Instrument Check Ride Mistakes with 2018 Flight Instructor of the Year Dan Taz Christman
Dan Taz Christman, 2018 Flight Instructor of the Year, breaks down seven common instrument checkride failures: weather briefing mistakes, regulatory knowledge gaps, improper approach step-downs, wrong alternate airports, holding pattern entry errors, GPS misuse, and descent criteria problems. Real approach plates from Kalamazoo and Kansas City show what DPEs catch most often.
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Hey, It's Kenny with HelicopterGround.com. we're getting ready to do our instrument Common Mistakes with Taz Crispin. We're gonna go to his camera in just a second. So let's go over to Taz's camera. Just make sure he's working.
Hi, everybody.
There we go. I want to mention catch up here. Alan Beaverstein. Hello. From Canada. Alan, Another longtime member who's remained a member and he uses our training to stay current. Owns his own aircraft, comments a lot. So he's here. That's awesome. Alan, you're here. Levi. We were just chatting with Levi last night. Levi just joined. He just bought the new remote book yesterday and got the remote course. Bonnie Seymour, Dean here. Dean is the one you've seen in one of our videos. He was like the most prepared student we've ever had. Showed up and had every single book and he'd had like one hour flight time. So we have a video on him that's quite a people have watched and made comments on. Because Dean is like the most prepared student ever versus showing up with nothing. Dean shows up everything that a person needs. So that was a good video. Dave Faulkner was here in the studio with us a few months ago. Thank you, Dave, for letting us know. Helicopter pilot, flew law enforcement. Chief pilot, now retired. And I believe. Dave, aren't you working on your instrument or did you get that instrument done? Let us know about that. Paul says hi, Taz. So Merry Christmas to everybody and all of you too. So I think we'll go to Taz's camera. And was there anything else I need to say before we get Taz going?
When we start showing some of his slides? Speak up if the audio is not working, but I believe we have it installed properly.
Okay. Yeah. Hopefully we got everything going. Just. I'm monitoring comments today. Gary's running cameras. I'm taking care of the comments so Taz can focus on presenting. Oh, yeah, and I wanted to mention we're wearing Airwork Las Vegas shirts today. Taz brought one for me and Gary. And today Taz is wearing his helicopter ground school shirt that we just got him. So I wanted to mention Air Work Las Vegas, we appreciate everything that Taz does for us and that he works for Air Work Las Vegas and that they allow him to be a guest instructor here. So if you need flight training for helicopters in the Vegas area, you need to see Air Work Las Vegas. And do you guys do fixed wing too?
We do, yep.
Fixed wing and or helicopter training in the Vegas area. Air Work Las Vegas that's where you need to go. All right, let's get rolling with Taz's presentation.
Awesome. Well, thanks, Kenny and Gary, thanks for having me here today. What we're going to be talking about is instrument checkride mistakes. Now, getting this prepared, I talked to two helicopter DPEs as well as two airplane DPEs on what the most common mistakes that they've seen from applicants during the checkrides. I narrowed those down to. What we're going to see here is 7 major mistakes that they've been knocking the students out with on here. So we'll go through most of those. Some are pretty easy for people to fix and then other ones are going to be something I'm going to dive a little bit more into, give you a couple of my techniques on it, and we'll go from there. So we'll keep on going here. So these are the, the seven big ones that I saw. Weather theory and weather regulations, improper step downs, alternate airport procedures, holding GPS in lieu of dme, and descents from MDA or DAS to the Runway. We're going to start out with weather and weather theory. So obviously as instrument pilots, you're going to be spending a majority of your time in the clouds. So it's a good idea to have a good background on understanding what the weather's going to do, not just where you're at right now, but where you're going and what you can expect. And what you're going to see here is most students have no problem reading the actual textual weather the reports. So the metars Taft. So they're very good at regurgitating exactly what those metars and TAFs say. But they have a problem understanding exactly what it's telling them. Not necessarily metars, because that's right now they can look outside and kind of tell what it is. But the TAFs knowing the time frames that they're looking for and that's going to affect their alternates as well as their departure and arrival areas. So some of the biggest ones that all the DPEs actually told me about, I talked about the terminal aerodrome forecast there, the TAFs, but weather charts and graphical weather products. So understanding where to get those and what they're actually telling you. So with that being said, what you're seeing here is if you go into the AIM in chapter five, section one, preflight, it gives you three ways to get an approved weather briefing. The first one is 1800WX Brief. So that's the old standard telephone that you call. Pick that up and you're going to get a hold of a Lockheed Martin guy and they're going to give you the standard weather briefing. The second one is going to be duots.com alright so same type of stuff that you're going to get from a pre flight briefer at the flight service station. But it's all going to be textual and you can get it yourself, you can print it out, you can download it, put it on your iPad or whatever and fly with it. And then the third one that's just out probably about two years ago is 1800WXBrief.com this was originally by Lockheed Martin. Same people that do the 1 800, wxbrief the phone conversation guys but now it's by leriados. Same type of stuff though. Big thing here. What this is going to give you. The reason why these are the three approved ones is it's going to give you this stuff right here. This is your standard weather briefing and I use the acronym Sacred Wind, you can see how it goes down here. But it's going to give you the synopsis of the weather, the adverse weather conditions, current weather enroute forecast, your destination terminal forecasts, winds and lofts and notam. So those are all the standard things that you're going to get in your weather briefing. The other thing that's going to give you is these are all recorded. So they're either recorded or it's, you know, when you do duots you put your information in and it's recorded. So there's a record of you actually getting a full weather