Flight Training - April 2013 - 35

left you feeling comfortable with short-field landings, and your checkride performance vindicated the work.
It might be a good idea to call ahead for a report on early spring field
conditions. They could range from hard-packed plowed snow, to frozen
ground, to mud (which might be good to avoid). So you will assess the
report you receive, and make a decision. On arrival, overfly the traffic
pattern and give the windsock some careful scrutiny for wind speed,
direction, and variability.
Stepping up, carefully. The privilege of having responsibility for setting your own boundaries is the reward for earning your pilot certificate.
You are becoming a prudent manager of risk and pitfalls.
Here is one: When you step up to a more capable aircraft, don’t conclude that your mere presence in its cockpit makes you a more capable
pilot. Just as when you were a student pilot, wait until you are completely
comfortable with the basic characteristics and operation of the new aircraft before you put it to the test under challenging conditions.
It may be hard to resist the temptation to load up people and baggage
for a week of skiing after that heady checkout in a bigger, faster aircraft.
But the extra power and speed of a high-performance aircraft, and the

WHEN YOU PASSED YOUR CHECKRIDE, THE FAA
GRANTED YOU THE PRIVILEGE TO USE WHAT
YOU LEARNED ABOUT SAFETY AND JUDGMENT
TO SET YOUR OWN LIMITS.
systems management of a complex aircraft, are best approached gradually, in easy weather and on familiar runways.
So here’s a standard for flying this type of aircraft after acquiring the
required endorsements: Be confident that you won’t “get behind the aircraft” in busy airspace or tricky weather. Many pilots bring a CFI along
on the first few longer trips. That’s also a chance to log some experience
toward an instrument rating, if you ponder that kind of upgrade.
It’s common for the crowd in the FBO to describe the capabilities of
aircraft—speed, payload, ice protection, short takeoff and landing operations, and so forth—as if they existed independently of the pilots flying
them, but this is dangerously misleading. It is only when you observe that
a new-to-you aircraft is reducing your workload during both routine and
unusual flight circumstances that you should consider yourself as much
in command of it as you now feel about the aircraft you have been flying.
Also, pilots flying an unfamiliar aircraft model tend to spend more time
with their eyes inside the cockpit checking instruments, managing fuel,
or locating and tuning radios. That means your situational awareness and
collision avoidance scanning will be compromised until you become more
at home in the new cockpit. Resolve to stay vigilant.
Weather detection capability is a triumph of technology, but it only
works as intended if the pilot uses it to reduce—not increase—a flight’s
risk. Don’t make the mistake of taking an aircraft with advanced
weather-detection equipment into or near weather that you would have
otherwise avoided. There are plenty of accident reports that illustrate
how pilots got in trouble trying to sneak through bad weather. Far better
to let that wonderful weather technology on your panel lead you away
from the bad stuff instead of into it.

Better weather detection capability is
not a license to snip away at the margins
of safety with which you feel comfortable.
Another complacency conundrum
arises when a pilot who has only flown
aircraft with basic navigation radios first
experiences the thrills and information deluge provided by satellite-based
navigation. Don’t retire your plotter and
flight computer just yet, or stop keeping
track of your fuel burn in flight. Tracking the magenta line on the screen of
your GPS, and reading groundspeed and
estimated time of arrival from a display,
reduce workload and provide certainty
of position. But the box won’t take you
where you want to go if you enter GRE
(Greenville, Illinois) as your destination
when you want to go to GMU (Greenville, South Carolina). If the database is
slightly out of date, you could follow it
blindly into an airspace incursion.
Flying new aircraft, and gaining new
confidence in your growing skills, inevitably expands the range of altitudes at
which you may fly. That’s true at both the
high end and the low end of the altitude
range—a fact that raises the most important personal piloting standard of all:
Pledge now to set a safe floor for your flying at all times. Then, for your own sake
and for the sake of anyone you welcome
into your aircraft, never violate it.
There will be times when someone asks you if you can get just a little
lower, to take a photograph or for other
reasons. But then throw in a distraction
that leads to loss of control, or failing to
see an unmarked obstruction, and the
risks soar; so decline the invitation.
When you passed your checkride,
the FAA granted you the privilege to
use what you learned about safety and
judgment to set your own limits. That
responsibility awaits you on every flight
from now on.
Set standards within your limits, not
at their fringes. Then add in some safety
margins to help you deal with the unexpected.
Dan Namowitz is an aviation writer and flight
instructor. He has been a pilot since 1985 and an
instructor since 1990.
APRIL 2013 FLIGHT TRAINING

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Flight Training - April 2013

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