Using the PAVE checklist is necessary when flying off pavement in Montana’s last, best airspace.

Richard G. Wissenbach

It’s hard to beat flying from Montana’s Bitterroot Valley. It seems only logical that a state known as the “Last Best Place” would also have some pretty incredible flying. It doesn’t hurt that it borders Idaho, “A Pilot’s Paradise.” I would expect every pilot has a place near and dear to their heart, and the opportunities that abound in the Treasure State have a firm grip on mine.

A fellow pilot and I jokingly speak of the “Home School Course.” It consists of three airstrips, each with varying degrees of difficulty. We feel that if you can become comfortable going in and out of these technical strips, you can land anywhere. Each has its peculiarities and challenges and there isn’t a whole lot of room for error.

Life in the early 1990’s was simply wonderful. My wife and I were married in the fall of 1989 and had a newborn the following year. She was totally supportive of my desire to become a Commercial Pilot and our first loan was for $4,500.00 to finish out the payment of a 1966 Cessna 150G. A great year to be manufactured, I might add! While $6000.00 doesn’t seem like much these days, to an A&P making six bucks an hour, it was plenty.

While I’m definitely not as young as I once was, I also like to think I’m not as dumb as I once was. As youth, it seems like we’re invisible and in retrospect, we realize it is nearly miraculous that we get through some things unscathed. It’s a very thin line that often separates us from our follies and near disaster to experiences that shape our future.

Three hundred feet or so from our fifty by ten-foot trailer mansion was a small field, and it wasn’t long before the ditches crisscrossing it were filled in with the help of a shovel and wheel barrow. Piney Field was activated early one spring day 26 years ago. While 900 feet may seem short, it had a good slope to launch from and it just wasn’t a problem to clear the power lines at the bottom, 1700 feet away. I was now a bush pilot and had it all figured out.

While I didn’t get a whole lot of flight time each day that I flew to work, the one way out and no-go-around landing option was great experience for the logbook. I was now a living breathing bush legend, at least in my own mind. Asphalt lovers were pavement pilots and there was green grass growing under my tires.

Learning To Use the PAVE Checklist

For good reason, there is an emphasis on incorporating the PAVE checklist into preflight planning. Risk is mitigated when we perceive hazards. Trust me when I say it absolutely must be an integral part of our decision-making process. As Father’s Day has recently passed, I shudder to think of what the outcome could have been when I didn’t comply with the all important External Pressures located at the end of the acronym. Faith, Family, and Flying would have been nonexistent if I would have flunked out, which for all intents and purposes I should have. It may be located last, but it’s certainly not the least.

My sweet wife was very patient with my flying. I think part of it may have been that fact that she was a stay-at-home mom and we only had one vehicle. It was difficult hauling the laundry with the wheelbarrow and shopping on foot was out of the question, especially with town 10 miles away.

To put it mildly, she was not overly enthused one morning when I informed her she wouldn’t have the car that day as it was raining and I would have to drive. My spouse was all of a sudden a wonder weather woman, as she looked out and let me know that I had flown in way worse conditions than that. She didn’t seem to be able to comprehend the excessive tailwind on takeoff concept either. Patience is a growing process and at that point in the game, it was merely a seed that had scarcely thought of germinating. I overreacted in a huff and rushed out the door. I hated being late and while this argument wasn’t the hill I wanted to die on, it very nearly turned out to be just that.

I untied my trusty bird, pushed down on the tail and spun it around pointed toward the east, ready for takeoff. The 100 horses were off and running and with a quick magneto check so was the pilot. It didn’t take but a couple hundred feet or so for me to realize that getting airborne was never going to happen. I’m not a swearing man, but there’s no doubt a few choice words entered my mind. I quickly got on the brakes and that’s when the real acceleration happened. The airplane started sliding downhill and it was totally out of control. I was simply along for the ride. It pointed northerly, it pointed to the south, and it nearly swapped ends, all the while headed down the sloped airstrip. I believe is was at that moment where I prayed really hard, probably contributing to the aircraft miraculously coming to a halt, just before crashing off the bottom of the field. I was far below what I ever kept mowed or free of rocks. How I missed the fences as well, I’ll never know.

