AOPA Pilot Magazine

Imagine you’ve taken the leap to learn to fly and challenged yourself even further by signing up for your lessons in Alaska. You’re all in, and you’ll be doing this as quickly as humanly possible, but you’d like to enjoy yourself and maybe even share the experience with a friend or fellow student.

Few inventions have changed the ways flying is taught or how the experience is conveyed more than action cameras. These small, lightweight, extremely capable, mass-market products have become pervasive in aircraft cockpits during the past decade, and pilots have enthusiastically adopted them—with both commendable and regrettable results.

Readers comment on the ‘Safety Spotlight’ column

Recent changes in aeromedical policy affect how the FAA reviews certain types of closed head injuries. More specific definitions are now in place to distinguish between a “head injury” versus a “brain injury.”

It is always critical to maintain situational awareness in flight. In minor lapses, you may miss a radio call or become briefly disoriented. In the worst cases, a loss of situational awareness can lead to a loss of control in flight.

Did you know your membership in AOPA provides exclusive AOPA member-only discounts and benefits from leading companies that support general aviation?

The Flying Machine Restaurant does a brisk business on gorgeous blue-sky days in Anchorage. Located on Lake Spenard—the adjacent lake to Lake Hood, the world’s busiest seaplane base—the restaurant and companion Fancy Moose Lodge and The Deck at Lake Hood celebrate Alaska’s rich aviation history and offer lakeside Alaskan bliss.

Fake it till you make it. Visualizing. Manifesting. Many successful people believe that sometimes we must project a confidence we don’t feel until we get comfortable with a new task or setting.

ATP Flight School celebrated a milestone in October: 40 years of training pilots for a career in aviation. “Forty-thousand individual pilots have come through ATP,” said Michael Arnold, ATP Flight School vice president of marketing. “That could be the individual ATP certification programs when ATP first started in the 1980s and ’90s. That also includes our CTP [certification training program] operations out in Dallas."

In our world of smart-everything and AI, sometimes throwback simplicity is what we need most. With Bravo Golf watches, founded by pilot Beau Garrett, you get an analog watch that only tells the time—and really, that’s all it needs to do.

By Greg Anderson

It was news too awful to even imagine. A lump formed in my throat as I gripped the phone at my ear to hear the familiar voice.

By Sheila Harris

A fellow pilot describes Andy Anderson, of Harrison, Arkansas, as “kind of a celebrity,” a description likely to resonate with many pilots in the region of southwest Missouri, northwest Arkansas, northeast Oklahoma, and southeast Kansas.

Do you enjoy watching webinars? They are great learning tools and AOPA’s You Can Fly team hosts monthly discussions on myriad topics and often include special guests who are experts in their field.

Each year, the AOPA Foundation High School Aviation STEM Symposium brings dedicated educators from around the nation for two full days of sharing insights, ideas, and best practices for starting and building aviation STEM programs.

They say it’s what’s inside that counts, and that absolutely rings true for the AOPA Sweeps Cessna 182. Over the past several months the 182 has undergone a complete interior restoration, including a brand-new, redesigned all-Garmin avionics panel.

By Ben Moses

I was in Cincinnati on a business trip around the eastern half of the United States in my new Beech Sundowner. My meeting broke in late afternoon and I headed for Lunken Field, next stop Fort Wayne, Indiana, (FWA).

For more than a decade, my primary care physician was Dr. F. She was a wonderful doctor with a deep understanding of internal medicine and superb people skills who cared deeply for her patients. I felt fortunate to have her as my doctor. Over the years, her reputation spread, and her practice grew. The lead time for scheduling an appointment to see her became uncomfortably long. Visits to her office became an ordeal involving lengthy delays in her always-packed waiting room, after which I would get to see the doctor for five to 10 minutes if I was lucky.

From our student pilot days on, we’ve learned that airframe and propeller icing ranks high on the danger scale. Fly in icing conditions and you can expect that even small ice accretions can cause significant losses of lift, reductions of the stall angle of attack, plus increases in weight. These accretions are the product of supercooled (subfreezing yet still liquid) cloud droplets or precipitation that flash-freeze on wings, propellers, and any other airframe projection. The results are buildups defined by standardized icing accretion rates.

It’s rare when the U.S. Supreme Court issues a decision that significantly impacts enforcement cases against pilots and aircraft owners. But this year, there were two. As a result, the playing field has become more level when you are fighting a federal agency action.

By Mike Ginter

“Who needs them? I can find anything I need to know about my aircraft on the internet.” That’s a common refrain from pilots who haven’t experienced type club membership or who have had a bad experience at some point. Some will say that pilots in the younger generations are different these days—that they are not “joiners.” I say it has little to do with a pilot’s age or generation, and that it’s all about the value. If the cost of my type club membership brings me more value than it costs me—then sign me up. I believe that basic economic principle transcends generations.

The preflight inspection is one of a pilot’s most important responsibilities, but it also is one of the most mundane. As a result, many take the walkaround for granted and overlook potential problems.

Flying from Erie to Toronto this summer with my son (“CN Tower, Half a Mile”) unveiled another uniquely GA opportunity. Not wanting to fly 40 miles across Lake Erie to Toronto, we flew along the Buffalo, New York, shoreline before crossing the Niagara River into Canada. We looked upriver to see if we could spot Niagara Falls and witnessed the most unexpected sight: spray from the falls rising almost 500 feet into the air, reaching the height of the tallest buildings on the more-developed Canadian side of town.