Alphabet Challenge Leg 21 KUDD - KVNY

[Talan2000]

Pilots,

http://peaware.pilotedge.net/flight.cfm?id=87412

Situation: Flying out of the beautiful Palm Springs area back into smoggy LA. Leaving a non-towered field. TEC route exists. (Remember they are regional not airport specific) Be sure to check for your ODP if IFR. And watch out for mountains if VFR. (hint take a peek at the ODP anyway). I always "feel" awkward flying the ODP without being specifically cleared for it like I'm deviating somehow from the flightplan. This is silly of course. Don't feel that way.

In this case you go down safely South to thermal TRM to climb up. As it turns out, the climbing power of the King Air made it a moot point as I was already at the minimum ODP altitude way before I entered the HOLD at TRM - and maybe this is a slight learning opportunity --

Question: Does one have to maintain a prescribed OD Procedure if you've already hit the min altitude before the hold (or the ODP ends)? In other words, can I just do I 180 and head on to my next filed waypoint or do I have to fully execute the ODP as defined? Trying as always to be conservative and always needing practice with hold entries I entered the hold (parallel) and left at 12000 having delayed my passengers by about 10 minutes by heading south from KUDD.

KUDD ODP.JPG (206.21 KiB) Viewed 2880 times

Lessons Learned: Brief the approach early. It's a balance between trying to memorize everything and being ready for any approach assigned. But those of us who need to improve their skills should probably err on the side of overpreparation. I was fascinated with a new - for me - type of approach called an LDA-C? LD What? I excitedly googled it in flight and read up on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Localizer_ ... tional_aid. The geography of VNY with mountains to the north (I think these may factor in to a later flight) and east must have given the FAA planners some headaches as they laid out approaches so we get a 90 degree intercept Localizer Circling approach. Ugly. So feeling happy to have learned something I smiled and then I noticed I was totally off course...

Banning-Bands-BERMUDA: For whatever reason, the Banning-BANDS valley is the BERMUDA TRIANGLE for me. Twice at least I have allowed myself to be distracted while briefing upcoming approaches and cruise off course. In this instance I caught it about 20 seconds before the controller asked me what I was up to (I had banked hard left to get back on course 2 - 4 miles south) when he very graciously gave me direct POM which my track was pretty much aiming at. I'll keep my eye out for for Flight 19 next time I go through there.

PPPPP: Got vectors for the 16R ILS. Probably master of the obvious stuff for you guys, but be ready to turn with alacrity when given the instruction. I had to make a pretty big one, pretty fast, to get aligned and headed to the FAC. Having my hand hovering over the HDG knob on AP (or affirmatively deciding ahead of time when/where to hand fly) gave me that nice feeling of accomplishment to roll out of the turn and directly on the FAC. Virtual high fives with ATC ensued.

Have a good flight

[Peter Grey]

Does one have to maintain a prescribed OD Procedure if you've already hit the min altitude before the hold (or the ODP ends)? In other words, can I just do I 180 and head on to my next filed waypoint or do I have to fully execute the ODP as defined?

No, the ODP simply says to cross TRM at or above an altitude and provides a safe way to reach that altitude (the hold).

The geography of VNY with mountains to the north (I think these may factor in to a later flight) and east must have given the FAA planners some headaches as they laid out approaches so we get a 90 degree intercept Localizer Circling approach. Ugly. So feeling happy to have learned something I smiled and then I noticed I was totally off course...

In theory yes, but the ILS 16R proves that you can make a north arrival work.

The LDA-C (which uses the BUR runway 8 localizer) helps with some ATC sequencing issues between VNY and BUR in theory.

[flyingdrill]

I thought I'd use Carenado's V3 of the PA46 Malibu today (X-Plane 10.35 on an iMac). I usually avoid it, and stick with an earlier version. I wish I had. Somehow, the scroll wheel control was hopeless, and even dragging things didn't seem to work properly. I was also having a constant fight with the S-Tec autopilot, which never seemed to want to obey my altitude commands. I must check back on the forums to see whether I am just having a bad hair day! Anyway, I'm going back to the older version, I've popped a Garmin 430 into that anyway. At one stage, I apologized to the controller for my jigging around. Cutting out the A/P, swapping hands with the joystick, and rolling the scroll wheel or dragging numbers that just didn't go to the values I wanted got frustrating. OK - a bad workman blames his tools.......

Anyway, I flew the ODP - or most of it, before the controller gave me an altitude and a vector to PSP, after which the altitude was hastily revised, and I was direct to the VOR. Arriving at VNY for the visual to 34L was odd, because I knew where the field should be, but could not identify any scenery or buildings of any sort. The controller asked me to report the field in sight, and asked me what my conditions were (very VFR!), because I should have easily seen it. All I could make out were a couple of lines, which may have been the runways, and then I saw that they were indeed the runways! So, I looked at my installation later, and saw that I had no scenery for KVNY. I really thought I had, because I sort of remembered making it out more than once. Also, I would have thought that 10.35 would have put a few generic buildings down on what is a well known field. I thought about my recollections, and it came to me that my memories of more populated scenery were from FSX! I sometimes fly stuff in that - especially A2A - but rarely on PE.

A respectable landing, but not one of the most pleasant flights I've had.