Just south of the equator in the mountains of Papua, Indonesia on the island of New Guinea, pilots spend their days carrying food, building supplies, doctors, pigs, and passengers into some of the most remote and extreme airstrips on the planet. That’s where I fly.
Each morning I load my Cessna Grand Caravan with 2,600 lbs of (insert strange cargo here) and depart my home base of Wamena just after the sun sends its first rays of light across the waking skies above. I spend my day winding through narrow valleys and crossing high altitude mountain passes with building clouds and poor communication, only to land on short, narrow airstrips with steep slopes and little room for error. Most of these one-way in, one-way out runways require me to commit to landing well before touchdown due to terrain that is too close to allow for a safe go-around. Everything better be right when I cross that decision point or I could be in for some excitement.
The need to keep wide margins of safety might seem obvious in environments like mine, but that doesn’t make them any less important where you fly. You may be a new pilot or an old timer, but keeping your margin should always be on the top of your priority list.
Let’s unpack this further. Margin is not just maintaining the regulatory requirements for cloud clearances or minimum altitudes. It’s more than planning for an alternate airport or carrying the required fuel reserve. Margin is breathing room. It is that extra maneuvering room, the Plan C, the well thought out options that provide you multiple “outs” in any given situation. Margin is what gets you home when things take a turn for the worse.
Margin comes in all shapes and sizes. For myself it includes maintaining double my required turn radius in narrow valleys or choosing not to land when my groundspeed is just 1 knot too high at a short and slippery airstrip. For you, it could be determining a ceiling or visibility minimum requirement that is more conservative than the legal ones or setting a wind limitation that you know is reasonable. When it comes down to it, keeping your margin means you don’t push to the ragged edge of your skill or the aircraft’s capability.
Margin can also refer to your mental or emotional capacity. Are you mentally prepared to divert and miss that important event because the weather is getting bad? Are you ready to handle the disappointment of passengers when you arrive over your airstrip and choose not to land due to approaching rain or a factor that is difficult for a non-pilot to understand? Are you willing to cancel a flight on an important client because you are coming down with a cold or didn’t get adequate sleep? As the PIC of your flying machine, you alone are responsible for the safety of the aircraft and the people on board and those are the tough calls that only you can make.
Fatigue, overconfidence, and complacency are the biggest obstacles to keeping your margin. They are all very subtle dangers and you may be experiencing them without even recognizing it. Fatigue can slow down your thought process leaving you behind the plane and backed into a corner before you know it. Overconfidence might cause you to push weather or commit to a course of action that has no favorable alternatives. Complacency will lead you to believe that, because you have 2000 hours in a particular make and model, you don’t need to do a thorough preflight or complete the pre-landing checklist.
Regardless of experience level, operating environment, fancy avionics, and level of proficiency, margin is something that we all need plenty of. So as you go about your upcoming flights, be asking yourself what you can do to build in more margin. It just might be what gets you home.
Pete Greenwald is a transplant to Atlanta, Georgia who has fallen in love with all things Southern, including his wife, Ashley. As a pilot and A&P with Mission Aviation Fellowship, he flies the Cessna Grand Caravan in Papua, Indonesia serving people who live in isolation. In his spare time he is on the hunt for the best burger around.
I was flying in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas a few weeks ago and heard an IFR clearance given to a King Air that pricked my ears up. It was a clearance from CRP to LRD, but the routing was one you don’t hear too often anymore. Because of active military airspace, the routing was via a radial and DME off the CRP VOR (so a point defined by the radial and DME) to another radial and DME point off the LRD VOR.
It took me a second to think about how to do this the easiest (without setting up the VOR and watching the DME). After a moment’s thought, it’s actually a snap with the G1000. You create 2 user waypoints, one for each Radial/DME spot, then put those 2 user waypoints in your Flight Plan.
Here’s how.
Step 1
Using the big knob, go to the Waypoint chapter. Once there, scroll down to the User Waypoint page using the small knob.
Step 2
Press the New soft key. If you want to name the waypoint something specific, you can do that at the top of the page. If not, it will default to something like VOR 1 or VOR 2.
Step 3
Under Waypoint Type, use the small knob to select RAD/DIS (stands for Radial/Distance).
Step 4
Under Reference Waypoints, again using the small knob (or your keypad), type or dial in the VOR identifier, the radial from that VOR, and the DME distance. Press enter and you are done.
