Globe with the words Around the Pattern cured around the top half.

Ramblings about flying for fun and profit

Aircraft Maintenance

  • So Your Plane Just Came Out of Maintenance…

    So Your Plane Just Came Out of Maintenance…

    FAA’s 57 seconds to safer flying video concerning doing an advanced preflight.

  • Time Flies but I Haven’t

    I just looked at my logbook today (yes, I still log every flight that I make) and was really disappointed at what I found. The last time I wrote an article here I described a flight I had in June to take part in Swift World Domination Day. Believe it or not, that was the…

  • Off the Injured List

    My last post described my encounter with NORCAL Approach and a problem with the altitude reading they were receiving from my transponder/encoder. I had, with the help of the local avionics shop (Aviation Classics), investigated the malfunction to the point where the altitude encoder appeared to be the most likely culprit. I had three options…

  • Currency and the Professional Pilot

    A reader has asked me an interesting and somewhat complicated question concerning flying currency for both military and civilian professional pilots especially when coupled with the life expectancy of various airframes and allowable budgets. Wow. I don’t know, but I would guess that even a small part of that topic has been the subject of…

  • Back in the Air

    I mentioned in Friday’s article that I had flown the Swift early last week – before the major cold front blew through the area.  I had planned on flying sooner but ran into a maintenance problem that caused a few days of delay. I pulled the plane out of the hangar after my preflight, got…

  • Down Time Again

    I haven’t had any actual flying posts lately because I haven’t been flying.  It’s the time of year that the Swift’s annual inspection is due – the end of October to be exact.  I started the inspection a couple of weeks ago and was promptly sidetracked by other projects at home. So far I have…