Pilot Brad’s Flying Blog

Lesson Date: 06.01.08
Flight Time: 0.3 (Elite Sim)

With Stage 1 now complete, it was time to officially move into Stage 2 topics.  With that in mind Nick dove right into the subject of holding patterns.  Sounds like fun… not!  My only prior experience with holding patterns has been as a passenger of an airliner that’s been put into a hold because of weather at the destination airport, so today was all new to me as much if not all of the training will be from this point forward. 

A hold is a manuever which keeps an aircraft in a specified airspace while it awaits further instructions (clearance) from Air Traffice Control (ATC).  An example of when you might instructed to hold is when approaching your destination, if another aircraft is currently on an approach, ATC might put you into a hold until the other aircraft has landed.  From what I hear, holds are fairly rare these days, but of course you still need to have the knowledge and experience.

After a very brief ”What is a hold?” coversation, Nick explained the basic components of a holding pattern.  They are the holding fix, fix end, outbound leg, outbound end, and inbound leg (pictured below).  The holding pattern is basically a race-track pattern based off of a fix.  The holding fix is often a navaid such as a VOR, NDB or localizer, but can also be defined by an intersection or DME distance from a navaid.  The standard holding pattern has 180° standard-rate right turns at each end and legs of 1 minute, but there are charted exceptions and ATC can always instruct you to fly a non-standard hold.  I am not going to go into all the details of holding patterns here, but if you want additional information you may read about them in Chapter 10 of the FAA’s Instrument Flying Handbook.

While the standard holding pattern seems relatively easy to comprehend, establishing yourself in a hold and then flying one accurately seems to me like it can be a bit of a mind exercise.  Technically speaking you can enter the hold any way you want, but the FAA recommends three different holding pattern entry procedures based on the direction from which you are approaching the fix.  To understand and use the FAA recommended procedures, you segment the holding pattern into three areas divided by the inbound leg, and a 70° angle from the holding fix.  This divides the area around the fix into thee sections; Parallel (110°), Teardrop (70°), and Direct (180°).  Using the picture below as an example, if you told by ATC to hold East of a VOR (the fix) and you were already inbound on the 090 radial, you would use the Direct method of entry.

Ok, so now that I know that there are Direct, Parallel and Teardrop entry methods, how to you fly them?  Since a picture can explain it a lot better than I can, I have included a few examples here.

       
                  Direct Entry            Teardrop Entry          Parallel Entry

Direct Entry - In the direct entry, you treat it as if you are already in the hold.  Once you have intercepted the fix, you turn to the course of the outbound leg.

Teardrop Entry - You intercept and cross the fix, then turn to a heading 30° less than the outbound course (for hold with right turns, 30° more for left turns) and fly that heading for 1 minute.  This is then followed by a turn in the direction of the hold to intercept the inbound course.

Parallel Entry - For the parallel entry, you intercept and cross the fix, then turn to your outbound course, paralleling the inbound course on the non-holding side for 1 minute.  Then its a greater than 180° turn towards the hold to intercept the holding course inbound.  The picture above shows you flying direct to the fix, but it would be more appropriate to intercept the inbound course before reaching the fix.

Armed with all my new knowledge of holding patterns, Nick thought it would be a good idea to put me to the test, so we headed to the sim for a few practice holds.  As usual, Nick would drag the little airplane to a spot on the map and issue instructions such as, “Hold West of Mantec VOR on the 270 Radial, Right Turns.”  I again found myself using the simulator’s freeze button to pause the action while I would draw little diagrams of the fix and desired hold.  I find it useful, but I’ve really got to break myself of that habit as I’ve got to learn to multi-task a bit better.  In our short time (0.3 hrs) in the sim I flew 2-3 relatively easy holds in no wind conditions to some success, however Nick tells me next time he is going to turn up the heat a bit.  We will see about that.