Once you have both User Waypoints created, then just put them in your flight plan (if you forget what you named them, you can just go back to the User Waypoint page), and off you go.
For years, there has been clamoring for airplanes to get rid of lead in piston engine Avgas. In the early 2000s, Thielert created a Jet A burning piston engine for Diamond Aircraft that gained some traction, but Thielert had internal issues and ended up declaring bankruptcy. Several other Jet A piston engines have come down the line since then to some success (Diamond is currently using 2 Austro manufactured Jet A piston engines on it’s DA62 and a Continental manufactured Jet piston on the new DA50).
The problem with a Jet A burning piston engine, though, is that those engines would be very expensive to put on existing airplanes, not to mention the cost of the STC alone.
Insert GAMI (General Aviation Modifications, Inc.), the famed Ada, Oklahoma company that championed turbo normalization, balanced injectors, and lean of peak operations. For those that have been to GAMI’s engine class, you know that these guys are at the very top of their game in engine knowledge.
In 2010, GAMI started the process of creating an Unleaded form of Avgas, terming it G100UL (the irony of traditional Avgas, 100LL, is the LL starts for low lead, but the lead levels in 100LL are actually quite high. UL stands for UnLeaded). Just before Osh Kosh in 2021, GAMI revealed that it’s work has come to fruition, gaining an STC for G100UL for Lycoming powered Cessna 172s.
The amazing thing about GAMI’s product is that it is able to mix with 100LL and not cause any issues. This means fuel trucks, fuel lines, fuel pumps, and aircraft fuel tanks don’t have to have any modifications to them to use G100UL. Plus, pilots will see longer engine life using G100UL because of the simple elimination of the lead. In tests, combustion chambers in cylinders burned cleaner, so theoretically, cylinders and engines will last a lot longer.
According to the company, GAMI has a few more tests to run and, assuming those go well, G100UL will be available for a whole lot more airplanes. An STC will still be required for the use of G100UL in a specific airplane, but the hope is, eventually, 100LL will be completely replaced by G100UL. The only downside is that G100UL is expected to cost about $1/gallon more than 100LL.
GAMI has partnered with Avfuel, so expect to see 100UL showing up at all Avfuel FBOs in the next year or two.
To read more, check out the press release on AOPA’s website.
The FAA defines personal minimums “as an individual pilot’s set of procedures, rules, criteria, and guidelines for deciding whether and under what conditions to operate (or continue operating) in the National Airspace System.” Have you actually given thought as to why we choose the personal minimums we do? From the beginning of initial pilot training, weather minimums were established for day-to-day training and during solo flight. I didn’t realize it at first, but I later learned these limits were not just an insurance mandate, but these minimums were set at the time to safely operate an aircraft based on my “then” current experience.
So here’s the question: what are your personal minimums and WHY do YOU have them? Do you ever lower or raise your minimums? Are your minimums based solely on your overall experience level or do they take into account other variables such as advanced avionics? For pilots that fly multiple aircraft like I do, can and do your minimums change in regard to category or type of aircraft you are flying? It’s a judgment decision on how you chose your minimums. However, it’s important that time is taken before you strap into the cockpit for each flight to critically think about the different risk factors and variables which may affect your decision for the minimums you choose.
To guide us, let’s try briefly apply the FAA’s Personal Minimums Checklist to see how risk factors might shape what personal minimums or decisions we make for the day. Remember, just because you have been flying with a certain set of minimums one day, doesn’t mean you can’t adjust your minimums to a higher value given an ever-changing situation.
The acronym most pilots have heard is PAVE:
Pilot– We all should be familiar with the acronym IMSAFE associated with this. It addresses variables such as Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, and Emotion. But how do you adjust your personal minimums using this guideline? Have you ever thought about raising your minimums for a training flight if you only got 4-6 hours of sleep, instead of 8? Or if you anticipate a hard IFR flight with a long day, maybe taking a safety pilot to mitigate the chance of a mistake if you’re forecasting having to shoot an approach to your weather planning minimums.
