my first IFR flight, KBED - KSFM
I’ve been working on my instrument rating in the simulator for a couple of weeks, making progress at a pace that is startling to both of us. I was prepared for another lesson in the sim, but with a bit of real instrument conditions hanging around, John gave me an hour’s notice to plan a short cross-country up to Sanford.
Bedford, MA (KBED) to Sanford, ME (KSFM) — 67nm
(alas, that link will stop working in 5 or 6 days)
Although it was my first IFR experience in an actual airplane, it went really well. I started getting approach vectors before I even got to Pease — not unexpected — but what was unexpected was how misleading and almost unreliable the Pease VOR is. It would swing back and forth from centered to full deflection every 20 or 30 seconds, making me start to wonder about whether one instrument or another was failing, but John said that it’s behaved that way for years. Pretty startling for what is supposed to be a trusted navigational beacon.
Anyway, we went to Sanford, got vectored to the runway 7 ILS, did a touch-and-go to make it a legal cross-country, then flew the missed approach anyway and went back to Bedford partial-panel. We don’t have a GPS in the simulator, so we took the opportunity to practice the GPS 23 approach into Bedford, and circled to land on 11.
The runway lights fading into view right in front of you as you start to emerge from the clouds at night is a pretty special sight.
Dan said,
June 18, 2007 @ 06:39
Well done :)
Can’t wait to get started on the IFR stuff, but over here in JAA land, it’s got to be a full IR following commercial stuff. It’s a stupid system currently under review, but I’ve started the proces of getting a CPL and IR so I may as well see it through. Might be 2009 before I get an IR, though.