briefing. So not that something's going to happen to you, but if something does later on then go back and see if you actually got a weather briefing. So these are the three big ones. This is where your examiners are expecting you to get your weather briefing. Your actual no kidding weather briefing. Now with that being said, if you watch our instrument presentations that I've done for the instrument ground school, you'll see me using this aviationweather.gov website quite a bit. And this is acceptable. This is, you want to use it in conjunction with the approved sources. So this is good to get background information. They have a lot of good weather products that you can get off this website. But the aim actually goes in and after 7 it says 713 it's talking about use of aviation weather products. So it's talking about other stuff and it says that you can use any other aviation weather product as long as you use it in conjunction with the approved source. Now if you actually look if you go to the Aviation Weather center webpage and you go to the standard weather briefing, it's going to give you this disclaimer right here and actually tells you the same information that's in the aim. That is you can use this, but it's not approved for an actual weather brief. So I get that a lot from the DPEs. They're saying that people are going here and trying to say that this is their weather briefing. So remember, so three at the beginning you can use this as supplemental information. This is a great webpage. Once you get that standard weather briefing, if the examiner asks you a question about say a weather synopsis chart or something like that, you can go pull it up on this webpage and you can get that and it works out pretty good. But for your checkride, remember, those three approved ones are what you're going to get. All right? Regulation seems to be the other big showstopper for your instrument written or your instrument rating. The DPs say that most students are very good at knowing the Instrument Flying Handbook and the Instrument Procedures Manual. But there's a whole list of other regulations and information in the AIM that they completely gloss over. So what I've done here on the side, on the right hand side of your screen here, I got a whole list. I'll give this to Kenny so he can upload this to the HOGG site or whatever. But it gives you a list of all the FARs, the NTSB830, all the AIM chapters and associated material for your instrument rating. So this is good for your instrument and your double eye. And what you're going to see is a lot of this is in the aim. So a lot of the information that's in the Airplane Flying or the Instrument Flying Handbook and the Instrument Procedures Manual is also covered in the aim. The AIM goes more in detail on some of the things like specifically holding, how to do the wind corrections and stuff like that that you're not going to get in the Instrument Procedures Manual. Alright? So I'm not going to go through all these. That would take us several hours. So I'll make this available. But if you're going for your instrument rating, use this list as a study guide of what you can go, what you need to be studying. Alright? So that's the regulations piece there.
Alright?
The next one that a lot of the students are missing is improper step downs. The big one that they're saying is students are holding a buffer, which is fine because they don't want to bust that minimum altitude right but realize outside that final approach fix, the PTS gives you plus or minus 100ft. So some students are saying, well, it's an at or above altitude. So you can see on the Will Rogers bar 1, 7 here, let's see if I can bring this over here. So let's say you're outside the final approach fix right here. So you got your Maltese cross, that's your final approach fix. And it says 3,300ft. So outside that final approach fix, the 3300 has only got a line underneath of it. So that means that's a hard altitude. At 3,300ft you can be above it, so they don't want you below it. So what students will do is they'll hold it, say at 3,500ft or 3,600ft, they're still above it, that's fine, and they're working their way down. But what happens is now when you get to that final approach fix, you might not be able to meet the step down restriction for the next step down. Or you might have to have an excessively aggressive descent. Not necessarily on this one, but on some of the other ones. This is something that they're seeing.
The.
Other one they're doing. Remember, like I said, it's plus or minus 100ft. So if you go right down to that 3,300ft, if you dip down to 30, 290 or something like that, you're still gonna be within that hundred foot tolerance. So they're not gonna bust you. Alright, but once you get inside this final approach fix here, this Maltese cross and you step down now that's this 2301 right here. What they're gonna do is now it's minus zero to plus 100. So you can be 2200ft and be fine. 23 or 2290, not necessarily. That busts that minus zero. But remember, you can go down that if you bust through it, that's fine. As long as you're making an aggressive, not an aggressive, but a corrective action to get back up, an immediate corrective action, you're not staying down there. What some of the DPEs were saying is, though, some of the students will come down and they see their MDA. Your minimum descent altitude in this case is 2,300ft. If you don't have DME, if you do have DME, you can go down to that 1680 and what students are doing is they're staying high. So let's say they're at that 2500. They're staying at 2500ft, they don't want to bust that 2300 on their checkride. Now when they get to that missed approach point at 3.4 DME for your missed approach, what's happening is they're too high. So they're not actually down low enough to actually be at the mda. So they might not break out if they've got, if you have DME here, you can see the minimums are 400 foot. So if the ceiling is right at 400ft and you're staying at 500ft, you're never going to break out of the weather. And the DPEs are seeing that and they're saying well look, yeah it's plus 100ft but you're not meeting the intent of the PTS, you're not descending down to that 1680 for the DME mins there. So make sure that when you're doing this, step down, hold a 50 foot buffer or something like that, that's plenty. As an instrument pilot you should be able to precisely manage that. And there again if you momentarily go below that 1680, say you drop down to 1670 but you make an assertive correction to get back up to that 1680, they're going to be fine with that. Alright, alright, next one. So this is another big one that we're seeing or all the DPs are talking about is alternate airports. So a lot of people get confused on alternate airports. So the question is when