Aircraft– Personally, this is a really important factor for me when deciding what minimums to apply. I often spend a large majority of my time asking myself; is this aircraft properly equipped for the flight? This question goes beyond just looking at the logbook for a properly equipped and legal aircraft. A professional pilot should think further. Am I flying a traditional 6-pack “steam gauge” layout, non-slaved compass card, with a separate OBS gauge for course guidance? What if the aircraft doesn’t have an auto-pilot? What if I’m flying an aircraft equipped with a dual auto-pilot, dual GPS with an integrated glass cockpit? I can comfortably say my personal minimums change depending on the equipment I have available.
A pilot should also look at his/her recency with the aircraft. For example, if you are qualified to fly both airplanes and helicopters, maybe you should choose to have higher personal minimums in one particular airframe or if you haven’t flown that airframe within 30, 60 or 90 days. This is a very important factor for the owner/pilot.
EnVironment– Most of the time, when we think of environment, we ask ourselves, is the weather legal for me to take off and, more importantly, can I conduct this flight safely? Basic flight planning should have taught us to take into consideration crosswind limits, day versus night, and the type of airspace the flight is conducted in. Thought should also be given to how you set your personal minimums in regards to the particular type of environment you might rarely encounter. Flying an approach to your minimums in the flat plains of Texas during the day is one thing, but how would you adjust your weather minimums flying to a new airport, at night, with no moon illumination, in the mountains of Colorado? Could you reduce the risk and adjust your minimums in this scenario with two pilots?
External Pressures – What external pressures are affecting your flight? Passengers, the owner, “get-there-it is”, the desire to impress someone? Although external pressures should never be a factor when conducting a flight, they almost always play a role in your decision whether to conduct the flight or not. For example, a professional pilot gets hired to do a flight and the weather is below their personal minimums. The pilot could be tempted to lower their minimums by 100 feet to take the flight for a paying customer. This scenario plays out every day across the country whether it’s a professional pilot or owner/pilot. It would be foolish not to consider this type of pressure. Always make sure you have a plan if and when you encounter this situation. Planning your flight and having a plan to deal with these potential scenarios ahead of time ensures you stick to your minimums. It can be as simple as telling your passengers, or the owner, well ahead of your flight what your personal minimums are to accept the flight, and to ensure they, or you, have a back-up plan!
Most pilots will never break a hard limitation such as an airframe cross wind limitation, or engine limit, but the chances of breaking a personal minimum are realistic. Think about the last time you went on a diet and broke your plan because you were tempted by your friends or family during an outing. Self-imposed personal minimums can be hard to enforce and we need to acknowledge this as humans. Here are a few techniques that you can use to assist in making a decision using personal minimums and help reduce the influence of external pressures.
Step 1: Sit down with your CFI/CFII and fill out a personal minimums worksheet. Filling one out by yourself is a good start but having an outside objective view will help in making sure your personal minimums are realistic. Remember, it is easy to convince ourselves that we can do something even though we have set personal minimums. Talk with other pilots to see if you have set realistic expectations.
Step 2: Preflight planning must start a few days in advanced. It can be as easy as checking what the forecast might be and looking at the projected route, near-by alternate airports, and various approaches. This can be done quickly and will give you a heads up on whether the flight can be safely conducted or not. By alerting the passengers or owner early enough, alternate plans can be developed. An extra pilot can be added, the passengers can fly commercial, bring along a CFI, or cancel the trip altogether and seek alternate transportation. The main point is the decision was made well ahead of the flight when conditions didn’t look favorable. This helps in removing external pressures and ensures you don’t go below your personal minimums.
Step 3: Never be afraid to ask for a second opinion. Part 135 operators have set procedures for conducting flights which assist the pilots in making decisions. These set procedures help remove external pressures by allowing the pilot to say, “The rules don’t allow for this, or this is how we will conduct the flight!” However, under Part 91, the pilot has to take ownership for all phases of the flight. This is where talking it out with another pilot helps with mitigating external factors and the environment. Ideally, this person should have more experience and be able to talk through the situation. For instance, if I’m flying to a new destination, I often seek the advice from another pilot who’s familiar with the area. They may have key insights into weather patterns, preferred approaches, or hazards to avoid. In certain situations, asking for another pilot’s opinion might be what influences your go/no-go decision! You’ll be amazed how much you can learn just from talking to other pilots.
Step 4: Continue to build your experience and knowledge base. Building experience requires us to push our abilities, and sometimes this may be to the limit. However, this can be done in a controlled training environment or just going out and experiencing it. Get a new license, fly regularly with a CFI/CFII, and always try and take advantage of training opportunities. For example on your next flight from point A to point B, practice hand flying an approach, do a short field landing, a quick steep turn, etc. Quality flight time is always better than quantity. Continue to challenge yourself and try not to become complacent.
