Don’t Be Afraid To Ask Questions

“It’s better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” 

That quote has been attributed to everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Mark Twain to Franz Kafka. No matter its origin, it’s terrible advice for anyone in the aviation field. I think it should be rearranged for those of us who love aviation, as well as the continuous learning that it requires. 

“It’s better to speak up and thought a fool than to be the first to the scene of the crash.”

That may seem fairly harsh when taken at face value, and maybe it is, but I stand by it. There have been too many senseless fatalities when a simple question or challenge could have prevented the loss of life.

The implementation of CRM (crew resource management) has greatly reduced the number of accidents and incidents caused by someone in the front of an airplane being afraid to speak up. We’ve come a long way from “gear up, flaps up, shut up.”

Your Skills Are Eroding 

It’s a well-known fact that the more you’re paid to fly an airplane, the easier that airplane is to fly. When you’re hauling freight in the middle of the night in a Piper Seneca that may or may not have half its systems operative, you’re working for your money. If there’s an autopilot installed, and if it works, it’s likely not good enough to allow you to kick back and sip coffee from your thermos while you’re along for the ride.

The opposite occurs when you’re crossing the North Atlantic in a 2-year-old Gulfstream G650. You’re still working for your money, but it’s a different kind of work. It’s not as much hands-on, stick-and-rudder flying as it is monitoring, anticipating and coordinating important tasks to ensure you’re where you need to be when you need to be there.

The autopilot systems on modern airplanes do a really great job of flying the airplane, so it’s very tempting to let the autopilot do all the work. A good autopilot is a great tool to reduce workload, as long as you know what to expect and how to use the automation. The problem with flawless automation is that it robs the pilot of the tactile experience of actually flying the airplane. Just like any other physical skill, your “stick and rudder” skills will erode if you don’t use them.

I like to hand-fly through at least 10,000 feet on departure, and I should do the same on the arrival, but I often don’t. My excuse is exactly what I wrote above—the autopilot does a great job of flying perfect localizer intercepts and three-degree paths down the glideslope, and I hate to interrupt such a wonderful performance. It’s like watching a figure skater perform 90% of their routine flawlessly, then having to trade places with them for the last 10%. Visions of a baby giraffe learning to walk on ice come to mind.

I recently went through recurrent training where nearly everything is hand-flown. I could tell that I was a little rusty on approaches, so I’ve set a goal for myself to hand-fly below 5,000 feet on the descent, as long as the weather is good. 

If the weather is crummy, I think letting the autopilot fly the approach makes sense. If, for some reason, the autopilot is inoperative, all those hand-flown approaches in VMC will surely pay off.

I think I sometimes forget that flying is fun, and now that I’m getting paid to do it, the company should get its money’s worth!

All Those Examiners Were Right

Whether it was my mechanic certificates, Inspection Authorization or pilot ratings, I was always handed a piece of advice along with my crisp, new temporary certificate: “This is a license to learn.” 

The good thing about being a professional pilot is that no two days are the same, and there’s always something new to learn. The bad thing about being a professional pilot is that no two days are the same, and there’s always something new to learn. Thankfully, aviation tends to attract naturally curious people who love to share information and learn new things, so monotony doesn’t need to be added to this list.

Even if you fly the same airplane along the same route every day, you’ll never have exactly the same day twice.

Everything Will Break At Home

I can be home for a month on vacation, wearing a tool belt, knee pads and a hard hat, and not so much as a dust molecule will fall astray. The air conditioning will keep the house within a tenth of a degree, the grass will remain at its golf course dewy height, and the two guitars hanging in my living room will stay tuned in perfect fourth notes that sing like the London Symphony Orchestra any time the dog burps.

As soon as I roll a suitcase wheel over the threshold of the front door, however, something changes. There’s some force that takes over. I picture it as something like the gremlin ripping the airplane wing to shreds in the “Twilight Zone” movie but more menacing and far less empathetic.

I was packing my big suitcase the day before leaving for a month-long initial type-rating school. It was July in the southeastern U.S., so the temperature was hovering somewhere near 200 degrees. Thank goodness the humidity was only 98%, or it could have been really uncomfortable. I noticed that even inside the house felt hot all of a sudden, and a quick check of the thermostat confirmed that the air conditioning wasn’t working.

After some looking around and mild to moderate swearing, I unclogged the condensate line and got the water drained out of the pan that sits under the air handler. 

Thankfully, I was able to fix that one before I left. It doesn’t always work out that way. 

I was flying out to the West Coast for a few days recently. I went out to the garage and noticed a puddle of water under the freezer, and the alarm was beeping. I opened the door to see everything sweating. When I closed the door, I didn’t hear the familiar whistle of air that a good door seal makes. Because it was already late in the evening, and I had to be at the airport for an early departure the next day, I did what any mechanic who flies airplanes would do—I put a couple of nylon ratchet straps around the freezer to hold the door tight until I could get back home to take a look at it. 