is an alternate airport required? The answer is always. Now if you read the regulation 91169 it says that when you're filing an IFR flight plan you must include an alternate airport unless you can meet paragraph A2 of this section. Alright, so if you look at section A2 it's talking down here. So I'm sorry, the exception is A two. So coming on down for helicopters. So this is all section A1. So it says two appropriate weather reports, weather forecasts or combination of them indicate the following. So for helicopters we go down here to the highlighted piece and you're going to see it says at estimated time of arrival and for one hour after the estimated time of arrival, the ceiling will be at least 1,000ft above the airport elevation or at least 400ft above the lowest applicable approach minima, whichever is higher and the visibility will be at least two statute miles. Alright, so you always have to have an alternate unless the weather says this and there's a published approach procedure. So that's what you're looking for. That's when you need an alternate. So let's take a look at this guy right here. So here's Kalamazoo up at Battle Creek International. This is the ILS localizer 3.5. So I gave you some weather here. So like I said, you got the weather there at kazoo on the 16th day at 0253 Zulu. Winds are 230 at 9 knots, 2 statute miles with light snow. Overcast at 2100ft, broken at 1100ft, scattered at 900ft. Temperature is minus 2, dew point is minus 4 and the altimeter is 2989. So the answer or the question is, do we need an alternate? Well, we've got a published approach, right? So now we got to see if it meets that 1000 or 400 foot. So what we're going to do is we're going to look up at the top, find our airport elevation. So right there you can see it's 874ft. Do the quick math, add 1,000ft to that and you're going to get your 1874 right there. Alright, so the weather has to be at least better than 1874 or we go down to the lowest approach minimums and add 400ft to it. So we can go down here and we can look at our ILS, provided the ILS is in service. So it's 1068. Add 400ft to that and you're going to get 1468. Alright, so now the highest of those is what we're going to use to see if we, if we need an alternate. Right. So in this case it's 1874 is going to be our highest. So we look over here at the weather. Do we have a ceiling that's lower than the 1874? We sure do. We got a broken layer at 1100ft. Alright, so remember, a ceiling is anything that's a broken or overcast layer. Alright, so in this case broken is at 1100ft. So do we need an alternate? Absolutely. Alright, so there you go. There's the weather at the time of arrival until one hour after the estimated time of arrival. So then obviously you look at the, the TAF as well and make sure that it's gonna, it's gonna stay that way. Alright, so now that we know we need an alternate, how can you select an actual alternate itself? So back at 91, 169, it talks about what the, what the procedures are for an alternate. Well, we're going to go through a bunch of those here. So if you have an alternate not authorized at the top of the iap, you see this little A which means it's got non standard alternate minimums with an NA after it. That means that it's not authorized, that procedure is not authorized for you to select that airport as an alternate. Alright? It doesn't mean the airport cannot be used as an alternate, you just can't base it on that approach. Alright? So then you go look down here. So like I said, non standard alternate minimums. So you look at the top of the iep, the instrument approach procedure. And if it has that triangle with the A in it, then it means that you can use it as an alternate. But there's non standard takeoff or non standard approach requirements there. Alright? So and that's at the beginning of your terminal procedures, publication your book with all the approach plates in it. And then you have your standard alternate minimums. So straight out of 91.169 it says weather at Eta has a ceiling of at least 200ft above the minimum for the approach to be flown and visibility of at least one statute mile, but never less than the minimum visibility for the approach to be flown. So if you're going to qualify an airport as an alternate and it does not have the ANA or, or the A symbol there at the top of it, then this is the minimums that you're looking for to be able to file it. And then you can see down at the bottom there. No instrument approach procedure has been published. So if there's no approach procedure being published, the ceiling of visibility has to be those that allows a descent from the MEA approach and landing under basic vfr. So that means you're going to be at that minimum enroute altitude and you're going to descend out of the clouds and be able to land at the airport. VFR basically. Alright, so let's take a look. So how do you select a pseudo alternate? So here's at the top of your approach plates. So here's what the ANA looks like. This is at Plymouth here. So we can't use the VOR10 to use Plymouth as an alternate. Then we go over to Warsaw here and you can see it's got an A in it. Alright? So that means it's got non standard alternate minerals. You go to the front of the book and what it's going to tell you is at Warsaw municipal for the vor, Runway nine, right here it says it's not applicable. So you can't use this approach to qualify it as an alternate when the local weather is not available. So if the AWAS is out of service, you can't use this as an alternate airport. So you look at your notams part of your standard weather briefing and if it's saying that the AWAS or the ASOS is out of service, you can't use this one as an alternate. Alright, so let's look at this airport here and see if it qualifies as an alternate. A lot of applicants get this, get confused. So they know that we're filing an alternate and we have to use that 200 foot and 1 mile minimum for the alternate. That's to make sure that the airport can be used as an alternate. But that's not the minimums that you're going to use to fly the approach. Right? So let's say you go to your destination airport, you do the missed approach, the weather was worse than it was forecast. You can't land, you have to go to your alternate. So now you're going to your alternate, you filed it because the weather was better than that, 200ft and 1 mile or whatever the non standard alternate minimums are. But now you get there and let's say that the weather is only 100ft above your minimums or whatever. Can you still use that? Absolutely, you can. Alright, so now you're flying to the actual minimums of what's on the approach plate itself. So let's take a look at this one.
All right, you're doing great by the way.
Thank you.
Take a drink. It's okay, they'll wait for you.
