Training & Sims

Those of you who once held paper certificates may remember the ill-fated Advanced Automation System (AAS), one of the worlds most ambitious software projects. Launched in 1981 and terminated in 1994, it cost over $3.7 billion and didnt produce a single piece of software.

On October 20, 2009, some changes to Part 61 became the new gospel from the FAA. These werent huge, sweeping changes, but they were easy to miss and could affect you quite a bit. Lets take a look.

The FAA has more plans in the works for Part 61, but, as they saw from the over 400 comments to the Notice for Proposed Rulemaking (NRPM), some of this thinking isnt fully cooked. Part of the plan was to provide some relief for flight schools who find it harder and harder to find (and afford to keep) complex trainers on the flight line.

It used to be that newbie, commercial pilots started out in the trial-by-fire world of check-hauling and freight-dogging in piston twins. The pilots that survived (and the majority of them did) understood the realities of single-pilot IFR at a visceral level. Those core skills were the foundation on which airline and jet-charter careers were built.

If you operate a turbocharged Continental, you might want to emulate Cape Airs technique for managing speed on the ILS. They set the power and then use drag rather than power changes to control rate of descent. This includes dropping gear to get down to a non-precision approach MDA and then retracting it again for the level-off. Apparently some ex-airline types balk at this at first.

Once upon a time it was considered just fine to polish frost smooth rather than scrape the junk off. Now the FAA has changed its mind. The rule is only binding on Parts 125, 135, or 91 subpart F (fractionals), but nine of the 12 frost-related accidents the FAA identified were with non-fractional Part 91 operations, so all of us might take note. Previous FAA guidance recommended removing all wing frost prior to takeoff, but allowed it to be polished smooth if the aircraft manufacturers recommended procedures were followed. But manufacturers never published standards for polished frost, and the FAA said it has no data to determine how to polish frost to satisfactory smoothness.

Any dummy can figure that one needs a Direct entry when approaching the holding fix on the hemisphere containing the racetrack. The head scratcher is whether, from the other hemisphere, to do a teardrop or a parallel entry to the hold.

As instrument pilots on IFR clearances, the types and differences of the airspace we fly in dont seem to matter much. But it turns out that there are some nuances that do matter and can cause hassle, hazard or even a certificate action if we ignore them.

Picture one of those ubiquitous human factors graphs that show pilot workload during a flight. The x-axis shows startup through shutdown. On the y axis, is a scale of pilot workload: relatively low during taxi, a significant spike during takeoff and departure, a long, low flat line for cruise, an even bigger spike for approach and landing and an anti-climactic taper-off for taxi in. At the top of the graph, theres an additional line that starts high and arcs slowly down representing the pilots capabilities.

The FAA handed over another $356 million to Lockheed Martin along with a three-year contract extension for running our automated flight service system. Lockheed Martin took over the AFSS function in 2005 and says the net result of the changes over the past five years is better, more efficient service, despite slashing the number of flight service stations and staff. Said Jim Derr, Lockheed Martin Flight Service Program Director, We are excited to have the opportunity to continue providing the most accurate and reliable flight service briefings available. We noted he didnt say, useful.

During a flight originating in Allegheny County, ATC amended our flight plan on a VOR/DME-equipped (no GPS, at least not in the equipment suffix) aircraft: KAGC AGC073 HOMEE JST300 JST SEG...The change is easy to execute-depart, intercept AGC073 which leads to HOMEE, then fly JST300 to JST-but came a bit as a surprise, because the system would not accept a flight plan that includes intercepting radials (the AGC073 and JST300 components) instead of radial and DME fixes. In talking to FSS their and our assumption was that the AGC073 component was a local ATC operational addition to route us out of busy airspace more precisely.We were wondering if there is a way (or trick) to include such intercept element when filing a flight plan.

Instrument currency is a pain in the tuchus. Convergence of soupy weather, aircraft availability, and free time rarely occurs. Even flying weekly, as I do, results in few actual instrument approaches. Unlike with landings, you cant maintain instrument currency on your own in VMC without a safety pilot or instructor.