AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 100

RUDDER & WRENCH
the panel, the chances are that they'll simply
fracture and then your head will hit it.
What surface?
Full-scale NASA crash tests uncovered
something surprising-if you have a
choice, touch down on pavement. If you do
stall, there's a fair likelihood that the pavement
will translate the vertical vector of
the impact into horizontal and the airplane
will slide. That's not the case with grass
or dirt. That goes especially for gear-up
or partial gear-up landings. The airplane
was designed for them, so the fuel lines
are above the bottom skin and are almost
never ruptured in a gear up landing on
pavement.
Full-scale NASA crash
tests uncovered
something surprising-
if you have a choice,
touch down on pavement.
NEVER AGAIN /
By the way, research that has been
going on for some years has yet to
uncover a gear-up landing in a civilian
airplane since World War II where
someone was hurt or killed-unless the
pilot tried to shut down the engine(s) and
bump the prop(s) horizontal. Too many
pilots who tried a prop-stopped glide to
a landing when unable to lower the gear
have been killed because they misjudged
the glide. If you can't put the gear down,
land on pavement and keep the engine
running until shortly before the flare so
that you can control where you're going
to land.
Those are the basics to keep in
mind-everyone strapped in all the time,
touch down as slowly as possible without
stalling, and fly the airplane all the
way into the crash. Rick Durden holds
an ATP certificate and is the author of The
Thinking Pilot's Flight Manual: Or How
to Survive Flying Little Airplanes and
Have a Ball Doing It, Vols. 1-3.
100
AOPA PILOT / January 2024
On human factors
When day is done, and shadows fall,
we miss the airport most of all...
BY GREG FARIS
A FEW Y E AR S ago, I was completing a
night cross-country flight with an instructor
outside Paris, France. When I reached
for the radio to get the weather, returning
to Toussus-le-Noble, I felt heat emanating
from the Cessna Nav II stack-a lot of
heat. We shut off everything except one
radio, and it was a nonevent, on that clear,
moonless night, to get back. We learned
the following day that the cooling fans
in the radio stack had indeed failed, and
our conservative measure may well have
staved off greater worries. But why do
such minor events always seem to happen
at night, when it would take very little
for things to get a lot dicier?
A few years later, preparing for my
commercial checkride in Florida, I planned
a short IFR night flight from Kissimmee
to Daytona Beach-challenging because a
short flight has as many tasks as a longer
flight, but less time to set up and execute
each one. As it turns out, the real challenges
were to be of a different nature, and
JAMES CAREY

AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024

AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - Intro
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - Cover1
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - Cover2
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 1
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 2
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 3
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 4
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 5
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 6
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 7
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 8
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 9
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 10
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 11
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 12
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 13
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 14
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 15
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 16
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 17
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 18
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 19
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 20
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 21
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 22
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 23
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 24
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 25
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 26
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 27
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 28
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 29
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 30
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 31
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 32
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 33
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 34
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 35
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 36
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 37
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 38
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 39
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 40
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 41
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 42
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 43
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 44
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 45
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 46
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 47
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 48
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - R1
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - R2
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - R3
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - R4
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 49
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 50
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 51
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 52
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 53
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 54
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 55
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 56
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 57
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 58
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 59
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 60
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 61
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 62
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 63
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 64
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 65
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 66
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 67
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 68
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 69
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 70
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 71
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 72
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 73
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 74
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 75
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 76
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 77
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 78
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 79
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 80
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 81
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 82
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 83
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 84
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 85
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 86
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 87
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 88
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 89
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 90
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 91
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 92
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 93
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 94
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 95
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 96
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 97
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 98
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 99
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 100
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 101
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 102
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 103
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 104
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 105
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 106
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 107
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 109
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 110
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 111
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 112
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - 113
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2024 - Cover4
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