Evolution of a lesson

The Air Safety Institute is the division of the AOPA Foundation responsible for "continuing education" for pilots.  They maintain a library of online interactive courses that are very slick and probably expensive to develop.  Each week, the online AOPA newsletter promotes one of them, and this week it was "Mountain Flying," one of the ASI's earlier offerings.  We have seen it before.

When it first came out, the page illustrating mountain waves was quite horrible, and we criticized it:

Fortunately, that didn't last long. A few months after its original publication, the course was updated and greatly improved, although it still wasn't perfect:

Finally, the third version came out, and it's pretty good.  Can you spot the difference between this image and the previous one?

Yes, there is still a fair amount to criticize here, but this is probably the limit of what a typical airplane driver needs to understand about mountain waves. After all, the target audience of the Air Safety Institute seems to be airplane pilots, exclusively.

Which is a shame, since the pilots of gliders, helicopters, ultralights, and balloons probably could also use some well-made refresher courses on safety.

P.S. You should join AOPA.

Best glide

How calm would you be if you had to fly a 17:1 glider toward an unknown destination...at night?

Watch this presentation - from AOPA.

A real encampment

Here's a nice story. I've always wanted to do that.

AOPA

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association is the second oldest national aviation organization to which I belong. AOPA is touting its 70th anniversary in the May, 2009 issue of their monthly magazine, AOPA Pilot. (Here is a link to the current issue.  Archived issues are available only to members).

I am definitely getting the impression that AOPA has decided to expand their coverage of activities outside the airplane category. There is a blimp on this month's cover, a blimp story inside, and a nice article about a little grass strip in Vermont where balloons and gliders are flown (you have to be a member to read it online).

SSA members Val Paget and Bill Daniels have been writing for AOPA, and last month we were visited at the Seniors Contest by AOPA contributors Mike Fizer and Mark Twombly.

Regardless of whether this new level of attention is official policy, AOPA deserves credit for reaching out like this.  They stumble sometimes, but at least they're trying.

You can join AOPA for $39.

Mountain Flying, Explained

You may remember my previous criticism of the AOPA Air Safety Foundation for a bit of misinformation in its online course on Mountain Flying.

I am happy to report that the course has been overhauled and republished, with a much more accurate portrayal of mountain waves. We've gone from "Beware of these clouds" to correctly identifying lenticular clouds as marking smooth air that can be "good for gliders:"

Click image for larger version

OK, so the rotors are still turning the wrong way in this illustration, but that is minor compared with all the improvements over the previous version.

AOPA gets full credit for going to the trouble and expense of improving this online course. If only the FAA were as conscientious about the accuracy of their published materials.

By the way, AOPA has recently increased the amount of attention paid to the communities of pilots who don't fly airplanes. They have published excellent pieces on proficiency and cross-training, and have regular blog posts about soaring. We can thank SSA members Chris O'Callaghan, Val Paget, and Bill Daniels for this.

AOPA is a good organization. Join or renew now.

Remain Clear of These Areas!

Feeling a bit guilty about my criticism of one of AOPA's online safety courses, I decided to give them another chance.

Yesterday, I took the verbosely titled Know Before You Go:  Navigating Today's Airspace course.  It is a good review of our complex airspace system, and I had just about decided to recommend it to all my gliding friends, when I encountered the "Miscellaneous Airspace Areas" part of the lesson:

(Click image to enlarge)

Note the subject of this sentence:

When practical, pilots should remain clear of these areas.

Once again, I agree with the advice given.  But I would have used slightly different wording.  Something along the lines of "When practical, bozos should remain clear of the pilots in these areas."

Another water landing

AOPA, among others, have joined the media bandwagon in praising the US Airways flight crew that landed the Airbus 320 in the Hudson River.  Unlike most of the others, however, the AOPA writers were able to refrain from using the words "crash," "plunge," and "miracle," separately or all together.

In fact, the AOPA article said some nice things about glider pilots and glider training.  But we've been saying the same things all along.  I wonder where they found that picture.

Beware of these clouds!

The AOPA Air Safety Foundation offers an interesting series of online safety courses targeted, seemingly, toward airplane pilots who were sound asleep during their basic training. I took the course entitled Mountain Flying, hoping to learn something about mountain waves.

I learned that all the classic misconceptions are alive and well in the power pilot community. Rather than list them all, I present some of the more egregious. Here is a diagram and a photo from the course (click to enlarge). The diagram shows an upside down lenticular all by itself out in front of the rest (I guess they had to draw it upside down, because this very special cloud has sink at its leading edge).


I especially like the warning: "Beware of these clouds! They almost always indicate severe turbulence." Yeah, right. Sort of like "Beware of automobiles. They almost always contain flammable liquids." Someone should inform these guys that the smoothest air on the planet can be found in the vicinity of lenticular clouds. The actual location of the wave's turbulence receives no mention at all in this tutorial. And speaking of rotors, did you notice that they're turning backwards?

In the caption to the photo, the first sentence contradicts the second, and the bit about condensation is at odds with the upside down lenticular cloud. The photo itself shows three different types of clouds.

It is disappointing to learn that the AOPA Air Safety Foundation has no more understanding of mountain waves than the FAA. Their advice to the pilot is to avoid mountain waves entirely, which, I suppose, is good advice if you haven't got a clue about what's going on.