If IFR could be summed up in one word it would be Planning. Flying VFR to a small airport like Three Hills takes almost no effort. Fly within 5NM of the field, make a radio call, join the circuit and land.

If you were to fly into YYC or Vancouver you would be talking a lot to ATC, switching frequencies, looking for landmarks, trying to spot traffic, and trying hard to keep up with what is going on.

The biggest difference between IFR and VFR is that IFR assumes that once your wheels leave the ground you won’t be able see anything. Obstacle avoidance is achieved by staying on course, knowing how to follow your navigation instruments, and knowing how to execute specific procedures in a way that keeps you flying in protected airspace. In many cases you can legally and safely fly to 200 feet AGL and within 1/2 mile of the runway before you spot runway lights or the runway.

The planning steps and the actual flying are very similar for both small airports and big ones, and it’s probably the same controller that you will be talking to. Having current maps, the CFS, CAP GEN (like an IFR CFS) and the TC AIM are the minimum needed to create a plan.

Planning starts with picking the appropriate route from your departure airport to your destination airport. The first place to start is to look for mandatory routes that ATC expects you to use. Next, lookup departure procedures for your airport, and then check the arrival procedures at your destination airport. Third, now that you know the last waypoint from your departure and the first waypoint of your arrival, is to pick all the required waypoints in between. You can choose to go direct and calculate your own terrain clearance or use a “T” route which is the GPS equivalent of a Victor airway. It’s important to pick a suitable altitude that achieves terrain clearance but also provides communication range if you don’t use a T route. If you don’t have an IFR certified GPS, you may still be able to use the NAV radio or ADF in your plane. In reality there are very few VOR’s still in service and even fewer NDB’s so that really isn’t an option anymore.

You also can’t use your handheld Garmin for IFR, you need a certified panel mount with a current database updated within the last 56 days.

One critical step for IFR flights is to have an alternate airport. This can’t be any airport; it has to be in fuel range and have suitable weather at the expected time of arrival. The minimum weather for an alternate is typically 2SM visibility and 800′ broken or overcast but there are some variations of this. As part of this step you also have to plan an additional 45 minutes of flying time for an extra margin of safety. When I do flight plans at work it’s not uncommon to carry an extra 1.5 to 2 hours of fuel on top of what it takes to get to the destination. W

ith the waypoints selected and verified you have a detailed route that works but you’re still not done. The most important step is to actually file that flight plan with ATC. They have to approve your route and altitudes and plan for spacing with other aircraft. They may occasionally make changes to your plan. Often they will phone you back but sometimes you don’t find out until you are in the plane and call for clearance.

Once you finally get in the plane the rest is fairly straightforward as much of the hard work is done. Program your planned route and altitudes into your GPS and then call for clearance from ATC. From the time you enter the runway, until you land, everything you do will be with a clearance from ATC.

Navigating IFR today means you can still use paper maps, but you also need to have an iPAD or tablet for the airport plates which are all electronic. The CAP GEN which has all of the airport procedures is only electronic now, there’s no book form like the CFS. The CAP GEN and IFR maps along with the GPS databases get updated every 56 days and any document even a day out of date is not legal for flight. For every airport there are departure plates (how do I take off and get on course), approach plates (how do I get lined up for the runway correctly) and for bigger airports like YYC they have arrival plates (I’m coming from far away and I want to get sequenced in correctly). If you are flying into Calgary from Regina in a small piston expect to start getting sequenced at Beiseker. If you are in a faster turboprop or jet that waypoint UDPAV is just west of the Saskatchewan border.

This brief introduction oversimplifies the entire IFR process and there are still things you have to figure out during the flight. In later articles I will go into more detail to explain how to accomplish this.