Fly the Sim
Thanks very much for the October 2013 “Simplified Circling” article by Dog Brenneman. He mentioned that “we just don’t get a lot of circling practice.”
I’ve been regularly flying the Redbird FMX motion simulator to practice circle-to-land maneuvers. I set the ceiling so that tight altitude control is required and adjust visibility, rain, day/night and wind choices to increase the challenge.
Readback: February 2014
Key Takeaways:
- While simulators are excellent for practicing complex maneuvers like circling approaches, current Instrument PTS (Change 5, 2013) mandates that the actual circling approach and landing for an Instrument Proficiency Check (IPC) must be conducted in an airplane.
- The article clarifies various aspects of circling approaches, including the location of new chart icons for circling dimensions, explanations for a "20-second rule" for turns, and the importance of extreme caution during difficult conditions like wind shifts.
- Approach restrictions such as "NA at night" are typically due to unlit obstacle penetrations, and some RNAV (GPS) approaches may be missing from Garmin WAAS navigators if they lack a published Vertical Descent Angle (VDA), an issue planned for a future software update.
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