AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2019 - 14

LETTERS

FROM OUR FEBRUARY 2019 ISSUE

Driven to distraction
Are distraction-induced maintenance errors preventable?
PROFICIENCY & EFFICIENCY

87 MAINTENANCE 90 WX WATCH 93 ADS-B 95 OWNERSHIP 98 NEVER AGAIN

Obstacle departure procedures
generally take into account terrain
and obstructions within 25 nautical
miles of airports in nonmountainous
terrain and 46 nautical miles of
airports in mountainous terrain.

PROFICIENCY

There's
a chart
for that

DANIEL HERTZBERG

I really enjoyed Mike Busch's
"Errors of Distraction." As a
former automotive shop owner,
pilot, aircraft owner, advanced
ground instructor, and grandparent, I can testify to the
abundance of distractions in life.
Having owned two aircraft
over the years, I experienced
sloppy work and potentially
dangerous oversights. The
most aggravating experience
was with my "new" Grumman
Tiger. The local FBO was asked
to do an oil change for me.
When I looked at my new shiny
airplane and saw oil all over the
nosewheel and cowling, I asked
what happened. I had a quick
drain on the engine, so they just
let it drain and did not clean it.
No hose was installed. Then I
did my preflight and smelled a
strong gas odor. On looking further, they had broken a primer
line. Just forgot to tell me.
With calmness-hard to do-
I explained to the FBO owner
what had happened to my airplane. He apologized and said
he would get the corrections
made. I bought the airplane
through him, so he knew his
crew was responsible.

Can you make the climb?
B Y C AT H E R I N E C AVAG N A R O

84 | AOPA PILOT February 2019

As a pilot, do you prefer to fly alone
or with one or more passengers?
15%

61%

Alone

23%

More than one passenger

15%

Aviation eBrief poll

14 | AOPA PILOT April 2019

ONCE I SWITCHED FROM PAPER to electronic
navigational charts, I never looked back.
For some, paper evokes feelings of nostalgia, but I remember too clearly the weight
and expense of all those unwieldy charts.
Hearing ATC say, "We have a rerouting for
you. Are you ready to copy?" would fill me
with a sense of dread. As the controller rattled off a list of unfamiliar VORs and fixes,
I had to locate them on my low-altitude en
route chart, fly the airplane with no autopilot, and keep two kids in the back quiet
enough so I could do all of that. No fun. The
only thing I miss about paper charts is that
someday my supply of outdated versions
will run out and my pilot friends will no
longer get their presents wrapped in them.
Well, that and one more thing.
I am a designated examiner for the
Nashville Flight Standards District Office,
and although most private pilot candidates
still arrive for the practical exam with paper
charts, instrument rating candidates almost
never do. That's fine, but recently I gave a
practical exam that reminded me of a convenient reference in paper U.S. Terminal
Procedures Publications.
I asked my instrument rating candidate, John, to plan a flight from Tennessee's
Winchester Municipal Airport to Asheville
Regional Airport in North Carolina. The
scenario conditions at Winchester included
8 miles visibility, a 300-foot overcast cloud
layer, winds from 150 degrees at 4 knots, and
his aircraft was at maximum gross weight.
Although John said his personal weather
minimums for a ceiling were greater than
those, we continued with the scenario as a
thought experiment.
The Winchester Airport is at 978 feet
msl and Memphis Center often cannot
see an aircraft on radar in that area until it
has reached 3,500 feet msl, so the controllers cannot assist with terrain avoidance. I
asked John, "How can you guarantee that
you will avoid obstacles on your departure
from Winchester?" John wisely consulted
the obstacle departure procedure for the
airport. For Runway 18, the minimums are
standard with a climb of 330 feet per nautical mile to 2,400 feet msl. John said that on
such a day his airplane can easily climb 550
feet per minute so we should be fine. The
problem is that he was comparing a climb

