It's Nice To Be Going Home

It is always nice to be going home after a tour or a training event. With spring upon us I now have the bike to look forward to in addition to wife, home, photo business, church and friends.

Anyhow I said yesterday that I would have a checkride report today so here it is. We spent the whole sim session in the Memphis area at night. Typical profile of steep turns, stalls, and approaches, missed approaches, with assorted engine failures and fires sprinkled in. One was especially interesting. We were doing the auto-pilot coupled approach with 200 foot overcast with a runway visual range of 1800 feet. This is generally below acceptable minimums but if you can see approach lights at normal minimums you can descend below that altitude. That was the case and we continued the approach for a landing. At about 50 feet the instructor told us to go-around due to an aircraft on the runway. Just then the shape of an aircraft appeared in front of us. As I added power and started to pitch up it looked like we were going to hit the aircraft so I banked slightly to the right and missed the tail but I think I would have clipped our winglet had that been real.

On another approach called a circling approach we descend to a minimum descent altitude until we see the airport then maintaining visual contact with the airport we maneuver the aircraft around to land on a completely different runway. Below is a printout of this maneuver, the curved line being our path to the runway.

These events are fun and exciting and get the adrenaline pumping. Even though we are in a simulator there are a couple of times where the mental processes are being taxed where you can really think it is the real deal.

Hey all, take care and have a great weekend. Cya Monday.

Doug