IFR Magazine

We learned 14 CFR 91.171-the VOR Check rule-during instrument ground school. In this era of satellites and GNSS, this rule is often overlooked as VORs become just named fixes instead of navigation beacons. Even with the latest navigation equipment, however, 91.171 can rear its head from time to time.

It had been a fun morning. The heater had broken in the TRACON radar room. It was 20 degrees outside, not much better inside, and the hot chocolate I was drinking was losing its steam-literally. On top of that, busy last-minute holiday traffic had been giving our morning skeleton crew a kick in the teeth.

Visual area penetrations have become a challenging problem for the FAA, airports and pilots. First, keeping track of them can be a moving target. Then theres the conflict between the hazard of visual area obstacles and the safety benefit of using an advisory glidepath. Although weve covered various aspects of this topic in the April and July 2013 issues of IFR, recent changes could affect approaches you fly.

A solid understanding of the rules and types of course reversals on an approach is essential. Course reversals are part of the FAAs guidance for IPCs. So, if you come out of proficiency training without feeling good about them, you didnt get your moneys worth. Regardless, you should be familiar, lest you hear unable radar vectors in the soup when you least expect it.

NextGen is such a simple word, yet it implies so much. This FAA effort to redesign the entire National Airspace Systems underlying technology and procedures has been underway for years and will continue for many more. Billions of dollars and millions of hours have been dedicated to new systems, new airspace design and new user training.

Technically advanced aircraft (TAA)-those with a primary flight display (PFD), multi-function display (MFD), and GPS-are sexy. Pilots are drawn to them like Pooh Bear to honey. Besides being eye-catching, TAA attempt to address some of the biggest problems in aviation by providing pilots with a lot of supplementary safety information. Moving maps designed to improve situational awareness make it almost impossible to get lost. Databases store more information at the touch of a button than…

In July 2013, we published “GPS Alphabet Soup” covering the five types of GPS approaches in some depth. A reader suggested a follow-on article with a table that gathers all the approach types and their key characteristics in one place. That seemed like a fine idea and it also affords us the opportunity to share […]

Everyone seems to be on the constant descent final approach (CDFA) bandwagon these days, telling us to avoid the trusted and long-used dive-n-drive technique on non-precision approaches. To be clear, I am not arguing against using a CDFA technique. Indeed, CDFA is a valuable tool. Add the availability of an advisory glideslope from modern navigators-although not required for a CDFA-and CDFA becomes as simple as an ILS. So, why use dive-n-drive at all? Im glad you asked.

Structural failure accidents, often from getting too friendly with thunderstorms, kill both people and what little good press GA is able to garner. In the last decade, 50 accidents-about 10 per cent of all accidents-were due to in-flight structural failure. Worse, even with better weather data in flight, these accidents arent going away.

Cruise through aviation forums on the Internet and you’ll find descent planning is a popular topic. Ask how people plan their descent and answers range from, “I wait for ATC to give me lower,” to a series of calculations, with a lot of rules of thumb in between. Wait for ATC to Assign LowerMany of […]