gradient (feet per nautical mile) to a climb
rate (feet per minute). My raised eyebrows
made John rethink his statement, and he
recognized the inconsistency.
John had correctly determined that,
given the field elevation, local altimeter setting, temperature, and aircraft weight, his
aircraft was capable of a 550-fpm climb
rate. In order to see if this was sufficient, he
needed to convert the 330-feet-per-nautical-mile climb gradient to a climb rate, and
for that he needed two other items: the true
airspeed during the climb as well as the
winds. In other words, he needed to know
the groundspeed during the climb to altitude. John used a climb speed of 80 knots
but assumed it would be 90 knots to err on
the side of caution.
Now John was ready for the conversion.
He said, "Hmmm, now there is a chart for
that," and proceeded to search his iPad for
it. The paper approach plate books always
included this handy chart, and even though
the approach plates were downloaded onto
his iPad, his search for the chart yielded no
results. After fumbling with some mathematical calculations, he finally estimated that he
would need a climb rate of about 495 fpm
to achieve the desired climb gradient-he
was good to go but it was a lot closer than
he would have guessed to the 550 fpm of
which his airplane was capable. That made
an impression on him.
As an examiner, I am aware that earning the instrument rating in a flatter part
of Tennessee means that you are legal to
depart an airport such as Steamboat Springs
in instrument meteorological conditions.
There, the takeoff minimums on Runway
14 require a climb gradient of 610 feet per
nautical mile to over 2,000 feet above the
airport elevation of 6,882 feet msl. It would
be easy to find days for which this isn't
possible in many general aviation aircraft.
Confusing climb gradient and climb rate in
this case could prove disastrous.
After the exam ended, I pointed out
to John that he can download the Digital
Terminal Procedures Supplement for free
from the FAA website and keep it on his
iPad. (The supplement also may be downloaded via some apps.) The last page of the
document features the climb/descent table.
Why spend time rediscovering a formula

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Miles J. Barrett
AOPA 687231
North Cape May, New Jersey

www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 85

Back to my automotive
shop. Our shop had one major
rule: No phone calls when you
were working. Our mechanics
had to finish the particular job
they were on before retrieving their phone calls from our
receptionist. If an emergency
occurred, and our mechanics had to be interrupted, they
were required to update me
on the exact status of the job.
When the work was finished,
it was my responsibility to road
test the vehicle, raise the hood,
double check all the work that

One passenger

I just wanted to thank you for Catherine
Cavagnaro's article in February's AOPA Pilot
("Proficiency: There's a Chart For That"). One
result was I went4%
online and added that FAA
resource to my ForeFlight documents to help
my students and remind myself of the climb/
descent table. Thank you.

23%
61%

was done. In my opinion, these
distractions can be reduced, but
it takes dedicated effort by all
involved in the service process.
James L. Hibbert
AOPA 647779
Walterboro, South Carolina

Generating change

"Turn and Face the Change"
was a nice article. My personal
belief is electric is where all this
will lead, including heavy jets.
If I look forward enough I see
electric-driven propulsion-not
by batteries but by small nuclear
generators. They already drive
various spacecraft, have energy
density that far exceeds so-called
fossil fuel, and should be able to
be designed to take up the space
of a few thermos bottles with
eventually little weight. Look at
the thrust of a high-bypass fan
jet. Eighty percent or so of the
thrust is produced by the turbine
blades accelerating air that never
sees the combustion chamber.

It could just as well be driven
by some kind of electric motor
powered by a nuclear generator.
Let's really start thinking out
into the future where, I'll wager,
we'll find no barriers-only the
ones we create ourselves.
Rob Bender
AOPA 1430506
Golden, Colorado

Top 10

I was dismayed to read in
Richard McSpaddens article "Our Top 10" that AOPA
"experts" would include airframe parachutes on their list
of top 10 safety advances. The
other items listed no doubt have
dramatically increased safety
for a broad spectrum of hundreds of thousands of pilots. If
you include passengers on transport aircraft, the number of lives
saved is probably astronomical.
But the airframe parachute
has only been implemented in
a minute segment of aviation.

AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2019