Lesson #6

Log Book - 3/1 C172 IA24 IOW OTM 4K6 1 1.6

The Cessna 172 that I fly needed to be delivered to our A&P so that it could get a required engine overhaul. The club had a Cessna 150 sitting waiting to be returned from its annual. I thought what a perfect way to get some hood time in without paying for the planes and helping out the club, so I volunteered to fly the 172 to Bloomfield, IA (4K6) and pick up the 150, so I scheduled my CFII to fly with me as well. After talking to Dale Sunday afternoon, I decided to go ahead and file an IFR flight plan so that I would get used to the filing process and also the different ways to pick up a clearance either at IA24 or in the air. I filed Sunday night IA24-IOW-OTM-4K6 at 4000’ and departing at 1515z on Monday. I knew that I had 2 hours after our planned departure time so I felt safe filing for the time that I did. I arrived at the airport, fueled and preflighted and waited for Dale. After Dale arrived, we talked about the different ways to go about getting our clearance. I decided that I wanted to get our clearance on the ground at IA24 rather than picking it up in the air after departure. I found out after the fact, that it was a mistake. I ended up having to sit on the ground at IA24 for 5 minutes waiting for my departure slot (I thought that only happened at big airports). After take-off I contacted CID DEP and received my direct IOW proceed own nav on the trip. I flew to IOW and then started my turn outbound to OTM. I was getting back to having the needles almost centered. While doing my normal instrument scan, I noticed both VOR needles showed that I was right of course so I proceeded to correct my heading to the left waiting for the CDI to center. After several minutes with no CDI movement, I turned the OBS knob on both VOR’s trying to center the CDI to find out what was happening. Oh crap, they were now showing that I was way left of course. You can see my flightaware.com track on the link below. This old plane and its crappy equipment is really starting to piss me off at this point. During this tracking issue, I had been told to contact Chicago Center. I had my Fujitsu tablet PC with moving map software and I should have used that to cross reference my position. Given the fact that was the first time that I had it in an airplane, I hadn’t included it in my normal instrument scan. After recognizing the error with the instruments, I validated the problem after thinking about the GPS that I had attached to the yoke. I immediately started my correction back to being on the correct course. As I was correcting back, I called CHI CTR to request vectors for the OTM VOR DME 13 (Link located below) approach. I received the vectors and was told to descend to 3000’. After passing through 3400’ I was told by CHI CTR that radar contact was lost and to climb back up to 4000’. I received several more vectors before being told to fly HDG 150 and cleared for the VOR DME 13 approach. At that point I cancelled my IFR flight plan and flew the approach. At 1150’ I pulled the Foggles and found the runway directly in front of me. I then went missed and proceeded direct to the OTM VOR as described in the missed approach procedure. After arriving there, we turned to the south and followed the 189 degree radial down to 4K6 per the Bloomfield AF/D. Dale gave me vectors and altitude instructions to get me lined up for downwind for RWY 36. We landed and I taxied the airplane to the waiting A&P that would be tearing it down within hours of its arrival.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N7717U/history/20100301/1525Z/IA24/4K6
http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/OTM/IAP/VOR_DME+RWY+13/pdf