You're supposed to go missed if you have a RAIM or GPS failure message. But all the GPS IAP's I've seen have missed approaches that require use of the GPS to fly correctly (fly to this waypoint, then go to this other waypoint and hold). So what do you do? Use the GPS to fly the missed despite the...

Looks like this Friday I may be picking up a family member on the way to KHYA. I'll be leaving from KTTA in NC and we're trying to decide which airport would be better to pick up a pax at in a C172. The choices are KBOS, KPVD, or KIAD (she's in Syracuse and will have to fly commercial to one of...

I am considering taking a flight from central North Carolina to Cape Cod in late March of this year. Up until all of my flying has been in the Southeast, with IAD being as far north as I've ventured. Playing with the AOPA planner the route looks pretty interesting -- go just east of the DC ADIZ,...

All through my primary training I learned never to turn more than 30 degree bank in the pattern, and keep that ball centered. For four years and about 230 hours I've flown by that doctrine. Now I'm doing instrument and on circling approaches I'm learning that to keep it close enough in on...

I've got about 6 hours now and find it not the slightest bit fun. Can anyone remind me why I'm inflicting this on myself?

I'm flying into my home base KHKS at night in a single engine airplane. At no point have I been outside of glide range to an airport. I am VFR shooting a practice full approach in Class C airspace going into a Class D airport. The controller wants me to descend to 2,000 feet five miles before...

Searching the newsgroup archives, I have been unable to find the technical distinction between LPV, LNAV/VNAV and LNAV+V approaches. I do not mean the legal and procedural differences. I mean what are the technical differences of the GPS that makes one more accurate than the other. In other...

My flight instructor is quite upset. He says every single one recurrent pilots is making the same potentially fatal mistake. When they reach MDA or the MAP, they hit the OBS/SUSP button as soon as it lights up. The Garmin 530 immediately paints a magenta line to the hold waypoint....

Let's say you take off on a long cross country with no forecast of icing. By the time you arrive at your destination, a 2,000-foot layer exist below you with temps of 30 F. You are getting low on fuel. Is it legal to descend through the thin layer even if you are in an airplane without known icing?

I fly with a Garmin 530. Great box, but I cannot for the life of me understand why they would fail to include Victor Airways. Anyway, I often get a clearance such as 210BA cleared to Yodoo, Clear City, Victor 245, Bogur. Now if I program the Garmin 530 for Yodoo, Clear City, Bogur, 19 times our of...

After struggling with my EchoFlight Orbcom datalink, I gave up. Forty minute nexrad data, when it worked at all, didn't help me much. Lo and behold, they now have a Wxworx interface, which I just installed today. Within two minutes I have all the weather data in the entire U.S. in high-res...

My Garmin 296 indicates 330 MSL at KHKS, which is correct. My Echo Flight GPS indicates 140 MSL. Both are locked on to WAAS. How can I have such a large discrepancy? Both units seem to be functioning properly other than this.

I had a my two-year transponder/static system check while visiting my mother in San Antonio. When I departed, I noticed the airspeed didn't come up like it should. I attributed this to shifting winds and assumed I had a slight tailwind. Then in cruise, I did my normal operating performance check....

Anybody had any experience with the Turbo Alternator? It is a wind-driven fan, about 7 pounds, which drops down from your wind in the event of an electrical failure. It puts out about 15-20 amps--enough to drive all your instruments.

Flying back from Atlanta to Jackson, my Echo Flight finally received its downloaded Nexrad data. It showed me flying right in the middle of a big blotch of red. I look outside the window. I'm in light 40 F light drizzle with ceilings of about 6000 above a broken 2000 layer. I turn on...

If you are eligible for retirement from the FAA I hope you are counting the hours until January 3, 2008 (for CSRS employees.) For FERS employees, the magic day is December 31, 2007 according to this article. But regardless of which date you choose---you should choose one of them and GET LOST....

The FAA is marching toward sole dependence on GPS. The FAA engineers and controllers are screaming from the mountaintops PLEASE do not single thread North American airspace navigation on satellite only. Yes GPS is awesome. Yes GPS has and will change our lives. But the signal is small and...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgNK2DEVHfU

FAA OUTSOURCED AIR CONTROL VIDEO The FAILED Aviation Administration saving a few dollars.. (WITH YOUR LIFE) http://themainbang.typepad.com/blog/2007/12/when-air-traffi.html

....something other than IFR oral related material. Since the weather was crappy yesterday and scrapped the checkride, and today and tomorrow were forecast to be more of the same, I drove to Andrews-Murphy, NC (KRHP) to get the oral portion taken care of. We talked for about 2 hours with most of...