All right, so what minimums are we going to use? So we can look at this one here. So here's Kansas City, Missouri, Charles B. Willer, Downtown ILS Localizer, Runway 3. You see, it's got the A up at the top of the approach plate. So we're going to go to the front of that book and look and see what that actually means. So right here it's telling us that we can see all of the different approaches they have in there. We're looking at the ILS localizer, Runway three. It's got the little number one. So we're gonna come over here to where it's got the number one and we're gonna read what it says. It says categories A and B902. So what that means is this airport requires a 900 foot and 2 mile visibility for the to be qualified as an alternate. Alright? So just like it says right there, alright? This is the weather, we need to be able to file this as an alternate, not that 200:1 for whatever reason. Might have high obstructions out there or whatever they're saying for this, for these categories you have to have that better weather. Alright, so that's pretty high weather minimums. It's almost vfr. Alright, so the weather required to fly the approach would be the weather it's listed at the bottom of the approach plate. So in this case, alright, so let's say we file it 902. We have to go missed approach at our at our destination and we fly over here to Wheeler and It's less than 902. That's fine. Now we have to shoot it using these minimums here, the 300 foot and three quarters of a mile. So that's what we're actually. If it's less than that then we can't shoot the approach. Right. But in this case, 300 foot and 3/4 of a statute mile. And we can now shoot that. Here's some what ifs. What if that glide slope is in OP and we can't use this 994 foot MD ERD decision altitude and the 300 foot and 34. Now we have to shoot the localizer which requires us a 900 foot weather minimum and 11 3/4 of a mile visibility. Alright, so in this case what we're going to end up doing is we take that 902 and we look at that and say okay, well this is 900 foot and to actually qualify it, so we get our notams and they say the glide slope's out of service. We can't use that ILS minimums anymore. We're gonna have to use the localizer minimums. So the lowest approach in this case would be that 900 foot. We were meeting that, but it's saying the 1 mile and 3 quarters. Well now we have to make sure that has the two miles. All right, so that's what we're looking for there. So now let's say if we have DME now we can go down here to the 701 right. Or the 501 quarter. Sorry. So in this case let's say we have dme, the glideslope's out of service and we want to do that 902 statute miles for the non standard alternate minimums. We look at this and whatever the minimum is. So if we go to the 901 and a quarter without the DME, so we don't have DME and we have to maintain that 900, we have to add the 200 foot to that and the one mile. Well we already got so in this case it would be 1100 foot and 1 1/4 mile is what we would need for our alternate minimums. But now we got the DME. So we go down here, add the 200. It's only 700 foot. That 902 takes precedence. So it's kind of confusing. But the big thing to look at here is, is if it's standard or I'm sorry, if you're using the non standard alternate modems, you have to do that 902 or the 200 foot above. So in this case, if the glide slope is out of service, you would have to apply that 200 foot above that 900 and then you could do the 1100. Alright, I know it's confusing. We're going to record this. You can play it back later and go over it as many times you want. If you have questions, you can ping us and we can go over it too. You can see why students miss this all the time. All right, all right, Holding. Take another drink here.
Good job. Yeah, nice job. Cameras on me. I'm just giving Taz there a little, a little break. I wanted to mention something I was gonna mention earlier and I'm trying to remember now what it was. I guess I'll think of it in a minute. Dang it. I had something I was going to talk about. Joininstrumentpilot.com that's not it. But we'll mention that if you want to check out our instrument course, the easy link, it's kind of long. Joininstrumentpilot.com I think we should come up with a shorter one, like a little something short that we like. But anyway, if you want to go check out our instrument course, go to joininstrumentpilot.com and that's where you can find the course and current options for joining that membership. So that will work. So if you want to go back to taz, people are making comments, they like your presentation, so cool. All right, just keep going.
All right.
All right.
I'm gonna try and get through some more of the stuff. So obviously the alternates, that's one of the big ones. The other one is gonna be holding. Alright, so I'm gonna go through what the AIM talks about here and then I'm gonna give you the TAZ tech here on how to do this. Alright. So holding may seem to be straightforward procedure, instrument flying, but many applicants lose orientation when approaching the holding. Fix and turn in the wrong direction. This was one of my issues when I was an instrument student way back in the day and it's still, you know, even when I was, as a seasoned pilot, you still have to sit there and think about it, right? But anyway, we'll go through this here. Controllers, when they anticipate a delay at a clearance limit fix, they're going to issue you a whole holding clearance at least five minutes before you get to the eta. That clearance limit fix, they're going to give you six different things. What it's going to give you is they're going to give you a direction to hold from the fix, name of the fix, the course or the radial. They want you to hold on the leg length if it's appropriate, direction of turns if left hands are required and the EFC time. So the expectation further clearance time, that direction turns. So standard turns are going to be right hand turns. Left hand turns are non standard. So in your clearance if they do not give you a turn direction you can expect that it's going to be standard turns to the right. You can see I got asterisks on three of those there. Those asterisks are for if it's a charted hold. Alright, so let's say you're en route on a Victor airway or something like that and there's a charted hold and they want you to hold at that charted hold. All they have to do is give you those three things. The direction to hold from that fix, the name of the fix and the EFC time. That's it. If they're making one up, they have to give you all six of those things. Alright, so entry procedures given in the AIM evolved from extensive experimentation under a wide range of operational conditions. The standardized procedure should be followed to ensure that an aircraft remains within the boundaries of the prescribed holding airspace. That's a lot of words saying that the air that all the controllers really care about is that you get into the hold and you stay on the protected side of where they're telling you to go. How are you going to do that? The AIM has a specific way they do it. This is the AIM technique. They divide the holding airspace up into three sectors. There's a 70 degree sector, 110 degree sector and 180 degree sector. And then from that you can determine what kind of hold that you're going to use or what kind of entry into the hold. Alright, so we'll go through each one of these and then