Holds are the bane of many pilots’ existence. The variety of helpful and not-so-helpful tips, tricks, and other “aids” tells us how big a problem it is. Fortunately, most of us eventually figure out that published holds are easy. A picture tells a thousand words. Unless we are a little OCD about that 70/20 section, when it’s drawn out for us, all we need do is visualize our path to the holding fix and even the AIM-sanctioned entries become obvious.
Unpublished holds, however, continue to perplex many of us. Fortunately, there are now excellent tools in both certified avionics and our EFBs that allow us to create holds at any waypoint—even a user created one. EFBs will let us draw the hold for situational awareness. The latest panel systems will do that and more; they will give us and our GPSS-enabled autopilots the same steering commands we receive for published holds in the database.
