Search Results for: Lockheed

The fire season is upon us and, with severe drought conditions in some parts of the country, it has the potential to be an ugly one. If you’re planning on flying in the late summer and early fall, before any regular precipitation starts to fall, you need to be aware of the fire potential and […]

For those of you who havent been following our little IFR soap opera with Lockheed Martin over Flight Service, heres the nutshell summary: We visited the under-construction Virginia hub of LMs Flight Service in 2006. It looked promising. We looked again in 2008 after the program fell on its face and was working to resurrect itself.

A few years ago, I managed to shoot an approach to minimums and not even know it. I was hauling cargo from Memphis to St. Louis Downtown. The forecasts at St. Louis werent all that bad, maybe 1000 overcast and three miles visibility. When I picked up ATIS, it had worsened to 400 and a mile. Eh, no sweat for a freight dog. I shot the ILS and landed uneventfully.

The tale used to go like this: Its a dark and stormy night. Youve spent the last 500 miles bouncing around the inside of an unbroken cloud, living in a world of round instruments 20 inches in front of your face. Youve kept the attitude indicator blue-side up, the altimeters 100s hand at 12 oclock, and the CDI needle within a degree or two of center as VOR after VOR has ticked by. On departure, the TAF for your destination was sickeningly close to minimums-but that information is hours old.

For an industry where speed is measured in hundreds of knots, changes in technology do not arrive quickly or easily to aviation.

As I write this editorial, the pilot community is buzzing with the news that Aeronav (a.k.a., the government chart folks) is going to start charging for the digital chart downloads after April 5, 2012. Well cover the fallout of this for IFR pilots in the next issue, as much of that fallout hinges on a meeting that wont happen until after we go to press.

Where’s the Runway?In December’s Readback, reader Mark Spencer asked about localizer offsets. In the answer, you said the offset value is not published for LDA approaches. That’s true for now. However a change to policy for the FAA will require charting the amount of offset for any ILS, LOC, MLS, LDA, LDA w/GS, RNP, LPV, […]

At the AOPA Summit in October 2012 Lockheed Martin had a large and impressive display to announce the rollout of Flight Services (LMFS). Sigh…another flight planning app. Why bother? We took a look and concluded that the site has a lot to offer, but a lot to improve. telephone. Quickie BriefingWe particularly liked the feature […]

The FAA told air traffic controllers to stop using a procedure that allows airplanes to land and take off in the opposite direction from normal, after a mix-up with three commuter jets in Washington on July 31. The FAA didnt blame the incident on the procedure, however, saying it was due to a communication lapse between Reagan Tower and Potomac Approach. Acting FAA administrator Michael Huerta emphasized that, At no time were the aircraft on a head-to-head course and the aircraft remained at different altitudes.

Recently during an approach to an uncontrolled airport, I asked the Approach controller for a telephone number I could use to contact Approach directly if necessary after landing to cancel the IFR clearance. I am the chief instructor at a busy 141 flight school. I have been flying for over 40 years. I get a […]