Teardrop? Parallel? Direct? without GPS

[jdwatkins]

Teardrop? Parallel? Direct? without GPS
The book seems to make this overly complicated to me...

Lets say IB radial to airport is 270 and OB is 090..

It seem to me, if your coming from the western half you can can do a teardrop or parallel of your choice. Depending on how is the best way to make wind corrections.
As long as you stay on the protected side and within 10 miles.

If your coming from the eastern half. make a direct entry.
As long as you stay on the protected side and within 10 miles.

Why does the books and instructors do all 20 degrees off set from a 90 degree stuff and even complicate things with parallell or teardrop? Seems like common sense to me... you don't need to make more than a 90 degrees turn to intercept.

What am I missing?

 

[flyingmoose]

What am I missing?

Some information. First you said "Inbound radial" and anything inbound is a course. You need to be outbound to be on a radial. Anyway you are missing some information in your question.
Is it standard holding?
Are you holding at the airport that you mentioned?
What side of the fix are you holding?

I think you are on the right path to trying to "UN-Complicate" it but your question was just a tad vague.

 

[midlifeflyer]

Don't know what you're missing. The truth is that even if you take the parallel and tear drop entries and the 20° offset into account, the methods typically used to train on this make it unnecessarily complicated.

Unless one is concerned with being 5-10° off the AIM recommended form of entry as soon as you can visualize the hold and your relationship to it, the form of entry becomes obvious.

The sole difficulty for people is finding a way to visualize it. All of the tricks and tips are trying to find the way. And it's finding the way that works for a particular pilot (and not tampering with it later) where, IMO, a lot of training fails.

 

[CT Arrow]

If I am given a hold, rare but it has happened, I first jot down what the controller requests, then draw out my heading, the fix, standard or non standard turns and the outbound radial. Now I can see what is the easiest way to enter the hold from my present course is. Math in an airplane just doesn't work for me.

My experience with controllers is that they will try to make it easy for you to hold; direct entry to a fix if possible.

 

[LDJones]

Use whatever gets you into the hold while staying on the "safe side" of the hold. The controller will not be awarding any bonus points for one form of entry over another.

 

[sacbluesman]

I think what is excessively confusing is that as a student pilot you are taught about this 70* line that has to be drawn or mentally pictured. This turned into a hot mess for me. The following helped me out and determining holding patterns is super easy now.

First, POA member dturri sent me to his website "avclicks dot com" He has multiple lessons on there and a great tutorial for holding patterns.

How I determine holding patterns is by mentally drawing a line horizontally across the center of the DG. The very center of the DG would be the fix. Think like the horizon bar on the AI. Now, if i'm on supposed to hold on any radial that is on the lower half of the line its going to be a direct entry.

To figure out the teardrop or parallel is just as simple. The top half of the pie has to be split down the center. So now what you would be looking at is a DG that has a 1/4 pie on the top left, 1/4 pie on the top right and half a pie on the bottom.

If i'm going to be holding on a radial that is on the top right piece of the pie its going to be a teardrop. If the radial is on the top left..parallel. It works every time. The only caveat to this if the hold pattern is nonstandard. If so, the only thing that you have to do is swap the top part of the pie. Parallel becomes teardrop and vice versa. The bottom half will always be direct.

 

[flyingron]

Use whatever gets you into the hold while staying on the "safe side" of the hold. The controller will not be awarding any bonus points for one form of entry over another.

A parallel entry doesn't put you on the safe side of the hold.

 

[LDJones]

A parallel entry doesn't put you on the safe side of the hold.

You're splitting hairs. But you're welcome to do it any way that tickles your fancy.

 

[midlifeflyer]

If I am given a hold, rare but it has happened, I first jot down what the controller requests, then draw out my heading, the fix, standard or non standard turns and the outbound radial. Now I can see what is the easiest way to enter the hold from my present course is. Math in an airplane just doesn't work for me.

My method sounds very similar to yours but my jotting down of the clearance and the drawing take place at the same time. In essence, I draw the clearance and then my position in relation to it. At that point it seems obvious what entry to make.

