Tips from CSIP's: Staying Proficient

CPPP in Vegas: Success in spite of weather

John Fiscus — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:49:00 GMT

We had a great CPPP event this last weekend in Las Vegas and I wanted to take a second to say thank you to all who made this event happen.

Thanks especially to all the attendees! Without all of you, none of the rest of us would have been there. It's great to see so many pilots interested in aviation excellence and safety. Keep that kind of mentality and you'll go far in aviation (figuratively and literally).

It was also great to see so many non-pilots attending Mike Radomsky's teaching of the PIC course on Saturday morning and then coming over to the sim so we could put you through your paces. Your dedication to learning about this mode of transportation and specifically how you can help out should the need ever arise shows a high level of responsibility in aviation safety. Be sure to keep practicing with the checklist Mike gave you!

I was able to teach on both days since I was the sim operator for the weekend. If you've read much of my blog over the previous months, you know that we have a full motion Cirrus simulator at our base in Las Vegas. It's a great teaching tool for approaches, procedures, emergencies, and trying out new minimums. I had a great crew of clients come through for their hour and a half or so of sim work. I snapped a couple of photos:

I think Jake knew something was coming:

This is just before the sim session started. You can see the big metal walkways are still down. We pull them up prior to engaging the motion. You can also see TWO fire extinguishers up there. The closer one is real, the one inside the cab has compressed air for fighting the simulated fires I can cause, courtesy of our smoke machine.

I'll see if I can compress the video I shot with my pocket camera that shows the smoke billowing out of the cab... stay tuned.

Thanks again to all who attended. It was a great weekend!

Safe flying!

John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Simulator Videos: Smoke in the cockpit

John Fiscus — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:27:00 GMT

One of the best things about simulator training is that we can make all kinds of things happen that we can't even get close to simulating in the real airplane. If you've been following our video series then you've already seen a few of those situations.

In this video, we're going to demonstrate another scenario that most pilots have never experienced this fully: a cabin fire. This is an especially dangerous situation because there's smoke obscuring your vision, fumes obscuring your lungs, and a huge distraction away from flying the aircraft. It's really important that pilots understand the distinction between engine fires and cabin fires (sometimes also called electrical fires) too. It's very common for me to give somebody a cabin fire and the first thing they do is kill the engine. It's a knee-jerk reaction, but if you do it, it'll cost you.

In this video, I'm flying the airplane and Chase Friesen hits me with the fire about 2 minutes after I've departed the airport. He was pretty judicious in his use of the smoke so you'll hear me coughing a few times. The cameras doesn't capture all the smoke due to resolution issues but you'll definitely see traces of it. Suffice to say that it's fairly thick if we want it to be (and Chase wanted it to be... he must have thought I wasn't paying attention).

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If you have seen our other videos, you'll remember that we're now offering a program that will allow pilots unlimited access to an instructor and our simulator for a really low price. You can find out more about the program by clicking here.

The short form is that for the price of 3,295 you get all the simulator training and instruction that you want for a year. This is equal to about two and a half days of training so if you could find an excuse to do even that much, you'd be ahead. Spouses are allowed to attend training and take part in a pinch-hitter style course at no cost. We're also working with Starr Aviation Underwriters to offer a 10% discount off your insurance premiums.

Give us a call at (866) 557-1501 or an email at info@theflightacademy.com if you'd like to talk about this program. Don't forget to view our options for people from out of town and some examples of the training you can receive found under the tab along the top titled Unlimited Simulator.

Safe flying!

John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Simulator Videos: Shooting an ILS Approach

John Fiscus — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:51:00 GMT

In this video, we're going to demonstrate the proper procedures for shooting an ILS approach. We'll look at configurations, speeds, and a few common mistakes that we see people make.

I'm using the ILS to 13R at KBFI. If you want to pull up a copy of the approach, you can find it on airnav: http://www.airnav.com/airport/BFI

The sound quality is ok but you'll have to turn your speakers up to hear it all. As these were our first attempts at making videos, we learned a lot about audio and video - our next series of videos are going to be experiments in HD.

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Safe flying!