This phenomenon knows no bounds. Kids will break limbs, a spouse’s newly installed tires will blow out, and opossums will chew their way into the garage and eat all the cat food. And that’s just Tuesday.

The list of things that can, and will, go awry is exhaustive, creative and utterly unpredictable. I’d tell you to get ready for it, but you can’t. You can only embrace the fact that you’re a very low-risk candidate for being bored, and that’s the reason you got into flying, right?

I’ll be back with a few more flying (and life) lessons that weren’t in the commercial pilot ACS.  

Read part two of Hard Truths About Flying here.

The post Facts About The True Nature Of Flying That You Won’t Find In The Study Guides appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

All ATC Delays Are Reserved for the Leg Home

Day one of a four-day trip never fails to go flawlessly. The ATIS reports weather that’s clear and a million, ground on point-niner taxis you to the nearest runway, and you get an unrestricted climb, “direct destination.” The next few days go about the same. It’s all good times and discretionary speeds. 

Then it’s time to wrap it all up and go home. You call clearance with a bright and sunny disposition. “Clearance, good morning, Falcon 7EC requesting IFR clearance to home base.” 

“Falcon 7EC, clearaaaaaance. [Sigh of discontent.] Standby.”

Hmm, that’s weird. I’m sure they’re just putting some notes on our strip so we won’t have to slow down on the arrival. I’ve already put my pen back in my pocket at this point because I’m sure we’re going to be cleared as filed, climb and maintain our highest certified altitude, squawk 0001.

“Falcon 7EC, full re-route, call 30 minutes before engine start, delays going back home due to traffic, construction and wild horses giving birth on all runways.” [!!!!!!]

Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but that’s how it feels when it’s time to go home after a few days of living in hotels, growing mold sitting around FBOs, and navigating the intricacies of obtaining “hold for release” clearances in various parts of the country from non-towered airports. 

The best course of action is to take a deep breath, accept your fate, and embrace the suck. As far as I’m aware, there isn’t a section in the 7110.65 that allows ATC folks to create delays just to inconvenience pilots. Given the opportunity, I bet most of them would point us directly toward home base and let us go. I say most because, you know, there’s that one—and you know who you are—who would definitely hold us up if they could.

The Fastest Way To Get the Weather to Clear up Is to Cancel the Trip

When you’re a student or private pilot, canceling a trip or a lesson is a no-brainer when the weather is overcast at 1,000 feet. If you’re an instrument student, overcast 1,000 is nothing short of a beautiful gift. What if you’re an instrument-rated commercial pilot tasked with getting passengers a few hundred miles down the coast in a single-engine piston airplane to an airport that’s reporting clear skies? Piece of cake. But what if 250 of those miles are covered by a solid layer of 100-foot overcast with no chance of lifting? 

So long as the engine keeps purring along in your trusty Arrow, that low overcast will be nothing more than a pretty, pillowy carpet that you’ll magically punch up through and fly over. But what if it doesn’t? Remember that time in the 150 that the engine started eating itself and turned the prop into a speed brake? Or the time that the 172 had just enough power to get you airborne but not quite enough power to keep you there? 

Yeah, it’s always fine…right up to the point when it isn’t.

The example above isn’t completely made up, but it’s not entirely true, either. I was going to fly a cross-country with a friend in my school’s Piper Arrow one day. Our airport and the destination airport were both reporting clear skies. The ENTIRE route between us was overcast between 100 and 200 feet. I agonized over the decision for an hour or two but decided to scrub the trip on the grounds that, as long as the engine kept running, it’d be an easy flight. But if the engine decided to quit, shooting an engine-out approach to minimums, if I was lucky, in an airplane that has the glide characteristics of a magnetic brick over an iron quarry didn’t sound like a good time to me. 

Shortly after I gave the airplane up, the weather magically cleared up against all odds!and forecasts. I went to lunch locally with a couple of flying friends, and after kicking myself for canceling a trip I could’ve made, everyone agreed that it could have easily gone the other way. I certainly couldn’t argue with that logic, as I tried not to read into the fact that we all ordered chicken wings. I’m not sure if it was the “chicken” part or the fact that these wings didn’t get to fly, either. 

“It’s not turning big rocks into little rocks with a claw hammer in August in Mississippi. Lighten up, and maybe dust off your sense of wonder now and again.”

You’re Going to Run Into People Who Are All Over It

We use amazing, gravity-defying machines to punch through gloomy overcast layers into brilliant sunshine-soaked air over pillowy blankets of clouds, but it’s still a job, and some days are just worse than others. Flying is an undeniably cool job, but, as with every profession, some people are utterly and completely over it. 