This is "Hold southwest of the XYZ VOR on the 220° Radial, left turns. Maintain 8,000. Expect further clearance at 0000Z:

 

[bobmrg]

Use whatever gets you into the hold while staying on the "safe side" of the hold. The controller will not be awarding any bonus points for one form of entry over another.

My guess is that as soon as you report arrival at the holding fix the controller diverts his/her attention to something else....they don't care what kind of entry you make unless you exceed the bounds of the protected airspace, and how well they can see that depends on the scale they are using.

Bob Gardner

 

[bobmrg]

A parallel entry doesn't put you on the safe side of the hold.

But for the type of airplane most posters in this forum fly, there is a ton of protected airspace on the "unprotected" side...2.6nm from the holding course at the lowest altitude for which a template is published (2000' agl), increasing in size with altitude.

Bob Gardner

 

[skidoo]

My method sounds very similar to yours but my jotting down of the clearance and the drawing take place at the same time. In essence, I draw the clearance and then my position in relation to it. At that point it seems obvious what entry to make.

This is "Hold southwest of the XYZ VOR on the 220° Radial, left turns. Maintain 8,000. Expect further clearance at 0000Z:

I just learned this the other day, except I will draw it always the same, label the radial and then rotate the paper to put the tail on the HSI. Then I can envision the direction headed relative to the pattern. It seems to work much better now. But, I still have a couple of questions:

1) what is the significance of "hold 'SW'... on the 220 radial". Why not just say hold on the 220 radial?

2) I have not figured out the simplest way to hold at say "
hold NW on the fix, 8 mile DME from radial 220 on the XXX VOR", or "hold SE on waypoint xxx". Any tips?

 

[rbridges]

http://www.langleyflyingschool.com/Pages/Holds and Hold Entriesl.html

I use the thumb method that's about 2/3 of the way down the page. This is very similar to what my CFII taught me. Use whatever PT the inbound heading lands on the HI.

 

[BillTIZ]

2) I have not figured out the simplest way to hold at say "
hold NW on the fix, 8 mile DME from radial 220 on the XXX VOR", or "hold SE on waypoint xxx". Any tips?

That would be one tough hold to figure out, not given in the "standard" order. Plus holding NW on the 220 Radial implies you are holding perpendicular to the radial?

"Hold SE, XYZ VOR, 220radial,8 DME fix, left turns, maintain 8000, EFC 0000"

 

[One Short]

How I determine holding patterns is by mentally drawing a line horizontally across the center of the DG. The very center of the DG would be the fix. Think like the horizon bar on the AI. Now, if i'm on supposed to hold on any radial that is on the lower half of the line its going to be a direct entry.

To figure out the teardrop or parallel is just as simple. The top half of the pie has to be split down the center. So now what you would be looking at is a DG that has a 1/4 pie on the top left, 1/4 pie on the top right and half a pie on the bottom.

That's how I learned. And to make it easier to remember think of your pie as the aircraft cockpit. The top left is the pilot seat, the top right is the teachers seat and the back is for the Dummy

Pilot------Parallel
Teacher---Teardrop
Dummy----Direct

 

[skidoo]

That would be one tough hold to figure out, not given in the "standard" order. Plus holding NW on the 220 Radial implies you are holding perpendicular to the radial?

Is a hold ever given not on a radial? Perhaps that is why I am having trouble figuring out how to handle such a request. I was thinking what if ATC wants me to hold at a fix xx miles from the VOR and they may want the hold some direction relative to that fix, not necessarily a direction to/from the VOR.

"Hold SE, XYZ VOR, 220radial,8 DME fix, left turns, maintain 8000, EFC 0000"

SE would still be 90 deg. Would ATC only have you hold saying SW or NE on the 220 radial, 8 DME fix? Or could they have you hold any other direction at that DME fix? I think I better go re-look in the books too.

 

[midlifeflyer]

I just learned this the other day, except I will draw it always the same, label the radial and then rotate the paper to put the tail on the HSI. Then I can envision the direction headed relative to the pattern. It seems to work much better now. But, I still have a couple of questions:

1) what is the significance of "hold 'SW'... on the 220 radial". Why not just say hold on the 220 radial?

