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Message started by JayG on Feb 21st, 2011 at 5:11pm

Title: Re: Lou - STORIES
Post by LOU on Feb 27th, 2011 at 4:57pm
CollP,
In another post I said that the wipers must have been designed by the same #@%# engineer that designed the noisy trim wheel!  >:(



As you can see in this approach plate there is a ton of information that the pilot must keep in mind and understand. The runway elevation of almost 9,500 feet puts this airport at the upper limit of "pig flying." The GPWS probably went off as they flew over a hill and the computer saw the rising terrain. As long as they were visual and understood the nature of the alert, thats OK. A look at the MSA (minimum sector altitude) circle in the upper right part of the plate gives you a good idea of what's around the airport. Also, night operations for this approach are NA - Thank God!

From the MAP (missed approach point) 2,5 DME from SUR VOR to the threshold is only 1.5 miles and you have to loose almost 1,400 feet - that is pretty steep. Remember a normal glide slope is 300 feet per mile. This approach will require almost 1,000 FPM if you are IMC and just go visual at the MAP in order to have Miss Piggy in a position to land. I don't know what the runway length is of RW 23, but even though the IAS on the approach would be about the same as the IAS for a low level landing, the true airspeed is higher in that skinny air so the speed across the ground at landing is faster. Stopping becomes a factor. No US carrier and most carriers for that matter would allow these young ladies in the cockpit because of the distraction they might cause.  ;)

You ask about some interesting approaches...

One night I was flying KSTL to KICT in "La Pig." The weather was nasty. A long line of thunderstorms was moving across the middle of the US. The northern end of the line was up in Canada and the south end somewhere in Mexico. Mid-west weather is violent compared to other parts of the country.

This little piggy - a 727 -100 - had old style "C" band type radar. This radar was pretty good, but you had to know how to adjust the gain and the tilt to glean what was really out in front of you. The ATC controller was very help full in passing on information form the ICT tower. He would relay things like "the tower reports the storms over the field, moving east at 40 KTS., heavy rain, lighting in cloud, cloud to cloud and cloud to ground." Nice night!

Well, I was able to find a few small holes in the line and popped out to the west side without too much trashing about. The light show was very cool and there was a bright moon to add to the scene. When we switched over to approach control we were happy to hear that the line was now east of ICT and to plan on landing on 19R since the wind was now out of the south east at 15 to 20 KTS. We were in the clear at 5,000 feet and started a descent for landing. Even though we were in clear air the turbulence was pretty strong because of all the fast moving air trying to keep up with the cold front.

As we started down the ILS the tower reported winds at 1,000 feet were 350 degrees at 58 KTS.  :o  This was reported by a plane in front of us that had INS and ground speed readout. We knew we had a strong tailwind because the rate of descent was very high just to stay on the G/S. The tower reported the wind shift would happen around 500 feet. All this time during the approach the bumps were pretty bad. OTTO (our autopilot) was not able to handle this kind of abuse, so I was "pig wrestling" (hand flying) the plane. At the outer marker, we could not see the ground as we had entered an area of moderate rain. About 3 miles from the runway we observed ground contact and a bit latter the approach lights started coming into view. As we approached 500 feet we were poised to go around because of the sink rate being high and the turbulence being heavy. Just as advertised, at 500 feet it became fairly smooth and we had a pretty good head wind shear.

The saying goes...Flying is hours and hours of shear boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror!

Lou

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