I was standing beside a corporate pilot with several decades of experience one evening. An airplane took off in front of us, and as the airplane went by, he said, “That looks like so much more fun than it actually is.” That was before learning to fly was even on the horizon as a possibility for me, and I had a hard time processing that statement. I’ve been flying for almost five years now, and I must admit…I still can’t process that statement. Sure, it may be different if I had started my aviation life as a pilot instead of a maintenance tech, and I completely get that there are times of burnout and various other low points in the job. But come on, man. 

It’s not turning big rocks into little rocks with a claw hammer in August in Mississippi. Lighten up, and maybe dust off your sense of wonder now and again. Look out the window and enjoy watching a build-up form right in front of your eyes instead of thinking, aww man, I guess we’re going to have to deviate around this thing. I know, I know. I’m just the preachy newbie who’ll be singing a different tune in another 20 years. That’s possible, of course, but I really doubt it. I know many pilots with tens of thousands of hours, and I’ve seen the look on their faces when we pop up through the overcast. It’s almost always followed by the words, “Man, that never gets old.” At least one of those pilots will pull back on the yoke a little more than usual to get a higher-than-normal pitch attitude so that when we blast out of the clouds, it looks like we’re a dolphin leaping from the ocean.

I suspect that there are people like that in every profession, no matter how great it is. Count yourself as fortunate for not being one of them, which leads me to my last lesson learned.

You’re Just a Pilot; You’re Not As Cool As You Think You Are

I’m pretty sure this isn’t a thing. Have fun, find wonder in the day-to-day, and keep the dirty side down.

And never forget that you used to be that kid looking through the fence at all the cool airplanes and saying to yourself, “One day!” Now that you’re on the fun side of the fence, remember to look back and give that kid a wave and a smile to let them know you’re still having a good time. 

Read part one of Hard Truths About Flying here

The post Four Big Aviation Truths” — Staying up While Getting Down appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

My first 22 years in aviation were spent as a maintenance technician of one sort or another. I’ve been an avionics tech, A&P, IA and director of maintenance (D.O.M.). I’ve spent a lot of time taxiing jets around various-sized airports, mostly GSO and CLT, so I felt pretty confident about my radio skills. Until I started flying.

I showed up for my first flying lesson in the mighty Aeronca Champ early in February 2017. When my instructor and I talked about communications, I proudly declared that I was already familiar with using a radio, and I felt pretty good about it. My instructor hand-propped the airplane, got in the back seat, and ran through the typical pre-taxi procedure. He said, “Go ahead and let CTAF know we’re taxiing to run-up for two-three.”

“Let who know?”

“CTAF. The common frequency.”

I wrote “common frequency” on my shiny new kneeboard and said, “We’re going where?”

“The run-up area for runway two-three.”

I wrote “run-up 23” beside “common frequency” on my kneeboard, looked confidently down at the instrument panel, up out of the windshield, then expertly said, “I don’t know how to do any of that.”

Over the next several months, I learned what to say on frequency, when to say it, and, most importantly, when to shut up and listen. When I took the check ride for my private pilot certificate, I was, again, pretty confident with my abilities on the radio. Until I started instrument training.

I studied for my instrument rating. A LOT. I listened to LiveATC. A LOT. I listened mostly to Daytona Beach tower and approach because that’s where Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is based, and there are always plenty of students stammering on the radio, just like I was. It was an invaluable resource, and I learned a lot. 

My instrument instructor used a great method of teaching radio independence. He was responsible for 100% of the radio communications at the beginning of my IFR journey. Gradually, and mostly undetected, I was handed more and more communication duties. He handed me the mic to request a practice approach here and an on-the-go report there. When it was time for my instrument check ride, I was handling the flying AND the talking.

As an aside, the two favorite quotes from my instructor, Ron, during instrument training are:

When I didn’t understand the approach clearance a controller issued to us: “You talk fine on the radio; you just need to listen faster.”

And:

A slight tap on my shoulder: “It’s a push-to-talk button, not a push-to-think button.”

Once I made it through my instrument training, I felt confident in my radio communications. Until I started my commercial training.

Well, that’s not completely accurate. The commercial rating is often seen as a time-building rating, after which you’re expected to understand laws, regulations and generally be capable of getting yourself around every chunk of airspace that the United States has to offer. This rating puts the “pro” in commercial. Or something like that.

My friend Joe and I started working as avionics technicians together back in 2001 at the GSO Citation Service Center and have remained close friends ever since. We began our flight training within a few days of each other, and we have a spirited attitude of competition between us.

