Approaches

February 19, 2012

Lately, Sundays have been my favorite day of the week because I always get to wake up and go fly. I hurried to the airport to find my plane in the hanger waiting for me. I organize the cockpit and inspect the airplane; ready to go! I track down my instructor, and after a briefing of our plans today we go outside. It appears that we will do the same VOR approaches as the last lesson, but this time at a controlled airport.

As I set up the radios and instruments, my CFI taxis out to runway 36. I do the run-up, then depart the area. Before reaching 1000ft, Mark tells me to put on the foggles. I'm told to fly a heading of north (360°) and climb to 2,500ft. I'm now positioned northeast of the St. Louis VOR and can make my initial radio call to ATC. Before making the call, I must check the ATIS to get reports of weather and airport information. Once I have received all of the information, I can tell ATC that I have "Information Romeo." This makes them aware that I know what to expect when I come in to land.

Mark tells me that now is the time to call up Approach. I take a deep breath, then push the button. "St. Louis Approach, Skyhawk 4882G(golf) with request." After a moment, the controllers voice responds and tells me to continue with my request. "82G, we'd like to practice the VOR-A approach into regional, we have information romeo." He then tells me to squawk "0210" on my transponder so that he can find me on his radar screen. Once identified, he assigns me to an altitude and a heading of east (090°). Now flying towards Regional, there's not much for us to do until we get closer. The sky had a layer of high altitude clouds and the air was smooth. We were loving it. After a couple minutes of relaxation, the controller tells me that I can continue with the approach but to remain at altitude. Marks tells me that the controller's instructions meant that I can go ahead and turn from a heading of 090° to 142°, which is the heading I'll need to fly to remain on the approach course. We continue flying and perform our pre-landing checklist. The controller's voice comes over the radio again and tells me that I now need to contact Regional's tower.

Sure enough, as soon as I contact Regional, the suns starts peeking through the clouds and the air gets bumpy. I went from flying with the normal one hand, to flying with both hands. My workload immediately got harder. Once I arrived at the TOPAZ intersection, the tower told me that I was cleared for the approach. I read my approach plate to see that I can now descend down to 1100ft, slow down to 90 knots, and lower one notch of flaps. I have 16NM (nautical miles) to go before reaching the airport. I struggle to keep the airplane at the assigned altitude and heading, as the turbulence is making things difficult. Once at about 11.5NM away, we reach the missed approach point (MAP), meaning that at this point, if anything is off at all, we need to "go missed" (basically do a go-around and not land). This particular airplane is equipped with two VOR indicators, and the one I was using wasn't working properly (it's not rated for IFR, so it's not required to work). So when Mark told me to look outside, I see that we're northwest of the airport, and not even close to on course. I called the tower and went missed.

Regional gives me a heading and altitude, then passes me back to St. Louis Approach. I call up approach and  tell him that we want to practice it one more time. He gives us a set of directions and we follow. This time, we're going to use the other VOR indicator and see if we can do a better approach. I continue to fight the turbulence as we get closer. Now close enough, I am passed back to the Regional tower for directions. All of this radio talk gets complicated and makes the job challenging. I do my best and keep flying. I watch the VOR indicator, as it tells me if I need to turn left or right to stay on course. Looking good, real good. I arrive at the MAP and look outside. Perfect!

We're done practicing approaches, so we head back to our home airport. I managed to do 90% of the radio communications with ATC, so I'm feeling pretty good. While flying back home, we listen to the current weather and decide to land on runway 9. I enter the downwind leg and take off the foggles. Once abeam the number 9 on the runway, I decrease power, slow down, lower flaps and descend. I then turn onto the base leg, lower more flaps, then turn onto final. I'm really high so I drop all 40° of flaps. A steep descent is now in progress. After clearing the power lines, I'm right on track. I adjust power as necessary, flare and gently touch down. That's the kind of landing I've been wanting for a while; I loved it.