Aircraft Sales and Parts

Private Pilot License

. The private pilot license enables you to fly a plane in both a small airport and a larger airport controlled by an air tower. With a private pilot license, you can fly during the day and at night time.You can take passengers with you and travel on both business and leisure trips.

Your passengers can help out with operating costs but they cannot pay you for travel. To be paid for travel, you have to acquire a commercial license. Private pilot licenses are the most popular licenses available for the general public. You can fly small two-seater planes popular in the 1970s and 1980s as well as the faster, lighter four-seater planes such as the Cessna 152.

Glider Pilot License

Gliders, sailplanes, they are wonderful flying machines. It's the closest you can come to being a bird. — Neil Armstrong



A glider is a plane that does not require an engine to sustain its flight. Some gliders, called motor gliders, have engines that help them take off. However, once the glider is in the air, the motor neatly tucks away into the plane and does not interfere with the air currents or flight pattern.

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be? —it is the same the angels breathe.



Mark Twain, Roughing It, Chapter XXII, 1886



Getting a pilot’s license opens up doors of opportunities you may never have envisioned before. In the United States, you can get a private pilot’s license which will allow you to fly single-engine aircraft and carry passengers. You can upgrade this license to further advanced certificates and licenses.

The basic steps for getting your private pilot license are:

1. Be at least sixteen years of age and be able to read, speak, and write English fluently.

2. Enroll in a licensed flight school. Costs range from $3,000 to $4,000 for both ground school and flight training.

3.  Obtain a medical certificate from a qualified doctor of aviation medicine before starting the course.

4. Complete the three-to-five week ground school course.

5. Take the written Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) test at the end of the course work. The test consists of one hundred multiple-choice

6. Complete thirty to forty hours of actual flight time with the instructor.The school provides the plane.

7. Complete your “solo” flight without an instructor on board.

8. Complete your final exam or “check ride” accompanied by an FAAcertified examiner who will ask you questions and assess your abilities.

9. Receive your private pilot’s license with a visual flight rating. This allows you to pilot a single-engine aircraft in good visibility during the day or at night.

Getting your private pilot’s license is not only a straightforward, clear process, but also a lot of fun. Flying is an acquired skill and truly, for a pilot, the sky is the limit. Flight training consists of a minimum of forty hours of flight time which can be broken down into the following parts:

20 hours flight training from the certified Instructor which includes:

3 hours of cross country flight

3 hours of night flight including:



By: Peter Bankss

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Laser Sights for your Glock

Over-shoot, under-shoot, loss of directional control, wing tip strikes ... are all symptoms of mistakes made BEFORE the pilot touches down. Mistakes that are easily prevented - but not necessarily in a way you might think.

I landed at the Nuttree Airport in a Cessna 172 in 1968. I felt pretty smug. It was a very smooth landing, one of those landings that you could hear but not feel. Then a wind gust picked me up and I landed a second time on a parallel taxiway. The pilot taxiing in the opposite direction was kind enough (or perhaps stunned enough or frightened enough) to hold short of a turn-off so I could move over to the parking apron. I couldn't look him in the eye as we went past. I mumbled some excuses to my passengers that I didn't believe. I had just made the three biggest (and most common) mistakes a pilot can make when landing.

Determined to never let that happen again, I spend a great deal of time in the intervening 40 years thinking about how to prevent these mistakes. The NTSB says that a full 45% of the weather-related accidents are caused by crosswinds and gusts. I believe it. It is time to introduce some little known techniques that help prevent these accidents. But first, we should look at their causes.

Landing too fast is caused by flying the approach too fast or trying to force the airplane to land before it is ready. The solution is to fly a consistent approach at the same airspeed, picking a safe projected glide point (or PGP), and controlling the PGP until you land. But hold the airplane a foot or so off the runway until the airplane nose has rotated up to the landing attitude. Hold that attitude until the airplane lands. That way you will land at the right speed.

Failing to cross control in a crosswind leads to ground loops, being blown off the side of the runway (the MOST common cause of accidents in the United States), wing tip damage, or, in my case, flying over the infield and landing on a taxiway. To put it simply, cross controlling is using the rudder to keep the long axis of the airplane parallel to the long axis of the runway and using the ailerons to keep the airplane positioned over the runway. This guarantees that you will keep the airplane moving straight down the runway after the wheels touch.

Quit flying the plane before the plane is through flying is one of the most dangerous mistakes that a pilot could make. Its cause is lack of concentration. Its solution is good flying habits.

I was lucky at the Nuttree. If the crosswind had been coming from the opposite side, I could have been blown into a canal. Remember that just because the main gear is on the ground does not mean that there is no 'fly' left in the airplane. Also remember that if you keep the airplane just above the runway until it absolutely, positively will not fly any more, then it will an unusually strong gust to put it in the air again.

It is easy to be lulled into the bad habits that lead to these mistakes. When the wind is gentle and the runway is long, all will be forgiven. So the question is: how to keep these bad habits from developing?

