I recently gave a presentation at the Piper M-Class Owner’s and Pilot’s Association (PMOPA) East Coast Regional Seminar at the beautiful Greenbrier Resort in White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia on Icing. It’s that time of year in the US where Icing becomes a much more relevant topic for pilots, especially pretty much anywhere outside Texas …
A lot of general aviation pilots don’t know what a flight director is, let alone how to use it. Most of us received our instrument training on either steam gauges without a flight director, or a glass panel with not autopilot (hence no flight director). Or, your CFII didn’t know how to utilize the flight …
It’s time to pick up your airplane with its new modern avionics package. The plane has been at the avionics shop for 3 months getting upgraded from all the old steam gauges, the trusty Garmin 530W, and the ancient autopilot that didn’t fly a glideslope well for the last 10 years. You’ve seen pictures of …
We live in a day and age of amazing aviation technology. 20 years ago, GPS was brand new to the GA marketplace and Avidyne had a cutting edge full glass panel running on Windows ’98 technology. Garmin was still a year out from debuting the G1000. Fast forward to 2023. We have GPS approaches that …
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The autopilot is a great tool for pilots. It’s vital for a pilot to fully understand the autopilot in his/her airplane, what it’s there for, and how to work it. We at The Aviator’s Academy see lots of pilots struggling with what button to push or experience confusion when the autopilot is doing something unexpected …
I recently got the privilege to go on a tour of the Ft. Worth Center facility. It was with our annual fly in group with Texas Top Aviation. The event was in Dallas, which made it very easy to get to the Ft. Worth Center facility by the DFW Airport. Pulling into the parking lot …
I had someone tell me earlier this week that in order to best understand how to do a certain task, it helps to understand the logic behind how to do that task. I believe that is true in doing a lot of different tasks in the course of life, but especially true in learning how …
Lately, I’ve been hearing of a number of IFR clearances where the pilot receives a DME Fix off of a VOR Radial as part of the IFR routing, especially going back and forth between Austin and Dallas for low altitude airplanes. The initial panic sets in of, “Wait, what? You’re giving me a VOR radial? …
Garmin has lots of cool stuff that help pilots. One of those is their Flight Stream. A Flight Stream is a bluetooth connection between the airplane’s GPS unit (it works with any Garmin GPS, from a 430 all the way up through a Garmin G5000) and any portable device, either Apple (Foreflight or Garmin Pilot) …
In a previous Glass Panel Minute, I wrote about how to set up a hold in Foreflight. In this week’s Glass Panel Minute, I am continuing on with the holding theme as we are going to go through the steps to holding on the Garmin 530/430 units. The Garmin 530 and 430 units were revolutionary …
