BFR Complete - On to the Instrument Rating!

2.3 hours VFR on Thursday. The first time back in the plane after two months of nose-to-the-grindstone work and family. Got to love the family (and, frankly, what I do for a living is actually a lot of fun), but it means less time tearing around the skies.

I flew well, even for someone who has flown in the last two months. The needles looked like they were painted on at a couple of points.

This was the completion of my biannual flight review, which all private pilot certificate holders have to go through every couple of years in order to maintain currency. It technically consists of at least an hour on the ground and an hour in the air, but I spent two hours on each, simply because I haven't flown much of late and really wanted to knock the rust off. Jamie, my instructor, basically conducted a full run through the private pilot practical test standards or "PTS."

We started out the BFR by flying the initial elements of a cross-country flight that I had planned. We flew until halfway past the second checkpoint by pilotage (which means looking out the window, looking at the map, and checking our calculations of how long each of the legs should be taking) and then Jamie diverted me to Livingston County, about 18 miles south of our position at the time. I did pretty much everything right except that the winds aloft were not as advertised, so I found myself about three miles east of my intended destination by the time we got there. That said, Livingston County airport is located right next to I-96, which is a major east-west divided highway. At worst, If I couldn't find the airport by the time we reached I-96, I could have found it by flying back and forth along the highway for awhile.

Afterward, we did the high airwork. That means stalls in both takeoff and landing configurations, steep turns, and slow flight. It was a blustery day, and the air currents wanted to pick up and drop one wing or the other pretty frequently, which is a problem when you're flying the airplane at about 42 knots and any substantial increases in pitch attitude or load factor would have caused us to stall. Nevertheless, I kept it under control and kept the stall horn going the whole time.

The low airwork was fine. S-turns along a road, turns around a point, and a rectangular pattern, all compensating for the wind so that the shapes were uniform over the ground. We did those over the Ford Proving Grounds near Romeo, Michigan. Pilots in the area like to do ground reference maneuvers over the proving grounds because there's always a strip of pavement somewhere below on which to land if there's ever a problem. But I sure could forgive an engineer on the ground if he or she thought we were from some rival automaker. I told Jamie, "Hey, man, the least you could do while I'm flying the ground reference is pretend to be working a video camera."

We did normal, short-field, and soft-field landings and that was it. A good debrief, too. Jamie pointed out where I was rusty and I told him that I was happy to be there and that I’d fix my safeties.

The biannual flight review is one way that the Federal Aviation Regulations help keep pilots – and people on the ground – safe. Technically, a pilot could pass his private checkride or his biannual flight review and then not fly again until two years later and he’d be completely legal. In fact, provided that he had three takeoffs and landings in the same category, class, and type of aircraft within the preceding 90 days (and that could be that last day), he could carry passengers and be completely legal to fly. So it’s important to know and understand that a BFR, though helpful, is a bare minimum level of training and assurance and that most pilots can, should, and do get much more recurrent training.

Now it’s back to instrument training and pursuit of my goal of completing my instrument rating before the end of the summer!

GA IS No Threat

I thought that this might be a good time to talk about a topic that’s never very far from the surface when we talk about flying.

I still remember September 11 vividly. I felt hurt and betrayed and the images of the jetliners crashing into the Twin Towers was – well –terrifying.

All of the airspace in the United States shut down immediately and, for many of us, stayed that way for a long time. At the time, I was training at Willow Run Airport, a cargo and general aviation airport west of Detroit Metro that turned out bombers during World War II. Willow run is under a shelf of what’s called the Detroit Metro “Class Bravo” airspace and, as a result, it stayed shut down to most traffic for a long time after 9-11.

In the time since 9-11, a lot has happened. Taller fences have gone up around a lot of airports, Air Defense Identification Zones have sprung up around the country, and, sadly, many of my friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens have turned a jaundiced eye toward aviation of any type.

For whatever reason, general aviation had taken a lot of heat in the aftermath of 9-11, much of it undeserved.

When I talk about general aviation (or “GA”), I’m talking about non-scheduled aviation of a kind done by private people and enterprises for their own purposes. It covers all of the flying I do and also covers lots of charters and other kinds of flying. Most of it takes place in single-engine propeller-driven aircraft like the Cessna 172s that I fly.

