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.

Meanwhile, many airlines are actively hiring for one particular behind-the-scenes job. Aviation Maintenance Technicians (AMTs) are in high demand throughout the United States and around the world.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates four percent growth for aircraft and avionics mechanics through 2032. Aviation training company CAE projects a need for 138,000 AMTs by 2033. While only two out of the five largest U.S. airlines are currently hiring pilots, all of them are hiring AMTs.

• READ MORE: AMT Day Offers Opportunity to Inspire Next Generation

AMTs play a critical role in the world of aviation and becoming one opens the door to a challenging and rewarding career. Here is what you need to know about being an Aviation Maintenance Technician:

What Is an AMT?

AMT is the term for a licensed aircraft mechanic in the United States. There are two ratings under the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) certification for AMTs: airframe and powerplant. Most jobs require applicants to have both, with the term “A&P” (airframe and powerplant) often being used interchangeably with AMT.

What Do They Do?

The role of an AMT is wide-ranging. AMTs can work on any type of aircraft, ranging from small general aviation planes to widebody jumbo jets. Similarly, AMTs can perform maintenance of all parts of an aircraft. An AMT’s work can consist of anything from making a small pre-departure repair to an airliner at an airport gate to working on an engine overhaul in a hangar.

As a result, there are diverse career prospects for AMTs. While many choose to work for airlines, there are also opportunities to work for other employers like business and charter companies, government bodies, and maintenance contractors.

How Much Do They Make? 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for aircraft mechanics in 2023 was $75,400. The median annual pay for those working at airlines was $101,500

How Do I Become One?

The FAA requires AMTs to meet a set of basic requirements before they can be licensed. Prospective AMTs must be at least 18 years of age and be fluent in English. In addition, they must meet either a training or experience requirement.

AMTs can meet the training requirement by graduating from an FAA-approved Aviation Maintenance Technician school or by completing the Joint Service Aviation Maintenance Technician Certification Council training course for military personnel.

Alternatively, they can demonstrate that they have had 18 months of practical work experience with airframes or powerplants or 30 months of experience with both systems.

After meeting these requirements, an AMT must pass three FAA exams (written, oral, and practical) before they can be licensed.

How Long Is AMT School?

Most AMT training programs are designed to be completed between 14 and 24 months. The exact length can depend on the program and student.

Students learn about a wide variety of topics to prepare them for their future careers. Upon completing AMT school, graduates can apply for the FAA AMT certification.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AirlineGeeks.com.

The post AMT Jobs Could Be Part of Aviation’s Next Hiring Boom appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Once there it gathered more parts as though magnetized and consumed money like, well, a suddenly well-paid merchant marine on extended shore leave. You embraced one and tolerated the other. In time, the list of to-be-completed tasks shrank, and the possibility of it actually flying came into view, almost mirage-like.

The path from having a huge pile of airplane-kit components in the driveway to a flying example has complications beyond the construction process, all of which you learn as you go—with help from KITPLANES, naturally. But the ultimate goal for most is to have a flying airplane. (Truly, for some, the journey is the driver, not the goal.) And it’s the step from an assemblage of airplane-looking parts to an actual flying machine that is unique to homebuilding.

• READ MORE: Latest CubCrafters Design Looks Back and Ahead

Every Cessna you’ve flown has had a professional test pilot commit its first hour or more of flight. For your homebuilt, the task is on your shoulders. Probably.

The question, of course, is: Should you? It depends. How experienced are you overall? How many different aircraft types have you flown? What is your experience level in airplanes the same or very similar to your project? How recent is your flight experience? These are all fixable things, meaning if you have spent most of your budget on the build, it becomes smart, as you get near the end of the project, to start investing in flying time.

Begin with whatever you’re most comfortable with or what is locally available. At this getting-back-to-it stage, it is less important to be in an airplane similar to your homebuilt than it is just to get the stick or yoke time. Find an instructor who will not let you fly sloppy and who will keep you honest. Also, don’t fool yourself into thinking that an hour or two of dual instruction after years away from the flight deck will do it. You need to get well and truly current and, more importantly, proficient.

