Last week while flying back to the Bay Area, the topic for this article came to me in a flash. Well, actually several flashes. Over on the west side of the San Francisco peninsula nature was putting on one of its most dazzling shows. Brilliant bolts of lightning arced...

It was a beautiful summer's day as the pilot and his family were flying back in the late afternoon after visiting friends in Sacramento. Over Concord the pilot could see that the marine cloud layer was blanketing the Bay Area with the coastal stratus just touching the...

It was 109 degrees on the ramp at Sacramento International. My preflight was a half-hearted walk around the plane and an oil check. I must confess my mind was more on getting the prop started to get some air circulation than it was in a detailed aircraft inspection....

"Ouch!" I muttered after turning around too quickly and banging my head on the leading edge of the wing during preflight. I haven't even started the engine and I'm already an aviation casualty. The reality is that you don't have to be airborne to have trouble...

Last week I planned a flight from San Carlos to a crop duster airstrip in the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley.  The weather forecast seemed pretty consistent on my route with occasional rain showers and cloud bases ranging from 3000 to 5000 feet thanks to an...

It is easy to feel relatively secure in dealing with known aviation risks.  We can plan for potential hazards such as bad weather or systems failures and then apply an alternate course of action to insure the safe outcome of a flight.  The prospect of a mid-air...