One of AOPA's premier member benefits is the team of dedicated pilots and instructors who interact one-on-one with members. Together, they own 11 aircraft and have more than 53,000 hours accumulated over 321 years in aviation. Any member can reach the specialists by calling 800/USA-AOPA (872-2672), or through AOPA's World Wide Web site (www.aopa.org).
"We need an instrument approach at my small airport. I've drawn a GPS approach and test flown it, and it seems to work just fine. How do we get the FAA to make it legal?"
There's more to an instrument approach than meets the eye, which is one reason an approach can take a year or more to develop.
Your airport manager can ask for an FAA feasibility study. Common reasons for denial at this initial stage are trees in the approach path, obstructions too near the runway, lack of proper airport lighting, insufficient demand for an approach, or the unavailability of a nearby current altimeter setting.
Other considerations include the effect on traffic at other airports and availability of good air traffic control communications. One frequent snag is lack of an official airport layout plan (ALP). No ALP, no approach.
If your approach isn't derailed by the initial study, actual development begins in the FAA's Oklahoma City office. Once the approach looks good on paper, it's sent to the field for flight testing.
FAA Beech King Airs fly the approach to make sure that the signal is stable and all obstructions have been considered. The FAA also gives the approach a real-life test: could an average low-time instrument pilot safely cope with this approach? If a problem surfaces, the approach goes back to Oklahoma City for adjustment.
Once approved, the procedure is sent to the National Flight Data Center in Washington, D.C., which distributes it to the National Ocean Service and private vendors who produce instrument charts. Now you can use the approach.
"Why is the minimum altitude for the VOR approach at my home airport so high? I don't see any trees near the approach end of the runway."
The bible for approach developers is the Terminal Instrument Procedures (TERPS) Manual, which specifies (for example) 250 feet as the lowest possible minimum descent altitude for an ideal straight-in nonprecision approach with a final approach fix and the VOR located on the airport. Trees or other obstructions on final will obviously raise an MDA, but high minimums can be caused by an obstruction several miles away, even in the missed approach path.
Circling minimums usually are higher and offer protection only near the airport. For the Category A aircraft that most of us fly, obstruction clearance is guaranteed only within a 1.3-mile radius of the airport. You might want to remember that for the next circling approach you make on a cold, dark, windy night.
"On a recent flight out west, I filed Victor airways for the protection of radar coverage. But controllers lost radar contact with me for long stretches at a time and didn't seem worried about it. What gives?"
It's a common misconception that the airway minimum en route altitude (MEA) guarantees radar coverage. MEAs guarantee only two things: navigation signal reception and obstruction clearance. They don't even guarantee communications, something Western pilots who fly at the MEA have long known.
Separation from other IFR traffic is still guaranteed, of course, but position reporting skills help.
"How did air traffic controllers do their job before radar and Victor airways?"
The first airways were defined by bonfires and huge rotating beacons helping 1920s and 1930s airmail pilots to navigate at night. One such airway was actually through the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon and Washington; 23 beacons mounted on gorge walls kept pilots from running into them, or at least that was the plan.
By mid-1933, radio-equipped aircraft could fly in clouds from New York to San Francisco, using the 90 radio ranges along the route. Real air traffic control by radio, however, was run by airlines for their own use and limited to a few major cities (Cleveland was the first, in 1930). In between, pilots relied on the "big sky" theory for safety.
In 1937, the federal government took over the embryonic en route system. At first, tracking equipment consisted of a blackboard, chart table, teletype machine, and telephone. As instrument traffic grew, so did electronic sophistication, and by the 1950s the first primitive radar scopes were lighting up in some air route traffic control center (ARTCC) facilities. Still, it was 1963 before transponders made aircraft identification easy and pushed position reports into the background.
Even today, position reports are invaluable when radar fails.
AOPA Aviation Information Resources
AOPA Pilot Information Center for expert help and advice for pilots, from pilots, 800/USA-AOPA (800/872-2672).
AOPA Online on the World Wide Web (www.aopa.org) is a user-friendly avenue to many of the information services AOPA and the AOPA Air Safety Foundation offer, including preflight weather.
AOPA and Air Safety Foundation booklets are available, some free and others for a nominal shipping and handling charge, by calling 800/USA-AOPA (800/872-2672).
Randy Kenagy, 26, joined the AOPA staff in April 1996. A 1,900-hour commercial pilot and flight instructor with instrument and multiengine ratings, Kenagy was just promoted to government research specialist.
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