Archive for the 'Ground Lessons' Category

Ground - Flight Planning & Filing

Published September 24, 2008 Flight Planning , Ground Lessons 0 Comments

Lesson Date: 08.20.08

With Stage 2 completed it was time for us to move on to stage 3, cross-country (enroute) planning.  Since I hadn’t had one in a while, Nick thought it would be best if we made the day’s lesson a ground lesson, and covered a few new topics.  So we grabbed a briefing room, got out the dry erase markers, low-altitude enroute chart and Instrument Approach Procedures (IAPs).

We reviewed the notion that an IFR flight is one that basically connects a departure to an enroute segment of flight which in turn connects to an approach.   Using VORs and Airways for the enroute planning can sometimes lead to a less than straight route of flight, and while it is possible to file direct using GPS there are altitude and airspace considerations to be made, especially in congested and mountainous California.  Using the chart and plates we walked through several “how would you get from here to here” scenarios before turning our attention to the topics of weather briefings and flight plan filing.

Nick is a proponent of the online method of briefing and filing, with his weapon of choice being CSC Duats.  This is good because I tend to favor the online method as well, as opposed to calling 1-800-WXBRIEF.  While we had already walked through much of the data required when filing, Nick reminded me that I need to give at least 30 minutes from the point of filing to when I request my clearance for the flight plan to be available to ATC.  This is usually not an issue because it takes about that long to get out to the airplane (we have to drive), pre-flight, and for me to get all my gear setup in the cockpit.

To finish up the day’s lesson we entered into a discussion about potential destinations for my cross-country flight with Nick simply asking me, “Where do you want to go?”  Not being satisfied with the standard run-of-the-mill locations the flight school usually uses (i.e. Fresno) I said, “Let’s go someplace different, how about Paso Robles and then on to Monterey?”  We got out the plotter and found that a flight from Livermore to Paso Robles, then on to Monterey and back to Livermore does in fact meet the 250nm distance requirement, and would provide us with a good variety of approaches to choose from.  It was settled, it would be KLVK-KPRB-KMRY-KLVK and after a quick look at the schedule we decided on a date August 31st.

With the lesson finished I left with a homework assignment to prepare flight planning logs for each portion of our flight.  After all these approaches, I am really looking forward to the cross-country flight.

At least I’m consistent

Published September 22, 2008 Ground Lessons 6 Comments

For the past few weeks I’ve been hitting the books and studying for my IR written exam, which is scheduled for this coming Sunday.  After using ASA’s Prepware to go through each and every question at least once, I’ve taken three practice tests and scored a 92 on all three of them.  That’s pretty good, but I’ll continue to practice and drill right up to the day of the test with the hope of improving that a score a little.

The one question that has me baffled is 4032 (I might have that # wrong), which asks you to compute the time enroute for a flight between Yakima and Portland.  The problem is that you must refer to the figures to determine the distances for each leg, and the for some reason I cannot figure out how they (the FAA) calculated the the distance for the last leg from the BTG VORTAC to PDX as 10nm.

The distance between the BTG VORTAC and MULES intersection on V448 is 18nm, and I suppose that by looking at the figure I could estimate that the distance to PDX is roughly half that difference (or 9nm), but I still want to know how the FAA gets its 10nm.   The answer is probably staring my right in the face, but I can’t find it.  If you know, leave me a comment.

Ground - Communications & ILS RWY 31 SNS (Sim)

Published August 5, 2008 Flight Lessons , Flight Simulators , Ground Lessons 0 Comments

Lesson Date: 07.17.08
Flight Time: 0.5 E

I was scheduled to fly, but the president was in Northern California for an event and several TFRs were in effect with the border of one of them just 4nm North of the Livermore airport.  Nick and I studied the TFR map for a few minutes and quickly came to the conclusion that we would stay on the ground today’s lesson as the TFR was just a little too close for comfort and flying today just wasn’t worth the risk of an F-16 intercept.  Everyone else must have felt the same way as the airport was uncharacteristicly quiet on what was a beautiful summer evening for flying.