Then it’s time to consider training in airplanes similar to yours. The average homebuilt has more power for any given gross weight. Consider that the Van’s RV-7A typically has as much installed power as a Piper Archer, yet is 750 pounds lighter. It also has less wing area but, more important, far lighter controls. While the RV series in general has predictable stall characteristics, they are not as “mushy” as your common four-seat family airplane. Training only in the Piper will not prepare you for the RV.

For some of the most popular brands, again we’re talking Van’s RV series, transition training is available, which is highly desirable. In fact, many insurance companies effectively demand it for the first flights. If training is available in your make/model of homebuilt, find the money and do it. There is nothing better than recent experience in an airplane likely to be very similar to the one you just built.

• READ MORE: This 2022 Van’s RV-14 Is a Homebuilt, Cross-Country ‘AircraftForSale’ Top Pick

How important is this training? Accident statistics around homebuilt first flights illustrate the need. About a third of all reportable accidents during first flights fall into the broad category of “pilot miscontrol”  or improper handling of the airplane. Nothing in the airplane broke or caused the accident; it was pilot error.

Of those mishaps, the greatest single category involves stalls, followed by a bad flare or bounced landing, followed by misjudged approaches and loss of control during landing. Sometimes misrigging can make an airplane touchy near the lower end of the speed range, but more often than not, it’s just flown with inadequate margin. In the first few hours, you really don’t know what you don’t know.

Just because you feel ready doesn’t mean the airplane is. In the past, Experimental/Amateur-Built aircraft were required to have something called pre-cover inspections, basically a partway check by a designated airworthiness representative (DAR) or inspector to help ensure you’re doing a good job. That’s no longer required, but you do need to have a DAR or an FAA representative inspect the airplane prior to first flight.

More often than not, this is a spot check of critical systems—flight controls, in particular—and a thorough review of the paperwork to support that you did build the airplane and that you’ve completed all the forms. It is not necessarily a guarantee of airworthiness. That’s up to you as the manufacturer.

What most builders do today is host a last-look party. Invite other builders around for an afternoon poring over your airplane. Best are those who have built and are flying the same type you have, but those with keen eyes and a mechanical bent are also helpful. Open up the airplane, stand back, and let them find stuff. Stow your ego. They will find things wrong—missing cotter pins or rivets, wires rubbing, bolts not properly secured, all kinds of things. Fix every single defect they find before you fly.

Why is this so important? Because it can prevent problems. In a recent survey of first-flight accidents, 20 percent were attributable to builder error—most often mistakes building or configuring the fuel system (22 percent of the total builder-error accidents) with problems involving the carburetor, propeller or rotor, and airframe each accounting for 18 percent of the accidents.

• READ MORE: Buying a Van’s RV-4 Is an Experimental Adventure

Some of these accidents begin when builders try new ways to do things—as in the fuel-system design, for example—but sometimes it’s just poor execution of common and well-understood systems. A core truth in homebuilding is that the closer you stay to the plans—meaning that you’re building an airplane as much like the factory’s efforts as you can—the happier you’ll be in the long run. Every divergence from plans is a place where you lose the fleet experience and the engineering savvy others have gained for you, sometimes at the expense of other accidents.

In the not-too-distant past, builders who planned to perform first flights (as well as the rest of the flight-test program, defined as Phase I flight test by the FAA) could piece together elements of a good program, but it wasn’t ready made for them. It is now, thanks to the EAA’s Flight Test Manual and the accompanying Flight Test Cards. The manual provides step-by-step instructions on how to commit the most common portions of Phase I flight test, including the first flight, so there’s no need to freelance the materials.

Moreover, the test cards make each flight into bite-sized missions that focus on specific aspects of airplane control and performance. The concept is to commit the flight, note the results on the cards, and then continue only when the test is completed successfully.

In fact, the flight test cards underpin a new program in the Experimental world called task-based flight testing. Before this idea, all homebuilts were subject to a Phase I flight test based on hours flown, most commonly 40, but sometimes as few as 25 when the engine and propeller combination was a certified duo. Experimental LSA are the exception. But for the most common homebuilts, the new task-based system allows builders to complete Phase I once all the tests are complete.

