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My mechanic would wonder why my airplane smells like French fries.

I give suggestions, such as “N1DB, suggest you turn 20 degrees left for traffic” and then “resume own navigation”. The thing to remember is that the closer you are to the traffic, the bigger the turn needs to be to get away (assuming head-on). If I got the instruction the way OP did, I’d...

If I’m busy and you cold-call me with a whole bunch of information I’m not ready for (doubly so if I miss a base turn with an airliner because you’re blocking the frequency), I am going to ignore you until I’m done with everything else I have going on. If you give me your call sign and...

Also, to expand on the climb before the frequency change...very likely the departure controller got on the landline “south, south, handoff”. The center controller then would say something like “radar contact, climb him to FL210” just to get them climbing a bit sooner.

You don’t get the same trajectory data that ATC does on a target. Also, that target could also be talking to ATC and they know exactly what they are doing where you know they are pointed “Westish at 110 knots”.

Interesting viewpoint. I had a near midair recently with an aircraft that didn’t have ADS-B out (requiring an abrupt control input once I saw the other plane). As an ATC, I routine work airplanes moving at 300+ knots groundspeed vs 1200 targets climbing and descending at 100 knots. You are...

Most controllers aren’t pilots and simply just don’t know the difference. There are BE33 Bonanzas and BE33 Debonairs. To the controller, there is no difference. Same for Lance vs Saratoga; we just see PA32. When I am calling traffic, I don’t expect the pilots to know the difference between...

Signature OH’d my Arrow’s IO-360. Turnaround time was about 6 weeks. I had an unrepairable case crack which added to my cost. Total was $32,300 with new case. Engine came back pretty much broken in (I used 2 quarts of oil in the first 25 hours. I did an oil change 15 hours ago and haven’t...

My Arrow is relatively slow compared to a lot of the alternatives, but it is cheap to maintain, cheap to fly, and a great cross country airplane.

Maybe, but mine is rock solid....no reason to rip it out now.

Yes, I still have the vacuum AI. And yes to the second question. My autopilot will follow the G5 heading bug or anything with a magenta line with the autopilot in HDG mode. If I want to track anything with a green line (VOR, LOC, etc...) it has to be appropriately selected by the Century AP...

I have G5’s and Century IIb autopilot. The HSI will only see data from Nav 1. Anything from the GPS source is seen as “heading” by the autopilot’s lateral guidance selector. If I want to follow a VOR or ILS, I have to twist the lateral guidance selector to the proper selection to follow it...

There is a function on the radar scope to see ADS-B data. It takes a couple of keystrokes if you’re on a 1200 code, and less if you’re already tagged up. We get your tail number and mode S hex code. There is a way to see all ADS-B equipped aircraft on the scope at once, but that function...

Reason 1: When you are IFR or VFR with flight following, your flight plan is transmitted along with a computer generated squawk code...if you filed 2 IFR flight plans, the squawk code you’re using is how the system knows which one is active. Reason 2: When you are on an assigned squawk code...

50nm isn’t that far in an airplane and being restricted to that is going to get boring really quickly. Consider the little bit more a private certificate will get you. Once you have it, you’ll have it forever and you can do so much more with it.

It got bad after Lockheed Martin took over. They consolidated to the point that I think they were overworking their briefers. On a nice VFR day they are generally reachable quickly. On a day with MVFR or IFR, I have let the line ring for 10 minutes and given up. Because we put in our own...

When was this? We have a dial line, but I regularly cannot get ahold of them. They have given us the ability to complete most of the functions we would call them (inputting pireps, getting NOTAMs, mainly), but not the ability to access VFR flight plans.

You are talking about two completely separate things here. Closing your VFR flight plan is not an ATC function, it is an FSS function. ATC has zero knowledge and does not have access to your VFR flight plan. ATC has the same access to FSS that you do....through the telephone. When you are...

If you’re IFR, which you would need to be to receive and accept a visual approach clearance, you would just need to stay clear of clouds. If you’re VFR, you would tell the tower you’re deviating for clouds. They would rather have you fly around the clouds under normal VFR rules than shut down...

That’s exactly right....nothing is stopping anyone else from going to medical school for 8 years and working their way into a high paying MD job. As an ATC I’ll be eligible to retire when I am 49; that’s part of why I picked that job. If anyone complains about someone else having something...