Spring Semester!

Happy start of the spring semester everyone! I am so excited to get classes started and start flying again. I was suppose to fly this morning, but the weather was looking bad around my arrival time back into Grand Forks. We weathered it today, but hopefully I can fly on Wednesday. I'm back in my office at my NASA job, watching the weather roll in that I luckily cancelled for. Since I didn't have a flight this morning to discuss, I wanted to bring up weathering your flight! When you first start flight training, your flight instructor will normally make this decision for you but ask for your help. Once you're in flight instructor training, it is completely your decision about weather. First, always get an official weather briefing. A lot of accidents that happen due to weather don't receive weather briefings beforehand. Next, consider the conditions based on your aircraft. When you are flying a small plane like the Piper Archer I fly, high winds or icing conditions will automatically make the flight too unsafe to go. If you have an aircraft like the Cirrus SR22, you could fly into those icing conditions. The go/no-go decision depends on the aircraft limitations (which you can find in the POH) and your own personal minimums. When I was in private pilot training, I would not go if the winds were higher than 15 knots. Now, I'm comfortable flying the archer up to recommended wind speeds by the manufacturer. Next week, I'll continue talking about where to find weather resources and everything to consider when making that go/no-go decision!

Picture: View from the office