How do most private pilots get their training? All the pilots I know started out as military fliers of some kind, so they were trained by the US. Not on small planes of course, so they must get some additional training I would think.
All the small airports I see around, who maintains those? Do municipalities maintain those, as a service to the community or does some sort of fee paid by the plane owners pay for them? I mean, do you have to pay to land at the Hicksville regional airstrip or does Hicksville extract its upkeep some other way? Is it expensive to store your plane there?
Most pilots start out like Asimovian is doing. They look for a school and take lessons.
Many transport pilots start out as military pilots, as they usually have experience with similar aircraft and/or systems – plus the requisite hours. Many others work their way up by earning a Private certificate, Instrument certificate, Commercial Certificate, Instructor certificate, Multi-Engine certificate, and so on. Then they take low-paying jobs to build hours. Usually this means becoming an instructor. My mom, whom I’ve mentioned was an aviation secretary for for about three decades, said that many times she was making more money typing than the instructors were. Other ways to gain hours without having to pay for them include banner-towing and pipeline/power line patrol and fish spotting. Pilots used to be ‘bank pilots’, flying checks in the middle of the night from one place to another. I don’t know if they still do that, now that banks can make .pdf documents and ‘transport’ them electronically. Air taxi operations might hire a relatively low-time pilot, but s/he still needs at least a Commercial and Instrument rating – plus enough hours to satisfy their particular operation and insurance requirements. I’ve heard that in Australia many helicopter pilots get their first jobs herding livestock.
With enough hours, a pilot can apply for a job with a commuter airline flying piston-engine or turboprop aircraft. San Juan Air flies Cessna 206s around Puget Sound, making for much quicker trips than riding ferries. Larger operations would be like ‘Sandpiper Air’ on the TV show Wings, which flew a twin-engine Cessna 402. (Actually, I think San Juan Air has a couple of offices and more airplanes, so they might be ‘larger’; but ‘Sandpiper Air’ flew a bigger plane.) Then there are the regional airlines flying turboprops, and such places like FedEx with their turbine-powered Cessna Caravans. The next step would be the infamously-underpaid turboprop/jet regionals, and so on up the ladder to the ‘heavies’.
Another training option is to go to an ‘air academy’ such as Embry-Riddle where you come out with the necessary ratings and a college degree. Very expensive.
But ‘private’ pilots – those who fly for pleasure or their own business – generall start by going to an airport and signing up for lessons.
Some airports are privately-owned, and some are owned by a municipality. Landing fees are the exception. Public airports make their money from their tenants, such as the FBOs, fuel concessions, and other airport businesses that pay rent and taxes. Federal taxes collected on fuel go, in part, toward maintaining the country’s airports.
The airport nearest me was closed a couple/few years ago because we just had to have yet another truck stop. Vocal residents said that they didn’t want to have an airport for ‘rich boy’s toys’. This is a common perception, that small airports are a community service provided to a small subset of the community. But as stated earlier, General Aviation (including commuter flights, business flights, cargo flights, etc.) contributes $150 billion per year to the economy.
I have an instrument rating and own a 32 year old Grumman Tiger which I bought for about 50k 12 years ago and is now, thankfully, paid off. I use it for my consulting business.
One trip I commonly make to visit a particular client takes about 12 hours door to door flying commercial between security at the airport, a layover at a hub, waiting for luggage, catching a shuttle to the rental car counter and waiting in line there. In my plane I drive to the local airport and leave my car in the hangar, fly 3 1/2 hours to my destination where they pull the rental car up to my plane as I park and help me load my bags into the trunk before I drive off.
The downside of flying myself for business is that even with my instrument rating there’s a lot of weather I can’t fly in that a commercial flight could easily handle so it’s common for me to have to delay trips a day or two while I wait for the right weather.
My kids are completely spoiled. I would have killed to fly in a small plane at their ages, but they’ve been flying in our plane since they were each about 6 weeks old and just read books or sleep while we fly around the country.
I’m about to take my first night cross-country flight, and my second night flight ever. We’re going 160 nm and landing in a Class C. I plan to do it solely by VOR navigation via radial intersections (as opposed to VOR-VOR nav). Any tips for me before I go?
Oh, I have a rookie question I meant to ask and forgot about. When we were landing on my demo flight, the instructor pointed out a set of what I think were four lights adjacent to and lined up perpendicularly to the runway. The instructor made a comment about whether we were “good” or not depending on whether these lights were showing red or white, but I didn’t catch his explanation, and I forgot to follow up with him on the post-flight debrief. I assume this has something to do with the angle you’re coming in at, or whether or not you’re properly aligned with the runway? Am I close?
Yes, I could look it up, but this is a discussion thread, right?
Another system in use is VASI – Visual Approach Slope Indicator.
PAPI lights are the ones you saw. VASI has lights arranged vertically (as seen from the cockpit). When you are low, the lights are red. When you are high, the lights are white. When you’re on the glideslope, the top light is red and the bottom light is white. A mnemonic to remember this is ‘Cherry on top’.
Thanks, Johnny. So I had the right idea. One more thing to practice on my sim, since I’m always coming in too high and having to force the plane down.
That seems…extreme. But, I guess if you’re too high, at least it’s easy enough to go around. Being low can have more dire consequences. I’d guess, though, that certain conditions (particularly strong head- or tailwinds) can dictate coming in at an angle that diverges from what would normally be considered optimal. Any truth to that?
Winds shouldn’t really cause you to change your glideslope angle, but you would use a higher airspeed. VASI/PAPI lights are consistent and unambiguous in that respect. When they are available, try your best to remain on or above the glideslope.