Because that's the "official" language from the Controller's Bible. A general direction followed by the specific radial. WAG - I read once the #1 error on the private knowledge test cross country questions was using the answer that was 180° off. Saying "southwest" along with the radial ends the potential for confusing the 220 radial with the 220 course to the station and recognizes that some pilots will visualize cardinal and ordinal directions better than numbers.

2) I have not figured out the simplest way to hold at say "
hold NW on the fix, 8 mile DME from radial 220 on the XXX VOR", or "hold SE on waypoint xxx". Any tips?

I think it's the same (although I didn't understand your 8 mile DME instruction at all; perhaps try it using standard hold terminology?). If you are on a radial to that point in space, there should be no problem with the visualization. If you are not and ATC is simply choosing a point in space you don't have NAV-direct capability for (the topic posits there is no RNAV capability) then your problem isn't visualizing the hold; it's figuring out where that point in space is. Without starting the usual argument about the legality direct IFR navigation without GPS, while it's not impossible to navigate to a point in space without RNAV capability, if not beyond the capabilities of the average instrument pilot in a high workload situation, it's taxing enough to merit a "unable direct [waypoint]; negative GPS" response to the instruction.

 

[EppyGA]

I learned to use

Nose
In
Teardrop

Nose
Out
Parallel

 

[midlifeflyer]

Is a hold ever given not on a radial? Perhaps that is why I am having trouble figuring out how to handle such a request. I was thinking what if ATC wants me to hold at a fix xx miles from the VOR and they may want the hold some direction relative to that fix, not necessarily a direction to/from the VOR.

That's not going to happen. In the absence of RNAV capability, there's no course guidance.

 

[flyingron]

Because that's the "official" language from the Controller's Bible. A general direction followed by the specific radial. WAG - I read once the #1 error on the private knowledge test cross country questions was using the answer that was 180° off. Saying "southwest" along with the radial ends the potential for confusing the 220 radial with the 220 course to the station and recognizes that some pilots will visualize cardinal and ordinal directions better than numbers.

Sometimes the holding fix is on the radial but is NOT the VOR itself.

 

[LDJones]

Is a hold ever given not on a radial? Perhaps that is why I am having trouble figuring out how to handle such a request. I was thinking what if ATC wants me to hold at a fix xx miles from the VOR and they may want the hold some direction relative to that fix, not necessarily a direction to/from the VOR.

SE would still be 90 deg. Would ATC only have you hold saying SW or NE on the 220 radial, 8 DME fix? Or could they have you hold any other direction at that DME fix? I think I better go re-look in the books too.

Are you ever NOT on a radial?? That said, there are holds off of GPS fixes.

 

[aterpster]

Use whatever gets you into the hold while staying on the "safe side" of the hold. The controller will not be awarding any bonus points for one form of entry over another.

In terms of instrument training and obstacle clearance from higher terrain the premise should be a non-radar environment, which is often the case at a mountain area airport. That is also where the obstacles often exist nearby that are higher than the holding altitude.

So, it is not an issue of what the controller likes or not, for under the circumstances I set forth, he/she wouldn't have a clue about whether I enter the holding pattern so as to remain within protected airspace.

At typical light aircraft speeds there is lots of protected airspace for the pilot to muck around. At turbine speeds, however, it is a different matter. In turbine airplanes the airplane would rather be at 250 KIAS than 200 or 230 KIAS, so most pilots flying jets hold at the maximum holding speed. Holding at maximum speed, combined with strong winds aloft, can easily cause the airplane to stray outside protected airspace, unless all of the holding pattern "rules" are carefully followed.

 

[aterpster]

But for the type of airplane most posters in this forum fly, there is a ton of protected airspace on the "unprotected" side...2.6nm from the holding course at the lowest altitude for which a template is published (2000' agl), increasing in size with altitude.

Bob Gardner

Some of that airspace can be taken by VOR system error, assuming a VOR hold.

