IFR: A Structured Approach Overview:

IFR: A Structured Approach

If your instrument training was as haphazard and unstructured as that of most general aviation pilots, then this book may cause a profound change in your method for managing the extraordinary demands of single-pilot IFR. With the help of this book, you will establish your own personal standard operating practices for IFR., including the incorporation of checklists, flows, callouts, briefings, and "by the numbers" aircraft control. Your flying will be much less haphazard, and much more regimented, structured, and above all, safe.

A wholesale review and analysis of IFR operations with special emphasis on the integration of GPS into modern IFR. This is long overdue. Tens of thousands of general aviation IFR pilots are now using GPS. Most of these pilots took their last ground school or IFR written exam years before the advent of GPS and have never really studied the new system. Instructors see the effects of this lack of training all the time. Many pilots have only a perfunctory knowledge of how the GPS systems works, and how it sometimes fails to work. Many pilots comprehend only a small fraction of the capabilities of their specific GPS units. Even more commonly seen are failures to understand the new regulations that govern GPS use and the newly formatted charts that have evolved with the GPS approaches. There are a great many subtleties here, and it is time for serious instrument pilots to roll up their sleeves and get to work bringing themselves up to date. This book will help.

250 pages, hardback
Published May 2003.
by John Eckalbar

Click here to view the Table of Contents for IFR: A Structured Approach
View the Introduction for IFR: A Structured Approach

REVIEWS

"For the instrument pilot seeking to upgrade his or her skill, John C. Eckalbar's IFR: A Structured Approach provides compelling insights...If one book could help you make the leap from a bit player to a skilled conductor of instrument flight, this is probably it."
    -- AOPA Pilot Magazine, November, 2003, p. 168

"There is an EXCELLENT discussion of this whole GPS area in John Eckalbar's new book IFR: A Structured Approach...The GPS chapter alone is worth getting the book...it is certainly the best instrument flying book I have ever read, and it also ought to be required reading right after (new instrument pilots) finish formal training ...It is also quite funny in places. He has a great sense of humor...Wish I knew him."
    --Fred W. Scott, Jr, ATP, B55

"Just picked up a copy of your new book at OSH. While I am still working my way through it, it is already apparent to me that this is perhaps the most useful aviation training publication I have encountered in almost 40 years of GA involvement. I regularly train at FSI, SimCom and BPPP, and have spent many hours with many CFI's (including a number of high time airline captains) since I began flying in 1966; none have been able to put it all together in the thoughtful, lucid way you do in this book. I have read your other books and found them useful, but IFR is a different kind of book, with its emphasis of procedures rather than technical matters. IMO, there is a large unmet need for this kind of training material in GA. For those of us who have not come up through the military or airline path, access to this information is quite limited, and much of what is available is outdated or otherwise irrelevant to flying in today's IFR system."--
    -- Fredric R. (Rick) Boswell, PhD

"A unique and welcome aspect of the book is Eckalbar's treatment of GPS. Not only does he give it extensive treatment, he integrates it with other nav systems the way we do in the real world. Eckalbar addresses a problem I struggle with, remembering to run in-flight checklists. His suggestion is to use the trigger of power change. Any time you change a power setting, you run a (the appropriate) checklist. Based on his discussion of the subject, I've modified my checklists and adopted the "power change" trigger idea. The book is targeted at pilots flying the high performance singles and twins. The flight example he uses is a Beech Baron equipped with the full suite of avionics: HSI, autopilot and Garmin 430 GPS. However, there's plenty in the book for the more basic 172 driver as well. The discussion of enroute and approach charts is enlightening and includes the latest additions to IFR approaches LNAV/VNAV and RNP."
    -- Peter Cassidy