We’re devoting this week’s posts to the VOR, a radio navigation system used worldwide by private and commercial pilots. This introduction comes from The Student Pilot’s Flight Manual, by William Kershner.
The most useful of the enroute radio navigation aids, other than GPS, is the VHF omnirange,
…Coordinated Universal Time, Universal Time Coordinated, Greenwich Mean Time, Zulu Time—I am sure you have heard these terms at some point in your flight training, but what is all of it? To keep it simple these are essentially one in the same: time corrected for seasonal variations in the earth’s rotation
…Understanding the imaginary grid we’ve laid out around and across our planet is key in flight planning and ultimately your safety. Today, we’ll review some of the basics with help from the FAA textbook Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge.
The equator is an imaginary circle equidistant from
…Part of your preflight duties as a pilot will be to determine the weight and balance of the aircraft. Trying to takeoff and fly with an aircraft over max gross weight or out of balance can cause drastic consequences on the airplane’s ability to fly. Below are some of the
…This week we’ll introduce weight and balance. This post is excerpted from Bob Gardner’s textbook The Complete Private Pilot.
It would be nice to have an airplane in which we could fill all of the seats and all of the baggage area, fuel up to capacity,
…With increasing technologies and access to the internet it may seem to some that a telephone weather briefing is a little outdated. For some it may be, but for others it’s a great opportunity to speak to a weather briefing specialist to learn about the conditions along your route of
…[Update: In December 2022, the FAA published the Aviation Weather Handbook (FAA-H-8083-28) which replaced Aviation Weather (AC 00-6) and Aviation Weather Services (AC 00-45).]
This week, we’re thinking about weather briefings. This post comes from the FAA’s Aviation Weather Services, available from ASA in print, PDF, and in a combo-pak
…New FAA Knowledge Exams were released February 9. The Private Pilot test saw the most significant changes this test cycle. Questions being deleted covered outdated topics including automatic direction finder/nondirectional beacon (ADF/NDB); Radar Summary Charts; the En Route Flight Advisory Service (EFAS); medevac; and transcribed weather broadcasts (TWEB). The FAA
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