Without taking fuel burn into consideration, you can wind up in a situation where you no longer have enough fuel to fly to the alternate – and perhaps even the destination.As an instrument rated pilot, you know all about flying holding patterns and computing entries. But you can’t fly around in a holding pattern all day, sooner or later you’ll have to decide when to bug out and go to the alternate. It’s better to make this decision sooner than later, here’s how.
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How to hold the checklist
Instrument rated pilots are all too familiar with fixation: the tendency to stare at a single instrument instead of maintaining a good scan. But flight instruments aren’t the only thing us pilots get distracted by, sometimes checklist usage gets in the way of flying the airplane.
How to Calculate a Visual Descent Point
Visual descent points are handy tools the FAA has included on many GPS approaches to keep you from flying dangerously unstabilized approaches and to prevent pilots from hitting all sorts of obstacles. But there are a number of approaches that don’t have these magic little references. Read on to find out how to compute your own VDPs in one simple formula. Read more…
The Makeshift Altitude Bug
Have you ever been assigned an altitude by Air Traffic Control, only to forget it at some point in the laborious climb to some-odd thousand feet? If not, just be patient: you will! Oh sure, it’s easy when you’ve got altitude bugs, glass cockpits and all the bells and whistles. But what do you do when your airplane doesn’t have an altitude bug? You make your own. Read more…
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