Meteorology: ever wondered what causes seasonal changes in weather patterns? Why drizzle can last for days while showers of rain come and go? Why white puffy clouds grow bigger in the late summer afternoon? And what’s that funny cloud above the mountain? All the answers can be found in PPL textbooks, but be warned: trying to understand weather is very addictive!

Mechanics and systems: being a software engineer by trade, there was a lot I didn’t know about the hardware side of things: internal combustion engines, hydraulics, gyroscopic instruments and fluid mechanics. All fascinating stuff that will help you impress your petrol-head friends. I also learned a lot by following aircraft construction blogs. My life is more complete now that I know what a cleclo is.

Safety: learning to fly shapes your brain to think safety first. You will find yourself pre-flighting rental cars. Your partner will get upset when you refuse to drive into an unknown section of the countryside without a current map. When she points at the GPS on the dashboard you will answer that you don’t have a RAIM prediction.

Human factors: you will learn useful facts about human physiology, but it’s the psychological side of human factors that I found most helpful: recognising patterns of thought that may lead to unsafe behavior, learning to give and accept feedback when working as a team and prioritising tasks in stressful situations. I cannot think of one area of life where those skills do not apply. As was said on this blog before, flying can improve your life. You may even develop specific personality traits.

Aviation is so strongly connected to a large number of other disciplines that you just never know what you will end up learning. I didn’t expect that at all when I first pushed the door of my aero-club, and this was one of the nicest surprises of my flying training. And of course your airline flights as a passenger will never be the same again.

Most of the unread posts were not from personal blogs but from news source like AOPA news, aviation in Google News, Planetalking.com, AvWeb current issue and Aero-News network. In this section, I used the “Mark All as Read button” a lot…

The hottest topic in the aviation blogosphere recently is the NWA flight 188 which lost radio contact and overflew its destination by 150 miles. There’s a lot of speculation around this incident. You can read more about it from Airlinerblog. Aviation-safety.net confirmed that the licences of both pilots were revoked. As often, the voice of reason and experience can be heard on flightlevel390.blogspot.com. Both Jetwhine and Cockpit Conversation listed their top 10 reasons why the crew missed the destination. Max Trescott also brings interesting arguments in his post on the NWA flight 188.

Another incident got my attention: a Cessna 400 cruising at 23.500 feet had a problem with oxygen and the pilot got incapacitated. The non-flying passenger got help from ATC and other pilots flying in the area. A great lesson of solidarity. Click here to read more about this incident and the dangers of hypoxia.

Still in the aviation accidents category, the Brazillian investigators released the final report about the A320 runway excursion at Sao-Paulo Congonhas airport. Click here to read more about their findings, and here to read an older post about this accident.

Lots of good posts also have to do with pilots training. Here are a lot of tips and training stories, in no particular order:

• Useful icing resources for pilots
• Why flight planning matters even more at night
• Holding pattern entries made easy (podcast)
• 72 years young lady gets her pilot certificate
• List of aviation don’ts

By the way, I noted that two blogging instructors I like have a new design at their blogs: www.askacfi.com and www.m0a.com. Congrats guys, nice job.

One impressive video appeared in several blogs. It shows a VFR aircraft entering IMC and continuing. At one point, the wingtip hits terrain, in the closest call I ever saw. I’m not sure this pilot learned anything from this mishap, but I share Rob’s opinion: be very afraid of this pilot.

MyFlightBlog.com also has a great, but not scary, post on flying in the Rocky Mountains. Todd made his first mountain flying experiences, and came back with nice pictures, a great video and big smile.

Sylvia, from fearoflanding.com, found incredible picture of a Piper Supercub attacked by a bear. But the most incredible part is that the pilot repared it with duct tape. Lots of duct tape. Click here to see in which state this aircraft flew back home.

Technical problems also occur at the other side of aviation, in the airlines. Dave from flightlevel390 related how one of his departures got delayed twice, because of two different problems. On the same day, he got an alarm about a thrust reverser, making an interesting link to the accident at Sao-Paulo Congonhas airport. Click here to read Dave’s post about how he handled technical problems with his maintenance, co-pilot and dispatcher.