I want to use this time to clear up some misconceptions about general aviation and the risk – or lack thereof – that GA poses to the public.

First off, unless you count the ill-fated exploits of Charles Bishop, no terrorist attack has ever been carried out using a general aviation aircraft. More on Mr. Bishop later

New regulations severely limit the opportunities that anyone would otherwise have to commit acts of terrorism using GA aircraft.

Stadium overflights within 3 nautical miles of and less than 3,000 feet above the venue are restricted. Further, the Superbowl was here in Detroit a few months ago and I can assure you that men and women with absolutely no sense of humor about security breaches were on the job and had the resources and resolve to protect the revelers downtown from any threat from the air. I know a few pilots at a local airport who just decided to stay on the ground during the surrounding days rather than take any risk at all of running into problems with the security measures.

In February 2003, an existing notice to airmen regarding loitering over nuclear facilities was strengthened to reinforce the need for pilots to avoid these facilities altogether. I flew to the airshow at Oshkosh soon after 9-11 and I can tell you that we got a stern warning from the briefer about the phase of our flight that would take us near the nuclear plant near Gary, Indiana.

New training regulations impose background checks on all non-US citizens who apply for pilot training. At one point, even I had to be fingerprinted when I switched schools.

Small airports – the ones where most GA aircraft live – are pretty secure places. I can tell you from personal experience that just about everyone knows everyone else and the tight-knit community of pilots at those airports are excellent at identifying people and circumstances that don’t belong and asking friendly but firm questions when they come in contact with those situations. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association has set up and funded a national hotline – 800-GA-SECURE – to encourage people to report potential security issues related to general aviation.

All flight schools in the United States have received updated guidelines from the FAA and each must conduct security awareness training.

So let’s talk about the damage that your average GA aircraft could do.

First off, more than 70% of the GA fleet is composed of small, single-engine aircraft with six or fewer seats and the overwhelming majority of those have four or fewer seats.

The typical GA aircraft, like the Cessna 172s that I fly, weighs less than a Honda Civic and carries even less cargo. By way of example, My instructor, myself, full fuel, and my flight bag take the Cessna 172s that I fly up to within 100 pounds ot eh aircraft’s maximum rated takeoff weight. You could probably exceed that by a few hundred pounds if you threw safety out the window, but not much more. The aircraft has a 180-horsepower engine and there’s only so much that it’s going to get aloft.

The majority of GA aircraft have less than 1% of the mass of a large airliner. A fully loaded Cessna 172 weighs approximately 2,400 pounds and carries 56 gallons of fuel. A Boeing 767 can weigh more than 400,000 pounds and carry some 25,000 gallons of fuel.

You probably remember the sad story of Charles Bishop, the 15-year-old who flew a Cessna 172 into the Bank of America Plaza Building in January of 2002. On impact, the plane’s wings came off and fell to the ground. The engine made it a short distance into the building and the plane did minor damage to the 28th and 29th floors on the southwest corner. Crews removed the fuselage from the building the next day and local officials declared the building safe from occupancy at that time.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association commissioned a study by internationally recognized nuclear safety and security expert Robert M. Jefferson. Jefferson reported in June of 2002 found that:

A GA aircraft could not penetrate the concrete containment vessel

An explosives-laden GA aircraft would not likely cause the release of radiation.

A small aircraft attack on auxiliary plant buildings would not cause a safety failure.

A GA aircraft could not ignite the Zirconium cladding on spent nuclear fuel.

It’s hard to steal a GA aircraft. They cost a lot. There’s almost no such thing as a GA aircraft that costs less than $40,000 and a new Cessna 172 will easily run you more than $100,000. Owners lock them up in hangars and use things such as prop locks and other measures to keep their aircraft safe. It would take a fair amount of effort to steal a plane with which to try to do harm.

