Avionics | News

Introducing…The Aviator’s Academy

ByHank Gibson May 26, 2022May 26, 2022

Imagine this …

You have plans to fly to an airport 218 miles north for a business meeting. Your window is tight; you have an early morning meeting at your office you can’t miss prior to leaving for the airport. The colleagues you are flying to meet must catch another flight within two hours of your target arrival time.

You’re comfortable flying in the current weather conditions, but a small southward-moving storm north of your destination might threaten your approach. Additionally, given the time of day, you can expect ATC delays due to vectors and know you’ll have to adjust on the fly.

Are you confident you can make the meeting in time?

If the answer isn’t immediately clear, you’re not alone. Good aeronautical decision making is of utmost importance in the air. External pressures, unexpected challenges, and your level of instrument proficiency are among the many factors to consider when considering an IFR flight.

While we can’t remove the external pressures or control the weather, we CAN help with instrument proficiency!

Introducing … The Aviator’s Academy – advanced online pilot training.

During my time training hundreds of capable and competent pilots at Texas Top Aviation, my most common observation with seasoned and rookie pilots alike is that the pilot is often aware of knowledge gaps with the airplane’s avionics after initial flight training or after upgrading to a more advanced airplane, but aren’t sure where to get answers. Simply put – expert glass panel flight training is hard to find.

They know enough to have earned their license, but still feel uneasy anticipating unexpected challenges. This leaves them feeling at best, uncomfortable, or worse, on edge and unsafe. When you’re not as proficient as you could be, an easy flight can become stressful quickly in unexpected scenarios, and things spiral from there. It doesn’t have to be this way.

That’s why The Aviator’s Academy offers online courses with real-life scenarios using glass panel avionics. You’ll gain more confidence in the air and be equipped with better aeronautical decision-making skills after learning from the best in the business.

We understand the pressures you face in the air. We get it because we have been providing expert, personalized, owner/pilot instruction since 2014 at Texas Top Aviation. With over 8000 hours of instruction given in Technically Advanced Aircraft and over 13,000 hours in total flight time, The Aviator’s Academy instructors are qualified to fly and instruct most single-engine aircraft to a level that far exceeds what a flight school can provide. Nowhere else can you get expert glass panel online instruction for Technically Advanced Aircraft.

If you’re in need of an instrument proficiency check and fly a technically advanced aircraft with glass panel instruments, this is the place to get your ground school training. Conveniently online. Expertly taught.

Mastering your glass panel avionics isn’t impossible. You just need a guide. Enroll in the course you need to take your skill to the next level. You’ll receive expert, specialized online training. Then you’ll fly with confidence.

LAUNCHING AT OSHKOSH! Visit www.aviatorsacademy.com and leave us your email to be notified when our first course drops. Come visit us at booth 3004 at Osh Kosh, July 25th-July 31st, 2022.

Brady Texas Fly In (KBBD)
ByHank Gibson February 11, 2016February 11, 2016

6th Annual Armed Forces Weekend Celebration & Fly-In, May 20-21, in Brady, TX and Curtis Field (KBBD)!

Friday Night on the Square – FREE

Fly-In Saturday, 9-4 – FREE

A Night in London with Sentimental Journey Orchestra
Saturday night 7-11 PM
Tickets for Dinner & Dance, $30 available at www.morganmilitaryaviationmuseum.com.

Some fuel is available for warbirds! Please contact the airport if you would like to bring one!
Using the ICARUS Device to Simulate IFR Conditions
ByHank Gibson January 7, 2021January 7, 2021

Most of us who have been through instrument training are familiar with the traditional view limiting devices. There is the original hood, which does a decent job of blocking a pilot’s view of outside, but there are still gaps that allow “peeking”, though that peeking doesn’t really help a pilot fly an approach. It does help them figure out which way is up, so it’s not a true simulation.

The other problem with a hood is the process of putting it on to begin simulating IFR conditions, then taking it off when it’s time to land. This process takes time and the instructor has to take the controls (or the autopilot flies), losing some of the realism of the simulation.

Overall, an IFR hood is relatively comfortable. The elastic band sits under your headset, doesn’t squeeze your heard, and doesn’t press underneath your ear cups of the headset, giving you a headache. Hoods are large and somewhat unwieldy.

Foggles are another way to simulate IFR conditions for training. Most of the time, these are safety glasses that have most of the lens blacked out or fogged out, leaving little slits at the bottom for the pilot’s eyes to see the instruments.

