Good evening all,
I managed to clock up a grand total of 5 hours in the sim today. The quality of my flying seems do go down after the third hour, so I only have 3 hours tomorrow.
The walk to the school was a killer, it was 35 Celsius and in mid afternoon, the sun is pointing right in your face all the way there! I suppose its better than 10 Celsius, with rain and wind.
We decided we would go to Seville today. They have 3 types of approaches there, ILS, VOR and NDB approach. We completed the Seville 1C Standard Instrument Departure which is over 60 miles long and takes you initially out to sea and away from all the high ground.
We leveled off at “Flight Level 100” – 10,000 ft pressure altitude, and started heading north to the Seville VOR radio aid. Initially it was the VOR approach to runway 27, followed by two go-arounds and two more VOR approaches. The first one I was a little ropey on, because I had descended down to Minimum Descent Altitude, and proceded to go around, but what I had forgotten is that you can’t go into the missed approach unless you’re at the missed approach point. In our case was 4 miles from the VOR.
The other two went fine. The missed approach procedure was long. It involved climbing ahead to 4000 ft and joining the 13 mile arc from the VOR. When you pass a certain radial, you fly inbound on that radial, until you come to 8 miles, and join a smaller arc! Head-wrecking stuff… You then have to join the hold over the radio aid.
By now, I was getting a little tired, and already had a pain in my head. We managed to do one good Instrument Landing System approach down to minimums (340 ft), but did not have our runway in sight so back around for another one.
This one I messed up. I got a little confused as to what i was doing, and whilst doing my parallel entry to the hold, I thought I was on the ILS, What an idiot! Coupled with that, I had a 17 knot wind from my 4 o’clock, and that didn’t help when i was doing 160 knots on the approach. I had to give it away and get vectors for an approach to which I did a full stop!
I could barely think after it. Five hours of instrument approaches over and over again is very intense. But the fun had only begun there… When getting out of the sim, I managed to walk into the over head door panel whilst in the dark, which gave me a right shiner on my head!
We did the de-brief and discussed what we would do next time. Thinking it was all over, I was walking home and it seems to be rush hour at around 9 pm. I was walking along the footpath, and next minute I get soaked wet, by what seemed to be someone downing a bucket of water out their apartment window. (I hope it was water, because it left a stain). Initially it was refreshing, but I think I ruined a shirt!
Anyway, back on at 1500 tomorrow for 3 hours! Might get some sleep!
Andrew