Help getting my IFR rating!!!

[Amish RakeFight]

BEST books hands down are from Rod Machado.
Rod Machado's Instrument Pilot's Handbook

http://www.rodmachado.com/Product/Books/books.htm

He's a corny guy. I cringe at his attempts at humor. Although I do own his IFR survival guide! - it's tucked away in some box under many other boxes!

 

[jajthejackson3]

I have had MS FlightSim since it first came out all the way up to FSX,(which I don't think is better than FS2004, but that's a whole other subject), so I have a pretty good handle on basic approaches, but I'm afraid holding patterns are going to give me fits......

 

[Amish RakeFight]

hey jackson, what kind of questions do you have with holds?

If it's the entries, what works best for me is visualizing the racetrack with an extended 70 degree cut extending out from the teardrop entry (either left or right). Once I've burned that image into my mind, holds become much easier to mentally figure them out when given an unpublished hold. You can also try to superimpose this racetrack image onto your DG.

My advice would be to sit down with a few pieces of scrap paper and use your finger to practice how you would enter the hold from various directions. Study the the sectors and how you would enter.

Since you have a simulator, this would be an excellent tool for learning to enter a hold. Make sure you set winds to zero, at least in the beginning, so you don't have to worry about drift corrrection. That will make it a tiny bit more tricky when your timing out on the outbound leg.

 

[aucfi]

Easiest way to figure out hold entry:

Fly directly to the holding fix

Find what your holding on on the outside of your DG (250, 360, whatever it is)

Move from that point to the center of the DG.

For left turns make a left turn and right turn make a right turn.

Your pattern is just as you see it on your DG and using common sense you can see what entry best suits the situation.

Your not breaking any reg or rule by doing a teardrop when a parallel is best. All you need is an approved entry.


The 3 quadrant stuff is nice for starting out and initial learning of how to hold but Ive seen way too many people mental lock while trying to figure out what entry to use.


my .02