The BEST explanation for making the entry decision I’ve yet seen. I’d read in a Richard Taylor book confirming that ATC doesn’t care exactly how you hold, so long as you stay within the airspace they’ve set aside for it. But since that reading, I’ve only encountered instructors who get perhaps a little overly pedantic about doing it the _right_ way, to the degree. These poor students try to do mental math while simultaneously trying to unpack a voice hold instruction, and there’s instant helmet fire.

Watching holds approach on nav displays, your insight was beginning to suggest itself in my mind, but handn’t voiced itself yet. I found myself just instinctively “feeling” the right way to fall into the racetrack as it slid under the airplane icon from various orientations.

My previous favorite trick absent a navigator display was using the thumb on the DG or HSI trick to mentally imagine the textbook 70-degree entry diagram appropriate to a left-turns or right-turns hold, then finding the outbound heading on the DG to see how the appropriate entry suggests itself. That was a great help, intuitive, but still required a little mental manipulation, just less.

Your insight is about as close to effortlessly intuitive as it CAN get. It’s the formalization of the feeling I was getting watching the navigator display. It’s so obvious, it brings out the “why didn’t I think of that?” that is the hallmark of genius! Thanks.

Rhys

Someone sells a little gizmo that does this, but if you have an ADF, you’ve got one in your plane, right in front of you.

I just purchased your holding app. Excellent product with a very simple design. I am a CFI and use many apps for teaching different topics on Instrument procedures. I am actually teaching a student right now as we speak. Well actually, this is his second day of introduction to holding procedures. Your product has helped him to visualize the holds on a compass card. I taught him the raise the 20 degree side using the pencil method.
I have one suggestion; on a teardrop and parallel hold we have an “intercept” heading either towards the IB leg (parallel) or OB leg (teardrop) of roughly 30 degrees. Any possibility you could include that “intercept” heading to show up on your application?

Many Thanks,

Drew

CFI, CFII, MEI

In your example, “Hold south of the 180 radial” means that the holding pattern will be along the south side of the holding fix. The inbound leg will be on a heading of 360. Assuming standard right turns, your heading of 155 means that you ought to fly a teardrop entry to this hold.

WHAT DOES ATC SAYING “SOUTH” HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING? If you are flying the 180 radial, you can be either headed NORTH or SOUTH??

Im lost