It was his first airplane trip at age seven that made Eric decide to become a pilot. "While boarding the airplane, a flight attendant noticed my interest in the flight deck and urged me to go talk to the pilot. I give a lot of credit to that pilot for my career choice." Eric earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and went on to an airline career. He learned to fly at Sporty’s as part of the University of Cincinnati’s Professional Pilot Program, an initiative he later directed. Eric now manages Sporty’s media network including IFRFocus.com. In addition, Eric serves as a Captain in a Cincinnati-based corporate flight department.
The ACS clearly define what applicants must know and demonstrate, but they often leave students wondering how those standards are actually evaluated. To help bridge that gap, PilotWorkshops has introduced Checkride Insights: Instrument Rating, a new training resource that adds practical context and examiner perspectives directly alongside the ACS.
The missed approach was routine. What happened next wasn’t. A real-world diversion during a rainy Memorial Day weekend arrival highlights how workload, weather, and multiple acceptable options can quickly challenge even experienced IFR pilots.
IFR cross-country planning depends heavily on weather forecasts, but any instrument pilot knows they’re not perfect. So how much weight should you really put on a forecast when deciding whether to launch, delay, or reroute a flight?
Instrument flying proficiency isn’t built from memorizing procedures alone—it comes from regularly exercising your judgment in realistic situations. That’s exactly the goal behind IFR Mastery from PilotWorkshops, now available inside the Sporty’s Pilot Training app.
On WAAS-equipped GPS units, many non-precision approaches (like LNAV or LP) will display LNAV+V or LP+V. That “+V” indicates advisory vertical guidance—an internally generated glidepath from the final approach fix (FAF) to the runway. It’s designed to help you fly a continuous descent final approach—a safer, more stabilized alternative to the old “dive and drive” technique. That’s the good news.
How well do you really know your instrument flying procedures? Here are 5 of the newest FAA-style questions, recently added to Sporty’s comprehensive online Instrument Rating Course. They’re designed to make you think like an IFR pilot—whether you’re prepping for a rating or just keeping your skills sharp.
“Do I fly or not?” It’s a question that may seem simple in the comfort of your living room couch, but in truth, it’s rarely a single, definitive moment. Weather changes. Equipment issues appear. Fatigue creeps in. By the time you reach your destination, you’ve already made dozens of go/no-go decisions. Some of those may have been conscious decisions, but some are instinctive.
In this live PilotWorkshops IFR Mastery webinar, the PilotWorkshops team will walk pilots through a realistic, thought-provoking scenario from the IFR Mastery series. You’ll be placed in the cockpit of a Beechcraft Bonanza and faced with a critical decision: how to enter and execute an instrument approach into Wichita Falls, Texas, with low ceilings and strong winds complicating the picture.
You’ve probably seen runway approach lights at larger airports many times during your training and when flying at night. These systems take on additional importance when flying IFR since they provide the basic means to transition from instrument to visual flight for landing. If an approach lighting system is available for a runway, the symbology will be displayed in both the small airport diagram in line with the runway, and in the briefing strip towards the top of the instrument approach chart.
IFR currency seems simple on paper—six approaches every six months—but in real flying, what seems black and white can turn gray in a hurry. Do approaches in mostly visual conditions count? What about simulators, vectors to final, or breaking out early? IFR currency isn’t hard to maintain, but it is easy to misunderstand. The biggest […]
