green

Each Tuesday, Smart Flight Training will post a sample question that a pilot could expect to see on an FAA Knowledge Test or hear during the oral portion of a checkride. A little known secret to saving money and time during your flight training: PREPARATION! Hopefully Testing Tuesday post will be one small step in helping you live up to your side of learning to fly by being prepared when you meet with your flight instructor, saving you money and time! Good luck on the below question – click the link at the bottom to see the answer and explanation!

During a night flight, you observe a steady white light and a flashing red light ahead and at the same altitude. What is the general direction of movement of the other aircraft?

The other aircraft is crossing from the right to the left.

The other aircraft is flying away from you.

The other aircraft is crossing from the left to the right.

Click here to display the answer…

The correct answer is b: The other aircraft is flying away from you.

Nav Lights

Requirements for night flight include operable navigation lights, including a steady red wingtip light on the left wing, a steady green wingtip light on the right wing, and a steady white light on the tail. Each wingtip light can be seen from the side and front of the aircraft, but not from behind. The tail light can been seen from either side and behind the plane, but not from in front. Most aircraft also have a flashing beacon, which is generally red, and flashes slowly (not in a strobing fashion, but more like a “blinking” light). The flashing beacon can be seen from most perspectives around the other aircraft.

Knowing the placement of these lights, you can determine the location and general movement of another aircraft based on which lights you are seeing from the other aircraft. This is crucial for traffic avoidance. In this case, we are seeing a steady white light and a flashing red light. The steady white is the navigation light on the tail, and the flashing red is the beacon. Since we are not seeing a steady red or steady green light, we know we are generally behind the other aircraft. So the other airplane is moving away from us.

If the other airplane had been moving from right to left, we would have seen a steady red, blinking red, and steady white light (left wing, beacon, and tail).

If the other aircraft had been moving from left to right, we would have seen a steady green, blinking red, and steady white light (right wing, beacon, and tail).

If you were seeing both red and green steady lights, then the other aircraft is moving generally toward you, and possibly be on a collision course!

So now that we know what general direction the other aircraft is moving, the question remains – why do we care? Because we have to know that information to determine which aircraft has the right of way, and what we must do to comply with the right of way rules…

So leave a comment telling everyone what right of way rule applies, and what the right course of action is, knowing that the other aircraft is flying away from us (assume we are faster than the other plane).

Reference: FAA Airplane Flying Handbook (see page 144 for this question specifically).

As always, I hope this Testing Tuesday question was helpful and thought-provoking! If you have any questions or concerns about this answer (or have a question that you would like to see on an upcoming Testing Tuesday post), contact us and let us know!

Andrew Hartley is a certificated flight instructor and commercial pilot in Columbus, Ohio. He likes when google answers his stupid questions because it means he’s not the only one asking google stupid questions.

Fortune Teller — Image Credit: Vjeran Lisjak

Each month, a visionary group of six formation bloggers blogs about something aviation related, each from their own perspective, for six days straight. Our first series was about how we got into flying. In month two, we discussed our most memorable flights.

As a series, we generally all post the first full week of each month, but this month we are changing it up just a little due to the American Independence Day holiday on July 4th. This month, we are starting a little earlier than usual and changing up the order of bloggers, all so that we can focus on a topic near and dear to all of our hearts – our freedom to fly and it’s future in the US. See what we did there? FREEDOM to fly? INDEPENDENCE Day (a celebration of American FREEDOM)?

Okay – so enough with the obvious.

Let’s talk about this month’s topic – the future of US aviation.

There are so many directions to go on a topic of this magnitude, and I’ll start by saying how much I hate predictions. Not because I hate being wrong (that happens CONSTANTLY), but because people make predictions all the time, but rarely revisit their predictions to talk about whether or not they actually happened (and why or why not – which is the more important part, in my opinion). Think New Year’s predictions or the stock market financial talking heads. Blech.

That said, I CAN say with relative confidence that the future of aviation is the present. Aviation generally changes SO SLOWLY (dreadfully so), that the things making news today can be confidently predicted to be making news tomorrow. On the negative side – think user fees. We’ve been fighting user fees pretty much every year and under every president since at least Clinton (and probably before). It’s a fight we will continue to have in the future in the US, and it is not a small issue (look at general aviation in many other countries (such as the Netherlands – where the loss of business far outweighed the gain in revenue) and the UK, Germany, etc.) and you’ll see that this issue is no small potatoes for us here in the US if we want to maintain our freedom to fly (relatively) affordably.

On the positive side, let’s talk technology. Technology has been advancing faster and faster for all of recorded history, and its velocity today is nearly unimaginable. One of the issues US aviation has had (and still has) is safety – how can we continue to improve our safety record? One of the ways this is happening is with “synthetic vision” technology – something like “Head Up Displays” or HUDs, which have been the sole domain of fighter jets for years, but are now making their way into business jets. It’s only a matter of time before they become available (and even standard) on GA airplanes. There are already even synthetic vision apps for your phone or tablet!