Into the classroom we went so I could learn about IFR communications.  For the majority of my training Nick has been working the radios for our IFR related communications, but I’ve been informed that it’s my job now.  I’ve been doing little bit of the talking (with ATC) and a whole lot of listening, so I somewhat familiar with the lingo, but we did need to cover a few details before I start running my mouth on the approach frequency. 

Continue reading ‘Ground - Communications & ILS RWY 31 SNS (Sim)’

Ground - Holding Patterns

Published July 2, 2008 Flight Lessons , Ground Lessons 0 Comments
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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.

Holding Pattern Diagram

Continue reading ‘Ground - Holding Patterns’

Ground - Clearances

Published May 29, 2008 Ground Lessons 1 Comment
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I was back in the classroom for another ground lesson with the topic of the day being Clearances.   What about clearances you ask?   We talked about the Elements of an IFR Clearance, IFR Departure Clearances and how to get them, VFR on Top, Clearance Readback, Clearance Shorthand, and Departure Restrictions.

Today’s lesson was very interesting and a lot was covered, but I think the most significant thing I learned was the acronym CRAFT.  CRAFT is simply a tool which can be utilized to assist pilots in the copying (or writing) of clearances as they are given by ATC, with the letters of the acronym representing the major components of an IFR cleareance…

Clearance Limit - Commonly the destination airport
Route - The route of flight to the clearance limit
Altitude - Initial and final climb altitudes
Frequency - The frequency of the radar facility handling departures
Transponder - The transponder code assigned for your flight

CRAFT is a useful tool to assist you in remembering the sequence in which a clearance is given to you and when used in combination with Clearance Shorthand, it is a way for you to quickly write down the clearance as it is given.  Remember the other day when I said I couldn’t keep up when trying to write my clearance down, well I wasn’t expected to that day, but knowing the CRAFT acronym and the appropriate shorthand sure would have helped.  For example, suppose my clearance was given to me as…

Cessna 1234, cleared to the Stockton airport, via Livermore One Departure, Altam, Victor-244, Manteca, Direct, climb and maintain 4000, expect 5000 10 minutes after departure, departure frequency is 123.85, SQUAWK 2246.

Using the CRAFT acronym, written vertically down the page on your kneeboard, you would use Clearance Shorthand and copy the clearance down as…

C SCK
R LVK1/Altam/V244/ECA/D->
A 4K 5K/10
F 123.85
T 2246

While the example I give is fairly simple, you see how these methods make the act of copying down a clearance much easier than just trying to write down what the controller says (which is what I had attempted).  While I obviously need a lot of practice before I can perfect the skill, at least I feel like I have set of tools that will help make the process more manageable next time.

If you are interested, you can read a bit more about Clearances and Clearance Shorthand in the FAA’s Instrument Flying Handbook (8.39 MB).   The section on Clearances starts on page 10-3 (pg 51 of the PDF), and Appendix A on page A-1 (page 99 of the PDF) contains a list of recommended shorthand.

Ground - Air Traffic Control

Published May 27, 2008 Ground Lessons 0 Comments

Air Traffic ControlNick had been warning me that our flying has been outpacing our ground work and that more ground lessons were imminent.   Well, it finally caught up with me, so for this lesson and the next I will be stuck on the ground in a small classroom with my instructor.  Yuk!  ;)

