SP MEIR - ADF, VOR, GPS...
Or in "actual" words... A Single Pilot, Multi-engine Instrument Rating, endorsed for NDB
[1], VOR and GPS approaches :-)
| Another sticker for the log book |
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After a few false starts and delays (as covered in my
previous post), and a flight test postponed due to the crap weather in the first week of July, the stars finally came into alignment and I ended up with flyable weather, a serviceable aircraft and a flight examiner... all in the same place at the same time.
So (very) early on Thursday morning, I headed out to the airfield, pre-flighted the Tecnam Twin (only thing of note were the muddy paw prints and cat fur located on the top of one of the engine cowls ;-) and extracted it from the hangar... thankfully, no "musical aeroplanes" required... and then taxied it around to the apron at the flying club.
I checked the weather and NOTAMs for my expected routes and noted that the freezing level was a little on the low side (5,000')... which was a bit of a concern, as the cloud base was forecast around 4000' and the aircraft doesn't have any anti or de-icing equipment :-/
The examiner showed up as scheduled at 0900 and we got down to business... working through the copious amounts of paperwork and red tape before commencing with the actual flying! :-P
So after confirming what I was testing for (Single Pilot, Multi-engine, with NDB, VOR and GPS) he checked that I had:
- A valid licence and medical
- A "Written Exam Credit" for the Instrument Rating Theory Syllabus
- Completed the required remedial work as stated on the Knowledge Deficiency Reports (KDR's) from my exam results
- A ground theory endorsement for the GPS equipment to be used in the test
- Met the various minimum hour requirements necessary to hold an instrument rating
- A type rating for the aircraft to be used in the test
- A flight test acceptance slip
the examiner went over the format of the test and what was going to be required. He outlined the basic structure of the flight which was:
- Flight plan the route NZAR (Ardmore) - NZHN (Hamilton) - NZTG (Tauranga) - NZAR
- We would depart NZAR via a published instrument departure
- At NZHN, make the VOR/DME approach, via the DME Arc (demonstrating a hold before commencing the approach) for the duty runway, execute the standard missed approach and then head to NZTG
- At NZTG, enter the NDB hold, then make the NDB/DME approach for the duty runway, execute the missed approach and then head to NZAR
- At NZAR, make the RNAV (aka GPS) approach, demonstrating a GPS hold at the waypoint ORERE before commencing the approach, and then make a circling approach for the duty runway for a full stop landing.
I was then left to create a flight plan, fuel log, check weather/NOTAMs, check GPS RAIM predications and lodge my flight plans with ATC.
The only issue I had with this particular flight plan, was the fact that, despite planning on making some instrument approaches at Tauranga several times during my training, I had never made it due weather on the days we had planned to go.
I mentioned this quietly to my instructor while I was at the computer lodging my IFR flight plans, and he told me not to freak out... just remain calm and remember: "You don't fly at a particular place... you fly a 'plate'"
What he meant was that unlike visual flying, where you can use various physical references and landmarks to aid in making an approach so it helps to have been to a place before or at least received a briefing on what to expect... with instrument flying you just follow the instructions spelled out on the approach 'plate' aka chart and as instructed by ATC, as you may not necessarily be able to see out the window anyway!
Thinking back on it now... this was probably the best bit of advice I got before my test ;-)
By the time I had completed the flight planning, the examiner had come up with a list of around 10 questions designed to test my knowledge of Instrument Rating theory and law... covering things like:
- The privileges & limitations of holding an instrument rating?
- The currency requirements to fly IFR and make instrument approaches?
- Various approach speed limitations for category of aircraft that we're using?
- Can you make a visual departure at night?
- What are the requirements for making a visual arrival during the day? at night?
- Requirements for nominating an alternate aerodrome?
- Non published alternate aerodrome minima for non-precision approaches?
- What do we need to sight to continue below MDA?
- Loss of comm procedures (In IMC on departure, on radar vectors)?
Thankfully, I had covered all of this material with my instructors so was able to answer all the questions (or at least reference the appropriate sections of the AIP to find the answers) without too much trouble.
We then went over my flight plan and the weather... noting the issues with the freezing level and what our options were. He left the decision up to me, and I decided that given the cloud forecasts we should be OK and in the event that we did encounter icing, we had plenty of options to mitigate the issue, as we could descend to lower altitudes due to the Minimum Safe Altitudes (MSA's) being below our flight planned cruise altitudes and the predicted freezing levels... or climb out of the cloud as they were predicted to top out at 6000'.
