midlifeflyer

Ultimately there is a practical aircraft limitation beyond our comfort levels. If the wind can cause you to drift across the runway while longitudinally aligned despite full aileron into the wind, you've pretty much reached the end of the aircraft's ability to land in it without breaking something.

If you're asking how much additional power is being used by tracking in addition to using moving map capability, probably not that much. All that should be happening from an app standpoint is logging information that's already there in a simple text file. That's pretty minor in relation to all the other functions taking place live.

You won't find it because (1) vectors only requires a heading indicator, (2) non-IFR gear reliance or DR while under IFR is not officially recognized or sanctioned by the FAA and (3) any direct route clearance that exceeds ground based navaid tolerances requires a radar environment, monitoring and guidance by ATC with some exceptions for IFR certified boxes (see AIM 5-1-8(c ) and Controller Handbook 4-1-2(a) as examples)

Flying waypoint to waypoint in the IFR system requires suitable equipment. The theoretical discussion of IFR dead reckoning is just that - theoretical. No practical value whatsoever. If you don;t think so, be my guest shutting off your navaids and flying an approach to minimums in IMC (sorry, no GPS or iPad either) based on your last estimates of the winds at different altitudes.. Or using dead reckoning to fly IFR at the MEA in mountainous terrain. In the real world, IFR tolerances simply are not conducive to dead reckoning. The regs require "navigation equipment suitable for the route to be flown" [91.205] for IFR flight. To fly direct to a point that is not a navaid itself, that means a suitable RNAV system, "an RNAV system that meets the required performance established for a type of operation, e.g. IFR; and is suitable for operation over the route to be flown in terms of any performance criteria (including accuracy) established by the air navigation service provider for certain routes (e.g. oceanic, ATS routes, and IAPs)." [1.1] As wonderful as they are, an iPad or handheld GPS is simply not suitable RNAV systems. Period. But, if asked, there is nothing that prevents one from informing ATC he or she has a handheld GPS or iPad with GPS capability. Not lying about having a certified IFR unit. They understand the capabilities of these systems and are happy to let you go direct to a waypoint while under radar coverage, knowing they wont have to correct your course constantly. BTDT. Because, as has been mentioned already, ATC in fact does not care what you do so long as you don't cause a problem for them. And this is all radar-monitored activity. In the early years it was kind of a hint/hint/wink/wink but became so widespread as to be pretty much SOP for those (fewer each year) pilots flying IFR without certified boxes, folks simply (and fortunately) became above board about it.

I think you forgot somehting that appears on some LOC (and VOR) approaches. Are you suggesting getting rid of DME stepdown fixes that serve to reduce minimums? Perhaps make all of them with (a) higher minimums so all can fly them or (b ) NA for anyone without DME capability? Just like the DME stepdown situation, the best simplification is understanding your equipment. It's been said that there's a trade-off for the simplicity of actually flying a GPS approach - complexity in the set up. Add to that the complexity of understanding the capabilities and limitations of the equipment.

Might be the wine but I'm not sure I understand. It's WAAS that adds the information that calculates the advisory glideslope on an LNAV approach as well as the approved vertical guidance on LPV and LNAV/VNAV). There's no advisory glideslope on an LP approach - that was intentional, the FAA wanting to ensure that one did not confuse LP (lateral guidance only) with LPV (lateral and vertical guidance). I guess the same issue potentially exists with respect to LNAV approaches. I'm guessing the FAA was a bit less worried about confusing a lateral-only approach (LP or LNAV) with a reg-certified lateral+vertical approach (LPV or LNAV/VNAV) than with confusing a lateral-only approach (LNAV) with a lateral-only approach (LNAV). [Note: LNAV+V is an annunciation from the unit, not a reference on an approach chart] The bad news is the confusion exhibited by pilots, including those who fly with these systems. There is, btw, a fairly decent description of all this from the FAA: RNAV (GPS) Approaches Of course, since I really didn't understand my answer might make no sense

Here's an example: http://api.foreflight.com/directory/tracklog/view.html?id=1912525 The nice thing is that there's an ability to export to Cloud Ahoy. In addition to not needing two possible conflicting apps open, it's especially nice for Stratus users because Status does not talk directly to Cloud Ahoy.

There are often debates between folks who know things and folks who think they know things. Trust me, not just in aviation

It should say what to do on the back of the certificate - check off the ownership transferred box and mail it to the FAA Aircraft Registry. The address is there also, where it says "This Certificate must be returned to..." For further reference, the applicable FAR is 41.47.

Rather than a simple, "No, that's incorrect," I will ask - what in the regulations and/or AIM makes you think that? You can start with the PCG definition and go from there: VISUAL METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS- Meteorological conditions expressed in terms of visibility, distance from cloud, and ceiling equal to or better than specified minima But be specific. Your memory of what you think the rules might be doesn't count.

