IFR Magazine

The FAA, it is said, lags technology-sometimes significantly. These pages have been sprinkled with examples over the years. One recent example was in Jeff Van Wests article, A Bit Over Ninety, which appeared just last month.In that article, Jeff touched on the protected airspace for a turn at a fix. Before area navigation, all airways and procedures were designed expecting us to pass over the fix, suddenly realize that fact, and then turn to intercept the outbound course.

The absolute best bang for the buck in charting is via a tablet and app as youre using. You didnt mention your transponder, but if youve got a new Garmin GTX 345, youve already got some connectivity between the iPad and GNS430W. Otherwise, you might consider a Flightstream 210 for that connection to exchange a lot of data between tablet and navigator.

Everything that can be invented has been invented is a popular quote attributed to Charles H. Duell, commissioner of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from 1898 to 1901. Today, the quote often is used to ridicule those who refuse to embrace the latest technology or believe nothing new will be forthcoming. The thing is, Duell never said that. He said quite the opposite instead: In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. Yet, hes not remembered for that statement, only the former, erroneous one.

Icon started to deliver airplanes to customers in June, and let them take them home and fly them wherever they want, the company said in its annual newsletter. The first deliveries went to owners in Seattle, Montana and California. To support these A5s, Icon said it trained authorized maintainers at their home airports. We are continuing to grow the third-party partner network to service upcoming deliveries that arent near factory service centers, currently in Vacaville and Tampa, Icon said. The company also said it has trained more than 125 pilots at its two Icon Flight Centers, and added that it hopes to deliver 15 more aircraft by the end of this year and ramp up to 200 deliveries in 2018.

I submitted a PIREP yesterday that didnt get disseminated properly. Not only did it not show up during the 1.7 hours left in the flight, it wasnt listed when I checked after landing on the aviationweather.gov/adds web site for PIREPs in the previous eight hours. However, after submitting an inquiry about this to Lockheed Martin, it showed up the next morning (about 20 hours after the flight).

It started with a reader question about the RNAV (GPS) Y Rwy 28L at Monterey, CA (KMRY). The question seems simple on the surface: There is a feeder from the SNS VOR to HIXAR on a heading of 146 degrees. The inbound course is 235, meaning an 89-degree turn is required. Are you required to fly the HILPT? AIM 5-4-9 (5) and (6) seem to say yes, but 5-4-5 (8) seems to say a turn from the feeder of less than 90 degrees is implicitly NoPT.

Theres little thats more essential to an instrument pilot than the approach clearance. We controllers issue them all day long. I fully expect much of my frequency time to be spent issuing approach clearances for either training flights or weather-related needs.

In the April issue of IFR, Fred Simonds wrote an article that did an excellent job of explaining how the FAAs Compliance Philosophy program, started in 2015, seeks to encourage pilot compliance with the regulations through guidance rather than punishment. He also provided data that strongly indicated it has had the effect of reducing the number of pilot deviation events (potential violations) that turned into violation actions seeking punishment of pilots to nearly zero.But, youll still want to be careful.

Our coverage of the FAAs Compliance Philosophy (April 2016 and April 2017 and in this issue) begs the question of how generally well-intentioned and experienced pilots fall out of compliance in the first place. A little research shows that falling onto the dark side can be slow and insidious with undesired side effects, eventually capable of triggering an incident or accident. …

My guardian angel has a perverse sense of humor. I cant count the number of times Ive done the wrong thing for the right reasons and had it turn out better than if I had seen it clearly from the start.