More Instrument Time

N172DR - C172R - 2.1 hours

As somewhat of a last minute thing, a coworker of mine asked if I wanted to go flying so he could get his night currency back.  I almost declined, having just gone last weekend, but since Eric is a CFI and I need to continue chipping away at the instrument requirements, I figured it was a good opportunity.

Since I didn't get my Grant County (W99) flight in last weekend, I figured I would fly the approach there, stop through Winchester (OKV), and then head back to Leesburg (JYO).  That would give him three takeoffs and landings, and it would get me a decent amount of simulated instrument time.

Departing to the west, I put the blinders on and picked up the Linden (LDN) VOR, which is the initial approach fix for the LDA/DME-B approach to W99.  Since LDN is pretty far away from W99, it gave Eric plenty of time to ask general flying questions before we concentrated on the actual approach.  Unfortunately, in order to keep the localizer in the NAV1 spot, I had to put LDN in the NAV2 spot which was unlit.  You can see the oscillations in the track as I wasn't as on top of it as I should've been (first going southwest towards LDN, and then I turned too early to the west, away from LDN).  In any case, I made it onto the localizer in the end, which put me right on top of the field.

As you can see on the chart, the airport is surrounded by terrain, so much so that a straight-in approach cannot be made with the necessary safety margins required by the FAA.  For this reason, the LOC is offset 25 degrees from the actual runway heading.  Moreover, this is also why it is a localizer-type directional aid (LDA) approach instead of being a localizer (LOC) approach.

For those who aren't pilots, localizers are normally placed at the far end of a runway and provide lateral guidance to it.  In this case, the localizer has been placed to the left of the runway, on the near side, because of terrain.  Being on the near side means that it is more sensitive, and therefore slightly more difficult to track, when compared to a normal LOC approach at similar distances from the field.  Additionally, because of the offset and the terrain, the minimum altitude you can descend to on the approach is 1540 feet above the elevation of the airport.  Because you're so high, so close in, it is designed as a circling approach, where you wouldn't normally immediately line up with the runway to land (note that the chart only lists "circling" at the bottom, with no "S" - or "straight-in" - minimums); rather, you would spot the airport closer in, circle around the airport to lose altitude, and then to land.  You can see this in the CloudAhoy track below (the knot at the far left of the blue line).  While the concepts of the various approaches are similar, approaches like this offer somewhat of a challenge, when compared to those offering straight-in procedures (which is what you experience on 99% of commercial flights if the weather is poor).

I ended up overflying the field, and passing the controls to Eric so that he could make his landing.  After a quick full stop landing with a taxi back, we departed to the north to avoid terrain.  If you look back at the approach chart, you'll see that there is a valley north of the field to follow until you clear the mountains.  Once above the terrain, I took the controls again with the blinders on to log more instrument time towards OKV.  After Eric had OKV in sight, I passed the controls back to him for a lap around the pattern and a full stop landing.  Since the weather was nicer, a few others were taking advantage of it for night currency as well, so I called traffic with the blinders off while we were in the pattern.

One of the pilots who landed before us decided to stop right next to the taxiway for some reason, but we managed to get by.  After the departure, I put the blinders back on and took us back to JYO.  Once again, Eric called the field in sight, I passed him the controls for the landing, and that was that.  By the way, if anyone wants to see the perfect example of a full stall landing, see this guy.

From all of the questions throughout the flight, it seems I need to dig back through the books to brush up on some of the items I've forgotten over the years.  It was a great flight, though.  He has his night currency back, and I have 1.6 more hours of the instrument requirement (not to mention 1.6 more instrument dual).

Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 2.1 - 84.1 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 1.6 - 13.7 (of 40)