John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Simulator Videos: VFR departure briefing

John Fiscus — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:44:00 GMT

In this video, I will demonstrate a VFR departure briefing along with a departure which utilizes some of that briefing. It is important that pilots be aware of what they're about to launch into... but many people I train with aren't as ready as they ought to be for anything beyond the norm to happen in those first few seconds of flight. Performing a VFR departure briefing is a good way to prepare for the unexpected ... and ensure the appropriate (and timely) reaction!

As I mention in this video, Mike was able to act quickly and deploy the CAPS when his engine failed right after departure. He could do this because he makes it a requirement to do a departure briefing (not in that video so we could feature it here) and because he uses the "Flaps and CAPS" call every time he departs.

Here you can listen to me perform the briefing and depart using some of those elements:

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A VFR departure briefing is going to be difficult for most established pilots to start performing. I have heard the excuses, but they really boil down to, "I have been flying this long and it works fine. I know what to do if something happens, I can handle this." Of course we think we could handle it. If we didn't, then why climb into the airplane in the first place? That wouldn't be very smart...

But what we find when doing simulator training is that many pilots aren't all that prepared to make a tough call fast. A pretty hefty margin of experienced Cirrus pilots don't make the decision to pull the CAPS handle soon enough, espeically when there's something like a low altitude engine failure involved and time is short. After a few scenarios in the sim, we find those habits changing quickly.

Safe flying!

John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Simulator Videos: Engine failure after takeoff - CAPS save

John Fiscus — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Here's the third in our video series about what you could do if your engine fails shortly after takeoff. In the last videos (found here and here) we first looked at what would happen if the pilot attempted to return to the airport, with disastrous results. Next we tried to land straight ahead in a field and while that worked a little better, it was clear that this doesn't have a great chance if you're departing in a place where there's any kind of ground clutter around.

In this next video, we'll have Mike perform the wisest of the 3 options: he'll use the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System after a quick attempt to get the engine back online:

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This is scenario is one that offers pilots very little time to react. If Mike didn't know his engine failure checklist by heart, he'd have spent too long trying to do that and lost too much altitude for the parachute to be a viable option. If he hadn't been trained to use the chute quickly, he may also have missed the window.

Would Mike have survived? I think we have enough data from low altitude parachute deployments to say that he has a pretty good chance in this scenario. So long as he uses the CAPS option above 500 feet (his engine failed at 700 feet) and is in normal controlled flight (not falling rapidly), then he's probably going to walk away. The airplane is totaled, but that should be the last consideration in a situation like this. Machines and money are temporary and replaceable. You aren't.

My next video will be featuring a VFR departure briefing procedure, I'll post that next week

Safe flying!

John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Simulator Videos: Engine failure after takeoff - land straight ahead

John Fiscus — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:11:00 GMT

Here's the second in our video series about what you could do if your engine fails shortly after takeoff. In the last video (found here) we looked at what would happen if the pilot attempted to return to the airport, with disastrous results. Turning back to the airport is generally a recipe for disaster below an altitude of even 1,500 feet - and that all depends on how steeply the pilot climbs out. If you climb shallow (and speed away from the airport), the required altitude might be even higher than that.

In this next video, we'll have Mike attempt to land straight ahead but in a congested area. There are trees, buildings, and roads but not too many great options. He'll make do with what he's got. Have a look:

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As you could see, landing straight ahead is a little better than trying to turn back... Mike chose to land in a field next to the river off his nose. There was a road off to his right but it wasn't very straight at all and that was pretty much it. There were numerous things in the field which made it less than a perfect place to land: ditches and holes. The aircraft in this case rolled over when the left main collapsed, bounced into the air, and then continued to roll over and come to rest inverted.

Would Mike have survived? There's a fair chance of that. I'd say there's a very low chance that he'd have survived unharmed, but I don't think it's necessarily a death sentence. He'd probably be walking with a limp for the rest of his life, at least. The airplane is surely totaled and he's likely going to need help getting out of the inverted aircraft. If there's a fire, the risk to his life goes up even more.

I hesitate to put a clear percentage chance to his survival simplly because that kind of analysis isn't plausible. I think we could easily agree that hitting a ditch and rolling the airplane, even at stall speeds around 60 knots, would not end well in most cases.

I'll post the next video in this series which explores the options that most don't choose, at least the first time, but is the most survivable of the three.

If you saw the last video, you'll remember that we're now offering a program that will allow pilots unlimited access to an instructor and our simulator for a really low price. You can find out more about the program by clicking here.

