IFR

Are you working on your instrument rating? You’ll want to get the latest edition of The Instrument Pilot Oral Exam Guide from Aviation Supplies and Academics written by Jason Blair, a designated pilot examiner and frequent contributor to FLYING and Plane & Pilot. Blair based his writing on the original text by Michael D. Hayes, […]

“Can you accept the visual?” It is not uncommon for air traffic control to pose this question to pilots on IFR flight plans approaching certain airports when the weather is VFR. In daylight, when the visibility is good, the winds calm, and the pilot familiar with the airport—and the approach is a straight in—the visual […]

When we moved east from arid northern Arizona to the very humid state of Florida, controlling corrosion on our trusty Cardinal became a full-time job. Like so many others, we hangar the bird and treat the airplane’s wings, fuselage, and tail feathers to an internal spray corrosion treatment regimen every couple of years. I make […]

Categorizing the day’s flying weather requires understanding the acronyms being tossed about. You’ll hear fellow pilots talking about the weather being IFR or VFR, with VFR being good and IFR being bad. I’ve always felt that VFR and IFR refer to the operating rules, as in the visual flight rules under which the flight will […]

Imagine you just went missed on an approach down to minimums. Based on what the ATIS, ASOS, or AWOS indicated, it seems like the weather is just on the edge of you being able to break out and make a landing. Maybe you even saw some pockets of hope, but just didn’t make visual contact […]

Given the dozens of forest fires burning out of control in southeastern Canada, mainly in Quebec and Nova Scotia, I have received many inquiries from my followers about how to deal with smoke from an aviation perspective. First and foremost, smoke can present a hazard to all pilots, but especially those flying under VFR. Smoke […]

With the return of spring, they start making plans to increase their flying and that often means getting the rust off their IFR skills. A lucky few are doing so as part of the inaugural Spring Proficiency class, an immersive proficiency clinic for instrument rated pilots slated for April 24 through 28 at the EAA […]

At the birth of powered flight, it wasn’t at all obvious that some day airplanes would need to figure out the complications that clouds present. But before long, looking at clouds and the complexities that both sides of them presented was an issue pilots couldn’t ignore. As cross-country flights became a thing, aviators had to […]

A seemingly academic exercise to figure out why radar is required on an odd approach leads to an understanding of how approaches are designed and why that can matter.