Holding

[minitour]

FS is good...you can use hte "analyzer" after the flight to see what it looked like...

The point of a hold:
1 minute inbound legs
stay protected

 

[Vik]

First, my profile is not up to date, but even if it said I had 5 hrs, I just wanted to tell you why someone I know that went for his ATP checkride busted.

You're right in that most holds are setup for easy entry and you can just eye ball them, but apparently this one was not and the examiner busted him for it even though protected airspace was not violated.

Well Vik I appreciate your full 355 hours of experience, however at all my FlightSafety sessions and on my previous type rides (one of which was observed by a FSDO Inspector whose observation day turned out to be my "lucky" day), to include ATP, I did just that, and passed with no problem.

Don't know your buddy's situation, but the fact is, look at the hold, and simply do the entry that is easiest, and it should work out with no problem. The AIM designed the holds to be entered that way anyway, they were not meant to be entered from the "most difficult method" technique.

If the entry turns out to be a "close tie" to another entry method, and you can articulate why you did it, and of course you did it safely, nobody is gonna bust you on it, unless they are d1ckheads.

Too many student pilots get over-think the AIM or the FARs, for the most part they are common sense or have common sense undertones to them. Most students would benefit from stopping over-thinking and "just doing it"

later

 

[huncowboy]

Not sure if this is going to make any sense w/o drawing but hang in there as this is really good.

For this to work you should be heading directly toward the fix. (Seems kind of obvious but just wanted to point it out.)

Once you figured out your pattern:

1. Note the heading of the outbound leg. (NOT the inbound!!!)
2. Note the directions of the turns in the hold.
3. Next you have to divide your HI into 3 sections, then you will have to see into which section does your outbound heading fall into. If it falls into the area that is half the HI it will be direct, if it falls into the area which is the 2nd largest area that covers 110 degrees than it will be parallel etc...

Now here comes the trick: Cutting up the HI is EASY in the plane. Takes about 1 sec. Describing how to do it here is kind of hard though... for me anyways.

If you'll make left turns in the hold put your left thumb above the left side of the HI. For example: if you head 360, your left thumb should cover the left side of the HI so that it will hide the headings from 270 to 290. From 290 draw an imaginary line through the HI to its reciprocal, 110 in our case. Now you have divided the HI into two halves. The bottom is the "direct entry" portion. The upper half will be divided into yet another two by your current heading, in our case 360. This way you'll end up with three areas. The one left of 360 will be the teardrop area (smallest), the one to the right will be the parallel area (2nd largest), and the bottom is the direct area.

Now point out your outbound heading on the HI. See into which area would that fall into.

If this did not make sense look at the drawings on this page. It talks about the same thing I believe:

http://www.pilotsweb.com/train/pattern.htm

Off course for all this the student should be able to draw holds, and in general understand how holds work. Also watch for wind correction. It can screw you a bit if it is too windy. If you hold a large wind correction angle than you need to use your magnetic course if you know what it is. If you are partial panel than just twist the OBS of the VOR to your current heading and there is your new HI.

Hope this helped.

 

[johnpeace]

I learned to just enter the hold in whichever way will keep me closest to the inbound leg...which entry makes the most sense given my intercept angle.

Practicing in the sim helped a lot.

You might want to get Rod Machado's instrument book and read the chapter on holding patterns, he offers a lot of down to earth, common sense advice on holds.