Search Results for: foreflight

A cardinal rule of mountain flying is to always be mindful of places where the terrain climbs faster than the airplane, and then avoid them. This isnt exclusively a backcountry issue-you dont have to fly in the Western U.S. or in the mountains to get bitten-there are plenty of airports on the U.S. East Coast where we can run into things if we cant climb well enough or if we stray off the published route, whether IFR or VFR.

In the summer of 2014 the FAA published in the Federal Register its intent to do away with the Area Forecast (FA) and replace it with digital and graphical alternatives. The agency wrote that the FA was a broad forecast of limited value and that existing, better, alternatives existed.

Spend enough time at a non-towered airport, as I have, and youll eventually see every traffic-pattern variation you thought possible. Traffic patterns at towered facilities, of course, are subject to ATC management. The controllers job is to sequence and separate traffic on the runway(s). In the absence of local controllers, non-towered airports use the traffic-pattern procedures first drummed into primary students during landing practice.

Avidyne announced new capabilities for its IFD-series navigators today at the Sun ‘n Fun International Fly-In and Expo in Lakeland, Florida. With the latest software upgrade, Release 10.2, the IFD440 and IFD540 will have synthetic vision views, safety functionality that is retrofittable to existing units for free. The R 10.2 release is expected in the […]

This week, Garmin announced its GTX 345 and GTX 335 all-in-one ADS-B transponders that include dual-link ADS-B In and extended squitter (ES) ADS-B Out, with options for built-in WAAS. Starting at $2,995, the ADS-B compliant transponders integrate with Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight Mobile apps as well as numerous Garmin displays, including select G1000 integrated flight […]

Cirrus Aircraft officials had been hoping to deliver the first SF50 Vision jet by the end of last year, but the company said in January that schedule has stretched to sometime in the first half of this year. Mooney International Corp.s M10T proof-of-concept model completed its first flight, in December, from Chino Airport in California. The M10T, unveiled in 2014 at the Zhuhai Airshow in China, is aimed at Chinas flight training market, and will be manufactured there. The FAA launched its drone registry in late December, and within the first three weeks, about 180,000 drone users had registered. In the NTSBs annual list of most-wanted safety improvements for aviation, loss-of-control accidents repeated from last years choice for general aviation. Anticipating that Congress will consider changing how the FAA is funded in this years spring session, 15 general-aviation advocacy groups signed a letter in December asking the U.S. House to hear their real and long-standing concerns about the expected proposals.

The potential for in-flight icing during an IFR flight-regardless of whether the airplane is approved for flight into known icing or not-means doing serious plotting and scheming prior to departure, and throughout the flight. As has been demonstrated for years, structural icing does bad things to airframes. Best to presume every cloud will contain ice, and plan accordingly.To illustrate our point, well look at a hypothetical flight from the Lima (Ohio) Allen County Airport (KAOH) to the Wexford County Airport in Cadillac, Mich. (KCAD). (Were going to KCAD because the FBO rents airplanes on skis and we purely love skiplane flying.) To get there, well be flying a Cessna 177B Cardinal, a stable instrument platform with satisfactory climb and cruise performance, but lacking turbocharging or real ice protection.

icing conditions are created

With an off-the-shelf microcomputer, a USB-based software-defined radio and a WiFi dongle, plus some free Linux-based software and a battery, pilots who don’t want to shell out a lot of cash to get a taste of ADS-B In’s traffic and weather information now have a lower-cost option. To see if there was anything to all […]

Reader’s accounts of their funniest, cleverest, worst, best, or proudest moments in flight. Send us your cleverest (or most embarrassing) moment on the radio-or your favorite fix names or airport names-with a subject of OTA, to IFR@BelvoirPubs.com. Be sure to include your full name and location.