All Rod's Posts

By Rod Machado, CR 2023 (You can call them Learners but I’ll stick with 3,500 hundred years of historical precedent and call them Students.)   For decades the leaders in...

By Rod Machado Are you interested in sabotaging your flight training experience? OK, then let me help. Here’s how to do it. Before you begin your flight training, demand to...

By Rod Machado   When Meriwether Lewis (of the Lewis and Clark expedition) encountered the Hidatsas indian tribe for the first time, he attempted to explain the idea of peace...

Is it possible that you have no idea how to fly an airplane? Until now, you’ve probably been flying wrong, and “wrong” is the reason pilots experience loss of control,...

By Rod Machado When Bob stepped into his Cessna 172 on a recent Sunday morning, he had no idea how difficult it would be to apply power for takeoff. No, his airplane was...

Automatic Direction Finding (ADF) Navigation:On Not Being a Homing BoyBy Rod Machado It's been said that anyone who keeps an ADF unit in his airplane does so because he can't...

Pop psychologist Leo Buscaglia once said, “When you learn something new, you become something new.” This is a vivid description of the benefits of learning to fly.

By Rod Machado Here's the scenario: From your present position shown in the graphic above ATC says, "....taxi to Runway 19R via taxiway Whiskey, hold short of Runway 19R at...

In its 1965 Flight Training Handbook, the FAA dedicated over two pages of text to explain the concept of flight at minimum controllable airspeed (MCA)