It’s even harder to highjack a GA airplane. Most GA pilots know their passengers well and a hijacker is unlikely to even make it into a plane. Even if a hijacking situation occurs, the pilot is not helpless. All pilots receive training in how to communicate a hijacking situation and what to do about it if it happens. And you can be pretty sure that no GA pilot is going to quietly put up with a hijacking situation if the guy with the boxcutter of firearm starts suggesting a flightpath that involves a building or gathering of people. Not stuff I’d do ordinarily but you can bet that I’d be willing to explore the outer edges of the airplane’s envelope before I’d obey a command to do something like that.

And it’s reasonably tough to rent a plane, too. Fixed-base operators, or “FBOs” that rent aircraft usually insist on taking you up and checking you out in the aircraft. The check pilots usually get a good idea of the personality and intentions of the renting pilot before they get out of the aircraft and send the renter on his way.

And you might remember the news crew a couple of years ago that tried to show how easy it would be to rent a plane and go do bad things with it. The FBO employee at the desk kept the news crew busy while another employee alerted the local sheriff, who showed up moments later to question the would-be muckrakers.

Even so, it’s possible that a ne’er-do-well might end up with access to a GA aircraft and have the ability to aim it at a local landmark. So let’s talk about what kind of damage a GA aircraft could do.

First off, more than 70% of the GA fleet is composed of small, single-engine aircraft with six or fewer seats and the overwhelming majority of those have four or fewer seats.

The typical GA aircraft, like the Cessna 172s that I fly, weighs less than a Honda Civic and carries very little cargo. By way of example, My instructor, myself, full fuel, and my flight bag take the Cessna 172s that I fly up to within 100 pounds of the aircraft’s maximum rated takeoff weight. You could probably exceed that by a few hundred pounds if you threw safety out the window, but not much more. The aircraft has a 180-horsepower engine and there’s only so much that it’s going to get aloft. In any case, there’s just not enough mass there to do any real damage.

The majority of GA aircraft have less than 1% of the mass of the large airliners that were involved in the terrorist attacks of 9-11.. A fully loaded Cessna 172 weighs approximately 2,400 pounds and carries 48 to 56 gallons of fuel. A Boeing 767 can weigh more than 400,000 pounds and carry some 25,000 gallons of fuel.

Back to Mr Bishop. You probably remember his sad story. He was the 15-year-old who flew a Cessna 172 into the Bank of America Plaza Building in January of 2002. On impact, the plane’s wings came off and fell to the ground. The engine made it a short distance into the building and the plane did minor damage to the 28th and 29th floors on the southwest corner. Crews removed the fuselage from the building the next day and local officials declared the building safe from occupancy at that time. Bishop’s story is sad and I wish that the incident had never happened, but the fact of the matter is that he proved that a GA aircraft just doesn’t have any real potential to do the kind of damage that the public seems to worry about.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association commissioned a study by internationally recognized nuclear safety and security expert Robert M. Jefferson. Jefferson reported in June of 2002 found that:

A GA aircraft could not penetrate the concrete containment vessel

An explosives-laden GA aircraft would not likely cause the release of radiation.

A small aircraft attack on auxiliary plant buildings would not cause a safety failure.

A GA aircraft could not ignite the Zirconium cladding on spent nuclear fuel.

Lastly, although there are many GA aircraft fitted out for cropdusting and similar activities, the experts tell us that its just about impossible to do any harm by spraying stuff over the populace. At any real altitude, any sprayed matter would simply disperse into the atmosphere and be harmless. Such aircraft would have to be at treetop level or lower to do any real harm and, by the time you’ve considered doing that, is there really any reason to use an airplane as opposed to a land vehicle?

On the whole, GA just doesn’t pose the threat that some are willing to believe that it does. The paranoia just can’t overcome the facts.

Finally, please bear something else in mind. General aviation plays an important part in the heart and should of this country. We were the first to demonstrate heavier-than-air powered flight. From the earliest military aviators to the barnstormers to the citizen pilots of today, our heritage is inextricably tied to general aviation. We are a people whose horizons are unlimited. Where else but in America can you walk the streets and run into citizen pilots everywhere you turn?

It is right an proper that 600,000 of us hold pilot certificates – 600,000 emissaries of the solitude and excitement of the skies – 600,000 reminders of the greatness that is in each of us – 600,000 pilots – The determined, talented, methodical, steely-eyed people that anyone would be proud to call countrymen.

