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Flying

"[Y]ou may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline!"
Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy)
Inherit the Wind
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.
Max Weber
Science as a Vocation

You may have picked-up that I'm a pilot (Airline Transport Pilot [ATP]) and flight instructor (Airplane: Single & Multiengine; Instrument: Airplane [CFI: A/S&ME, I/A]). I find the evolution from steam gauges to glass one more sad example — I think the saddest example that I have seen — of the rationalization of the sky. Pilots are becoming clerks at computer consoles who, experience is now teaching us, cannot hand-fly the aircraft.

O.K., the above notwithstanding, I still enjoy teaching and still recall fondly my own time as a student at various levels. Over the years I have made notebooks full of, well, notes. Some of these go back to the summer of 1975, when I was doing my multi, instrument, commercial, and CFI training (actually, in that order): the VOR and NDB notes are basically word for word out of the notebooks I wrote with my multi/instrument/commercial/CFI instructor (Larry Platas at OPF). Others were techniques that I learned (or discovered) during my own time as an istructor.

I have gradually, over more years, transcribed these notebooks to e-format (still in progress). Some of this material I have managed to get into .html format, but for some rather arcane reasons, much of it, even simple text, is prepared in spread-sheet format, as noted below, with multiple "worksheets" in each of the "workbook" files (see the tabs at the bottom of the workbook display for worksheet navigation within the workbook).

While much of it is directly below, some is on the Schodack Aviation web site (excerpted below) because it fits better there, for example, material relating directly to the two planes; it is fairly specific to those operations so of limited interest.

To be clear, these are my notes to myself for giving flight instruction: they are not "official" or necessarily comprehensive.

Flight instruction material

Flight planning material

Links Pages

Pilots' Briefcase

The Pilots' Briefcase is a listing of files aggregated from the files on this site to keep handy in your flight bag (or on a tablet or wherever you carry your charts now) as a template for flight planning, as a reference, or as a supplement to checklist items.

Flying Odds and Ends

Ever Wonder?

The little Roman numerals on the license?

And they're not in the correct order, either! That's because they are references to the ICAO license elements. If an FAA license were to follow the ICAO standard exactly, it would look like this: ICAO License Mock-up (In MS-Excel format [Read Only]) [size: 24.064 kb].

The Atmosphere

…and below

Remembering some past flying

 

Cessna 152 Cessna 172

 

Diving

(that is, SCUBA)

Assorted odds and ends

All right, I admit that this is a bit off the beaten track for flying, but the general atmospheric tables grew out of these dive table computations, as the makeup of air is critical to divers. One day I'll make-up a dive page for this site, but until then, mostly for myself to find things, here it is:

Dive tables

Dive Site Information and Emergency Assistance Plans

Links to various resources

Scuba Shops

More-or-less local

And for Law and Order: SVU fans,

Note that there are no links to on-line dive retailers (except for that rather odd item above). Our local dive shops cannot survive on air-fills alone and need your business. Even if gear is more expensive locally, you cannot order air online.

Scuba Instructors

Active locally

Dive Site Information

Two local clubs

Associations and Information


revised 25 October 2025 [ TOP ]

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Steve Sconfienza, Ph.D.
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