I'll talk a little bit more about each one in particular. Alright, so here's a parallel procedure. Alright, so what they're saying in this case is you're coming in from sector A right along here. You're going to hit your holding fix and you're going to parallel the inbound. So normally the hold is going to follow around here like this, right? It's the racetrack. This is a standard hold to the right. So as a parallel entry, you're going to come into the holding fix right here and you're going to parallel that inbound radial outbound. So you're going to go hit this, you're going to start your five tees, six T's, whatever you're going to do, and then you're going to go outbound for one minute. At the end of a minute you're going to make a left hand turn. So a turn in the opposite direction of the hold and you're going to make a left hand turn in this case and reintercept that inbound course or proceed direct to that fix if you want either one of those. Alright. And then once you get inside that, now you're going to just enter the holding pattern and you're just going to maintain that 1 minute leg inbound is what you're trying to do for the teardrop procedure coming in from sector B over here. So this is the 70 degree sector. You're going to fly directly to the fix. You're going to hold a 30 degree course intercept here. So basically 30 degrees from whatever your inbound or your outbound leg is going to be. And at the end of one minute you're going to make a turn inbound and proceed direct to that fix. Then the direct entry, this is the easiest one because you're already conveniently aligned with the holding fix. So anywhere in this side over here, coming straight in, you're going directly to the fix. You're just going to hit the fix and start turn and right into the holding pattern. Now that all sounds very easy, right? The problem is the way the AIM and the Instrument flying Handbook teaches it. It's from a bird's eye view. It doesn't really give you that three dimensional picture. So the best way to do it, I'll give you my technique here is I'm going to use my heading indicator and I'm going to call it a rule of thumb. And the reason why I call it a rule of thumb is because I'm going to use my thumb to figure out what my entry is for this. The way I'm going to do that is I'm going to draw an imaginary line across my heading indicator. This works good if you have an HSI doesn't matter. Whatever your heading indicator is, I'm going to draw a line directly across that case there. I'm going to place my thumb at the 90 degree point. So like I said, rule of thumb, right? So in this case they say right hand turns. I'm going to put my thumb on the right hand side of the case and then what I'm going to do then is I'm going to draw a diagonal line across the case so you can see it divides it up now into thirds and then I'm going to draw a vertical line. And what that's doing, my thumb is basically giving me a 70 degree offset. So you can see from right there. So this is setting up my 70 degrees. This is a little bit exaggerated just for the effect but basically it sets up about 70 degrees off here. Sets up my teardrop entry area, my parallel and my direct. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to overlay. When they give me my holding instructions, I'm going to pretend that my holding fix is right here in the middle of my heading indicator. And wherever my holding pattern is, that's the type of entry I'm going to use. Alright, I'll give you some examples here. Here's what it looks like. This is my right hand thumb. If it's a non standard, I use my left hand thumb because I'm going to do a left hand turn. Same type of procedure over there. What I'm going to do is I'm going to superimpose those holds. You can see here. If it's a standard hold and the majority of the holding pattern is down here in the direct, I'm going to fly up to it. I'm just going to make a turn and enter the holding pattern. If it's a parallel, so majority of that hold is over here in the parallel sector. Come up to the, to the holding intersection here and I'm going to parallel that and then go outbound for a minute and then turn back in just like we talked about earlier. Same with the teardrop. So let's do a couple of these. So I set this one up here. So we got, we're flying a heading of due north, so 3, 6, 0 or 0 there. Then the controller gives us a hold here. So they say hold east of the Knox VOR on the 090 radial left turns. Maintain 5,000ft. Expect further clearance at 2117 Zulu. Time now is 2100 Zulu. So you got 17 minutes. You're going to hold that racetrack.
Good job while you're taking a break. And you know what? I'm muted. I'll point out why you're taking a breather there and getting a drink. Taz, that joininstrumentpilot.com is down below in the description box on YouTube. So you can always go down there and find it along with some other links for different things. And if you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel yet, do that for us because we're almost at 10,000 subscribers. This morning earlier we were like 9,960 something. 10,000 is a big goal for us. If you would subscribe and do us a favor for all the content that we put out, we really appreciate it because 10,000 is just a cool milestone for us. We've been chasing it for seven years now with this channel. You know, some people get 10,000 in a month but for us it's taking us a while to get there. But there's some benefits that we get for having 10,000 subscribers like live help from YouTube when you need assistance with something. So we ask that in return for all the free content that we put out, please subscribe to our channel like this video and you can find that join instrument pilot down in the box below. So gave tabs a little break there. You ready to go back to it?
Sure, let's get this. Hold on.
All right, we'll go back to you.
Alright, cool. Got my drink there. So what I'm going to do is they gave me this hold so I tried it, you know, wrote that down and then I'm going to pretend that that holding fix is right in the middle of my of my heading indicator there. I'm going to draw my 90 degree radial out of that. So nice thing about your head indicator, it shows you where all your radials are, right. Remember radials radiate out from that navaid. Alright, so what I'm going to do is the 90 degree radial, it's coming out this direction. They told me left hand turns. So that means once I'm inbound going and establishing the hold, all my turn is going to be to the left. So I'm going inbound. I'm holding east of the vor. So this would be east of the VOR on this side it's non standard turns. So it's going to be a left hand turn. So I'm going to be doing left hand turns like that. Alright, so there's my race track. Now if I use my rule of thumb, put that up there, I can draw my teardrop they said left hand turn. So I'm going to use my left hand or my left thumb. Put it over there, draw my line. You can see a majority of that holding pattern is in the parallel sector. So what that means is if I stay on this heading, my three six zero heading comes straight up this direction. I'm going to hit that, hit my intersection right here. And then I'm going to parallel, I'm going to make a turn to the right and parallel outbound for one minute. At the end of one minute I'm going to turn inbound and then establish myself in the hold. So that's the easiest way to see that. Alright, I got a couple more for you here. So it says hold west of the NOX VOR on the 270 radial. 