Remember that time you were caught in low weather and weren’t ready? Or that admonishment from Approach when you mis-dialed the stepdown altitude? Just last year, or last Thursday? If you’re reading this, you lived to tell the tale and hopefully learned a thing or two about what it takes to stay both legal and safe.
So just in time for New-Year resolutions, here are some samples from the logbooks to try for yourself. Too far from home? Do you have a malfunction-free airplane? Wanna trade? If you want to really see how you’d handle a given situation, fly it in good weather, or get thee to a simulator. See how that obstacle database can keep you disciplined, and why you’re a test pilot on each and every flight.
Watch Out
In the flatlands, there’s not much terrain to worry about and what’s there amounts to some hills and ridges that hardly qualify as “mountains” like those found to the east and west. To make up for that, somebody decided we should have a lot of towers, tall ones. Windmill farms are all the rage. Also popular are majestic transmission towers, guy wires and all. Occasionally, there’s one right in your approach path, and sometimes the lights are inop and you probably didn’t see the NOTAM.
A good example is the RNAV (GPS) 14 at Janesville, Wisconsin (KJVL). Choose from three IAFs and say Approach descends you to the published minimum of 3100 feet near the turn inbound at TAYOR. Now, look to the right. The transmission tower is 2029 feet MSL, but looks a lot closer. This is what you can’t see coming in through the clouds, and it sure drives home the point that approach courses and altitudes are there for a reason. This is even sportier with a northeast gale that’ll force you to fight the drift towards the tower. For more excitement, fly the HILPT included here as an option, which has you racetracking between the tower and a grain elevator. How Midwestern.
For those craving more rocks and trees in the windscreen, check out the Runway 19 approaches to Rutland, Vermont (KRUT). Select the RNAV (GPS) Z or Y, or ILS or LOC Z. Due to the terrain that gets in the way of the approach, missed approach, and ability to circle at night, these procedures have a lot of extra notes.
For starters, you will fly a nine-mile final from the FAF to the runway for any approach. Plus, the ILS Y and the RNAV Z LNAV/VNAV, while providing glideslopes and glidepaths for stability and precision, have to use much higher-than-standard visibility minimums of five miles. The ILS Z, at 1451- 1½ minimums, is already stricter than the standard ILS and requires a missed-approach climb gradient of 425 feet per NM to 3200 feet. If in doubt, the ILS or LOC Y is available, but with even higher minimums of 2162-5. Thanks to a fellow IFR contributor for sending this with a picture and the note: “Looks like you’re flying right at the hillside.”
Partial Panel 2.0
The owner of a newer-model TAA once arrived to our regular workout session with his hair on end, and kept the batteries on to show what happened on the way in. The PFD looked like an untuned TV screen, and was unresponsive to any button presses, pounding, or even yelling. More startling was that the system failed to revert flight instruments to the second screen/MFD as designed. The backup instruments were the only reliable source of airspeed, attitude and altitude, and so while not ideal, the flight from home to here was luckily in VMC, so while quite uncomfortable, it was safe.
The maintenance techs, super experienced in the avionics, were also baffled by the malfunction, which did end up requiring a replacement. During a day of troubleshooting and phone calls to the manufacturer, we took our now-cancelled flight time to discuss what would have been the best actions if this had occurred in a IMC flight. No primary instruments, no reversion, just the little secondary gauges that no one flying with these avionics ever thought they would have to use.
This pilot already set personal minimums such as full tanks before every flight, giving him up to several hours to simply turn around for home if feasible. There’s a lot to be said for an emergency diversion at a familiar airport, where the runways, approaches, and terrain are already known and that saves a lot of workload for more urgent matters. Barring that, you can be far from home, and fuel means time to reach VMC with ATC assistance—the best option in this case. And don’t forget that §91.187 applies to any IFR flight, even if in VMC: reporting “any malfunctions of navigational, approach, or communication equipment…” That includes problems that aren’t covered in the books, as this example shows. So get comfortable with flying real approaches with backup instruments, whether installed or portable.
When Ya Gotta Circle
I still talk about the time I was a wet-ink CFI-I and learned a big lesson. Picture circling around a 5000-foot runway in a slippery single at 699 feet AGL, somehow thinking that Departure could hear me trying to get a clearance to climb into the 700-foot overcast. My instrument student, who had great flying skills and was dutifully flying the low-level hold at my instruction, must’ve thought this was normal. Circling in uncontrolled airspace at a non-towered airport was certainly legal with at least one mile visibility (we had three) but the 1200-foot ceiling I had expected had dropped, and even that wasn’t the best idea.
The IFR controlling facility was 26 miles away. Sometimes you could get them on the ground, sometimes not; that should’ve been a sign. We had filed an IFR flight plan, going through all the steps to check changes, advisories and expected approaches, and were looking forward to a real-life, 150-mile flight in IMC. I didn’t adjust the departure plan by simply calling the facility land line for a clearance and void-off time. That was last week’s lesson; today we were going to cover getting clearances in the air. We ended up covering how to land from a circling approach (kinda), reviewing void-off times, and how to better stick to personal minimums.
Maybe that’s why I contribute to the treatment of circling approaches as a difficult, risk-laden procedure that shouldn’t be flown unless it’s well practiced, and even then only if necessary. I do tend to treat circling approaches in recurrent training as a tool for a fly-to-minimums diversion due to weather, fuel, or malfunction. But in reality, busy airports regularly take advantage of such instrument procedures, or portions of them, to corral a constant flow of traffic into the terminal environment.
One by one, each aircraft is cleared for the approach while lining up for the runway in use. New York’s Teterboro is a good example of this (a colleague recently flew this and talked me through it). The ILS Runway 6 has been used for flow, ending with a circle to land Runway 1. With the approach clearance comes all the mandatory stepdowns (like 1500 feet between LEESY and DANDY). By TORBY, nearly four miles out, you can start the right-base leg, turn to final and comply with any speed restrictions. It’s flown well above all IFR circling MDAs—pretty much pattern altitudes. This is not nearly as scary a circling approach, knowing there’s plenty of room. A smaller single-engine could fly this in half the mileage or less.
Speaking of which, those of us in the piston crowd could stand to add some miles to our travels with some real trips—not just currency flights or $500-hamburger runs near the home airport. And when flying locally, work in some variety like unpublished holds, circling approaches and partial-panel work. It might take you all year to master the most challenging tasks, but that’s what the calendar is for. Better get started.
Elaine Kauh is a CFII in eastern Wisconsin. Her New Year’s resolution is to land at as many airports in her state as she can fly to, using instrument and visual approaches for currency and fun.
