IFR Magazine

Another light-sport amphibian has entered the field, this one from Vickers, a New Zealand company. The Wave, an Icon look-alike with a Lycoming IO-360 engine, will sell for under $180,000, the company said, and will be available for sale at EAA AirVenture in 2014. Kit manufacturer Vans Aircraft has a second batch of ready-to-fly RV-12s in production by partner Synergy Air, in Eugene, Ore. The first batch of 12 was announced a year ago and sold out the first day. The LSA version sells for $123,000, fully equipped, or $115,000 for the base model.

I made up my mind to sell my house at that fancy Florida fly-in community the day a joker from the homeowners association scoffed at my Skyhawk and asked, You flew all the way from Chicago in that thing?

This past year weve delved rather deeply into many of the details and vagaries of approaches you can fly with your satellite-based navigator. To do so, weve used many industry-standard terms and their common acronyms. Since a lot of these are unfamiliar to many pilots, weve gotten criticized for our journey through the acronym jungle, as one reader put it. …

Its true. You really dont have the whole picture, by design. Alternate missed approach fixes have been sneaking onto approach charts for a while, but you wont easily find a way to use them. Its even difficult to find out when you would use those alternate holding patterns. [IMGCAP(1)] Those alternate missed approach holding fixes are associated with alternate missed approach procedures. These are in addition to your regular missed approach procedures and are established whenever the…

There werent any IMC Clubs when I began flying on instruments. I wish there had been. I might not have had to make quite as many mistakes for myself as I did. [IMGCAP(1)] Back in 1984, a designated examiner by the name of Francis Xavier Scott pontificated upon me and pronounced me fit to fly an airplane solely by reference to instruments. I clearly remember Scottys magic words: Lets go inside and get you written up. I…

In a pinch, you may only have access to one type of chart, and it might not be the type youre familiar with. A good briefing is essential for every departure and approach, and a good knowledge base for the chart type in use will help facilitate that briefing. Lets compare AeroNav and Jeppesen approach charts.Lets use the ILS or LOC Rwy 34 in Roanoke, Virginia for comparison. …

A friend and I were flying into Boeing Field. It was Sunday and more-or-less VMC with layers of clouds at various altitudes. It was the usual distracting approach into Boeing Field, with a 737 and a Dash-8 overhead going into Seattle International Airport, someone towing a banner over the stadium immediately off to the left, somebody in the pattern that I couldnt see, and so on. With the rather limited bandwidth I had left I was…

After retiring from a long career of trucking between New York and Florida, my thoughts of hitting the road on a new motorcycle instantly vanished when my wife said, I would sooner see you buy another airplane. After a 30-year absence from flying, we bought a nicely equipped Cherokee 180. It wasnt long before I wanted to fly to Florida, and we were on our way. South of Savannah, Ga., flight following told us that two…

Perhaps the most famous of consecutive fixes is at Portsmouth, New Hampshire and may well be the approach that drew national attention to the occasional TERPS frivolity. The RNAV approach to Runway 16 has fixes of: ITAWT ITAWA PUDYE TTATT-with the missed approach hold at IDEED. Jim HansonAlbert Lea, Minnesota…

Were expanding OTA a bit to include funny fix names. While most of us get a good chuckle from the work of a clever TERPSter, few of these cute names find their way beyond the local airport crowd. With your help, were going to change that to recognize pure genius when we find it. Please send us your favorites. Extra credit given for sequences of fixes. -EditorOn the RNAV (GPS) RWY 33 approach to Kingston-Ulster airport in New York, the intermediate approach fix is ITTLE and the final approach fix is BFINE.Bill ColeEllenville, New York