midlifeflyer

Believe it or not, even in the NXi, it's an airframe manufacturer choice. My flying club had a Diamond DA40 NG with the NXi. Turned out Diamond blocked access to regular Connext so we had to have portable ADS-B if we wanted weather and traffic on our iPads.

No, it shouldn’t be necessary. Neither should “hot spots.” But I’m guessing some airports have had enough incursion issues to merit them. I’m betting on taxiway C at this airport being a problem.

Sorry, I should have said "looks like to use it." The smallest iPhone has more screen real estate. YMMV, but that won't give me the situational awryness I want in a taxi diagram.

If it helps any, I am using both ForeFlight and Pilot. In terms of a switch, most really depends how easily you take to technology differences. Overall, both apps will give you what you need and you’ll probably find 90% of the useful features are the same. The main difference is flow - how to get to what you want. In a nutshell, ForeFlight started as a flight planner with in-flight functionality. Pilot basically emulates Garmin’s GTN-family oanel mounts, including its menu system and flight plan entry (which can be a plus if you ate flying a Garmin panel). That difference in emphasis means some tasks will be easier in one the other. the only way to know if the switch is worth the savings is to grab the trial and use it.

I have trouble imagining what a taxi diagram would look like on a 355 screen!

Me too. I try to always know what my alternatives are*. Fortunately, with ADS-B or XM weather, there should be very few surprises. And I will happily head somewhere else rather than exceed my personal minimums. From that standpoint, approach conditions below personal minimums is no different than a thunderstorm sitting over the airport at arrival time. (* That means more than filed alternate, which is worst-case scenario planning and pretty much irrelevant in flight.)

Many have personal departure mins higher than their approach mins.

We did?

There are no general part 91 rules requiring airport lighting of any kind for departures. There may be takeoff minimums requiring lighting at a specific airports and there may be requirement for certain operators, but not plain vanilla Part 91.

That's a excellent point. For most regulations, I think much of the looseness is just poor drafting or not thinking of some of the consequences of the language, so it may well mean being more careful. But there are also those areas - offhand I think the poster child is probably the fuzzy border between Parts 91 and 135 - where I think the published regulations are intentionally susceptible to multiple interpretations because of all the new and clever ways people argue around it. I don't really expect to see a change from "if it quacks like a duck". More like the Court of Appeals' statement in the Warbird case about deference: "Because we conclude that the regulation is unambiguous and covers Warbird's conduct (Warbird does not contest the ALJs under-lying factual determinations), we need not address Warbird's remaining arguments about the FAA's interpretation of this regulation." Thinking back to Trent Palmer, deference wasn't even an issue discussed by the court (except for the penalty).

Agreed. You definitely know more after practice. A lot more. But it’s equally important to know the limitations of the practice (again just like circling approaches in CAVU conditions). In retrospect, my short adventure had a humorous aspect. It was a second lesson for a new student. The turnback involved flight over construction sites. The student talked about it at work. Someone asked him, “how low were you?” He answered, “the construction worker had blue eyes.”

It’s easy to overestimate the effect of the Relentless and Loper Bright cases (which overturned Chevron). At a baseline, neither Chevron nor these cases were about creating regulations. That process is directly authorized and controlled by the legislation governing the agency and the Administrative Procedures Act. Those regulations, unless successfully challenged claiming the agency had no authority to make them or followed improper procedures, have the force of law. The cases are about agency interpretation of the regulations properly made, and mainly say, that the courts should not automatically defer to those interpretations. “The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.” A court making an independent judgement of the metes and bounds of an agency’s authority when reviewing a regulation or its meaning is a very different thing than “out the window.” I don’t expect to see too many cases raising that flag and expect to see the courts side with the agency in most of them.

I don’t recall seeing the earlier one, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see differences. For example, this uses a 360 degree turn instead of the 270/90 changes in direction which would be needed and which I’ve seen suggested practicing elsewhere. Plus, the whole concept of doing it at altitude means it’s only testing altitude loss, not distance from the “runway” and some of the other variables and sensations which go into the maneuver. I’ve seen pilots have issues with unfamiliar low-altitude maneuvering during practice circling approaches - and that’s with power. Having done a partial power loss turn back for real, I can say the view is very different and the temptation to pull back despite knowing we need to keep the nose level strong.

It should make a difference. Since we can’t feather, prop back (coarse pitch) is about as close as we can get to feathering. Not the best, but a decent diagram of prop position.

The large turn radius with a high glide speed is probably the smallest apart of the problem. Go up and practice the maneuver at altitude and you can get an idea of how much altitude you need in order to complete it and get lined up with the departure runway. The problem is that there are other variables. The winds that day will have an effect on not only whether you will make the runway but also whether you will end up overshooting it. That nice big headwind during departure translates to a non-so-nice tailwind for landing on that not-so-long runway. So testing itself is only going to give you a baseline which needs to be adjusted that day. I've seen monographs which go into some calculations but realistically, who is going to do that? The best bet, other than giving up doing it ever, is to test for that baseline, and like takeoff and landing distance calculations, or even instrument approaches, create a personal minimum that you ultimately adjust for conditions with a guestimate. For those interested, this is the testing suggested by Brian Shiff.