The hype is just that. Hype. The facts bear out the proposition that general aviation is not the risk that the ignorant believe it to be. If you hear a friend, relative, or colleague perpetuating the misinformation that’s so common, invite them to listen to this podcast. Berret yet, invite them to visit www.aopa.org, where the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association has compiles genuine and correct information about general aviation and its essentially nonexistent threat.

Let’s preserve GA for the treasure it is and address the naysayers with the cold, hard facts.

Understanding Stalls

It’s vocabulary day here at airspeed and today we’re going to make you smarter than 90% of all television, newspaper, and other reporters about one aspect of aviation. That aspect is the “stall.”

Now, the average non-pilot could be forgiven for not understanding that an aerodynamic stall is different from a stall that has to do with an engine.

I stalled an airplane four times earlier this week. I did it intentionally. The guy in the right seat, who was administering my biannual flight review, had no problem with it. In fact, he told me to do it. Had I not done it, he would have failed me. And we landed safely and regarded the whole thing as a great way to spend a Thursday morning.

The general public understands that, when an engine stops running in an unplanned sort of way, that engine has “stalled.” But it’s a completely different thing when an airplane stalls.

When I stalled the airplane, the engine was running each time. In fact, on two of the stalls, the engine was running at full power. A stall in an airplane usually has nothing to do with the engine. Sure, an airplane’s engine can stall, but aviators usually use some other word, such as “quit” or “stop.”

Let’s talk about how an airplane stalls. Airfoils develop lift by moving through the air. Airfoils include the wings on airplanes, the rotor blades on helicopters, and lots of other things. The control surfaces on airplanes and even the propeller blades themselves are also airfoils. Heck, a barn door can be an airfoil under the right circumstances.

We’re going to talk about some specific kinds of airfoils, namely the wings on airplanes. Generally, the aircraft engine spins the propeller, pulling the airplane through the air and creating airflow over the wings. The wings develop lift when they interrupt the air, sending some over the top and some over the bottom. The air over the wings develops something called “laminar flow,” which is a fancy way of saying that the air on both the top and the bottom of the wing moves quickly and uniformly in the area very close to the wing.

The angle of a wing as it meets the airflow is called the “angle of attack.” When you tip a wing up into the airflow – when you increase the angle of attack - more air hits the bottom of the wing and there’s a greater pressure differential. Low angles of attack are good for cruising and that’s what you see when you see an airplane overhead that’s pretty much level and is on its way somewhere. High angles of attack are good for climbing. You can see an airplane with its wings at a high angle of attack every time you go to the airport and see them taking off.

Nut high angles of attack are only good up to a point.

Imagine what would happen if you increased the angle of attack a lot. Thirty or forty degrees or something like that. At some point for every wing, the airflow is simply smacking the bottom of the wing and not enough air goes over the top of the wing to keep that laminar flow. Eddies and turbulence build up on the top of the wing and the laminar flow just dissolves.

At that point, the wing won’t fly anymore. It’s not developing lift. That angle of attack for any given wing is the “critical angle of attack.” When a wing exceeds its critical angle of attack, the wing is “stalled.” When aviators talk about an airplane being stalled, they mean that the airplane’s wings have exceeded the critical angle of attack and that the wings aren’t developing list like they otherwise might. What does that look like? The airplane’s nose is usually very high and its forward speed is very low.

Stalls can happen at any airspeed, at any altitude, and for any wing or other airfoil. They’re generally bad when you’re not expecting it, so student pilots and experienced pilots alike practice stalling their aircraft so that they know how to recover from stalls. The private pilot practical test standards require that an applicant for a private pilot’s certificate for airplanes be able to stall an airplane – and recover – with a lot of power or with little or no power, and in turns either with or without power at bank angles of up to twenty degrees.

Stalls are particularly bad at low altitude, such as when you’re taking off or landing. It generally takes some altitude in order to recover from a stall – about 100 feet in many aircraft in the case of a power-off stall. That’s altitude you might not have.