Foggles aren’t quite as good as an IFR hood at blocking the outside. Due to their shape, there are often cracks that allow more “peeking” then a hood. The process of beginning to simulate IFR conditions and ending the simulated IFR conditions is easier though, since all the pilot has to do is put the foggles on or slip them off, which can often be done one handed (putting them on can be more difficult one handed since they have to fit underneath your headset). Wearing them for a long period of time can get painful as your headset is probably going to start crushing them against the side of your head.

The best comfort and view limiting combination I have found, so far, is called the ViBAN. It’s very comfortable and does a really good job of simulating IFR by blocking a view of the outside.

What’s the whole goal behind a view limiting device? When a pilot starts instrument training, ideally, all the training would take place in the clouds, since that is why someone get’s an instrument rating. As we all know, this isn’t possible, hence the need to simulate IFR conditions. The problem with simulating IFR is, it’s not true IFR. True IFR conditions are different then what a hood or a set of foggles can simulate. This can lead to spatial disorientation if a fresh instrument pilot enters the clouds for the first time, having done all his training in simulated conditions.

I’ve even heard a story of a pilot who did all his IFR training with a hood, passed his check ride, went into the clouds the first time, and put the hood on because he was getting disoriented since he hadn’t ever experienced true IFR.

What about full motion simulators? How I wish every airport had a full motion simulator for instrument training. Full motion sims are truly the best way to simulate IFR conditions. A pilot can easily get spatially disoriented in a sim if he or she isn’t careful. It’s a great way to simulate IFR conditions, but, alas, this just isn’t possible.

Are we doomed to just do an okay job of training instrument pilots in simulated IFR conditions with a hood or foggles?

Nope, at least not anymore.

Enter the ICARUS Device. The ICARUS Device, which stands for Instrument Conditions Awareness Recognition and Understanding System, is an amazing piece of equipment which truly simulates IFR conditions in the training environment. The ICARUS is a plastic shield that uses a Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal film that allows the degradation of a pilot’s visibility. It clips on to a baseball cap and is attached to a battery. That battery is then bluetoothed to an iPad or iPhone App that allows the instructor to put the pilot into and take him out of simulated IFR conditions.

Originally designed for helicopter training, it’s an excellent tool for fixed wing IFR training too. I’ve been using it for the last month and a half and I am hooked. The customer’s that I have used it with truly say that they cannot see a thing outside. Because the plastic shield turns white, it really does give the view that the pilot is in the clouds. The inner ear certainly believes it. The curve of it fits the glare shield in most planes nicely (there is some custom cutting that would have to take place for specifically rounded glare shields, but it fits Cirrus and Piper Saratogas nicely, the two planes I have used it in), and it sits away from the pilot’s face, blocking out all windows, which is what clouds do.

The greatest thing from an instructor’s standpoint is the ICARUS Device app. The pilot puts the device on before taxi and I set the app to VMC. This completely clears the ICARUS Device so the pilot can see just fine for taxi and takeoff. Then, at about 400 AGL, I tap the <1/2 VIS button on the app, and boom, the pilot is in the clouds. I even have a time delay to slowly make the ICARUS Device opaque to simulate slowly entering the clouds. I do the same thing on an approach, except in the reverse order, simulating we are slowly exiting the clouds.

The ICARUS Device is a game changer for IFR training. It’s comfortable, easy to use, the battery lasts for a long time (though bring a standard USB charging cord with you in the plane because the battery failure mode makes the ICARUS Device opaque instead of transparent. You don’t want that to happen at 200 AGL!), and, most important, it truly simulates IFR conditions.

After using it, I believe all flight schools and CFII should get one of these, both in the fixed wing and helicopter world. It’s the best option for simulating IFR conditions.

Checkout the ICARUS Device website for more information and to hear the story of the company.

Texas Top Aviation, LLC was given an ICARUS Device by the ICARUS Device company to test. Texas Top Aviation, LLC was not paid for our above opinion on the ICARUS Device (trust me, if it was terrible, I would have told you!).
Scud Running
ByHank Gibson June 2, 2015

I was speaking with a pilot a few months back who was not instrument rated. He was telling me of his flying experience while continually speaking fondly of scud running. He told me several stories, most of the time with a smile on his face, about scud running to his destination while staying clear of clouds. While he was talking, my mind was cycling through the numerous accident reports I’ve seen where a scud running VFR pilot has crashed into terrain or an obstacle. Needless to say, scud running is not a very good idea.

This pilot’s stories got me to thinking, how common is the practice of scud running amongst VFR only pilots? As an instructor, I always teach my private students about personal minimums and making that no-go decision when clouds are below those personal minimums. The act of scud running falls under several of those dangerous pilot mindsets, get-there-itis, invincibility, and macho-ism, to name a few.

