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I’ve used checklists that you can purchase for planes but haven’t liked them too much. Since I only fly planes I own, I’ve gotten into the habit of making detailed checklists that contain a lot of information from the Operating Handbook that I need to know but may forget. I used to print checklists on [...]

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I just refurbished a 1968 Piper Cherokee 140 and liked the result so much that I decided to keep it and rent it out. This post is a collection of articles on buying and flying the Cherokee. Image from original Piper marketing literature. My Cherokee Overview Fred Weick, the designer of the Ercoupe, designed the [...]

When reading about aircraft in publications like Aviation Consumer, I tend to focus on the accident causes and it seems that across all aircraft, around 12% of accidents are caused by fuel exhastion and another 2-4% by fuel contamination. This usually puts fuel mismanagement in third or fourth place among accident causes. Inexplicably, fuel exhaustion [...]

Certification of Aircraft is covered by PART 23–AIRWORTHINESS STANDARDS: NORMAL, UTILITY, ACROBATIC, AND COMMUTER CATEGORY AIRPLANES Among other things it sets out the four types of aircraft that are normally flown in Part 91 operations. FAR §23.3 Airplane categories. (a) The normal category is limited to airplanes that have a seating configuration, excluding pilot seats, of [...]

Roll over the planes to see parts labelled. Beginning students should name and roll until the names become second nature. Use the Next and Previous button to see more planes. The Show/Hide button lots you see all of the items on the page. If two labels are close together, roll over each of them and [...]

We recently had a visit from a medium-size military cargo plane and I was curious as to what it was. One of the airport kids knew what it was and I used the information to find out more. But it started me thinking about sites that might be useful for identifying aircraft and I found [...]

Click on the picture for more pictures of the same plane.  Swift  T38 Trainer  Stearman PT-17 Trainer  Quickie (More Photos)  Longer Long-EZ  Coast-to-coast Air Mail Bi-Planes  Avanti

Inspections of the entire aircraft and parts of it are required and 1 or 2 year intervals. In addition, ADs, service buletins, or manufacturers specifications may require inspection or replacement of parts at certain intervals. This article covers life limited parts. The following list is not necessarily complete. Annual Inspection FAR §91.409 requires an inspection [...]

One thing that I thought odd when I first started flying was the propensity for pilots to tell stories about how they really messed up and lived to tell about it. As I listened to more and more of these hanger flying stories I came to the realization that almost all of them involved the [...]