Let me introduce two exercises that have helped my students far more than I could have ever imagined. They are the 'very slow Dutch roll' and the 'controlled projected glide' point. Neither is difficult or dangerous. Both simplify and strengthen any pilot's ability to land.

The very slow Dutch roll is a simple exercise done at a safe altitude. It teaches two very important skills. First the pilot learns to continuously move the stick and rudders to control the airplane as conditions change, and second, the pilot learns how to cross control the airplane in the most extreme circumstances.

Here is how to do a very slow Dutch roll. Pick a point on the horizon and hold it steady as you change the angle of bank, airspeed and flap configuration. Maintain constant altitude. Change your bank very slowly. Continue to increase the angle of bank until either the aileron or the rudder is pushed to its limit. This is the angle of bank for the maximum crosswind that the airplane can land in. The cross controlled airplane slowly accelerates to the side for a minute or two. During this time, the pilot must move the flight controls continuously - an unanticipated benefit of this exercise when I thought it up.

Let me tell you about the projected glide point or PGP. When you approach the runway your eye will naturally gravitate toward a point on the runway that does not move in your field of vision. The phenomenon is much like when you are on a collision course with another airplane: it stays still in your field of vision but just gets bigger. Well, there is always a point on the ground where exactly the same thing happens. This is the point that you would glide to if you never made that last little flair to land. This is an extremely important concept that can save you many hours of landing practice. I never heard another flight instructor talk about it but I am sure that many pilots use this technique.

You can control the PGP with power and drag while keeping the airspeed constant. To move the PGP closer to you, reduce the engine's power or increase the airplanes drag - usually with flaps. To move the PGP away from you, increase the engine's power or decrease the airplane's drag.

Put the two concepts together to make consistent, safe landings. Once established on final, use the center line of the runway as your reference point for very slow Dutch rolls. Use the ailerons to position the airplane on the extended centerline, the rudder to keep the long axis of the airplane parallel to that extended centerline. Move the PGP to the same place every time. I recommend the runway threshold. Consciously continue cross controlling until the airplane slows to a taxi.

These two simple techniques will get you to the same place on the runway every time in a landing configuration that compensates for crosswinds or gusts until the airplane is going so slow that you can taxi to parking.



By: Douglas Daniel

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Want to buy Some Glock Parts?

Recent History

During the 1920s and 1930s, there was a huge leap forward in the field of aviation. Noteworthy milestones included Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight in 1927, and Charles Kingsford Smith’s transpacific flight the following year.

Without doubt, the most successful design of this period was the Douglas DC3, which became the first airliner to carry passengers profitably, and ushered in a new era in passenger airline service.

By the beginning of the Second World War, many towns and cities had built airports, and there were many eager and qualified pilots available. There were many new innovations in aviation, including the first jet aircraft and the first liquid-fueled rockets, which were the result of research generated during WW2.

There was a boom in aviation, in both the private and commercial sectors, after the war, in particular in North America. This was due, in no small part, to the thousands of pilots who became available from the military, and the plethora of inexpensive war-surplus transport and training aircraft which became available. Manufacturers such as Cessna, Piper, and Beechcraft rapidly expanded production in order to provide a ready supply of light aircraft for the new middle class market.

As the 1950s dawned, the development of civil jets had expanded at a pace, starting with the de Havilland Comet. The Boeing 707 was the first commercially successful passenger jet, since it was much more economical than its competitors of the period. By now, turboprop propulsion was coming into its own on smaller commuter planes, with the result that low-volume routes could now be served in a much wider range of weather conditions. 

In 1961, Yuri Gagarin was the first human to travel to space whilst, in 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first to set foot on the moon. Since the 1960s, composite airframes, which are engineered materials made from two or more constituent materials, and quieter more efficient engines had become available, and Concorde was the first supersonic passenger airliner.

However, the most important, and lasting innovations took place in the field of instrumentation and control. This was exemplified by the arrival of solid state electronics, GPS, or Global Positioning Satellite, satellite communications, and increasingly small and powerful computers and LED displays, which is a semiconductor diode that emits light when an electric current is applied in the forward direction of the device, have dramatically changed the cockpits of airliners and, increasingly, of smaller aircraft as well.

Pilots can navigate much more accurately and view terrain, obstructions, and other nearby aircraft on a map or through synthetic vision, which is a technology that provides pilots with a clear and precise method of understanding the environment in which they are flying, even at night or in low visibility.

In 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded aircraft to make a spaceflight which presented the spectre of an aviation market outside the earth's atmosphere.  Aircraft powered by alternative fuels, such as ethanol, electricity, and even solar power, are becoming more common and may soon become a reality, at least for light aircraft.

Aviation – How To Succeed

Peter Radford writes Articles with Websites on a wide range of subjects. Aviation Articles cover History, Aircraft Types, Air Traffic Control. Website has many more.

View his Website at: aviation-how-to-succeed.com

View his Blog at: aviation-how-to-succeed.blogspot.com

 





By: peter radford

About the Author:

Laser Sights for your Glock