However, don’t become reliant on VASI/PAPI lighting. They aim you at a landing point some distance down the runway, not the threshold. In a small aircraft, you will often land at airports with no such aids where it will be important to land as short as possible. I worked at such an airport for years, and often saw people have difficulty if they learned to fly on large, well equipped runways and didn’t often go to more challenging fields.
As I mentioned in my ‘comeback’ thread, my instructor asked me if I preferred to come in rather high. I thought not, and tried to maintain the 3º approach. But it turns out I really do like to come in high. When I was flying before (in fixed-wing) my practice was to have no power and full flaps on final. this instructor likes to have full flaps and carry power on final, and that messed me up because I’d concentrate so much on the landing I wouldn’t get the power all the way off. So I come in high, closer to the threshold, full flaps, and power off. PAPI says I’m high, but I know I’m coming down.
Yeah, unless I’m actually flying an ILS I don’t fly a 3° approach. If you’re flying 3° with power you’re probably not reaching the runway if you lose your engine. I guess if your plan is to transition to larger planes its good to practice a glideslope approach from the start; however, if you intend to mostly fly small planes it’s safer to practice landing after pulling power on downwind.
The plane I fly, the Tiger, is famous for having flaps which are more for show than utility (unlike the flaps on the Cessna I trained on which acted like drag chutes). It’s pretty common to come in high with the Tiger and then forward slip right to the threshold.
My first instructor drilled that into my head. Don’t carry power unless you have to, and make sure you’re set up to make the runway in case you lose the engine.
My first five hours were in an AA5 (N5801L, which seems to now be an invalid number) when I was 13. ISTR having to ‘fly it to the ground’ like a larger aircraft, rather than to drop in like a raptor as you do in a Cessna. Of course with a helicopter you carry power all the way down, unless you’re autorotating. But it’s still a ‘full-flaps, power off in a Cessna’ type of approach.
So, yoke versus stick. What are your personal preferences? Are there important differences?
The 182 I went up on last Thursday had a yoke and was a heavier plane. I’m supposed to go up in the Diamond Star DA40 this coming Thursday, which is lighter and uses a stick. Is a yoke just something that becomes standard as the plane gets larger or heavier? Do some manufacturers use one over the other? Are there manufacturers who would let you choose one over the other as a sort of optional feature for a particular model of plane?
The new Cessna 162 Skycatcher (hate the name) uses a stick. Sort of. It’s more like a single-horn yoke.
In fixed-wing, I’ve only flown with a yoke. The R22 uses a T-stick arrangement for its cyclic control, while the 300CB uses a traditional cyclic. A yoke is flown with the left hand. In a helicopter, the cyclic stick is flown with the right hand. Both feel perfectly natural. The big advantage of the sticks I’ve used is that they are in helicopters. Compared to a helicopter, a Cessna feels like a pig. Since I’m used to flying with my right hand on a stick, I think flying a stick-equipped airplane from the left seat might feel funny.
Me personally, I prefer a stick. But it’s not a huge preference. I won’t turn down an airplane simply because it has a yoke. I think I prefer them in part because I started with sticks.
Are there important differences? Um… no, I don’t think so. You might be slightly less inclined to try to “drive” an airplane like a car when you have a stick as opposed to the more wheel-like yoke, but most people find they can use either with little difficulty.
There are people out there who will argue stick vs. yoke as if it were a life or death matter but honestly, other than, maybe, a little bit of an odd feeling for the first few minutes the first time you use one instead of the other it’s no big deal. I’ve yet to meet a pilot who couldn’t fly both, even if he/she preferred one over the other.
Not so much - a Boeing 737 has a yoke, an Airbus 380 has a “side-stick”. In decades past there was a fashion for yokes in commercial airplanes and a lot of the Cessna and Piper general aviation while the military leaned toward sticks (at least for fighters - some of their other airplanes used yokes), but there are a lot of general aviation sticks out there even so.
Yes. Cessna and Piper for the most part use yokes (exceptions such as the Cessna “Skycatcher” and Piper Cub do exist, though). Bellanca favors sticks. A lot of kit planes favor sticks.
Hm… the only ones I’m aware of are kit planes, where the owner assembles/builds the aircraft. But there are a bunch of new designs that have come out recently, so maybe.
I respectfully disagree - if you can see the lights, then there’s nothing in the line between you and the runway. You’re not in trouble unless the lights keep moving higher in your field of view, meaning you keep getting further and further below the glideslope. It’s easy to get back on the glideslope if you want to by adding a touch of power, but if you’re stabilized, you’re fine.
But if you’re high, you might be in even more trouble. Getting back down to the glideslope takes a little work - more flaps if you have them, or slipping, or cutting airspeed, and the last two mean getting closer to stalling. A stall that low can lead to a spin, and they’re simply unrecoverable below pattern altitude. You might not do that well enough to get back on a glideslope that also intersects the runway with enough room left to stop. Bottom line, being high can get you in a lot more types of big trouble than being low.
Now bring it on.
Another disagreement. That isn’t really a consideration anymore, not like the old days of unreliable engines when the rule about staying in gliding distance from the runway started. Engines very rarely fail at all anymore, and when they do, it’s almost always at high power, not low or idle. There are plenty of planes that land much more smoothly with a little power on, anyway.
It does move pretty much like a floor-mounted stick. I got to sit in one at the AOPA thing in Hartford last month. The 162 stick moves forward and back in translation, with no change in angle, but it swings left and right on a bellcrank type thing under the panel. And you don’t have to climb over it to get in. I’m still a little puzzled about why Cessna gave it electric trim but Johnson-bar flaps - I’d have gone electric with those too, but nobody asked me.
But, I guess if you’re too high, at least it’s easy enough to go around. Being low can have more dire consequences. I’d guess, though, that certain conditions (particularly strong head- or tailwinds) can dictate coming in at an angle that diverges from what would normally be considered optimal. Any truth to that?