This lesson covered the Jeppesen syllabus ground lesson 7 topic;  Air Traffic Control.  We talked about Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC), Processing IFR Flight Plans, Weather Information, Terminal Facilities, Clearance Delivery, the Control Tower, and Approach/Departure Control.  If I to summarize the lesson in one sentence it would be; Who do you talk to, for what purpose, and when?  For example, when departing a class D airport, assuming you’ve already filed your IFR flight plan with FSS (by phone or online) and listened to ATIS, you would contact ground control and inform them that you are going to be IFR.  Ground will then typically coordinate your clearance with ATC, and clear you to taxi to the active runway.  Once your run-up is complete, you would then talk to Tower who would clear you for take-off and departure, but you may have to wait a bit until your route of departure/flight is clear of other IFR traffic.  Once you’ve departed, Tower will then tell you to contact Departure Control on the frequency that was given to you in your clearance by ground (more on clearances later).  You may fly out of Departure’s area and be passed off to Center, who, when you’re nearing your destination will often tell you to contact Approach control, with the process now reverseing itself. 

In my case, Norcal Departure is always involved because I am departing from an airport in a busy metropolitan area with several large airports, but I suppose that if you were in a more remote area not served by Approach you might get passed from directly from Tower to Center.  To tell you the truth I am not sure about that, so if you are reading this and you know, please post a comment and set me straight.

Ok so that’s one lesson down, three to go.  Next topic, Clearances.

Ground - The ILS

Published May 8, 2008 Ground Lessons , Videos 2 Comments

Today was the a ground lesson, and with it we officially entered into Stage II of my IFR training.  OK, since I have yet to have my Stage I check, maybe it’s truly official, but the topic today was a Stage II topic; Instrument Landing System (ILS) basics and approach lighting systems.  I found today’s discussion interesting as we covered a bunch of stuff that was all new to me.  Sure, all this IFR stuff is new to me, but many of the Stage I ground topics are just more in depth versions of topics covered for the Private.  Yes, I know I am simplifying a bit here.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but when I am mention “Stages”, I am referring to the stages as outlined in the Jeppesen Instrument Syllabus.  It’s a bit odd that I am using the Jeppesen syllabus and text book from ASA, but since I am doing all my training uner Part-61of the FARs, it doesn’t really matter what syllabus/text combination I use.  While the syllabus is generally intended for Part-141 use, it can be used for Part-61 training by using it as a guide, rather than following it exactly.

OK, back to the ground lesson.  Nick brought me up to speed on the basics of the Localizer, Glide Slope, Marker Beacons, and Approach Lighting Systems.  Prior to our lesson, I was supposed to have read the chapter in the book that covered these topics, but things didn’t shape up the way I would have liked and I was unable to read ahead beforehand.   I’ve really got get better at getting my studying done in advance.  Anywhoo… We looked at a few approach plates and with what I learned today I am starting to be able to make a bit of sense of all the strange lines, symbols and numbers they contain. 

There isn’t much more I can say about today’s ground lesson, and I am not going to go into the detail of the ILS here, but I do have another lesson scheduled in a few days.  Nick tells me that we really should have another ground lesson to talk about Departure Procedures, but we might go flying if the weather cooperates and I am able to get some actual IMC experience.  Guess which I would rather do? ;)

In the meantime, I found this cool video on YouTube that shows what an Stage III ILS approach in extremely low visibility looks like from the cockpit of a B737.  While I am no expert, I would estimate the visibility to be below 1000′, and while I sure won’t be flying in these conditions it sure is cool to watch someone else do it.

Ground - VORs

Published April 17, 2008 Ground Lessons 1 Comment
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VOR IndicatorI showed up at the airport on Tuesday half hoping we would fly, half hoping we would not.  It’s not that I don’t want to fly, but I spent most of the the weekend on the couch at the mercy of my bad allergies.  I was feeling better by Tuesday, but still not 100%.  I wouldn’t have flown solo, but I figured I felt well enough for a lesson, although I suspect it wouldn’t have been all that productive.  As it turns out, my instructor wanted to spend some time on the ground talking about VORs.  Perfect!

