A lot of technology is available to piston pilots these days. This includes certified glass-panel displays in new airplanes as well as gee-whiz, almost-real-time weather graphics displayed on the same laptop computer used to play MP3s over the ship's audio system. Some of the portable products available to the GA aircraft owner and pilot these days are truly revolutionary and can literally mean being able to complete a marginal-weather trip safely and reliably instead of holing up somewhere and waiting for the bad stuff to pass.The additional capability these portable devices bring to the average GA cockpit is a definitely a good thing. But -- you knew there would be a "but," right? -- they aren't certified as a primary navigation source under IFR. Consequently, they should only be used in supporting the equipment already installed in your panel.While there are certainly legal and safe ways to, say, use a handheld GPS to navigate under IFR to a destination hundreds of miles away, it's not a good idea to use portable equipment as the primary resource in more safety-critical applications, like instrument approaches. In addition to the accuracy and reliability of such equipment, its design and user interface can be less-than-ideal, leading to distractions. As a result, depending on portable, non-certified equipment as a primary source of navigation under IFR in anything other than an emergency is not only illegal but it's not a good idea.This latter point was demonstrated on the afternoon of October 15, 2002, when a Cessna 172N was destroyed while attempting the GPS Runway 21 approach to the Mount Sterling-Montgomery County Airport (IOB) in Mount Sterling, Ky. The Private pilot and his passenger were fatally injured. The daytime flight departed the Greenwood Municipal Airport (HFY) in Greenwood, Ind., and was conducted under an IFR clearance.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/probable-cause-22-handheld-ifr