More Thoughts About VFR Flying

John,

I had a similar experience back on Jan. 9th. I was flying the Kodiak from Juneau up to Mule Creek. When I reached Haines on my way north,I decided to drop down to the water to get under the weather and proceed up the Chilkat River to the northwest. About 1500' above the river, I entered a cloud. I tried to climb out of it, but my heading was too far north and I experienced a "CFIT" into the Chilkoot mountains. It was then that I recognized that I was taking chances in the Sim that I would never have taken in real life. Because this usually works (particularly if you can refer to GPS), it has the effect of making the job easier than it really is. So, part of the game, as I conceive it, is not to run such risks and, if necessary, to return to base and await better weather conditions. That is what I mean by "realistic constraints". I would also propose that pilots go ahead and log such "aborted" flights, but I agree with your judgement not to log "fatal" flights. The objective should be to develop the judgement to avoid such mistakes altogether by flying cautiously, just as you would if your life were at stake.

It also occurs to me, that the use of the pause key to gain time to resolve navigational issues is unrealistic and should be against the ground rules. The alternative is to retreat to a safe altitude/heading to gain the time necessary to solve the problem. That's what you would have to do in "real life".

So, for the time being, I am proposing to follow these ground rules for all of my VFR bush flights and to encourage other SPA pilots to do the same thing. In the longer term, I would like to develop some special bush assignments of the type I described above.

Mike

Sounds good Mike. Yes, I knew I was risking it plunging into the cloud and I also felt guilty hitting the pause to review my charts (although I reserve the right to pause for non-flight, real-world interruption).

It might be worth while to rate some of the flights on an easy - moderate - difficult scale. For example, I've been going down the list of the AK Postal flights, I found the first one moderate, the second one easy and the 3rd one difficult. This is based on using the single VOR DME navigational equipment available in the Aerosoft Beaver. A second gauge to triangulate VORs would be nice - although I think I can learn to jump between two VOR settings on one gauge since it has the standby Freq function.

John<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Jan 19, 2016 - 06:40 AM</em><!-- end editby -->

ELF-TKE

I set my heading bug for 97 deg. for direct to TKE. I also had figured the SSR VOR radial 344 at 24mi at TKE. I set my gauge for that radial and frequency and took off.

My flight path should intercept Tenakee Inlet at an angle, which it did, and I moved a bit right when it came into view. I keep getting confused by the scale of the chart and what I see out the window. I was further confused by the DME indication that I was getting closer to SSR rather than farther to achieve the 24mi 344 deg intercept that would indicate I was at or near my destination. Additional research and I would have noted that my flight path moved me closer to and then away from SSR. In fact, at the point it changed from moving closer to moving away as I went down Tenakee Inlet would have provided me with my approx. location in the inlet.

Regardless, as I neared the radial intercept I could see the bend in the Inlet and Tenakee Springs was easy to see along the shore line.

John<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Jan 19, 2016 - 09:30 AM</em><!-- end editby -->

John,

I agree about the use of the pause key for real world interruptions. This happens to me on almost every flight and I often am away from the sim for an extended time. When I get back to my flight it no longer shows on our SPA ACARS page, but I find that it pops back up after the next position report in the flight log.

The VOR is essential in performing these "VFR in poor weather" flights and I really notice the absence of the DME in the Scout. I have also noticed that the CDI isn't where I think it should be on some of my flights. I haven't gotten to the bottom of this yet, so I'll have to do some experimenting. I suppose that these flights are VFR only in the sense that they are accomplished without the aid of radar tracking by ADC, and not in the sense that they do not utilize instruments or are compliant with FAA rules for VFR flights. I'm not sure exactly how (or even if) these flights are regulated by the FAA.

I am interested in your ideas about assigning a difficulty level to bush flight assignments. Obvious factors include the difficulty associated with seeing the destination from the air, the length and width of the airstrip and the avaiability of nearby radio nav aids. These attributes are inherent in the bare bones of the flight assignment. Other difficulty factors, such as time of year, time of day, required passenger and cargo loads would be additional factors which would have to be specified along with the origin and destination. Things like the passenger and cargo load would clearly affect the aircraft employed and therefore influence the difficulty of a short field destination. Then there are factors that we can't know in advance, most obviously weather, or if we want to get really fancy, aircraft system failures. So, we couldn't evaluate these beforehand, save for the probable association of weather conditions with the time of the year. It sounds like it might be tricky to come up with a definition of the relative difficulty of a given assignment.


Mike

Steve,

I don't think I've encountered any of those recently. What I have found is nav aids that are there in FSX and not in the real world. For example, FSX thinks there's an NDB at Wrangel, but it isn't there on the sectional. Likewise, the FSX ATC thinks there's an ILS available for Rwy 08/26 at PAJN, but the only thing there is LDA 08, which is a displaced LOC/DME with no glide slope.

Mike

The difficulty rating I was 'using' when referring to the first set of postal flights I did was based on proximity of nav aids - primarily at the destination airport. The further they are away from that destination, the more you are 'on your own' so to speak.

Also the terrain is a factor. I found the PAPG-CBM5 flight to be difficult due to the high terrain (and existing cloud cover) and lack of Nav aids.

I had to push that poor beaver up to 10500 to meet safe alt for route. Intermittent VOR (108 miles) from my dest. was the closest, with an NDB some miles distant in the opposite direction.

I was able to drop below the clouds and avoid the mountains by calculating my location with the VOR and DME. I don't know how you might do that without these two vital instruments. That would really be a long white knuckle flight following various waterways to stay below the clouds.

It was exciting however to drop out of the clouds and try to pick up the river that Telegraph Creek flowed into (and where the airstrip was).

Between using the various visual cues, the intermittent VOR signal and the direction to or from the NDB, I was able to locate the airstrip. Very exciting to see that little strip of gravel amongst the mountains there.

As for missing or incorrect nav aids, I worry about that too - and did also note the issue with the nonexistent ILS at PAJN.

I use the freeware airport editor to change those - although haven't lately since my latest system reinstall.

This allows me to add or remove nav aids to meet real world requirements - and adjust changes in frequencies and runway numbers, etc.

Thus far ( postal flights 9840 to 9847) I've found the nav aids to be where they are supposed to be and working on the correct frequencies.

John<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: jer029, Jan 19, 2016 - 04:01 PM</em><!-- end editby -->