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Departures, Arrivals

Every flight, even a VFR flight, has a departure procedure and an arrival procedure. On VFR flights that might just be make a left...

Gambling in Reno

Today’s Sim Challenge begins on the ramp at Silver Springs, Nevada, (KSPZ). You can use real-world weather, but since it’s probably good VFR in...

Build Your Own Sim, Pt. 5

You’ve built your sim and you have been flying it a lot, improving your instrument proficiency and your overall confidence in the airplane. You’ve...

Winter Troubles

You’ve probably heard at least something about a strong El Niño episode that’s underway. During such years, weather hazards are plentiful, especially in the...

IFR Quiz November 2023

Departure in IMC can lead to a CFIT or midair collision after even a slight deviation from the published procedure. Review the practices below...

New Opportunities

Unless you ignore general aviation news, you’ve probably already heard that all of the Belvoir Media Aviation titles—Aviation Consumer, Aviation Safety, AVweb, IFR, and...

Briefing October 2023

“Pibot” Can Fly Anything Say Researchers Korean researchers say their humanoid “pibot” is an autonomous flight system that doesn’t require significant flight deck modifications. The...

Cancel If You Can

I always enjoy the magazine. Thank you to all who provide and produce the content. In Tarrance Kramer’s “Towerless Tribulations” article in April, he discussed...

Handling Absolutes

Before I was an air traffic controller, I dabbled with computer programming. Both fields involve complex problems that are often broken down to simple...

Altitude Preselect

Of all the features of the modern Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS), perhaps the most useful is altitude preselect. It improves safety by reducing...

Challenging Upgrade

After deciding I wanted as much redundancy—immunity from any single failure—as possible, and designing the systems toward that goal (See “Belt, Suspenders, Rope” in...

Mixing It Up

You can have too many choices, so many that decisions get delayed. It’s usually not a big deal for simpler matters like cruise altitude—estimate...