Articles by John E. McLain
Prior to his retirement as a career flight instructor, John McLain accrued over 18,000 flight hours of which more than 13,000 were dual given. He has conducted over 4000 flight tests in his twenty-five years as a designated pilot examiner. These articles first appeared in The Southern Aviator and are reprinted with John's permission.
The toughest flight test by any standards is the Private Pilot Flight Test. This starts from square one. The applicant is not assumed to have demonstrated any aviation knowledge or skill beforehand. Through oral and in-flight testing, he or she must demonstrate all aspects of aviation from aerodynamics through in-flight performance of maneuvers to prove [...]
A recent letter to the editor raised the question of Pilot in Command (PIC) and whether a safety pilot could log PIC time. This is one of those “can of worms” questions.
In my opinion, the FAA lawyers who prepared the final wording of the regulation have gone out of their way to be confusing in [...]
It has been my pleasure in the past few months to administer instructor renewal flight tests to three gentlemen, each of whom has been instructing for more than 50 years. My 39 years of instructing pale in comparison.
What interested me most were the comments that each made regarding the changes he had seen over the [...]
How can you avoid the stall spin accident? Yaw is as much a culprit in causing these accidents as a stall. We all know that the improper use of rudder is the main cause of yaw. However, there are other causes that every pilot should be aware of. One of the least considered is what [...]
