Lecture 21: Weather Minimums and Final Tips

Key Takeaways

so remember as VFR pilot she's gonna be doing stuff that is in some ways more challenging than what airline pilots do because you're always trying to keep clearances from clouds that the IFR pilots don't care about and if you're flying a low performance airplane you're also dealing with you know flying through the leather instead of it's going on top of it so while you're the VFR only pilot these non-local flights really pay attention to whether airspace go and study this a little bit before the exam here are the different kinds remember Class A is up high in an instrument clearance Class B is around the biggest airports class Charlie's around Manchester New Hampshire and D is for Hanscom and E is kind of everywhere else okay the goal for the basic VFR weather minimums is to make sure that an IFR plane coming out of the cloud has time to see and avoid you because the air traffic controllers job is to separate IFR airplanes from each other not to separate IFR and VFR traffic they will tell you about them but you're responsible as the VFR pilot for staying reasonably clear of clouds so just review these cloud clearances Class E you can see that this is a pretty good one to remember for the test 500 below a thousand above two thousand horizontally if you're really low in Class G airspace you can do some crazy stuff again I don't think this is really there to let you you know go from Boston to Chicago Scott running with you know one mile of visibility and just clear of the clouds I think it's more to enable people to say take off and do pattern work at their home Airport in some kind of little tiny very slow airplane pattern work is just what we were drying on the chalk board flying the traffic pattern at an airport so again yeah just review the presentation or the fa book so you know your weather minimums yeah incredibly at night for class G getting back to that pattern work thing if you want to go out and practice takeoffs and landings at night if you stay within half a mile of the runway you can go right down to one mile of visibility and right off right up to the clouds okay here's that chart again learn it know it special VFR actually if you're at Hanscom and the weather is below the basic minimums and you say you want to do some pattern work anyway either in a helicopter or an airplane you can request they can't offer it but you can request a special VFR clearance and they'll say okay there's not too much higher traffic right now so you you know take off and land and do your do your stuff if it's a night you'll have to be an IFR pilot basically cirrus publishes this good personal minimum matrix I wouldn't say that you have to adopt their specific numbers but I think their way of thinking isn't bad so notice they're saying you know if you are let's see an average pilot so you've got you know ten IFR hours within the last 90 days you've done you know one not on out of it approach within the last 90 days I'll go over here and go down to a 500 foot ceiling in two miles of visibility don't go down to the published approach minimums which are designed for a two pilot professional crew unless you know you're very current you've done a whole bunch of flying in the last 90 days anyway so they just try to fit they try to say how challenging is this like how experienced are you in general how experienced are you recently and come up with some numbers so again you can pull this out of the slide and just to clarify what we're talking about when we talk about personal minimums so there there are minimums that you have to know for the FAA exam like we were just talking about in terms of the minimum visibility that must be there in order to for you to fly in certain classes of airspace but then there are also minimums that you set on yourself to be a safe pilot and to be kind of knowledgeable about what your restrictions and what your experience and what your currency is so for example we talked about crosswind so there isn't an FA reg necessarily you know as long as it's within your aircraft's operating conditions there's no specific reason why you know a 15 or 20 knot crosswind is a problem but maybe you're not very comfortable with it you haven't done a lot of slips recently you're still getting used to your aircraft so you might say you know a smaller crosswind or gusting winds would be appropriate for you to land it so that's setting a personal minimum on yourself and this this is an example of personal minimums based on your experience and your currency and the FAA will never suggest this but the appropriate escape from you know a challenging situation that you think might be on the edge of safety is to rent the five-seat sr22 instead of the forc'd sr20 and go with an instructor so it's as easy as that ok remember this was confusing they use category in class to mean totally two totally different things for getting your pilot's certificate the category is there on the left something like an airplane versus a rotorcraft and the class would be you know multi engine land versus helicopter category class but then for aircraft they do something totally different and they say category would be you know normal category or acrobatic and class would be airplane so they may ask you about this just because they like the torque for you the four forces of flight remember these Tina talked about them if you're just bombing along straight and level not accelerating then they're gonna all be in balance because F equals MA equals whatever get remembers math anyway F equals MA I know that much remember the three axes they'll ask you about this on the test usually in combination with some other stuff so rotation about the vertical axis is going to be yaw rotation about the this is complicated let's see rotation about the lateral axis is going to be pitch rotation around the longitudinal axis I believe will be roll so that's a little bit confusing since yeah here we have it pitch roll yaw right so think about it roll is