Just thought I'd pass this along - I went to an AOPA air safety seminar a few weeks ago. The topic of the seminar was FAR's. Not an exciting subject, but I figured it was free and I always learn something new when I go to one of these. One of the main points that the speaker stressed was that it is absolutely imperative that every pilot get an official preflight weather briefing before every flight - either over the phone from the FSS or via some approved computerized briefing service like DUATS. This is because the TFR's pop up and move around every time the president and certain other officials decide to go somewhere, and if you fly into a TFR, he said that the FAA will pull your license. TFR's can pop up anywhere with virtually no notice at all. All it takes is for some politician to decide that he wants to go visit someone. He said the only way that you will be able to avoid losing your license is if there is a record (their record, not yours) that you got a briefing before that particular flight and that you were told that there were no TFR's on your route. He said that the powers that be are deadly serious about this. He even went so far as to say that if you fly somewhere and land for fuel and then get ready to take off again, you should call again and check to see if any TFR's have popped up while you were flying. I always call and get a preflight briefing anyhow (I'm on dial up, so I can't do it over the computer), but now I've started treating this TFR thing like getting a Class B airspace clearance. If the briefer doesn't specifically say "There are no TFR's" during the briefing, then I ask him to "Confirm that there are no TFR's". If all I am going to do is go up and fly around the pattern at my home field for 20 minutes, I still call the FSS, give him my info and tell him that I don't need a weather briefing, and that all I need is to confirm that there are no TFR's in the area. They don't seem to have any problem with this request, although they will usually give me a brief weather report anyhow. Hopefully the need to get a briefing before every flight is old news for everyone on the list, but I decided to pass it on anyhow, since one of my pilot friends told me the other day that he usually doesn't bother getting a preflight briefing when the weather is good because "it takes too long". I'm waiting to hear about him and an F-16 on the evening news. When that happens, he's going to spend a lot more than 3 minutes talking to the FAA, and some politician will start working on passing new legislation to further restrict all those little airplanes that can't follow the rules..... Best Regards,
Wayne DelRossi Alon N5618F Hours logged since restoration: 334.5 ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
