Monthly Archives: December 2005

Cockpit as campaign prop

Posted on December 19, 2005 by David Megginson

Canada is in the middle of a federal election (with no TFRs, proving to the U.S. that it can be done). This photo shows Stephen Harper, one of the four major party leaders, at my home airport in Ottawa, using … Continue reading →

Tagged | 5 Comments

Partial panel and fixed gear

Posted on December 18, 2005 by David Megginson

From aviation pundits with deadlines to meet and empty pages to fill, we hear a lot about the dangers of losing a vacuum pump (and consequently, attitude indicator and directional gyro) in IMC, and why IFR pilots need to (a) … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 3 Comments

Dash-8 incident out of Kingston

Posted on December 16, 2005 by David Megginson

This morning, I read a CBC story about a control problem on an Air Canada Jazz Dash-8 flying from Kingston to Toronto on 2 September 2004. From the story, it was pretty hard to figure out what had actually happened, … Continue reading →

Tagged , | 1 Comment

Mind reading and ATC

Posted on December 15, 2005 by David Megginson

I’ll guess that 80% of my flying is done in continuous radio contact with ATC, either IFR, VFR in class B/C/D airspace, or VFR with flight following in class E/G airspace. This kind of flying has its own challenges, but … Continue reading →

Tagged | 1 Comment

Training and false alarms

Posted on December 7, 2005 by David Megginson

The story goes (true or not) that 911 gets more than its share of calls about airplanes in distress over the practice area west of Ottawa. I don’t blame the people calling in — stall practice is (hopefully) too high … Continue reading →

Tagged | Comments Off on Training and false alarms

LOP debate goes mainstream

Posted on December 6, 2005 by David Megginson

The lean-of-peak debate, which I’ve written about before, has just gone mainstream — check out this Forbes piece, part of a series of online articles about institutional stupidity. The focus is on Lycoming’s business practices (deny evidence that you cannot … Continue reading →

Tagged , | Comments Off on LOP debate goes mainstream

Cirrus owner's review (mixed)

Posted on December 3, 2005 by David Megginson

Back in July 2005 (updated in September), Philip Greenspun published a detailed owner’s review of his factory-new Cirrus SR20, the 200 hp (cheaper) sibling of the Cirrus SR22. Philip has flown his plane pretty seriously around a huge part of … Continue reading →

Tagged , , | 6 Comments