The result is that instead of having to wait for several years before upgrading, some airlines have had junior pilots bid for the left seat—and have it awarded—while they were still in initial training or shortly thereafter.

So why are some first officers so content to stay where they are? In a nutshell, they prefer a bit of control over their schedule versus the boost in hourly pay. When bidding as a very senior first officer, pilots get to choose the “milk runs.” What constitutes a great trip is widely varied. Commutable start and end times, favorite layover cities, avoiding landings at O’Hare (KORD), or simply trips without a lot of flying involved are all considerations that a senior bidder may seek out in a trip.

First of all, let’s clear up the difference between a captain and a first officer. When we were referred to as pilot and copilot, the inference was that the copilot mainly went for coffee and maybe talked on the radio while the captain did the lion’s share of the flying. And that wasn’t far from the truth—80 years ago. For generations now, captains and first officers are treated more nearly as peers than as superior and subordinate. Generally, they share the flying about evenly—in my fleet we usually swap off flying duties after two legs of the trip. If there’s an odd number of legs, I’ve seen who flies the go-home leg determined by a coin toss, spinning the heading knob for a game of even/odd roulette, or one captain even surprised me midway through the last leg when a timer went off exactly at the midpoint. “OK, that’s my half of the leg. Take us on home from here,” he said as he transferred the autopilot.

But we’re not exactly equals. The captain signs for the plane and assumes a level of responsibility beyond that of the first officer, and generally captains are obligated to do the landing when low visibility forces a Category II or III landing. And when flying with a new first officer without a certain number of hours in the seat, there are considerations such as weather or special airport qualifications that force the captain to fly that leg. Earlier this year, I flew a four-day trip with a brand-new captain, and the ceilings and visibility hovered right near minimums, forcing the captain to do most of the flying. I think I landed twice on that trip. But whenever a captain asks if I’d like to start out flying or monitoring at the beginning of the trip, my answer is almost always, “It doesn’t matter as long as it pays the same!”

• READ MORE: Lessons Learned: Achieving Aspirations

When most of us were hired, it was the left seat we longed for ultimately, but the pay for pilots has improved significantly in the last contract cycle or two. As long as we don’t have collections of boats, airplanes, vacation properties, and ex-spouses lining up at the bank on payday, living comfortably on a first officer’s salary in today’s economic environment shouldn’t be a challenge. Maybe just wait till you’re off probation before you buy that Maserati or Bonanza.

Still, some of us take the bait. We’ve trained for that seat from day one, and for some of us, the carrot remained just out of reach until now.

“When we hired you, we didn’t hire a first officer,” the instructor told us on our first day of indoctrination at the regional airline. “We hired you as a captain in training.” Was that yesterday, was it a lifetime ago, or have 17 years passed since that morning? All three answers feel correct. At age 27, I wasn’t “the old man” in our class, but I wasn’t far from it.

In the years that followed, I gained experience unfathomable to the 12-year-old kid who showed up at the airport one weekend and, despite going home to sleep, his heart stayed in the hangars and in the heavens. I turned wrenches, swept floors, and earned a few big favors that paid off in the end. After nine years of flying regional jets on starvation wages, I moved up to an Airbus at a lower-cost carrier and started living comfortably. The entire time, I’d been in the right seat as a first officer. At the regional airline, I got within eight seniority numbers of upgrading to captain before we began to slide backward, losing airplanes and downgrading pilots from captain to first officer.

At the next carrier, I was awarded captain 23 hours before I interviewed for my current and almost certainly final job. I opted to skip upgrade training since I would be leaving before my check ride. The time in the schoolhouse would have been a waste of resources for the company and a lot of effort for naught on my part.

When is the right time to upgrade, though? Some have always advocated that upgrading at the first opportunity is the only way to go— start making captain pay as soon as you can. Others really do need a bit of time in the right seat before they take the role of captain. Military fighter pilots, for example, can fly the heck out of a mission with tight formations and precision attacks against the enemy. If they’ve been flying single-seat jets for years, fine-tuning the communication skills required on the flight deck takes a while. On the other hand, a pilot who has flown regional jets for years may walk into the job completely ready for the command seat as soon as they settle in and become comfortable with the company’s procedures and policies.

But above all, the greatest criteria is universally echoed by the better captains when the topic comes up: “You’ll know when it is time to upgrade.” And while the length of time varies for all of us, at some point it really does become evident that it’s time to move up. I found myself imagining if I would be the same or different than most of the captains I was paired with and becoming more particular about the tone they set on the flight deck. Some of the worst captains I flew with could fly the plane just fine. They just could not hold a conversation without bouncing off the third-rail topics such as religion, politics, or hot-button social issues. Starting over at the next airline reset my itch for the left seat…for a little while.

A little after a year at the company, I modified my bid sheet just a bit, changing one parameter. One of the most tired of our industry’s tropes haunted me as I did it: Bid what you want, but want what you bid. In other words, be careful of what you ask for. It might just happen. A few days later, I was at Oshkosh when my phone blew up. “Congratulations, captain!” was the constant theme, and I celebrated with some friends over ice cream at the show center moments after the award. I’d be training for the left seat of my current fleet in just a few months.

• READ MORE: How Much Flying Stuff Pays/Costs

The hard part still lies ahead. The award is based on seniority, but the training, check ride, and initial operating experience with the check airmen still sit beyond the horizon. I’ll be grilled on my ability to fly the plane, sure, but also scrutinized for my capacity to manage the crew, delegate responsibilities when things get busy, and call the shots when things go off script. I’ve already spent considerable time in our manuals, bookmarking all sorts of reference items. Knowing where to find the information is the key when what you’re looking for may be spread across any of a half dozen manuals.

I’m learning a lot as I set up these quick-reference links, for sure, and a lot more knowledge is yet to come. Each captain I fly with, upon learning I’m soon to upgrade, takes care in imparting a few gotchas they’ve encountered along the line and tricks to making some difficult situations easier. This is truly one of the last chances in my career to look left for an answer. As one of our manuals for the captain upgrade points out, “Pretty soon, you’ll look left for an answer, and all you’ll see is your reflection in the cockpit window.”

But in a few months, I’ll go to work with an extra stripe on my shoulders and won’t have to shake my head to avoid a minor case of stolen valor whenever people see me in uniform and refer to me as captain without knowing which seat I occupy up front.
As the old joke among pilots goes, I’ll be flying with my favorite captain every single trip.

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the November/December 20203 issue of Plane & Pilot magazine. 

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It’s a story I’ve heard told in any number of FBOs with minor variations, recollections of when a favor went terribly wrong. “I was laughing and crying and worried I would hit the trees because my buddy’s ashes were all in my eyes. The ashes washed out of my clothes, but a little bit of Don goes along for the ride whenever I fly now. I’ll never get all the ashes out of the nooks and crannies of my Cherokee!”

A family friend asked if I could help him find a pilot to spread a friend’s ashes over a farm. “If you don’t mind it being a weekday, I can help you out,” I offered.

Saying no when a friend asks for a favor is difficult for me, and I volunteered for the mission before even contemplating the machine I had available. My Mooney is a fine traveling machine. It’s relatively comfortable, quick enough, and efficient. I’ve crossed significant swaths of the country in it, enjoying the experience. It really isn’t great at flying low and slow; the wing on the bottom kind of gets in the way of seeing what’s below, and the only window that can be opened in flight is the pilot’s ice window, which is only a little bigger than a deck of cards.

In other words, it’s a fine machine for anything except trying to spread a person’s ashes across a farm.

• READ MORE: Words Aloft: Test Pilot, Airline Style

A Piper J-3 Cub would be perfect, and I have enough pieces to build most of a Cub, but the fella’s younger relatives would likely need their ashes spread before I get around to that. A Cessna with an opening window would do, but try getting a Mooney owner into a 172. You’ll have better luck getting a McLaren owner to drive your Toyota Camry to town.