Personal minimums are a tool to assist in every pilot’s aeronautical decision making process. Use your personal minimums to guide your final go/no-go decision and remember to stick to the plan. I encourage you to review the FAA’s Risk Management Handbook (FAA-H-8083-2). Appendix B has Sample Risk Management Scenarios and reviewing them will give a better understanding how to apply the techniques discussed to your everyday flying.
Pedro Vargas-Lebron is a King Air 200 and uH-60 Blackhawk Instructor pilot with the Texas Army National Guard. Pedro is a CFI/CFII/MEI both in airplanes and helicopters with over 4000 hours of flight time, half as an instructor pilot.
This is the second part in a series on drones and Unmammed Aerial Systems (UAS). To read Part 1, Drones: A Brief History, please click here.
I’m surprised how often I’ve been asked about drones by concerned passengers as they load up for a charter flight. Most commonly I’m asked how many drones I’ve seen while I’m flying, or how many drones I’ve hit/ almost hit. Sadly, the media has made this drone crisis into something that it isn’t. I’ve never seen a drone while I was operating a full scale aircraft, and I’ve certainly never been put into a situation where I felt that a drone was a threat to my safety or the safety of the flight. In fact, I only personally know one pilot who has reportedly seen one around an airport and that was an isolated incident (and a non-event).
The reality is that while Unmanned Aerial Vehicles can be a real danger to full scale aircraft, incidents aren’t actually all that common and detailed information is often lacking or missing altogether. It is likely that some of the reported drone incidents were actually a case of a pilot confusing a loose balloon or a bird for a drone. This, combined with the media’s sensationalizing of every “close” encounter nationwide has led the public to believe that the problem is much bigger than it actually is.
In actuality, when the AMA (Academy of Model Aeronautics, the USA’s governing body for model aircraft) analyzed the data from the FAA’s 764 recorded Drone sightings, only 27 of them (3.5%) were actually recorded as “near misses” or “near collisions.” Additionally, only 10 of the records (1.3%) indicate that pilot was required to take evasive action.
The records also include reports of drone sightings at altitudes which would be impossible for civilian models to attain (19,000-24,000′). Finally, some of the sightings took place in areas which are specifically set aside for model aircraft and drones to operate. In those cases, the person flying the drone when it was reported was actually doing so in a safe and legal manner in an area designated for that specific purpose. If you’re interested, the whole article is available here and has a lot of great information.
As pilots, it is important that we do our part in helping reduce the risk of drone strikes. The biggest thing that we can do to help is to report any activity that we see so that it can be investigated and hopefully the drone operator can be found and dealt with. Try to get as much detail as possible about the incident, such as the size, color, location, direction and altitude of any sighted UAVs and report it to the closest tower or controlling agency.
Recently, the people in Washington have come up with a bunch of new rules to regulate the operation of model aircraft. As of this year, every unmanned aerial vehicle between 0.5 and 55 lbs must be registered with the FAA and have an FAA issued registration number located on the model itself. The logic here is that if someone crashes a drone where it shouldn’t have been operated, the officials will be able to identify the owner of the model and take action.
Model manufacturers and vendors have also agreed to start providing information about a program called “Know Before You Fly” (KBYF) in the packaging of the drones. This program seeks to help educate new hobbyists to the rules and responsibilities associated with model aviation. For more information on KBYF, here is a link to their website.
In the end, the sad reality is that it’s a combination of many factors: new technology making models cheaper and easier to fly, GPS navigation and automation, the media blowing the incidents out of proportion, and inexperienced and foolish operators which have caused the growing concern and required the FAA’s action. I think that it is important to understand that thousands of people have been flying radio controlled models for many years responsibly and this has never been a problem. The AMA has rules (which are the same ones now adopted by the FAA) regarding flying location, altitudes, speeds, and more which have kept both the modelers on the ground and the pilots in the air safe until now. Its a classic case of a few foolish individuals who have caused all modelers to be cast in a bad light.
