Hello everyone,
Another 30 degree day here today with not a single cloud. Scheduled to fly at 1 o’clock. Arrived at the school at 12:30 to meet Jeronimo and got the brief that we would be starting to fly a standard instrument departure and how to brief, fly and communicate with ATC.
Started up the engines, power checks, got departure clearance from ATC (who is the instructor!) and brief our “SID”.
The Standard Instrument Departure is designed to maintain a specific flow of traffic and also designed around obstacles, which there are quite a lot of both.
I got clearance to Seville via the Jerez 1C SID. I briefed this to the instructor and we were on our way. Takeoff was normal, ahead to 3 DME. After 3 miles, we turned to a heading of 133 and intercepted the 106 bearing from the NDB. Once intercepted, fly until you cross the 204 radial from the Malaga VOR and you must cross this position at an altitude of 3000 ft or above.
Being my first one, I managed to get the 106 bearing from the NDB and from there it all went horribly wrong . I started my turn to intercept the 204 radial, which I wasn’t supposed to do until I had passed the radial first. So, a quick reset, out of the sim and have a look at what went wrong. Soon we were back in the air and I got it right this time.
After the SID was complete it joined us to the Seville approach plate. So there was a few bits and pieces on the way, ATC, tune/identify the instruments to the Seville approach and get clearance to descend.
Entered the hold at Seville using an offset entry and was cleared to descend in the hold down to altitude 3000 ft. We did about 4 rounds of the hold with different winds and corrections. From 3000 ft I was cleared for the VOR approach. My first time doing it, but once passed the 5 mile position, I was cleared down to 2500 ft and passing the VOR you are allowed to descent to the “Minimum Descent Altitude/Height” which for this approach is 600 ft. (Hope I got this right). It’s not practical to dive down to 600 ft, so there is a constant descent of 2.96 degrees in our case, which when you work off your ground speed will give you the required feet per minute. There are various checkpoints to check on the way down, like at 1 DME you should be at XX altitude. There is one tricky thing about this particular airport, the VOR is not at the airport, so as you approach, the distance is increasing and the altitude is decreasing.
Oh, forgot to mention that if you go more than 5 degrees from the inbound radial, you must discontinue the descent (that’s 2 dots on a VOR CDI).
We are cleared to land! We get closer and closer and eventually reaching about 650 ft we get visual with the runway, and what do you know, there’s some mad man on the runway and we have to go around.
I won’t bore you with the go around procedure but on the climb out we had a blocked static port so our altimeter stopped reading and our airspeed started to under-read. We joined the hold again with the alternate static source, around and around and around with different winds until we got clearance for another VOR approach.
This approach was pretty much similar and we established on the inbound radial with the exception that this time my landing gear wouldnt come down. No delay, put the gear position switch down, popped the circuit breaker and used the emergency extension tool! Wehey, it worked 🙂 3 greens.
I think I spoiled the instructors chance for another go around so he said, ok there’s something else on the runway, go around!
This time, I did an NDB-only approach, which was again my first one. The NDB is not at the airfield and there is no DME facility. So we proceded to the beacon and did the hold a few times, around and around we go!
This time, you’re tracking a QDM to the beacon, and given a specific altitude to pass overhead at. Once overhead, you start a stopwatch. On the basis of your ground speed, you’re given a time in minutes and seconds which will indicate your missed approach point. Again you have a MDA of 610 ft. You can either fly all the way in at 610 ft, or use the constant descent profile and descend at a given rate of descent.
Finally, we got clearance to land! With the wind 20 knots across the runway! I was never so delighted to be on the ground, even though I never left it 🙂
I’m back in the school in 30 minutes for another 3 hours. I’ll report back later.
Andrew