Membership News & Notes

Back in the saddle

The remarkable journey of a once-rusty pilot

By Joel Mack

I got my private pilot certificate in the spring of 1980 while I was in college and fulfilled a lifelong dream of becoming a pilot. I logged about 80 hours, then went to law school, where I had to stop flying as I buried myself in student debt like so many young people do. After law school, I got busy with a new career, marriage, kids, and all the rest, and before I knew it, 35 years had flown by.

Fast forward to 2015, when I found myself single with grown children and recovering from a serious cancer surgery. That kind of life experience encourages personal reflection, and I realized that if I didn’t get back into flying at 56, it was never going to happen. I took Jason Schappert’s MZeroA.com ground school and went to AOPA’s You Can Fly Rusty Pilots seminar at Pearland Regional Airport in Houston in early 2016. When AOPA’s Pat Brown surveyed the crowd about how long folks had been out of aviation, I was the last man standing at 35 years! I got some great input and advice from Brown.

I bought a Tecnam Astore LSA and took delivery the day after my fifty-seventh birthday in July 2016. I received training and a flight review and flew it all over the southeast and the Midwest. I was finally able to get a third class medical in June 2017, and I bought a 2007 Cirrus SR22 in September and received their excellent Embark training. I earned my instrument rating in June 2018 and purchased a 2016 Piper M600 with a partner in March 2019.

In 2018, I ordered a CubCrafters FX3 through the factory build-assist program. I started that build in February 2019, got my tailwheel endorsement in May, and transition training in early July 2019. I took delivery of my Cub at EAA AirVenture and flew it home. In the past three years, I’ve gone from 80 hours to about 550 hours total time, from an LSA to a Cirrus, and on to my instrument rating, to a turbine and the flight levels, and to a tailwheel airplane and my first Oshkosh experience. I have jumped back into aviation with both feet (along with both arms and my wallet).

But it really all started with Pat Brown’s great, practical advice and excellent program that Saturday morning in 2016. I can’t thank Brown and AOPA enough for helping get me back into my lifelong passion—it’s been, and continues to be, a great journey.

Joel Mack is a former rusty pilot living in Houston.
aopa.org/rustypilots

Meet Pat Brown: AOPA Texas Ambassador

Pat Brown was bitten by the flying bug early, earning his private pilot certificate shortly after his seventeenth birthday. Today, more than 7,500 hours later, he holds a commercial pilot certificate for gliders, single-engine land, and multiengine land and is a gold seal flight instructor for gliders and single- and multiengine airplanes, with more than 5,500 hours of instruction given. Brown is the co-developer of AOPA’s Rusty Pilots seminar and a safety seminar presenter for the AOPA Air Safety Institute.

AOPA Air Safety Institute

Point of no return

Lessons from a backcountry missed approach

By Alicia Herron

One of the first things student pilots are taught when learning how to land is the gift of the go-around. Too fast? Go around. Too high? Go around. Are you on short final and there’s another airplane still on the runway? Easy—go around. Perhaps you can hear the voice of your instructor ringing in your ears even now: “You can always go around.”

That’s true, but there are exceptions. At some airfields, surrounding terrain rises so steeply that below a certain altitude or past a certain point—often called the abort point or point of no return—a pilot must continue their approach to the runway no matter what. Why? After the abort, the required climb gradient to avoid terrain would exceed the capabilities of even the most powerful backcountry aircraft. Attempting to go around would result in controlled flight into terrain or loss of control in flight.

On a summer day in 2018, pilot Todd Simmons was flying with his brother and friends in the Idaho backcountry. As afternoon approached, the experienced group decided to head for the challenging Dewey Moore airstrip—a field Simmons had never flown into. Unfamiliar with the nuances of the field, Simmons began the approach, flew beyond the abort point, and then, realizing that something was not right, attempted to go around. The only problem is at the one-way-only Dewey Moore, a go-around is not an option, and Simmons narrowly survived the resulting stall/spin accident. Listen to the roundtable interview with Simmons, his flying companions from the day, and AOPA Air Safety Institute’s Richard McSpadden for an in-depth look at the exacting environment of the Idaho backcountry, and learn how you can be a safer pilot from it.

Even if you don’t fly into one-way airstrips it is important to consider times that a go-around might not be the safest option. Maybe one day unforecast weather will appear disturbingly close to your route of flight. Or what about a series of pop-up thunderstorms? Impending low ceilings? Fog rolling in so fast you know the field will be IFR in minutes? And of course, you wouldn’t be able to go around if you had an engine failure, right? Keep those moments in mind, even if they are unlikely, and you’ll be safer and more prepared because of it.

