Flying little airplanes with single engines you want to climb up as high as you can. Altitude is safety, since if something goes wrong you have some time to glide toward a good emergency landing spot and some time to diagnose and solve the problem. Thinner air up higher means the airplane faces less drag [...]
An adventure is only an adventure if it has the potential for something to go a little wrong. A bad magneto is certainly always possible when flying, and that’s what happened to us trying to cross the country. As misadventures go, this one only cost us time. No one was hurt, the airplane was not [...]
AOG. Dreaded triad of the alphabet for pilots. Airplane On Ground. Almost always due to a maintenance issue. Last night was our second night spent in Albuquerque. People I spoke to about being stuck at ABQ all said, “Oh, I love Albuquerque.” Well, I might love it if I were here voluntarily. Maybe I’ll come [...]
The engine in a piston-powered airplane is not like the engine in your automobile. It is much more primitive. Until fairly recently they still had carburetors. In fact, when you rent planes you are sometimes climbing into a thirty year old plane and it will still have a carburetor. Ours has fuel injection. (That’s good, [...]