First IFR flight on PE

[awreaper]

I made my first IFR flight on PE last night. I made my home base KPSP and am using ORBX Socal and PSP. I started planning the day before and selected my departure, route and arrival procedures. I had it all planned out and committed to memory. I called up clearance and she gave me a totally different departure and route. I had to recalculate everything but it worked out. The departure and enroute went smoothly with the exception that I was having a hard time understanding all that the controller said to me but that is a headset issue that I will get resolved. So as I am near the end of my enroute phase the controller asks what I would like and I tell him the visual as it was VFR weather. He gives me a heading and tells me to report the airport in sight. I fly on and on and still don't see the airport. It is night and I am now just a few miles away and I should see it. Just as he was getting frustrated and I was about to give up and ask for vectors to my alternate, the lights came up. I cancel IFR and am on my way to the strip. About 4-5 miles out the lights go out again. All the lights at the airport including the beacon are gone! I am a real world pilot and during PPL training we made several landings at night with nothing but the beacon on so I know it can be done. I keep heading toward the dark spot which I know is the runway and about a mile out all the lights come back on. When I land I notice that all the terrain beside the runways and taxiways is elevated about 30-40 feet. So I have some terrain issues going on that probably also explains why the lights were going on and off. Not a good thing to have happen on my first IFR flight but at least it was VFR conditions. Anyway it was a fun flight and I am now hooked.

[Kyle.Sanders]

As for your scenery, I'm not an expert but for your routing problem, some parts of the country have Mandatory routing. In SoCal, there are a series of "TEC" routes.

Use these two site to help be better prepared for routing:

https://www.fly.faa.gov/rmt/nfdc_prefer ... tabase.jsp

http://myflightroute.com (great resource for PilotEdge in general. Especially the ATIS page)

[Keith Smith]

welcome to the network. Here's a workshop on flight planning and TEC routes, too: http://www.pilotedge.net/workshops/ifr- ... tec-routes

[awreaper]

I watched all of the workshop videos but missed this one somehow. I will watch it this morning.

[awreaper]

That is exactly what happened. I was assigned a TEC route. I went to FlightAware and looked at the last several real world flights from my origin to destination and sure enough they flew the same route they assigned to me last night. Kudos to PE for being so realistic.

[Ryan B]

Yeah SoCal hehe

I'd recommend not doing much pre planning - the routes are all laid out for most airport pairs. You'll want to look it over yah, but no need to memorize it - things will always change.

What I would look over a lot is VFR routing. It's no secret that VFR is more difficult in SoCal than IFR. Some people posted links to the pilot program - it's a GREAT tool that will help a lot