Arc en Ciel

[I prefer writing about flying to writing about me, but this is an unusual juncture so please indulge me.]

---

For some reason the date was memorable: May 5, 1992. My third class medical certificate was expiring, and that day I got a second class certificate. The way things work in the USA, flight privileges are tied to the medical. For commercial privileges, one needs a second class certificate; for Airline Transport privileges, one needs a first class.

I got my commercial certificate in an old Cessna 210, the kind with struts and a hydraulic system so ancient that it took significant strength to position the valves to raise or lower the landing gear. An ag plane cut me off in the pattern and the examiner seemed to think that the required emergency was covered. I was a Commercial pilot.

I worked my way up, earning a bunch of certificates: multi, CFI, CFII, MEI, Commercial glider, CFI-G, and, most important of all, ATP (which took two tries, the only one that did so). For that I needed a first class medical (technically a third class will do to take the test, but you need a first class to use it), and after my double bypass in 1998 I kept my first class medical certificate, hoping for a jet job (jet captains under 14CFR135 must have an ATP, hence need a first class medical). Since I wasn't using it I let it lapse to a second class for the second six months, but during that first six months I endorsed a lot of logbooks with "ATP" rather than "CFI", instruction in commercial operations being an ATP privilege.

I flew freight, fires, and frightened patients all over the West. There is no possible universe in which a part-time pilot who is also a mathematics professor with heart disease can fly a King Air, but I got three years in King Air 200s anyway.

Two more cardiac interventions cost me the King Air, and I gave up on the jet idea and, as a consequence, on the first class medical. But I kept the second class and my commercial privileges. ATP was now a diploma on my wall and an attitude toward flying, but not something I used.

A year ago, after the incident described here, the FAA's annual letter describing what it would take to renew my second class medical became draconian: they were demanding much more testing, testing that neither my insurance company nor wallet could justify. AMEs tell me this level of testing won't be required for a third class medical.

My second class medical certificate expired June 30, and I have informed the FAA that I will not seek another (see above). The FAA is concerned about my heart, but without Rheumatoid Arthritis I would have the energy to make enough money to pay for the heart testing. And now there's evidence connecting RA and heart disease. Since my heart disease is unusual (no risk factors, no lifestyle changes, no symptoms: the only effect is that every now and then they take all of my money), it may have been RA all along.


In other words, I am a Private Pilot now. (I'm still a CFI; that's teaching, not flying.) I even changed my blog profile to say former professional pilot.

Make no mistake about it: I am proud of my PPL. In the next few months I'll write about the joys and adventures being a PPL can bring. I'm hoping for at least one long trip, and maybe a seaplane rating.

And I still intend to fly like an ATP; I have some things to say about that, too.

---

ps I have started a Google AdSense account, which is supposed to target ads based on content. I hope you don't mind; it seems unobtrusive to me, and it would really be nice to get a little compensation for all of this writing. I noticed in looking up the post on my most recent stent that AdSense came up with ads for heart surgeons. Now that's targetted!

Making Mountains out of Molehills

I hate personal whining in blogs, but allow me to say briefly that the FAA "has done a lot of work" on my medical; I might hear something as soon as next week.

In the meantime I have gone to work resurrecting and redesigning a mountain flying course that I used to give. I created it for retail customers, and later made it part of the single-engine 135 syllabus. The new-hire charter pilots usually had about 600 hours and were active instructors, so they were sharp on the CFI stuff like short field landings and steep turns, but weren't ready for flying the fire patrols and Fish and Game flights that were the source of the single engine charters. So we reviewed mountain flying techniques ("Always be in a position where you can turn toward lower terrain"), then headed to the airplanes (182s).


The flying part was fun, and eye-opening. I would fly them into a bowl (there was a nice one within 10 miles of our home airport), and have them pick an escape heading; that would be where the terrain was most manageable. Mountain flying is like a pact with the Devil, and like "Shoeless" Joe Boyd in Damn Yankees you always need to have an escape clause in the contract.

We'd fly around the bowl for a while, admiring the scenery. Then "Put on the hood."

"What?" They all said that.

"Put on the hood."

And so they did.

Then came the eye-opening part. I hoped that they would immediately climb and turn toward the escape heading, but no pilot I ever trained did both, and many did neither. They just flew along, holding heading and altitude, as if all of a sudden this had become an instrument lesson. I would let the mountain get really big in the windshield, then have them take off the hood.

It was like the reveal in Trading Spaces. "Oh my God!" they all said, even the most devout non-swearers.

"That's why you pick an escape heading," I would say, and then we would go on to the next exercise.

