IFR Magazine

There is an old joke that has three people arguing over what is the smartest machine in the world. The first one says, The smartest machine is the electronic computer. It can solve any problem in a fraction of a second.

Solar Impulse, the one-of-a-kind solar-powered aircraft designed to fly around the world, is now in Dubai, where it will launch in March. The aircraft was built and tested in Switzerland. It was then disassembled and flown to Dubai aboard a cargo airplane. Andr Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, who have led the effort, said they are confident in the aircrafts capability and their own training, and they will take turns as pilot. The expedition is expected to take 25 days of flying, and will be completed in stages over four or five months. Some legs above the Atlantic and Pacific will require five to six days of nonstop solo flight. The aircrafts wings measure about 236 feet across, and carry more than 17,000 solar cells.

In January, a database update for some Bendix/King KLN and KLX products rendered them unsafe for use under IFR. Jeppesen apparently delivered some bad data to Bendix/King that contained incorrect dynamic magnetic variations for all terminal and en route waypoint records. Bendix/King quickly posted a corrected database and got the word out to customers through about every channel imaginable. Still, its a sobering thought how dependent weve become on data that has a potential, however remote, of being corrupt. As far as we know, no in-flight incidents occurred as a result of the problem.

I used to get occasional in-person briefings when I lived in the Emerald City. Thatd be Seattle, Wash., not somewhere in Oz, but it might as well have been a fairy tale for all it matters now. Before the mid-80s there were over 350 FSSs around the country. Unless youre in Alaska, thats all gone. Flight Service (run by LockMart under contract) briefs over the phone-if you bother to call at all.Thats a real loss, because I always learned something in those one-on-one briefings. The briefer would point to a Prog chart showing low pressure moving into British Columbia: Now this looks like its gonna roll right through the south tip of Vancouver Island. If that happens, the winds will be blowing like stink when you try to get back here tomorrow. Youll have great groundspeed, but landing could be tricky …

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I was flying my Cirrus SR22TN into Boeing Field on the 13R ILS when the following happened:Me: N564JH. Intercepting 13 Right ILS.Approach: Cirrus 4JH, 8 miles from ISOGE, following a Citation 10, cleared for the approach. Contact Tower.Me: Tower, N564JH, ILS 13R.Tower: Cirrus 4JH following a Citation, slow to 120 knots for separation.The next week I had the same dialog behind a Falcon. Love those speeds.

I read with interest and obvious necessity for possible future application, your article on hypoxia, Get Your Mask On, in December, 2014.I fly a Malibu Mirage PA 46. Ive had several decompressions in the low 20s that were attributed to squat switch/pressure switch failures. Ive now added another immediate action to pressurization problems:

Naysayers tell us, ADS-B Out does nothing for the pilot. The faulty reasoning behind this statement is that ADS-B helps controllers, not pilots. Uh, hello? Anybody?

On a recent IFR flight, climbing through 500 feet, I noticed the tach was low by 300 RPM. It had been normal just moments before when I checked it on the takeoff roll. Just as it really sunk in that something was amiss, Tower called to hand me off to Departure. I declined, asked to land immediately and alerted them to the abnormal condition. The discrepancy didnt reappear on a second run-up, or ever since.