Courtesy of AOPA’s ePilot Training Tips email newsletter that I receive each month (this is an AOPA member benefit but hopefully many of you are already members of AOPA, if not please have a look and consider joining) I found out that Rod Machado has just started an email newsletter. Rod is a very well know part of the aviation community and brings his unique brand of humour to his columns in Flight Training Magazine, AOPA Pilot and his live seminars and his training books.

You can always tell when Rod is speaking at Airventure as the crowd spills out of the seminar hall and it’s standing room only inside! AOPA has an online video showcasing some of Rod’s humorous approach to teaching so you can have a look if you are not familiar with Rod’s style.

Needless to say he has a lot of great information to impart on the subjects of flight training, being a student pilot, flight instruction and a lot more. You can find the March 2008 edition of his newsletter here: http://www.rodmachado.com/Newsletters/March-08.html and this includes a place where you can sign-up to receive subsequent newsletter via email.

The current newsletter gives some links to Rod’s existing material online and information about his new book “Rod Machado’s Instrument Flying Handbook” (you can check out some example chapters and it does look very nice). He writes that subsequent editions of the newsletter will contain free podcasts, CFI slides for instrument ground school and more. Given the quality of Rod’s work this should turn into a very valuable resource so I would encourage you to have a look and sign up.

I just came across FlightAware, a live flight tracking site that you can use to follow the usual commercial airline flights but also any flight under IFR. This could be a useful tool for individuals watching their loved ones en route or instructors/FBOs wishing to follow their IFR flights out in the field. In addition to the flight tracking features they have a number of other resources on the site which are of note:

• 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

If you are ever passing through Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport with some time to spare, they have an excellent second hand bookstore with a great section on aviation. On a recent trip I stopped by and was casually browsing when Barbara Cushman Rowell’s “Flying South” came to my attention. I first noticed her surname which brought to mind the world famous mountaineer, climber and photographer Galen Rowell. A quick look at the cover and at the spectacular photos inside confirmed the connection. Barbara Cushman Rowell was Galen Rowell’s wife and this book is as much a story about her escape from his shadow as it is about a flight she took from California down and around South America and back.

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With an acknowledged weakness for books, particularly books related to flying and especially ones with great photography, it wasn’t a struggle deciding to purchase Jim Wark’s ‘America Flying High’ when I came across a second hand copy in my local bookstore.

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Propellers - most of us use them in one form or another and we study the basic theory as part of the various FAA written exams. The various prop manufacturers have some great additional resources to learn more about these critical components of our aircraft and how to approach the related safety issues.

• McCauley has a very nice Propeller System Technology Guide which covers theory, performance and maintenance.
• Hartzell has a highly instructive Propeller Safety section describing propeller safety and issues that might crop up in various phases of flight. This would be a great handout/reference for flight schools and FBOs.

Listening to Air Traffic Control (ATC) can be a great way to get used to the phrases used between pilots and controllers. If you can listen to your local ATC it also helps familiarize you with local procedures so they don’t come as a surprise when you hear them in the air. You can listen sitting in the aircraft but thats usually not too convenient. If you have an AM scanner and are close enough to your ATC facility to get a signal you can listen at home but that requires investment in more gear. There have been some live ATC feeds online but these have been somewhat patchy and didn’t have much selection - little chance of hearing your local controllers. Today I heard about LiveATC.net and so I popped over to see what was there.

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As a sign of things to come, the University of North Dakota’s Aerospace team have just started putting out some flight training video podcasts combining computer-generated in-flight footage with real video, narrated by Anthony Bottini, one of the UND CFIs. Previously only found on quite expensive DVD and CD ROM kits, these types of multimedia presentations are a great way to create engaging training material and I’ll be following their progress with great interest.
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I was glancing over the current surface analysis chart that I have displayed on my desktop and a symbol I don’t recall having seen before caught my eye. After a bit of investigation I found out that the meteorological feature stretching north-south across central Texas was the Dry Line and I went in search of some more information about this phenomena.
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This is a page showing some rather more artistic representations of aircraft in motion over the United States by Aaron Koblin. The researchers took the real time flight data for a 24 hour period and plotted the positions of the aircraft in flight over the US and coming to and from the US. Visually its a very attractive piece, from an aviation perspective you can see the waves of aircraft coming and going as the time zones roll by - well worth a look.
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Always a concern when following large aircraft, we often hear mention of wingtip vortices and wake turbulence. There are a lot of diagrams but what does it really look like? Following a question today and through the wonder of Google, I came across a couple of sites with some good movies and pictures of real life wingtip vortices.
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