As Joe and I were building time for our commercial ratings, we challenged ourselves by flying into congested airspace on some days and playing ATC on approaches while the other was under the hood on others. When we flew together, it was fair game at any time to call out engine failures, fires, commando attacks, etc. Neither of us cut the other any slack, and we had an absolute blast doing it.

I passed my commercial check ride, then, shortly after, I passed my commercial-multi check ride. 

I felt confident in my radio communications in single- and multi-engine airplanes at that point. Until my first leg in the right seat of a jet.

ATC talks differently to people in jets. When they talk to a piston single, most of the time they’ll mirror the speed of the pilot’s speech. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but it happens. The default cadence of ATC talking to a piston single is that of a concerned citizen helping the airplane cross a busy street. The default cadence of ATC talking to a jet is that of Niagara Falls helping you into the water. 

The patient gentleman, Matt, with whom I was flying my first day in a jet, walked me through how to get us out of a non-towered airport and on the way home with our passengers.

“Here’s the frequency for clearance delivery. If you can’t get them on the frequency, give them a call at this phone number. Tell them we want a hold-for-release clearance. They’ll give you the clearance just like they do at home, then we’ll call them when we’re ready to go.” 

On the leg home, I was caught off guard completely when the center controller gave me three (the maximum) instructions while we were still almost 200 nm from home. It went something like this:

“Citation 7EC, contact Atlanta Center, 132.35.”

I read back the instruction and went over to Atlanta. I wasn’t expecting anything more than a regular check-in.

“Atlanta, Citation 7EC, FL370.”

“Citation 7EC, descend and maintain FL240, published speeds at FLLGG, descend via the STOCR3 arrival landing south.”

I got as far as pressing the “direct” button on the FMS before forgetting every English word I’d ever learned. It must’ve been the blank stare on my dumb face that clued the PIC in to the fact that I was stuck in an endless loop of stuckness. He keyed up the mic and read back, “Descend and maintain FL240, published speeds at FLLGG, descend via the STOCR THREE landing south, 7EC.”

I’m not saying my instrument instructor didn’t prepare me for STARs (standard terminal arrival routes) because he did. The problem is that piston airplanes typically don’t fly arrivals, and it’s very difficult to teach someone how to fly an arrival without being able to demonstrate it properly. 

STARs for piston airplanes are usually not more than a heading and a fix, which works just fine, but the complexity of arrivals applicable to jets is something that is fairly difficult, if not impossible, to teach at 0′ AGL and 1g.

I apologized to the PIC for words not coming out of my face, and he graciously let me off the hook before showing me how to set the arrival up in the FMS. We landed uneventfully, and my first 1.8 hours of turbine time was complete. To quote Gary, my aviation hype-man, “I was so far behind the airplane that, after we took off, I looked back and saw myself walking out of the FBO.” 

 “My friend Joe and I started working as avionics technicians together back in 2001 at the GSO Citation Service Center and have remained close friends ever since. We began our flight training within a few days of each other, and we have a spirited attitude of competition between us.”

I’m a tactile learner, so, much like learning how STARs work, I can’t grasp a concept until I’ve been neck-deep in it. If I learn a lesson the hard way and it hurts, it tends to stick. The more it hurts, the better it sticks. 

After that first flight, I studied the STAR charts quite a bit more WHILE I was listening to LiveATC. Hearing the same thing over and over again said the same way is also very helpful to me.

I’ve flown about 250 hours in jets now, plus another 70 hours in level-D simulators, and I think I’m just starting to get to the point where I’m learning how to communicate on a professional level. I still get the occasional instruction with which I’m not familiar where my more experienced mentor has to help me a bit, but those cries for help are becoming fewer and further between. 

As I asked for advice from experienced pilots and controllers on how to do words good, the vast majority have said some version of, “If you ever get confused, flustered or overwhelmed by ATC, fess up. Quickly. The absolute worst-case scenario is that you’ll hear an irritation in the controller’s voice as they begrudgingly give you simpler instructions at a slower pace. Far more often, you’ll hear empathy in the controller’s voice as they happily give you simpler instructions at a slower pace.” 

“I’m a tactile learner, so, much like learning how STARs work, I can’t grasp a concept until I’ve been neck-deep in it. If I learn a lesson the hard way and it hurts, it tends to stick. The more it hurts, the better it sticks.”

We can’t always sound like Chuck Yeager on the radio, and we have to keep in mind that controllers didn’t start off sounding like Houston mission controllers, either. Sometimes it’s tough to remember that the sound coming out of the headset is just a person doing their best to keep airplanes from fusing together. 

As an experiment, one of these days, I’m going to check in with, “Center, good afternoon, Falcon 7EC, student pilot, FL410,” just to see if I get a reaction. Better yet, “Center, good afternoon, Falcon 7EC, maintenance, FL410.” That should get a rise. Or at least a pause.

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