Who Knew !

For the past nine months I've been flying bush flights in Alaska. This all started with our new relationship with RTMM and spread out to include most of Southern Alaska, as I came to appreciate the virtues of the Orbx Pacific Fjords and Southern Alaska scenery. I'm long overdue for my upgrade to the B777 and a return to my day job at MSP, but I keep putting off the serious time commitment that will entail. I started out flying the Beaver and the Bushhawk for what was more or less VFR only summertime flying. As we moved into Fall and the weather (and the daylight) in Alaska started to change, I upgraded to the Quest Kodiak for its superb avionics suite, including a Garmin G1000 glass cockpit. I have kept filing VFR flightplans, but some of the flying has gotten a little sketchy and so it was nice to have the nav radios and autopilot. It also gave me a chance to practice some of the unusual IFR approaches like the kinda bizarre LDA X 08 approach to runway 8 at Juneau (PAJN). In fact I had meant to write that up for one of my illustrated tutorials, but then discovered that I had busted the minimums on my approach and decided I should put that off until I had a clean run.

So, I've been flying Yoland's Juneau Hub flights: Juneau to X and back, Juneau to Y and back, etc. It's been pretty routine stuff. The Kodiak has a 25,000' ceiling, so it's easy to get above the clouds (and the mountains) and just kinda go "VFR Direct" from point a to popint b. Really lazy stuff.

In more than ten years of sim flying, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that my destination was actually below IFR minimums and I had to divert to an alternate. So, even when I am flying the big iron, I look at the weather forecast at my destination and decide not to plan (and program the FCU) for an alternate. A lot of work for nothing, right?

So, today on my return flight from Haines Junction back to Juneau, I looked at the forecast for Juneau and read: 000/00, 6 SM, BKN 500, OVC 5000, 2/1, 29.31. Piece of cake; let's go.

About 75 miles out of Juneau, I noticed the weather starting to thicken. I couldn't raise the Juneau AWOS, so I started to set up for an RNAV/LDA 08 approach and diverted from my VFR Direct flight plan to the IAF for this approach. As I got closer I got the bad news: PAJN: 000/00, 1/4 SM, R08/1400V2000FT, FOG, VV02, 2/2, 29.33. I didn't know what most of this meant, but I knew that it wasn't good. But I was quickly running out of time and didn't want to take the time to look it up. When I contacted the Juneau tower they denied my landing request. Of course, I was on a VFR flight plan, so naturally they wouldn't clear me for an IFR approach. But, on top of that the MDA for this approach is 3200' and it requires a 14 deg. right turn on short final. Although I didn't understand exactly what the weather was, I reasoned that 1/4 mile visibility would be below minimums, so Juneau was out..

So, I hit the "NRST" button on the Garmin GPS and started to look at nearby airports. Unfortunately the first five or so were all were water runways, nice, if you've got pontoons - I didn't. At this point I recognized that I was well behind the airplane, which was rapidly proceeding south into unknown terrain. So, I hit the PAUSE button.

Whenever I have to hit the P button, I know that I was unprepared for the flight. More than that, if I had been a "real" pilot, I would be in very serious trouble. This is what keeps me interested in this hobby; I still haven't mastered the discipline; but I keep trying.

With the luxury of the pause, I found a nearby strip with an adequate runway, just ten or twenty miles southwest of Juneau. That was PAOH: Calm, >20 SM, LT RN, 1800 OVC, 4/4, 29.34. Using the GPS map display I was able to descend below the ceiling over water and line up for runway 5 at PAOH. I came in too hot and got a bad score on my SPAACARS descent rate. But I made it. So, as I write, I'm sitting on the ramp at PAOH in the rain, waiting for the weather to clear in Juneau. The arrivals display on our homepage shows me as having landed in Juneau. I’ll probably have to spend a cold night in the airplane. I hope the coffee is hot in Juneau when I get there tomorrow.

So, maybe I should start giving some thought to an alternate on the most mundane flight. You never know.

Mike



<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: Westcoast, Dec 04, 2015 - 03:47 PM</em><!-- end editby -->

Good post Mike, I love the offset approach at PAJN RWY 8, and often fly Yoland's postal flight there from PAKT. I find the rnav approach to be the best help, but with .25 vis. that would only get you lined up with the offset.

A Hail Mary might be to drop to the water level there, but you still need to jump over the tree line and make the right turn for landing. Certainly ATC would not approve, but it's a fun flight anyway.

I usually fly the Q400, and more recently the BAE-146 on that, and it's really less forgiving than the Kodiak when it comes to making quick adjustments. Also my FSPASSENGERS scream in fear and there's not enough time to serve them enough alcohol to help them recover.

I should also explore the alternate airport and include it in my flight plan, but I usually opt to finish my flight at the required destination. Still, the offset approach at PAJN sent me scouring the Internet to understand it. Just goes to show the level of realism that is available - as much as you want.

