IFR Magazine

The end of an approach means a transition from the instruments and navigator to the eyeballs and best judgment. Yet, some situations conspire to confound.

A good friend of mine is a physician and a pilot. (No, there isnt a Bonanza in his hangar; he happily flies a Mooney Ovation.) Ive always found him to be a very safety-conscious pilot. He gets an IPC every six months and does other periodic training. When he wanted to do something different, I suggested he get an airline transport pilot certificate with an airplane single-engine land rating. (ATP-SEL) Why? was his first reaction. I dont need it for the kind of flying I do.

You are planning an IFR flight. Its a route you have flown many times before. You always file direct and most of the time the cooperative controllers give it to you. So you again file direct, toss in a nearby Class B or C as an alternate, and calculate your fuel requirements for a flight to the alternate. Youve met your obligations under 14 CFR 91.167 and 91.169. Or have you?

The first sign of trouble came when the pilots yoke-mounted GPS announced External power lost. Switching to battery. Before the pilot could wrap his head around that, the instrument panel went as dark as the inky night outside. Central Florida is thinly inhabited, offering few ground references. Fighting vertigo but keeping his cool, he knew that his Bonanza was trimmed for straight and level cruise. Using his GPS, he gingerly turned east toward the ocean with well-lit towns and cities hugging the shore, aiming at his home base, Boca Raton airport, KBCT. The engine droned along as if all was right with the world.

Perhaps its a bias from learning to fly in Colorado, but I never think of Pennsylvania as particularly mountainous. Yet mountain-dodging is what jumped to mind looking at the RNAV (GPS) Rwy 12 into Williamsport, PA (KIPT). Approach designers dont toss in a 26-degree turn at the final approach fix for no reason, nor do they allow another 16-degree turn from the final approach course to the runway-unless they have to.

Models like the NAM, RAP, and HRRR are often considered the cutting edge of weather forecasting on supercomputers. Indeed, these are some of the best forecasting innovations of the past 15 years. They are a class of tools called dynamical models, designed to solve conditions in the entire atmosphere across a large forecast zone. Typically a three-dimensional grid is built with a granularity of several miles, and the equations of motion are solved at each gridpoint to provide us with temperature, pressure, moisture, and wind.

In Valdez, Alaska for the annual fly-in and STOL competition, a Lake amphibian (not known for its STOL capability), in town for the fly-in, departed early to beat the weather just before the last round of the competition. Heard on the temporary tower frequency as the competition continued and the Lake departed:

Having been very happily married for a long time, my wife and I partially attribute our success to recognizing each others pet peeves. Examples? She hates it when kitchen cabinets are left half-open or dining chairs arent pushed in, so I ensure that doesnt happen. My home office may appear, well, unkempt, but I know where everything is, so she knows to leave her organizational tendencies at the door. These minor actions and expectations help maintain a healthy, happy household.

The Mayo Clinic is now offering a free online BasicMed course for pilots. The course takes about 90 minutes to complete and is followed by an online test. Pilots must submit evidence of having passed a physical exam prior to beginning the course. Once the course is completed, pilots can print a certificate to keep in their logbooks. Certification information is then transmitted to the FAA. The clinic is the second organization, after AOPA, to offer an online BasicMed course. Pilots who choose to fly under the BasicMed rules must take an online course every two years.

General aviation pilots take grief for their spoiled-rich-kid activities. In some cases thats appropriate, but in others it isnt. Last month I briefly mentioned an extended trip my wife and I took in our gratuitously excessive Cessna 340. (Read last months Remarks for context.) I didnt mention that the series of legs we undertook probably couldnt have been accomplished as readily via the airlines.