 

[aterpster]

Is a hold ever given not on a radial? Perhaps that is why I am having trouble figuring out how to handle such a request. I was thinking what if ATC wants me to hold at a fix xx miles from the VOR and they may want the hold some direction relative to that fix, not necessarily a direction to/from the VOR.





SE would still be 90 deg. Would ATC only have you hold saying SW or NE on the 220 radial, 8 DME fix? Or could they have you hold any other direction at that DME fix? I think I better go re-look in the books too.

Attached is a short article I wrote for the ALPA magazine on this subject in 1999. Nothing has changed since then in this respect.

 

[midlifeflyer]

Sometimes the holding fix is on the radial but is NOT the VOR itself.

True.

 

[midlifeflyer]

Great article, Wally (as usual).

I know I never read it before so it strikes me as interesting that your article and my example both use the 220° radial. Hmmmmmmm.....

 

[skidoo]

Attached is a short article I wrote for the ALPA magazine on this subject in 1999. Nothing has changed since then in this respect.

Thanks! So the hold "SW" part has significance when holding at other than the VOR itself. And, there are not other directions to hold other than four possibilities when given a DME fix.

 

[Threefingeredjack]

It is impossible to enter a hold without a coupled GPS and autopilot.


I may just give up flying altogether.......

 

[GMascelli]

Why do pilots want to work so hard?

You have the plate/chart in your hands or on the iPad. All the plates are configured north up so use your finger to simulate the direction you are approaching the fix or VOR from.


On this approach I am on a south heading so I am approaching from the north and will cross the VOR with the best entry being the teardrop. I note my direction of travel/entry by the red line on the approach plate which would be the line followed with my finger. Easy Peasy.....

 

[midlifeflyer]

You have the plate/chart in your hands or on the iPad.

What plate/chart are you referring to? We've been talking about an unpublished fix with ATC created holding instructions, where you have to "create" the chart yourself.

 

[GMascelli]

Mark,

Yes, my brian fart. The OP did not specify a vor or working from an approach plate.

In my limited instrument flying time I have been given three holds. All three were after I was told to expect a specific approach. I'm /G so two of the three were specific to the RNAV approach holding at the PT. The other was to a vor but the same procedure would apply for a fix. On my knee board i'll sketch out the odd ball holds my safety pilot throws at me, pretty much as your sketch in post 9. I'll add cross radial notes to id the fix and "report" underlined to remind myself when the workload gets busy.

 

[midlifeflyer]

Exactly, Gary. I teach the drawing when I teach holds. At that point, it's intended to show how simple it can be and how much sense the AIM-recommended entries make (without being religious about them). But I leave it to my students whether they like that visualization method or whether another (or none at all) would work as well or better.

 

[bobmrg]

Is a hold ever given not on a radial? Perhaps that is why I am having trouble figuring out how to handle such a request. I was thinking what if ATC wants me to hold at a fix xx miles from the VOR and they may want the hold some direction relative to that fix, not necessarily a direction to/from the VOR.





SE would still be 90 deg. Would ATC only have you hold saying SW or NE on the 220 radial, 8 DME fix? Or could they have you hold any other direction at that DME fix? I think I better go re-look in the books too.

Let's go to the format used by controllers as found in AIM 5-3-7:

1. Direction of holding from the fix: "Hold northwest..." (this means that when you cross the fix you are going to turn roughly to the northwest....somewhere between 292 and 337.

2. Holding fix: "...of the Podunk VOR..." (self explanatory)

3. Radial, course, airway, bearing, or route: "...on the 315 radial..." (again, self explanatory)

4. Leg length (when it is a DME hold)

5. Direction of turn: Only when non-standard, i.e., left turns

6. Time to expect further clearance.

Simply turning in the cardinal direction stated and timing for a minute or so solves most of your problems. What to do at the end of the wait? If it is a standard hold, turn left and return to the fix; if it is left turns, turn right and return to the fix.

Enjoy.

Bob Gardner

 

[DutchessFlier]

Use whatever gets you into the hold while staying on the "safe side" of the hold. The controller will not be awarding any bonus points for one form of entry over another.

Amen to That!

