Words have lost much of their impact these days. The word "extreme" was one of the first to go. At one time, it meant something serious or overpowering. Then it got taken over by marketers, truncated to "Xtreme" and applied to a flavor of Mountain Dew that absolutely nobody asked for. "Epic" came in to fill the void left with the watering-down of "extreme", but it sadly fell to the hyperbolist hordes as well. It used to mean something like Beowulf and slaying dragons, then it went on to describing something very impressive like pulling off a 1200 on the drop from the helicopter on the drop to ..read more

I have accomplished many things during my COVID-19 time off. The clutter is slowly going away (do I really need that book on Unix written in 1998?), I'm almost done with my project of reading all of Warren Buffett's letters to shareholders, and my basement is looking better than ever. Soon I'll be able to get that home gym set up the way I've wanted it for years so I can skip workouts by not bothering to walk downstairs instead of not getting in the car to not drive to the gym. However, getting a Ph.D. in epidemiology isn't one of the things I've done in the last 32 days. I don't expect docto ..read more

One of the memes that went around recently was the pilot working from home: While I can't fly an airplane right now, I am fortunate that I am senior enough at my airline that I was able to avoid getting furloughed. Instead, I'm sitting at home on long-call reserve, getting paid to hurry up and wait. If airline flying picks up, I might get called in to do some flying that gets added back. For April and May, I'd estimate the chance of that happening as about .01%. Like many, I've been wildly successful in handling this bounty of extra time to do things and wildly unsuccessful as well. One of ..read more

It's Sunday, March 22, 2020, and I'm fat, dumb, and happy in my seat 33,000 feet in the air. I'm staring aimlessly out the front window, enjoying a nice view of Norfolk and Virginia Beach off to my left as I leave a contrail over the East Coast, doing seven miles a minute from Washington-Dulles to Jacksonville, Florida. Suddenly, I'm fat, dumb, and less happy as I hear ATC tell an aircraft that was going the other direction, to LaGuardia, to contact their dispatcher and file an alternate outside of New York Center's airspace. So many controllers had called out sick today that they were going ..read more

When I was 12 years old, one of the most impressive simulation games ever to come out for the Commodore 64 was released: MicroProse's Gunship. I spent months and months and hundreds of hours flying missions in it, trying to get the game's highest award: the Congressional Medal of Honor. [Yes, I know it's actually just "Medal of Honor". The game refers to it as the Congressional Medal of Honor, so that's how I refer to it in this post.] Winning the ultimate medal was actually secondary to just flying it and having fun flying. It was one of the hardest games ever on the Commodore because it was ..read more

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. My dogs, Orion and Meissa (pronounced "MAY-suh"), certainly did. Orion and Meissa. They're as opposite as they look. Orion, the black/tri-color guy on the left with the serious look, is a Border Collie/Australian Shepherd mix. Meissa, the merle on the right with the goofy grin who is slightly blurry because she has a problem sitting still, is pure Australian Shepherd. I mentioned Orion in my post Turn the Page: The Downside of Being an Airline Pilot. Since I wrote that in 2017, we've added Meissa. (Basically, we got our dog a dog.) Although they're ..read more

In case you missed it (you were living on the moon, you fell into the Kola Superdeep Borehole and had to climb out, your shady travel agent sold you a fabulous spelunking excursion at the Great Pit of Carkoon, or you somehow managed to be completely disconnected from civilization for the month of July), we Earthlings celebrated the 50th anniversary of stomping on the moon's face this month. It's easy enough to practice touch-and-goes on the Earth: just show up at the airport with some cash burning a hole in your pocket and they'll let you turn that into burning avgas instead. But what if you ..read more

My last post was a little on the serious side, so this time I'd like to lighten the mood a bit. I've written many a post on practice in this blog; in some ways, that's the fundamental theme of this whole thing. How to use flight sims to practice, how to create efficient practice sessions, how airline pilots practice, and so on. The first video I ever posted on YouTube was a pattern lesson with the glass panel turned off. Flight simulators are a wonderful tool to practice inexpensively and safely. But let's say that instead of a student pilot, you're a student proctologist. How can you prac ..read more

I was recently reminded the other day of a somewhat oddball question that I've been asked more than once. This won't be the last time I come across it, and the answer is a little bit complicated. The question is, "Can I endorse myself for knowledge tests?" The answer is, "It depends. And even if so, it depends." The answer is actually pretty clear if you are a CFI and don't hold a ground instructor certificate. In that case, the answer is NO. The FARs are pretty clear on this under Part 61 Subpart H: §61.195   Flight instructor limitations and qualifications 3(i) Prohibition against self-e ..read more

As a student pilot, most flight schools will require you to obtain a copy of your aircraft's POH to study from, right? Well, actually, no. They will almost certainly require you to acquire a copy of the PIM or AIM, although nowadays you can probably just download a free copy from the Internet. Cessna provides their PIMs online for free, so you won't even be violating copyright laws if you do. First, let's expand some initialisms: POH: Pilot's Operating Handbook AFM: Airplane Flight Manual AIM: Airplane Information Manual PIM: Pilot's Information Manual The terms are often used interchangeabl ..read more