It took a while for me to stop shaking and a real effort to taxi back up the strip. In fact, there was enough time for it to sink in my head that I could never again give in to external pressures in that manner. You see, there were actually two items in the PAVE checklist that were violated. Two strikes, not a good position to be in. The Environmental Conditions alone should have been such that the takeoff should never have been attempted. The pilot and aircraft survived that one but had the takeoff not been aborted precisely when it did, the results could have been catastrophic. While I don’t recall whether or not I had a nice hot meal that night, the recollection of the experience is still warm and fresh in my mind. The PAVE checklist is meant to be!

Every pilot has a responsibility to set and live by standards. What are your minimum standards? Do you find yourself relaxing them at times? Have you ever caved to external pressure? Let’s each look within and evaluate the risks as part of our preflight action. The PAVE checklist is not only the way for the next generation of pilots but a path we would do well to find ourselves on. Pilot (Personal), Aircraft, enVironment, and External Pressures.

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My personal aviation lineage and the first time I knew I wanted to be a pilot trace back to my grandfather.

Shawn Arena

Those of us who have been fortunate to have received the gift of flight or just the enjoyment of aviation can usually trace back to where that flame to be a pilot was first kindled. Perhaps it was a friend who owned an aircraft and gave you your first flight. Or it may have been a family member who long ago instilled that love and passion for airborne experiences. That is how it was born in me – through my maternal grandfather.

The Start of His Influence

My grandfather was born in Rochester, New York in 1907, a mere four years after the Wright Brothers’ flight in 1903. He and my grandmother moved to California by the mid-1950s where they lived the rest of their lives. I was only 8 – 10 years old at the time and remember vividly him taking me to either the local airport to watch planes take off and land or to a hole-in-the-wall photo gallery where he would purchase pictures of anything aviation. Being just a kid at the time, I did not understand the significance of those weekly trips – to me it was just ‘time with grandpa.’ My bedroom would be adorned with pictures of the Spirit of St. Louis, or from early aircraft designed by aviation royalty such as Douglas, Curtiss, Langley or the Wrights.

My grandfather, circa 1927-28, with a WACO aircraft he’d just helped build.

As years went on and life unfolded before me, I was unknowingly aware that the kindling aviation fire was simmering within. By the time I was a junior in high school, that kindling of a desire to be a pilot had grown to a full-blown blaze (which it remains to this day). I enrolled in the school’s fledgling 2-year old USAF Junior ROTC program, whose curriculum included not only the mandatory Drill and Ceremony protocols but frequent aviation-related field trips. One of those trips was to one of the two local active duty U.S. Air Force Bases in southern California – March AFB (now March ARB), where I stood in awe as the Strategic Air Command (SAC) B-52 Stratofortress fleet based there would lumber down the runway in a very deceiving manner that looked as if it was not moving enough to even take off!

His Physical Decline

By early September 1975, his physical state was in serious decline. After surviving six heart attacks, he suffered a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body which left him not only unable to speak but only able to walk with the aid of a walker. I had been accepted into the University of Southern California as a biology major and he and my grandmother followed my parents and I as we drove the Los Angeles freeway system to my new life as a college freshman living in the dorms. That was the last time I saw him alive, for two weeks later he passed away- at the young age of 68. Little did I realize at the time, but from that day forward he would become greater than life to me as aviation slowly but surely took a hold of my career.

Carrying On And Working To Be a Pilot

Four the next four and half years, my total focus was concentrating on ‘surviving’ the college experience. By the end of 1979, I had not only changed my major but was able to graduate with a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Psychology. By November 1980, I was able to land my first ‘real’ job as a Civil Engineering Aide with the County of Orange, CA. This turned out to be my personal gateway that would lead me back to aviation, because the County owned and operated John Wayne / Orange County Airport (SNA), and provided me with an avenue to someday working there. In January 1984 I began flying lessons at SNA. By February 11th of that year, I was ready to solo. I took the time to commemorate the occasion by penning a tribute to my grandfather entitled “You Gave Me My Wings.” I earned my private pilot certificate on April 11, 1984. I was living in a small condominium nearby and took stock that night to offer a toast to grandpa – “We are on our way” I stated to myself that night.

My grandfather in the mid-1960s, at a Southern California airport.

