Interesting carreer, what next. What do you fly now?
I fly a corporate Citation Encore that is operated by an AOC holder, so I alternate between flights for the owner and commercial revenue flights – a good mixture.
I have flown a few holds myself, many more in training, and I think the main thing – for Europe – is to be generally aware of where holds might be.
I don’t think you will ever get a hold which is unpublished. The issue is that it might be published anywhere within the airport’s set of plates so if e.g. Zurich has 84 pages of plates (just counted them!) the hold you might get could appear anywhere within the STAR or IAP plates which make up about half of the 84 pages.
You may also get a hold which is published on a STAR which is not the STAR you were assigned. Or, much more likely, you were never assigned a STAR because you were vectored all along…
For example 10-2C shows a hold at GIPOL
and they can throw you that one while you are coming from the west, coming from nowhere near the HOC VOR and perhaps on a “own navigation to KLO” instruction, or even just being radar vectored. I’ve had that at Zurich myself. It takes you as long as it takes you to go through the plates until you find GIPOL and with a holding pattern shown at GIPOL. In the meantime you obviously need to be on autopilot and flying the current heading or whatever. If you have difficulty finding the hold picture then you can ask ATC but in any case an instruction to hold at X means a “DCT X” so you need to either ask for a vector to the holding fix, or just enter DCT GIPOL and fly that, while sorting out which way the hold is oriented and how you need to enter it. The exception to the foregoing is if flying a previously explicitly assigned STAR in which case you continue the STAR until you reach the holding fix, and obviously the holding fix must be on that STAR. If coming from HOC you will be on a track of 080 which is very convenient but if they throw you “hold at GIPOL” while you are 20nm south of HOC then you need to build a mental picture fast, with more or less the right hold entry. I vaguely recall that in the USA all published holds are right-hand while unpublished ones are left-hand but I don’t know if there is such a rule in Europe (and being at work I am not going to look for exceptions 
).
So if flying to these big airports you need to thumb through all the STAR and IAP plates and see what holds are published on them, and keep in mind that ATC could throw you any of these and they expect you to go straight to it – like the airline pilots who fly the route several times a day. I normally start doing this stuff 100nm before the destination so I don’t get suprises.
Actually flying the hold is trivial, with a GPS moving map, and by twiddling the heading bug on the autopilot. Or you can use any of the more esoteric methods like using NAV mode to track to the holding fix (with the GPS in the OBS mode, if the inbound track is not your programmed leg as it would be if coming from HOC), etc, etc but the protected area is big enough for a 747 at 220kt or so so IR exam style of precision is not required.
There are avionics which will fly the correct hold entry and fly the hold but I wouldn’t pay money for that capability unless I had something fast like a TBM or higher. With piston GA, ATC normally slot you in, using vectoring.
A WAAS GNS430 will fly the holdings automatically if they are a part of the approach. So with a W unit you get that feature for “free” (well not exactly free :-))
What a lot of GA pilots overlook is that our aircraft have a nice speed envelope. When something requires mental capacity, I can pull out the throttle, set 10° of flaps and continue with 65KTAS instead of 150KTAS.
@Alexis: the GNS430 only has the holding if it is a mandatory part of the procedure. In the above example, it would not show the GIPOL holding.
I like the “DCT KLO” instruction because that’s often exactly what I need towards the end of many flights (“Klo” in German = loo). 
@Alexis: the GNS430 only has the holding if it is a mandatory part of the procedure. In the above example, it would not show the GIPOL holding.
Really in Europe the only holds you can fly automatically are in the missed approach as it seems very rare for them to be mandatory. At EGTK for example you are frequently asked to hold if Oxford RADAR is not operational as the ILS becomes procedural. But you can activate the hold in the missed approach to save effort and it will fly entries etc correctly.
As said before I fly them based on distance XTRK and from the holding point. I add a wind correction outbound really to prevent me closing too close to the inbound course and overshooting in the turn. And if a strong wind the other way would do the same.
@ Achim, that’s what I wrote :-) ) (“if they are part of the approach”)
I think it’s a good idea to slow down once things happe too fast – but I would maybe not fly 65 KIAS, not even in a Cessn.a How about 85? ;)
Jason, thanks, didn’t know that.
@ what next
and especially the most awful of them all, the King KLN 90…
as I got the KLN 90B together with a TB20 I bought 2 years ago and all the bells & whistles (double row of annunciator lights like the TB20 GT) belonging to an RNAV approach-certified GPS – I wonder whether your KLN 90 was approach certified with EASA? Mine is only IFR enroute and terminal area.
BTW, first thing I did was buying a Commander Docking Station from Lonestaraviation to get familiar with the 90B at home. Having such a procedure trainer
at home makes the 90B a lot less awful …
Anyway it is a relict of the 90s but I would be happy to use it legally for non precision 400ft minima approaches. Maybe I should try Peter’s way with a new AFMS ( and a EASA minor/major change ) to get it certified.
I wasn’t aware that the current kit can’t fly a hold which is published on a STAR. That is surely the most likely one at a big airport.
You are not likely to be going missed very often – the vast majority of approaches are landed with the wx way above minima.
The GNS480 can fly a hold anywhere (unpublished) but I wonder if its database would include the STAR hold, or if you would need to enter the holding fix and the inbound track manually. It is a very good box and seems to be well debugged by now (just as well since Garmin seem to have stopped software development on it) but its radio is not 8.33 which is a problem for people who need or want two 8.33 radios.
The KLN90 is fine – it just has a small screen so needs an MFD – just like the KLN89, KLN94, and arguably the GNS430 and the GTN650
Peter the STAR holds are either not in the databases or are supressed. GTN650/750 and the IFDs are all going to be able to do ad hoc holding. In the GARMINs this is supposed to be imminent. But it still will not be enroute/STAR holds ie you will have to say hold at point X, inbound course Y, i guess time Z and LH or RH..