Safe flying!

John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Simulator Videos: Engine failure after takeoff - return to airport

John Fiscus — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:36:00 GMT

At The Flight Academy, we've been fortunate to have one of the 3 full motion Cirrus simulators to enhance our training abilities. A few months back, Mike Radomsky installed 4 closed-circuit cameras into our rig and that made Luke and I think about how we could use the sim in other ways than just one-on-one training. We decided to write up some scripts and make a few training videos.

Over the next few weeks, we're going to post those videos. This first week, we're going to post a total of 3 videos showing the possible outcomes of an engine failure right after departure. Number one will be what you should never do, which is try to return to the airport. If you don't see the "full screen" button on the lower right of the video, just double click on it to go to YouTube's site. You should be able to make the vid full screen there. Have a look:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

After this week, we'll be posting videos about all manner of VFR and IFR flying - both normal and emergency situations.

Simulators are great for a lot of reasons. They allow us to create a situation that is realistic, remove or add distractions, and allow a situation to go all the way to the end... whatever that may be. What's more, this is one of the few places you can pull the CAPS handle as a response to an emergency. Our data shows that most pilots won't do that when it counts the first time... and after one or two more scenarios that begins to change.

We'd also like to announce that we're going to offer a program that will allow pilots unlimited access to an instructor and our simulator for a really low price. You can find out more about the program here: http://theflightacademy.com/simulator/unlimited-intro.html The short form is that for the price of 3,295 you get all the simulator training and instruction that you want for a year. This is equal to about two and a half days of training so if you could find an excuse to do even that much, you'd be ahead. Spouses are allowed to attend training and take part in a pinch-hitter style course at no cost. We're also working with Starr Aviation Underwriters to offer a 10% discount off your insurance premiums.

Check in for our next video later this week!

Safe flying,

John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Speaking Fluent WAAS: Part 4

John Fiscus — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:49:00 GMT

Here's the 4th and final video in our Speaking Fluent WAAS seminar. Let us know what you think!

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Safe flying!

-John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Speaking Fluent WAAS: Part 3

John Fiscus — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:23:00 GMT

This is the 3rd in our 4 part video series. Thank you all for the feedback and letting me know you've seen these! Luke and I plan to make more.

Also, we're finishing the editing on our first try at videoing some lessons in our full motion simulator. Keep checking back, I expect to start posting those videos in about a week. We have a total of 8.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Safe flying!

-John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Speaking Fluent WAAS: Part 2

John Fiscus — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:11:00 GMT

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Safe flying!

-John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Speaking Fluent WAAS: Part 1

John Fiscus — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:55:00 GMT

Luke and I made this for M7 and have decided to record it and put it up here. It's my first attempt at making educational videos and the experience has been... well, educational.

The course itself is designed to familiarize pilots with the basics of what WAAS is, some of the terms involved, and a few tips about using a Garmin 430 and S Tec 55x autopilot (standard in most Cirri out there).

I'll post the other parts of this video (4 total) through this week.

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Safe flying!

-John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Icing Insight: Cirrus Accident Near Truckee (Feb 2005)

John Fiscus — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:50:00 GMT

Over in the Cirrus Flying forum, Ted Cohen posted a link to one of the best summaries of this accident that I've seen yet. AOPA did the study and has actual audio from the accident overlain into a pretty thorough discussion of the decision making points leading to the occurrence.

The results aren't exactly new but there is still a lot of misinformation out there about this accident. The icing was not forecast and the NTSB actually cited the National Weather Service as partially at fault for not having a better prediction. There was even a PIREP passed along by Southwest Airlines but the report came in too late to help the accident pilot. As the flight progresses, the accident pilot makes some decisions that ultimately cost him his life... and even though the situation was a surprise to him, there was a point where he could have avoided it.

You can view the comment thread here: http://www.cirruspilots.org/forums/p/116149/478054.aspx#478054

Or, for those who aren't COPA members (yet), you can go right to the course here: http://flash.aopa.org/asf/acs_airframe_icing/?WT.mc_id=091127epilot&WT.mc_sect=sap You do NOT need to be an AOPA member to take the course, just sign up as a guest.