I needed to find someone with a suitable airplane for the mission, so I did the right thing and figured out how to jettison a person’s mortal remains out the ice window of a 165 mph airplane without wearing all of the ashes in the process. Some of the local EAA guys had spread ashes from the gear leg of a 172 using a PVC pipe rig with a pull-string trigger to release the contents. I could have done that, but how would I retract the landing gear then? Ain’t no Mooney driver gonna buzz around with the gear down if they can help it. We pay a lot of extra insurance for the privilege of retracting our gear. Another idea floated was hanging a hose out the window, positioning it into a lower-pressure area and using a $75.00 shop vacuum to pull the ashes out of the window.

I flew a test run, with a friend—using a setup I’d heard would work—and in my mind it was the perfect solution for the job. Take a brown paper lunch bag, fill it with ashes, and tie a string to it. Throw it out the window, while holding onto the string, and the bag will shred, spreading the powdery contents in a puff to scatter across the land below.

It was simple, foolproof, and cheap: a perfect solution.

But why leave perfection alone? I did what I always do and overengineered the thing. I put an index card into the bottom of the bag to reinforce it and punched two holes through the bag bottom and its reinforcement. I looped some paracord through the holes, tied it in a bowline, and then tied another loop into the other end of the string.

On a test flight with a friend, using stale Cream of Wheat instant cereal as the test medium, I looped the end of the string around my wrist and slowed to about 80. I had wrapped the bag around on itself and ran two loops of paracord around that. Holding the assemblage in my left hand and flying with my right, I stuck the bag out into the breeze and released it. The brown parcel rolled out of my hand and shot aft in the breeze, a good 2 feet before it hit the end of the line. Tethered in the breeze by its reinforced base, the bag stayed intact for about a millisecond as it unfurled and tore away from the string in a puff of milled grain. I cheered and we flew back to home base, where I realized there was a fine dust where I’d sat the bag on the floor ahead of my seat. The plan wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t a disaster.

There was no time left to refine the design. I had to fly a work trip, and our plan was to spread the ashes the morning after my return.

Monday dawned a little cloudy and foggy, but the clouds burned off quickly, and I hopped over to the nearest airport to meet the son and daughter of the fella we’d be spreading across the farm. They wanted to go along for the flight, so I’d opted for the longer, paved runway for our mission. They walked into the FBO carrying a cardboard tube the size of a small artillery shell—its contents would certainly not fit into the single brown bag rig I’d built to go out the Mooney’s window. Time was on my side, as I’d told them to arrive early. After having a discussion about what to expect and where on their farm they wanted the ashes dropped, I came up with a plan.

“Why don’t y’all stay in here with the air conditioning while I load your dad up?” I followed with my truest words of the day: “The next few moments might not be the most dignified part of the day, and there’s no reason y’all need to be part of that.” It was a hot day, and AC was a hard amenity to pass up, so they agreed.

On the ramp, I fished another brown paper bag out of the baggage bin and cut another length of cord with my penknife. Hearing voices behind me, I glanced over my shoulder to find a group of 20 or so kids and their chaperones, having come from a summer camp for a tour of the airport. The FBO manager was explaining that I was preflighting my airplane, and someone asked what exactly I was doing. The manager and I locked eyes for a moment, and he mumbled something to the crowd and they shuffled off into the FBO hangar as I spilled a bit of our guest on the ramp while filling the second bag. Some kids probably thought they’d witnessed a pilot smuggling cocaine. Oh, to be that glamorous. If only they knew.

• READ MORE: Jargon Fails: Why Pilots Should Simplify Messages

With two bags filled as much as would fit out the ice window, there was still a little bit of remains left. It was time to swallow some pride and ask for a little help. Back into the FBO I marched, carrying the partly filled cardboard tube. “Friends, it’s getting a little windy out there. I don’t have a lot of practice dropping ashes from an airplane and, frankly, most of them may blow clear of the farm before they settle. Do y’all want to carry this bit back with you to ensure at least some of him really does settle where you’re intending?”

His son looked me in the eye with a smile, and his answer saved the shreds of my dignity I was about to sacrifice: “It was [either] spread his ashes from an airplane or plant them with a tree, and we had a tough time trying to make the decision. We’ll plant this part with the tree, and both ideas will work out.”

The flight itself went well. We launched early enough for a sightseeing lap over my passengers’ homes, and we made a high circle over the farm to confirm my memory from the test hop the week prior. I lined up on the upwind boundary of the property and let the first salvo go with the same sound effects a 7-year-old might use if pretending to drop bombs from a toy plane. With a jolt, I realized I was speaking into the microphone and that his kids could hear.

I very politely apologized for my less-than-sensitive sound effects. “Don’t worry. Dad would have loved every moment of this, your noises included,” the son said. “He had a great sense of humor.”

“Well, that’s good that we’re pretty compatible,” I said. “Seems like a bit of him may tag along for a few more flights with me!”

They took it in a figurative sense, and I just left things as they settled, including the small pile of powder on the carpet next to my left foot.

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of Plane & Pilot magazine. 

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The idea was great; the execution, not so much. That first-gen version, while promising, had a number of issues. Pilots complained about the design’s headband and earpieces being uncomfortable for long flights. The first ProFlight headsets were lighter than a pair of A20s but still heavier than the industry-standard Telex headset. Also sporting a thick, cumbersome cord, the design struggled in the market.

The ProFlight Series 2 headsets incorporate feedback from the field and feature significant improvements. Now weighing in at 4.5 ounces, Bose’s ProFlight Series 2 is only half an ounce heavier than the Telex Airman 850. The changes go much deeper than a crash diet, though.

The microphone and cable can be swapped from left to right without tools—a handy feature for anyone who doesn’t always sit in the same seat. Because the cable is thinner and more flexible now, it doesn’t disturb the headset when moving your head, as in the previous iteration. The control module offers three levels of digital noise reduction. Low offers minimal reduction in background noise. Medium filters out more noise but leaves a slight base rumble. The high level of noise reduction reduces the noise, too, and even works well enough in the cabin of a piston single-engine aircraft. We reviewed it in a Mooney M20C and an Airbus 320. Medium noise reduction worked great in the jet; the Mooney demanded the highest noise reduction.

An included silicone band and d-ring provide a handy mechanism for hanging the control box in the flight deck, so it’s not dangling and swaying in turbulence.

A number of conversations on the flight deck happen outside the intercom system. With traditional headsets, pilots would push one earcup off the ear and converse normally; an in-ear headset makes that awkward, as you’d be inserting and removing the earpiece. Bose’s solution is a quick double-tap to minimize noise reduction in the applicable earpiece. Tap it again to restore the selected noise reduction.

Because there are no earcups, there is no seal around the ear to be interfered with for bespectacled aviators. Anyone who wears glasses full-time will recognize this as a giant plus for the design.

Many other in-ear designs have used round ear inserts; the ProFlight 2 has molded silicone bits that are directional, with a lobe to match the curve of your ear. The first couple times you don this headset will take a moment; by the third day, it’ll become routine. ProFlight pro-tip: The wire into the earpiece exits forward when you insert the pieces. Also, try all three sizes of ear inserts for more than a moment. The inside of your ears may be smaller than you imagined.

There are still a few shortcomings, though. The control box has volume adjustments for Bluetooth input but not for the audio coming from the aircraft—you’ll run that from the audio panel. And just to be clear, this headset is not really for piston aircraft. They are designed with pilots of jets in mind.

The carrying case is slimmer than that of an A20, but to make it fit, you rotate two headset pads, and a diagram suggests an orderly pattern to wrap the cables. When you’ve had a very long day, and you just want to get to the hotel, there’s a temptation to just try to make it fit in a hurry.