Stalls can also lead to other bad things. One of them is a spin. A spin happens when the airplane is stalled and uncoordinated. An airplane is uncoordinated with the tail is not where it’s supposed to be – when the pilot doesn’t use the rudder to keep the stalled airplane from banking or rolling in the direction of the wing that is the most stalled. If you stall and you’re sufficiently uncoordinated, one wing or the other will drop and the airplane will start falling in a lazy spiral. The spiral will be in the direction of the wing that is the most stalled. The other wing, the one that’s less stalled, will be flying just enough to keep the rotation going. It’s called autorotation. Being in a spin is very unpleasant if you’re not use to it. There’s a lot of green in the windshield and it’s turning pretty fast.

Stall recovery isn’t particularly difficult. I’ll bet you know how to recover from one right now. If increasing the angle of attack caused the wing to stall, what do you think will break the stall? That’s right. Decrease the angle of attack. Push the nose over and get some laminar airflow over the wings. It also helps to go to full power if you’re not already at full power. For that matter, spin recovery isn’t that tough in most airplanes. Pull the power out so you don’t descend any faster than is necessary. Stop the rotation using the rudder. The wings may be stalled, but the rudder should be pretty effective. Once the rotation stops, push the yoke forward (decreasing the angle of attack), and then, once the wings are flying again, pull out of the dive.

And it’s not like stalls don’t have constructive uses. Aerobatic pilots use them all the time as part of graceful and energetic maneuvers. A stall is what your Frisbee does when it drops to your Labrador retriever’s waiting jaws just as the Frisbee runs out of forward momentum. It causes those pleasant swooping arcs that your paper airplane flies if you release it from a high enough spot.

The way stalls get into the news – and the way most members of the media screw up the references – is when a stall results in an accident that gets reported. As you can imagine, an accident could easily occur if you stalled an aircraft so close to the ground that you didn’t have enough altitude to recover. That’s doubly true for spins, because spins usually take something like a thousand feet in which to recover.

Reporters sometime report on an accident saying that the engine stalled when, in fact, the airplane was stalled all right, but the engine was going full tilt when the airplane interfaced with the planet. The actual event that the reporter misreported was probably an aerodynamic stall and/or spin in the pattern or on takeoff or landing. Reporters who get this wrong do aviation a disservice because each time they do it, they cause a few hundred more non-pilots to believe that general aviation aircraft are mechanically unreliable. When it was actually pilot error of some kind.

Hey, I know that pilot error doesn’t help pilot’s reputations much more, but I’d always rather that the cause be something that’s under a pilot’s control because those are things that other pilots can do something to avoid.

So if you’re a member of the media and someone tells you before you go on the air that an aviation accident involved a stall, inquire further and find out whether it was an aerodynamic stall. If your source is a pilot or an aviation official, chances are good that they won’t use the word “stall” unless it was an aerodynamic stall. If the engine quit, they’ll usually say that the engine quit. And if you ask them to clarify, you’ll be an instant Eninstein to them because you’ll have clued them in that you recognize the difference.

If you’re a pilot or aviation official with the solemn job of briefing reporters on an accident or incident involving an aerodynamic stall, please take the time to explain what an aerodynamic stall is and point out that it has little or nothing to do with the engine.

And if you’re a member of the non-flying public, recognize what aerodynamic stalls are – that they generally have nothing to do with a powerplant or any other function of an aircraft. And that pilots train long and hard to avoid situations in which stalls occur, recognize their onset, and be always ready to recover from the rare unexpected aerodynamic stall.

Aerodynamic stalls are vanishingly rare in everyday flight operations. Unless you’re a pilot who’s training or performing aerobatics, the odds are vanishingly small that you’re ever experience one – even if you fly commercially every day of the week and on weekends, too, your whole life. They just don’t happen much.

Stalls are a natural result of the behaviors of airfoils under certain extreme conditions. Aerobatic pilots put them to use in graceful and energetic performances around the world at airshows and other events. Student pilots train to recognize them and recover from them so that they can fly safely for decades to come.

So now you know the difference and you’re a better consumer of news and information. And you know more than 95% of the population about aerodynamics. Congratulate yourself!