Most of us have found that the last few hours of Phase I was a matter of trundling around, burning time. It’s too early to tell if Phase I hours are really reduced, but some have completed all the tests in 30 hours or less.

The last question is a hard one: Are you willing to treat your airplane like the machine that it is? If the engine quits on takeoff, you have to be willing to put it into the trees off the end of the runway. Because you’ve spent years building has no bearing on the outcome. You must be willing to sacrifice the airplane to save yourself. Builders have come to grief trying to stretch the glide after a problem, trying to make the airport or a softer landing spot because they don’t want to bend their new bird.

Truth is, doing your own flight testing takes more than piloting skill—though it absolutely starts there. You need to be careful, thoughtful, disciplined, and laser focused on the task at hand. When you land after the first flight and someone asks you how it felt, your answer should be more than “pretty good.” Instead, be precise: “Well, rudder trim’s a bit off, number 3 CHT is a little high, and I think the right main brake is sticking a bit.” Write that down (or, better, review the in-cabin video you so wisely employed), pull the airplane into the hangar where you can uncowl it, and inspect it like it’s the first time.

Then, once the adrenaline has worn off a bit, fist pump all you want. Just remember you have a bunch more of this ahead of you before your dream airplane is real.

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

The post Ultimate Issue: Are You the One for That First Flight? 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.

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

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

• READ MORE: Perusing Some Old Logbooks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• READ MORE: Looking at the Physics of STOL Drag

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the 1956 model year, the company applied the nosewheel concept to its tailwheel 180 and smaller sibling 170, creating the 182 and 172. Thus began a sales tour de force that continues to this day. Where the 172 became the most popular general aviation airplane in history, the more powerful and capable 182 became the big-engine, reliable, go-almost-anywhere, powerful climbing, carry-almost-anything, good-handling, comfortable old boot that could be found nearly anywhere on the planet where there was space into which to shoehorn an airplane.

In the first decade of manufacture, Cessna fine-tuned the 182 with a wider and deeper fuselage that made the cabin truly comfortable for four, added a panoramic rear window, as well as beginning steady gross weight increases so that what was soon named the Skylane became the utility infielder of the GA world.

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The original design was eventually stretched to become the models 205, 206, 207, and, with retractable landing gear, the 210 and retractable 182.

In 1962, Cessna became the first to successfully bring a form of turbocharging to general aviation with its model 320 twin. A turbocharger is an air compressor that pumps more air into an engine, allowing it to develop greater power at higher altitudes than a normally aspirated engine as intake pressure drops with altitude. A turbocharger uses exhaust gas to turn a turbine, to compress and boost intake pressure. When there’s more air entering the engine, more fuel can be added to the fuel/air mixture resulting in greater power.

Turbochargers have been around since World War I, but their complexities and fiery operating environment prevented their widespread use in GA until the Cessna 320 debuted with a system that was reliable and didn’t require a degree in engineering for pilots to operate safely. The 320 sold like mad, so Cessna expanded its turbo offerings.

For the 1981 model year, Cessna turbocharged the Skylane, but with a relatively primitive, fixed-wastegate system that involved significant pilot workload. Nevertheless, it proved popular, outselling the normally aspirated 182 until Cessna’s hiatus on piston-engine production in 1986.

When that production began once more in 1996, the 182 was reintroduced in its normally aspirated form. In 2001, to start out the new century, a new turbocharged 182—the T182—was offered with important updates, including aggressive corrosion-proofing and aerodynamic tweaks to the airframe. Motive force now came from a Lycoming engine with slightly more power, the 235 hp TIO-540-AK1A with 2,000-hour TBO. Most significantly, the turbocharging system was a sophisticated set-and-forget type.

A sloped controller in the system sensed manifold pressure and modulated the wastegate to keep the correct amount of exhaust gas going through the turbine section of the turbocharger to maintain the desired manifold pressure. The wastegate is a valve that adjusts to direct exhaust gas through the turbine section of the turbo until the system decides the amount is appropriate, and then it directs any excess into the overboard exhaust pipe.