10DME Fix left turns, maintain 7,000ft. Expect further clearance at 2217Z. Time now is 2200Z. Alright so in this case I'm flying a 300 degree heading. They want us on the 270 radio and we're going to hold west. So remember it's not here's the vor, west is going to be up here. This doesn't necessarily mean north because it's the top of the case. It's direction dependent. So I'm going to draw my line there. It's going to tell me okay, there's my two seven zero radial and so I'm going to be left hand turns right. So that means everything is going to be left hand. Alright, use my rule of thumb. You can see there, it's clearly in the teardrop sector. So I'm coming up this direction and maintain a 30 degree offset. At the end of one minute I'm going to turn inbound. Convenient here. So here's my two seven zero, here's my 30 degree. I'm already on my 30 degree intercept. I'm just going to hit that fix time for a minute. At the end of a minute I'm going to turn inbound and be established in my hold. Alright, last hold question here. So hold south of cleft intersection on the 170 radial. Maintain 5,000ft. Expect further clearance at 05 17Z time now 0500. So here you go, here's our fix. 170. So my line is, line's gonna come out there. So there's my 170 degree radial. They didn't give me a turn direction so that means it's gonna be right hand turns right. So it's gonna be looking like that all My turn is gonna be to the right do. My rule of thumb clearly puts it in the direct. So I'm going to hit my fix, make a right hand turn. I'm already established in the into the hold there. Alright, so that's VR holding. So that's the biggest issue people have is actually getting established into the hold itself. Once you get in the hold, it's pretty easy to fly. Right hand turns, left hand turns, timing for a minute, adjusting, adjusting your inbound leg for winds and all that kind of stuff. Alright. The next one that students have issues with is GPS in lieu of dme. So this is right out of the Instrument flying handbook, the AIM. It's an AC90 108. How do you actually use GPS for DME? Not all aircraft nowadays have DME. Most airplanes have GPS nowadays. If it's an instrument airplane, it probably has GPS because that's what a movie majority of what aircraft are going to. So you don't necessarily need DME anymore to fly approaches. GPS can be used in lieu of it, but there are some things that you have to be able to do with that GPS for it to count as dme. I highlighted here on the slide some of the more important ones. You can read all of this if you want. But the big things I want to highlight here. Here in number two, it says if the fix is identified by a five letter name that is contained in the GPS airborne database, select either the name fix as the GPS waypoint or the facility establishing the DME fix as the active waypoint. So that's probably one of the biggest things that you have to be able to do. So that identifier has to be in the database. You can't make it up, you can't put in the lat longs and call it up or make your own based on the range or anything like that has to be in the database. Let's see, it says here number three. The only acceptable facility is the DME facility that is charted as the one used to establish the DME fix. So that means you can't use a different navaid. So we're going to see here in a minute using it for an ils. The only facility that you can use is the one that is actually based on that dme. You can't based on something else. Like I said, the five letter name has to be contained in the facility. If it's not in the facility, then you have to select the facility itself that is being used to establish the DME fix and then selecting the DME provided facility as the active GPS waypoint. A pilot is over the fix when the GPS distance from the active waypoint equals the charted DME value. So it works just like your distance measuring equipment, your DME. So an aircraft with DME, if it says that you're 10.5 miles from the VOR and you look at your GPS when it says 10.5, it should be the same. Now realize DME is going to use slant range where GPS is just ground range. So it's going to be off a little bit depending on how high you are. The FAA understands that when you're shooting an approach, it's negligible. It's, you know, a few tenths of a mile, it's not a big deal. When you're enroute high altitudes, they compensate for that. It's all in that AC90,108 as well as in the instrument flying Handbook if you want to read about how it's off just a little bit. But it's not a big deal, alright? Big thing is if you put in the NAVAID and you're using it for the distance, that distance is acceptable. So let's talk about the big one. Since all my examiners that I asked are from the Vegas area, this is one that gets students all the time. It's the ILS Localizer, Runway 12 left into North Las Vegas. You guys that aren't flying in Vegas, all over the world, same procedures can apply to you as well. So when you're doing your instrument training, look and see if this is if this might happen to you as well in the Garmin 430. It's a really good unit. What you're going to see here is when you go in, you select an approach, you go to the procedures, select an approach, it pops up here and tells you, hey, look at this, I got an ILS 12 left. It's got the two GPS approaches. But what happens if I select that ILS 12 left. Alright, first it's going to tell me that the GPS guidance is for monitoring only. So it's going to ask you if you want to activate the approach. What that means is you can't fly the localizer using just the GPS like you would GPS approach. So if you activate it doing this way, make sure that you have the correct localizer in there. So 110.7 is our localizer here for ihog. And it has to be in the V lock or the VOR localizer mode. So you have to have your CDI set for that. Alright, that is acceptable if you do that. All right. Now what it's going to do is it's going to come down here. Once you activate, it's going to put that approach into your waypoints in here. You can see I'm still going off of V lock. So that means all my CDI indications are going to be based off of the actual ILS itself, the actual localizer itself. But it's going to give me distance. So in this case it's going to give me distance from Kigee and From the Runway 1, 2 left as well as the missed approach down here at Tupac. The problem is if that glide slope is noted out of service or it fails or something like that and you back yourself up with the localizer, how are you going to identify these step down fixes along with that, how are you going to identify Jocus as well outside here? Alright, so it's only giving you the information for Kigee as well as your missed approach. Once you pass Kigee here, it's going to sequence over here to the missed approach point and it's going to start giving you distances from that. Alright, so the 6.2 and the 3.5, that's from the actual localizer itself, the localizer antenna, which is on the other end of the Runway. All right, you can see here at the missed approach point, it's 0.8 miles away. Alright, that's a missed approach. When you, you get to the Runway one, two, left, it's going to say zero. So what you're going to have to do in order to figure out where Jocas is, if you're doing it this way is you're going to sit here and say, okay, well how far is Jocas from kigee? Well, it's 3.3 