Think Always Wind Direction

Madeleine, una Instructora de Vuelo - IVI, a quién aprecio mucho por su tenacidad y profesionalismo, remitió recientemente un artículo de Barry Shiff. Al respecto, me he tomado la libertad de compartirlo con Uds. y deseo expresar a los IVI que es muy distinto realizar una aproximación instrumental en viento calma, que en otras situaciones. Nunca olvide que el viento reportado por el CTA, corresponde al viento de superficie y por ende se debe interporlar el viento en altura. De allí entonces que en la Check List IFR, he agregado un punto para tener presente......Think always WIND DIRECTION.

 

No pierda jamás la Conciencia Situacional.....

 

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More recently, an instrument student questioned me about why pilots are required to time and adjust the outbound leg of a holding pattern so that the inbound leg to the fix is one minute long. "Wouldn't it be a lot easier," he asked, "to time the outbound leg for a minute and allow the inbound leg to be whatever it is? Wouldn't this accomplish the same purpose with less confusion and mental gymnastics?"

I thought about this, constructed some patterns on a chart, and concluded that my student was correct. Why, I pondered, doesn't the FAA require that pilots time only the outbound leg? After several calls to FAA's Flight Standards Office in Washington, D.C., I learned only that this is the way it has always been done, an example of bureaucratic inertia.

So now I have begun a one-man campaign to change the holding-pattern timing requirements, although I doubt if my effort will have any effect on simplifying a procedure developed so long ago.

Irrespective of how many logbooks we have filled and experiences we have survived, I have discovered that we are all student pilots, and becoming and working as full- or part-time flight instructors helps us to discover just how relatively little we know.

Rod Machado, aviation educator, humorist, and a columnist for this magazine, is one of the best pilots I know, and yet I have never had the privilege of being in the same airplane with him. How do I know he's the best? Simple. Given his obvious stature and respectable knowledge of matters aeronautical, he nevertheless does not hesitate to call others with questions regarding various aspects of aircraft operation. He is an excellent pilot because he is unwilling to knowingly allow gaps to remain in his already-vast mental database of knowledge. "One never knows," he says, "when some tidbit of information might come in handy." Machado relishes the joy of learning.