There was one more pause in Turbo Skylane production—in 2013—when Cessna explored replacing it with a diesel version. I’ve heard various reasons that the diesel didn’t work out but don’t know if any are true. Cessna, wisely, in my opinion, reintroduced the T182T with deliveries starting in 2023. The newest version included the latest Garmin G1000 NXi avionics suite, a heated prop, and upgraded interior amenities. Max operating altitude is 20,000 feet. Base price is currently $760,000.

As an aside, the first “T” in T182T refers to the Cessna’s way of saying that the flying machine is turbocharged. The second letter designates the specific model (as type certificated) of 182. The first model 182 had no alphabetical suffix—it is called the “no letter.” Each subsequent model change received a new letter, although some letters were skipped. The current normally aspirated 182 is the 182T.

The Basics

The T182T I flew was the first off of the assembly line in the 2023 production restart. It was flown as a demonstrator for 240 hours before being purchased by Phil Preston of Poplar Grove, Illinois. The airplane came with most available options including electric air conditioning, oxygen, and a striking interior.

The T182T’s Lycoming engine is a “max continuous power” engine—it develops its full-rated 235 hp continuously at 32 inches of manifold pressure, 24 gallons per hour (gph) fuel flow, and a quiet 2400 rpm all the way to 20,000 feet. There is no time limit on full-power operation.

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Empty weight of the airplane I flew is 2,191.5 pounds. With a maximum ramp weight of 3,112 pounds (max takeoff weight is 3,100 pounds), it has a useful load of 920.5 pounds. (Cessna’s advertising claims a 998-pound useful load.) Max landing weight is 2,950 pounds, so 192 pounds of fuel (27 gallons) must be burned off following a max-weight departure. Fuel capacity is 92 gallons in the integral wing tanks, of which 87 is usable.

With full fuel—522 pounds—398.5 pounds can be loaded into the cabin. At first blush that doesn’t seem like much for a legendary load hauler like the 182, but the huge fuel tanks make the airplane a camel. At 15 gph, full tanks give well over five hours endurance.

Still, with all the options, this airplane is heavy. Putting four 200-pounders in the cabin means the airplane is over its maximum landing weight without any fuel aboard, so juggling fuel and passengers is required. Assuming having 10 gallons of fuel on board when landing at maximum landing weight after burning off 27 gallons following a gross weight takeoff, the maximum possible cabin load for the airplane we flew is 698.5 pounds, or three large adults and baggage. Maximum baggage is 200 pounds—split between three baggage areas.

Cessna singles have a reputation for some of the longest center-of-gravity (CG) ranges in the industry. The T182T lives up to its reputation. I ran several weight-and-balance scenarios and found that in none of the occupant and baggage combinations I tried was the airplane out of the forward or aft CG limit. That’s impressive.

The fuel system is simple. Two tanks and a fuel selector that offers left, right, and both and off positions. Leaving it on the “both” position means getting all the available fuel and minimizes the risk of selecting a tank that doesn’t have fuel in it. To avoid inadvertently shutting off the fuel, the selector valve must be pushed down before it can be rotated to the “off” position. I was impressed by the accuracy of the fuel gauging system, something important when launching with partial fuel may be routine.

The electrical system is straightforward—dual bus, 28-volt DC, powered by a 95-amp alternator with primary and standby batteries. The standby battery will power the equipment on the essential bus for about 45 minutes.

Walking around this new T182T revealed excellent fit and finish, a beautifully applied paint job and some of the aerodynamic touches made over recent years to maximize speed, such as smaller steps, low-drag wheel fairings, and a low-profile beacon.

The Cabin

Opening one of the large cabin doors, you notice little touches, such as their solid feel and the easy step into the cabin itself. Preston has owned several airplanes, high-wing, low-wing, and biplane. He told us that he chose the 182 because of the ease of entry: “I don’t like climbing up onto a wing to get in and out of the airplane.” He also likes the high wing because he’s loaded and unloaded airplanes in the rain many times and prefers to be able to stay dry.

