Contributing Editor Fred Simonds sent me a brief There I Was story that he published elsewhere. Not being one to let a good idea slip by without exploiting it, Ive borrowed the topic and moral for these remarks. Heres my True Confessions story.
A new or modified procedure is a coordinated effort among many groups, such as airports, air traffic control, local communities, and local aircraft operators, each of whom may have input into the final procedure. Once a procedure is developed and everyone is as happy as theyre going to get with it, the procedure is sent through a quality assurance review process. This process essentially rebuilds the procedure to verify criteria compliance, use of correct data, and proper documentation. Once past quality assurance, the next step in procedure approval is performing a flight inspection to look for anything unsafe or unexpected on the procedure that wouldnt have been known during the design process.
Last month, we gave you a survey course on what happens behind the scenes of approach procedures (TERPS 101). Thats a prerequisite for this course, since were going to build on what was covered in that article to examine the nuts and bolts of other types of procedures. In case you didnt complete the prerequisite, lets quickly go over what you need to know.
There are many considerations to work through before your first purchase. Indeed, for the most economically efficient path to the best simulator for your purposes, you should work through all those considerations before making any purchases.
Few things are more annoying to me than when something simple turns complicated. For instance, our local grocery store is only a five-minute drive from our home. Some days, though, unexpected traffic, an unfortunate accident, or construction transforms a five-minute jaunt into a 20 minute slog-usually when Im in a hurry, too.
When planning an approach to minimums there are many items to check, like the missed approach point. But sometimes, there can be more than one MAP … if youve briefed accordingly.
But even if flying remains a joy, we dont fly enough, do we? Id like to log a few hours every week. Nearly all of my flying is purposeful; I travel by my own airplane because I have places to go. I log around 100 to 120 hours a year now, but it comes in bunches separated by breaks of a month or two where I never just go flying, and dont even visit the hangar … because Im too busy.
Redbird closed its Skyport FBO at San Marcos Regional Airport in Texas citing poor financial performance. In its eight years of operation, the Skyport has never made a dime. Not even a profitable quarter, Redbird founder Jerry Gregoire wrote in a blog post. Had it not been for Redbird Flight Simulators explosive growth and profitability over those years, the Skyport might have found itself in deep trouble very early on. Gregoire said the company miscalculated some fundamentals in building the FBO in 2011, including its location. It was, however, well received by users. It won ACE and STAR awards for best FBO at an airport with less than 4000 annual arrivals in 2018. Employees were offered jobs with the simulator company.
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