Also, I use voxatc and I think I must have the alternate set up before so it knows what I'm up to. Also I either have to set the approach beforehand or most often I request the rnav approach and it just has me report my final waypoints, which it knows, before finally giving me clearance for landing.

Great fun and a great IFR approach - so much fun to break out of the clouds and see the water and mountainous terrain around you. On some regular IFR approaches I've been turning off the GPS and using only the localizer and glide slope signals. Gives you even greater thrill when you see the runway appear.

Same with one of your training flights (I think it was yours) - the one to Hutchinson MN using basic VOR DME navigation. That was a first for me, and seeing the runway appear out of the murk with its friendly strobe lights directing me in - I was amazed and hooked on this hobby ever since.

John

<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Dec 03, 2015 - 10:03 PM</em><!-- end editby -->

John,

In a sense GPS has taken all the fun out of navigation. With a good GPS map display (one that displays terrain elevation), you can discard the nav radios and ATC and grope you way down to the runway threshold with a fair chance of success, at least in a maneuverable light aircraft.. It's not something the FAA is likely to approve in our lifetimes, but it can be done, probably with an autonomous vehicle. So in a sense, we are fascinated with learning how to solve the problem that used to exist. Sometimes I think it would be more fun to fly all of my flights without GPS, just to experience things as they were 20 or 30 years ago.

For awhile we had a pilot here at SPA who used to set up flights with WWII era aircraft and equipment - dead reconning and NDBs. I remember flying a DC3 from Newfoundland to a AAF base on Greenland (Bluie West 8 ?) using dead reckoning. The trick is to stay low, plan an offset into your landfall, and then go down the coast looking for visual clues to your destination. Same trick I learned to navigate a sea kayak.

Mike

So here's how all that turned out. [see the photos I posted on the homepage (these have been pushed off the homepage by other posts, but you can access them at >Lounge>photos>More of Mikes Miscues). They're a bit out of order, so you'll have to follow this narrative to piece the story together].

After a cold night sleeping on top of the boxes in the back of the Kodiak, I awoke determined to get back to Juneau for that hot cup of coffee. However, the morning TAF for Juneau was not hopeful. It read in part: 000/00, P6SM, VCFG, SCT 001, etc., etc., including BCFG. Briefly, this says there is about 50% cloud cover at 100' and patchy fog in the vicinity. On top of that, the ATIS broadcast indicated that the ILS approach to Rwy 26 was in use. This is doubly problematic. First of all, there is no ILS approach at PAJN. Apparently it's there in FSX, but the FAA says it doesn't exist in reality. So this leaves us with a LDA 08 approach with a circle to land on Rwy 26. Given that Juneau sits in a slot with surrounding hills, this invites disaster with a 100' ceiling as there will be no way to make a visual approach with the hills buried in the clouds.

But the hot coffee beckons, so I decided to go with our Webmaster's "Hail Mary" approach (see Joihn's comment above in this thread). I prefer to call this the "Dive and Dash" approach because it involves diving to get under the cloud cover while over the water and then dashing under the cover to the runway threshold. He's right to say that ATC wouldn't approve, in part because it is not a sanctioned approach and in part because they have aircraft taking off the other direction. So I'm not going to divulge my plans to the tower at Juneau, lest they have the police waiting for me when I taxi in. I'll just have to hope the approach works and that I don't land in front of a DC-10 on its takeoff roll. Don't try this at home.

Once airborne I get the latest PAJN ATIS update: Calm, 2 SM, ceiling 200' OVC, 2/2, ILS 26 in use. So, all-in-all it's worse than the TAF. Visibility is down from 6 to 2 statue miles and the cloud cover, while up from 100' to 200', is now overcast, which means 100% obscured. So the plan is to sneak out of PAOH while maintaining "radio silence", climb to 3700' at waypoint BARLO and begin the LDX X 08 approach. But then to dive under he cloud deck and visually navigate through the offshore islands that front Juneau and the ring of hills in front of the airstrip - a little like the Doolittle Raid of 1942. The LDA approach leads through a notch in these hills and then makes a last minute 14 deg. turn to right to line up on the runway. If I follow the localizer for horizontal navigation I should be able to find the notch with the help of the line of white strobe lights that lead into the runway threshold. I promise that if i survive this I'll never fly with me again .

So, if you follow the photos on the homepage, you'll see what happened. I broke out of the ceiling just short of a few islands that I was able to hop over and I then picked out a single white strobe light in the distance and was able to follow this through the notch. There I "visually acquired" the runway lights and started my roll onto final. Just as i was rolling out of that turn, a fog bank enveloped me and I lost the lights for several very long seconds, but then I broke out of that just short of the threshold and made a perfect touchdown right on the centerline. It was just dumb luck that there was no one on the runway. I taxied to the first turn off, crossed the triple yellow line and asked Juneau ground for parking instructions, which they thoughtfully provided - stupid FSX ATC.

The coffee was the perfect 177 degrees.

Mike<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: Westcoast, Dec 08, 2015 - 01:28 PM</em><!-- end editby -->