 

[aterpster]

Amen to That!

In lots of circumstances he won't even see you.

 

[EdFred]

I never parallel entry. I just teardrop or direct. If holding with an inbound course of 270º if I am 135° from the fix clockwise to 360º from the fix it's teardrop, if I am 360º from cw 135º FROM it's direct.

 

[azure]

I never parallel entry. I just teardrop or direct. If holding with an inbound course of 270º if I am 135° from the fix clockwise to 360º from the fix it's teardrop, if I am 360º from cw 135º FROM it's direct.

My DPE said the same thing. His reason was that parallel adds an extra turn. I don't really agree with this logic though, since turning to do a teardrop from 270 cw 360 FROM the fix in your example (you didn't say, but I assume you meant standard turns) also means an extra turn. From 270 cw 315ish or so it's pretty trivial though.

I'd also favor parallel entry over teardrop if there was a strong crosswind from the protected side, so that I could gauge my needed drift correction from the start and estimate where my outbound course should be so I don't get blown into unprotected airspace when turning inbound.

The 480 makes hold entries easy peasy though -- you can put a hold at any fix, in any direction, left or right turns. And not only does it draw the racetrack for you, it even tells you the FAA-recommended entry method.

 

[EdFred]

My DPE said the same thing. His reason was that parallel adds an extra turn. I don't really agree with this logic though, since turning to do a teardrop from 270 cw 360 FROM the fix in your example (you didn't say, but I assume you meant standard turns) also means an extra turn. From 270 cw 315ish or so it's pretty trivial though.

See the picture, I take no extra turns. Maybe longer ones, but not extra.

I'd also favor parallel entry over teardrop if there was a strong crosswind from the protected side, so that I could gauge my needed drift correction from the start and estimate where my outbound course should be so I don't get blown into unprotected airspace when turning inbound.

Having GPS, I would know if I have a strong wind, and start the teardrop before actually getting to the fix so I don't get blown too far.

The 480 makes hold entries easy peasy though -- you can put a hold at any fix, in any direction, left or right turns. And not only does it draw the racetrack for you, it even tells you the FAA-recommended entry method.

Picture...1000 words.

Although that area from due south to the southeast boundary, could be direct as well.

 

[Jaybird180]

Let's go to the format used by controllers as found in AIM 5-3-7:

1. Direction of holding from the fix: "Hold northwest..." (this means that when you cross the fix you are going to turn roughly to the northwest....somewhere between 292 and 337.

2. Holding fix: "...of the Podunk VOR..." (self explanatory)

3. Radial, course, airway, bearing, or route: "...on the 315 radial..." (again, self explanatory)

4. Leg length (when it is a DME hold)

5. Direction of turn: Only when non-standard, i.e., left turns

6. Time to expect further clearance.

Simply turning in the cardinal direction stated and timing for a minute or so solves most of your problems. What to do at the end of the wait? If it is a standard hold, turn left and return to the fix; if it is left turns, turn right and return to the fix.

Enjoy.

Bob Gardner

I don't understand this part. Why does not NW indicate the larger 271-359 sector of space? Why only a 45deg slice of the pie?

Simply turning in the cardinal direction stated and timing for a minute or so solves most of your problems. What to do at the end of the wait? If it is a standard hold, turn left and return to the fix; if it is left turns, turn right and return to the fix.

Thank you for clearing up things for me. This is why the 3 holding directions never quite made sense to me because I understood all turns to mean that it includes the initial turn back to the fix.

 

[bobmrg]

I don't understand this part. Why does not NW indicate the larger 271-359 sector of space? Why only a 45deg slice of the pie?



Thank you for clearing up things for me. This is why the 3 holding directions never quite made sense to me because I understood all turns to mean that it includes the initial turn back to the fix.

There are 360 degrees in a circle; there are eight cardinal directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW). Each is a 45 degree slice of the pie, centered on 360, 045, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, and 315. The holding instructions format begins with a cardinal direction from the fix. Northwest (315) is the center of that piece of pie, and the word "northwest" incorporates all headings/radials, courses between 292.5 and 337.5.

Bob