Sage1 Solutions

I've had a few folks over the years ask me for advice on taking the instrument rating checkride. There are plenty of resources on what to study, which designated pilot examiner (DPE) to use, and other "how to prep" suggestions. They are generally pretty good considering they have to be pretty general considering those providing ...

Like I imagine many (most?) pilots have done, I have progressed through a number of headsets in my "career" looking for comfort and quality. I started with inexpensive passive sets because...well, they were what I could afford. Later I moved up to active noise reduction units as inexpensive units became available. The first ANR set I ...

Evelyn Bryan Johnson, recognized by Guiness as the female pilot with the most logged flight time (over seven years in the air), was involved in a car crash on the way to the airport the morning of September 10, 2006. The gist of the full story is she was traveling with the sun in her eyes and rear-ended a slow moving tractor. Her legs were crushed ...

Well, here are a few lessons learned (and re-learned) today: Always brief the departure procedure given by clearance delivery. When the lineman chocks the front wheel, remove both chocks - especially if you have wheel pants. Don't trust the lineman's opinion of ''2/3rds full''. Controllers don't like it when a plane does an unapproved ...

Another power outage in a California ATC facility - this time LA Center.  What gives?  Does the FAA have nobody planning for this sort of thing? ''We lost everything. We lost all power to phone lines, computers, everything,'' said Allen Kenitzer, a regional spokesman for the FAA.  Why?  Where were the generators?

I heard a blurb about this on the radio while driving home from work today and had to shake my head. Here is the story as reported by the San Jose Mercury News. In a nutshell, there was a problem with an underground cable feeding power to a TRACON near Miramar, CA that caused an interruption of electrical service. The FAA's backup generators ...

AOPA reports the transcripts of the Metropolitan Washington Special Flight Rules Area public meetings are now back online. This was yet another exercise in bureaucratic stupidity. Even though the meetings were public, attended by hundreds of citizens, the media, and representatives of the military, Secret Service, Homeland Security, etc., NORAD ...

As you undoubtedly know, I share a number of flying videos on this site in both Windows Media and Real Video formats.  Frankly, I'm tiring of spending the time to render both high- and low-bandwidth versions of each video in two formats (making four files for each video), so I'm considering using a single format for all videos - which brings ...

I was asked recently about my thoughts on owning versus renting and figured I'd share those thoughts here. If I had the funds to buy a plane outright, I would, but a small flight club was the best option for my scenario. In this case, we're actually part owners since we all own a share of the corporation so we don't feel we're renting. Also, the ...

I am a private pilot with an instrument rating for single-engine airplanes.  To date, I have about 380 hours of total flight time and fly approximately 45 hours per year - which is about double that of the typical private pilot.  I am a part-owner in a single-engine airplane based at Leesburg, Virginia.  Most of my flying is in and ...