really the lateral motion but it's around the longitudinal axis so don't get confused there remember why Johnny Cessna can't hover is also a limit for this is this limits everything basically the stalling angle of attack is why you need a helicopter if you want to hover and it is why you need to maintain a reasonable airspeed when you're a landing and it's also it limits your runway right if you had an airplane that didn't stall till it reached some crazy angle attack you could probably take off and land in 50 feet right and remember that we talked about even a paper airplane can generate lift so it's not about the shape of the cross section of the wing that is making you be able to generate lift it's the angle of attack and your ability to deflect air molecules down that's what generates lift that shape of the airfoil is just what Philip was saying that allows you to have the stall speed be lowered all right so remember your left-turning tendencies mostly you just remember that you need right rudder and a couple questions had come up on gyroscopic precession so I added two videos about gyroscopes to help you understand gyroscopic precession and why that force is applied 90 degrees later and those are really fun videos you can look at their in the slide deck called QA and review ok so let's go back to the altitudes so true altitude is your actual height above sea level this is what's important if you want to get over on mountain because the altitude on the chart for the mountain is also the actual height above sea level indicated it's what your L Timoner shows if you're below 18,000 feet and it's not some insane temperature and you've got a current altimeter setting from air traffic control as you fly along with VFR advisories they'll keep updating you with altitudes if you're not talking to ATC you know you may to nin to the airports that you're flying over to get the altimeter there if you have your correctly set altimeter it should be pretty close to your true altitude but and the GPS will give it to you as well all right absolute height above the ground I don't think that's ever really relevant pressure altitude is what you see if you tune your altimeter to to nine or nine or two density is critical for determining performance of both the aircraft in the engine so that's a measure of you know how many actual molecules of air are there gonna be in a one liter cylinder for example know your taxiway and runway markings this has practical value and also test value one easy thing to remember is if you're driving along a taxiway in your aircraft you will see yellow paint on a black pay of surface so that sign tells you what taxiway that you're actually on just like the real-world experience of yellow paint on black everything else is kind of reasonably self-explanatory they probably even though if you're not an instrument pilot they want you to know about this ILS hold short line so if it's kind of bad weather conditions and they're using the ILS they don't want you going beyond there because your metal airplane might interfere with the radio beams that are being sent up - landing IFR airplanes remember L over D max for a best glide speed so all these climb speeds guides beads etc are driven off of the points at which the various drags reach a minimum or a minimum per per mile traveled thunderstorms the one thing you I hope you do remember is that everything is bad about convective clouds unstable air leads to cumulus clouds they can become cumulonimbus clouds and now you have a really bad hazard aviation with terrible icing terrible turbulence may be hail so the squall line I think they sometimes ask about this on the test the frontal band of thunderstorms so just you know it's hard to get around them and you know you may have to go 500 miles out of your way to get around the cold front or hang out on the ground for a few hours and wait for it to pass also just big changes in weather usually are not a good thing so whether it's a big change in the barometric pressure or as we saw from yesterday today to today like a 4050 degree increase in the temperature it's going to be accompanied by massive gusting winds today is not a good day to go flying yeah although actually it might not just be the day it might be you know now referring the helicopter from Los Angeles back to Boston and you know there was a thunderstorm coming in so we just landed in an airport it was probably gusting about 30 knots at the time which isn't that bad for Robinson the four-seat Robinson but the helicopter and a hangar you know there's a huge storm and the two hours later later we took off in beautiful weather and continued our flight so don't you know there is an airport usually every 10 or 15 minutes of flight time so take advantage of that if things are getting beyond your comfort zone don't just blindly continue to your destination so remember the lee side of mountains is where you can get a lot of turbulence and downdrafts a little airplane doesn't have a whole lot of kind performance usually especially up in higher altitudes so be cautious about crossing big mountain ranges unless the winds law forecast is for very light winds indeed icing also super bad again as the VFR pilots you shouldn't have to worry about this once you get into instrument flying that's a help a lot of you will this is really what limits your ability to travel around in a piper Cessna or Cirrus during the winter and shoulder seasons remember how to read the meats are so this is back to Peachtree DeKalb Airport in Atlanta so there's it's the 16th at 16 53 so about almost 5 p.m. in London Zulu time winds are variable at 410 statute miles of visibility overcast 6000 feet that's 6,000 feet above the airport not above sea level temps 14 dew points -7 altimeter three zero one five oh and in the remarks it says the rain ended 46 minutes after the hour there you have it alright human factor summary so you are the weakest link and if you develop some personal minimums you'll be way ahead of the game they should also