Visual Flight Rules

Sharing the quintessential GA experience, the $100 hamburger, with nonpilots is always a treat.

One of the biggest pleasures of flying airplanes is the freedom it provides. It is not only the ability to go virtually anywhere at any time that excites, but it’s also the ability to explore things you have never seen before from a bird’s-eye view. Part of the joy of flight is discovering some intriguing […]

“It’s that lake right … there,” he said. When he removed his finger from the chart, all I could see was a mass of hundreds of lakes. It was to be our briefing for the flying adventure of a lifetime, but it was occurring in a restaurant bar, and it was clear that by the […]

After we’ve been flying for a while as pilots, things get a lot easier. Our hands and eyes begin to go to the right places in the cockpit naturally, and the body just knows how much response the airplane will make to each control movement. We become comfortable with aviation communications. We get to know […]

Aspen Avionics has received FAA certification for the VFR version of its Evolution primary flight display, billed as the first glass panel upgrade designed specifically for pilots flying under visual flight rules. Why offer a VFR-only PFD? Aspen says its market research shows VFR pilots and non-current IFR pilots represent over 50 percent of the […]

At a news conference at AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Jeppesen introduced several new aviation programs for the iPad. Responding to the popularity of Garmin’s G1000 integrated glass-panel avionics, which is now the standard package for most new training airplanes, Jeppesen has introduced a G1000 avionics training app. The G1000 avionics training covers VFR and IFR […]

One cloudy spring day a few years ago a Beechcraft Baron piloted by a high-time ATP and with a relatively experienced private pilot in the right seat hit a peak in the Ruby Mountains of eastern Nevada while en route from Truckee, California, to Salt Lake City. Both occupants were killed in the crash. The […]

April 2010 Flying cross-country by visual flight rules is a far less precise endeavor than flying IFR (see Robert Goyer’s IFR Flight Prep: A Whole New Game April 2010 article for more info). As a former Navy fighter pilot turned GA pilot once put it, VFR flight consists of “sniff-checking your way through weather” –– […]

__For many of us, going places is one of the wonders of flying. Many instructors like to take potential flight students on a short cross-country flight during the initial introductory flight in order to whet their appetite for the reward that awaits after they complete their primary training. Getting kicked out of the pattern is […]

It starts with weather. A pilot knows where he wants to go VFR and the first step is to see if the weather will allow a flight along the route that, at this point, is just in his mind. The most direct route is the first one considered. The next thing is the weather synopsis, […]