No need to retype Scott’s book from VAF, so here you go…
Pop quiz: How do you keep two instrument pilots current and proficient? Answer: You burn some avgas and a few hours under the hood.
Today our mission was to go out and each shoot as many approaches as we were comfortable with, with the 22 gallons of fuel that were in the tanks. It was a beautiful severe VFR day, perfectly clear, cool, and just a flying kind of day. However, we chose to spend it trading being under the hood for more than an hour at a time each, shooting approaches and such within just a few miles of home.
I find that it is a valuable exercise to stay under the hood for well over an hour at a time to demonstrate to ourselves just how sloppy we can get later in the flight. I was up first. We launched and made the turn toward Taylor to intercept the outbound course for the VOR/DME 17 approach. We tracked it outbound 014 and I delayed the procedure turn a little more than usual to give myself plenty of time on the inbound leg to think and get in the groove. We turned for the PT and timed about a minute. Right turn to reintercept the inbound course. That darn VOR CDI is a tease sometimes. Ok, finally got it glued in the center just before reaching the final approach fix. Over the FAF, it was time to dive for the floor.
Oh yeah, did I mention how beautiful a day it was. Of course everybody else thought so too, and they were out flying. Tanya, the safety pilot, was earning her keep making sure that we stayed safe and coordinated with all other aircraft in the vicinity. When we were in the procedure turn, there was a Mooooony that called 18mi from the field in the procedure turn on the same approach. We were in the PT at about 9mi. Tanya and I both thought to ourselves, “at 18 mi, you aren’t on THIS approach as it has a 10mi limit.”, but whatever. I reannounced our position and intent, being certain that we would beat them to the airport by a few counties distance. As we crossed the FAF and started down, the Moooooney announced PT inbound at 17 mi from the field. However, at about the same time Tanya calmly demanded “Left turn now, heads UP.” No hesitation, I complied. She had been watching this target converge on the mode S. Yep. There is the Mooney. They were calling distances from the field by simply reading the DME from the VOR which is about 13 mi from the field. Tanya wanted to stomp on them on the radio and point out their mistake, but I kept her from it. They were out doing the same thing we were, and if there is any kind of weather to make some simple mistakes, this was the right day. But, where was their safety pilot, allowing such transgressions to continue. They made a few more grossly incorrect position calls before departing the area. We love mode S traffic. We just kept a close eye on that target.
Ok, so where were we, headed down from the FAF on the first approach. Getting things stabilized in the decent, mixture, prop, speed, flaps, pre-landing checklist, making the radio calls since this is kinda’ a non-standard thing going on for any other VFR pilots in the area. I did my rookie mistake I call a “Boing”, as in bouncing off the floor. I didn’t arrest my decent early enough and flew through my 1180′ minimum by a few feet. This calls for a positive change to get back up where we are supposed to be. This is no good at all in the soup or on a check ride. That is why we’re out here burning the fuel. The missed approach point comes up pretty fast. I take a quick glance out the window as we approach the MAP to see if we’re in a position to make a “normal decent and landing”. This is our recognized 30 day VOR air checkpoint for today . Yep, and we go missed with climb power and a climbing right turn to 2500′ back to the initial approach fix (same location as the FAF). I reintercepted the VOR outbound course without getting sucker punched by the needle this time. Rinse and repeat.
After the second approach, I entered the published holding pattern and nailed the 1min inbound leg on the first lap. The GPS and EFIS track and wind correction data makes this almost child’s play. On the next inbound leg, we swapped safety pilots and Tanya went under the hood. She did a couple more laps in my perfectly established holding pattern . She departed the hold inbound for her two runs at this approach. She clearly had her mojo in order and executed two pretty nice approaches, although she wasn’t immune to the “boing” on the first one either.
Next up on the hit list was to do a number of GPS approaches at Georgetown. We fly these in a few different practice modes. This GPS approach is just a plain old GPS approach with advisory vertical guidance. We sometimes (most of the time) use the vertical to simulate a precision approach, observing minimums of course. We also sometimes do the “dive and drive” step down. Then sometimes feed in the autopilot just to remember how it behaves setup various ways. With the GPS approach loaded up and active, Tanya proceed to fly two approaches with a missed. Some of the trick here is basic aircraft control with a lot (depends on who you talk to) of GPS button pushing and controller interaction.
The tower has gotten into the habit of being sure to ask us at what speed we’re going to fly the approach for sequencing. I’m very comfortable flying this approach anywhere from 85-140kts. Tanya likes the good ol’ 90kts until the 2.5mi mark to slow down for flaps. So she did her two, then it was my turn. I pushed the power up a little and let the tower know that we had changed seats and that the next few would be a little more rapid at about 130kts. Around and around we went. I let the autopilot fly one course intercept getting its guidance through the GRT efis. It flew way out through the course line with almost no anticipation and came back to pick it up. Hey, that isn’t cool. I double and triple checked my nav setup, that should have done better than that. I threw the toggle switch and let the A/P fly the next course transition coupled directly to the 430W. Yep, nice and pretty. We’ll work more on that some other day.
I let my third GPS approach down to a perfectly respectable landing. Our SOP is that as we touch down and are firmly on the ground, rolling out, the copilot is reconfiguring for ground ops. So before the nose has even touched down, Tanya is turning off the wig-wags, fuel pump off, carb heat cold, mixture lean for taxi, and dispatch the “missed” flashing stuff on the displays. As we turned off of the runway, she said “whew, I’m pooped”. I was ready to do a couple more, but fuel was at our minimums. We accomplished a lot in that 2.4hrs of flight, just barely leaving the pattern. The good, bad, and the ugly is there for all to see on the APRS track. It is a great training and debrief tool.
