Pilot Institute

JULY 11, 2025

When you reach around 36,000 feet (11,000 m) near the tropopause, the temperature stabilizes at around -56.5 °C. That’s the speed your airspeed indicator shows based on ram air pressure in the pitot tube. The result is a region of separated, turbulent flow behind the shock. As you go higher, the air usually gets colder.

True Airspeed

Plane and Pilot

NOVEMBER 10, 2024

Sure, there are the removable wings and an unusual-for-an-RV stabilator out back for pitch control, but there’s nothing revolutionary in the concepts or execution. In fact, the unusual pitot-tube location—it peeks out from the center of the prop spinner—was chosen to reduce fuselage-to-wing connections. Modest wing loading—10.4

Airplanes

Air Facts

MAY 5, 2025

The general prognosis indicated no icing in the clouds, no turbulence and a quartering headwind from the west resulting in a mere five knots of headwind component. The ice was simultaneously adding weight while destroying the shape of the wing and stabilizer air foils. It got turbulent, and then very turbulent.

VOR

Fear of Landing

MAY 9, 2025

On the 3rd of March 2023, a passenger in a private jet died after severe injuries in the cabin, which were originally reported as caused by severe turbulence. Incidents of severe turbulence are becoming more common, often leading to injury. There was no turbulence. This accident stood out as fatalities are very rare.

Turbulence

Plane and Pilot

NOVEMBER 10, 2024

Sure, there are the removable wings and an unusual-for-an-RV stabilator out back for pitch control, but there’s nothing revolutionary in the concepts or execution. In fact, the unusual pitot-tube location—it peeks out from the center of the prop spinner—was chosen to reduce fuselage-to-wing connections. Modest wing loading—10.4

Airplanes