Jim Davis Descending is a remarkably complicated subject and us overworked instructors have to be able to field all manner of questions about it. To ease you gently into it – here’s the story about Joe’s picture. It was 1964 when I clambered on to an SAA Skymaster at ErosRead More →
Fighting Fuel Foolery This was meant to be the last of four articles persuading instructors, and everyone else, that they will have a longer and happier life if they understand this 20 point outline of the fuel system. But it’s not the last one. I underestimated how much more thereRead More →
You know those aggranoying people who say, “Oh I wouldn’t fly in one of those little things – you can’t just pull over and fix it if something goes wrong”? What makes this particularly irritating is that the bastards are right. Pupes, pilots and instructors lend me your ears. ByRead More →
More Fuelish Mistakes Instructors, instructors, instructors – this is for you (and everyone else). Most engine ‘failures’ aren’t – they are pilot failures. To a large extent this means instructor failures. Instructors are often not good at teaching the relationship between fuel management and life-expectancy. And, of course, to manageRead More →
If the carburettor is the heart of your aircraft – the fuel is its lifeblood. When an engine stops without warning or prodigal noises, the problem is that it’s not getting a steady supply of nice clean fuel. This is mainly for instructors – but fuel and its management areRead More →
Jim Davis TRIM – look, Ma, no hands It’s traditional to bitch about the Regulator, but we have been lucky to have some really brilliant CAA /DCA bosses in South Africa. I think of Barry Radley, an ex-RAF Farnborough test-pilot who taught me a very valuable lesson – basically thatRead More →
Special Rules Area Charts – Johannesburg and Cape Town Imagine an aviation chart that has all the essential ground detail like roads and mountains and towns, yet doesn’t need an iPad or a whole EFIS system to display. Imagine a chart that doesn’t rely on batteries that will unexpectedly letRead More →
Guy Leitch Pooleys Air Pilot Manual. Volume 4. The Aeroplane – General Knowledge British based Pooleys have become the industry standard for ab-initio flight training books in the UK and Europe. They have brought out Southern African editions of their Air Pilots Manual series and I have been reviewing oneRead More →
The sometimes surprising effects of the controls So it’s the mid 1990s, I think – I’m not good with dates and times. I am flying from Jan Smuts to Port Elizabeth in one of SAA’s new Airbus A320s. Tupperware aeroplanes I’m told. Those were the days when SAA was stillRead More →
The Effects of Controls Ask a dozen people why the sky is blue and you will get a dozen woolly answers about refraction and reflection but not one honest, I don’t know. So nobody learns anything. And now ask a dozen pilots why Madame Beech or Mr Piper put aRead More →
