Holding Entry Trainer: Practice the Three Entries Until They Click
Date Published
Try it now: Open the Holding Entry Trainer →
Holding patterns are one of those IFR topics that feel perfectly clear in the FARs and completely scrambled when ATC gives you the clearance at a busy moment. The three entry procedures — direct, teardrop, and parallel — make total geometric sense on paper. In the airplane, decoding the clearance, working out the inbound course from the radial, comparing your heading to the sector boundaries, and executing the correct turn all need to happen fast. The only real cure is repetition. So I built a trainer.
The trainer has two modes. In quiz mode it reads you a realistic ATC clearance — a random fix, a radial, a turn direction, an expect further clearance time — and tells you the heading you will be on when you reach the fix. Your job is to work out the inbound course from the radial, choose the correct entry, and check your answer. The map stays blank until you answer, so you actually have to think rather than just look at the picture. After you check, the correct pattern and the three entry sectors appear on the map and the coach explains the geometry in plain language.
The 70-degree line
For a standard right-turn hold, measure your arrival heading relative to the inbound course: if you are between 110 degrees right and 180 degrees right of the inbound course, it is a teardrop. If you are between 70 degrees left and 180 degrees left, it is a parallel. Everything else — the big swath from 70 left through direct to 110 right — is a direct entry. The boundary between teardrop and parallel, and the boundary between parallel and direct, form a single straight line through the fix at 70 degrees to the inbound course. That is the 70-degree line. Once you can visualize it you stop second-guessing. The trainer draws it on the map every time so you start to internalize it.
Watch it flown
After answering — or if you just want to see the right entry — you can watch it flown on the map at up to 16x speed. The simulation uses 100 knots TAS and standard-rate turns, so the timing and geometry are realistic. A live coach narrates each phase: the turn at the fix, the outbound leg timing, the turn inbound, and then the standard pattern. After the first circuit it tracks the inbound leg time and adjusts the outbound leg to compensate, just like you would in the airplane. Add wind with the sliders and watch the aircraft crab and the outbound time change to keep the inbound leg at one minute.
Sector map for exploring
The second mode is a free-form sector map. Set any inbound course, any turn direction, and drag the arrival heading slider through 360 degrees. The shaded sectors update in real time and the entry name changes as you cross each boundary. It is the fastest way to build intuition for how the sectors rotate with left versus right turns, or when the inbound course changes. Hit Fly this entry and the simulation runs your custom scenario. Run through a dozen random quiz scenarios until the entry pops into your head before you finish reading the clearance — that is the goal.