How to avoid an F-16 intercept

Wow. I read last night that another pilot violated the Presidential Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) and then this morning, I hear that three more small planes were intercepted. During the last visit, a pilot was intercepted and forced to land at El Monte as one of my student’s watched, and during a February visit, a really clueless pilot was also intercepted. While seeing an F-16 in flight might be cool, this is NOT the way to do it. Continue reading

VFR Flight Plans

I’ll start off by saying I rarely file a VFR flight plan (and I’ll explain why), but every pilot needs to know how to file, open, and close a VFR flight plan. There are times when they are valuable and our club requires that all student pilots flying solo cross country flights file and  open a flight plan. Continue reading

May Gray and June Gloom

It’s late April, but we’re already getting a typical Los Angeles basin weather trend that we call “May Gray” and “June Gloom” (since that’s usually when it is at its worst). When we are experiencing this, we get low clouds and visibility that may or may not “burn off” later in the day. This means a lot of delayed or cancelled flights for private pilots and students and can be bad enough to ground even IFR pilots.

I woke up this morning to drizzle. This means a cloud layer that may be 3000 feet thick. I check PIREPs and see base and top reports that confirm that:

SMO UA /OV SMO270005/TM 1538/FL037/TP BE58/SK OVC008-TOP037
POC UA /OV POM/TM 1525/FL043/TP UNKN/SK TOP043

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Propeller safety

It’s a grizzly topic, triggered by a sad story. While not common, this happens more frequently than it should and is a reminder of the dangers posed by propellers.

1) When moving the propeller, always assume it could start; keep all body parts out of the arc of the propeller

2) When the engine is running, be aware of any people or animals that approach the plane. If unsure, shut down immediately. Remember that a moving propeller can be very difficult to see; a woman in Plano is lucky to be alive.

3) Never attempt to hand prop (start) a plane without proper training of both the person turning the prop and the person inside of the cockpit.

4) Never handle the propeller with power on or keys in the ignition, unless you intend to start the plane.

5) Don’t allow passengers to enter or exit the plane while the engine is running.

TFR Season

While you might not believe that there’s a season for TFRs, it’s true in California right now. We have presidential visits, airshows, wildfires, football, and for a few days longer, baseball. All of these have TFRs associated with them. Take a look at this depiction courtesy of RunwayFinder from last Saturday.

See all those red and orange circles? Those are TFRs and that’s not even all the ones you need to worry about in California over the next few days!

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