Instrument Flight

Robert Jenkins had a system deviation today. He was workingMetropolis-highR-side and the sector was down the tubes. Busy, busy, busy. Somewhere in therehe ran a guy into Southwest Center’s Capital City-high’s airspace. Bad news. That’s ano-no in air traffic control, running a guy into someone else’s airspace withouta handoff. Southwest Center, at least the system […]

Myfirst Aerostar, a 1974 600A, came equipped with a Wulfsberg Flightphone I. Thiswas a manually-operated early model — “New York operator, this is QM-2602I’d like to call 215-555-5575 please…” — and was only half-duplex. Thatmeant only one person could speak at a time; “I’ll be home at 6:30 …over,” I’d say to hear my wife […]

Single-pilot IFR is a subject near and dear to my heart,because so much of my own flying falls into that category. Back in 1966 when I startedflying serious IFR in single-engine aircraft, a relatively small percentage of privatepilots were instrument-rated, and most considered single-pilot IFR (SPIFR) to be a riskyproposition, something on the order of […]

It’s possible — no, likely — that pilots think too much aboutthe weather. We can move a lot of aluminum and a buncha SOBs and their golf clubs hundredsof miles without doing much more than filing IFR and asking the briefer for departure anddestination weather. We do it everyday. And it’s okay. Furthermore, it’s just […]

So, last July, Kal says to me: “Ohhh-kay.” (Honest,he’s straight from the cast of Fargo – maybe that comes from growin’ up inNorth Dakota.) “You’ve done pretty well on the practice IFR patterns with me playin’ATC. Now it’s time for you to do the real thing.” Two weeks earlier I had passed my first flight […]

The Cast of Characters The FAA Other Feds The Avionics Companies Others The Saga

Driggs, Idaho, is in southeastern part of the state,northwest of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and on the opposite side of the majestic Teton range.The short, scenic Teton Pass provides easy highway travel between Driggs and Jackson (mostof the year, at least), and many find Driggs an attractive alternative to the congestionand high prices that have characterized […]

The Rocky Mountains of central Colorado have been greatlyaffected by the fast-growing popularity of skiing. It wasn’t long ago that the smallColorado mountain community of Aspen came to realize this in a big way. Every year,thousands of enthusiasts flocked to their town to ski their “hills,” many ofthem arriving by air. The amenities of Aspen […]

In 1996, Bill C-20, “An Act respecting the commercialization of civil air navigation services” was passed by the government of Canada. Essentially, this piece of legislation allows a new, “not-for-profit” corporation called “NavCanada” to take over responsibility for all of the air navigation services in the country. In the last decade, successive Canadian governments (regardless […]

Nearly all of the time, we end up landing out of a “for-real” instrument approach. An instrument approach gets us down pretty far — around 500 AGL for a non-precision approach, and 200 AGL for a run-of-the-mill ILS. It’s not very often that we’re not out of the clouds at minimums. If we’re not, the […]