Cover of FAA Safety Briefing, July/August 2010

If you haven’t already seen it, the latest copy of the FAA’s Safety Briefing is available as a PDF download from their website: http://www.faa.gov/news/safety_briefing/ and it has some really useful weather-related articles this month.

This month’s edition covers topics like:

• Weather flying - a framework for the go/no-go decision
• Density Altitude - what is it, what can it do to you and your airplane
• Online Weather Briefings - Guide to key resources and how to use them
• Datalink Weather - Using this emerging technology in flight

There are many other articles and useful tips so its well worth having a look. If you want to grab it now, click to download the current briefing as a PDF. They also make past editions available on the FAA Safety Briefing website and you can also subscribe to receive subsequent editions of the briefing via email.

What information do you store?

Every time you take an exam just about every thing is saved into the database. This includes such information as:

• Exam Date
• Start time, finish time
• Overall score
• The chapters you selected, the questions in each chapter
• The results for each individual question, including your answer selection for each question.

How can this be used?

When you grade an individual exam you will see an overall grade for the whole test along with the results for each question. You can get a more detailed Summary Results report of each exam detailing the questions you answered correctly and, perhaps more importantly, the questions you got wrong. This is very similar to the results sheet you will get when you take the real exam and is shown below. This format is great for printing out for your instructor as it gives them all the information they need about your practice exam and clearly shows them the areas in which you may need a bit more work.

The exam summary results showing all questions and listing incorrect questions by learning code

By selecting [SHOW STATS] at the top of the summary page you can also see more detailed information on each incorrect question - the question itself and your answer history for this question (See below). If you keep getting a question wrong then this indicates you need to do a bit more work understanding the theory behind the question. Looking at the incorrect answers you have selected in the past will help identify where your misunderstanding might be.

The extended results view shows more details for the questions you got wrong

Cumulative Exam Stats

As you take more exams, you build up a history of your recent exams. This can be seen on the Exam Statistics page which can be reached by clicking on the mini bar chart on the left of your exams in the My Exams section of the Members home page:

Click on the mini bar chart to view more detailed statistics for each exam question pool.

The Exam Statistics page has two main components - the question pool coverage graph and the summary results of your last five exams.

• The Question Pool coverage graph is a bar chart showing the number of questions in each topic area, or chapter, of the exam. The height of the bars indicates the number of questions in that chapter, the orange bar indicates the number of questions you see in that chapter. Once the orange bar reaches the top you have seen each question in that chapter at least once.
• The Summary Results Table shows the summary results from your last five exams. This is helpful to see what you did in previous sessions so you can decide what to practice for your next exam. Each exam date at the top of the table links to the exam Summary Report (as shown above), the Chapter link on the left side of the table links to a detailed list of questions for that chapter (described in more detail below).

Exam Statistics page showing question pool coverage and your last five exam results

The Chapter links take you to the Chapter Question List which list, perhaps not surprisingly, all the questions in that chapter! This is handy so you can review all the questions that are included in a specific chapter.

Each question in a chapter is listed along with a recent performance history for each question.

Questions you haven’t practiced are colored purple so you can spot them easily. For each question you have taken you can see the question plus a graphical result history which shows you how you did the last five times you took this question.

Why is this result history useful?

The results history is a very powerful feature. Over time as you practice the questions you will find there are some you just get right each time and you dont want to keep seeing them so you need a way to stop them appearing in your practice exams. Similarly there are questions you are a bit less certain of and you can get wrong every once in a while, these are questions you want to work on. The results history tracks your last five results so when you create a new practice exam you can do things like create an exam of 10 random questions but ‘leaving out questions that you got right the last 2 times. This will allow you to practice only the questions you’re getting wrong, it wont show you the ones you’ve been getting right.

Practice exams can be customized using your recent results history

Hopefully this illustrates some of the features of the results tracking available on PrepareToTest. I am always open to suggestions on ways to improve the reports, statistics and other features so please feel free to use the comments below to ask for more explanation or suggest improvements. I will try and put together a quick screen cast that shows how these tools can be used in practice on PrepareToTest and I think that will help show how things fit together.

Hope to see some of you at Airventure!

1. The Anticipation factor (pilots hear what they expect to hear, not what is actually said)
2. The Language factor related to the challenges of dealing with pilots and controllers for whom English is not their first language.
3. The Call sign factor, similar sounding call signs leading to confusion in the air and on the ground.

You can read about these topics and much more on the NASA ASRS website.

• Logging into http://faasafety.gov
• Navigating to your My Wings page
• Finding the seminar or event you attended
• Finding a validator who can confirm your attendance at that event
• Submitting the request to the validator

This video presumes that you already have an account on faasafety.gov as that is now a prerequisite for being able to get into the WINGS system and manage your progress. If you are an Airman of any type (Pilot, AMT, flight engineer, etc) and do not yet have an account on the site it is well worth getting signed up, not just for WINGS but also to be able to take safety courses and other things. The AMT side of the site is going to be spruced up significantly in the near future so it will have more useful content for maintenance folks too. You can register for an account here: https://www.faasafety.gov/login/reg/Register.aspx

Validating WINGS credits on FAASAFETY.gov from Simon Twigger on Vimeo

If you have any questions or comments on this video or its contents I would love to hear them, please pop them into the comment field below.

To help address the problem of runway incursions the FAA co-produced a DVD in conjunction with the Airline Pilots Association and United Airlines. This video is reproduced below and focuses on runway safety best practices for commercial operations at towered and non-towered airports.

Even though its focus is Commercial operations the lessons are the same for general aviation so its still well worth watching. The video is around 31 minutes long.