miles. So what you're going to do is when your GPS tells you that you're 3.3 from Kige, you know that you're at Jocas. Alright? Then if you step down inside here, so once you hit Kiggy, it's going to go zero, then it's going to start, it's going to sequence automatically to the Mr. Approach point. Now if you're not using that glide slope and you're going to use veg Q here, how do you identify that? Well, it's 2.7 from Jackboo, which is 2.7 from here. So you have to add those up and it's going to be 5.2 miles for this one. Then once you get past that, you can see it's a Lot of math, right? And it's a lot of mental stuff that you have to go through. You can do it, it's legal because the waypoints are all in the database. Right. But that's a huge pain in the butt. I can't do math that fast. So what I do is. This is the TAS tech here. Put the NAV facility in as your active waypoint. So what I do is I just go over here and put IHOG in. Forget about loading that ILS approach. You don't have to do that. Just load the IHOG in here. So the IHOG is the, the four letter identifier here for the localizer itself. Now what it's going to do is it's going to give you distance from this just like your DME would. So there's no need to do math. When it says that you're at 12.6, you're at Jocas. So when it says 12.6, you're at jocas, it says you're at 9.4, you're at Kigee. In this case right here, you can see right now we're at 10.8. So that means I'm halfway between Jocas and Kigee. Makes it easy, right? So this is one of the things that students mess up a lot in Vegas. I'm assuming it's probably all over trying to figure out your DME distances and stuff like that. So while this way is legal, putting it in for the using the actual overlay in there, as long as you're following the actual localizer and distances, you have to calculate it this way. Actually putting the NAVAID in is by far easier. And when you've already got a handful of collective and cyclic, this is probably the easiest way. You don't want to be trying to calculate and do math while you're trying to navigate the weather as well. So this is what I recommend for all my students and that's what they do. Alright, last topic here is descent from the Runway to the DA or MDA. So 14 CFR 91175 defines three requirements that must be met before you descend below the MDA or below the da. So you must always be able to make a descent to landing on the intended Runway using normal maneuvers and a normal descent rate. Flight visibility that you observe must meet or exceed the minimums published for the approach and you must be able to distinctively identify one of the approved visual references for that Runway, often called the Runway environment. It alright, you can group the Runway Visual references into two groups the ones that let you descend down to 100ft above the touchdown zone elevation and the ones that allow you to land. So if you can see the white approach light system and nothing else, then you can descend down to 100ft above the touchdown zone elevation regardless of the type of approach you're flying. So if you look here, you've got the white approach light system here it's got the sequence flashers, we call that the rabbits. If you can see that, you can descend on down, but at the 100 foot point you need other visual references to descend for those other references. It's all these things right here. It's a whole list of stuff. If you've been studying for your instrument, you should be familiar with these. Your examiner is going to ask you these on your checkride, so make sure you understand these, alright? Different types of approach line system, the Runway threshold, all this kind of stuff inside here is what you're going to be looking for. So be able to regurgitate that stuff to your examiner. Alright? So your approach chart shows the lights you're going to see in two places. It's going to show it to you at the top of the approach flight. So there's your ALSF2, it's going to give you your sequence flashers and it's also going to be at the approach bottom in your airport diagram right there. So it gives you two places. So if the examiner asks you, hey, what kind of approach lighting system is this going to have? You can see it right there. It shows you exactly what it's going to do, alright? It also tells you over here what kind of visual approach you're going to have. Right? So it's got a papi in this case, alright? And then if you need to identify that more, so if you ask you, hey, what's this ALSF2, you can go to the front of your TTPS and it's going to tell you at the front of your approach book what exactly that gives you. The other thing to remember is the approach is not complete until you land or execute the missed approach. What examiners see is pilots get so excited at the side of the Runway that they duck under the glide path and get dangerously close to trees and other objects. So the examiner says, hey, yep, you break out, you can go visual. So what do the students do? They take off the hood and then they duck underneath that glide path and they get close. They don't follow that glide path on down to the Runway. What the examiners are wanting you to see is continue flying that glide path, give it a nice stable. You've already been flying a nice stable glide path. Especially if you're going to ils. Keep flying that until you get down to the Runway to a position where you can actually take over and land. Normally. Don't go visual and then drop 200ft or change that descent profile.
Alright.
Alright. So that's all the stuff that we talked about there. Alright. Hopefully you guys got some questions we can get in before. Top of the hour here. And there you go. Obviously I want to acknowledge these guys. So These are the four DPEs that I talked to and thanks for all the information they gave me. I tried to whittle it down to keep it within an hour. So there we go.
Awesome. Come back to me Gary. Yeah. Let us know what your questions are. Everybody was good. Everybody sent a lot of hellos and tell us where you were from and Merry Christmas. No specific IFR questions yet. Go ahead and type them in now. I will mention a couple things. I typed in a document. Dave Faulkner passed my IFR checkride on November 9th. Used your videos which helped me a great deal. Key is to be prepared and study your tell off which is absolutely right. I know for me it was my hardest rating hands down. Steve Busch said Merry Christmas. Awesome job on this lesson Taz Steve from Austin, Texas. So while I watch for any other comments to come in, I'll mention subscribe to our channel like if you haven't yet. We appreciate that joininstrumentpilot.com is where you can go and check out our instrument course and I'm going to put a late comer on the spot. Christopher Hauser just walked in because he was off flying somewhere. So I'm going to make him go up and say hi to Taz real quick. Go on up there, go back to their camera and we'll introduce. They know each other through videos but they've never met. So it's kind of cool that Houser was out flying the shower.
How you doing buddy? Good. Nice to meet you. I was listening to the presentation on my drive over.
Oh yeah, so sounded pretty good.
Yes, I was off flying. Sorry. I was supposed to fly yesterday but weather canceled that so I had to be with the student today and I just got back so.
Awesome. Do you have any instrument questions that you can think of for Tess?
Not at the moment.
