Points for Pilots

   Salt Lake City Terminal Area Chart In summer 2024 we had hiked for several days in Teton National Park and were ready for the return flight from Rexburg, ID to Dallas. In earlier years the return route had taken us east across Wyoming, then southeasterly via Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma back to Dallas. Unfortunately, that route was blocked every afternoon by massive thunderstorms.  A safe and interesting alternate route emerged: We would go south across Utah, stop at the Canyonlands airport in Moab for fuel, then proceed southeasterly via Albuquerque, NM to Dallas. Starting from Rexburg, it seemed easiest to fly south across Salt Lake City at a low altitude. That thought evaporated when we looked at the Terminal Area Chart for Salt Lake City, see above.  Indeed: The Federal Aviation Administration has managed to overload that chart. A number of magenta boxes specify special rules, the class B airspace has been divided into numerous parts, various preferred route...

  Use of fan-cooled iPad   In a previous post we described a mount for the iPad that allowed for convective cooling from below. That system worked quite well for several years. But now and then the iPad overheated and had to be shut down.  This happened often toward the end of a long trip.  In each such case, the forced shutdown was really annoying:  No longer could we see ADS-B information about nearby aircraft and couldn't navigate precisely under tight airspace conditions. Not good. Due to these difficulties, we decided to create an active cooling system using a fan. This post has the details. The earlier post described how the cover for the iPad was modified to open up two cutouts on the back.  We won't repeat the details of that modification and only point out that we enlarged these cutouts to create a maximum area exposing the back of the iPad. The photo below shows the resulting backside, with the iPad inserted. Never mind the rough appearance of t...

  Aviation Weather Center (AWC) Prog Chart Forty years ago, filing a flight plan was complicated. You wrote the relevant information on a special form, called the flight service, and explained that you wanted to file a flight plan. In a tedious back and forth, you transmitted the data in the sequence provided by the form, often interrupted by clarification of names and other possibly misunderstood information. Activation was done after takeoff. You called the flight service using a particular frequency. This often was done under pressure since you wanted to use the radio for something else, like listening to other traffic in the area. This gradually improved, and you could file the flight plan using a computer. But if you took off immediately afterward and tried to activate the flight plan, the Flight Service didn’t have access to the flight plan yet and hence couldn’t activate it.  The remedy to that problem was a tedious filing process done via radio, with lots of correction...

  Rocky Mountains near Grand Teton National Park A simple rule: Do not try to cross the high parts of the Rockies when surface winds exceed 25 kts. The air can be so turbulent that you cannot keep the plane upright.  How about routes under these wind conditions where the mountains aren't quite so high, say 8,000 ft MSL or less? You can cross with suitable precautions that depend on whether you have tailwinds or headwinds. In the tailwinds case, you simply stay at least 2,000 ft above ground level (AGL), and all will be well.  This also works for the headwind case provided your engine is powerful enough to achieve sufficient ground speed.  Lots of small planes with engines producing 100 hp or so cannot do this. Our Zenith 601HDS, with 80 hp Rotax engine, is in that category. You then have two choices: You either don't fly, or if you have to fly for some reason, you fly low and exploit the terrain to overcome the adverse wind forces. This post describes how you can do ...

Nuts for fighting fatigue Years ago when an autopilot was a luxury option, homebuilt airplanes mostly did without them. But then innovative engineers, for example of the TruTrak company, came up with low-cost autopilot installations. That option, wonderful as it was, brought a new aspect to long-distance flying: the effect of fatigue. Surprised? Well, if your plane doesn't have an autopilot, nodding off due to fatigue is not an option, and if done anyway, it may prove deadly. Hence there is strong motivation to stay awake. With an autopilot on board, the plane flies itself for an extended period without any pilot input. Thus, nodding off is tempting, but wrong, of course. "Maybe I should close my eyes for a few seconds,'' the pilot reasons. "It cannot possibly cause a problem,'' the argument continues. Of course, all this is wrong. Seconds easily become minutes, with potentially disastrous consequences. How can a pilot fight this temptation? This post supp...

OceanSignal PLB1 Beacon If your plane is equipped for emergencies with a 121.5 MHz Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT)  like my Zenith HDS601, you are depending on old technology in case of a crash. The ELT is designed that a force exceeding 5g triggers transmission of a beep signal. Who will pick up the signal? It will unlikely be a ground station due to the line-of-sight limitation of the signal. This leaves any aircraft overhead that is monitoring 121.5.  All commercial airliners are tuned in to the frequency, so most likely one of them will contact Air Traffic Control (ATC). They will send out  Search and Rescue personnel. Lots of things can go wrong with the process. The ELT antenna may be damaged, the plane may be partially immersed in a creek, . . . Your imagination is the only limit for the possible bad scenarios. If the ELT seemingly cannot transmit the signal, you can remove it from the plane, extend its built-in antenna, and manually trigger the transmission. I...

  Hale County airport reporting VFR Our flight from Aero Country (T31), our home airport near Dallas, to the Hale County airport (KPVW) in Plainview, TX hasn't been very pleasant. There have been low clouds, forcing us into 1,000 ft AGL flight.  Not to worry.  There are no nasty obstacles or troubling magenta areas on our route. All airports along the route are reporting at least marginal VFR, with ceilings predicted to rise, so ceilings cannot come suddenly down and trap us. The news ahead is even better. Hale County has been reporting VFR for the past hour, with ceilings rapidly rising. But Hale County is just the first stop of the day. Following the excellent advice of C. Sullenberger, the famous pilot of the miracle landing on the Hudson, we look ahead every 30 minutes and examine the weather-reporting airports right up to the final destination of the day, in this case the Grants-Milan airport (KGNT). We have been particularly concerned about the Clovis AFB since it w...

As we approach Weatherford, OK, our first refueling stop on the way to the Rocky Mountains and Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, the Garmin Pilot displays an astonishing situation. A puzzling display of airport traffic The blue-green numbers and arrow heads look like a swarm of bees converging onto the airport. Yet the display rule for these symbols says that each of them is an airplane. How is this possible? Three hours earlier, we had taken off in the dark from Aero Country airport in Texas, the home for our Zenith 601 HDS, N314LB. Shortly thereafter we experienced a spectacular sunrise. Sunrise worthy of Texas The leg to Weatherford is purposely short, to be followed by a longer leg to Goodland, KS. We plan to reach Goodland shortly after noon and stop for the day. You may wonder, why stop so early and not go on? The reason: In the summer, significant turbulence always starts in the mountains shortly after noon.  It isn't fun to fly in the turbulent air, and can ev...