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When I learned IFR, the oddball technique for GA pilots was the DME Arc. These were the days of turn 10, twist 10, which was the best we had for approximating a curve using the straight-line navigation of VORs and slant-range distance. When GPS came on the scene, the box simply drew the magenta line in an arc and we, or George, followed it. An era was over.

Most thunderstorm-related accidents happen when departing or approaching the airport. Flying near the convective cloud bases exposes you to the most dangerous aspects of a thunderstorm. Reduced visibility, low ceilings, hail, strong straight-line winds and lightning are all possibilities, but more imperceptible hazards lurk.

A short IFR flight should be easier in a glass cockpit. Youve got all the information you need just a twist and a push away-so long as you know without thinking which knob to twist and which button to push.

[IMGCAP(1)]Question: What do pilots hate most of all? Answer: Check rides Question: Other than check rides, what do pilots hate most of all? Answer: FAA ramp checks Question: OK, other than check rides and ramp checks, what do pilots hate most of all? Answer: Thunders… Enough. What pilots hate, almost more than anything else are surprises. This might not be obvious, but think about it. If you know whats coming, youre prepared for it, but the unexpected requires…

Standing to get a closer view of my towers radar display, I said, That doesnt look right. Somewhere in the dense, ragged and choppy 300-foot overcast outside the tower windows, there was a Piper Matrix inbound on the ILS. Well, supposedly on the ILS. His target was crossing the final approach fix several hundred feet lower than published and a half mile to the right.

It may surprise U.S. pilots to know that much (perhaps most) private instrument flying in Europe is done in U.S.-registered aircraft using an FAA-issued pilots certificate. But the times are a-changing. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is now the sole authority across much of Europe, enforcing by law what was an amalgamation of voluntary agreements between countries.

Five years ago I adopted a different kind of recurrency routine for myself. It did away with the annual three days of fire-hose drinking and associated abuse and replaced it with a monthly program that would cover all the details over the course of a year. I wrote about it in July 2007 IFR.

What do you do when youre only 90-percent sure you know what ATC wants? Some folks would just do what they think they were told. Others would try-no matter how futilely- to get a clarification. Still others would do nothing, assuming the controller will call back because they didnt acknowledge the instruction.

With the advent of WAAS, the FAA developed approaches that provided vertical guidance while offering the lateral accuracy that previously was only available with an ILS or localizer approach. It was named LPV for Localizer Performance with Vertical and now sports decision heights as low as 200 feet.

Heard this one on a hard-IFR trip down V27 off the California coast. The weather was scuzzy with heavy rain from the surface up to the flight levels with no layers at all. Despite this, ATC valiantly continued trying to call traffic:NORCAL Approach: Skywest Two Niner Six Five, traffic is a Beech Sierra, 12 oclock, opposite direction at 8000.Skywest 2965: Approach, Skywest Two Niner Six Five is IMC.Approach: Beech Seven Four Papa, traffic 12 oclock,…