It doesn't take very long to complete this course, maybe 15 minutes. If you complete the very short quiz they have after there's even an option to get a certificate from AOPA stating that you've done so. Print it off and send it to your insurance people... who knows? Maybe they'll give you a bit of a break.

One of the spookiest things to me was the last transmission made by the pilot. They have a recording of it on the course so you can listen to it there. Basically, the pilot (seemingly calmly) tells the controller that he's icing up and going down. The thing that caught my attention was that he held his push-to-talk switch down for quite a while after he stopped talking, a sign that he was mentally locking up. I see that a lot in training when a pilot is overloaded. Anyway, during those last few seconds after he's done talking but still transmitting you can hear the incredible speed of the airplane coming through his mic. They estimate he was coming down at over 5,000 feet per minute and his speed was well over the red line of 201 knots.

It was spooky because I've heard that noise of rushing air before but didn't realize how accurate it is. When I'm teaching in our sim and working with an instrument pilot, one of the things I like to demonstrate is an elevator stall as brought on by icing (largely suspected to be the reason this accident airplane entered the dive). The reason for this is because I want the pilot to see just how fast he or she must react to the situation before it's too late to do anything other than hit the ground... and it averages 5 seconds from the time the elevator fails til it's far too late to do anything about it. If you've never seen or experienced anything like this before, the chances that you'll react in that timeframe by pulling the chute are virtually nil. To date, nobody that I've put in this situation has done it the first time and most of them I specifically *told it was going to happen* right before I did it. How's that for a giveaway?

Our sim makes the exact same noise of the rushing air, quite loudly, just like I heard in that last transmission. I got a bit of a shudder when I heard it again for real.

Icing is very avoidable. There's no need for it to take as many pilots each year. As we continue through this time of year where icing is so prolific, we need to make sure we're making conservative decisions based only on the safety of our flight... not how inconvenient it would be to not make the flight.

Now, go watch that video!

Safe flying,

-John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Why We Fly: Morning Pictures

John Fiscus — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:39:00 GMT

We had a great sunrise today in Seattle. Here are a couple of pictures I took on the ramp just outside The Flight Academy's corporate office at Boeing Field. Mt. Rainier is the big one visible in both shots.

Safe flying!

-John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

The Return of Icing Season

John Fiscus — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:48:00 GMT

It happens every year: G.A. pilots find themselves in icing with no easy outs. Terrain limits descent, the clouds are too high (or the ice too thick) to climb, and the only way to exit visible moisture is to deviate and land via an impromptu approach ... and the ice continues to build while the decision process churns.

This scenario should chill any pilot with an imagination good enough to put themselves in it. Any of us who have had it happen kicked ourselves once we got down and tried to figure out what we did wrong so it never happens again. It isn't necessary to re-invent this wheel.

Let's look at some resources to help make that determination before leaving the ground. There are some really good places to go out on the web and I'll show you some of my favorites:

ADDS (Aviation Digital Data Service) is a free website that most pilots are familiar with. It's easy to use with tabs along the top identifying the various kinds of information available. The tab labled "icing" is exactly where I go when I want that kind of information.

First, I look at the Airmets for ice. The graphic supplied makes it easy to determine if any part of my route will go through an Airmet. Here's where you can find that graphic: http://adds.aviationweather.gov/phputils/wrap_image.php It's important to remember, though, that just because you're flying through an area with an Airmet for icing, it doesn't necessarily mean you're in violation of the regs or in danger. You *must* have both conditions met (temps and moisture) so if you stay out of the clouds and precip, you're fine. Just because an area has an Airmet for ice does not mean there will be clouds in the entirety of that area.

Here's an example:

The other tool I use on the ADDS site can be found here: http://adds.aviationweather.gov/icing/icing_nav.php This tool is a little tricker to use but once you've done it a time or two, it makes a lot of sense. I'll talk about that a little next - it might be useful to you to have both this blog entry and the ADDS page open at once. You can go back and forth between them to experiment with the settings.

This is really two products: the first is a measure of icing severity, the second is a measure of the probability of picking up ice. Those are pretty important distinctions.

First, notice that initially this image is a composite image of ALL icing severities from 1,000 feet up to FL300 (30,000 feet). This isn't exactly helpful since it'll show you ice that might be happening up at 15,000 feet when you don't intend to go even half that high. You'll see two drop down selections above the image. The one on the right should say "max". Click that and pick an altitude at which you intend to cruise and then click the down arrow to view all the altitudes below it.

