Climbing the learning curve
Flight Training Apps teach the basics, shortcuts
By Jill W. Tallman
The AOPA Sweepstakes 172 is outfitted with a Garmin GTN 650 nav/com. It’s a beautiful setup with lots of functionality—but if you’ve never flown with a 650 or similar Garmin product, you’re in for a slight learning curve.
Flight Training Apps has released a new app to guide you through the basics, and the many shortcuts and features that the nav/com offers.
Apps such as Flying the Garmin GTN 650/750 are a practical, cost-effective way to really get to know these systems. Yes, you could take the user manual, hook up the airplane to an external power source, and sit for an hour tapping on the 650’s touch screen. Or you could download the app, study each concise unit, and keep the touch screen that much cleaner. The app also is a great tool for times when weather, maintenance, or other issues keep you away from the airport.
Much as a user manual does, Flying the Garmin GTN 650/750 breaks down basic setup, the map, main menu, the flight plan menu options, waypoint options, and flight planning and utilities. What’s even more useful is how Flight Training Apps’ Dave Simpson walks you through a VFR flight from Gillespie Field to Catalina Island in California, demonstrating how to plan it out on the ground with a big-picture look at the route, and then edit it on the screen to skirt Class B airspace. In the air, he demonstrates how the unit readily offers up information on the destination airport so that you can effectively plan your arrival. Similarly, an IFR-focused segment shows you how to set up a STAR or a SID. A 10-question quiz rounds out additional resources.
The app doesn’t show your progression through the units, and I would like to have seen a more in-depth quiz, or one that presented a different set of questions on a second try. But those are minor quibbles with an otherwise solid learning platform.
Flying the Garmin GTN650/750 is available for iOS devices running version 9.0 or newer.
Price: $39.99
Contact: www.flighttrainingapps.com
Email [email protected]
A fun way to learn
IFR mastery from PilotWorkshops
By Dave Hirschman
My inquisitors were a formidable group. There was a former airline chief pilot; two FAA designated pilot examiners; a retired air traffic controller; and an aviation author whom PilotWorkshops, an aviation education firm, brought together to examine a detailed series of IFR flying scenarios.
Sadly for me, all these accomplished aviators disagreed with my conclusion for the scenario I was assigned, and they made no secret of their readiness to pounce.
“Just so you know, I’m going to come after you on this one,” Bob Nardiello, a gruff FAA designee and former Flight Instructor of the Year, told me over coffee that morning. “You’re going to be all alone on this one, so be ready for the pushback.”
Their criticisms would be recorded as part of PilotWorkshops’ online “IFR Mastery” series and heard by tens of thousands of fellow aviators. The Nashua, New Hampshire-based firm has developed an online following of more than 180,000 for its subscription IFR Mastery series, as well as free weekly flying tips delivered by email.
Despite the adversity, or perhaps because of it, I was looking forward to the verbal rough and tumble. It started jovially enough with all of us seated around an actual round table in a recording studio outside Nashua. The IFR scenarios are meant to draw attention to aviation’s many gray areas not clearly addressed by regulations.
Mine involved a Lancair Legacy pilot flying VFR in clear air over an area of known icing in Ohio on the way to the East Coast. He must decide whether to climb to 13,500 feet without oxygen to stay clear of clouds and continue, or divert to areas reporting better weather. (FAR 91.211 allows climbing to 14,000 feet in nonpressurized airplanes for up to 30 minutes without oxygen.)
I turned out to be the only one on the panel who thought climbing and continuing the trip was a reasonable choice, and defended that position as well as I knew how. But the other panelists had some well-informed reasons to disagree.
Hear how this, and scores of other thought-provoking scenarios, played out online. It’s a lively, convenient, and fun way to learn.
Cost: Free 30-Day Trial
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