From: robg@Apple.COM (Rob Griffiths)
Newsgroups: rec.aviation
Subject: "Long" IFR cross-country
Date: 12 Apr 92 06:53:55 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA

(Caution:  Somewhat long and rambling diatribe follows; but,
what the heck, it was a fun day, and I feel like writing about it!)

Today was the day for my "long" IFR cross-country flight.  For those
not familiar with the IFR requirements, you need one cross-country
flight of at least 250nm in length, with an ILS, NDB, and VOR approaches,
each at different airports.  What follows is a description of my 
trip, and what I learned from it...

The morning sky was unusual for California in early April.  When I
awoke, it was overcast with stratus, and it appeared to be much
higher than the normal early-morning overcast that we usually see.
It looked like a good day to grab a few more precious tenths of
actual time...

After arriving at the airport, we sat down to finalize the plans
I had drawn out last night.  I learned my first lesson when I sat
down with my CFI (David) to review the routings I had planned.
For the first leg, a flight from Palo Alto to Santa Rosa (about 65-odd
nautical miles northwest), I had tentatively planned a transit through
our local SFO TCA.  David said, "Nah, file 'PAO direct Woodside VOR
to Woodside 270 radial intercept the Sausalito 160 radial direct
Sausalito VOR direct Santa Rosa.'"  It turns out that this is Bay's
preferred routing for flights from PAO to STS.  I actually didn't
file that, and instead simply filed "tower en route" to STS.  This
would let Bay assign my routing.  And, as it turns out, they assigned
exactly what David had described.  This was my first lesson in "Reality
vs. the radar environment."

(We actually filed three more flight plans, for each leg of our trip,
but I'll leave those out for the moment...)

On departure, we followed our clearance (which actually had radar vectors
to Woodside VOR).  As we approached the VOR, I got lesson #2:  Around
the Bay area, expect vectors to cut corners!  Instead of forcing us to
fly out past the VOR, and then pick up a course back towards Sausalito,
we got an assigned heading, followed by "proceed direct Sasualito when
able."  This probably saved ten or fifteen minutes of flying time.

The weather was >perfect< for my flight!  The cloud bases were around
3,200, and the tops were varying between 5,000 (our assigned altitude),
and something just a bit higher (we could sense the sunlight, but not
see any of it).  From Woodside until we descended out of 3,500 going
into Santa Rosa, we were in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC).
The freezing level was well above our assigned altitude, and, if we
had seen any icing, clear air was only 500 or 1,000 feet above us.

The winds in Santa Rosa were favoring runway 14, and the airport was
using the runway 32 approach, followed by a circle-to-land on
runway 14.  I had mentally prepared myself for the circling maneuver,
when tower called a new wind speed that allowed runway 32 to be used.
The controller asked if we'd like to use 32 instead of 14.  We
accepted ... without fully realizing the implications.  The approach
went fairly well, with the needles centered most of the way down
to decision height.  When I flipped the hood and looked out, the
runway was Right There, and the ground was moving by at a good
clip.  Lesson #3:  Even though I'd adjusted my airspeed for the
effect of the tailwind on the ILS, I wasn't prepared for exactly
what it would look like translated to groundspeed.  We pulled back
the rest of the power, dropped the flaps, and slipped in.  We
landed at about the 1500 foot mark.  Tailwinds do amazing things
to ground roll distances!

After taxiing back, we picked up our next clearance, a very simple
straight leg over to Sacramento Executive and the (shudder) NDB
runway 2 approach.  Once again, we were cleared for 5000 feet,
and this put us perfectly in the clouds.  The cloud cover lasted
for most of the leg out to Sacramento.  It is highly unusual to
see mild coastal clouds that far inland.  How unusual?  Well, in
my previous 37.4 hours of instrument training, I'd amassed all of
5.1 hours of actual.  Today, I added another 1.7 to that total in
one flight.  Fully 50% of today's flight was in actual conditions.
Lesson #4:  Clouds look different than the hood.  In fact, they
were easier than the hood.  Clouds completely remove all those annoying
ground references that sometimes sneak under the edges of the hood.
The other strange thing they do is to completely remove all sensation
of motion.  Other than the clicking off of the DME, and various
cross-checks with crossing radials, there's no way to really know
you're moving!  It was a strange sensation.

The NDB appraoch into Sacramento went really well.  In fact, it
was probably the best NDB approach I've shot.  Of course, the
fact that I had a direct tailwind didn't hurt :-).  Nothing
truly eventful happened at Sacramento Exec (other than a superb
Polish Dog at the stand in the terminal!).

From Sacramento Exec, we headed off for the VOR runway 10 approach
into Oakdale.  While we were approaching the Manteca VOR (which is
the IAF for the approach), the DME failed ... uncanny timing, as
it happened to go out just as David's hand brushed past the on/off
switch :-).

The VOR approach went fairly well, with one final lesson at the
end.  As we were approaching the airport, a request for advisories
returned "Oakdale is using left-traffic, runway 28."  From our
approach, this meant a circle-to-land.  Somehow, when I "broke
out" and flipped the hood up, I went to circle for right traffic.
I had completely forgotten about the left traffic ... must have
done too many landings at Palo Alto, which uses right traffic.
Once I corrected for this oversight, we did a touch and go,
and then shot the published miss.  While heading for the hold,
we picked up a pre-filed clearance back to Palo Alto.

It was during this last leg that I learned my last lesson of the day.
We were flying along, on course and trimmed straight-and-level...
and the radios were completely silent.  It was the quietest day
I'd ever seen in the Bay area.  After reading our initial clearance
back to the controller, the next time I heard his voice was when
he handed us off to Bay Approach.  In my two years here, this was
uncannily quiet.  It appears that the clouds were keeping most of
the VFR pilots inside.  I'm not sure where the Big Guys were, though.
It was eerie, in a way.  There's something reassuring about hearing
the controller's voice from time to time.

By the time we got back to Palo Alto, the clouds were starting to
break up, and we made a VFR arrival back to home base.  Total hobbs
time 3.4, with 1.7 of true actual conditions.

It was an amazingly fun day!  It also really helped pull the whole
system (departure, en-route, arrival, Departure vs Center vs Arrival
controllers, etc.) together in my head ... It's actually starting
to feel like it all makes sense.

-rob.


-- 
Rob Griffiths    "The beatings will continue until morale improves..."
robg@apple.com   PP-ASEL, -IA nearing completion ... B52s/REM/Erasure!
Newsgroups: rec.aviation