To bring everyone on the same page, let’s define scud running. Wikipedia has a very good definition:

Scud running is a practice in which pilots lower their altitude to avoid clouds or instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The goal of scud running is to stay clear of weather to continue flying with visual, rather than instrument, references. This practice is widely accepted to be dangerous, and has led to death in many cases from pilots flying into radio towers and high tension wires; however, even instrument-rated pilots sometimes elect to take the risk to avoid icing or embedded thunderstorms in cloud, or in situations where the minimum instrument altitudes are too high for their aircraft.

To put some numbers with that definition, a scud running VFR pilot would takeoff with a 1200-1500 foot ceiling and stay 700-1000 feet above the ground, right in the area where towers, hills, and rapidly rising terrain reside.

How do we change this mindset? Well, if someone has been scud running for years without incident, the practice becomes normal, like the pilot I mentioned above. The mindset of invincibility sets in and the practice continues. This particular pilot can also lead other pilots to adopt the same practice, encouraging them that nothing will happen to them, since we all know that our pilot peers know better than our flight instructors (insert heavy sarcasm here).

In order to change this mindset, instructors need to emphasize personal minimums from day one. This includes ceilings, visibility, and winds. For a seasoned pilot, a review of accident statistics might help the process.

Scud running is not a safe practice. If you’re a scud runner, you need to rethink your attitude. Is getting there really worth it?

Still not convinced? Read this pilot’s experience from AOPA.
Pancake Fly-In At KCVB
ByHank Gibson November 28, 2014

For those of you in the Hill Country looking to kick off the Christmas month right, head over to the Castroville Airport (KCVB) on Saturday, December 6th and get yourself a short stack of flapjacks. For just $5, you can get yourself a good hearty breakfast that includes coffee or juice and bacon or sausage. The eating starts at 0800 and goes until 1200, local time. Come with an empty belly and an empty gas tank as CVB currently has some of the lowest priced gas in South Texas, currently listed at $4.70/gallon.

There will be plenty of hangar flying, lots of airplanes to look at, and most importantly, lots of pancakes!
Weather Avoidance
ByHank Gibson October 31, 2014

I began flying a Piper Malibu earlier this year. For those of you not familiar with the original PA-46, a Malibu has a Continental TSIO-320 engine, with 310 HP. It’s pressurized and cruises at about 185-200 KTAS.

A few things are introduced to the equation when pilots start flying higher, faster, and farther. When you start flying over longer distances, weather becomes more of an issue. On a quick hop from, say, Austin to Dallas, you can be pretty sure of what the weather will be since it’s a short trip. When you fly from Austin to LA, leave in the morning, land once along the way, and arrive in the afternoon after spending six and a half hours in the air, weather can change a lot in that amount of time.

A must for any pilot flying high and over long distances is some kind of Nexrad system, whether it be a Garmin 696, or it shows up on your GPS or MFD. Having this situation awareness is very helpful when planning ahead as to what to do about weather. A stormscope is also a handy tool, since you can see where the lightning is with it.

Cold fronts can be pretty nasty, depending on how strong and how fast they are moving. A strong, fast moving cold front usually has a lot of convective activity associated with it. The tricky thing with storms associated with fronts is that storms form in lines, most of the time. If you’re trying to cross a front in the morning, you can usually get high enough over the clouds with a pressurized airplane since the temperature is still relatively low to get clear of the cumulonimbus clouds. The cloud tops will only be around ten or twelve thousand feet.

Crossing fronts in the afternoon when daytime heating is pushing the tops of the CBs up to the 20-40 thousand foot range, it’s best to land, have a meal, stretch your legs, and wait till the sun starts to go down before pushing on. Do not, under any circumstances, try and go through the cumulonimbus clouds associated with a cold front in a small airplane. Not only is it uncomfortable (the turbulence bounces you around pretty good), but you’ll get ice, scare the passengers, and, if you’re in the heart of a storm, the plane could come apart.

When crossing mountains, the weather is always highly unpredictable. If it’s a clear day, no matter your altitude, you’ll probably pick up some turbulence from all the rising air off the peaks. If there is moisture in the air, there are going to be isolated to scattered thunderstorms in the summer time. The advantage of flying high when there are isolated or scattered storms is you can utilize the see and avoid method.

See and avoid is simple. When the storms aren’t embedded in other clouds, it’s actually rather easy to spot the big, rising clouds and go around them. The same concept holds true when avoiding those pesky pop up thunderstorms in humid areas like Houston and Florida.

