I'll give you an example used by an examiner I know. It covers pretty much all the bases.
You're filed IFR from Wilmington DE to Atlantic City NJ. Your filed route is OOD V184 ACY KACY at 3000. Your clearance is "radar vectors OOD, then as filed, maintain 2000, expect 3000 ten minutes after departure," and you are taking off on Runway 27. Tower tells you "turn left 180, cleared for takeoff." At 400 above the departure end of the runway, you start the turn to 180 and Tower tells you to contact Philadelphia Approach. You switch, call, and hear nothing. What do you do?
First thing you do is confirm that you really are lost comm. That means:
· making a second call in case the controller was on the land line.
· checking the freq you've dialed in.
· checking your audio panel volume knob, headset plugs, etc
· listening to see if you hear anyone else
· try the #2 comm
· switch back to Tower and see if maybe the lights just went out at the Philly TRACON
· try 121.5
· listen to the ILG and/or OOD VOR audio signals (yes, they can talk over the VOR's)
· try your cell phone
· anything else you can think of to restore communication with the ground.
Only when all of those possibilities are exhausted do you consider yourself "lost comm" and start squawking 7600.
Next step is to look out the window. Per 91.185(b), if you are in visual conditions and can land visually, you are required to do so as soon as you can do that safely. So if you can see the Wilmington airport, you turn back to it, enter the downwind for 27, and watch the tower for lights.
Only now, if you have exhausted the possibilities for restoring comm and are not in visual conditions do you start into 91.185(c). At this point, you're probably level at 2000 heading 180 on a radar vector. Per paragraph (c)(1)(ii), you go "by the direct route from the point of radio failure to the fix, route, or airway specified in the vector clearance," i.e., turn direct OOD VOR. After that, you'll continue on your cleared route all the way to ACY.
What about altitude? Paragraph (c)(2) says you flight at the highest of the
· MEA
· Expected
· Assigned
Note that this trio makes the acronym MEA -- easy to remember?
At this point, perhaps three minutes after takeoff, the MEA comes off the L-chart, the expected is still 2000 since ten minutes have not yet elapsed, and the assigned is 2000 from your clearance, so you fly at 2000 for now. This will remain the same until you get to another MEA (say, at OOD) or ten minutes runs out. Let's say you reach OOD (14 nm from KILG) at 9 minutes. Now, the MEA drops to 1900, but your last assigned and the expected at this time remain 2000, so you stay at 2000. But one minute later, you'll hit the 10 minute mark, sending your expected up to 3000, and you'll climb to 3000 at that time, and stay there unless an MEA comes up that is higher (which on this route it doesn't).
However, let's say you've made contact with Philly, they've turned you direct OOD, assigned 3000, and amended your route "after OOD, cleared V166 LEEAH V229 ACY direct KACY". You lose comm immediately thereafter. The route part is easy, but altitude's a bit trickier. When you hit OOD and turn southeast on V166, the MEA drops to 1900. Your last assigned is now 3000 and you have no further expected altitude, so the highest of the three remains 3000 -- until you reach BRIEF intersection about halfway from OOD to LEEAH, where the MEA jumps to 7000. At that point, the highest of the three becomes 7000. Since there's no X-flag MCA there, you don't start the climb until you cross BRIEF, but when you do, you must maintain the standard minimum climb gradient of 200 feet per nautical mile, which you translate to a minimum climb rate in feet per minute using the table in the back of the Terminal Procedures book (or the Digital Terminal Procedures Supplement in your iPad/ForeFlight). That's where you stay until you reach LEEAH and turn northeast, and the MEA drops back down to 2000. Now the highest of the three is back down to 3000 (your last assigned), so after crossing LEEAH, you start a descent to 3000, which you will maintain all the way to ACY.
In the various situations above, you end up reaching the ACY VOR at 3000 feet. Now what?
Based on your preflight weather briefing and the equipment in your aircraft, you should already have decided which approach you are going to fly. If ACY VOR were an IAF, you could start an approach from there, and if that's the approach you wanted to fly, you'd comply with paragraph (c)(3)(i) by holding there until your filed ETE runs out, or commencing at once if your ETE has already elapsed. With no published hold there, you'd do what the AIM says about arriving at a fix at which you must hold with no holding instructions and no published hold -- make a standard right holding pattern on your arrival course (V184 or V229, depending on which scenario we use) at 3000 feet.
Since none of the approaches to KACY begin at ACY VOR (i.e., it's not an IAF), you are definitely going somewhere else immediately IAW paragraph (c)(3)(ii), and do so at 3000 feet. Let's say you've chosen the ILS 31 approach. There's a feeder route to the STEVV IAF from ACY VOR (3000/127 CRS/11.8nm), and a published hold there, so you'd turn outbound to that 127 course to STEVV and check your clock again. If your ETE has elapsed, you complete the reversal descending to 2000 and continue inbound on the ILS after crossing STEVV the second time. If not, you'd hold at STEVV as published until the time ran out, then leave 3000 and fly the approach.
You may hear some discussion about what to do if the last point in your flight plan route block is not the airport or a navaid on the airport. In the above case, it's pretty easy, since the ACY VOR is on the airport, so there's no question about whether to proceed to the airport from here or to consider ACY VOR your clearance limit and continue with paragraph (c)(3). However, let's say you'd filed to Republic Airport, Farmingdale NY (KFRG) which has no navaid on the field and has no approach beginning from overhead the field. Most folks would file with either JFK VOR or DPK VOR (depending on arrival direction) as the last point in the route of flight block. If you filed through JFK, what do you do when you reach the JFK VOR, especially if you don't have a GPS so you can't fly direct to KFRG from there? This question has been answered by the FAA's Flight Procedures Branch in the attached response.
The short answer is you should have filed from JFK VOR to either the FR OM or BBN NDB to which you could navigate as the last point in your route of flight, but if you didn’t, that’s where you’ll go from JFK VOR immediately upon reaching JFK VOR anyway, since those are fixes from which an approach begins, JFK VOR is not, and you can’t navigate direct KFRG (even if you flew a radial off JFK VOR, you wouldn’t know when you reached the airport). Once reaching FR or BBN, you would do just as you did on reaching STEVV in the KACY example. What the FAA does not want is for you to continue from JFK direct to KFRG and then out to some other fix to start the approach [and this should answer McManigle's question immediately above].
Obviously, with an IFR approach GPS, you could also proceed direct from JFK VOR to the IAF for an RNAV(GPS) approach.
Questions?
BTW, despite the marking on the attached file, I have the FAA's permission to distribute it.