To prepare for a potential no-go-around situation, and to make yourself the best pilot you can be, always push yourself to land with precision and accuracy. Don’t accept sloppy technique because there isn’t an instructor or examiner on board to give you a hard time. Choose a touchdown point and strive to hit it on every landing. Fly a stable approach at appropriate speeds—don’t rely on an extra thousand feet of runway to bleed off extra airspeed.

Flying safely in any operating environment comes back to knowing your options. At a one-way strip like Dewey Moore those options are severely limited past the abort point. In your own flying, make sure that you have Plans B, C, D, and more, and if your situation gets sticky, enact them early. Don’t wait until you feel panicked. Err on the side of caution, especially when you’re in an unfamiliar operating environment, as Simmons was at Dewey Moore.

You may not regularly operate in the backcountry, but there are lessons to be learned for every pilot from Simmons’s story. His experience also reminds us of the value of openly discussing mistakes made, however uncomfortable, so that others may learn from them.

airsafetyinstitute.org/rps/nogoaround
Email [email protected]

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Pilot Protection Services

Lessons learned so far

BasicMed proving effective for all pilots

By Gary Crump

BasicMed continues to be a popular topic among new pilots, experienced pilots who have been out of aviation awhile, retiring professional pilots, and former military aviators. We are into the second year since the rule became effective in May 2017, and the rule requires that every 24 calendar months, pilots must renew the online medical self-assessment course to remain eligible.

You will find all the information you need to participate on AOPA’s BasicMed landing page online. Click on “Take the Course” in the lower right corner at the top of the page.

If you are renewing the course, you will log into your account using the email address and password that you used to create the account. From there you will go through the seven chapters of the course content and complete the quiz in Chapter 8. After completing the quiz, you will enter your personal information and the physician information from the BasicMed physical exam you did two years ago. Remember, the physical exam is due every 48 months, so at the two-year renewal, you will just enter the same information as before. Print out your new completion certificate and you’re finished.

If you’re doing BasicMed for the first time, visit the landing page, watch the introductory video, then download the exam checklist and locate a state-licensed physician for the physical exam. When your doctor has completed the exam and signed the form, you can complete the online course, take the quiz, fill out the certificate completion form, and print your certificate.

Remember that an FAA medical exam with an aviation medical examiner does not meet the BasicMed requirement (see “Tips from PIC: BasicMed versus Medical Certificates,” p. 110), so if your AME is willing to do the exam for you, make sure everyone understands that you are there for a BasicMed exam and not a third class medical exam. If you are asked to provide a “confirmation number,” that’s a warning flag that the AME staff may not know what BasicMed is.

BasicMed is a great improvement in the way pilots fly, and it’s being demonstrated by 50,000 pilots and counting. If you have questions, please give us a call at 800-USA-AOPA.

Gary Crump is senior director of the AOPA Medical Certification division of the AOPA Pilot Information Center.
aopa.org/pps

Tips from PIC

BasicMed versus medical certificates

By Gary Crump

More than two years after implementation, more than 50,000 pilots are using BasicMed, an alternative to medical certification. BasicMed is different from a regular FAA medical certificate in several ways.

First, it’s a whole different part of the federal aviation regulations. FAR Part 68, Requirements for Operating Certain Small Aircraft Without A Medical Certificate, was based on legislation that went into effect in May 2017. FAR Part 67, Medical Standards and Certification contains the standards for operations that require a medical certificate. The regulations are mutually exclusive. The FAA Office of Aerospace Medicine oversees Part 67, but FAA Flight Standards has responsibility for BasicMed.

Another difference is that BasicMed is a qualification, while a medical certificate is a certification.

One aspect where medical certification and BasicMed share common ground is that any time we are exercising our privileges with either BasicMed or a medical certificate, we are adhering to FAR 61.63, which requires us to self-ground when we have a “medical deficiency” that makes us unable to safely exercise our privileges.

The process of flying under BasicMed involves a physical exam with a state-licensed physician and completion of an online medical self-assessment course. You will not be applying for a medical certificate, with an aviation medical examiner, so there is no need to access the FAA online medical application.

Questions? Call AOPA Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time, at 800-USA-AOPA, or email [email protected].