Author Archives: David Megginson

Greenspun in a Malibu

Posted on February 9, 2005 by David Megginson

Philip Greenspun is posting about transitional training from his Diamond Star into a super-high-performance Piper Malibu. Here is one man living the geek dream, especially since he made his money from a company associated with Open Source software, the basis … Continue reading →

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Blog: Cockpit Conversation

Posted on February 7, 2005 by David Megginson

[Update: once again, I missed a syndication URL] Pilots have been painfully slow to take to the blogsphere compared to people in other areas. We love our newsgroups, mailing lists, and web sites, but gosh-darn-it if we’re going to mess … Continue reading →

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Beauty in brevity

Posted on February 1, 2005 by David Megginson

Sometimes it’s hard to love the Canada Flight Supplement or its U.S. equivalent, the Airport and Facility Directory, printed on cheap, easy-to-rip newsprint in tiny smudged type, going out of date every seven weeks, and filled with abbreviations you have … Continue reading →

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Admin: Moving to WordPress

Posted on January 29, 2005 by David Megginson

Land and Hold Short has just moved from a hacked-up homemade system to WordPress, an excellent Open Source weblog manager. The new system has search, trackbacks, pingbacks, user comments, and many other features, so it should make reading the blog … Continue reading →

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Alternate Reality

Posted on January 6, 2005 by David Megginson

I just received my January copy of the so-so IFR Refresher, and I came to an article “Choosing Wisely” about picking IFR alternates. IFR flying, I think, is 20% about flying and navigating the plane on instruments and 80% about … Continue reading →

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A Light Aircraft Maintenance Blog

Posted on December 23, 2004 by David Megginson

Sacramento Sky Ranch, which sells airplane parts, has an RSS 2.0 feed dedicated to light aircraft maintenance, including pictures and even sound. There’s lots of great stuff here, from the sound a cracked cylinder makes when you flick the fin … Continue reading →

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Leaning the Mixture

Posted on December 23, 2004 by David Megginson

Student pilots and renters rarely worry much about the red knob or lever that controls the fuel/air mixture to their engines; owners worry about it a lot. For a while, there has been a big controversy about how far to … Continue reading →

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Flying into the Wind

Posted on December 20, 2004 by David Megginson

A comment by a fellow pilot got me thinking about headwinds and tailwinds. I started flying with serious misconceptions about how a headwind or tailwind affects a flight, and some of the bogus rules of thumb only makes things worse. … Continue reading →

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Hope Air

Posted on December 18, 2004 by David Megginson

Last week, I flew my first flight for Hope Air, a charity similar to Angel Flight in the United States and British Columbia. An icy, snow December is a strange time to start on something like that — many of … Continue reading →

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Speed and Fuel

Posted on December 6, 2004 by David Megginson

My Warrior is one of the slower planes on the apron. It’s not as slow as some people claim, of course — under ideal conditions, I actually can get within 2-3 knots of the 127 knots true airspeed promised by … Continue reading →

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