The seats are delightfully comfortable and adjust far more easily than older 182s to fit a wide variety of pilot sizes and shapes. Cessna has been a leader in GA crashworthiness going back to 1946 when it began offering shoulder harnesses as optional equipment for all seats in its singles, continuing through the 1960s when it did full-scale crash testing and later when it donated some 172s to NASA for its crash research. Where it shows in this new T182T is with the best occupant restraint systems available in general aviation—AmSafe airbag seat belts for all four seats.

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The clean panel is dominated by the Garmin NXi two-screen display with all controls, switches, and knobs easily accessible to the left-seat pilot.

Flying It

Start-up is not simple. The process, including system checks, takes nearly a minute before the starter switch is engaged. On my flight the engine started easily on the first try, even though it was hot. Preston told me that he has not had any problem with hot starts.

Once the avionics were on, Preston showed how easy it was to load a route into the Garmin NXi system. He said that he appreciated its wireless database and flight plan loading capability.

Taxiing out, I was impressed at how easily the airplane rolled and the lightness of the nosewheel steering—there’s no sense of a heavy engine pressing down on it as there is in older Skylanes. On the hot morning of our flight, I came to quickly appreciate the electric air conditioning. It cooled the cabin rapidly.

I used Cessna’s recommended 10 degrees of flap for takeoff. Lined up, and throttle forward, I monitored the manifold pressure to make sure that it stopped at the 32-inch redline. While the turbocharger control is automatic, if the engine oil is cold, the control can be sluggish, and it’s possible to overboost the engine slightly. If 32 inches is reached before the throttle is fully open, just stop pushing it forward until the control system catches up. Acceleration is rapid, and right rudder is most definitely required, especially once the nosewheel leaves the ground.

The aggressive takeoff performance of the turbo Skylane reminded me that the T182T meets the U.S. Department of Defense’s definition of STOL aircraft right out of the factory—no mods required. At sea level, it will take off or land over a 50-foot obstacle in less than 1,500 feet. Few production airplanes are that capable. For a short field takeoff, 20 degrees of flaps are used.

Cleaned up and holding V_Y, 84 kias, loaded about 200 pounds below gross on a warmer than standard day, the rate of climb approached 1,000 feet per minute (fpm)—book is 1,015 fpm on a standard day. When I pulled the power back to what Cessna calls for in a “normal” climb—25 inches of manifold pressure and 16 gph fuel flow, while maintaining the full 2,400 rpm—the rate of climb sagged off by nearly half. At the suggested 95-knot airspeed, it was only 550 fpm.

Frankly, in my opinion, making a power reduction for climb in an airplane with a max continuous power engine makes no sense. It greatly increases the time to altitude and burns slightly more fuel—according to the POH—than a climb at full power. In addition, in case of an engine failure after takeoff, the higher it happens, the better the radius of action for a forced landing. Using full power and climbing at V_Y, the time to 20,000 feet per the POH is only 23 minutes from sea level and burns 9.2 gallons.

For a “normal” climb, it takes 24 minutes just to get to 12,000 feet and burns 6.3 gallons. Comparatively, at full power and V_Y, it takes 13 minutes and 5.1 gallons of fuel to get to 12,000 feet.

As with all but the oldest Skylanes, control forces on the Turbo Skylane are not light.

However, if sufficient pressure is applied to deflect them, the airplane is quite responsive with a most satisfying roll rate. Pitch forces are heavy, mostly due to the downspring in the elevator system that allows the long CG range. The first rule of thumb when flying a Skylane is to use the trim when any change is made in power or speed. With trim, the Skylane is a pure pussycat to fly—one of the reasons it has been so popular for so long. With trim, steep turns are a piece of cake. The solid stability of a Skylane in slow flight could set the standard for GA aircraft—the T182T proved no exception.

The Garmin Electronic Stability and Protection system kicked in while I was maneuvering (it can be disabled). It is a safeguard to protect the pilot while hand flying. Once the aircraft is rolled beyond a selected angle of bank or gets faster or slower than set speeds, it applies control forces to roll the airplane toward wings level or pitch up or down to control speed. Given that in-flight loss of control is well up there when it comes to risk of fatal accidents, I like this system a lot.