Finally, with Chritmas in sight, the season of product reviews started. AviationMentor made a review of ForeFlight mobile for iPhone. I like his reviews because they are always very deep, detailled, and rather objective. Max Trescott has read Captain Sullenberger’s book, “Highest Duty”. Max also had a personal meeting with Sully and tells all about it in this post.

The G3000 is a big step forward. Compared to the G1000, the softkeys below the screens are still present, but there are no knobs on the side. The screens are bigger, and of a different aspect ratio. The touch-screen control units seem to be like bigger versions of my iPhone. Lists scroll smoothly, and the infrared technology used by Garmin reduces the risk of error in turbulence. Actions are not triggered when your finger touches the display, but when you remove it. If turbulence makes your finger shift, the impact and end of contact points won’t be the same and the controller will take no action.

Garmin presented the G3000 at NBAA, and several reports are available from there. Click here to read more from AOPA. As mentioned in this article, the G3000 will initially be certified for light turbine aircraft, read King-Airs and light jets. With the G1000, Garmin used a different approach, starting with light aircraft to step up into turbine. I’m not sure why they use a different approach this time, but I guess the cost of the two controller units – required for multi-crew and redundancy – as well as the required space make less sense in a light aircraft. They could gain some room by using touch screens the PFD and MFD. Got it, guys ?

It’s not easy to describe a glass cockpit system with words, so I selected for YouTube videos for you.

Finally, from the GarminBlog, a spectacular but short history of glass:

Do you have a political orientation ? Are you more left-ish or right-ish ? For US readers, Democrat, Republican ? Ecologist ? Without specific political orientation ?

And finally, does this impact your flying ?

Towing and playing hangar Tetris
Most of my flying was in a flying club having a hangar for its whole fleet. On the plus side, there was no need for aircraft covers. I hate aircraft covers, and if you already tried to put one in a 20 knots wind, you know why. But this hangar was quite deep, and I often had to tow two or three other aircraft out, on top of the one I was flying. We also used to tow the aircraft to the fuel pump. Not that far away, but towing a PA32 is a lot of effort.

Short term flight cancellations
Canceling a flight is never fun, specially at short time. There are many reasons to cancel, and this is possible at any time. The latest of my cancellations was during the take-off roll, as the heading bug was blocked. But the worst is to cancel late on the day before because the weather forecast for an early flight is looking clear, and find glorious VFR weather the on the next day.

Weather suspense
Spending lot of time checking each and every weather report, building scenarios and alternatives is not always fun. This can create interesting discussions, but I hate spending half a day of hardly gained overtime to end up non flying because of fog dissipating later than expected, or thunderstorms building earlier than expected.

No plane – no fun
Rental pilots know that one: a perfect day, a short-term plan for a great flight but no plane available. An even more frustrating variant is when the guy having the reserved the plane before is not back on time, whatever the reason.

Staying current
National and club regulations require a certain number of flights per year or even per month. Keeping all privileges current (aircraft types, single engine, multi-engine, night VFR, IFR, …) is sometimes a source of intense worries.

I hoped that writing a post about the less funny parts of flying would help me dealing more easily with my non-flying situation. It does not.

When a force is applied to an object, it makes it move, and / or rotate. If the object can move freely, like an aircraft in flight, it will rotate around its center of gravity. The farthest the point where the force is applied, the higher the rotation. The so-called “moment” is the force multiplied by the distance to the center of gravity. This is nothing else than the good old lever principle: “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth.”

Because the center of gravity of an aircraft is never located at the center of gravity, the lift generates a moment. In light aircraft, the center of lift is typically behind the center of gravity, so lift generates a nose-down moment. This moment is compensated by some aerodynamic forces generated by the horizontal stabilizer. To compensate for the nose-down moment, the stabilizer generates some downward forces which create a nose-up moment. Because this force is far away from the center of gravity, a minimal magnitude is sufficient.

