Fast-Geese

“Runway 27 is 3200-2 or standard.” Sounds to me like he was ending the thought there, and reading it as separate from the gradient. Like I said, sounds mega dumb but I’ve done plenty of dumb shit learning new stuff.

This is gonna sound mega dumb when you realize it but the period is an abbreviation for “standard” (std.), not the end of a section. Read it as one sentence, “or standard with a minimum climb of 500’…”. Sounds dumb but reading the abbreviations is half the battle

A lot of information coming for you about IFR departure methods… have fun! 1. Yellow is the required weather to be able to see and avoid obstacles during the climb. The first half of that line is saying you need to climb at 296’/nm (as opposed to the standard 200’) to 9300 to out-climb whatever obstacle is in the departure path. The back half is saying if you can’t, you must have that wx to see and avoid whatever obstacle up to 9300. 2. Red and green is two separate instructions. This is more common on STARs for example where multiple airways converge into common directions. The ellipsis ends one section of instruction (there could be a bunch of different sections), and then you pick up where the ellipsis starts a sentence for common directions. So you would do the red… or the green… thence do XYZ regardless if you used red or green to get there. 3. Green is saying you cross Stevens Fld heading south at or above 9400 MSL. You should already be at 9400 at this point, and because this is a climb in visual conditions the climb gradient doesn’t apply and it’s up to you to get there by that point. You’re climbing at whatever gradient you can get, visually clearing obstacles, up to 9400 over Stevens field.

Find the big long stretch of pavement and crash the plane into it? Aim for the big white bars 1000’ from the end of the runway.

IFR flying is a lot of GK, and for a pretty good reason. One thing that helped me was mock planning a flight from start to finish from two fields I wasn’t familiar with, and think through everything from where I’m parked, the taxi to the runway, how I’m getting out (SID, SDP, etc), routing, arrival through approach, to taxi back to whatever FBO. When you’re walking through it, don’t just go “yeah I’m flying ILS Rwy XX into XYZ”, think about how you’d ACTUALLY fly the approach - which IAF, stepdowns, routing, which NAVAIDs tuned up, the missed, etc. “I’m gonna hit FIX, should be tracking this course and I can descend down to 3100, waiting for this radial to start my turn onto final, once on final I can descend to 2700. Gonna configure at XX DME, start my descent to 500, if I don’t see the runway environment I’m doing (missed).” You get the idea. Find some real world examples that give you the why behind why you’d need a certain piece of information.

Established in holding is if, for this plate, you were already holding as published at CADAB. If you were cleared the approach while in the hold, you would not hit the fix and do another turn in holding for the procedure turn, you’d just continue inbound.

From what I’ve read, there’s no requirement for 91 pilots to have any wx criteria to start an approach. But 121/135 operators it sounds like (making generalizations, I have no real world experience) must meet the wx minimums at the intended destination at the estimated time of arrival to take off. It’s just not as clean cut?

I stand corrected - I had no idea civilian pilots just use the DA/Vis for weather decisions. I like the required wx being listed right there - makes it easy to decide with no math whether I can shoot the approach. Learned something new today!

AFAIK, MAPs on RNAV approaches are the last named fix. In this scenario it’s “RW06”, and because “1.3NM to RW06” isn’t named it’s just the VDP. If they’d named a fix before the threshold, that would be the MAP.

Minimums are given in the format: DA/Vis HAT (Ceil-PrevailingVis). The numbers in parenthesis are required weather minimums for the approach. The 200 outside parenthesis is the height above touchdown at the DA.

Yes, airplane weight matters. Runways are given a Pavement Classification Rating (PCR), and aircraft are given an Aircraft Classification Rating (ACR). Compare the two, and any aircraft with an ACR under the runway’s PCR can land on that runway without damaging the runway. I don’t know about the A380 specifically, but for the other commenter’s DCA example, each runway has its own classification published on the airport diagram. 01-19 has a higher PCR than 15-33, which is higher than 04-22. Don’t land on a runway that won’t hold you.

None of this is relevant… this isn’t a PT or HILPT.