Stalls—hey, what do you want? It’s a Cessna. Power on, power off, full flaps, or clean, it’s a nuthin’ muffin. With the ball centered, it breaks straight ahead. A little pitch reduction, and it’s flying. Adding power (right rudder, remember!) turns any descent into a climb forthwith.

Preston and I then looked at cruise power versus airspeed. As much as I despise the overused phrase “power packed,” that describes this Lycoming engine. For pilots used to maximum cruise at 75 percent power, this engine gets one’s attention because it can be run, and leaned, at as much as 87 percent power—204 hp on a 235 hp engine. At 10,000 feet, the POH quotes a cruise speed on a standard day of 155 knots and 17.8 gph at 87 percent—that’s moving in a 182. At 20,000 feet on a standard day, 82 percent generates 165 knots while burning 16.3 gph.

Some time ago, I was told that Cessna does its cruise speed testing by launching above gross weight so that the airplane is at gross at altitude—and therefore the book speeds will be conservative. For over 40 years I’ve cross-checked book versus actual speeds on new Cessnas, and that’s always been the case.

Descending to 10,000 feet and setting up 75 percent power, at 15 degrees above standard temperature, the book called for 144 ktas. Preston and I saw 145, however, our fuel burn was 13.8 gph versus the book’s 13.6. Want to save some fuel but still move along nicely at 10,000 feet? Pull the power back to 60 percent and get a quiet decent 131 knots at 11 gph. Want to go far? According to Cessna, max range is 971 nm at best economy power.

Leaning leads to an issue that is troubling for an airplane of this sophistication and a useful load that is, let’s face it, not exactly great. Lycoming’s recommended lean mixture setting is 50 degrees rich of peak turbine inlet temperature (TIT). (Lycoming certificated the engine, so Cessna must follow Lycoming protocols.) With what we know now from published data from sophisticated general aviation engine test facilities, 50 degrees rich of peak is not at all good for an engine.

It is the power setting for the highest combination of heat, internal cylinder pressure, and minimum detonation protection—and may necessitate cylinder replacement prior to engine overhaul. For best power, Lycoming calls for 125 degrees rich of peak TIT—which is better for detonation protection. Per the POH, best economy is at peak TIT. That setting is not wonderful because it is still in the range of maximum heat and internal cylinder pressure as well as lower detonation protection.

Lean of peak (LOP) operation is not “approved.” As far as I can tell, it’s not a limitation, so it is a recommendation. Still, it makes no sense to me. Lycoming engines have a reputation for excellent mixture distribution between cylinders and have been run LOP for decades. LOP reduces fuel burn 2 to 3 gallons per hour and dramatically reduces CHTs as well as internal cylinder pressures.

In an airplane that is heavy to start with, having to burn 2 or 3 gph more than necessary isn’t a stellar idea. It means having to carry extra fuel instead of payload. For a trip of several hundred miles, that can mean an extra hour of endurance wasted. To make a good airplane even more capable by reducing fuel consumption, extending engine life and increasing payload, one wonders why Cessna hasn’t leaned on Lycoming to come into this century with engine operating guidelines.

As we flew, I purely enjoyed working with the Garmin automation in the Turbo Skylane. Preston demonstrated that not only did the autopilot engage smoothly, programming it to do what we wanted was easy.

Millions of words have been written about Garmin automation, so I won’t add more here, other than to say it was intuitive, easy, worked well, and seamlessly integrated into the T182T.

Approaching our towered airport, I was asked to keep the speed up until short final. Those are magic words to a Skylane pilot. The T182T smoked down a long final at 150 kias until 3 miles out—then I took advantage of the high flap speeds. The first 10 degrees of flaps can come out at a blistering 140 kias, 20 degrees at 120 kias, and all of them at 100 kias. The airplane slowed so quickly that it was a piece of cake to be stabilized at 60 kias while still several hundred feet up.

