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           Government Weather Flight Planning Tools General Aircraft Magazines Books & Tapes Organizations 
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July 2009 
Max-Range FlyingMost pilots never need to eke maximum range out of the airplane. For others long-range flying is the norm, the reason for having an airplane in the first place. There are many considerations—some objective, some subjective—when you’re planning a maximum-range flight. Let’s define maximum-range flying as any flight planned to travel near the maximum distance the airplane can fly with the fuel on board, and have legal fuel reserves. When we think of max-range flying in light airplanes we’re usually thinking about a flight of three to seven hours, depending on characteristics of the specific airplane. If you take off with minimal fuel but are planning to use most of what you’ve got, however, even a short flight entails some maximum-range thinking. Briefing The Slam-Dunk Approach Where you are, droning along in IMC, when suddenly you’re almost on top of the final approach fix and haven’t planned for the procedure, much less set up the cockpit. How are you going to get safely from the FAF to the runway? It doesn’t really matter why you find yourself here. Maybe you spent too much time at altitude without oxygen and it suddenly dawned on you where you are and what you need to do. Maybe the right engine just committed harikari and is dangling from the wing. Maybe a passenger needs urgent medical assistance. It doesn’t matter. The problem is you’re about to shoot an approach for which you haven’t briefed yourself or configured the airplane. What are you going to do Power-Off Approaches Takeoffs, as a friend and CFI likes to inform her students, are optional. Landings, however, are mandatory. Within the soaring community, the line was "Get one free landing with every takeoff!" And therein is the most sobering aspect of facing a power-off landing: the reality the old stand-by go-around option we enjoy for other situations is eliminated. So while making all the usual efforts to restart an engine after it stops, the savvy pilot must simultaneously make a quick assessment of available options—and adjust to flying the aircraft as a glider. That means trimming for best glide while working the restart prospects and looking for the best suitable landing area available. And you must take these steps quickly: Altitude equals time to touchdown; the lower the failure altitude the less the time available, and the smaller is the radius of territory you have to consider. Gravity will prevail; your job is to make the arrival survivable, maybe even a great landing that leaves the airplane ready to fly again—once the engine problem is fixed, of course. Ultimately, an engine failure in a single—or, say, flameout of both engines after flying through a flock of birds—presents a situation demanding the best of your stick-and-rudder skills along with all your top judgment and experience. Don’t Like The Weather? Wait An Hour If you take a big look at the general weather patterns across the entire contiguous U.S., you’ll see a rather marked difference. The eastern U.S. from about the Mississippi River to the Atlantic has a pattern that is often the least flexible, with adverse weather that can be frustratingly stable. Weather not very friendly to airplanes can persist there for days. Still, though, the worst weather—i.e., convective activity—is usually transient. Next is the area from the Mississippi to the Rockies. This area can get some rather severe weather, too, but the worst of it usually doesn’t last long. While you may have to avoid the thunderstorms, tornadoes, ice storms, etc., an early start or short delay will usually make the difference between "don’t-go-there" weather and reasonable VMC. Of course, like anywhere, it can still have its periods of low IMC that just hang there with no hope of a quick reprieve. The next area that we can generalize is from the Rockies all the way to the Pacific coast. Here, other than predictable isolated cells or cell clusters, severe weather is far less common. Indeed, other than the infamous coastal fog layers that can last for weeks, the weather in the West is seldom even IMC for more than a few hours at a time. Fighting Fires An in-flight fire is most pilots’ greatest fear, surpassing even a mid-air collision. Although relatively rare, the unique combination of combustible materials and ignition sources available in the typical personal airplane means an in-flight fire must be dealt with quickly and decisively. Doing so usually means disabling systems to deprive the fire of its fuel or ignition sources, and employing a fire extinguisher to smother it. A quick landing, even if off-airport, may be necessary. The problem? Our cockpits feature an abundance of materials capable of sustaining a fire. Carpeting, insulation, upholstery and paper charts are present in even the most basic airplane. This is true even if every scrap of fabric has passed an FAA-approved burn test. Throw in a fuel line or two—whether routed through the fuel selector, flowing via a capillary line to a fuel pressure gauge, or resulting from the designer’s basic need to move fuel from the tanks to an engine—and you’ve got another, much more combustible material. Zero-Zero Departure Since so much emphasis is placed on approaches during the typical instrument student’s training, it’s unsurprising practicing the takeoff into IMC receives little attention. That’s more than a little unfortunate, since the instrument takeoff—especially the zero-zero takeoff—can be much riskier. For our purposes here, we’ll define the instrument takeoff as one in which the aircraft will be in IMC before reaching the lowest altitude specified for crossing the final approach fix of a published procedure for that airport. We’ll define a zero-zero takeoff as one where the aircraft enters IMC before reaching DH or MDA on a related approach. Often, of course, the zero-zero takeoff is just that: The crew can see neither the end of the runway nor a definite ceiling, and must transition to instruments when the wheels leave the runway. The challenges posed by either procedure aren’t immediately obvious to those who haven’t experienced them, which is another reason for greater attention during initial instrument training. Takeoffs are always a busy part of any flight, arguably more so than landings. The aircraft is accelerating, for one, and gathering energy that must be dissipated before stopping if there’s a problem. Too, panel gauges, especially mechanical gyros, behave in ways further complicating instrument flight when they are accelerated from a standing stop to climb speed in a few seconds. Various procedures necessary during a takeoff and departure—raising the gear and flaps, for example, or setting power—can wreak havoc with a pilot’s concentration and the aircraft’s trimmed attitude. And it is during the initial climb in IMC when any errors in setting the aircraft’s configuration are discovered, at exactly the wrong time for something to be done about it.
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