Aero-Tips!
A good pilot is always learning -- how many times have you heard
this old standard throughout your flying career? There is no truer
statement in all of flying (well, with the possible exception of
"there are no old, bold pilots.") It's part of what makes aviation
so exciting for all of us... just when you think you've seen it
all, along comes a scenario you've never imagined.
Aero-News has called upon the expertise of Thomas P. Turner,
master CFI and all-around-good-guy, to bring our readers -- and us
-- daily tips to improve our skills as aviators, and as
representatives of the flying community. Some of them, you may have
heard before... but for each of us, there will also be something we
might never have considered before, or something that didn't
"stick" the way it should have the first time we memorized it for
the practical test.
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ground-bound readers to the concepts and principles that keep those
strange aluminum-and-composite contraptions in the air... and allow
them to soar magnificently through it.
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Remember... when it comes to being better pilots, we're all in this
together.
Aero-Tips 06.17.06
I was instructing an instrument student in a high performance,
single-engine airplane. His primary attitude indicator was covered
to simulate partial-panel flight; he was "under the hood" sweating
out a partial-panel, hand-flown Instrument Landing System (ILS)
approach.
My student is very demanding of himself (a good trait in a
pilot), and probably felt he was doing much worse than he actually
was, bobbing and weaving left and right, up and down on the
approach -- but still well within IFR standards. It was then that I
had a "personal minimums epiphany"... looking at a common risk
management tool in an entirely different light.
Personal minimums
Instrument pilots are frequently told to establish personal
minimums, self-imposed limits (above the lowest legal IFR weather
and operations) they should adhere to, to compensate for less
frequent flight, unfamiliarity with the aircraft or location, and
other factors. This is great advice—but pilots (and
instructors) provide little guidance as to how to establish
personal minimums.
Linguistics note: Although I actually
prefer the more correct term "minima", use of the colloquial
"minimums" is so common in this context that I use it
here.
Watching my student fly a good partial panel approach (but not
nearly as precise as his full-panel flying) it occurred to me that
we should base personal minimums not on our ability to fly with
everything working, but instead we ought to base personal minimums
on our current ability to fly a partial-panel instrument
approach.
Ask yourself honestly: what are the lowest weather conditions
can you safely and comfortably hand-fly with an electrical failure,
a failure of the airplane's vacuum/instrument air system (if the
airplane is so equipped) or a failure of the primary attitude
instrument itself? My epiphany was that likely failure modes, not
everything's-working flight, should determine personal
minimums.
Aero-tip of the day: When establishing personal
minimums, consider your ability to fly partial panel in any given
environmental conditions.