I’ve heard pilots complain that 182s are nose heavy. They aren’t. The reality is that with just two aboard, the airplane is near the forward CG limit, so a lot of nose-up elevator is necessary to flare. Plus, if the airplane isn’t trimmed, it’s going to take a lot of effort to heave the yoke aft because of the downspring in the system and the airframe’s attempt to nose down to maintain its trim speed.

The POH says that the demonstrated crosswind level is 15 knots. With the effective flight controls of the T182T, I suspect that number is conservative.

Conclusion

The Cessna 182 became the four-place airplane everyone wanted because it does almost everything well—it’s the SUV of the general aviation world. With turbocharging the T182T takes that utility and performance to new heights and new capabilities, giving a pilot more options and more ability to deal with weather and winds.

Spec Sheet: Cessna T182T Skylane

2024 Base Price: $760,000

Engine: Lycoming TIO-540-AK1A

Propeller: (Manufacturer, metal or composite, number of blades) McCauley, metal, three blade

Horsepower: 235

Length: 29 feet

Height: 9 feet, 4 inches

Wingspan: 36 feet

Wing Area: 174 square feet

Wing Loading: 17.8 pounds per square feet @mtow

Power Loading: 13.19 pounds/hp

Cabin Width: 42 inches

Cabin Height: 49 inches

Max Takeoff Weight: 3,100 pounds

Max Zero Fuel Weight: N/A

Standard Empty Weight: 2,114 pounds

Max Baggage: 200 pounds

Useful load: 998 pounds, depending on options

Max usable fuel: 87 gallons

Service Ceiling: 20,000 feet

Max Rate of Climb, MTOW, ISA, SL: 1,040 fpm

Max Cruise Speed at 82% Power at 20,000 Feet: 165 ktas

Max Range: 971 nm [45-minute reserve]

Fuel Consumption at 82% Power: 16.3 gph

Takeoff Over 50 Ft. Obs: 1,385 feet [ISA, sea level]

Landing Over 50 Ft. Obs: 1,335 feet [ISA, sea level]

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

The post Ultimate Issue: We Fly the Cessna T182T Skylane 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.

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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.

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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.

Decades later, Captain Rosenkranz returned to LA, where he commanded a specially chartered Airbus A330-900neo for his final flight at Delta. On board were 112 of his friends and family, including fellow pilots who didn’t get a proper retirement send-off due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

“Back when COVID hit, some of my friends…couldn’t get a final flight,” Rosenkranz told FLYING. “My one friend, all he could do was an Orlando [Florida] turn instead of a nice international trip. And I remember thinking, you know, I don’t want to do that. I want to fly where I want to fly.”

To set his plan in motion, Rosenkranz said he pulled some strings in Delta’s charter department. The Atlanta-based airline regularly charters aircraft for sports teams and other special events, but never for one of its own team members.

“I sat down with the charter director…I think it was around October 2022, and I told him my idea, and he says I’ve never done this before,” Rosenkranz said. “I said, ‘Well, I’ll be the first.’”

Although Rosenkranz wasn’t turning 65 until June, a weekday in late February—often a lull for airline demand—proved more ideal for taking a widebody jet out of commercial service. Having become an Airbus A330 captain three years ago, he asked the airline for an A330-900neo, which is the latest-generation variant of the jet.

Not only did he receive his requested aircraft type, but Rosenkranz also asked for the special “Team USA” livery on N411DX, which Delta also obliged.

The Special Trip

Rosenkranz and his hand-picked passengers jetted off for Kona International Airport (PHKO) in Hawaii on February 27 for a daylong, overnight trip. The chartered A330 flew from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (KDFW) to LAX, where it made a roughly one-hour stop.

Then, the aircraft departed Los Angeles for Kona, arriving at approximately 2:30 p.m. HST. On February 28, the A330neo completed the same routing on the return, arriving back in Dallas-Fort Worth at 10:10 p.m. CST.

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Joining Rosenkranz in the flight deck were longtime friends, one of whom he knew from a high school job at Safeway. The duo were once box boys together for the supermarket and now fly one of Delta’s largest aircraft.

