Short Final: Consider This
The aviation safety culture can be brutal and unforgiving. Consider this sage advice from Angus Kydd, one of the instructors at my home-base airport,...
Short Final: Numbers Game
During the early days of World War II in the Pacific, the Curtiss P-40 served heroically well, despite its shortcomings against the Japanese Mitsubishi...
Short Final: Hold Your Horsepower
From sister publication IFR Magazine’s "On the Air" letters page: A female tower controller at a flight-school airport was known to have a sultry voice...
Short Final: Retirement Planning
From AVweb reader Erik Klavon: After an unusually long period of silence on a Denver center frequency, I heard the following exchange:Unknown pilot: “Still there?”Denver...
Short Final: Don’t Ask!
My old Bonanza was a very capable airplane for instrument flying, but my panel avionics did not include an FAA-blessed GPS navigator. My Garmin...
Short Final: Pick Your Poison
In the 1980s, when I worked at Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire, it had an innovative flight training program with a diverse...
Short Final: Age Before Duty
My friend and I were flying his SR22 into Denver’s Centennial Airport. I was handling the radio. We were VFR at 13,500 feet when...
Short Final: Identity Crisis
I owned my little two-seat Grumman AA1-B for 22 years and loved it. But after getting my instrument rating, I realized it just wasn’t...
Short Final: Coastal Navigation
Stop me if you’re heard this one. Many years ago, a foreign student with a heavy accent contacts air traffic control over the east coast...
Short Final: Controller/Pilot Telepathy
On a recent trip from the West Coast to the Midwest, I’d just checked in with Center after a couple of sectors in NorCal....