IFR Magazine

Unless your flying is limited to local sightseeing in good weather, chances are you’ve used winds aloft charts at some point. For many commercial and military pilots, they’re a staple of the preflight weather briefing, and they’re easily found on sites like aviationweather.gov.  These charts are constructed by weather centers at a series of designated […]

Unless you’re one of those lucky pilots who fly only from big, comfy airports with at least a part-time tower, copying and canceling IFR clearances while airborne are routine. And while it’s not as common to file IFR to a destination with no instrument procedures, there are plenty of such airports scattered around, so it […]

You’re an active pilot, right? You even get some training now and then beyond what you’re required to get. But, if you spent a little energy— and usually no more money you might be able to take most or even all of what you’re already doing and let it, for example, count as the flight […]

Stabilized approaches help us avoid obstacles and loss of- control accidents as well as approach-and-landing accidents. They also provide more time for you to cope with ATC, weather, and to make the critical land-or-go-around decision. Test your knowledge of stabilized approaches and sharpen your approach skillset with these questions.

The first thing that happened was a sudden shift in “safety” concerns over to handling COVID- 19. Should I go fly? Wear a mask? But, where we began and where we’re headed now are two very different paradigms. The aviation safety culture we’ve built over decades is somewhat perishable—it’s not just like “riding a bike”—and […]

Over the past months, some of us decided that flying was essential and a social distance of 6000 feet was a thousand times better than six. They got a rare treat: The Class Bravos were their playground. We heard stories of near silence on the frequency in NorCal/SoCal and Boston controllers giving full-length low passes […]

Category I ILS approaches, long our low-weather mainstay, offer us minimums as low as 200 feet above the touchdown zone with RVR 1800 feet or higher. That’s low, but as it develops, not as low as you can go. CAT II approach approval opens about 160 public CAT II approaches to GA, easing access to […]

Before BMW started to produce cars, it manufactured motorcycles then aircraft engines that powered a number of well-known German airplanes such as the Focke-Wulf FW 190. In the BIMMR TWO DEPARTURE from the Greenville-Spartanburg International airport (KGSP), DRIVN around Greer in the South Carolina Upstate in your BIMMR ZZCAR (BMW Z Car), you can stop […]

Finds Skew-T Useful I must categorize Mr. Mazza’s comments in “Readback” in the May issue as uninformed. Far from being the domain of only professional meteorologists, Skew-T diagrams are an essential and invaluable tool used by glider pilots and instructors on a daily basis. They can provide useful information for any aircraft flight and I […]

FLIGHT DIRECTOR “CONFLICT” LED TO CRASH The struggle to find balance between pilot input and autonomous control of aircraft added another chapter with the revelation that the crash of a state-of-the-art military helicopter in April happened during a “conflict” between the pilot and the aircraft’s flight director. The Royal Canadian Air Force is investigating the […]