The Bose ProFlight 2 is available from multiple retailers for $995 without Bluetooth or $1,045 with Bluetooth. In addition to two-pin general aviation plugs, LEMO and XLR Plugs are available, which can power the headset depending on the aircraft configuration. www.bose.com.

What Are the Best Aviation Headsets of 2020?

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• READ MORE: Mooney’s Almost-Warbird Returns to the Texas Skies

As we lifted off, the stick shaker buzzed in my hands for a long second—an obvious fault. We had flying speed, and I wasn’t pulling aggressively. I still eased a little of the back pressure to give a little extra margin, and the stall warning went away shortly after. We climbed in silence, fully expecting more failures. 

Airplanes don’t like to hibernate, and this one had spent years parked in the desert before a crew ferried it to this maintenance base, where it spent 64 days in the hangar. A squad of mechanics—nicknamed the “Pumas”—performed 1,500 tasks to get our bird inspected and airworthy. The Pumas found corrosion in some of the bulkheads and stringers, requiring extensive sheet metal repairs. Seals had become dry and brittle. Electrical issues had cropped up just as we arrived in town for the functional check flight required before our bird could return to service. The original sheet called for an April 30 return to service. We were scheduled for the test flight on May 24. There were a lot of folks at headquarters who wanted this airplane back on the line.  

• READ MORE: “Tuskegee Airmen” Plane Returns To Service

Maintenance test flights almost never happen on schedule, and I knew that when I picked up this trip. We’d been deadheaded down with a connection through Mexico City, and the captain received a text from one of the company representatives as we awaited our connecting flight to Querétaro. The electrical issue was taking more time to troubleshoot and by the time we arrived they had pushed our test flight to the next morning. We went to the hotel and tried again the next day. We powered up the airplane and started our preflight checks. Something was amiss in the elevators—I could feel binding on the control check, and the indication only showed one elevator going up as it should. “Controls: free, clear and correct” is a cornerstone of checking every airplane from day one of training in a Cessna 150 until your retirement flight, and it was flunking that most basic test. We also found a significant fuel leak dripping from the belly and some hydraulic fluid seeping from the landing gear actuators. The mechanics, inspectors, and company reps were less than pleased with these findings, but we all wanted a fault-free airplane when paying passengers stepped aboard again. So we went back to the hotel while the night shift went to work. 

My ties to aircraft maintenance go back to the day that set me on course to become an airline pilot. My grandfather worked at the main maintenance facility for the airline that now writes my paychecks. As he prepared to retire, he toured me around the facility, and I decided that maybe–just maybe—airplanes were cooler than trains. I apprenticed with a mechanic years before the Department of Labor would have preferred such training to happen, and wrenching on airplanes is what kept me fed for more than a decade. When the flying business turned sour in 2009, I exchanged my pilot’s hat for a greasy mechanic’s uniform in the airline’s hangar for a spell. Spending a few days at the MRO facility was a trip down memory lane. Having to brush up on my failing Spanish was a challenge, but the sights, sounds, and smells were universal.  

On the third day, we were down to just a few minor details before we could go on the test flight—but the little things often take the longest. We were in the company’s office, staring out the window, when the captain asked if we could stroll through the hangar and stick our heads into the airplanes being worked on. The inspector looked a little surprised that two pilots even had an interest and said, “Down here, you’re the boss. Go where you want to go. Just make sure you’ve got a safety vest on.” We bolted for the door—and then he paused us for a moment to give a quick safety briefing, so we didn’t do anything stupid. 

• READ MORE: BOEING 717

For the next hour or so we roamed the hangar. This facility had three Boeing 717s in for inspection at various stages of disassembly and a few Boeing 757s. An Embraer 190 sat outside as well. We poked around jet engines that were completely uncowled, a sight never encountered normally, and the captain had me point out the major components—starters, generators, igniters, thrust-reverser actuators. I was giving my granddaddy’s hangar tour from 1991. We stuck our heads into one of our airframes with the entire interior and much of the flight deck removed and a hollow shell opened to inspect the underlying structure. This time, when we climbed into the recently finished airplane with fresh carpets and seat belts all perfectly crossed, I wasn’t the wide-eyed kid dreaming an impossible dream—I was going to start flipping switches and do the test flight. I was ages 11, 42, and every year in between all at once. 

Before the test flight, we sat down at a conference table with the company representatives, the mechanic who would be on the flight deck jumpseat observing the flight, the leader of the line of mechanics who had performed the inspection, and the person who would be filing our flight plan with the Mexican authorities, among others. Our discussion began with an overview of the work that had been performed, some of the unexpected repairs that had been required, and key things to look for. The jumpseat mechanic reviewed the checklist of items he would need to see demonstrated.

The checklist normally called for a level off at an intermediate altitude for a series of checks before climbing well into the flight levels for a second series of tests. Since there was mountainous terrain all around, we agreed that if all systems were operating normally as we climbed, we would do the high-altitude tests first over the mountains as we flew toward the coast, where we would descend for the lower altitude tests over relatively flat terrain. We were looking to ensure we had a lot of room between the airplane and the rocks at all times in case of an emergency. We defined everyone’s roles—I’d be the pilot flying, and the captain would be the pilot monitoring and also running the checks for the maintenance team. Our company’s philosophy is generally to have the first officer fly the airplane during an abnormal situation while the captain runs the appropriate checklists, so this prepared us in case of a failure to keep from having to exchange control of the aircraft. Everything we planned revolved around managing the risks involved. Only check airmen act as captains on these flights, and they’re specially trained for the profile associated with these flights. A lot of things we would be doing were not the normal procedures from a revenue flight, and anything outside the normal is very much a threat in the airline world. 

• READ MORE: Neta Snook: Amelia Earhart’s Instructor and One of the First Female Test Pilots

As we finished our preflight checks, someone stepped onto the airplane with a plastic bag full of street tacos from a roadside stand. “Lunch is served,” he said. We finished our preparations with a mouthful of carne asada and sipping sodas with real sugar. It was a far cry from the normal airport grub we’re stuck with while passing through Newark, New Jersey. 

Once airborne, passing through 10,000 feet msl, I looked to the captain. I asked if he had noticed the stall warning at takeoff, and he had. He turned to the mechanic to explain that issue, and my focus returned to flying the airplane. We climbed to altitude and the airplane flew straight with almost no rudder or aileron trim required. We tested various systems in the high-altitude segment then descended near Tampico to test out various configurations, slowing the airplane as if setting up for a landing but at 20,000 feet. Our first test of the speed brakes grabbed our attention—only one side deployed, but on the second try, they worked as advertised. We figured it was likely just a bit of air trapped in a hydraulic line that had to be purged through use. The team of mechanics in back reported their checks were complete with no faults noted. 

We had been expecting major issues from the outset—an engine failure, pressurization issue, or electrical failure were prime threats, but the few squawks on the checklist were minor as we landed and taxied back to the hangar. There was no Beemans chewing gum, no heroics, and no West Virginia drawl downplaying significant failures. A few logbook entries gave the mechanics some work to square everything away, and a handler took us to customs for our exit pass. Unlike the normal crush of people in customs associated with a flight, it was just two pilots and a customs inspector, a relaxed conversation, and a fist bump with wishes for a safe trip as we walked away for our flight home. 

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the September 2023 issue of Plane & Pilot magazine. You can subscribe here.

The post Words Aloft: Test Pilot, Airline Style appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

We joked that the Bombardier CRJ-200’s weather radar was solar-powered. When the sun went down or you were in the clouds, it became useless at times, but we were flying the mighty CRJ-700 that day, and there is a definite possibility that we were experiencing more than a little misplaced faith in the equipment as we took off from Atlanta. We took a vector for weather and proceeded to not make it over any waypoints until we joined the localizer to land.

In cruise, we were deviating left and right around buildups we could see in the occasional breaks where we were on top of the clouds. And when we were in the soup, we tried to keep a safe distance from the buildups the radar painted, but as the flight progressed, the screen faded from distinct buildups to a general screen of mostly green, and guessing where the strong cells were was a hunch more often than not.