Trippin' the Light (Sport) Fantastic

My medical recertification is palpably closer; I've already started the preparation (which mostly means no caffeine, so I ate some chocolate with breakfast) for tomorrow's treadmill test. Then comes the angiogram, the bundling of the reports, and off it all goes to Oklahoma City for the FAA docs to consider. I can't run anymore due to rheumatoid arthritis, but I have been walking and biking, so I'm pretty confident.

But being confident won't remove one hole in my certification: I need a 14CFR61.56 Flight Review, usually called a BFR. We're supposed to get the review very two years, but, as one of my instructors used to say, "there are a lot of ways to skin that cat," and for the past fifteen years or so I have either added a rating or passed a 14CFR135.293 pilot proficiency check.

(Another method is to do something with the FAA's WINGS program, but there are two problems with this. First, the redesign of the WINGS program has made it awkward and confusing, to say the least. The other problem is that WINGS, at least in its previous form, demanded experience but no proficiency. I have seen pilots complete the WINGS program whom I would not have signed off for a BFR.)

After all of the "automatic" BFRs it was hard to remember what to do, but I had a plan. Richard Neves, a local instructor, has a 1946 Ercoupe, and has been flying its wheel pants off giving Light Sport instructions. It's a pretty airplane, and I have been looking for an excuse to fly it. What better excuse than a BFR?

So I called Richard and told him I needed a BFR. There was a little serendipity: he needed one, too. So we could trade.

Another exception to the BFR regulation is that current Flight Instructors are not required to have any ground instruction during the flight review. The idea is that instructor recertification, required every two years, makes the review superfluous. I don't agree: bad habits can form pretty quickly. In our case, I needed instruction on Ercoupe systems, so I got an hour's ground while observing Richard's teaching style and knowledge of systems and regulations. Sounds like a pair of good BFRs to me.

The 'coupe has no flaps and giant ailerons, about 3/4 of the span. And, originally, the ailerons and rudder were connected, so it is always coordinated. Some owners have added rudder pedals, but Richard's still has the single brake pedal on an otherwise smooth cockpit floor.

Then we flew. Having no rudder pedals is a big adjustment. It took a while to get the hang of steering with my hands while taxiing, but that was minor compared to my big error: when Richard pulled the engine on me (right after doing lots of stalls, such a classic flight instructor move), I picked a nice field right below us, tried to restart, and approached high, thinking that I could slip it in! Oops! You can't slip without rudder pedals!


We did a ton of landings, trading off on the controls. He showed me how to do a steep power off approach; the 'coupe is brick with the engine idling, so those work out well.

After two hours of stalls, steep turns, engine failures, crosswind landings, and chit-chat about the state of aviation we signed each other off and called it a day.

---

I was surprised and disappointed to hear Richard say that I was the only local instructor who was embracing light sport flying. Perhaps my medical woes have made me more open-minded, but my interest in LSA is more than selfish. I want to jam my family into the Cherokee Six and fly off on vacation, night and IFR if necessary, and that's not possible with light sport privileges. But I also want to take my friends and families for hops in the Ercoupe. It is easy to fly, it has an intriguing funky air about it, and it has a big glass canopy, meaning almost as much sight-seeing as in a glider or fighter. It's both the past and future of flying. Thinking back most of my private pilot students were really interested in light sport privileges: day VFR, two seats, going-to-visit-your-cousin-in-Twin Falls flying. This is a way to get more people into flying, and it has to be good for all of us.

When the medical comes, and with it light sport privileges, the Ercoupe gives me a new recruiting tool. No, that's incorrect, that's corporate language, so I take it back. The Ercoupe gives me a new way to help people have fun "messing about in small planes," to quote Richard Collins paraphrasing The Wind in the Willows. And fun is what it's all about.

A Modest Proposal

I'm approaching the end of my six month wait for recertification after last September's angioplasty; my testing is scheduled for days n+2 and n+4, where n is the FAA requirement.

Getting ready to fly again has got me thinking about what I did not, or, better, could not do as an instructor without a medical certificate. In particular, the combination of 14CFR 61.23(a)(3)(v), "Medical Certificates: Requirement and Duration," and 14CFR91.107(b)(1), "...Simulated Instrument Flight..." require that an instrument instructor (CFII) have a third-class medical certificate; the latter makes the instructor a required crewmember, and the former says that an instructor who acts as a required crew member must have the medical.

Generally, the reason that medical certificates are required is the concern that a crewmember suffer from "sudden incapacitation." That means things like heart attack, seizure, stroke, or kidney stone. I imagine that it is a truth universally acknowledged that sudden incapacitation in an aircraft is a Bad Thing.

