Example of Instrument Approach Procedure overlay

In The Other Guy Part 1, I wrote about some of the “other guys” who might have played a part in me being re-ended after Winter Storm Leon. As promised, here I will write a bit about how we avoided

mid-air collisions in one of our training areas where I was an instructor.

After basic instrument maneuver training, our syllabus included instrument procedure and navigation simulators and training flights before putting the students in a full Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) environment with Air Traffic Control (ATC). Using an actual navigation aid (NavAid) in one of our training areas, a group of training instrument approach procedures had been designed and provided to students in approach plate format.  Instructors were provided a kneeboard card with all of the training procedures depicted, not unlike the chart included with this post.  During the flights, instructors played all things ATC for the student. 

Here is where the Cheese comes in, although I use different names than last week’s graphic. At the organizational level, this training was only conducted under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) with a safety observer seated behind the hooded student and the training approaches crossed the NavAid at different altitudes. Procedurally, all instructors in the area worked a common frequency for traffic deconfliction. This is where “the other guy” comes in. Actual traffic conflicts were rare because all the instructors communicated their positions and intentions. By listening to the radio, each instructor knew where “the other guys” was going and how to safely get into the mix.  Announcing our own intentions made us predictable so we were not “the other guy.”

How good are you at knowing what “the other guy” is going to do? How good are you at not being “the other guy?”