Night Flight

Herb just finished all his night requirements... Herb, if you get a chance, post some thoughts here about night flying for those who still have that coming up. It's different!

From the FAA Safety Team

FAA Safety Team | Safer Skies Through Education
Airport Surface Deviation Safety Tip
Notice Number: NOTC2623
Safe Taxi Operations
Think about the two scenarios:

1. It is a clear sunny day at your airport. You are taxiing out for a VFR flight to your favorite back country airstrip.

2. It is a cloudy, heavy overcast day with visibility near minimums. You are taxiing out for an IFR flight to your corporate headquarters 250 miles away.

Now thinking about these two scenarios, what is the common operational element in each?

If you said taxi operations, then yes, you are correct. But let’s think about both of these taxi operations for a minute. One is conducted on a beautiful clear day while the other is in very marginal conditions with the visibility near minimums.

Apart from basic operation of your aircraft, would you treat either taxi operation differently than the other even though one is in VFR conditions and the other in IFR conditions?

The FAA Safety Team hopes that you would not. The FAASTeam wants to promote that taxi operations, either in VFR or IFR conditions are exactly the same. Your eyes and attention need to be on the task at hand. Taxiing your aircraft should be considered a ‘VFR’ operation regardless of the weather conditions. After all, you wouldn’t drive your car in heavy fog while reading the newspaper would you? The same goes for taxi operations. You need to be alert to the taxiway/runway markings on the pavement; you need to pay attention to all the airport signage; you should not be reading the preflight checklist or programming your fancy electronic flight instruments, and you should not be talking on your cell phone.

Distractions in the cockpit during taxi lead to a large number of runway incursions. These runway incursions can be classified as a D or C where there is little chance of an incident; whereas a B or A runway incursion classification could lead to a catastrophic event. Remember, getting an A or a B in this class is not a good thing!

You are a pilot. You worked hard for your certificate. Up your game a little. Be a “professional” in your actions. Always use the sterile cockpit routine; preprogram all flight equipment prior to taxi; keep all chatter to a minimum or better yet none at all. Keep your eyes open and outside the cockpit and always follow any ATC instructions to the letter. Always write down taxi clearances and if you ever find yourself unsure of what to do or where you are, call ATC for clarification or progressive taxi instructions.

Be safe, be a “Professional” and -- safe flying.

Interesting chart observation

It seems that the more I stare at the VFR charts the more unique things I see, learn or relearn. The latest one was an elevation that was printed with a white background and large font as seen in the picture to the right, the 4400. Normally elevations are printed in black but with a transparent background like the 4230 below and to the right of the 4400. This can be seen on the San Francisco terminal chart roughly about 9 NM east of RHV. There is only one elevation on the entire chart printed this way. I have not found on the chart legend where this is explained but this elevation # in white represents the highest elevation on the chart page. Does anyone know where this is noted?

Antennas

I found the attached to provide a useful summary of the location and description of the common antennas on small planes

http://flighttraining.aopa.org/students/presolo/special/antenna.html

While watching another student pre-flight a plane early on I found he would clean the antennas underneath the plane. I found this useful to do since it really forces you to look at the surface underneath the plane. In addition the article mentions the following as another good reason to do that. It is common to hear the tower state "transponder appears to be inoperative, recycle" to a plane departing and this may simply be that the xpdr didn't get set to the right mode but it also might be because of the reasons mentioned below.

The spikes are prone to caking up with oil, reducing the transmitting range. Often, just cleaning a spike antenna doubles your transponder range and gets rid of those intermittent Mode C problems. The reason is that the ground secondary radars need only one sweep to determine your squawk code (Mode A), but they need two good sweeps to determine altitude information (Mode C). Hence, a dirty antenna may not conduct a good signal reliably. This goes for all antennas; a dirty antenna does not perform up to its potential.