The secondary reasons that medical certificates are required is the concern about vision and hearing. You can't see and avoid other aircraft if you can't see. (You can fly well if you are deaf, but the FAA makes you prove it and limits your privileges with regard to radio use.)

The justification for 14CFR 61.23(a)(3)(v) is based on the secondary reasons. A CFII having a heart attack while a student is under the hood is no different from any other passenger's incapacitation, and we have no medical requirements for passengers. Sudden incapacitation of a passenger is a Bad Thing, and pilots need to be prepared to deal with it, but it is not a threat to the public at large.

No, the reason a CFII needs a medical is to make sure that he or she can "see and avoid" other aircraft and the ground. That's why we have 14CFR91.107(b)(1).

Now, in the past few years the FAA has decided to accept the judgment of another agency about pilot vision: your state's Department of Motor Vehicles. If you have a driver's license and your most recent medical was not revoked then you may exercise "Light Sport" privileges. Light Sport privileges are restrictive (day VFR, ground contact, altitude and speed limitations, and, most importantly, number of passengers). But it is my experience that a large amount of instrument instruction more-or-less fits the Light Sport model. The airplanes are heavier and faster, of course, but the back seat is empty and it's day VFR.

So here is my proposal: allow a CFII who has Light Sport privileges to fly with a student under the hood. I see no downside; if you do, I would like to hear it. The upside is that this would allow a bunch of older, experienced instrument instructors to continue to pass their wisdom along to the next generation without worrying about a medical certificate.

There is one big difficulty here. 14CFR61.65(d)(2) requires a training flight that is conducted under instrument flight rules. I like this regulation; it makes sure that students get out into the system. And I do not think that someone with only Sport Pilot privileges should be PIC under IFR; if the CFII became incapacitated in instrument conditions while approaching a busy terminal, there would be a lot of trouble. But a CFII without a medical could send a student to someone with a medical for this flight, which would make a very comprehensive stage check.

So, what do you think? I plan to contact the FAA to see what they think. Let's keep all that knowledge and experience around for the next generation.

Day 62

It took a while to find my logbook. The last entry was on September 13, 2009. A little over an hour in the Cherokee Six, doing practice approaches with a buddy (and aspiring instrument instructor) as safety pilot. As I recall it was a rough afternoon, and it was good practice.

September 16 was the treadmill test. No flying after that one.

September 24 was the stent: The FAA says that I may reapply for a medical on March 24, 2010.

A stent is absurdly easy on the patient. One day, your life is hanging by a thread, and less than a week later you are out running. The only difficult part is the money. This was my second stent, too. After the first, I went right back to flying, working with a CFI candidate. He was always Pilot-in-Command, of course.

I didn't know that I had it so lucky. I am fully confident in my heart; the problem is my hands. A couple of Saturdays ago the soaring conditions looked promising (locals have been climbing to 18K in strong wave, and running 300K in strong ridge), and I was feeling up to doing the drive (it's hard to sit still for too long). But I woke up in the middle of the night with excruciating hand pain. "Oh no," I though, " I can't hold the stick and I'm too weak to pull the dive brakes." I didn't fly.

The week before had gone the same way. I had been suffering from extreme fatigue; I fell asleep at my desk every afternoon that week. And I had been taking narcotics for pain, although i stopped. The National Transportation safety Board [NTSB] report would have been very unfavorable:

"The pilot in command held an Airline Transport Pilot Certificate with multi-engine rating, and commercial privileges in single-engine landplanes and gliders. [So far, so good.] A recent major medical procedure had made his 14CFR67 second-class medical certificate invalid, but no medical certificate is required to be PIC of a glider. [Still nothing to get upset about.] PIC also suffered from an as-yet-undiagnosed condition. Pilot complained frequently of fatigue and inability to sleep at night, and family and friends remarked that they had found him asleep during the day several times. PIC also complained of loss of appetite, and had lost 10 pounds in the past month. PIC had been taking narcotics for pain."

The NTSB bureaucratese falls short of "What the blankety-blank-blank was the PIC doing trying to fly a glider?"

[It's not as bad as all that, but I'm sure that would be the NTSB's spin on the situation.]

Anyway, I'm seeing the rheumatologist again tomorrow, and am hoping for a definitive diagnosis and the beginning of treatment. The treatments are supposed to be well-tolerated with quick relief. Of course he'll have a definitive diagnosis: my insurance denied the claim for a $106 blood test. They'd only do that for something useful.

So please cross your fingers; I can barely cross mine.