Search Results for: vfr

This article originally appeared in IFR magazine, Jul. 2005. It was late in 1981 or maybe early in 1982, because that’s the only time in the history of O’Hare that the draconian departure restrictions in this tale were used. To understand how those departure restrictions fit into our story, you need to know a little […]

Overheard on a recent trip from Cross City to DeLand (Fla.), with flight following provided by Orlando Approach: Orlando Approach:“Cardinal 12345, destination is 12 o’clock 10 miles. Advise you have destination in sight.” Cardinal 345:“Approach, 345 has destination in sight.” Orlando Approach:“Cardinal 345, Squawk VFR, frequency change approved, no traffic observed between you and your […]

Winter in the Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport can be pretty slow, with days of low overcast and generally lousy flying weather. Either no one comes out to the airport and our flight-school owner starts to panic over whether last summer’s revenues can be stretched through the winter, or a lot of people come […]

This article originally appeared in Aviation Safety, Dec. 2005. In aviation, perhaps more than with any other activity, there is really very little that’s new and different when it comes to accident causes. If we fly only on calm, VFR days, pay excruciating attention to our training and proficiency, and operate only new airplanes with […]

This article originally appeared in IFR Refresher, Feb. 2007. Every one of us remembers the old phrase, “Fly the airplane first.” The reference is to our first job as pilots, which is to maintain safety of flight and/or operation any time we are sitting in the left seat and the engine is turning. It means […]

This article originally appeared in Aviation Safety, Nov. 2005. We all have so-called “personal rules” we use to help us make decisions when everyday challenges arise. In aviation, they are sometimes called personal minimums and are used to help us decide whether this morning’s low visibility and cloud cover — even if legal VFR — […]

This article originally appeared in IFR Refresher, Jan. 2007. When a pilot contemplates an IFR flight, the focus will tend to shift towards the latter part of the trip. This is reasonable, as an approach is arguably the most challenging phase of any IFR flight.This focus on approaches, enforced during initial and recurrent training, does […]

[Editor’s Note: Recently two flight instructors wrote a book on how to use Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) to enhance pilot training and to provide sim-only pilots a guide to making their flying more realistic. AVweb is reprinting several chapters from this book, the first of which was Chapter 13 — Weather. To download the […]

Flight Without Delays The Leading Edge article concerning flight delays (Columns, Nov. 12) apparently omits the one- to three-hour early airport arrivals demanded by airlines. The long lines and sit/wait periods are a part of today’s commercial travel whether we like it or not, but not a part of GA travel. What happens to the […]

This article originally appeared in IFR Refresher, Dec. 2006. It’s not too difficult to understand the theory of the ILS approach. The pilot is required to fly a horizontal radio beam while referring to a cockpit indicator that tells him whether he is left or right of the course. At the same time he must […]