factor in your recent experience not just your overall level of flying and always remember that it's a big aviation community there's a lot of people are happy to go flying you can send mail to the members of the MIT Flying Club and just take a copilot that's how the airlines have cut risk almost to zero magnetic variation this is kind of a topic that tends to snag people on the knowledge test so just remember you can read arrived it from the vor if you ever get stuck and East is leased West is best deviation then don't don't get deviation and variation confused so deviation remember is that tiny little correction that's printed right underneath the compass flight planning tip you saw this slide earlier even the far 61 and far 91 allow it and doesn't mean it's wise so if you look at far 121 and far 135 for charter and scheduled airline service they show you that there's some extra safety margins that can be built in night flying advice you just heard remember is the owner/operator you're responsible for keeping the airplane air worthy if you do choose to go out and buy an aircraft so these responsibilities are you know for most of you going to be on the flight school however you're still the final authority as the pilot and you can deviate from the rules in an emergency and you only have to report the deviation if requested I think that the feds like to ask this on the knowledge test because the natural answer is of course you have to report the deviation and I declared it an emergency and I broke the rules but you don't actually have to report that unless they ask you to but even aside from an emergency you're the pilot and command even if someone very assertively tells you to land and hold short or to fly straight to the numbers which means don't fly the profit proper traffic pattern but but land very quickly or tells you you know no delay on the go because they want you to get out quickly they have other jets you can just say unable and they have to deal with it and make sure you're flying safely and if you especially as a student pilot need extra time or extra consideration just add student pilot to the end of all your radio calls and they'll give you plenty of room to make mistakes but they might also make you sit there and fly a bunch of 360s while they land everybody else and then give you time and yeah so safety is not high tech it should be probably you know we should actually all the stuff that Michael showed you that's embedded in that DJI drone should probably be in these multi-million dollar aircraft but it's not so in the meantime you know since an airliner isn't actually that much smarter than a little Cessna you know why is it safer and if you take that perspective and just adapt all the things the airlines have done you can make flying that little Cessna dramatically safer so that means recurrent training you know maybe go up with an instructor every three months instead of the every two years that the FAA requires the instrument flying skills are really important for VFR safety they make you a much better pilot you know at night as we've just discussed and even bombing around during the day you'll be able to fly with about five percent of your mental energy instead of 50% if you are an instrument-rated pilot on a nice VFR day the two pilot crew and checklist is really the cornerstone of the airline safety system so and you can take advantage of that as a ga pilot even though the FA you know really about 5% of the FAA which is the one you've seen and interacted with it's all about encouraging people to be single pilots and 95% of the FAA is about forbidding people to operate single pilot every part of the FAA that regulates you know the airlines and charters of sizeable airplanes they say no of course you can't operate a single pilot that would be incredibly dangerous alright so just remember study a little bit about the part 61 and part 91 for learning - we know what does it take to be and maintain your status as a pilot or being able to exercise your privileges as a pilot that certificate never expires part 91 is about what you can do with an airplane operated privately and then there's this little corner over there under title 49 part 830 having to do with accident reporting and investigation if you want to get a hundred on the fa knowledge test a lot of East Coast Aero Club customers seem to over study I see a lot of 95 97 98 and 100's actual 100's just reread the FAA text I mean they can't ask you anything that's not in one of their own PDFs that includes the far aim though the the regulations and the aeronautical information manual there are test prep books and all nine equivalents that are worth it to finish this course actually you can get this you'll be able to get actually we don't even need to email you because if you have the course homepage you can see it here you go to this king school thing and you say you want to do 60 questions 60 is a number of questions on the actual exam so we're making our final exam being the same and then you start test and you send us the results and we'll be happy all right next steps if you want to continue your journey beyond this class maybe that's for the one or two people that applies that actually want to continue their journey can I borrow the pointer for just a second this for the guys that we're getting tripped up thinking it was a river that's exactly what we're talking about this is a Boston Logan these blue lines circles that are rounded are not rivers it's indicating that class Bravo airspace and I have it open over here if you want to take a look okay so yeah join the flying club go visit a flight school most of the busier US airports have some kind of flight school that you can do and yeah in the two hours that are remaining to me for this presentation I would just like to say thank you now we're saying thank you but just to clarify there's there's a really cool guest speaker coming next but for the purposes of our teaching thank you very much and we'll take any questions you you