“We had four pilots because you can’t fly a domestic leg and an ocean crossing in the same day,” Rosenkranz said. “So I had two of my friends fly the domestic portions from Dallas to LA, LA to Dallas.”

Rosenkranz said he flew both oceanic crossings to serve as his final two flights. Roughly 50 guests joined him in DFW, while the rest boarded in Los Angeles.

“We showed up in the terminal here at DFW, and about 50 friends and family were already there,” he said. “And it was very emotional for me just seeing everybody there clapping and giving me hugs. When we got to the gate there in LA, and my wife and I walked into the terminal in the gate area, another 60 friends and family were there. I started crying all over again.”

In Kona, Rosenkranz took care of his guests’ transportation to and from the airport, only asking them to pay for their one-night stays at a Hilton resort. The experience was made complete with a customary luau and a surprise renewal of wedding vows with his wife of nearly 42 years.

‘Fini’ Flights: Marking a Milestone

The tradition of the so-called “fini” flight dates back decades, finding its roots in the military. During their final flights, retiring pilots are met with fanfare. For the military side, this send-off can include an affectionate hose-down upon exiting the aircraft for a final time.

But in commercial aviation, retiring captains—who often wrap up their careers with decades of seniority under their belts—are met with grand gate parties and water cannon salutes by local firefighter crews. Some airlines allow captains to select their final flight and allow family members to join with free confirmed tickets.

Rosenkranz’s charter came with three different water cannon salutes, including in Kona, DFW, and most notably LA.

• READ MORE: Which U.S. Airlines Are Hiring Pilots?

The city of Los Angeles—which runs LAX—has long maintained a moratorium on water cannon salutes, citing local water shortages. By a stroke of luck, though, Delta was able to convince the city to make an exception for Rosenkranz’s special flight.

“So a week later, [a member of Delta’s charter team] calls back and said, ‘Well, the pilot’s name is this, and he grew up in Southern California. [He] and the other pilot were box boys at Safeway. His high school’s here,’” he said. “And whoever that person was said, ‘You know what? Let’s make it happen.’ So the FAA approved, the airport authority approved, and the fire department approved. I think I was the second one in nine years to get a [water cannon salute]. So, wow, just great.”

As the pandemic ravaged the airline industry, many retiring pilots lost out on the opportunity for a proper send-off flight. This was especially the case for widebody captains, who primarily flew long-haul flights, which were some of the first to be scuttled in 2020.

With his charter flight, Rosenkranz also sought to provide an additional opportunity for a proper sendoff to some of these pilots, all of whom he knew during his tenure at Delta.

A Decorated Career

Rosenkranz boasts a long and well-decorated aviation career, starting in the Air Force after graduating from an ROTC training course. In the military he flew the F-16.

Later, he would go on to write a book about his experiences flying during the Gulf War titled, Vipers in the Storm: Diary of a Gulf War Fighter Pilot.

“You know, I’m not Tom Clancy or Stephen King, so it certainly didn’t allow me to retire, but I’ve received thousands of letters from all over the world and kids in grade school, high school, and college will read the book and send me a note,” Rosenkranz said.

• READ MORE: Pro Track: Finding Your Way to an Airline Pilot Career

His airline career began in July 1991 when he started at Delta as a flight engineer on the Boeing 727. Throughout his time at the airline, he flew the 757/767, the Airbus A320, and most recently the A330 in the left seat.

“So, I would tell any new person…your love of aviation is going to carry you through anything, and then enjoy the job,” he said.

Rosenkranz said the No. 1 question about his retirement charter was the cost. Without going into too much detail, he said it was “probably a good year’s salary.”

“I mean, to be able to go out with your own jet and fly all your family and friends to Hawaii for a big luau, you just can’t put a price on it,” he said. “And you don’t want to be the richest man in the graveyard one day. So, I would do it again a hundred times and never look back. And so, I’ll be OK in life. And my wife and I will never forget this trip.”

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

The post Delta Air Lines Captain Makes the Ultimate ‘Fini’ Flight appeared first on FLYING Magazine.