The captain and I were debating the combination of hunches and weak radar returns, combined with Washington Center’s advice. There were more than a few moments where static overpowered our radios, and Saint Elmo’s fire danced on the windshield wipers. “We’re about ripe for a lightning strike,” I muttered, unaware I still had the microphone keyed up for the intercom.

The captain immediately replied, “Oh, well, I’ve never been struck by lightning before!”

He and I slumped a little and exchanged a glance—tempting the fates with a hook like that cannot end well. Within five minutes, he went from “never been struck” to “Holy moly, that one shook the plane” by way of “Well, that one wasn’t so bad.” Three lightning strikes in five minutes remains my all-time record, and I’ll happily stay out of the contest to push that bar any further along.

In spite of my junior status—and a corresponding lack of hours in the right seat of the jet—it wasn’t my first lightning strike. What I remember is not the first strike itself, but telling the captain that it wasn’t my first. And depending on your experience or that of your instructor, you might expect a tale to follow of how we proceeded to finish the flight with a partial electrical failure, an engine fire, a remagnetized compass, or any number of other doomsday scenarios.

What actually happened was our eyes widened to the diameter of saucers, and we exchanged gallows humor and made a concentrated effort to see if anything was affected by our foray into Mother Nature’s light show. From the cockpit, we couldn’t find evidence that lightning had harmed a thing, but by the time we finished taking stock, the flight attendants had called up front to see what had just happened and if we were in an emergency. Once everyone had caught their breath, we began our descent for an uneventful landing at Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport (KPHF), also known as Patrick Henry Field.

On the exterior inspection after parking, it became evident we had indeed suffered a trio of hits and had the marks to prove it. On the nose, a pair of small burns seemed to show where the energy had entered our airframe; the exit wounds were burn marks about the size of a nickel on the flaps, and a small chunk of composite material had departed the trailing edge of one winglet. Again, we’d noticed zero faults in the airplane after the events, but we were pilots, and it’s a mechanic’s job to sort that out. By the time the company rounded up a mechanic to inspect the airplane, we had exceeded the duty limit for the day and were illegal for the return leg to Atlanta. We had to inform the passengers there were no pilots legally available to fly them to Atlanta, and we’d try again in the morning.

The National Weather Service keeps tabs on these things, and it has published that, on average, each airliner gets struck by lightning once or twice a year. As I preflight these birds with two decades or more in service, I believe it. Random patches often stick out in places that don’t make sense for normal damage, such as being hit by a catering truck or baggage loader.

In addition, a lightning strike can magnetize parts of an aircraft, creating havoc with the avionics. Degaussing an airplane—removing the magnetic field—can be labor intensive. But the idea of a lightning strike outright destroying most airplanes is rather dramatic. Most airplanes, being metal, feature bonding straps across hinges and attachment points to establish electrical continuity, so discharge can be routed out through static wicks or designated exit points in the airframe. Composite materials often feature a conductive layer to establish that same continuity. The Glasair III LP homebuilt featured that component to give peace of mind to builders and pilots who wanted all-weather versatility.

A phenomenon many pilots don’t experience until they’re in jets is Saint Elmo’s fire, where the static electricity generated moving through a cloud dances along parts of the airframe—most often the flight deck windscreens—in a dazzling display that looks like a mad scientist’s Tesla coil. It can be a precursor to a lightning strike. The constant static to sustain this display does often generate static in the radios. If I’m getting that sort of static, I’ll often ask the center controller for the next frequency in case we’re out of range when it subsides.

Another variation of Saint Elmo’s fire is ball lightning, a phenomenon that sounds like the stuff of ghost stories—a ball of energy forms outside, passes through the windshield, and drifts slowly through the cabin. In a November 2021 piece in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics titled “An Initiation of Ball Lightning in an Aircraft,” Wilfried Heil and Don Smith detail a 1960s event when an orb entered the flight deck and followed the path a person would take walking to the cargo deck. The article is easily found online—free to access.

The abstract, introduction, and observation are an easy read. As you continue, it dives into the nuts and bolts of how airplanes are designed to withstand these events while also demystifying an event that otherwise many might discount as supernatural or imagined. I still haven’t experienced ball lightning, and if it stays that way, it’s absolutely fine by me.

For the remaining years at that airline, I addressed that check airman as “Sparky” when we crossed paths. We’ve both put a few airlines behind us now, but our shared flight remains fresh in my mind. With a jolting experience like ours, I’m pretty sure he can recall it, as well.

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the August 2023 issue of Plane & Pilot magazine. 

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The traffic targets were thick on ForeFlight, a swarm of blue triangles trying to wedge into the same path. I fell in behind a Cessna 180 to begin the arrival, and as we flew down the railroad tracks, a few pilots got peeled off to restart their arrival—15 over the speed limit works on Interstate 75, but on the arrival to EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh, not so much. There are no passing lanes unless you’re a true “fast mover.” None of us were transmitting—because there’s no room to get a word in edgewise.

“Friends, this is your afternoon ATC team taking over for the morning crew, who have been doing a fantastic job—and you pilots have been as well! As a heads-up, we’re landing on runways 27 and 36, and keep your eyes open because there’s an ag applicator spraying directly beneath Fisk. Now everybody, pick a partner, fall in behind them, and maintain space of a half mile up to a mile. Welcome to Oshkosh, everyone. We’re glad you came.”

Before long, some controller had me in his binoculars. “Gray Mooney over Fisk, rock your wings!” A Mooney is built to fly in long, straight lines, and it really doesn’t appreciate the ailerons hitting the stops. Add in my airliner-deadened feet on the rudder, and the turn coordinator was only too happy to announce its unhappiness as we wallowed through a quick Dutch roll. “Great rock! Follow the railroad northbound; you’ll be landing on 27.” I flew the rest of the arrival as charted, guided by the controllers along the way when to make the turns.

Turning off the runway, I took a deep breath, realizing my palms were a little moist, and a little shake was subsiding in my hands. My day job is based at the world’s busiest airport, but the busy precision of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport pales in comparison to the controlled chaos of the arrival into Oshkosh.

A Lifetime of AirVenture

My first time flying my own plane into AirVenture was in 2021. Before that, I’d flown in as an airport kid on a glorified Young Eagles flight in 1995, and my next AirVenture wasn’t until 2007, when I arrived on an airliner and drove from Milwaukee. Fourteen years later, I showed up working with Plane & Pilot, flying my own Mooney into the event. Each year I’ve attended, the event has been different, but the magic of my first visit still hasn’t worn off.

In 1995, I got to meet Richard VanGrunsven as he unveiled the RV-8 during its first public appearance. Once the folks at Van’s Aircraft found out I had an RV-4 tail kit with my grandfather, they signed me up for a demo ride. Crammed next to us was Mort Crim, a famous broadcaster who inspired Will Farrell’s Ron Burgundy character. At an event in the warbirds section, I got to shake hands with Tex Hill, a Flying Tiger, and Chuck Yeager. Both of them signed my EAA ball cap, a memento I miss, having lost it in one of many moves in my itinerant phase.

In a forum tent, I got to see Gordon Baxter, a former columnist from FLYING, speak for about an hour of quality entertainment. I had an English teacher back home trying to get me enthusiastic about writing, and as Bax held court, I realized that writing about flying at an airshow was basically a license to steal. After all, who could resist the invitation for their bird to grace the pages of an aviation magazine?

The experience was heady stuff for a 15-year-old with nothing but big hopes and a few lines in his logbook. I crewed on an airshow team through my last years of high school and college. I’ve watched so many airshows from the other side of the crowd line that they don’t hold my attention like they used to—the entertaining acts for me are the low-performance airplanes putting on a good show. Stock Stearmans move to the front of the line in my book. No disrespect for the guys flying the high-powered monoplanes, but the slow movers are my jam.

