Video tip: the Cessna 172 fuel system

It's important for pilots to have a good understanding of airplane systems to know how to properly operate their controls and troubleshoot them when things don't work as expected. This week's tip takes a look at the Cessna 172 fuel system to show each component and give you a better understanding of how all the parts work together.

How to fly a rectangular course

Ground reference maneuvers integrate the fundamentals of flight and demonstrate that you have competence in manipulating the flight controls and applying control pressures to maintain a pre-determined aircraft course relative to objects on the ground. Applying this skill to the rectangular course is the basis for airport traffic patterns.
Podcast logo

New episodes of Sporty’s Pilot’s Discretion Podcast

Sporty’s Pilot's Discretion Podcast has new episodes available with guests that include Bruce Williams on flight sims as well as EAA Chairman Jack Pelton, discussing EAA AirVenture and the experimental aircraft boom. The informative and entertaining format features wide-ranging questions with one intriguing guest.

Sporty’s webinar video: 20 questions to test your IFR knowledge

Sporty's John Zimmerman hosts a fun, fast-paced hour of IFR flying questions and tips, covering everything from approach charts to weather theory.

Keeping One Step Ahead of ATC when flying IFR

/
1 Comment
Gone are the days of making an educated guess on a route, only to have ATC respond with a full route clearance with intersections and airways. It now takes only a moment in ForeFlight, Garmin Pilot or FltPlan.com to enter a departure and destination airport and then see recently issued clearances to other aircraft flying the same route.

ILS approach with Spencer Suderman to Jacksonville Int’l

The Instrument Landing System (ILS) is a precision approach that provides instrument pilots with both lateral and vertical guidance to a runway. In this video, Spencer Suderman demonstrates what it's like to fly an ILS in a Cessna 172 with a Garmin G1000 avionics system, and how to use the runway approach lighting system to descend below the decision altitude and find the runway when the ceiling is less than 200' AGL.

How to prepare for checkride day

Communication is key to the examiner understanding your thought process and decision making. Checkrides have plenty of emotion and pressure that will hopefully allow you to excel. Don’t bring unnecessary pressure or emotion to the flight by overreaching or trying to do too much. Fly like you’ve trained and be the PIC.

Interactive exercise: Unusual attitude recovery procedures

It's important for pilots to recognize the conditions or situations that could cause an unusual attitude, with focus on how to recognize one, and how to recover from one. Test your knowledge of unusual attitude recognition and recovery with this interactive exercise.

Understanding TEC routes in busy IFR airspace — Advanced IFR, by Pilot Workshops

The flight will utilize and explain a Tower Enroute Control (TEC) route which is an FAA program of standard routes that keep a flight solely within approach control airspace instead of working with air route traffic control centers.

Combining IFR and visual flight

If we didn’t have access to the variety of visual IFR procedures or the option for VFR flight, the system would quite simply be overwhelmed. Where the breakdowns and inefficiencies occur, can often be attributed to a lack of awareness on the part of pilots or failure to take advantage of our options for combining IFR and VFR flight.