Getting weather info in flight has gotten cheaper due to FIS-B (ADS-B In). However, years before the FAAs eventual roll out of FIS-B and its array of free weather-information products, the dominant player in that industry was Baron Services though XM Radio. Sirius radio offered a competitive product from WSI. Eventually, Sirius and XM merged. The leading hardware was probably Garmins GDL 69 and 69A receivers getting XMs Baron offering.
“November 12345 is cleared for the visual approach to Runway One Left, traffic is a Boeing 737 on a seven-mile final behind you, maintain best speed, contact the tower….Fly into a Class C or Class B primary airport and youll eventually be asked to keep your speed up because of inbound traffic behind you. Do it IFR, even at some Class D facilities, and youd best be very ready to mix with the heavy iron, which easily could be approaching 100 knots faster than your flivver can manage.
brakes and control locks for example. But after mechanics have been pawing around in it
NY NEXRAD. There is a large wind farm nearby with turbines oriented from due north through southeast of the radar. The turbines are close enough (within 18 km) to cause spurious multipath scattering that extends well beyond the wind farm and contaminates data at multiple scanning elevation angles.ӟOur modern Nexrad (Next-Generation Weather Radar) system is still based on radar
Iwish I had read, or at least learned the material, in Mike Harts April 2018 article (Seeing The Invisible) before my husband and I departed on a flight from Santa Monica to Lone Pine, Calif., back in 1998. My excuse is that I had not yet earned my certificate. At the time, I blithely believed the plane simply went where you pointed it.
Fixed-wing pilots start learning stall recognition and avoidance during pre-solo training. The private and sport pilot checkrides require recovering from developed stalls with minimal loss of altitude, and stall and spin awareness are (or at least should be) refreshed during flight reviews for the duration of ones flying career. But unintended stalls still put dozens of airplanes into the ground every year. Is it possible that stall training as currently practiced isnt as effective as it might be?
Its a staple of instrument flying: the need to alter your route to avoid weather hazards. Often the obstacle in your path is a building cumulus cloud-a thunderstorm. The good news is that ATC is almost always willing and able to let you maneuver around clouds with extensive vertical development. All you have to do is ask (although sometimes weve seen ATC offer a different route in advance). Before you make the request, however, there are several things you need to consider to safely and successfully maneuver around the threat.
There are many old sayings sprinkled throughout aviation. One of them, Theres no such thing as an emergency takeoff, highlights the fact that deciding to initiate a flight is optional. As pilots, we get to decide many elements of our takeoffs, including whether to perform one in the first place. This is important since there are many unknowns in the first few minutes after a takeoff.
For the last few years, my home airport has been a private, paved and lighted strip in a rural area. The pilot-controlled lighting is non-standard, however. For one, the systems intensity is relatively weak. For another, there seem to be fewer runway lights than at most other airports Ive used. And the light fixtures themselves seem located farther from the pavement than Im accustomed. Often, there are few other ground lights in the area to help provide perspective at night. The runway does not have a rotating beacon, only a dimly lit windsock that may or may not tell the truth. There are few obstructions in the area above a couple of hundred feet, although theres a tall tower about five miles north.
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