At the moment your brain's probably tired from flying and driving back over here.
Flying already And I had to drive today. I don't like driving to my student. I much rather fly to my students, but absolutely no, I'm glad I made it here because I wanted to meet Taz. And I meant to be here earlier, but like I said, we were supposed to fly yesterday and be off today, but weather, good old northern Indiana weather.
All right, we got some more comments here, not a whole bunch. Thank you for the presentation from Ben. Awesome. That was fantastic. I'm in instrument training right now. That was from James. Rex Jester. Great presentation. Thanks. Kilt Dipper. Nice. Very helpful. I like the holding pattern cheater program. So those are catching up on our comments. And something I wanted to ask you, Taz, do you want to tell us a little bit about air work Las Vegas? Just kind of what you guys do down there. Just give them a plug a little bit and let us know what the website is and what their Facebook is and just kind of plug what you do down there.
Cool. Yep. So I'm, I'm the chief pilot down there. I fly both fixed wing and rotor more on the fixed wing side just because I got more experience than that. But I do a lot of helicopter as well. We do. We have four airplanes, actually five airplanes. We got two Cessnas and an Arrow and a Cherokee. And then we got Decathlon that we do upset recovery training, spins, all kinds of stuff like that. And then we've got Robinson 22, two Robinson 44s and a Schweitzer 300 that we do all the helicopter stuff in. Most of the instrument is in the helicopter in the Schweitzer. We do the cross countries in the 44 because the Schweitzer's a little slow, has problems getting up to the MDAs or the MEAs out in the mountains. But most of the stuff's in the Schweitzer in the 44s for that. But yeah, we do everything from private all the way up to to ATP. So awesome in both ratings airplane and helicopter both.
Got a couple questions going back to holds. When do you report established when you first hit the fix or after you've made the PT and are established inbound?
So the ATC requires says that you are established once you hit that holding fix. So whether you're entering it and then doing your procedure turn, the first time you hit that fix, you're considered established.
Your.
Procedure turn, your parallel, direct, teardrop, whatever you're doing that is considered already established in the hold because you're in the holding airspace. So once you're staying in that general area, you're establishing the hold. So the first time you hit that fix you're considered established awesome.
And the other one was not a question, but a comment from Dave Faulkner. The that I want to mention. Great job, Taz, in tackling tough material. We'll be in LV soon and lunch is on me when I see you.
Cool.
And I don't know if you've seen a picture today, but nice guy, he's been here with us. And then I just thought something that I'm going to have Gary talk about that we haven't even mentioned yet. And I'm going to let Gary tell you because something huge happened yesterday. So Gary, you get to go back to your own camera and you get to show them and tell them what happened yesterday.
Okay? Kenny and I wrote a book for our new course, remote pilot 107 online. And our book was published on Amazon and reached Amazon number one best seller yesterday. So those of you that dabble in the drones or the small unmanned aircraft in addition to helicopter flying like us, now this is out there and available. And are we still running the deal for the purchase today or not?
But we can.
Okay, if anybody's watching this program and you want to go grab a copy for 99 cents, the Kindle version on Amazon and show us proof of that transaction and give us a quick review, then we'll give you free Access, which is $107 value to our remote Pilot Online course. Tells you everything you need to know to add Remote Pilot onto your rating with the faa. And I created a coupon code this morning I'll throw out there for anybody watching. You can get $50 off of any of our membership levels being yearly or unlimited, whether it be private, commercial, CFI or instrument. And this would be the first time we've ever had a discount like this where it's just a one time $50 off instead of percentage. You just type holiday 50 into the coupon code section. So this is our last program until after Christmas. So we wanted to do something a little special there. And it's an excellent gift idea for yourself or for a family member or another pilot.
I'm calling that the Renegade Outlaw discount because I woke up this morning and find this email. Gary just decided to give you guys 50 bucks off today. I've never done that. So you can thank Gary Cleveland for the Renegade Outlaw discount.
Yeah, Kenny's. Kenny's mic's not on, but you might have heard him over mine. He's calling it the I've got it on my camera. So he's calling this discount the Renegade $50 off discount. Because since he comes in late sometimes. I just decided to throw it out there and without his permission and so take advantage of it. $50 off any of the memberships. And we are FAA certified, which means our course can be valuable to even rated pilots who wish to get their phase credits on the wings program. So go back to you for a minute. Do you have anything else?
Got one more question.
There we go.
We got the great job from Dave James. Hold question. When ATC gives you a direction, will they always give you a radial or bearing in line with that cardinal direction?
Okay, if I understand the question correctly, what they're going to do is if it's not a charted hold so it's not already on the inroot chart or on an approach plate or something like that, then yes, they will give you a radial to hold on. They're not going to just say hold west of the vor, just hold west. They got to give you something to hold on. So they're going to give you a radial to hold off of, a radial DME to hold off of or an intersection. They might tell you to hold down an intersection east or west of it, but then that intersection is going to be based on radials themselves. And if they don't ask them, they're human too, and they make mistakes. So yeah, they should. They should give you a radial.
All right, well, if you want to come back to me, that's right at one hour we went live on time today. Taz is good luck for us. He showed up and we hit number one best seller. And then we start on time and we're ending on time right at one hour. That gets all the questions. A lot of merry Christmases from all lot of you. Merry Christmas to all of you back out there for everything that you do for us. You are how we are here every day and how we have roofs over our heads and able to come to work and do what we do. So subscribe to the channel if you haven't like share. Keep supporting us on our content. Anybody? Anybody got anything they want to add before we go? Before we click out of here?
Go to your camera real quick.
Say Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, everyone.
Set your personality. Merry Christmas. See you next year from Helicopter Ground.
Sa.