There is no reason to fly in fear, though. A pilot should always be watching for hazards as he or she is flying, regardless of the variety. In fact, according to the FAA’s website, there were 142,000 wild life STRIKES with civil aircraft in the USA between 1990 and 2013. That seems like a much bigger concern to me than the 764 reported drone SIGHTINGS. As with any new technology, drones are suffering from growing pains. As the rules fall into place and new operators become better experienced, hopefully we will hear about fewer incidents on the evening news. Anyway, I’ll stop “droning” on. Fly safe.
Andrew Robinson is a 135 Charter Pilot and flight instructor who lives with his wife and 2 daughters in Pennsylvania. He flies Pilatus PC-12s and instructs in Beechcraft Bonanzas.
The first task I give my new instrument students before we start training is to find a view limiting device that they like. There’s the hood that everyone hates (which has been used since the beginning of instrument training,though it isn’t that uncomfortable) or foggles, which usually end up becoming very uncomfortable very quickly. The headset ends up pressing the sides of the foggles into the side of your head, leaving lumps and scars that hurt for days.
Well, there is finally another solution that combines the hood and foggles. Meet the ViBAN.
ViBAN brags that it is the most comfortable IFR view limiting device out there. I have a customer who has one and he loves it. It’s easy to put reading glasses on underneath while still blocking the view of the exterior of the plane. It doesn’t leave bruises against the side of your head, either.
If you’re looking for something different for your IFR training, give ViBAN a try.
When filing an IFR flight plan, part of the process is determining whether or not an alternate airport is required. An alternate airport is required when the following conditions exist(as is outlined by the FAA in 91.169 (b)):
The weather conditions at the destination airport
From 1 hour before your arrival time to 1 hour after your estimated time of arrival, the weather conditions are forecast to be below
2,000 Feet AGL and/or
3 statute miles visibility
Let’s paint a scenario. You are traveling from KSAT (San Antonio International Airport) to KHBV (Jim Hogg County Airport in Hebbronville, TX). You start to file your flight plan and get down to the space where you put your alternate in. Since Laredo (KLRD) is the closest airport with a TAF, you check Laredo’s TAF and see that the forecast conditions there at your ETA are ceilings 1,500 and visibility of 2sm.
Based on this information, you need an alternate airport. Now, the process of finding one. In Part 91.169 (c), the forecast conditions at the alternate airport must be at or above:
600 Feet AGL and 2sm visibility for a precision approach, or
800 Feet AGL and 2sm visibility for a non-precision approach
Alright, now we have some guidance. Laredo is the nearest airport to KHBV, and we know the forecast from the above TAF showing the conditions are forecast to be above the alternate minimums outlined in Part 91, so let’s pick Laredo. All done?
Not quite. A lot of airports have Non-Standard Alternate Minimums. How do you figure out if they do? The easiest way is to look at any approach plate for the airport. In the notes section of the government plates, there will be a black triangle with an A in it. That means there are non-standard alternate minimums published for that airport (in layman’s terms, different than the ones stated above in Part 91).
Now the question is, where do you find those non-standard alternate minimums? On Foreflight:
Go to the Airports page
Tap the Procedures button
Tap the Arrival button
Tap the Alternate Minimums option
This brings up the IFR Alternate Minimums document for all the airports with non-standard alternate minimums in that area. Scroll through to find Laredo.
As you can see, there are several notes there concerning the different approaches into Laredo. For our example, we’ll say the winds are out of the south and we are planning on flying the ILS 17R if we cannot get into KHBV and have to come to Laredo. The note there is that the Alternate Minimums for the ILS 17R are actually 700 AGL ceilings and 2sm instead of the above state 600 AGL ceilings and 2sm, the procedure is NA if the tower is closed, and NA if the local weather isn’t received.
What does this tell us? If the forecasted ceilings at Laredo were below 600 AGL instead of 700 AGL, we would not be able to use LRD as an alternate airport if we were planning on flying the ILS 17R. The RNAV approaches are all fair game, so a GPS equipped aircraft would have no problem.
On top of that, some approaches at a certain airport are not authorized to be used in the case of the airport being used as an alternate. At the Galveston airport (KGLS), the ILS 14 is NA as an alternate procedure, but all the RNAV approaches are available.
Picking an alternate seems simple at first, but there are actually a lot of things to consider in the process.
Need help remember all this stuff? AOPA has put out a kneeboard sheet that helps all IFR pilots remember those important things when it comes to IFR flying. Check it out here.
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