Instrument Flight

If you’re like most instrument pilots, you spent a lot of trainingtime flying full approaches, muddling through procedure turnswhile you tried to figure out just exactly where the final approachcourse really was. Unfortunately, all that training wasn’t goodpractice for the real world; the full approach just isn’t theusual way of doin’ business. Vectors to final […]

The very idea of going around in circles in a hold at 150 knotsis pretty ridiculous, particularly when it goes on so long thatyou end up diverting to an alternate. Makes you wish you’d takenthe bus. Nonetheless, the feds really do want to minimize airborneholding and they use something called Flow Control to do it. […]

Remember when you were studying for your instrument written andyou came to the chapter on holding? Remember how your brain wentnumb and you had flashbacks to high-school algebra class? I realizethere are a few people who actually understood algebra (not me)and those same individuals probably understand how to enter aholding pattern while calculating their weight […]

For reasons not easy to explain, pilots don’t like to ask for help. Just why this is so would make a good topic for a graduate psychology thesis but certainly pride and machismo have a lot to do with it. At the least, fessing upto an emergency seems likely to reveal flawed thinking; at worst, […]

Ever notice how some towers seem to be more specific than otherswhen it comes to pointing out traffic? At some airports, you cancheck in with the tower and instantly be told “…trafficis a Lear Jet just off the airport, southeastbound.” That’sthe last you’ll hear about the Lear until he fills your windshield.Yet, at other locations, […]

It’s sometimes difficult for pilots to understand why air trafficcontrollers do the things they do. They often reject our requestsfor altitude changes, vector us away from our destinations, oroccasionally request what seem like unnecessary speed adjustments.These delays are bad enough when IFR in real weather but they’redownright aggravating when you’re IFR in good weather. If […]

The FAA hasn’t done a very good job of making it easy for pilots and controllers to say “I’ve got a problem here and I need some help right now.”Some pilots are under the mistaken impression that controllers are cops, just waiting to violate them for the slightest transgression of the FARs. And even if […]

FAA tiger teams are still trying to sort out exactly what happenedin the wake of an unprecedented, 45-minute power outage that shutdown all radar and radio communications at Oakland Center on Wednesdaymorning, August 9th. All ARTCCs are equipped with three independent sources of powerfor critical equipment. Each includes an emergency diesel generator,plus a bank of […]