Exercise Your License to Learn
Have you ever been assigned an altitude by Air Traffic Control, only to forget it at some point in the laborious climb to some-odd thousand feet? If not, just be patient: you will! Oh sure, it’s easy when you’ve got altitude bugs, glass cockpits and all the bells and whistles. But what do you do when your airplane doesn’t have an altitude bug? You make your own.
Taking off on the wrong runway can have serious consequences. This one pilot error can lead to runway incursions, FAA violations, and even fatal accidents. Pilots can greatly improve their chances of getting it right by adding one simple step to their takeoff clearance.
There has been a lot of talk about the “point and wait” trick for cloud clearance since my first post on the subject. To clear up any questions on the matter, I went up and shot some video of this rule of thumb in action. Check it out and spread the word.
Operating in and out of towered airports requires a landing clearance prior to touchdown. Pilots do occasionally land without a clearance. Depending on the circumstances, this could become an FAA violation: something every pilot should want to avoid. The solution? Almost every airplane has a built in advisory system to alert the pilot as to [...]
