IFR Magazine

Most of us learned to fly when the most advanced thing on our panels was a NAV/COM. Perhaps you entered the scene a bit later and had DME or even a rho-theta RNAV. Point is, few of us learned to fly in an airplane that had a display of any type.

The controller is usually a great resource. But sometimes other demands can produce some real challenges.

Ever plan on running an errand on the way home only to arrive home having made no stops? It happens to me all the time. People become conditioned to patterns and trying to do something different leads to mistakes. The same is true when flying. Procedures are developed and implemented to prevent and catch errors. […]

It’s been a pretty smooth flight so far, but out of the haze, you see the emerging outline of a huge towering cumulus. Oh, wonderful—an afternoon thunderstorm in your way. But controllers are primarily concerned with directing aircraft, so a dynamic rainbow of colors on their scope would be a serious distraction. For that reason, […]

We recently had a thought-provoking exchange of e-mails with Henry, a reader who asked a multipart question: What equipment does he need in his airplane for an instrument checkride? Afterward, what equipment does he reasonably need to fly it daily in the system? If an autopilot is installed, its use is expected during the test […]

My student and I were on an IFR flight. Nearing our destination, it occurred to me that we hadn’t heard from ATC in a while, so I called them. No answer. I opened the squelch and tried again. Nobody home. Could we both have missed a radio call? I tried calling ATC on the frequency […]

A flying friend of mine likes to say that you know you’re into something interesting when you have to sign a waiver beforehand. In the IFR world, I tend to think of approach procedures having an alphabetical suffix, such as RNAV (GPS) Z RWY 01, the same way. Whenever you see one of these, something […]

At my day job flying airliners I get a lot of idle time for my brain. To avoid the clich of that becoming the devil’s workshop, I try to occupy myself with deep thought. I’m not often successful, but on a recent rather long leg, I was. I’d just reviewed the sensor data for our […]

In spring 2003, I was halfway through my flight training. My instructor and I were chatting about air traffic control. He’d just visited the local TRACON. From his description, I pictured a dark room filled with the intense chatter of men and women half-lit by radar scopes and blinking sci-fi lights. A few short years […]

Last spring, Garmin made a declaration of sorts. It introduced an aggressive new line of inexpensive avionics for experimental aircraft. This said, in effect, even 800-pound gorillas have to compete in a new market where avionics prices are dropping, due in part, to pressure from tablet computers and ever-more-capable apps. Within two weeks of Garmin’s […]