That said, there’s always a fantastic lineup of performers at AirVenture, with a good variety to captivate nearly anyone. That’s the magic of AirVenture. If you love airplanes, there’s enough here to interest you for the duration, regardless of your market segment. You could dive into the forums and educational opportunities for the length of your stay, roam the antiques in appreciation of yesteryear, or imagine yourself as a military hero in the warbird area.

Shopping for an airplane? Whether it’s a some-assembly-required kit or a factory-built million-dollar bird, you can meet up with owners and sales folks who can answer your questions and allow you to put your hands on equipment that beats the heck out of any online video or website.

Read the Notice

If you’re coming to Oshkosh for the first time, let me say this loudly: Read the Notice. I mean, you already read all the pertinent NOTAMs before you fly, right? The AirVenture procedures Notice is longer than the entire NOTAM package I’m given for a typical airline flight—and that’s a lot of paper.

But, unlike standard NOTAMs, the AirVenture arrivals are printed in plain English, with many pictures. It’s almost like they really want pilots to read it. If you can find a friend to come along, even better. Sharing expenses is helpful, and a second set of eyes is invaluable. The controllers will ask you to maintain half-mile spacing in trail, and most of us aren’t used to doing that. Having someone looking at an EFB showing the traffic ahead can be a big help to keep your eyes outside while they’re studying the traffic, charts, frequencies, and fuel gauges.

Be comfortable with your aircraft before you leave home. I’ve talked to pilots who had just finished decades-long restorations before heading to the convention, and we’ve all seen beautifully restored classics ground looped—the two factors have almost certainly overlapped more than once.

Be ready for the controller to call your base turn directly toward the runway numbers—the colored spots used as touchdown targets are displaced well down the runway, and even knowing that, you’ll feel like you’re too high to make it. I felt the same last time, and still had to add power and fly in ground effect to the green dot.

Bring tiedowns. The volunteers will want you to drive stakes into the ground as soon as the prop stops turning, and while you can buy stakes on-site, the best options are the ones you bring. If I’m camping with my airplane, I usually wind up wishing I’d brought sandals for the shower house. Make sure your sunscreen isn’t expired (as I write, the last of my Sun ‘N Fun Aerospace Expo sunburn has just finished peeling), and a big floppy hat is a great idea. A cheap set of cutting boards to roll the tires onto when you park also helps keep your airplane from sinking into the mud.

The item that almost never shows up on a packing list is something to clamp your shower towel to the propeller—it makes a great clothesline, but a breeze can carry your towel away from your campsite. I’ve seen clothes pins fail miserably, but big black binder clips work well. Last time I forgot my binder clips, but a pair of vise-grip pliers from my emergency toolkit served as a fine substitute.
It may be your first time at AirVenture, or you may have lost count of your pilgrimages. We may have known each other for decades or friends who just haven’t met, but if you stroll by my Mooney in the vintage campground, stop by and say hi. We’re all family at Oshkosh. 

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the July 2023 issue of Plane & Pilot. 

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Equipped with a sliding canopy over two seats and control sticks, the M20T was unmistakably geared for military service. Under the wings, four hardpoints gave the Predator teeth in the form of missiles, light rockets, or gun pods.
Much like the 1951 effort, the Predator showed well—but not well enough. The official reason for its rejection was that the M20T did not recover well from spins with a full load of fuel. Mooney wings are lauded for their strength and stability. The former was an asset, the latter a liability in this design. Roll rates were lackluster, failing to meet design criteria despite numerous revisions to the ailerons. Spin recovery has never been great with the Mooney design, and that was really the nail in the coffin. A one-turn spin was easily recoverable with quick recovery inputs. A two-turn spin took another four turns to recover; a four-turn spin wasn’t recoverable. Mooney withdrew from the competition before it ended.
The winner was the Slingsby T-3 Firefly, which raised some eyebrows: “Made in America” was a stipulation of the contract, but Slingsby built most of the airplane in the U.K. and assembled it in the U.S. After a brief few years in service, the U.S. Air Force grounded the T-3 fleet in 1997 after a pair of spin-related accidents and an engine failure. They were destroyed in 2006.
Meanwhile, the M20T prototype had gathered dust at the Kerrville, Texas, factory. Jacques Esculier, the company’s president, ordered the prototype destroyed. The engine went back to Continental (it had been loaned for the venture), but the employees in Mooney’s R&D complex were more than a little attached to the machine they’d poured so much work into. In a clandestine effort, they disassembled the airframe and pigeonholed it in various spaces across the facility. And there it stayed hidden until it found a champion.
Former Mooney chief operating officer Tom Bowen recalled his first encounter with the design. “In 1995, the research and development team staff gained enough confidence in me, and they said, ‘We have something to show you—this project we’d really like to work on.’” The workers took him through the
hangars where the pieces of the M20T were scattered. “I knew a little about the program, but it hadn’t been my focus.”
Bowen received permission from the company’s president for the workers to resurrect the project, but Mooney was being prepped for sale so they had to do so without any meaningful budget. “So we begged, borrowed, and might have stolen a few pieces from the production line,” Bowen said of beginning to reassemble the airplane. Working evenings and weekends, the airplane began to come back together, this time with a Lycoming AEIO-540 under the cowl. The bird had never been underpowered, but this engine promised even more performance.
Now registered as N20XT, the unique Mooney took flight again, and Dirk Vander Zee, then Mooney’s vice president of sales and marketing, dubbed it the “Predator.” The name stuck, and the Predator gained its memorable paint scheme after Bowen’s daughters, armed with a three-view drawing and a box of crayons, colored in tiger stripes. In the hands of longtime Mooney experimental test pilot Mike “Mikey” Miles, the Predator took flight, and Miles started checking out the other Mooney test pilots in the bird.