We headed out to the aircraft, started up, set up the radio and navaid frequencies, requested and received our clearance instructions from Air Traffic Control, entered the initial flight plan in the onboard GPS and then I worked through the various pre-Take Off engine run-ups and equipment checks. With everything in place, we lined up on 03 and I made my departure call.
We got airbourne, I was instructed to put on my "foggles" to simulate entering cloud once we had reached terrain clearance height on the instrument departure and away we went towards Hamilton.
The first leg was going well... I had remembered the "Twist, Turn, Time, Talk, Tune"... Twist my course selector to the required headings, Turn the aircraft and heading bug to the required heading, Time (not applicable to time anything), Talk to ATC as required, Tune radios and navaids to the new frequencies... We were cruising in cloud, and the outside air temp was only 2 degrees, but I'd noted that while we had some visible moisture on the leading edge and engine intakes, there was no icing... I was feeling good.
Then 30 seconds later, the examiner says "What is MSA on this route? We're going to need to descend, we're icing up, check the leading edge"... sure enough, and less than a minute since I had checked, ice was building up at an alarming rate. We requested a descent to "non-standard 5000' due icing" and were immediately cleared as requested. We dropped down from 6000' and popped out the bottom of the cloud and into slightly warmer air. This was my first experience with icing whilst flying... and the sound the ice made as it started to crack and shed from the wings was a little disconcerting... the examiner commented that it was "some pretty impressive icing".
The rest of the leg to Hamilton was relatively uneventful... we were cleared as requested to join the DME arc and enter the TAYLA hold at 5000'. That went without a hitch and we requested the approach. They cleared us to descend to 3000' and to commence the approach for runway 18L. We flew down to 'minimum descent altitude' (MDA) and tracked to the 'missed approach point' (MAP)... As I had no visual reference to the runway at this point (due to the simulated conditions wearing the foggles), I declared a missed approach, powered up and executed the missed approach procedure.
We received our onwards clearance and headed (for the unknown) towards Tauranga. I started to feel a little nervous, having never done this before... but I just followed the procedures, and we arrived at Tauranga without a problem. The first attempt at the NDB hold, which would have been almost perfect, was scuppered by the arrival of an Air New Zealand flight... which was given priority by ATC. This meant that just as I was about to begin the inbound portion of the hold, they started radar vectoring me away from the aerodrome to create a safety zone for the other aircraft. Unfortunately, I had to demonstrate a complete hold for the purposes of the test, so I had to do another entry and lap of the hold, from a more difficult position... not a huge issue, but it wasn't as tidy as the first attempt...
We then commenced the approach, I got a little high... this was due to my inexperience with the Tauranga approach and failure to recognise that I would require a slightly higher than normal descent rate to maintain the proper approach profile. Still, I recognised the issue in time, verbalised my intentions and managed to regain the proper profile through some slightly aggressive descent manoeuvring ... not the best way to make an approach, but acceptable.
Again, we reached MDA and the MAP and again I was not "visual" so we executed the missed approach. This time however, the examiner simulated an engine failure. So while trying to fly the missed approach procedure and maintain the required rate of climb, I had to deal with an aircraft trying it's best to fly sideways on only one engine!!?!
I ran through the initial actions
- Control Yaw with Rudder, Maintain Airspeed at "Blue Line" speed
- Rich, Pitch Power! - Mixtures Rich, Prop Pitch full fine, Throttles full
- Identify, Verify, Feather - Identify the "dead" engine by identifying my "dead" leg... When an engine fails on a twin, you end up with asymmetric thrust. The result being that you need to put in a whole lot of rudder on one side to keep the aircraft flying straight. So one leg is doing a whole lot of work. The leg that isn't doing anything (ie. "dead") is the one on the side that has the failed engine. We then verify that we have identified the "dead" engine correctly by closing the throttle on what we suspect the failed engine is... if it is indeed the failed engine, nothing should change, if we've chosen incorrectly, the aircraft will yaw wildly due to the rudder input no longer having to overcome any asymmetric thrust. We then decide whether or not we're Terrain Critical (ie. Are we in danger of hitting something solid in the very near future?) If we are, we just feather the failed engine to reduce drag and increase performance flying on one engine while we figure out what we're going to do to not die :-P. If we aren't (ie. at a reasonable altitude) we can take our time, run some more thorough trouble checks and see if we can get the engine restarted.
At this point, the examiner asked "If this was real, and you were in IMC, what would you do right now?" Noting that we were unable to maintain a climb rate necessary to ensure terrain clearance by following the missed approach procedure, I told him I'd turn back towards the navaid beacon at the aerodrome, and climb in the hold to the minimum safe altitude, advise ATC and then make an approach to land.
