controller staffing levels are at a 16-year low. This is one silly way to actually promote that incident.”
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Overlooking the Key Bridge and Potomac River from the Watergate this past Sunday in the lovely home of Vice-Chair Barb Rohde,
we were given the privilege of spending an afternoon with Pilot and Judge Pauline (“Polly”) Newman. As so often when a group of 99s get-together, a wonderful atmosphere of unity emerges, that transcends space and time and lasts forever in our memories. In this case, through the recollection of Polly’s aviation experiences, we became linked to 99s founding mother Ruth Nichols, to aviation in the 1940s and 1950s and to the incredible life story of yet another strong, independent, intelligent woman in aviation. Polly impressed us all with her soft-spoken, articulate description of her education and with her flying accomplishments. Dr. and Judge Newman is remarkably well-educated with degrees from Vassar and Columbia, a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Yale, and a Law degree (L.L.B) from New York University. Of all the things her family told her she could not do—they never said she could not fly. And fly she did. She was swept up into the exciting time in aviation after WWII, and had the tremendous opportunity to be trained by the “hot” <err–savvy> veteran pilots looking for work in New Haven, Conn. Her primary training was by the best, and she received Airman’s certificate #3708.
She worked for a few years as a Scientist at American Cyanamid Co, and some of her best adventures were her Sunday flights in a Piper cub, where she learned to do aerobatics as well as those that could be done in a Stearman. Her most memorable aviation adventure during this time was a trip from the tip of Cape Cod across Buzzards Bay with passengers, where she encountered such incredibly strong head wind that she seemed suspended in space. In her head, she could hear the voices of her past instructors [“keep your eye on land/ground for perspective” and “know where the nearest airport is”]. She descended to ~6 ft off the water to get forward speed and prepared for an emergency landing into Newport. She was aware by then of the strong, wicked winds as she lined up for a wheel landing, but was perplexed and detoured by all the men on the field. Not knowing why they were there, and not wanting to hit them, she maneuvered for an adjacent grass field—only to have them run over to it. As she landed, she realized that they were there to hold the plane down, and that she had landed a J3 in winds gusting to 60 kt!
Polly flew with Ruth Nichols in the CAP, and both shared the ambition of becoming astronauts in the 1950s. (precocious, that is, as this would not become a reality for any American woman until 1983 and Sally Ride). She offered a kind and thoughtful perspective on the life, accomplishments and tragedies of Ms Nichols. Ruth Nichols participated in the 1929 Powder Puff Derby and was one of the original founding 99s, always wanted to push further and break records. She set numerous speed records including a transcontinental speed record (in 1930—beating Lindberg) and was one of the first women to fly jets. In her later years, after 6-major accidents, she turned her efforts to humanitarian work with the CAP.
We all sat spellbound this past Sunday and were indeed fortunate to have Judge Newman as our guide. For those of us who knew Fay Gilles Wells, or Dr. Linda Thompson (MD) who treated Bobbi Trout, Polly gave us a grasp of the human link and continuity to our sisters-past in aviation that left us all with a new contextual reality of greater depth and appreciation for all that we share here and now.