The whole rehabilitation project had stayed beneath leadership’s radar, and on June 30, 1997, Bowen taxied the mostly complete Predator, its test time already flown off, to the main headquarters and parked it in front of the office of Mooney president Bing Lantis. “The offices all have windows out to the ramp, and as I walked in, he was speechless,” Bowen said. Lantis went for a ride, and magically, the team had a modest operating budget for the program. With a few bucks to use, the crayon on paper became paint on metal, and soon the bird was ready to display.
The Predator parked at the Mooney Aircraft Pilots Association tent that year at EAA AirVenture, and the next it was front and center for Oshkosh and the Sun ’n
Fun Fly-In.
The R&D team continued to tweak the design, modifying the flight control sizes, then adding and adjusting servo tabs to eke out every bit of maneuverability it could. The work was well outside the norm for Mooney’s engineers, who had built generations of stable, efficient aircraft but sometimes overshot their goals and had to rein back the project when it became too unstable. What they wound up with, Bowen recalled, was not the fingertip-flying mindbender that some would imagine.
“It’s not a two-finger machine,” Bowen said. “But it is a pleasant airplane to fly with one hand on the stick.” The 90-degree-per-second roll rate hoped for initially never really came to be—50 degrees per second is where it settled in, and inverted flight was never all that great, taking an aggressive nose-up pitch of 10-12 degrees to hold level inverted. “But it looped great, pulling only about 1.8 to 2 Gs.” It was speedy—160 knots or so in cruise, but the straight exhaust pipes with no mufflers made for a very noisy experience until ANR headsets came along.
Dreamers drooled over the design, but nobody was ready to pony up the bucks for orders, and when Bowen left Mooney, the Predator hardly flew. After a period of dormancy, the Florida Air Museum asked to display it, and it was ferried to Lakeland, where it sat for several years. It eventually wound up back in Kerrville at the Mooney factory, once again forlorn.
Don and Paul Maxwell, the father-son team at Maxwell Aviation, made an offer to the newest owners of Mooney: They’d restore the Predator to flight status if they could get permission. One might argue that short of the factory itself, Maxwell Aviation—one of the nation’s most popular Mooney Service Centers—would be the perfect place for such a project.
In 2020, the Maxwells showed up at Mooney’s Texas factory to bring the Predator back to their shop, but it didn’t fly home. The solid wing, a design trait Mooney owners brag about when it comes to comparison with other GA aircraft, becomes a liability if you want to haul a Mooney home. The crew from Maxwell Aviation set to drilling out the bulkhead’s rivets just aft of the cabin’s steel-tube cage and separated the tail, setting the pieces onto a flatbed trailer for transport.
The restoration took two years of part-time work as Paul led the effort, overhauling the engine and rebuilding the airframe. The M20T wing had featured larger-than-stock ailerons. Paul and his crew replaced that wing with a M20K wing, which brought them back to stock ailerons and flaps. The elevators had featured servo tabs to lighten stick forces, but after a few flights the team replaced them with stock equipment.
“Unless you’re going to be flying aerobatics every single flight, the older elevators were overkill,” Paul Maxwell said.
The Predator’s entire existence had ridden out numerous ownership changes at Mooney and a shoestring budget all along, but now the Maxwells have heaped the goodies onto it. Its instrument panel now features Garmin G3X Touch displays with engine instrumentation, CIES electronic fuel senders, and a Garmin GFC 500 autopilot.
The fuselage’s tiger stripes were replicated and extended to the wings. Carbon monoxide in the cabin was an issue all along, but the Maxwells have sorted that out, and it now has a Guardian CO detector. Sporting a 300 hp Lycoming AEIO-540 on the nose, the Predator certainly has the power to push you back into the seat and plaster a smile on your face.
“It’s a 170-knot airplane,” said Paul Maxwell. “It’s not as fast as a Bravo, but it will outclimb all the other Mooneys.”
The Predator returned to flight March 18 and recently attended a Mooney Caravan formation clinic in San Angelo, Texas. The Caravan clinic provides training through the year at regional venues before a giant formation arrival—with tentative plans for the Predator to lead it—at AirVenture in Oshkosh. The Predator will also be on display at MooneyMax, a Mooney-specific symposium in Longview, Texas, on June 22 through 25.
As for its future, what the Predator can do is limited mainly by regulation—it’s registered as experimental-exhibition. “Despite being factory built, it has more restrictions on its use than something built in a garage,” Paul said.
But he intends to fly it to Oshkosh for every AirVenture as long as he lives, and it will actively participate in Mooney caravan clinics as well as attending other, smaller events. 

Editor’s note: This story appeared in the July 2023 issue of Plane & Pilot magazine.

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Dreadnought, the flagship of the Sanders race team, is a fixture at the Reno Air Races. Since the heavily modified Sea Fury’s first race in 1983, it has been a constant menace to the souped-up racers who gathered each September at Stead Field (KRTS) to race for the Sunday Unlimited Gold. In the words of Matt Russell, longtime race enthusiast, “Dreadnought kept everyone honest. Without ‘The Buick’ in the field, there was considerably less pressure to push the racers to the limit. That ship kept everyone motivated.” 

Chatter between fans and Dreadnought crew in the pits at Stead makes it clear that after the Mayday call during qualifying this year, Dreadnought’s engine is toast. “You can push on the prop if you want, but it won’t turn,” one mechanic told a fan. After landing, the crew pulled the oil screens and found slivers of metal likely indicating the master rod bearing failed. The damage was such that the crew didn’t even bother opening the cowlings. Dreadnought was down for the remainder of the race. While fans hoped desperately for a miracle—a Pratt & Whitney R-4360 race engine materializing was beyond the pale of the miracles one might encounter on the ramp at Reno. 

This race engine has been on Dreadnought for 15 years; the crankshaft was installed in the prior engine that ran 13 years before that. Needless to say, 28 years of life on a crankshaft in a racer is remarkable—but it was apparent Dreadnought’s caretakers are concerned the failed master rod bearing could have caused irreparable harm to the beating heart of the beloved racer. 

In a radial engine, the master rod is a connecting rod from the crankshaft to a piston, and the connecting rods to all the other cylinders bolt to the master rod. The crew was quick to point out that had the master rod actually failed, the damage would have been absolutely catastrophic. “There would have been cylinders all over the race course,” a mechanic said in conversation with a fan.

Crew members said Dreadnought will remain on display through the remainder of the event and will be trucked home for repairs after the Sunday Race. The Sanders team has a trailer set up for Sea Fury racers. They’ll pull the wings, mount Dreadnought on the trailer in a pretty aggressive bank angle to meet roadway restrictions, and it’ll head home a bit more humbly than it arrived.

“You’ve not seen the last of this bird, not by a long shot,” fans were told. Wherever the next iteration of unlimited air racing happens to come along, we’re sure the distinctive gray racer will rejoin the ranks and push the field to race all the way to the finish line on Sunday.

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Halfway through the preflight inspection in Bloomington, Illinois, the phone buzzed in my pocket. I let it go to voicemail. I’m not one to screen calls, but I’m also not one who enjoys interruptions in a preflight walk-around. It was cold out, besides, and I just wanted to get back into the heat.

The voicemail was from a manager at an airline I’d interviewed with a month or two before. Like the village idiot, I’d gotten the call and let it go to voicemail at quitting time on a Friday. I wondered if I could survive the suspense of having to wait out the whole weekend to know my fate.

I was sitting in the right seat, pulling the ATIS and starting to load our flight plan as I hit send. I was mentally preparing to leave a voicemail of my own when the ringing stopped.

There was a voice on the other end, not a recording.

There was a job offer and a class date.

There was much rejoicing and an uncountable number of thank-yous.

After more than nine years of flying regional jets, I had an offer to move up. I scrambled for a pen and came up with a magic marker. I grasped for paper—any paper, in a flight deck where we burned through 12 linear feet of paper per flight. I came up with the piece of cardboard off the back of a hotel notepad.

March 23, I scrawled.

After my stammered flurry of thank-yous, I fired another call off to Amy, my wife. “They hired me. I start in late March. Gotta fly. Coming home.”

The captain, one of our company’s most senior, looked at me with a smile and a twinkle in his eye. “You got the call, you S.O.B. Okay, that’s it. I’m done here. Fly us home. Congratulations, kid. We’re gonna miss you around here.”

I had about a month until class. Choosing my day to leave the company was a strategic move to manage a few days off to rest before beginning training, while also trying to pick up a few fun trips to end on a high note.

My last scheduled trip was a continuous duty overnight from Atlanta to Westchester County, New York, and back. Naps, as we called them, are rough. You typically fly the last flight into a city and the first flight back out the next morning. There’s a couple hours at a hotel in between, usually no more than five hours on the ground.

I had the leg back to Atlanta, and I misjudged my flare just enough to drive the mains into the pavement with a somewhat firm arrival. Steve, my captain on this trip, just shook his head. “I’ll tell everyone you greased your last landing,” he said.

We got to the gate, and the passengers disembarked, hurrying to their connections. I walked to the back and pulled my bag from the overhead bin. Steve offered to do the post-flight inspection, but I needed a quiet moment away from people. With a lump in my throat and moist eyes, I waved my crew off to the employee shuttle.

As I descended to the ramp, I reflected on the nine years and a little more than 5,000 hours of flying these CRJs. At several points, I stopped to remember events from the last decade. The numerous bird strikes that hardly left a scratch. The sets of tires I’d worn through. Three lightning strikes on one flight with a check airman I’ll forevermore call “Sparky.” The CF-34 engines that’d never failed me. The air conditioning packs and auxiliary power units that had failed me more times than I could count.

