IFR Diversions
Instructor M and I are back flying today. And I’m back under the foggles again too as it’s another nice VFR day. Today’s flight is ostensibly a cross-country, but there’s a diversion that will come up somewhere too.
We’re not under real IFR, this is a VFR flight and M is playing ATC. He gives me my clearance, I have program my route into the GPS, and he takes off. I’ll take the plane 200 feet up. He readjusts my altimeter setting before lift off.
I’d set it, but to 29.89 instead of 29.99. I noticed it was odd shortly before M reset it for me. I need to double-check things and handle anything out of the ordinary. It wouldn’t have affected takeoff or climbout and I could have handled it in the air. But I don’t want the habit of little things going off like this.
We did the usual departure stuff, climbing to the altitudes as taking the headings as usual. I get a “direct to” instruction and fiddle with the GPS for a bit (to change the route) and then turn to my new heading. Then, once we were established on the longer leg of this cross-country flight. M in his role as ATC tells me that the destination airport’s closed. Someone had a nose gear collapse or something I was told. So, what are my intentions?
I picked the nearest airport, next to the VOR we crossed not long ago. M says that’s below minimums and mentions that another was is still above. Alright, we’re going there. ATC won’t tell you what to do, you’re the pilot in command after all. But, they will hint broadly. These hints are valuable as they have more information that I do as a pilot. I took the hint.
Told M as ATC that I wanted the GPS approach and will contact him when I have weather. It should really be the other way around as I don’t know if the GPS would be available till I listen to weather after all. But it was good and he vectored me.
I quick-and-dirty programmed the GPS; Direct to, then select the approach. Then M gave me direct to the approach point and I was on my way.
Of course, we were really VFR and other people were flying out actually looking out the window, unlike me. My radio calls needed to adjust for that and give information for both VFR and IFR pilots. M was watching for traffic of course.
We broke off, and circled to land on the runway in use (we’d come in facing the opposing runway). Just as I was in the groove for landing, M says, “go around”. Crap. I’m not ready for this. He probably knew that too.
I start my climb out, fiddle with the GPS, drop that as I need attention on the plane, milk back the flaps as we climb out, check the approach plate. Well shoot, as we circled to land the missed instructions are not accurate anymore. It’s ok, I know the missed point, I’ll have to modify the instructors on the fly, so to speak. I get climbing out there and turned to the right direction, more or less. The M reminds me to contact him as ATC and tell him I’m missed.
M as ATC tells me that this airport just went below minimums, asks me my intentions and mentions that our home airport is above mins. Fine, we’ll go there. He gives me a point to go direct to and I turn roughly in that direction. M as instructor asks me what I’m doing. “Successive approximation” I answer. “This is more or less in the right direction, now that I’m stable I’ll fiddle with the GPS and get it set up, then fix my heading.” He laughs and says he’ll remind me of that later.
The approach went better than yesterday’s and the landing was smoother too. Later, in debrief, M tells me I should have used successive approximation for my earlier “direct to” heading change too. He likes that term I think. And, although he had some comments, he basically liked me handling of the missed approach. But he did caution that I should always plan to go missed, then be pleasantly surprised with being able to land.