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Plastic Pilot 
The FAA defines a “complex aircraft” as “one which has manually or automatically controllable pitc
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Plastic Pilot
Since mid of December, I published one post per day on this blog, seven days a week - and sometimes two when important events required so. The objective was to publish original and attractive content,
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Plastic Pilot
If you’re not a newcomer to this blog, you certainly know that I’m a private pilot with an instrument rat
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Plastic Pilot
Aircraft are changing owners, being sold and bought by private owners, clubs, schools, or financial organizations who rent them back. Some of the aircraft I knew for years changed hands, and simply va
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Plastic Pilot
I can’t close the series about my flying in England without talking about my temporary home-base there: the West London Aero Club, at White Waltham (EGLM) airfield. There is a short and easy way
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Plastic Pilot
IFR pilots are always talking about the Minimums - referring to the point after which a go-around must be done if the runway is not in sight. ILS Category I are the approach with the lowest possible m
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Plastic Pilot
The English weather is a legendary, and not for being brone to VFR. The thrid week of August is usually rather good f
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Plastic Pilot
The crash of the Spanair MD-82 on the 20th of August is before all a human tragedy. As all airline accident, it carries a strong emotional wave. My thoughts go first to the survivors that fight for th
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Plastic Pilot
My flying week in England and Switzerland taught me a lot about flying, about my skills, and about local usages.
Local procedures
Before that week, I flew VFR in Switerland, France, and Germany
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Plastic Pilot
Boredom is probably the second reason for which private pilots stop flying, after price increase. I can’t do anything against price increase, but I have many ideas to fight boredom. This of toda
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Plastic Pilot
I could hardly beleive it, but my plan to fly from Bournemouth to Guernsey unfolded exactly… as planned. We flew
the ro
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Plastic Pilot
Many potential pilots never do start flying, because they perceive light aviation as something expensive and reserved to an elite. The number of active pilots has never been so low, and to help improv
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Plastic Pilot
Saanen is one of my favorite airfields. It is located in the Berner Oberland, in the Swiss Alps, approximately 14 miles to the east of the eastern end of Lake Geneva. This former military airbase is n
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Plastic Pilot
The creativity of the air transport system is amazing. Each time I think that I experienced all possible problems creating delays, something new happens. I already told about the time where
August 24, 2008
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Plastic Pilot
On the 23rd of August, a Swiss Airbus 320 flying from Zurich to Malaga as LX 2114 made an emergency landing in Geneva, because of a bomb threat. Eventually, it revealed a false alert, but the airport
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Plastic Pilot
My flying vacation is now over. From monday to saturday, I flew for a total of 12h30, in England and around Geneva. I took the DA40-TDI with G1000 to Saanen (LSGK), Gernchen (LSZG), Yverdon (LSGY), an
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Plastic Pilot
This picture is one of the most frequently viewed from
August 21, 2008
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Plastic Pilot
From time to time, I receive request from other pilots about flight planning, and one recurrent question is “how to avoid this controlled airspace ?”. Circumnavigating and fleeing controll
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Plastic Pilot
The English part of my flying vacation is now over. In a couple of hours, we’ll be flying back to Geneva, where I hope to fly the G1000 DA40 TDI. The last three days were full of flying. I will
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Plastic Pilot
In the discussion about checklists that followed my “
Do you wr
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Plastic Pilot
When Travis asked me for more information about
the first flight of my then 9 month old daughter, I was happy to provide him addi
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Plastic Pilot
I can’t no longer count the number of male pilots I know, there are too much of them. Counting the number of female pilots I know is much easier. It just requires two hands, and a strong memory
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Plastic Pilot
One of the things I want to do during this week away from home is take some time to think about the future of this blog. I like to do it periodically, to make sure that it’s still lined-up with
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Plastic Pilot
Tomorrow is the first day of our vacation trip to Switzerland and England. The next days will be full of driving, flying, and visiting. The know part of the plan is as follows:
16th of August - Drivi
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Plastic Pilot
I like modern charting software. No more long and fastidious airway manual update. No more super-thin charts getting damaged when being used more than three times. Printing charts for each flight also
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Plastic Pilot
One of the advantages of FADEC controlled engines is the constant parameters monitoring. The smallest deviation, and any exceeded parameter is detected, even if this condition lasts for a couple of se
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Plastic Pilot
Being well prepared is the key to succesful flying. As many “golden rules”, this one is a bit general. With this post, we’ll see how it applies to flights below half an hour.
