First Flight of the Year
Neither Eliot nor I partied much yesterday, so we decided to get back up in the air as early as we could. We completed three approaches again, this time the GPS Runway 29 Right (GPS RWY 29R) and the VOR Runway 29 Right (VOR RWY 29R) in Stockton (KSNS), then the fairly complex ILS Runway 25 Right (ILS RWY 25R) in Livermore (KLVK), with a holding procedure at TRACY intersection. This approach would be a lot easier to fly with two Horizontal Situation Indicators (HSI), but the Cirrus SR20 we flew (N824JA) only has one, so we had to fly on the V195 airway using our bearing pointer with the Manteca VOR (ECA) set in VLOC1, then switch to Heading mode once established onto the airway while monitoring the bearing pointer, switch VLOC1 to Livermore’s ILS, then finally intercept the localizer by switching the autopilot to Heading-Approach mode. Needless to say, it’s easier said that done, and I had to request an additional turn in the hold in order to get everything ready for it. While on final, I realized that we were flying through a crosswind of about 30 knots, which is a lot more than the 15 knots the autopilot can handle, so we had to manually fly the approach, making the whole thing even more interesting. We then did another holding procedure at SUNOL intersection using the Omni Bearing Selector (OBS) mode on the GPS, and finally some DME arc tracking on our way back to San Carlos (KSQL) using the Oakland VOR on the 13 DME arc, which is an elegant way of avoiding San Francisco’s Class B airspace. We logged 2.1 hours, including 1.8 hours of simulated instruments. Happy New Year!
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