The FAA have a dedicated site for Runway Safety issues here: http://www.faa.gov/runwaysafety/

The Pilots Best Practices for airport safety are as follows:

1. Encourage use of correct terminology and proper voice cadence
2. Eliminate distractions in the operational area.
3. Obtain and use airport diagrams. Use the FAA runway safety website to find airport diagrams for all airports.
4. Conduct “Clearing Turns” prior to entering ANY runway.
5. Maintain a sterile cockpit when taxiing.
6. Maintain appropriate Taxi speed.
7. Encourage pilots to have their “eyes out” when taxiing.
8. Encourage pilots to have a “heads up” policy when taxiing.
9. Attend safety seminars and programs on RUNWAY SAFETY.
10. Improve safety by teaching, advocating, stressing and understanding situational awareness.
11. Customize RUNWAY SAFETY presentations for targeted audiences such as pilot organizations, safety seminars, airport authorities, etc.
12. Cite specific airport RUNWAY SAFETY web pages.
13. Distribute RUNWAY SAFETY materials to every aviation entity.
14. Package and distribute runway safety materials to: Flight Schools, Flight Safety International, Maintenance Centers, Aircraft Manufacturers, etc.
15. Realize that every airport is unique and presents its own set of RUNWAY SAFETY challenges.
16. Stay alert; stay alive.
17. Declare war on errors; make it everyone’s responsibility.

Bob Comperini - http://fly-ul.com

Bob’s site has a lot (and I mean a LOT!) of great links to a whole bunch of online information relating to ultralights, sport pilot, homebuilding, regulatory and many other topics. Its well worth having a quick visit to see what he has on there.

Aliseo Flying Boats - http://flying-boat.com

Aliseo Flying Boats require the Sport Pilot Weight Shift license and they have a very handy Training page that gives prospective pilots some more information on the sport pilot test and how you can get specific training in the Aliseo II. Its deep mid-winter here in the Midwest, the ski plane fly-ins are in full swing, its great to think about flying around the lakes in summer in one of these aircraft!

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• They have various weather charts but it is not a comprehensive selection so its useful to see what’s going on in the world but not sufficient for getting your own briefing.
• The e>metar feature is interesting - send email from your mobile device to wx@flightaware.com with the airport codes in the subject line and get back a reply containing the most recent METAR and TAF for these airports.
• IFR Route analyzer - Enter a departure and destination airport and see flight plans that have been filed for that route in the past 24 hours.
• Of interest to web and application developers they also provide the FlightXML API. This is a webservice that you can use to query live and historical flight tracking info for use in your own software.

Technorati Tags: flying, IFR, flight tracking

For me this is a book I really love. Perhaps because it is written by a woman it is one of the most honest portrayals of the ups and downs of aviation I have read. She describes the fears, the uncertainty, the elation, the sense of achievement, the whole range of emotions that I think we all experience as aviators but which we might not admit to in public. The other thread running through the book is Rowell’s personal flight of discovery, how the experiences of the flight and her reactions to them lead her to a better understanding of herself.

Barbara Cushman met Galen Rowell through her job at The North Face outdoor equipment company. A whirlwind romance followed leading to their marriage and then things became a blur of travel, photography, climbing expeditions and way too much time waiting for Galen while he did his thing and she watched. Through a growing frustration with this state of affairs, Cushman Rowell is encouraged to list the top 10 things she would most want to do if money was no object. The top 4 items were:

1. Learn to Fly
2. Become fluent in Spanish
3. Explore South America
4. Write a book

Starting at the top of the list she takes her first discovery flight and is immediately smitten, she has her private pilot license seven weeks later and has found a passion that she can call her own. They go on to forgo buying a house and instead purchase a Cessna Turbo 206 which she and Galen use to great effect in their photography business, traveling to and from some of the most mountainous regions in the United States and Canada. Working on items 2 and 3 on the list She takes trips to South America to study Spanish and becomes very proficient in her chosen language and gains a great appreciation of the countries and culture she visits. Despite this, over time some disenchantment starts to creep in again. When one of Galen’s friends suggests she come along on a once in a lifetime flight down to Chile and back, she leaps at this chance to bring so many of her goals together in one trip. Needless to say she later achieves goal #4 in writing ‘Flying South’ and I think its a worth addition to any library.

The book describes each leg of the cross-country flight from Oakland, CA down through Central America, around the western coast of South America to Chile. They then return around the east coast, through Argentina, Brazil, around the Caribbean and back into the US. In the course of the trip they fly over spectacular terrain which is wonderfully captured in the photos in the book. Its hard to imagine having a better person along to document a trip like this than Galen Rowell. They deal with a whole range of weather ranging from good to bad to the truly ugly, she experiences a vacuum pump failure, continued VFR flight into IFR conditions, political coups, crossing the Andes, flying over the Amazon and much more.

Whether you are a pilot or not, this is a great adventure book, Cushman Rowell does a very good job of relating the aviation side of the trip so it can be appreciated by pilots and non-pilots alike. As a pilot, some of her experiences and mental battles were very familiar to me and putting myself in her position and wondering what it would be like to deal with various situations was a very salutatory experience.

Personally I would have liked a few charts in the book to be able to better piece together the flights, instrument approaches and terrain but that would have been a little out of place in a book for a general audience. You might want to follow along with a world atlas as you read or use Google Earth to get an even better feel for the places and terrain. You’ll get a good review of South American geography and an even better appreciation for the flight. If you have access to one, fire up the flight simulator and give bits of it a go for yourself - how would you like to fly their leg to Rio….?