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Despite the magazine vogue of articles on glass cockpits and technologically advanced airplanes, thousands of us continue to fly steam gauges. A well-equipped steam-gauge airplane enables a competent pilot to fly the same mission that a glass airplane can fly. The Apollo spacecraft were steam-gauge equipped and carried men to the moon.

I get the question a lot: Whats the best iPad app for aviation? Its impossible to answer. Not only is there no perfect app for all users, the field changes so quickly advice is only good until the competition releases its next update. In fact, I cant even answer whats the best app for only chart use under IFR.

It used to be the procedure turn (PT) was the lynchpin of many an instrument approach. Youd track to the VOR or NDB station located on the airport, fly outbound, use a PT to reverse course, and fly back to the station on a specific course while descending to the specified minimum descent altitude. If you didnt visually acquire the airport, locating the missed approach point was a simple matter of identifying station passage.

Theres no question that practicing on your desktop flight simulator will help your instrument flying. It exercises your instrument scan, it solidifies your procedures such as chart briefings, and it keeps you connected to flying when grabbing a real airplane isnt an option.

Keeping your holding skills up-to-date these days feels like keeping a working fax machine around; well, I suppose this might come in handy. Someday. Maybe.

As much as we drill instrument students on the 10 items from FAR 91.175 (c) you could see to go below DA/MDA, in the real world if we see anything that might be part of the runway, we land on it. Its nearly certain that youll first see the ALS, allowing you to descend to 100 feet AGL and search for something resembling a runway.

The FAA says we should stop crashing-good idea, yes? The problem, though, is to figure out why we crash so we can stop doing whatever it is that makes us crash. I have a few broad-brush ideas about why we crash: bad luck, incompetence and bad judgment.

You never thought about oxygen during your training until after your advanced ratings years later when you finally started flying at altitudes requiring oxygen. At first you probably just borrowed a portable bottle. Perhaps later you flew a plane with a built-in system. But you never liked that cannula stuck up your nose, so you bought a pressurized twin Cessna 421 with its requisite built-in oxygen system. With pressurization, you again no longer think about oxygen.But…

ATC has myriad restrictions and rules, all of which are designed to maximize safety and, believe it or not, also maximize overall efficiency. But, sometimes that overall view of things just doesnt work out for you. Youve got three choices: 1) Comply with the instruction, 2) Tell em youre unable, and 3) Work out an alternative to meet your needs and the controllers.

The U.S. pilot population doesnt have a good track record with weather safety. Inadvertent VFR into IMC was responsible for over half of 2010s 55 weather-related accidents, of which 83 percent proved fatal. Projections are for that to get worse. Do we just not see the weather coming, causing us to innocently fly where we shouldnt? …