The left drop down allows you to view the severity with Supercooled Large liquid Droplets (SLD) which show up as areas of red shading. SLD is aka freezing rain... and I shouldn't need to tell anybody how bad that stuff is. You can also select to see severities without SLD, severities only with a more than 25% chance of the ice being there, and severities only with a 50% or greater chance of being there. I don't really use those other three views... any chance of ice makes me pause and any SLD in my intended altitudes will make me fetch a cup of tea and call it a day.

Lower in that left drop down, you'll see "forecast icing valid {zulu time and date}" You can pick a time here and an altitude to the right and see what the percentage chance is you'll encounter any icing. Astute observers will note that it's pretty common to find a decent chance of icing OUTSIDE an Airmet area for ice. This fact along with my observations that this tool is usually pretty accurate makes me give it a lot of credence when I'm doing my flight planning

Use these tools and a conservative view when doing your flight planning this winter and stay safe! If you'd like to have a safe encounter with icing, come see us in Las Vegas where we can put you in our full motion Cirrus simulator and crank up the heat... or crank it down, as the case may be. http://www.theflightacademy.com/simulator/index.html

Also, see here if you'd like to read my write up about what to do if you get into icing from last year's blog entry on this subject: http://www.cirruspilots.org/blogs/tips_from_csips/archive/2008/10/13/winter-s-coming.aspx

Safe flying,

John Fiscus

Chief Pilot, The Flight Academy

www.theflightacademy.com

Check that tire pressure!

John Fiscus — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:39:00 GMT

Now that temperatures are dropping and affecting tire pressures, I thought I'd talk a little bit about that.

I had a good opportunity to be reminded of how important it is to keep regular tabs on how the air pressure is doing just the other day. Luke and I were attempting to push a plane around on our ramp and had a really hard time of it. After verifying it wasn't the brakes, I got down and had a close look at the mains. Wow! They were very low.

As we all know, the wheel fairings are pretty tight and the wheels can be hard to see. This tends to make many Cirrus pilots get out of the habit of having a close look at the wheels. Really it isn't so hard to see them if you get down close to the pavement and look in from a foot or two. This view will tell you what you need to know about the tire pressure and it's also a great time to check those white stickers on your brakes. If I had a dollar for each time I've found those stickers dark gray or black on an owner's plane when I do my preflight on it, I'd at least be able to fill my car with gas. That subject is a blog post for another day...

Let's say you haven't been doing that. First - start doing it. I'll tell you a little about how to train your eye below. But say you're taxiing along - can you tell if your tire pressure is low? You bet. Every Cirrus pilot should be aware of how much energy is being used to taxi. If you're rolling on a flat paved surface without much of a slope, you should be able to keep the plane rolling without much more than 1,000 to 1,100 RPM. Breakaway thrust is always a little more just to get the plane rolling, so don't worry if it takes 1,200 or 1,300 to start taxiing... but once it's moving, throttle back. If the plane slows down quite a bit then you've got an issue.

As a preventative measure, make sure your service center is checking your tire pressure at every oil change, or just do it yourself. Keep in mind that you have to ask the mechanics for this, they won't always just do it. Since most pilots only do a couple of oil changes a year, this interval might not always catch the problem when pressure starts to get low but it's a good way to help with prevention.

Many clients ask me how to tell if the pressure is too low by looking at it. That's a tough thing to describe with just words, but you can easily find out with a simple experiment. Make sure you've parked near where the air in your tires can be filled (many portable tanks won't do this too well) and, using a pressure gage, release the pressure in one of the main gear down to about 30 or 25 psi. Now fill the pressure back up to 62psi in SR22s and 53psi in SR20s. You should be able to notice the difference quickly, a very significant bulge will be evident when the pressure is low.

Another method which some prefer is to cut a block of wood which fits just under a fairing when the tires are properly inflated. If pressure drops, the block will not fit as well. This method requiers a little more work and is succeptible to tread-wear, but it works.

Regardless of the method, make sure you're keeping track of your tire pressure. Low pressure can have all kinds of bad side effects from excessive tread wear to loss of controll on landing. It's a really easy thing to maintain too.

Safe flying!

John Fiscus

Chief Pilot

The Flight Academy