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Where are you going vs. where are you pointing?

Military pilots (and some business jets) have a cool feature called a head-up display (HUD), which overlays a whole load of flight information like airspeed, an attitude indicator, vertical speed and other things over the view in front of the pilot out of the windshield.

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Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

Landings

I must say, it’s tricky to teach people to land. Most manoeuvres that you have to learn in order to be a pilot can be practiced thousands of feet up in the air, where there’s no danger and no damage if things don’t work out, and where the instructor has plenty of time to fix things if and when they go wrong.

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Photo by Olav Ahrens Røtne on Unsplash

An aerodynamics puzzle

You’re in a small airplane in level flight at 100 knots. You increase power and pitch up to place the aircraft in a climb, at the same airspeed. Has the angle of attack increased, stayed the same, or decreased?

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Spins and the falling leaf exercise

Here’s a video extract from a recent lesson where we did some spins, and I introduced my student to the “falling leaf” exercise, which gives valuable experience in roll stability and control (and the lack of them) when the aircraft is stalled.

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Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash

A flight instructor’s apology

Suppose you wanted to learn the piano. And your piano teacher said that they were going to teach you one note per lesson: today, we’ll learn middle C. Tomorrow, maybe an E♭; the lesson after that will be on an F♯. And at the end of being taught all 88 notes on the keyboard, you’ll be able to play the piano.

Doesn’t that seem a funny way to learn a musical instrument?

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Under, over, or around those clouds?

If you do an amount of cross-country VFR flying eventually you’ll come across a situation where your airplane is headed what looks like right at a bunch of clouds. It can be helpful to know a few minutes in advance, whether, when you reach the clouds they’re going to be at your altitude, or whether you’re going to pass above or below them.

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Emiliano Sala crash linked to carbon monoxide

On 21 January this year (2019) footballer Emiliano Sala was killed when the Piper Malibu aircraft in which he was flying (from Nantes, France to Cardiff) crashed into the English Channel. The accident was widely reported at the time, along with all sorts of speculation about the cause. There has also been a lot of press about the licencing status of the pilot, David Ibbotson, who was also killed.