So the moment of lift (upwards, behind CoG, nose-down) and the moment from the stabilizer (downwards, behind CoG, nose-up) compensate for each other, making the aircraft stable, easy to control, and reduce the required control forces. But the distance between the center of gravity and the center of lift is not that big…

If the center of gravity moves behind the center of lift, the direction of the moment created by the lift changes direction: lift is still upwards, but it’s now in front of CoG, creating a nose-up moment. The force from the stabilizer is still downwards, and still behind the center of gravity… and still creating a nose-up moment. There is no more compensation and the sole way to compensate for the moment is to use extra control forces, but it’s not granted that the aircraft will remain stable and controllable…

Flying with passengers in the back seats of a PA28 or C172 makes quite a difference in the required control forces. This is why the typical differences training for a new aircraft type includes a flight at maximum take-off mass.

Nobody will check that you’re flying with a properly positioned center of gravity before you go flying. It’s one of the numerous duties of pilots to ensure the plane is loaded correctly, before and during each and every flight. As soon as you operate with a center of gravity outside the approved limits, you become a test pilot.

Insurance companies don’t like test pilots at all.

1 – “Go West” with pictures from Blue Angels cockpit

2 – Basejump – The art of flying without an aircraft

3 – John following Greg for landing in two gliders

4 – Breathtaking picture from military jets cockpits

5 – A music video to the glory of Experimental Aircraft

6 – Flying to Fresno over the Tehachapis in a Piper Seminole

7 – United Breaks Guitar – Not exactly a flying video, but I like it so much…

I hope you enjoyed this musical moment. Which is your favorite one ?

Is that short ? It certainly depends where you use to fly. I reckon to most US standards, this is short. I learned to fly in this environment where landing shortly after threshold and with accurate speed is important. Not that landing long on a 12.000 feet runway is good or acceptable, but it’s much less drama. The first time I landed on the main runway which is 12.000 feet long and concrete, I flared to high because of the well known optical illusions. My instructor was here and corrected for that. I learned to adapt my flare to larger runways, but my primary one remains soft and short making soft and short landings and take-offs non-events for me.

Similar considerations apply for different domains as well. I feel at home at controlled airports, and in low-wing tricylce aircraft. I have some experience in high-wing aircraft, none with tail wheel, and I’m not so used to navigate VFR “clock-and-compass” over flat land without major landmarks. Just like each pilot, I’ve my strengths and my weaknesses and I think it’s important to know them. I continue to extend my comfort zone, step by step. Sometimes with an instructor, sometimes alone on board. The place where I learned to fly the DA42 has more often crosswinds than Geneva, where the winds are almost always in the axis because of the surrounding mountains.

The pilot certificate is a license to learn, and we should never stop exercising these priviledges. The Flying Across America adventure I’m preparing for next year will certainly be a great opportunity to learn new things, in a completely new context. Not tail wheel or sea plane though… this will have to wait a bit.

A – F-HDAI – A DA40TDI with G1000 which I flew in Cannes.

B – The registration prefix for Switzerland is HB, so that’s an easy one for me.

C – HB-CHW – A C172 retrofitted with a Thielert TDI engine.

D – D-GGWB – The German DA42 TwinStar I flew to get my Multi Engine rating.

E – HB-HET – An AS-202 Bravo, basic trainer.

F – F-GZMP – The second French DA40 with G1000 I flew in Cannes.

G – G-ELLA – An English PA32 Saratoga from the West London Aero Club.

H – See B.

I – HB-KIW – This Bonanza was my ride for my IFR training.

J – HB-PEJ – This previously Swiss PA32 is now flying in Sweden.

K – HB-KIW – See I.

L – HB-PLL – The first PA28 I flew, a very nice warrior.

M – F-GZMP – See F.

N – HB-PNJ – A PA28 Archer III with the airline-like overhead panel.

O – OE-DAB – One of Diamond’s replacement aircraft when a DA40 goes in maintenance.

P – HB-PID – A Piper PA28 Archer II.

Q -HB-PQN – The very first PA32 I flew, also with a nice overhead panel.

R -Missing! But this could be change with the FlyingAcrossAmerica project, the aircraft is N512R.

S – HB-SDX – Another DA40 TDI with G1000.

T – HB-HET – See E.

U -Missing!

V – HB-HFV – Another AS-202 Bravo.

W – HB-CHW- See C.

X -N737XL – A Liberty XL2 which I test flew.

Y -Missing!

Z – HB-PDZ – A PA28 Archer II which is now flying under a G- registration.

What have YOU done after your first solo?