Returning to the left side of the nose where I began the walkaround, I noted a stenciled “operated by!” was the only place where my company’s logo adorned the jet. For a long moment, I remembered the people who’d made the company such a great place. There had been a merge, a failed rebranding and then another name change. Many had left. Planes were being shuffled to other carriers. We didn’t know it yet, but they’d soon lose the vast majority of the flying that formed our pre-merger company. I’d almost gotten the seniority to make captain before things began winding down. I’d just have to earn the fourth stripe somewhere else. Hoping I was hidden from public view beneath the jet bridge, I gave this bird a little kiss on the cheek and climbed the stairs.

I wasn’t done, though. A trip popped up in open time that was too juicy to leave on the table, a maintenance ferry from Atlanta to Tucson. I’d never flown a plane that far west. The captain, Andy, was a great guy who was restoring a Bucker Jungmann. I’d met him just before starting at the airline. It seemed like a great way to wrap things up.

We told stories all the way out. We had an airplane, a destination, and a rough time frame. I got an eyeful of the boneyard on the way in, and the mechanics drove us to lunch. We had brought an airplane to them for an interior modernization and were planning to take a refreshed jet back. After lunch, Andy and I agreed to do separate preflight inspections. With the plane having just undergone a major maintenance task, we knew there was ample opportunity to find things unfinished.

I did my preflight. I opened every panel I could reach, climbed into the aft equipment bay, stuck my head into the landing gear wells, and peeked into the avionics bay. It was a nice throwback to my time on furlough spent as a night shift mechanic, maintaining the same birds I’d been flying.

Andy did his preflight. We compared notes. We’d both seen a few fasteners loose on a big panel under the belly. They’re a pretty common sight to find loose, but we figured it’d be an easy thing for the mechanics to tighten them down.

We figured wrong. One fastener broke. Two nut plates were stripped. We retreated indoors to an air-conditioned office while the mechanics scrounged to find the fasteners they needed.

Andy and I fired up our computers, hit the wifi, and went shopping on Barnstormers the way kids from ages past shopped the Sears and Roebuck “Wish Book” catalog. We found a Piper Aztec nearby that was dirt cheap. Andy, ever keen to flip a plane, called, and we almost got serious about buying the thing.

As we watched the clock tick away, we debated possible outcomes for the day. It was my last day with the airline. I drew up a drop-dead time, the minute when we’d have to be taxiing out, because we were near our duty limit for the day.

We weighed possible outcomes if we couldn’t get airborne in time. Would they buy a ticket home for a former employee? Could we adjust my resignation date by a day to complete the trip?

Deep down I wondered if they’d go for the most painful option: “You should have known better than to pick up a ferry flight on your last day. Those never go to plan. Thanks for your service and enjoy the next phase of your flying career.”

We continued debating the merits of buying the derelict Aztec so I’d have a way to get home. It never came to that, though. The mechanics said they’d found the needed parts and got us buttoned up with just a little time to spare. I knew better than to ask from whose plane they’d robbed the parts.

Winging our way east as the sun sat behind us, it all seemed like a time lapse video. As we descended down the arrival into Atlanta, the red flash of the Master Caution annunciators, a triple chime and the audible alert “SMOKE, SMOKE” absolutely wrecked the quiet reverie of my final flight with the airline. The EICAS screen showed an alarm for the aft lavatory smoke detector.

There were no flight attendants to query whether there was smoke back there. Andy was flying the plane. He took over the radios and I grabbed a fire extinguisher as I walked aft through the empty cabin. The message had cleared before I got halfway back, but I looked to be certain. False alarm. We figured some dust stirred up during the interior refit had settled on the innards of the smoke detector.

The last 15 minutes passed uneventfully. We landed, turned north away from the terminal, and taxied up to the company’s maintenance hangar, where we turned “our” ship over to our technicians with a write-up about the smoke detector. Andy, who parked in a lot by the hangar, gave me a lift to the shuttle pickup for my parking lot on the other side of the field. We shook hands, and I walked off to the bus stop.

In a week’s time, I was surrounded by a dozen of my newest friends in training at a new airline, deep in the books as I began learning the ins and outs of my new company and their equipment. I had graduated from flying the “Barbie Jet” to learning the Airbus. I had an intense couple of weeks in the schoolhouse ahead of me.

Jeremy King is an airline pilot from Atlanta, Georgia. He and his wife, Amy, are restoring a 1945 Piper J-3 Cub.

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Miniaturized electronics and advances in backup batteries that have emerged in recent years have hit the avionics scene full-on, and the FAA’s improving attitude toward approving new technology in the panel has accelerated an explosion of new models available for aircraft owners when the time comes to repurpose gyroscopic instruments into bookends. As clichéd as terms like “game changer” and “disruptor” may be, these instruments have ushered in a new age of reliability and situational awareness.

A Mostly Standardized Layout

The beauty of a good primary flight display (PFD) is that it needs almost no instruction for basic use. The sky is blue, the ground is a brownish-orange, and the rest should just make sense, right? Beyond that, most instruments stick to the convention of displaying altitude to the right of the instrument and airspeed to the left. A window at the center of each “tape” shows the actual speed or altitude, and the tape moves up or down in the background, indicating a trend of climb/descent or change in speed. There are some variations in how different manufacturers present this information on their displays—we’ll get into that with each instrument’s rundown. 

Aspen Evolution E5/Pro 1000/Pro MAX 1000

Starting off alphabetically, the Aspen’s offering differs a bit from other contenders. While the other instruments fit the standard hole for a single instrument, Aspen’s Evolution line takes up a bigger chunk of your panel: An over-under presentation of attitude and direction indication by a single screen takes up a 3.5- x 7-inch footprint of your panel. As long as you’re rocking a standard six-pack panel, you’re in good shape, but if you own a nonstandard-cut panel such as older Cessnas or have an angle bent into your panel—we’re looking at you, vintage Mooney owners—then you might be looking at cutting a brand-new panel for your Aspen install, which can substantially increase installation costs. The Evolution series of instruments all use the same hardware, so if you install an E5 and get envy after flying a Pro MAX with synthetic vision in a friend’s plane, you can upgrade the unit—which ain’t cheap—but you’ll move up a few tiers without having to tear your panel apart again. All the Evolution units are controlled via a combination of two knobs and a number of buttons along the right and bottom frame of the unit, so their operation is standardized, allowing you to move from one model to the next without much of a learning curve. 

With a base price of $4,495, the Aspen E5 is the budget model. It gives you an attitude indicator and HSI display. The Non-TSOed device is installable via an AML (Approved Model List) STC that covers most types of general aviation aircraft lighter than 6,000 pounds. It is directly compatible with the Honeywell AeroCruze 100 autopilot (previously known as the TruTrak Vizion), and with a few adapters, it can interface with a number of vintage autopilots. It’s approved for IFR flight when connected to a panel-mounted IFR GPS. While the unit does have an internal GPS built in, installations lacking an IFR GPS will be limited to VFR only. The Evolution 1000 Pro MAX, at $9,995, is the next step up, introducing options for terrain and synthetic vision, traffic and weather display. 

Garmin G5 

Garmin’s first entry in the field was the G5, and compared to some other contenders, it’s easy to view it as something of a simpleton. Its STC limits installation to replacing the attitude indicator or turn coordinator when configured as a PFD. So, for a typical certified install, you’d need to keep your airspeed, altimeter, VSI and turn coordinator in place. The altitude selector gives you a target on climbs or descents and keeps you honest in cruise. While there’s less information displayed than many other systems, the uncluttered display is basically the same presentation airline and business jet pilots have used for years. It makes an easy reference for pilots, and up to four hours of battery life means that in many electrical failure scenarios, your aircraft’s attitude reference will likely outlast the fuel on board. 

While the installation can be as simple as providing connections for power, ground, pitot and static, if you have compatible equipment, the display packs in flight directors, annunciators for autopilot commands, and GPS course direction. Garmin’s GAD13 interface ties a temperature probe to the G5 to add true airspeed and winds aloft data. 

