AOPA Pilot Magazine - Turbine Edition

The Bell 505 Jet Ranger X shouldn’t be a great helicopter. Always inclusive but rarely exceptional, major projects done by committee are usually predictable and boring. Now, approximately five years after the helicopter’s certification, it’s clear Bell’s approach was a major success and the 505 is, by all accounts, a fantastic helicopter.

Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport is often derisively referred to as “sunken Lunken,” thanks to its location on the banks of the Ohio River. When the river floods, the airport is often at least partially underwater.

Paperwork. Just the word conveys a sense of mindless drudgery. There’s some truth in that, as many aircraft owners well understand.

By J. Mac McClellan

Next time you’re taxiing onto or off the runway, or turning at a taxiway intersection, look down at the edge of the pavement. There’s a good chance you’ll see tire tracks going through the dirt or grass.

“When is the best time to finance an aircraft—before or after I retire?” We’re getting that question a lot more these days.

Yep, you read that right. They’re now building and selling single-engine turboprops as ultralights. Not in the United States, but in Europe.

With fuel prices at all-time highs, it’s more important than ever for pilots of general aviation airplanes to fly in a fuel-efficient fashion. I am especially sensitive to this issue because I fly a piston twin that guzzles 30 gallons per hour and I suffer post-traumatic stress each time I refuel.

Before whirling views of the ground filled the Mooney M20’s windscreen, I had asked my commercial candidate, Hal, to demonstrate a power-off stall.

One of my favorite games to play is “If I won the Powerball, which airplanes would I buy?” (Why limit yourself to one airplane?)

By Amanda M. Stahl, M.D.

April 2 was a nice, sunny spring day. I was planning to take a sunset flight to Hamilton, New York, which is about 78 nautical miles west of Albany International Airport (ALB).

George Braly, co-founder of General Aviation Modifications Inc. (GAMI), holds out a beaker and invites a visitor to waft it toward her nose. “Can you smell the difference between that and 100LL?” he says. “People say it’s got a sweeter smell.”

Pilots like to take potshots at weather forecasters—especially those who make terminal area forecasts (TAFs). Let a ceiling prediction of 1,000 feet turn out to be 3,000 feet—or 3,000 to 1,000 feet—and pilots are likely to complain that forecasters don’t know what they’re talking about.