When a student of mine does a couple of touch-and-go’s (typical take-off and landing practice) without any help from me, I decide they’re ready to solo. I tell them to stop on a taxi-way, and I climb out of the airplane.

I normally get these beseeching looks from my students, the question “Where are YOU going?” written all over their faces.

November 9, 2008: When I asked Paula if she was ready for me to leave, she said “Yes,” looking straight out the front. “I’m ready!”

There are always a couple of things outside a Flight Instructor’s control.  Before Paula’s first solo takeoff, a Hawaiian Airlines B717 turned around directly in front of her airplane. She handled that just fine. After her last landing, she noticed that the taxi-ways leading off the runway were closed. Simple: she asked the Control Tower in plain English that she wanted to get off the runway.

And that was that.

Congratulations, Paula!

Aviation is full of redundancy.

Your airplane may have only a single engine, but that one engine has dual, redundant systems for fuel, air, and ignition.

The next time you do a run-up, consider that you’re testing the primary and backup for each of these systems.

Magneto check?  You’re testing each one of the two independent ignition systems: two separate magnetos, driving two separate sets of spark plugs.

Carb-heat?  You’re testing an alternate source of air into the engine.

If you’re in a high-wing airplane, gravity will force fuel into the engine, and that’s pretty fail-safe.  But notice that you have two fuel tanks.

If you’re in a low-wing airplane, you’ll have an auxiliary, electrically driven, fuel pump in addition to the engine-driven fuel pump.

All this redundancy doesn’t make the engine twice as reliable: it makes it thousands of times more reliable.

A pilot with good judgment would never intentionally remove any one part of a redundant system.  Before take-off, the run-up proves to the pilot that both halves of that critical engine system works.

Redundancy in Instrument Flying
Private pilots are taught attitude instrument flying (hood time!) and then are told that it is illegal and unsafe to fly into clouds.  The attitude instrument flying experience, and that artificial horizon, is the pilot’s backup.

Should a non-instrument-rated pilot blunder into a cloud, the attitude indicator can be used to do a smooth 180-degree turn back to good weather.  At the worst, the attitude indicator keeps the airplane upright while the pilot calls for help.

But, if a non-instrument-rated pilot intentionally flies into clouds, all faith is being placed on a single instrument: an instrument which can fail as often as every 500 hours.

Instrument-rated pilots do have a backup: your turn-coordinator and all that partial panel training.

Vacuum pumps and magnetos have about the same failure rate.  So consider a partial-panel practice instrument approach as the philosophical equivalent to a run-up.

Here’s part one of a two-part recipe for mastering instrument flight on the Big Island.

Hilo has actual instrument conditions, more so than any other airport in the State of Hawai’i, I believe.

Kona has technically challenging approaches, these approaches are almost never needed. I’ll be covering these approaches in a later post.

Do the approaches listed below every couple of months, and you’ll not only be legally proficient and current, but you’ll be ready for the worst that the Big Island can offer.

“He’s a good stick,” the D.P.E. said after the flight.

Congratulations, Andres!

Dale, one of the excellent Hawai’i Flight Academy instructors, needed time with his family; so he passed his student, “Dickie” Wilson, over to me.

I only needed to fly with Dickie 5 times to be convinced that this guy knew how to fly. Dale did a great job teaching him - Dickie definitely understood his airplane. So, a checkride was scheduled with Hawai’i’s new examiner, D.P.E. “Mac” Smith.

The checkride started at 9:00AM, June 8, 2008. They started flying a little after noon. By 3:00PM we all knew he had passed. His flying was *perfect*.

Dickie has his own Grumman Cheetah. There are advantages and disadvantages to learning to fly in your own airplane. One disadvantage is obvious: you’re bending your own airplane on those hard landings. But there’s a clear advantage to flying a checkride in your own airplane, when you have the incentive to learn every quirk of your bird. And that’s the advantage Dickie brought to today’s checkride: mastery of his aircraft.

Congratulations, Dickie!

16 year olds just need a short, sharp shock whenever they get too cocky. Other than that, a flight instructor merely needs to point them in the right direction and get out of their way.

Solomon has flown with me 7 times, no previous experience.

3 touch-and-go’s later, and Solomon has soloed.

Congratulations, Solomon!

Jesse took his check-ride - excuse me, his Private Pilot Practical Test - with George Morikawa on March 21, 2008. George has done hundreds, if not thousands, of check-rides, so I think he knows his airplanes. More importantly, he knows people.

I tried to pump him for details on Jesse’s weak spots, but all he would say was: “He was very strong on the ground portion [the knowledge test].” And, of course, I witnessed his landings. They were perfect.

Congratulations, Jesse!

I replaced the old Narco NAV12 VOR receiver with a NAV122D.

This thing is a full VOR/Localizer/Glideslope radio and indicator.

So, N41282 is now full IFR.

I spent Thursday flying around, driving Hilo Approach absolutely nuts; and on Sunday night had to use it in hard IFR, a night flight from Kona to Hilo.

It works great, and I’m very very happy.

I’ve put N41282’s schedule on Google Calendar.

http://www.wayforward.net/schedule.html

A&P Mechanic Phil Byrnes and I completed the required 100 hour inspection on N41282.
The airplane is back in service, with new brake pads and discs.