One thing that I learned this summer was this. Sometimes, with an area of closely grouped storms, the cloud base is actually quite high (some storms I went underneath in New Mexico had cloud bases of 15,000 MSL). The thing to do here is just stay below the bases of the clouds and go around the areas of rain. These will be visible and you’ll be able to navigate around them. With bases even as low 9-10 thousand feet, it’s a much better idea to stay below the clouds, sacrifice some speed, and dodge the rain shafts.

The most important concept to take away is don’t fly into a thunderstorm. If there are a bunch of really high clouds in front of you and you don’t see a safe way around them, descend down and land, wait it out, and then continue on your way.
Angle of Attack (AOA)
ByMike Hostage January 27, 2020January 29, 2020

You are hand-flying an in-the-weather descent, power back, heading for the FAF. You start a 30 degree banked turn at your lead point to cross the FAF, when your passenger behind you gasps. Looking over your shoulder, you see he has spilled his drink into his lap…too bad for him! However, when you turn your head back to your panel, your inner ear tumbles and you see 45 degrees of bank, 15 degrees nose low, airspeed increasing.

Congratulations! You have managed to get distracted and sucked into an unusual attitude recovery. By the book, you should roll wings level, pull to the horizon, and adjust power as necessary to keep the airspeed within limits. In this scenario, if you had not experienced vertigo, you might have been able to roll to less than 30 degrees of bank, recover your turn, pull the nose up to less than the original descent attitude, pulled a bit of power to slow back to your desired penetration speed and then resumed your desired ground track. However, this would only be appropriate if you had full situational awareness as to the deviations caused by the look over your shoulder, plus full confidence that the moderate corrective actions would put you back on your desired flight path.

As a military aviator, I learned unusual attitude recoveries based upon hard maneuvering at extreme pitch and bank angles. In the hard-maneuvering environment, an unusual attitude could be 90 degrees straight up, airspeed decreasing below 120 kts…or 80 degrees nose low, 135 degrees of bank, airspeed increasing through 500 kts… etc. In these cases, understanding angle of attack, or AOA, is critical to maintaining controlled flight and returning to a normal attitude.

In an extreme nose-high attitude, a military aviator is trained to roll the aircraft to 90 degrees of bank, ease off the back-stick pressure to reduce AOA, add power as required, and allow the nose to slice back towards level, rolling to wings level as the nose approaches the horizon. If nose low, the recovery procedure is to roll rapidly, within asymmetric g limits, until wings level, then to pull at optimum g loading to recover to level flight. For the nose-low recovery, power was normally reduced until airspeed could be assessed and brought under control. However, when doing the nose-low pullout at 7-9 gs, pulling the power for too long would leave you much to slow to resume combat.

The AOA gauge on a fighter’s glare shield is a primary reference during hard maneuvering and for landing. The AOA for optimum maneuvering is 13 degrees, displayed as the green circle or “green donut” on the gauge. The red chevron on top represents a slow condition of 15 degrees or more and the yellow lower chevron represents 11 degrees or less.

For normal landing in the F-16C, the pilot slows to 220 kts and configures abeam the touchdown point while mentally computing the final approach airspeed of 136 kts plus 4 additional knots for each 1000 lbs of fuel. When rolling off the perch and flying the final turn, the pilot would usually only glance once at the airspeed once to ensure final turn airspeed of 180 kts while using the AOA sight gauge as the primary indicator of a best performance turn. As long as the AOA was green donut (13 degrees) or less, you would not stall. If on speed and 13 degrees wasn’t going to get you around the turn to line up with the runway, you knew you were going to overshoot. You never wanted to see the red chevron of 15 degrees or more as that meant you were too slow, pulling too hard, and in danger of building an un-recoverable sink rate!

Few GA aircraft are currently equipped with AOA indicators, though there are several after market devices available for retrofit. However, knowing the impact of AOA and how to manage it is vital to safe aviating, even without an AOA gauge. The bottom line is, as long as you don’t ask the wing to produce more angle of attack than it can handle, you won’t stall.

Practicing final turn stalls, to know what the wing feels like as you get too slow or pull too much on the controls, increasing AOA past the critical point, will keep you safe when you encounter that unexpected overshooting wind or you find yourself inadvertently on too tight of a downwind leg. Better to overshoot or take it around to try again, than to pull too hard and exceed critical AOA.

Mike Hostage is a retired USAF pilot with 37 years of experience, flying a wide variety of aircraft. An instructor pilot for more than half of his 4800 flight hours, Mike is currently qualified in a Cirrus SR-22T and regularly flies his two homebuilt sailplanes.