by stevekirks » Wed May 06, 2015 3:59 pm
Keith:
I watch the DME arc workshop last night and felt like I got a lot out of it. Turns out it saved my "sim pilot's" life:
I was flying the Chinook on FSEconomy early this morning, trying to bank some cash. I was flying to the next to the last stop which was KSBP and was direct to the airport, VFR at 8500 feet. I saw the clouds up ahead and figured I could get below while still in the clear but X-Plane had something else in mind.
San Luis was reporting OVC 2600 so I descended into the broken layer that X-Plane was rendering but it became 100% whiteout at 3500 or so. I had the ILS RWY 11 approach plate up already and the Paso Robles VOR on NAV1 and I had DME. I sort of panicked for a bit but the Chinook was on heading hold autopilot so I could take stock of what I had to do.
I looked at the procedure and figured out how to get to the193 radial - twist and turn! I flew out to get to the 10 mile DME point, then fle an arc to get to the IF and was able to finish the procedure from there. I realize with the helicopter it would have been easily to just go straight up to get out of the IMC but I was glad to have a chance to apply what I learned during the informal training.
Note-- this was mountain terrain and turning around to go back the way I didn't consider safe. I tried to approach my silly sim mistake as a real training problem and not to panic. It seemed like I had all of the tools for success so why not complete the procedure?
Steve Kirks (sKirks on Twitch)
KSGF--I-10 rated
Student Pilot
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