Lesson #16

Log Book - 5/1 P28R-180 IA24 KOTM IA24 1 1.4

I had to cancel on Thursday due to expected strong winds (18023G35KT), so I was hoping that my session scheduled for today was still on. The winds were stronger (23016G24KT) than normal, but not so bad that we had to cancel for the day. Given that I will be taking my exam at KOTM (Ottumwa, IA) and I still needed some more x/c hours, we decided to head down to KOTM to do an approach and work on partial panel on the way back. The Cessna 172 is expected back any day, but still wasn’t here so I decided to take the Arrow rather than trying to wedge ourselves into one of the Cessna 150’s. I filed for the IFR flight earlier that morning, so there were just the normal preparations for the flight. I arrived about 15 minutes before Dale and got the plane out of the hangar and started the preflight. The tanks were filled to the tabs, which meant that we had 36 gallons of fuel available to us. After verifying that I had all the necessary charts, etc. we proceeded with startup and taxi. After all of the necessary instrument checks, we taxi out to RWY 15 for departure. The day was gorgeous with the exception of the wind, so I was able to take-off from IA24 and pick up my clearance when airborne. I don the Foggles and call CID DEP. (Flight plan link can be viewed below) After getting our clearance, altitude and squawk code we proceed direct to the IOW VOR up to 4000’. After turning outbound from the VOR, we get turned over to CHI CTR. The last time I flew this route, there was no radar coverage from CTR, so I had to give DME reporting points along the way. The same thing could be said for today’s flight. As I was approaching about 15m DME from the OTM VOR, CTR asked what type of approach that I wanted at KOTM and to let him know when I had the weather. I tuned to the ASOS and replied that I wanted the ILS 31 (Link located below). Knowing that it wasn’t the best choice given the wind, I figured this way I could circle to land on runway 22. All of my approaches so far haven’t included circle to land procedures, so this was a good thing. Plus, I also need to land in order to pacify the FAA to log this as a cross country flight. I started getting vectors about 10 miles out from the VOR. That worked good as I could get the NAV1 tuned to the ILS freq, verify the identifier and get the OBS set for the approach. I was finally given vectors to intercept the LOC, but was still at 4000’ to make sure that I was still on radar for the CTR controller. This was the first time that I had been given this type of approach and I have to admit that it threw me for a loop. It was strange because the typical altitude for this approach is 2800’ so on I was being vectored 1200’ higher than I expected. Once I was established on the LOC, I called CTR to cancel my IFR and was told to squawk 1200 and to change to advisory. This was one of the most difficult approaches I have done to date. Once established, not only was I changing the transponder, COM1 radio frequencies and calling CTAF of my intentions, I also had to descend at a higher than normal rate (1000’ fpm) to establish myself on the GS. Not only that, but a gusty crosswind was also aiding in my difficulties. The circle to land minimums are 1260-1 so at 1300’ MSL, I added power to stop my descent and took of the Foggles. Normal traffic pattern for RWY 22 was left hand so I announced on the CTAF and continued on my runway heading. Once past the airport boundaries, I started a turn to the left at 1300’ to enter into a left downwind. I maintained 1300’ and made sure that the airport environment was in my sight the entire time. Once on final, I put out the extra notch of flaps and landed. Once we landed and we were taxiing back to the departure end of RWY 22, Dale mentioned something that could have been done to help with the more than expected descent was to extend the landing gear. The landing gear extension speed on the Arrow is well above our approach speed, so that is an option for the future if this were to happen again. We waited for a few minutes before departing back to IA24 as we discussed what we would plan for the trip home. Given that Dale needed to be back, we decided to fly direct to the CID VOR partial panel, which would take us directly to Green Castle. Once we were airborne and receiving the CID VOR, Dale proceeded to cover the Attitude Indicator and Directional Gyro and had me fly back to CID simulating a vacuum pump failure. This was a fairly easy assignment on this trip, but as Dale explained, this will get us ready to do several VOR approaches into KIOW partial panel in our next lesson. We got back and we debriefed in the office afterwards. We discussed things from today and we scheduled our time for our next lesson. He then told me to start thinking about my IFR cross country and to be thinking about potential destination airports. I will spend the next few days using Flight Sim to work on my partial panel skills. While the sim is not the same as real world flying, it does wonder with the instrument scan.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N3936T
http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/OTM/IAP/ILS+RWY+31/pdf