Filing IFR

June 27, 2012

I wake up much to early for my day off work. I have to plan my first instrument cross country trip to Greenville, IL. I locate my Low IFR chart. This looks much different than the VFR charts I'm used to. Using an IFR chart essentially shows the highways of the sky. These routes are called victor airways and are flown by instrument rated pilots. They are designated by a number following the letter V, such as V26. You navigate by using VOR stations and their radials. My chosen route was to be fly direct to the STL VOR, transition onto V14 by flying a radial of 076 degrees. This would take me to the Vandalia VOR, which sets me up perfectly to perform the VOR-A approach in runway 18 at Greenville airport.

After planning the route and doing fuel and wind calculations, I pack up my flight bag and head for the airport. I meet my instructor at 9:30am, do a preflight inspection on my plane, then go inside and discuss the plan with Mark. He likes my planning and gives me the ok to call the Flight Service Station to file the flight plan. This plan goes directly to the FAA so that ATC can use it. They generally include "basic information such as departure and arrival points, estimated time en route, alternate airports in case of bad weather, type of flight (whether instrument flight rules or visual flight rules), the pilot's information, number of people on board and information about the aircraft itself." -wikipedia.

Once filed, we head out to the airplane and set up for departure. Mark taxiis the plane to the runway while I get together my paperwork, set radio frequencies and listen to the weather. After a successful run-up, Mark lets me take command of the radio and call up STL Clearance Delivery. These are the controllers who will be giving me information regarding my departure. My instructions are simple, and easily remembered if you write them down by using the acronym of CRAFT; clearance, route, altitude, frequency, transponder. My instructions are: C- cleared to Greenville, R- as filed, A- 2500' expect 5000' in 10 minutes, F- 124.2, T- 4630. We don't hear the controller say the typical, "hold for release" meaning we can't takeoff until he finds a place for us in traffic. Since we didn't hear those three words, Mark assumed that we were good to go.

We takeoff and contact ATC. Very quickly the controller responds, "I did not release you for departure, next time please wait until I give you the clearance." I look at Mark as he smirks a nice choice of words. He apologizes to the controller and has me turn onto the new course that the controller assigns. I'm now wearing my foggles. The first part of our requested route has changed due to the early departure. We will now be flying this:

The controller now passes us over to STL Approach. She has us fly nearly directly over the Alton airport at 4000'. Not much time later, we're cleared to fly at our cruising altitude of 5000' and onto V14. Soon after that, she forwards us to KC Center. They control a much broader area of airspace than STL. I make a radio call to KC Center to give them my altitude. We'll be in contact with them until we arrive at Greenville.

While enroute, I look over my approach plate for Greenville and brief the approach to Mark. Everything is looking good. We arrive at the Vandalia VOR and the controller clears us to carry out the approach. I set up the instruments... all except one, the main OBS, which is what you use for a VOR approach. Mark notices that we're off course and quickly realizes what I had forgot to set. It was too late to have a successful approach, so we cancel the IFR flight plan and finish under VFR. Mark plays the role of the controller and has me fly back out to the Vandalia VOR station. Lets try this again.

Everything looks good. I fly the inbound heading of 209 degrees and stay at 2200'. Once at the final approach fix, I slow us down, drop a notch of flaps, and descend to 1060'. We reach the missed approach point so I take off my foggles and look outside. The airport is right there, off to my right. I set us up to land on Runway 18.

After a successful landing, we taxi back to the start of the runway and call KC Center. They will open our IFR flight plan for the trip back home, and give us our clearance to depart. After three attempts at contacting them with no answer, Mark says we can just depart VFR and call them once airborne.

We takeoff and head west. At approximately 1000' I call KC Center again. Success, they answer! The controller sets us on course, however it's different that what we filed. I guess it just didn't work for him and the current air traffic situation. This is normal. We eventually get passed over to STL Approach and they have us fly over the Alton airport at 4000' on our way back home. We're now 20 minutes away and can close our IFR flight plan. Their assistance is no longer needed since we can fly it VFR.

We don't have time to perform a GPS approach into our airport so we just enter the pattern and land the plane. I logged 2.1 hours of cross country time today. It was a fun, challenging, and hot lesson.

Next up, a flight to Quincy, IL!