I’
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Plastic Pilot
Few months ago, one of you asked me what is the cost of rental flying in Europe. It’s not so easy to answer in a straightforward way, so I always postponed it. Several factors make a US vs. Euro
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Plastic Pilot
“Affirm”
This shortened version of “affirmative” simply means “yes”. Yes was too short to be always cleary understood over radio, and “Affirmative”
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Plastic Pilot
Several glider pilots amongst my friends invited me to fly with them as passenger, but this never took place. Lack
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Plastic Pilot
In the chain of aviation development, light aircraft are frequently the last link. We got glass-cockpits, FADECs, and composite airframes, but years after these technologies have been introduced in mi
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Plastic Pilot
Being well prepared is the key to succesful flying. As many “golden rules”, this one is a bit general. With this post, we’ll see how it applies to flights over two hours. If your usu
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Plastic Pilot
Some pilots fly without licenses. This is bad, this is sad, but this is a fact. This raises lots of insurance and legal questions, and lives are endangered. This is a scandal.
Some drivers drive witho
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Plastic Pilot
I have not any idea. If you ever ran out of fuel while flying, I’m very interested in your feed-back. The fuel gauges look like cartoons, and they’re all but accurate, because measuring in
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Plastic Pilot
1) Nasa courses on icing
This NASA website contains not less than 6 hours of training material about icing. There are two courses: ground icing, to help pilot to make good decisions, and in-flig
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Plastic Pilot
Making predictions is hard work, and stating opinions is always risky. There is a French proverb that says “Il n’y a que les imbéciles qui ne changent pas d’avis” - only idiot
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Plastic Pilot
Even if 2008 is not yet over, I’m already sure that this year will remain in aviation history for the number of new aircraft types that made their maiden flight. From Light Sport Aircraft (LSA)
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Plastic Pilot
Any pilot probably at least heard of
Jeppesen. If you never heard about that company, let’s say that it’s providing pilots worldwide with with en-rout
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Plastic Pilot
I got spotted ! Twice, as far as I know, but there could be more. If you read my blog regularly, you already know about spotters - if not
July 30, 2008
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Plastic Pilot
Diamond anounced two day ago that the DA50 will come in two version: the DA50 SuperStar and the DA50 Magnum with the AustroEngine AE300 powerplant. This is not hot news, but what Diamond added is that
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Plastic Pilot
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Plastic Pilot
Three days after the in-flight depressurization of a Qantas Boeing 747, it was the turn of a Qantas 737 bound to Melbourne that had to return to Adelaide, after a door opened in flight. Flight QF692 l
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Plastic Pilot
The second part of my “flying week” will be in Geneva, to fly the new DA40s that the club acquired this spring. They are fitted with Thielert TDI engines and Garmin G1000 glass-cockpit, an
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Plastic Pilot
The title of this post souds good, don’t you agree ? When I started the research for it, I was sure that I would find tons of material to read, compile, and that it would give a great post. Even
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Plastic Pilot
A Qantas Boeing 747 flying the London - Hong-Kong - Melbourne route had to make an emergency landing in Manilla. The NTSB initial press release mentions: “The airplane, Qantas flight 30, a B747-
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Plastic Pilot
One of the important roles of a pilot’s logbook is to keep track of all examination flights, endorsements and ratings. Some are simply signed by the examiner, others come with a stamp. In all ca
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Plastic Pilot
I recently got contacted by someone working for
Conklin & de Decker, who informed me about the
July 22, 2008
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Plastic Pilot
Flying is fun - parts of it can be stressing. This post is about the top three stressing moments on my personal stress-o-meter. Feel free to comment about yours.
Line-up and wait…
When operating
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Plastic Pilot
One of my first posts on this blog, back in April 2007, was about what I called
the Plastic Revolution
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Plastic Pilot
Do you know about side-step approaches ? The concept is easy to understand: it starts with a standard approach to a given runway, at least until breaking below the clouds base. Then comes the funny pa
