My student previously had instrument instruction from a non-CFI-I and their procedure for briefing the plate was to read the whole thing out loud. This was something I noticed the student did in the plane too. Initially I assumed the student was trying to show that they knew how to brief, but during our long ground it became apparent they did not have a flow they were using. That brings me to our topic of today – briefing instrument approaches.
I broke it down to my student that a good way to brief the instrument approach happens in three stages. The preflight, the enroute, and terminal stages.
Preflight: In the preflight, the airport and its available instrument approaches should be reviewed for anything out of the ordinary. This is a time to review the weather to determine the most likely approach to be used. At this point in the pre-flight, the entire plate should be reviewed and any “gotchas” should be noted.
Enroute: Get the weather and verify altimeter. Is your expected approach compatible with the weather? Brief and load the approach. Most GPS systems will have an overlay of the waypoints. Verify what the database produces with the waypoints on the chart. Load and listen to the frequencies as applicable. This would be a good time to review the plan of action (what are we doing on the approach and what altitudes).
Terminal: Verify the current weather and altimeter with your safety pilot/CFI-I as applicable. Confirm the approach profile and minimums. Prepare to begin the approach.
After showing this to my student, we hopped in the simulator to test it out at KAKO’s VOR approach. The student briefed the approach as described above and reduced the amount of lag between phases of flight, contributing to a much smoother transition between enroute and terminal operations. Pretty cool!
Here are some more pictures from the ground session that help show how I tried to break down the approach brief, its even color coded. (Green = Pre-flight, Blue = you in enroute, Red = Us in terminal)
Homework: what is needed to land from an instrument approach (re. 91.175). This was a primer from our last ground to get my student in the regs and looking at requirements to land and the available approaches – and what they can expect to see at minimums – on the approach.