We covered much of the basics, reviewing much of the stuff from private pilot training.  The Citabria I had owned a few years ago had a VOR receiver/indicator and DME.  I used them quite a bit, so I wasn’t as rusty as I thought I would be.  My instructor gave me some good tips and tricks for figuring out where you are relative to the station, just by looking at the VOR and without turning the OBS.  The most important thing I took away from our discussion was to completely ignore the Heading Indicator (HI) when trying to determine where you are relative to the station and when selecting intercept headings (for a radial).  When in the air, I think there is a tendency to get confused by looking at the HI and trying to combine your heading information with the data given to by the VOR indicator.  I’ve often found myself saying or thinking things like, “I am flying at 070, but the OBS is set to 150 and the needle is off to the right, I must be…”  The problem is that by interjecting the current heading of 070 into the equation, I’ve introduced information that doesn’t necessarily need to be factored in at that particular time.  If you ignore the HI and focus solely on the information presented by the VOR indicator, I think the mental calculations become much simpler.  Remember, the VOR doesn’t know what your current heading is!

Let’s look at an example.  Suppose you want to fly a heading to intercept the 180 radial outbound.  Remember, forget about the HI for now.  Instead, look only to the VOR and turn the OBS so that it reads 180 with the FROM flag.  Remember you want to intercept the 180 outbound.  If it had been the 180 radial inbound, you would want to turn the OBS to 360 with a TO flag.  With the OBS now set, where is the CDI needle?  If it is displaced to the left, then to intercept the 180 outbound radial, you simply need to turn to a heading between the course in the Index set on the OBS and 90° to the left of that course.  If the needle were displaced right, it would be a course 90° to the right.  In this case, since 180 is set in the OBS, any heading between 090 and 180 would intercept the 180 radial, with the ideal intercept angle around 45° or a course of 135.  NOW (emphasis intended) you can look at the HI, and turn from your current heading to a heading of 135. 

Easy-peasy right?  Well put me in the airplane and get me airborne; hopefully I won’t go instantly stupid. ;-)

Ground - IFR Basics

Published March 28, 2008 Ground Lessons 0 Comments

I was scheduled to fly at 5pm today, but we had some inclement weather move in this afternoon and my instructor, who had just come in from another lesson, said it was bit choppy and probably not the best conditions for hood work.   We walked outside to perform a visual inspection of the weather, and sure enough there was a wall of rain moving towards us.  Since we would also be introducing, or shall I say reintroducing, a different airplane into the equation he recommended we scrap the flying today in favor of doing some ground work. 

In the dryness of one of the flight school offices, we covered topics such as Crew Resource Management, Workload Management, Spatial Disorientation, and other Aviation Physiology issues before moving onto a review of the Instrumentation required for IFR flight, their operation and potential errors.   We finished up the day talking about flying under patial panel conditions, spending quite a bit of time on the compass and the typical errors encountered when using it.  If you’re a pilot, you know the stuff; ANDS and UNOS.  For those you who aren’t in the know, those stand for Accelerate North Decelerate South and Undershoot North Overshoot South.  If you want to know what those mean, I suppose you’ll just have to Google it.  ;-)

I am scheduled to fly tomorrow at 2pm.  Hopefully this weather will blow through by then.

Ground - Instrument training introduction

Published March 16, 2008 Ground Lessons 0 Comments

I was supposed to have my first true instrument lesson today but the weather didn’t cooperate.  It was perfectly clear, but the winds were rather strong and gusty, which aren’t the sort of conditions that are productive when you are under the hood. 

I was at the airport, so rather than leave empty handed, my instructor and I sat down and talked for a but about the instrument course syllabus.  We discussed the pilot experience requirements for an instrument rating, the different phases of the training, and most importantly the homework I will need to do before each lesson.  While it was very general, and no instrument how-to’s were discussed, it was a productive hour and I have a much better idea about what to expect and when.  So rather than call this instrument lesson #1, I am calling it instrument lesson 0.5 (or 1/2).

We are scheduled to fly Friday afternoon, when we will formally begin the training, I hope.  Between now an then I have a bunch or reading and some excercises to do.  I guess I better get busy. :-)



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