Hardly an expert since I'm learning this myself, but unless your camera is sophisticated enough to correct for this (and you know how to use those settings) for the simple/GoPro crowd, the solution seems to be a neutral density filter that reduces light entering the camera by about 4 f-stops. It apparently causes the camera to compensate by slowing down, causing the series of prop "stop actions" to change to a less intrusive blur.

Troy, in both cases, if you can see past the tops over the tops, you are above them. Mountain flying 101.

The theory is downright simple. Even if one thinks the risk of accidentally raising the gear is low, why do something so completely unnecessary to a normal landing instead of deferring it to after leaving the runway?

I like the plan. The only part I question is avoiding non-towered airports. If you do them in actual, they will be pretty quiet; if you do them with a safety pilot, well, traffic lookout is a big part of that job. And if, it's a general dislike of non-towered airports, you really need to get over that. Good chance your best deviation option some IFR cross country day when the bad weather is heading your way is going to be non-towered. The other thing to consider including is proficiency exercises. How about, after the missed on the first (because the weather was too low) you decide to deviate. Although you may plan where in advance and in the real world you would probably do this in advance as soon as you were aware of the possibility of needing to go missed, make a point of not briefing the second airport approach until on the missed off the first one. That's just an example. There's all sorts of stuff you can come up with to make currency flights do a bit more on the proficiency side.

You'd probably get some disagreement on that from a pretty large group that firmly believes innovation is best fostered by at permitting protection of trade secrets and the temporary monopolies of copyright and patent protection.

The problem with regulated "standardization" protocols is that they tend to inhibit innovation at least in terms of slowing it down while the government goes through the process of approving modifications or new protocols. I'm not anti-government by any stretch of the imagination, but innovation is not something it does particularly well. Government supports it best by leaving regulatory standards loose enough for it to take place. I'm not sure your "HP, Dell, Acer" analogy is particularly apt (with Apple, you do have pretty much the SD drive that would only work on their machine). The demand and the ability to run applications (another thing Apple chooses to control) pretty much takes care of that issue. OTOH, what if before Apple gave us iOS 8, it had to run it by some bureaucrats or was required to make it talk with Android?

There's more to the discussion than that. I do a roundup of what's out there in my "How much actual" FAQ: http://midlifeflight.com/flying-faq/faq-instrument-procedures-currency/

You're probably right. The problem is there's no way for the FAA to gauge proficiency, so you are stuck with a minimum of legal currency. And there's no way for the FAA to establish a minimum that will satisfy everyone. Think of it this way: are you flying these under the hood or in actual to within a few hundred feet of minimums? Are they at the home area or places you rarely go? I'd bet we can agree that a pilot who flies them in actual to near-minimums 3 times in 6 months to airports he rarely goes to is more proficient than the one who flies 6 under the hood at the home base. But he still needs to meet FAA legal currency. Point is that FAA currency does NOT equate to practical proficiency. It's a minimum and minimal baseline. That's all. If you're doing these flight specifically for currency purpose why not add an extra every other month? Seems it would increase both your proficiency and extend you currency? I just did an approach last weekend that increased my currency by 2 months. I'm current through November right now although I won't make the mistake thinking that if I do nothing between now and then I would be proficient for anything other than pretty light conditions.

Not a hurricane. This was the line of thunderstorms that passed through this past Sunday. We were en route home from the Outrt Banks when we saw it coming (on iPad) and diverted.

I can tell you this M20J was more than happy to be safely tied down on the ground.

Nice Yves. And for anyone interested, here's mine. Similar instructions - save and change the extension to xlsx. Obviously, it's at your own risk and you really need to confirm the numbers including the CG window itself (move the graph aside to see those numbers) MooneyJWt&Bal.txt

There's a reason this site is the darling of Part 91 corporate and non-dispatched Part 135. You mentioned a few of them. For IFR it can't be beat, not even by the "newbie" real-route selection capability of apps like ForeFlight. I do most of my IFR cross country planning using it. The FltPlan Go! app, OTOH, while I have it, it still leaves me a bit cold. And their checklists are something I can definitely do without, but that's just a personal bias against check-as-you-go electronic checklists (as opposed to "paper" checklists in electronic format).

Is this the kind of thing you are looking for? I've made one of these for every make/model I've flown until just about a year ago.

Wow! Out of curiosity I searched my own files for .dbf files. Located one from an old home accounting program with entries from 1987 thru 1992. Opened it right up with no problem.

Open it in Excel, Access, Open Office, LibreOffice, etc, etc, etc. and save it/convert it to pretty much whatever you want com. Just about every spreadsheet and database program can read the DBF files. It was once one of the almost universal standards for DataBase Files. By the same token, I'm not aware of any program or online logbook app that won't take a common spreadsheet file, eve if it's just simple csv. Actually sounds like a simple conversion to me.