Happy with this plan, he gave me both engines back and we departed Tauranga for Ardmore. Then something weird happened... I was tracking what I thought was pretty well, the ADF indicating that I was on the 278 course from Tauranga... the examiner says "check your tracking on the GPS"... turns out we were significantly left of track!!?! Then ATC advised "MTW, confirm ops normal, you appear to be approximately 2 miles south of track". I pointed out to the examiner that according to the ADF we were tracking correctly... he agreed, and we adjusted course to intercept the GPS track and the ADF still showed we were tracking correctly!! ADF's are notoriously unreliable... so the examiner seemed willing to accept that I hadn't done anything wrong.
We continued towards Ardmore and, once again, we needed to request a lower than planned cruising level to prevent icing. We were then cleared to track via the WAIKA and ORERE waypoints to make the RNAV (GPS) approach for Runway 21 at Ardmore. They were actually using Runway 03, but that was OK, as it gave us an excuse to do the circling approach, where you fly the approach to one runway, achieve visual reference and then circle around to land on another runway.
Up to now, everything had more or less gone OK (aside from the ADF issue), I hadn't been advised that I had failed (which the examiners are required to do so you can cut the flight short to prevent wasting money flying approaches that are unnecessary) and I had always found the GPS approaches to be relatively easy.
So, naturally, I did my best to screw everything up on the GPS approach. :-/
It went wrong near the end of the holding procedure... for some reason, and I'm still not sure why (possibly just fatigue towards the end of a stressful 3 hour flight??) I got a bad case of "fiddle with the GPS"-itis... I naturally, pushed the wrong button, and ended up making a messy approach back to the ORERE waypoint to commence the final approach.
The whole way down the final approach I was cursing my stupidity under my breath, thinking that I had just blown the whole test. On the final approach, I got another simulated engine failure, which helped me forget about the mistake and focus on flying... I then flew the circling approach and made a full stop landing on only the one engine. Ironically enough... one of my better landings! :-P
We taxied back to the club, shutdown and as I started to note down flight times for the aircraft flight logs, the examiner said "I'll see you in the briefing room", he collected his stuff and headed into the clubrooms. My instructor and a couple of others came to help secure the aircraft and refuel asking the usual "How did it go?" type questions... fearing the worst I replied dejectedly "I think I just blew it on the GPS approach".
I headed into the briefing room to receive the "bad news"... I could hear the examiner and my instructor talking outside, and then the examiner went to make a quick phone call to advise his next test candidate that he was running late. My instructor came in and said "don't panic, I think you're OK"...
The examiner came in and asked me to debrief the flight to my instructor... basically walk him through the flight, saying what went well, what didn't etc...
I was, in my opinion, brutally honest... I started by saying it was far from the perfect flight. The initial departure was good, the VOR/DME at Hamilton was OK, the initial NDB tracking and hold at Tauranga was OK, I got high on the approach, but recovered OK, tracking out of Tauranga we had the issue with the ADF tracking, the initial GPS tracking and hold entry were OK, then I got trigger happy and screwed up the end of the hold, the final approach was OK, the circling approach and a fairly decent asymmetric landing. I commented that some of my height holding was a little poor... and while the conditions were fair from perfect (a bit lumpy and bumpy in the clouds), it was not completely to blame.
At this point, (and to my HUGE relief) the examiner commented "Well, it's a pass, a little marginal, but a pass... based on your self-assessment, you obviously have high standards, don't lose them... I'm giving you a licence to learn, so don't rush off and fly to MDA in hard IMC your first time out OK?" and gave me the customary handshake.
| 3.1 hours... a long flight test |
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We finished up the paperwork, I thanked him profusely and he headed off to
torture his next victim[2] his next flight test appointment. I think it only really sank in about 5 or 6 hours later, after the obligatory bar shout, that I had actually passed...
| Not all 4 letter words are bad! |
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I'd like to thank my instrument instructors, Phil Welcome and John Ashman for helping me achieve this rating... MTW for being a sweet little aircraft that flies right and (mostly) works OK... various pilot/instructor friends for various tips and tricks with regards to instrument flying...
and last, but by no means least, my awesome GF... for putting up with a very busy (and stressed!) BF and providing lots of support and being very understanding these last few weeks (and months) as I tried to get this damned rating finished!! Thanks babe... ;-)
[1] No... I don't know why they use the acronym for the cockpit instrument as opposed to the navigational aid??!?
[2] I think it only fair to point out that the examiner was actually very nice and made the whole thing a lot less stressful than I had anticipated ;)