A G5 can also be installed along with a GMU 11 magnetometer as an HSI to replace your DG and CDI. Add in a GAD 25B, and it’ll run selected autopilots from Garmin, Century, Cessna, Honeywell, S-TEC and Piper. A G5 DG/HSI also serves as a reversionary attitude display in case your primary attitude source fails. 

The G5 fits into a standard 3.125-inch instrument hole, but it mounts from the front to allow a larger 3.5-inch screen. 

The G5 attitude indicator is priced at $2,595, and the HSI, when set up with GPS interface, is $3,445. Unlike the newer GI 275, the G5 is sold “over the counter,” with an AML STC for installation by any A&P/IA mechanic with no need to deal with avionics shops or Garmin dealers. 

Garmin GI 275 

Garmin’s newer instrument replacement is a Swiss Army knife of aircraft instruments. Again, we’ll focus not on its many possible presentations but solely on what it will do when replacing your attitude indicator or directional gyro. (But be aware that with a different software load and some additional interfaces, that same box can serve as an engine monitor, MFD or CDI. In theory, you could build up an entire panel of GI 275s, but by the time you’ve installed three, you may as well have gutted the instrument panel and installed a G3X system.)

The GI 275 fits a standard instrument hole, and for better aesthetics from behind, so it integrates a little more subtly than is possible with the G5’s square form factor. The 275 features a touchscreen interface in addition to a two-piece knob. The limiting factor of the 3.125-inch instrument hole means the screen isn’t big, and it’s presenting a lot more information than the instruments it will replace. Plenty of folks who haven’t yet flown with a GI 275 are quick to criticize the complexity of the display, but we have yet to hear tales of buyer’s remorse from any owner who’s committed to the system. 

When configured as an attitude indicator, which also displays altitude, heading and airspeed, the GI 275 can also be configured with synthetic vision to display terrain, obstacles, traffic and a flight path marker to show the aircraft’s trajectory. As an HSI, the GI 275 can display a GPS map as the background with weather, terrain and traffic all tied in. It can also integrate with a number of legacy radios, including the venerable KX-155, which the G5 can not. 

While Garmin is quick to tout the GI 275’s seamless integration with the GFC 500 autopilot, it also works with a variety of legacy autopilot systems, including models from Bendix/King, Century, Cessna, Collins, Honeywell, Sperry and S-TEC. As with the G5, the compatible models list is available on the Garmin website and should be referenced—and doublechecked with your installer—before making installation decisions.  

When installed as a primary or backup flight instrument, the GI 275 is installed with a battery pack rated for 60 minutes of use. 

Garmin lists MSRP for GI 275 at $3,995 for attitude indicators and $4,345 when set up as an HSI. These instruments are only available installed by Garmin dealers, who ultimately determine final price and installation. 

RC Allen Mini6

RC Allen’s Mini6 is the newest offering of this instrument lineup—in fact, as we write this, it’s on the cusp of release. While this is the latest offering in the market segment, the RC Allen company has been around far longer than any others in this line—it was founded in 1932. By the 1970s, RC Allen was the largest manufacturer of general aviation aircraft instruments. Now RC Allen is owned and manufactured by Kelly Manufacturing Company. As such, the Mini6 instruments could well replace instruments of the same brand that have been in service for decades.  

The Mini6, so named because it can replace any of the six primary flight instruments, fits a standard 3.125-inch instrument cutout and is manipulated with a knob and two buttons to adjust brightness. The Mini6 sports TSO certifications for pitch and bank, turn and slip, magnetic direction, airspeed, altimeter, rate of climb and multipurpose electronic displays. 

Pilots and aircraft owners often see TSO, and their eyes glaze over at the alphabet soup that follows, but here’s the takeaway: While every other instrument in this lineup is certified under a multi-aircraft approval (AML) STC, TSO (technical service order) certification of the Mini6 means it can be installed in virtually any aircraft out there when accompanied by a simple form 337 from your inspector. There are no remote magnetometers involved—it’s all in one unit. With only four screws to mount to the panel, four wires for power, ground and GPS connections, and two connections to the pitot and static lines, installation should be straightforward. 

The Mini6 presents a classic case of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” You could, in theory, wipe out your entire panel and put one of these front and center. But then you’ve created a single point of failure that could ruin the whole day—we’d consider hanging onto an airspeed indicator and maybe another altimeter at the very least. 

The Mini6’s backup battery is advertised as good for one hour at full-screen brightness, but with the screen dimmed to 80% brightness, we’re told it should last up to three hours. The battery is to be replaced every three years. The Mini6 enters the market at $3,250. 

uAvionix AV-30-C 

The AV-30-C arguably looks the most like the legacy vacuum instrument it replaces—but, in fact, its face can be changed to display the conventional blue-brown horizon or other schemes, including the older gray-black setup many classic aircraft have used for decades. The AV-30-C had been available for experimental planes for a while before gaining FAA approval—long enough that homebuilders had certified owners drooling over the combination of functionality and economy this instrument offers. 

The AV-30-C is certified to display primary attitude, slip and direction indication—unlike other offerings, the AV-30-C doesn’t have a remote unit to determine heading. Like a DG, the AV-30-C, when used as a heading indicator, has to be set to a compass heading on startup. Some early units were prone to precession and required attention to keep them from drifting far from the compass heading. It wasn’t a consistent issue—some owners reported theirs were rock steady while others said theirs drifted more than the DGs they replaced. A recent software update reportedly solves this problem, though.

As a directional indicator, the AV-30-C can display GPS information but is not certified as a primary indication as a CDI or HSI. 

The AV-30-C presents data a little bit unconventionally: With no animation to the values displaying speed, the numbers just flash from one to the next when displaying speed and altitude—both things an owner can grow to accept, although it does look somewhat crude compared to its competitors. There are no numbered tapes for speed or altitude, but there is a tape attached to the speed indication that shows the colored arcs for stall, flap operating range and redline, giving off the look and feel of conventional gauges, even if presented slightly differently. With a few hours in the seat, they’d become more intuitive than they do in just a few minutes of watching YouTube videos demonstrating the instrument. 

Like the GI 275, the AV-30-C’s display fits within the confines of a standard 3.125-inch instrument hole, but you won’t be squeezing your fingertips within the bezel to pinch and drag the information being displayed onscreen—a single knob and two buttons control the instrument. 

Whether you’re running the AV-30-C as an attitude or DG, you can set the instrument up to display a ton of other values in combinations most wouldn’t have imagined—when’s the last time you’d have thought to look at your DG to see how many G’s you were pulling? G-load, density altitude, voltage, temperature, true airspeed and probeless angle of attack are all options to display on these instruments, although some users have reported the angle of attack reporting is less than consistent.

The AV-30-C’s backup battery is advertised as good for two hours at a comfortable 20°C temperature, but if you’re operating a cold cabin, it may be worth noting that at -20°C, it’s only good for 30 minutes. Granted, most pilots would barricade themselves at home in those cold temperatures, but if you’re operating a backcountry workhorse, that’s worth noting. 

There’s an unexpected twist of functionality to the instrument: The AV-30-C can control the tailBeaconX, the company’s ADS-B transponder that replaces the tail navigation light. At the time of writing, the AV-30-C has no autopilot connectivity, although an autopilot adapter is mentioned as being in development on the uAvionix website. 

At $1,995, the AV-30C is by far the most affordable offering in this lineup, used as an attitude or directional indicator. 

Whether you’re just looking to replace a dying gyro instrument or upgrade your panel for significant IFR capabilities, these offerings give you a chance to craft your panel to your needs—and without breaking the bank in the process. While it’s cheaper in the long run to gut your panel and do one big upgrade, such as a G3X or Dynon panel, these instruments offer the chance to pay as you go and do a progressive panel upgrade as your finances allow. After all, bells and whistles are nice, but some of your airplane budget needs to be spent on fuel and $100 hamburgers. 

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