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Chain of events - Behind the aircraft

Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2018 7:29 pm
by vinman1000
I wanted to share an experience I had flying on PE. I was doing the CAT6 from BFL to MHV, which is VFR with Flight Following. When arriving MHV I was monitoring AWOS on COM2. This normally works but for some reason I was getting nothing. I double and triple checked the freq, but nothing. I even put it in COM1 and took a quick listen but got nothing. So I resolved to just advise the tower I was negative on AWOS.

However, this is where the next link of the chain came in. Because I was a little behind the aircraft I noticed I was like 5 miles from the airport and approach didn't send me to tower yet. So I called approach to say I had the airport in sight. They immediately sent me to tower. I called tower and received instructions to enter a right downwind for RWY 26. Now I was so far behind the aircraft at this point I didn't know which runway was which.

This is when the stall horn went off.

Yeah, I had been slowing and descending in anticipation of the arrival and I got "low and slow" as the saying goes. Too slow in this case. To my defense my real world training kicked in and I floored the throttle, pointed the nose down, and just flew the plane. Once out of that emergency I advised tower I was overwhelmed. He vectored me away from the airport to get things right.

Lessons learned:
1) Don't let one single thing suck your attention. Missing the AWOS started me down this path.
2) If you think the controller forgot about you then call him up.
3) I should have immediately notified the tower I was unable to comply with his instruction. Or, asked to be vectored away in the first place.

PE is such a great learning tool!

Thanks,
Vin

Re: Chain of events - Behind the aircraft

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 7:52 am
by rtataryn
At a lot of airports the ATIS doesn’t play on the sim, and even when it does it may indicate the wrong current runway that PE is using. The best place to pick up the ATIS for towered airports on PE is http://myflightroute.com/atisplay.php?

I usually try to pick the ATIS up about 40 miles out, and have the frequencies and runway layout briefed well ahead of time especially at unfamiliar airports. Tasks can definitely pile up and happen fast at the end of flights.

Re: Chain of events - Behind the aircraft

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2018 7:57 pm
by Ryan B
Another option, as long as you're using RW weather is to see the METAR at the destination or area airports using skyvector.

All the little green, blue, red, and maroon dots are the weather from good to poor.

I usually use this to find poor weather for fun... like tonite I'm going LAX to POC. But you can also see weather at other potential "alternate" destinations!

Imageskyvectorinfligh by ryan b, on Flickr