But now let’s focus on something I personally think is inevitable: the greening of US aviation (and aviation in general worldwide). I’m one of those rare birds who is a pilot and an environmentalist (sue me). I’ve been following with interest the “unleaded avgas” research and experimentation with “mogas” and biofuels, and this is one issue that is not going to go away, no matter how much the industry and alphabet groups (such as AOPA, NBAA, etc.) try to push it off for as many reasons as they can come up with.

For one thing, as the holder of an MBA in entrepreneurship (yet another of my many onion-like layers), I know that business and industry tend to fight change like a cornered animal when that change is being discussed and contemplated (the fighting gets fiercer the closer it is to happening), but I also know that those same businesses and entrepreneurs are the most creative when it comes to ultimately figuring it all out when the change is actually upon them. Regulation for the public good is usually a good thing overall – and business has always (and will always) be the best placed and most motivated to make it work for them – no matter how much they gripe about it.

There are many examples today of ways people are trying to make flying greener – not the least of which is a number of electric aircraft currently traversing the country and the world! Pilot Chip Yates is planning on becoming an electric Charles Lindbergh by flying an electric aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean. Pilots Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg have been flying the Solar Impulse around the world (albeit very slowly), having recently flown from Cincinnati, Ohio to Washington, D.C. (at a whopping 39 knots or so at 10,000 feet). One of Borschberg’s statements from the above-linked article struck me, since it speaks to multiple aspects of the greening of aviation in the US:

…Borschberg acknowledged that 100 percent solar-powered airplanes are not normal in day-to-day aviation, he said some of the ideas behind the Solar Impulse could find its [sic] way into general aviation aircraft. “I will see the first [general aviation] electric propulsion coming soon,” he predicted. A plus with that: Fewer noise complaints at airports. “This airplane doesn’t make any noise,” he said.

Electric, nearly noiseless flight is happening now, and will only get better and find its way into our day-to-day flying. But another green idea (that pilots will readily admit, whether they are granola-crunchy or not), is simply increasing the efficiency of aircraft. This can range from “lean-of-peak” operations (sound off in the comments, those of you on both sides of the LoP debate) to new aircraft designs that fly on less than 3 gallons per hour of fuel (that’s better than most cars on the road)! Talk about a great way to make less impact on the environment (and less impact on your pocketbook, with avgas reaching into the $6s and higher per gallon)!

So on top of higher efficiency and different power generation, which directly impact the earth and our environment, pilots today (and tomorrow) can also indirectly impact the world both environmentally & socially by flying for non-profits such as Pilots N Paws (pet rescue), Angel Flight (flying medical patients to care), LightHawk (environmental protection through flight), Civil Air Patrol (search & rescue, among other things), Kids in Flight (giving seriously ill children a chance to experience aviation), Angel Flight ( free air transportation for any legitimate, charitable, medically related need), and even mission trip flying (if you’re a religious person). This list barely scratches the surface of what good aviation can do in the world, environmentally and socially. I personally think that the above FAR outweighs any bad aviation may do socially or environmentally…

My Daughter, Wynnie, on a rocking plane!

So with that, I’ll leave off with with one final prediction about the future of US aviation – and this one is more certain than anything else I’ve discussed above: that what we do right now to get and keep the next generation interested in aviation is more critical than anything else we can do as pilots and enthusiasts to secure the future of general aviation in the US. One of the upcoming Formation Bloggers – Karlene Pettit – recently wrote a couple of posts speaking to this very thing – one about the upcoming movie Planes, and a more recent one about the upcoming kid’s TV show “Airpark” – and this is one of the ways that we can ensure that there will even be pilots in the next generation… popularization of flight has declined ever since its peak with Top Gun, and it’s time we bring it back and ensure that US aviation (and aviation across the world) even HAS a future – if the kids don’t care, our dwindling population will continue to shrink.

And that would be a great loss of freedom, don’t you think?

Please check out all the “Formation Bloggers”

Saturday, June 29: Dan Pimentel (Airplanista – The Future of U.S. Aviation: Again, the Resiliency of the GA Family Will be Tested)
Sunday, June 30: Andrew Hartley (Smart Flight Training – The Future of Aviation in the USA)
Monday, July 1: Brent Owens (iFlyBlog – The Future of Aviation in the U.S.)
Tuesday, July 2: Karlene Petitt (Flight to Success)
Wednesday, July 3: Eric Auxier (Adventures of Cap’n Aux)
Thursday, July 4: Ron Rapp (House of Rapp)

Andrew Hartley is a certificated flight instructor in Columbus, Ohio.