Aero-Tips!

A good pilot is always learning -- how many times have you heard this old standard throughout your flying career? There is no truer statement in all of flying (well, with the possible exception of "there are no old, bold pilots.")

Aero-News has called upon the expertise of Thomas P. Turner, master CFI and all-around-good-guy, to bring our readers -- and us -- daily tips to improve our skills as aviators. Some of them, you may have heard before... but for each of us, there will also be something we might never have considered before, or something that didn't "stick" the way it should have the first time we memorized it for the practical test.

Look for our daily Aero-Tips segments, coming each day to you through the Aero-News Network.

Aero-Tips 11.06.06

One of the things I always asked new Private students is how they plan to use an airplane, to get a better idea of how to slant the training they receive.

My student Mark had completed everything needed for his Private pilot experience requirements except some night dual. We had practiced full-stop takeoffs and landings for a little over an hour the previous week. Mark was an executive in a multi-location business, and he planned to fly on a lot of business trips, so while I was making sure he was well trained in all the Practical Test Standards requirements I had reached an agreement with him that we'd do a little extra work on things he'd need to eventually be a business pilot, specifically night cross-country flight and practice toward an eventual instrument rating. Tonight we were planning his first night cross-country, from Sedalia, Missouri 100 miles almost due south to the tower-controlled airport at Springfield.

Weather reports were as spotty as the small towns in the hills and lakes south of Sedalia. Columbia Flight Service reported a high overcast but excellent visibility on that cold, autumn night. Mark and I preflighted the Cessna 152 and carefully arranged the cockpit so everything we'd need was close at hand. The Cessna's four-banger Lycoming coughed to life and, after an appropriate warm-up and Before Takeoff ritual we launched off Runway 18, making the slightest turn to the right to align on a deduced-reckoning magnetic course that would eventually allow us to pick up the Springfield VOR.

It was dark. Sedalia, about 20,000 front porch and business lights strong, slid astern and the lights of crossroads-town Lincoln and hamlet Windsor beyond were right where the red-illuminated Sectional chart said they should be. That's when things started to look strange.

The ground lights began to flicker in and out. It was eerie plunging in and out of darkness, something Mark had never seen and I was not expecting. We could still see down, so we weren't in unexpected clouds. Something made me turn on the landing light, however, and suddenly it was like flying through a hyperspace star-field in a science fiction movie. Snow! Visibility forward along the ground was dropping to almost nothing.

I could see it was a major disappointment for Mark (who, as a businessman, had difficulty scheduling time for flying lessons), but I turned off the landing light and told him we had to divert because of weather. Sedalia was still glowing bright in the Cessna's rear window, so he made a careful, standard-rate 180° turn and in moments were out of the snow shower, logging another uneventful night landing.

Mark soon passed his checkride and at last update was flying a turboprop to further his successful business. I don't know for certain, but I think a then-low-time CFI cautioning him to turn around at the first sign of conditions beyond his and the airplane's abilities may have helped promote an attitude that was keeping him safe alone in a very different type of airplane.

Aero-tip of the day: Don't just hope things will improve when adverse weather develops unexpectedly. Make a change right away, before conditions deteriorate to disaster.

FMI: Aero-Tips