Author Archives: David Megginson
Float planes
[Updated] The Canadian Press has an unusually detailed and accurate story about floatplane safety in Canada. Unfortunately, with the summer season arriving, we’re going to see another big spike in the fatal accident rate in Canada as the floatplanes take … Continue reading
Tagged news, regulations
4 Comments
Non-annual inspections
The annual inspection for my Warrior is approaching. As I’ve mentioned before, as a Canadian private aircraft owner, I have the final responsibility for determining that the annual inspection has been completed. In the U.S., on the other hand, it’s … Continue reading
Tagged maintenance, owning
10 Comments
Toronto/Pearson still in the top 30
The Airport Council International (ACI) released its preliminary 2004 list of the top 30 airports yesterday (ranked by number of passenger movements). Toronto/Pearson saw a huge increase in traffic, but is still just barely clinging to the list in spot … Continue reading
Tagged places
3 Comments
Canadian Airport Diagrams Online
U.S. airport diagrams for all airports with instrument approaches have been available online for a while, along with all U.S. instrument procedures (SIDs, STARs, approaches, etc.); recently, official PDF versions became available which do not go fuzzy when you blow … Continue reading
Posted in General
2 Comments
Power + Pitch = Stall (?)
Kris Johnson has a posting on holy wars in aviation, including the two variants of the very dangerous teaching that you control airspeed with pitch and power. The idea is that students learn to look out the window (which is … Continue reading
Tagged aviating, numbers, tips
7 Comments
Admin: Comment and Pingback Limits
I’ve been a bit overwhelmed dealing with comment and traceback/pingback spam on my two blogs, sometimes having to delete up to 50 a day (mostly in the moderation queue, fortunately). My first impulse was to ban comments completely, since most … Continue reading
Tagged admin
6 Comments
IFR risks
Congratulations to Hamish, who has just earned his instrument rating down in California. Hamish wisely reflects that he wants to ease into IFR flying — no low approaches, etc., until he has a lot of experience. I’m going to be … Continue reading
No Glamour
Kris Johnson, a student pilot, has a post about the lack of glamour in being a pilot. Instead of the soft leather jacket, silk scarf, and rougish smile, it’s a big, clumsy headset, googly sunglasses, and trying to find a … Continue reading
Posted in General
3 Comments
Signing off on maintenance
Mike Busch has written a column about annual inspections in the U.S., especially about understandings and misunderstandings among U.S. IA’s (inspection authoritiesI think) — many US IAs think that they are a kind of police force responsible for keeping unsafe … Continue reading
Tagged maintenance, owning, regulations
2 Comments
Moving to Full Text
[Updated: Bloglines OK] At the request of a couple of users, I’m going to experiment with switching this weblog to a fulltext RSS feed. I had been reluctant to do that because some of the posts are fairly lengthy, but … Continue reading
Land and Hold Short 