One of the easiest things to learn in an airplane is to go in circles. You may go in circles around yourself, but the point is that learning to do turns around a point is not a difficult concept. Even the most wind-vector-challenged student can tell if the chosen point is getting closer or further from the airplane. You'd think that learning to fly pretty concentric circles in the clouds would not be too hard either, after mastering the other intricacies of instrument flight, but you'd be wrong. DME arcs stink, plain and simple. I hate 'em. As an instructor, though, I love to watch people squirm, suffer, swear, and screw them up (The Four-S's; not to be confused with the Five-TsJ. Most humbling, the DME arc. So, what's the key to slogging smoothly through these beasts? Get vectors for a straight-in approach. Having said that, the reason for the arc's existence may not always be so obvious. I suspect that they were designed by controllers to reduce their workload by requiring the pilot to navigate all the way around to the final approach course.
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