On June 17, 1987, I was selected as a Noise Abatement Specialist at John Wayne Airport and performed those duties until May 1994, when I received a promotion as a Noise Officer at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) in Arizona. For the next 27 years, I became an airport administrator at four commercial service airports and airport manager at four general aviation airports (while also teaching aviation education to undergraduate and graduate students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Worldwide Campus, where I earned two Masters Degrees). All through those years, however, I did not forget where that passion for flight came from. At every airport, I would make it my duty (of which my superiors were glad to see) to conduct self-inspection tours – not only to satisfy associated FAR Part 139 Certification and Safety requirements – but to spend time with my grandfather as we drove the perimeter road to make sure all was well, and to reflect on him. When I saw a vintage airplane I would stop the vehicle and gaze at it…” Imagine” I would tell myself, grandpa saw or heard about these planes when they were in their prime.

The Tradition Continues

January 22, 2016. My youngest son Andrew graduates Western Maricopa Education Center (WestMec) at Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU) with his Airframe & Powerplant Certificate. Now I know many of you may be thinking “Oh, that’s nice he took his father’s advice and followed in his footsteps.” Well, not exactly. He decided on his own that he was going to ‘give it a try’ because in his mind he was out of options of what he wanted to do in his life…yes, dad was proud of his achievement. He now works at one of the busiest flight schools in the U.S. at the second busiest general aviation airport in the country (and one I used to manage), Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT). Another generation of aviation in the Arena family… one that started long ago and who’s tradition continues. Thanks Grandpa!

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Albert Antosca

To those outside of aviation, pilots seem to have their own language, filled with acronyms, jargon, and incomprehensible terms. The more time you spend in the aviation industry, the more accustomed you become to this terminology. Do you recognize these aviation acronyms, and can you pass this quiz from memory?

Questions – Aviation Acronyms

• 1) UTC
  • a. Coordinated Universal Time
  • b. Upper Tail Cowling
  • c. Unmanned Traffic Control
  • d. Universal Temperature Conversion

• 2) TRACON (pronounced “tray-con”)
  • a. Trans-continental
  • b. Terminal Radar Approach Control
  • c. Transfer of Control
  • d. Tracking of Navigation

• 3) EGPWS (pronounced “e-jip-wiz)
  • a. Exhaust Gas Pressure Warning System
  • b. Environmental Gas Pollution and Water Sterilization
  • c. Endurance Glide Path Window Speed
  • d. Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System

• 4) RAIM (pronounced “raim”)
  • a. Rain and Ice Mitigation
  • b. Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring
  • c. Relay Aircraft Interception Maneuver
  • d. Risk Avoidance Integration Management

• 5) EDCT (pronounced “e-dict”)
  • a. Emergency Ditching Contact Transmission
  • b. Exhaust Distribution Combustibility Threshold
  • c. Expect Departure Clearance Time
  • d. Estimated Differential Coefficient of Thrust

All right.  Put your pencils down, and let’s take a look at how you did.

Answers – Aviation Acronyms

Question 1: “Coordinated Universal Time”

UTC is the standard time used in aviation. Everything from ATC clearances to weather reports are reported in Coordinated Universal Time. This standardization is vital to eliminating the need to convert between time zones or daylight savings time. But wait, why isn’t it abbreviated “CUT”, you may ask. Well, in keeping with the standard abbreviations of other versions of universal time, such as UT1 & UT2, etc., the international community decided to keep the “UT” format.

Question 2: “Terminal Radar Approach Control”

TRACONs are ATC facilities that control airspace in and out of airports. TRACONs control areas at lower altitudes and in smaller areas than “Center” controllers, officially known as Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs), which handle vast sections of en-route airspace. “Boston Center” is an example of an ARTCC, while “Boston Approach” is an example of a TRACON.

Question 3: “Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System”

Have you ever heard that automated voice inside a commercial aircraft cockpit that yells things like “terrain, terrain — pull up?” Well, that voice is part of the plane’s EGPWS. In the 1960s, a series of aircraft accidents prompted the development of automated systems that would help warn pilots of impending collisions with terrain. These systems have made a large impact on commercial aircraft safety.

Question 4: “Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring”

RAIM is a system used to check the integrity of signals received from satellites by your GPS navigation system. This becomes especially important when conducting GPS approaches where accuracy is critical.

Question 5: “Expect Departure Clearance Time”

An EDCT, also simply called a “wheels up time”, is a delay given by Air Traffic Control that is meant to regulate when a particular flight can depart. EDCTs are often part of an ATC Ground Delay Program (GDP) and can be issued due to hazardous weather, airspace congestion, or other factors impacting air traffic management.

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